Ben Colman
CEO and co-founder of Reality Defender. MBA from NYU Stern; BA from Claremont McKenna College. ~15 years in cybersecurity and data science, including leading cybersecurity commercialization at Goldman Sachs and working on Google's partnerships team.
Colman co-founded Reality Defender in 2021 alongside Ali Shahriyari and Gaurav Bharaj, going through Y Combinator's Winter 2022 batch. At Goldman Sachs (2015-2017) he worked in the Office of the CIO on cybersecurity and technology commercialization, and has said the deepfake-detection idea grew out of watching voice-authentication systems struggle with synthetic audio there. Before Goldman, he worked on Google's partnerships team on consumer privacy solutions. Reality Defender has since raised roughly $52M, including a $15M Series A led by DCVC (2023) later expanded to $33M with Illuminate Financial, Booz Allen Ventures, IBM Ventures, and others joining.
Overview
- Role
- CEO & Co-Founder, Reality Defender
- Based in
- New York, NY, USA
- Prior experience
- Goldman Sachs (cybersecurity commercialization lead; 2015-2017), Google (partnerships team)
- www.linkedin.com/in/benpcolman
Affiliated funds0
No linked records yet.
Frequently asked
- Who is Ben Colman?
- Colman co-founded Reality Defender in 2021 alongside Ali Shahriyari and Gaurav Bharaj, going through Y Combinator's Winter 2022 batch. At Goldman Sachs (2015-2017) he worked in the Office of the CIO on cybersecurity and technology commercialization, and has said the deepfake-detection idea grew out of watching voice-authentication systems struggle with synthetic audio there. Before Goldman, he worked on Google's partnerships team on consumer privacy solutions. Reality Defender has since raised roughly $52M, including a $15M Series A led by DCVC (2023) later expanded to $33M with Illuminate Financial, Booz Allen Ventures, IBM Ventures, and others joining.
- What is Ben Colman's role?
- Ben Colman is CEO & Co-Founder, Reality Defender, based in New York, NY, USA.
- Where did Ben Colman work before?
- Ben Colman's prior roles include Goldman Sachs (cybersecurity commercialization lead; 2015-2017), Google (partnerships team).
Sources & citations4
Each claim links to its underlying source. Confidence reflects how directly the source supports the claim.
- 1
Q&A with Ben Colman, co-founder and CEO of Reality Defender
Goldman Sachs Alumni: Q&A with Ben Colman, Co-Founder and CEO of Reality DefenderVerified2024-01-01 - 2
Ben Colman co-founded Reality Defender in 2021 with Ali Shahriyari and Gaurav Bharaj, went through Y Combinator's Winter 2022 batch
Y Combinator: Reality DefenderVerified2026-08-09 - 3
Ben Colman, CEO & Co-Founder of Reality Defender; background at Goldman Sachs and Google
Reality Defender: Ben ColmanVerified2026-08-09 - 4
Reality Defender expands Series A to $33 million with Illuminate Financial, Booz Allen Ventures, IBM Ventures, Jefferies Family Office and Accenture joining
PR Newswire: Reality Defender Expands Series A to $33 MillionVerified2024-10-08