Lookout

James Martin, CNET

Lookout

Entrepreneur: John Hering, 26
Funding: $5.5 million from Khosla Ventures, Trilogy Partnership, and angel investors that include Chris Sacca

If smartphones are the new personal computers, it stands to reason that hackers and other digital miscreants are trying to purloin the information they transmit. Lookout is security software for smartphones including Apple's iPhone, Research In Motion's Blackberry, and phones running Google's Android operating system and Microsoft's Windows Mobile software. Chief Executive and co-founder John Hering has been a computer security researcher for eight years. He turned his attention to mobile devices in 2004, when the most popular phone was Motorola's Razr. "It was a different world then," he says.

Toughest decision: Moving his team of 10, who had met at the University of Southern California, from Los Angeles to San Francisco.