ThreatStream Lands $22 Million in Series B Funding Led by General Catalyst Partners
Other Investors Participating in Round Include Google Ventures, Institutional Venture Partners and Paladin Capital Group
REDWOOD CITY, CA – December 4, 2014 – ThreatStream™, the provider of a threat intelligence platform that identifies cyber threats and facilitates trusted threat sharing, today announced that it has raised $22 million in series B funding led by General Catalyst Partners, with significant investment by new investors Institutional Venture Partners and previous investors Google Ventures and Paladin Capital Group. With this investment, Steve Herrod, managing director at General Catalyst Partners, will join the ThreatStream Board of Directors, which already includes 30-year industry veteran Tom Reilly, the former CEO of ArcSight and current CEO of Cloudera.
This funding was secured based on the rapid adoption of ThreatStream OPTIC™, the first community-vetted threat-sharing platform to manage the entire life-cycle of security threat intelligence. Since the company’s founding in February 2013, more than 1,100 registered users from Fortune 1000 and government organizations have deployed the ThreatStream OPTIC platform, which analyzes threat intelligence feeds from hundreds of sources, digitally integrating that intelligence into the operations of customer organizations existing security devices. Building on the momentum of the past year, ThreatStream will use this funding to ensure customer success as well as to further accelerate growth and revenue.
ThreatStream is led by former founder, chief technology officer (CTO) and executive vice president of research and development at ArcSight, Hugh Njemanze. Njemanze is regarded as the initial architect of Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and helped establish ArcSight as one of the most successful security companies to come out of Silicon Valley in the last two decades.
“Today the bad guys are winning because they are collaborating. ThreatStream is committed to providing the tools to enable companies to share threat intelligence in a practical and effective environment,” said Njemanze. “The pedigree of our investors and board members, together with the experience our team has gained building successful security companies like ArcSight, makes me confident in our ability to execute and grow our business with this additional investment.”
Growing threat complexity, frequency of attacks, rapidly growing data volumes and number of locations data is stored are complicating the ability of enterprise organizations to ensure that IT infrastructure and business-critical data are protected. Despite significant investments in people, capital and security tools, organizations are struggling to win the war against cyber threats. At the heart of protecting organizations from cyber threats and their customers from data breaches is the speed at which risks can be identified. Security teams spend significant time analyzing the same attacks but lack the visibility needed to aggregate and analyze threats according to risk.
IDC predicts threat intelligence will grow to a $1.4 billion industry by 2018. ThreatStream is well positioned for market leadership, offering the first threat intelligence platform that truly changes the game for enterprise and government organizations. The unique OPTIC platform enables security teams to optimize work-flows by enabling community collaboration and analysis, then ranking threats according to severity and relevance.
Investor perspective:
“With the daily drumbeat of sophisticated security breaches, it is vital that companies across all industries augment their infrastructure to combat advanced malware and increase their defenses," said Steve Herrod, managing director at General Catalyst. "We are excited to back a visionary like ThreatStream, which is focused on developing a new category of actionable threat intelligence that helps companies make sense of millions of threats in real-time while allowing them to securely share their findings.”
“ThreatStream offers enterprise customers a revolutionary model to protect their sensitive data and core infrastructure. In addition, the company is led a by a true visionary in Hugh Njemanze, and we are excited to be working with him once again,” stated Steve Harrick, general partner, Institutional Venture Partners (IVP).
About General Catalyst Partners
General Catalyst Partners is a venture capital firm that makes early-stage and growth equity investments. The firm backs exceptional entrepreneurs who are building innovative technology companies that transform industries, including Airbnb, BigCommerce, Datalogix, Datto, Demandware, The Honest Company, HubSpot, KAYAK, Oscar, Snapchat, Stripe, and Warby Parker. The General Catalyst partnership leverages its broad experience to help founders build market-leading businesses. General Catalyst has offices in Cambridge, MA, Palo Alto, CA and New York City. For more information, visit: www.generalcatalyst.com or www.twitter.com/gcvp.
About Google Ventures
Google Ventures provides seed, venture and growth stage funding to the most innovative and promising entrepreneurs across a variety of industries. Founded in 2009, Google Ventures has extensive entrepreneurial experience, deep technical knowledge, and expertise in building high growth, scalable products and companies. Among its 200+ investments are Uber, Kabam, RetailMeNot, DocuSign, AngelList, and Foundation Medicine. Google Ventures is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., with offices in Boston and New York. For more information, please visit www.gv.com.
About Institutional Venture Partners (IVP)
With $4 billion of committed capital, Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) is one of the premier later-stage venture capital and growth equity firms in the United States. Founded in 1980, IVP has invested in over 300 companies, 100 of which have gone public. IVP is one of the top-performing firms in the industry and has a 33-year IRR of 43.2%. IVP specializes in venture growth investments, industry rollups, founder liquidity transactions, and select public market investments. Since its inception, IVP investments include such notable companies as AppDynamics, ArcSight (HPQ), Buddy Media (CRM), ComScore (SCOR), Dropbox, Dropcam (Nest), Fleetmatics (FLTX), HomeAway (AWAY), Juniper Networks (JNPR), Kayak (PCLN), LegalZoom, LifeLock (LOCK), Marketo (MKTO), MySQL (ORCL), Netflix (NFLX), ngmoco (DeNA), Polycom (PLCM), Pure Storage, RetailMeNot (SALE), Seagate (STX), Shazam, Snapchat, Supercell, Synchronoss (SNCR), Twitter (TWTR), and Zynga (ZNGA). For more information, visit http://ivp.com or follow IVP on Twitter: @ivp.
About Paladin Capital Group
Headquartered in Washington, D.C., Paladin is an established private equity firm that provides investment capital for growing companies. Paladin has over $950 million under management in multiple funds with over 30 portfolio companies. Paladin invests in enterprises whose principal business centers on products and services that address homeland security issues and needs. Importantly, the funds' leadership comprises individuals with a proven track record of financial expertise, national security experience and specialized technical competence. For additional information, see www.paladincapgroup.com
About ThreatStream
ThreatStream offers a SaaS-based cyber security threat intelligence platform. The ThreatStream OPTIC platform is the first ever community-vetted cyber security intelligence solution that aggregates millions of threat indicators from around the internet and integrates them directly to an organization's existing security infrastructure. ThreatStream provides enterprise and government organizations visibility into newly discovered security threats so they can proactively defend against malicious attacks. Headquartered in Redwood City, Calif., the company is privately held and has received venture capital backing from Google Ventures, Paladin Capital Group and individual investors. To learn more, visit www.threatstream.com and follow us on Twitter @threatstream.
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Press Contact
Travis Anderson
Trainer Communications for ThreatStream
(925) 271-8227
tanderson@trainercomm.com
Katja Gagen
General Catalyst Partners
(415) 690-6689
kgagen@generalcatalyst.com
