Hilt began with a founder who knew the stage before software. William “Will” Cielen, the son of a magician and acrobat, performed in his father’s magic shows before building cybersecurity software. On October 7, 2026, his startup has raised $4.2 million in seed funding, giving an unusual career path a very conventional technology milestone.
Cielen spent his first five years living on a cruise ship, then spent five years in Las Vegas. At 10, he moved to Montreal and entered an intensive ballet program. By 15, he had skipped two grades, started college, and launched a website design and development business.
“I was rather introverted as a child, but I became extroverted through the unique upbringing,” Cielen said. The résumé is not a standard route into cybersecurity, unless the standard route now includes cruise ships, ballet, magic shows, and leaving school to board a plane for San Francisco.
From Algorithmic Trading to Security Software
Cielen attended Concordia University in Montreal and worked as an algorithmic trading intern at the National Bank of Canada. He later dropped out of school, quit the internship, and flew to San Francisco to start Hilt.
That decision connected his background in trading with the security problem Hilt set out to address. Hilt’s software helps companies detect and stop unusual data activity, including the theft of sensitive information.
The company’s early commercial test came from a hedge fund that offered a potential contract worth $1 million to $2 million if Hilt could solve a security problem in high-frequency trading operations. The hedge fund paid a six-figure sum upfront before Hilt had built the solution.
That arrangement gave Hilt something founders usually spend months requesting: a customer with a serious problem, a large possible contract, and money committed before the product existed. It also placed pressure on the company to build around an actual security need rather than a polished pitch deck.
Cielen described the purpose of that approach as a chance “to see what the real problems were, not to build in the dark.” In cybersecurity, that distinction matters because unusual data activity is not an abstract concern; it is the thing the software must identify and stop.
Investors Back the Security Platform
Array Ventures led Hilt’s $4.2 million seed funding round. Other investors include Verdict Capital, Base10 Partners, Brickyard, Liquid 2 Ventures, Sequel, the Sarah Smith Fund, and Alumni Ventures.
The seed round brings Hilt’s total funding to $4.7 million when combined with a $500,000 pre-seed round led by Pear VC in October 2025. The funding gives the startup a larger financial base after its first commercial validation, though venture capital remains a promise about what a company can build next—not proof that the hard part is over.
Hilt’s stated focus is clear: help companies spot unusual data activity and prevent sensitive information from leaving their control. The company now has funding, a high-value potential contract, and a founder whose path to cybersecurity began far outside the usual technical pipeline.
Cielen’s story is useful for a reason beyond its novelty. His background supplied experience with performance, adaptation, trading systems, and software businesses before Hilt combined those threads into a security startup. The result is a company funded to solve a narrow problem with expensive consequences—an approach that is less glamorous than magic, but much easier to measure.
