Author : zebethcontrol

Thoma Bravo, Sunstone Partners to acquire UserTesting for $1.3B and combine it with UserZoom • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in customer experience, Enterprise, mergers and acquisitons, thoma bravo, usertestingNo Comments

Thoma Bravo and Sunstone Partners announced today that they’re acquiring customer insight platform UserTesting for $1.3 billion in an all-cash deal. The acquirers say they plan to combine it with UserZoom, a customer research company Thoma Bravo bought an $800 million majority stake in last April. The firms paid what appears to be a generous $7.50 a share for the company, which opened trading this morning at $3.86 per share. Brent Leary, founder and principal analyst at CRM Essentials, was surprised by the price, but says that combining the two companies creates a broad platform of customer experience services. “With more interactions taking place digitally, UserTesting has built out a nice platform for getting quick feedback that allows marketers to react quickly to the insights they’ve uncovered. And you have to think the combination of UserTesting and UserZoom has the opportunity to provide insights to a broader set of user experiences covering customers, employees, devices and more,” he said. While it may seem that Thoma Bravo wants to buy every company with ‘User’ in its name, as Leary pointed out, combining these two companies could provide an interesting mix of tools to help understand those users better with the ultimate goal of delivering better customer experiences. Thoma Bravo partner A.J. Rohde sees the customer experience angle as being key to this acquisition, especially the combined firms. “Our acquisition of UserTesting is a testament to our belief that customer experience is mission critical to organizations, and the combined company will be well-positioned to further market expansion, accelerate innovation and provide even greater insights to its customers,” he said in a statement. That outcome remains to be seen, but the fact is that UserTesting has had a rough ride as a public company, going public below its expected range just about a year ago when it IPOed at $14 a share — not a good sign as it entered the public realm. The stock price bottomed out at $3.43 a share on September 22nd. It had to be a pretty good day for shareholders when this price crossed the wire, all things considered. Not surprisingly, the UserTesting board unanimously agreed to the terms of the acquisition and the deal is expected to close in the first half of next year. There is a go-shop provision that allows the company to shop around and see if it can find a better price before December 10th. While that seems unlikely at this point given the premium on the share price, it is part of the terms of the deal. UserTesting was founded in 2007 and raised over $150 million before going public last year.

Yuga Labs’ Nicole Muniz to talk about NFTs and Bored Apes at TC Sessions: Crypto • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Crypto, NFT, NFT marketplace, TC Sessions: Crypto 2022, Yuga LabsNo Comments

As the NFT ecosystem continues to waver, superfans and blue-chip holders are still holding on strong. But how can the digital asset sector reignite growth and appeal to new audiences? The number of NFT sales is down almost 90% from the year-ago date, according to data on NonFungible market tracker. But still, the hype is growing across platforms like Reddit, which saw that millions of crypto wallets were created to mint NFTs or on layer-1 blockchains like Cardano, which hit new all-time highs for NFT volume. NFTs are one of the most talked about topics in crypto, which is why we’re excited to have Nicole Muniz, CEO of Yuga Labs, onstage at TC Sessions: Crypto on November 17 in Miami. Earlier this year, Yuga Labs raised $450 million in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz, hitting a $4 billion valuation. The Miami-based NFT startup is the firm behind Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club and that has acquired other popular NFT projects like CryptoPunks and Meebits. It also launched ApeCoin, a token that gathered a multibillion-dollar market cap on its first day of trading that is now around $1.4 billion to date. The company wants to build something that “expands the universe” of Bored Ape Yacht Club but “invites the larger NFT community” in at the same time, ZebethMedia previously reported. With all that said, there will be plenty to talk about with Muniz, ranging from the fine-tuned details of Yuga Labs to where her thoughts are for the broader NFT ecosystem and where things stand. We’d like to hear her thoughts on the challenges and opportunities in the NFT marketplace and what areas she sees as most promising when it comes to scaling the ecosystem. Prior to Yuga Labs, Muniz founded an agency called Something New, which has worked with mega-brands like Nike, Google, EA and Square, to name a few. TC Sessions: Crypto takes place on November 17 in Miami. Save $150 with early bird pricing and buy your pass today, and then join the web3, DeFi and NFT communities to keep up with the ever-evolving and always exciting crypto world.

Versa raises $120M for its software-defined networking and security stack • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in BlackRock, cybersecurity, Enterprise, Security, startup, Startups, VersaNo Comments

