Why ICONIQ Invested in CyberGRX
We are excited to announce our new investment in CyberGRX. At ICONIQ, our mission is to partner with incredible teams who have built breakthrough products addressing critical needs for businesses. More than anything, we look for founders who, through direct experience with a problem or years of iterating to solve that problem, have taken a differentiated approach to building a product or service. In the case of CyberGRX, we found all the above: a time-critical market opportunity, a team with unique experience and perspectives, and a breakthrough product. Let me explain.
First, CyberGRX is operating in a market with strong tailwinds. The good news is that corporations are more connected than ever before. To drive more efficient and accelerated business, companies are connecting their technologies and data with customers, suppliers and partners in an ever-increasing way. This is a strong positive driving force in global business today. But, as companies are exposed to an increasing number of vendors and partners (an average of ~180 vendors access a company’s networks every week) it is also leading to security vulnerabilities. And, today, more than 60% of all security breaches are linked to a third-party organization.
Unfortunately, most organizations don’t have an accurate inventory of all connected third parties. And, existing third-party risk management solutions don’t measure up. Most companies still use spreadsheets to track their third-party risk and existing software solutions lack sophistication. As a result, now more than ever, global businesses are seeking a modern approach to third-party cyber risk management.
CyberGRX has built a leading product to solve this problem. CyberGRX’s platform allows customers to evaluate their ecosystems for vulnerabilities introduced by third-party applications and systems. Built on the market’s first centralized third-party cyber risk assessment Exchange, CyberGRX arms organizations with a dynamic stream of third-party data and advanced analytics, helping organizations make better decisions to manage risk in their shared ecosystems. And, while they have developed a very intuitive software product for risk managers, they have taken the solution much further and created a true platform with network effects. Today, more than 60,000 companies participate on the Exchange to identify high-risk vendors.
We have always found that this level of product innovation does not happen by accident. It comes from a team that has a unique background and set of experiences. In the case of CyberGRX, this is absolutely the case. As a pioneer in the security space, CyberGRX CEO Fred Kneip previously was the Head of Compliance and Security at Bridgewater and has deep relationships with key CISOs across a multitude of industries. And, CyberGRX’s initial idea was founded by former Blackstone CISO Jay Leek in 2014, who worked with Fred Kneip to bring together a consortium of product-focused CISOs and heads of security, from Bridgewater, Aetna, Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg and MassMutual. This was a truly powerful group that came together to redefine cyber risk management.
Of course, we also look for strong customer validation and market traction to support our thesis. And, CyberGRX has both. CyberGRX will end 2019 with a 5x increase in recurring revenue and more than 60,000 organizations worldwide on their Exchange. They have also won numerous product awards.
This week, we are delighted to announce CyberGRX’s Series D, led by ICONIQ Capital. And, we are excited to partner with several existing investor friends including Bessemer, Scale, Telstra Ventures and TenEleven Ventures. CyberGRX joins ICONIQ’s portfolio of breakthrough enterprise companies, such as Datadog, Gitlab, Snowflake, Braze, Procore and many others. And, we are excited to invest in another company in Denver where we recently invested in Guild Education and we expect to find more category-defining companies.
We are truly looking forward to working with the entire extended CyberGRX team!
