Our Investment in BigID

22

Jun 2018

We are thrilled to announce BigID as the latest cybersecurity Investment to join the Information VP portfolio of companies.

Within our broader B2B FinTech focus, Information VP has a long history of investing around core themes including governance, risk and compliance, fraud detection and cybersecurity. As we looked to add additional exposure to these core themes in our second fund, we were introduced to BigID Founder and CEO Dimitri Sirota by Ed Sim of Boldstart Ventures. We were immediately impressed by the strides that BigID had made in the data intelligence segment. We also believed its focus on Personally Identifiable Information (PII) security amid major regulatory changes like GDPR put BigID in a very unique position in a segment of the cybersecurity software market with incredible potential.

We continue to believe in this core investment theme as the incidents of cybersecurity breaches continues to be on the rise. According to CB Insights Cyber Defenders 2018 report, nearly 2,000 data-breaches occurred in 2017. We believe the number to be much higher as we suspect many breaches remain undetected and underreported. Financings also continue to rise. Last year, was a record year for cybersecurity as annual global deals reached 552 and financing reached a disclosed funding amount of $7,663M. BigID, who was also mentioned in this report under the ‘Identity Vaults’ category are listed as one of the 29 startups in the report with the potential to transform cybersecurity. We also see ID tech, such as PII security on the rise. CBInsights states that in 2017 there were globally 226 deals in this vertical and a disclosed funding amount of $2,251M.

Among our existing portfolio we have invested in and helped create market leading ventures in these markets including Verafin – the North American leader in anti-money laundering and fraud detection and eSentire, the leading cybersecurity vendor focused on Managed Detection and Response (recently acquired by Warburg Pincus). We believe BigID also has the potential to occupy a market leading position.

In addition to satisfying a fit with our core thesis, the other element that attracts Information VP to an investment is a visionary CEO. Dimitri Sirota ticks that box for us as well. Dimitri is not a stranger to creating successful companies. Prior to BigID, Dimitri was a founder of Layer 7 Technologies that was the leading API management vendor, a technology that is critical for closing the gap between on-premise and online infrastructure and apps. During his time there, Layer 7 was named to the Deloitte Fast 500 for three years running, was awarded the 2013 Technology of the Year for British Columbia and in 2013 was awarded the Canadian Venture Capital Association Deal of the Year for its successful exit to CA Technologies.

We see in Dimitri and the rest of the founding team, this same of passion and drive for success as he has had in his previous companies. This year alone, BigID has already been awarded the RSA Innovation Sandbox 2018 award and the Gartner Cool Vendor 2018 accolade, along with many other nods from the cybersecurity industry.

On closing this investment with BigID, we are excited to be working with Dimitri and the rest of his team. We believe that their team has the talent and passion to succeed and are innovating in an industry that is ripe with potential. We will be closely watching and guiding them as they continue to grow and help them reach our mutual goal of building a successful cybersecurity company.