Networking and cybersecurity firm Versa today announced that it raised $120 million in a mix of equity and debt led by BlackRock, with participation from Silicon Valley Bank. CEO Kelly Ahuja tells ZebethMedia that the proceeds, which bring Versa’s total capital raised to $316 million, will be put toward go-to-market efforts and scaling the company. He demurred when asked what percentage of the financing was equity versus debt. Versa’s large round suggests that, despite the market downturn, VCs haven’t lost faith in cybersecurity vendors yet. According to data from PitchBook, venture capital investments have reached about $13.66 billion so far this year, up from $11.47 billion compared to 2020 (albeit down from $26.52 billion in 2021). It helps these vendors have customers — or at least potential customers — in droves. A December 2021 survey by CSO found that 44% of security leaders at large companies expected their budgets to increase in the upcoming 12 months. And Gartner estimates spending on information security and risk management will total $172 billion in 2022, up from $155 billion in 2021 and $137 billion the year prior. “The pandemic drove enterprises to accelerate their transition to cloud and saw their workforce become fully distributed. This has led to a dramatic increase in cybersecurity issues — leading businesses to look for new ways to protect and connect their users, networks, and applications,” Ahuja told ZebethMedia in an email interview. “We find ourselves in an extremely good place to have the right solution that meets the market needs.” Apurva Mehta and Kumar Mehta, two brothers, co-founded Versa in 2012. They came from Juniper Networks, where Apurva Mehta was the CTO and chief architect of the mobility business unit and Kumar Mehta was the VP of engineering. Kelly Ahuja, a Cisco alum, was tapped as Versa’s CEO in 2016. Versa provides a vast range of subscription-based software services — too many to list here — but positions itself primarily as a secure access service edge (SASE) provider. As described by Gartner in 2019, SASE combines software-based wide area networking and security principles like zero trust into a single service model. Through partnerships with service providers, Versa connects users to apps in the cloud or data centers with security layered on top — like data loss prevention tools and gateway firewalls. Concretely, the company offers a hardware-agnostic software stack that provides a single interface — via the cloud, on-premises or both — to implement corporate security and networking policies. “Versa’s portfolio in SASE converges security and networking,” Ahuja said, noting that Versa has a “sizable” team working on machine learning and AI-based malware detection. “Versa has developed a differentiated platform that combines AI and machine learning-powered security services edge and software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) solutions that helps customers reduce cybersecurity risk.” When asked about current clientele, Ahuja said that 625-employee Versa’s solutions have been deployed by “tens of thousands” of enterprises globally. He declined to reveal revenue figures, instead pointing to San Jose-based Versa’s annual contract value, which he says grew 60% over the “past few years.” “Every industry and business are facing similar macro challenges — high inflation, risk of recession, and supply chain and geopolitical challenges,” Ahuja said. “[But] Versa provides a clear value proposition and ROI of reducing cybersecurity risk.” In a June 2021 piece covering Versa’s last funding round, CRN’s Gina Narcisi pointed out that the SD-WAN and SASE space has seen a great deal of consolidation in recent years. Cisco Systems acquired Viptela and VMware bought SD-WAN vendor VeloCloud, and more recently, HPE’s Aruba snapped up Silver Peak while Palo Alto Networks absorbed CloudGenix. Last year, Ahuja told Fierce Telecom’s Linda Hardesty that Versa wasn’t shopping itself. Plans haven’t changed, he says — Ahuja sees the latest financing as setting the firm on a path toward an initial public offering.

Uber alum rakes in $9.7M to curb finance-related fights between co-parents • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in finances, Fintech, OnwardNo Comments

If you’re a parent, one of the hardest things about getting divorced is still having to deal with your ex about financial matters regarding your children. And, according to a 2015 report, just 50.2% of all 13.6 million custodial parents in the United States had either legal or informal child support agreements. Even in those cases, most agreements don’t cover expenses beyond the basics such as medical bills and extracurricular activities, among other things. This means that divorced parents end up going through a lot of back and forth about who’s paying for what, how and when. Finances when you’re co-parenting are an issue even in the most amicable of divorces. The daughter of divorced parents herself, Jacklyn Rome founded Onward in 2020 with the aim of helping divorced and separated parents more easily manage their shared expenses. Rome, who previously led new product launches at Uber and Blue Apron, said she built the app with the intent of not only alleviating headaches for the parents but also for helping reduce family tension overall. As she can personally attest to, children also suffer greatly from being caught in the middle as their estranged parents bicker over money. Today, Onward – formerly called Ensemble – has raised $9.7 million in a Series A funding round led by Atlanta-based TTV Capital to advance on its mission. Lerer Hippeau, Citi Ventures, Correlation Ventures and Gingerbread Capital also participated in the financing. The Los Angeles-based startup previously raised $3 million in seed funding in March of 2021. Since that time, Onward has launched a number of new features, including the ability to pay your co-parent back through the platform, partial payments and the ability to track other expenses not related to children such as shared mortgages or telephone bills. One co-parent for example may have taken a child to the dentist at a cost of $120. They can upload a photo of the receipt, and the other co-parent gets a notification to view all the details around the expense. The two can negotiate if needed all via the app, and settle the expense through a connection to payment providers such as Venmo or Zelle through the Onward platform. Rome says the company has grown significantly with nearly 100,000 installs. So far, Onward has leaned into social media as a marketing tool, including leveraging TikTok as a platform. By partnering with influencers who are co-parents, Rome said, the startup has been able to boost awareness of its offering. Onward remains pre-revenue. The company plans to begin monetizing early next year via “a suite” of new financial products,” including connected credit cards, according to Rome. Down the line, Onward may also build out a paid subscription model. Image Credits: Onward Incorporating transparency into the platform has also been a priority, Rome said. “Very often, men will say that transparency is their biggest pain point – they may or may not believe that the expenses are legitimate,” she told ZebethMedia. “In our app, they can view receipts and eventually with our cards, will be able to have a third-party verify where every transaction took place.” Onward’s new capital will go toward building out those products, additional testing of new marketing channels and boosting its current headcount of 10. While there are a number of fintechs in the broader family tech space such as Greenlight, Step and Acorns, Rome believes there is a “ton of green space in this market.” “There are 50 million co-parents in the United States, and they represent a massive, massive market that hasn’t yet been served,” she said. As to way, Rome speculated that “it might be considered a little bit less sexy of a market, or those who have been through it tend to be less likely to found a company.” TTV Capital doubled down on its investment in Onward, with partner Mark Johnson describing the app as being “brilliant in its simplicity.” “Jacklyn and her team have truly listened to the co-parents who are using the app – and have gone above and beyond in rolling out new improvements and features based on their needs,” he wrote via email. “We’re proud to support Onward as they scale to help even more co-parents easily navigate their unique financial situations.”

