Grip Security, a Boston, MA-based SaaS identity risk management company, just raised $41M in Series B funding. In conjunction with the announcement, CEO Lior Yaari answered our questions about the company, the product, the funding round and future plans.
FinSMEs: Hi Lior, can you tell us a bit more about yourself? What’s your background?
Lior: I have a unique combination of industry, venture capital and military experience that has provided me with intriguing insights into the problems modern enterprises face in cybersecurity. After evaluating countless startup ideas, we identified a glaring gap in the cybersecurity strategies companies deploy today – the lack of adequate solutions addressing one of the most fundamental risks: SaaS identity risks. Motivated by this revelation, I joined forces with former IDF 8200 colleagues to explore innovative approaches to tackle this critical challenge.
FinSMEs: Let’s speak about Grip Security. What is the market problem you want to solve? What is the real opportunity?
Lior: SaaS has changed transformed IT and today, we live in a world where data is everywhere and accessed from anywhere. Every employee is their own CIO, and they are able to procure their own applications, which has many benefits.
Improves productivity since employees are able to use the best application to do their job
Increases enterprise agility and allows companies to react faster to market conditions
Improves job satisfaction since employees are provided the tools they need when they need them
The traditional framework of centralizing and controlling SaaS risks does not work because the risk is now decentralized. As businesses increasingly adopt cloud-based SaaS solutions, managing user identities, controlling access and ensuring compliance becomes more complex. The need for companies to rely increasingly on SaaS applications makes the discovery, prioritization, remediation and orchestration of SaaS identity risks more critical.
Existing solutions are focused on a limited number of SaaS applications and are unable to manage the risks from the thousands of self-provisioned SaaS applications most organizations have in their environment.
FinSMEs: What are the features differentiating the product from competitors?
Lior: The award-winning Grip SaaS Security Control Plane (SSCP) platform offers a comprehensive approach to manage SaaS identity risks. By leveraging identity as the primary control point, it delivers the industry’s most advanced solution to discover, prioritize, secure and orchestrate the mitigation and remediation of these risks. By placing identity at the core of control and not relying on endpoint or network controls like traditional solutions, Grip SSCP platform stands out as a truly unique and innovative solution. It recognizes that in the modern business environment, users can access applications from any device and location. By focusing on identity as the ultimate control point, Grip SSCP ensures comprehensive and granular control over user access, significantly reducing identity-related risks.
FinSMEs: You just raised a new funding round. Please, tell us more about it.
Lior: We’re raising $41 million in Series B funding led by Third Point Ventures, with participation from YL Ventures, Intel Capital and The Syndicate Group. The investment would bring Grip Security’s total funding to $66 million.
FinSMEs: Can you share some numbers and achievements for the business?
Lior: Every company is using more and more SaaS, and this trend is only expected to accelerate. Gartner expects SaaS budgets to grow by 18% in 2023 compared to 4% for the overall IT budget, and by 2026, 75% of organizations will adopt a digital transformation model. Grip Security is uniquely positioned to take advantage of this trend with the best solution on the market to address the risks that come with large scale SaaS use. The company has already demonstrated its ability to address this emerging market need by delivering 400%+ bookings growth year over year and signing multimillion dollar contracts with multiple Fortune 500 customers, which is almost unheard of for such a young company.
FinSMEs: What are your medium-term plans?
Lior: We plan to accelerate our ambitious growth strategy by expanding our investment in research and development, bolstering our go-to-market initiatives and cementing our position as the industry leader. We take immense pride in our ability to execute and deliver results, and that is shown by our more than 400% bookings growth and winning contracts with multiple Fortune 500 companies. The new funding round provides us with the financial resources to propel the company through its next phase of growth and deliver even more impressive results.