Shape Security is a hot cybersecurity company with everything going for them.
The company just landed $25 million in series D funding, which brings their total raised to a whopping $91 million.
They have the Who’s Who of VC investors behind them including names that need no introduction: Ted Schlein, board member at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Ray Rothrock, board member at Venrock. Another investor, John Stewart, brings hard-core cyber credibility. Stewart serves as chief security & trust officer at Cisco.
Shape Security’s management team is exactly what VCs mean when they talk about pedigree. The co-founder and CEO previously started up a hot cybersecurity firm that Raytheon acquired; he’s “been there, done that.” A couple of executive staff previously held titles including chief information security officer (CISO) at Walmart and deputy assistant secretary of defense at the Pentagon. The others have been heavily involved with cybersecurity at companies including Google and Palo Alto Networks. Several of the exec staff worked together previously at a cyber division within Raytheon.
Shape is being steered by some really smart people that are planning to use some of that $25 million to enter China’s ecommerce market, which is ripe for growth.
“There is a highly increasing demand in China’s ecommerce market for bot detection and corresponding services,” said Feng Deng, founder of Northern Light Venture Capital and previously the founder of Netscreen (acquired by Juniper). His firm participated in the series D funding. “We invested in Shape because we believe the botwall product and service could be an excellent complementary solution together with products from other network and endpoint security vendors.”
Lead investor in the round Baseline Ventures, Northern Light and Epic Ventures, join existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Venrock, Norwest Venture Partners, Google Ventures, Eric Schmidt’s Tomorrow Ventures and other prominent investors in this round.
ABI Research, a tech industry consultancy, estimates that the cybersecurity market in China is on track to hit $10 billion by 2017, double the size of 2012. The growing mobile Internet, online shopping and deeper integration of cloud computing in traditional industries such as energy, finance and retail will be the major drivers.
Things are shaping up for Shape Security to continue its domestic expansion while making a big splash in China.
Steve Morgan is founder and CEO at Cybersecurity Ventures and editor-in-chief of the Cybersecurity Market Report and the Cybersecurity 500 list of the world’s hottest and most innovative cybersecurity companies. Follow Steve on Twitter or connect with him on LinkedIn.