Earlier today we announced that Accel Partners and a new board member in Eric Wolford would be joining our fast growing stellar team, and leading a substantial new investment in the company. I wanted to take a moment to share my personal thoughts about this announcement and where Netskope is headed.
First and foremost, we’re simply delighted to have Eric join the Netskope board. He brings a wealth of experience including his most recent role as President of the Products Group at Riverbed Technologies where he helped take the company public and deliver growth from 0 to $1B in revenue. In addition to the experience he brings, it was gratifying to discover that we were of same mind when it came to fueling Netskope’s growth and solving the challenges our customers are facing. And not only did we have this same philosophy, we also had a very good meeting of the minds when it came to the trajectory of the company and the market. This alignment was seen across the entire board of directors, including Enrique, and our existing investors The Social+Capital Partnership and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Regarding the market, this is an exciting time. Over the past 12 months we’ve seen tremendous demand as more and more CIOs and CISOs alike recognize that cloud and SaaS applications are literally taking over and that the business processes that run on these services have graduated well beyond “nice to have” and in many cases are considered business-critical. The market is literally taking off. From a product point of view we’re noticing that customers across every vertical are recognizing that addressing this challenge is best done when you know the real time context around cloud usage – for sanctioned and unsanctioned apps, and inclusive or remote/mobile users. It’s not enough for customers to just discover the app is being used; they want to have a more thoughtful conversation with the business about the type of transactions and activities being performed that expose the company to greater security and compliance risks. They don’t want to say “that app you love… we have to block it until we complete our audit of it,” instead, they want to say “your app is enterprise-ready, but we both agree that uploading PHI data is not allowed and so we’re going to block that specific activity and coach users on safe cloud app usage.” Similarly, they don’t want to be in any more red-faced meetings with their peers where they can’t answer the question: “What are people downloading from the cloud to their mobile devices?”
So, with this happening, where’s Netskope headed? The answer here is that we’re going full speed ahead. The market opportunity is great and we’re accelerating every part of our business as a result. From R&D to sales and marketing to customer support, we’re growing our already great team, continuing to attract the best minds in the business, and ensuring our open, transparent and collaborative culture is always top of mind. We’re heading into new markets and continuing to innovate rapidly and ensure that we are providing the absolute best solutions in the market today. It’s an exciting time for Netskope and if you haven’t already taken a look at what we’re up to I hope you’ll reach out to learn more.