Navina secures $22M to process and summarize medical data for clinicians • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in AI, Alive, Biotech & Health, Grove Ventures, Robotics & AI, Schusterman Family Investments, Startups, Vertex Ventures IsraelNo Comments

Navina, a company developing AI-powered assistant software for physicians, today announced that it raised $22 million in Series B funding led by ALIVE with participation from Grove Ventures, Vertex Ventures Israel and Schusterman Family Investments. Bringing the startup’s total raised to $44 million, inclusive of a grant from the Israeli Innovation Authority, the proceeds will be put toward product development and widening Navina’s footprint to home, virtual and urgent care, CEO and co-founder Ronen Lavi told ZebethMedia. Navina was founded by Ronen Lavi and Shay Perera, who previously led the Israel Defense Forces’ AI lab, where they say that they built AI “assistant” systems for analysts suffering from data overload. Their work there inspired the products they went on to built at Navina, which aim to help physicians drowning in medical data. “The funding comes at a pivotal time for the U.S. healthcare industry on the heels of the pandemic, when physician burnout is at an all-time high,” Lavi told ZebethMedia in an email interview. “Navina’s platform is uniquely able to put exactly the right patient information in front of physicians at the right time to give them a deep understanding at a glance, along with actionable insights at the point of care.” Several startups — and incumbents, for that matter — are developing AI assistant technologies for clinical settings. For example, there’s Suki, which raised $20 million to create a voice assistant for doctors, and Bot MD, an AI-based chatbot for doctors. Lavi claims that Navina is distinguished by its ability to “understand the complex language of medicine,” including non-clinical data. Trained on a dataset of imaging notes, consult notes, hospital notes, procedures and labs curated by a team led by medical doctors, Navina’s AI systems integrate with existing electronic health records software to identify potential diagnoses and quality and risk gaps requiring attention. Navina.ai uses AI to process and summarize medical records data. Image Credits: Navina “Navina differentiates in the way it structures and organizes data specifically for primary care physicians at the moment of care,” Lavi said. “Navina fits into existing workflows and familiar tools, meeting physicians and staff where they are … Its goal is to align workflows to effectively serve patient populations and improve value-based care.” One point of concern for this reporter is Navina’s diagnostic capabilities. While perhaps helpful, medical algorithms have historically been built on biased rules and homogenous datasets. The consequences have been severe. For example, one algorithm to determine eligible candidates for kidney transplants puts Black patients lower on the list than white patients even when all other factors remain the same. In response to a question about bias, Lavi said that Navina takes steps to “address health inequities and bias” and “ensure high accuracy of data sets and models.” He added that the company is compliant with HIPAA requirements and underwent a third-party privacy audit, and is in the “final stages” of SOC2 certification. With “thousands” of clinicians and supporting staff using the platform, Lavi says he doesn’t anticipate the economic downturn significantly impacting Navina. He demurred, however, when asked about the company’s revenue and precise customer count. “The pandemic gave Navina and other health tech companies a boost as it required both patients and physicians to grow accustomed to new modalities of care, such as telemedicine and remote visits,” Lavi said. “This has led traditional primary care providers to look for solutions that can help them take responsibility for their patients no matter where they enter the health system.” Navina has 65 employees currently. It expects to end the year with around 75.

Elon Musk tells advertisers that Twitter cannot become “a free-for-all hellscape” • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Apps, Elon Musk, TwitterNo Comments

Elon Musk published a note addressed to Twitter advertisers on his account this morning, the day before his court-ordered deadline to close his $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform. In the short address, Musk — who is currently in San Francisco and spending the week at Twitter HQ — explains to Twitter advertisers why he is motivated to buy the platform. “There has been much speculation about why I bought Twitter and what I think about advertising,” Musk wrote. “Most of it has been wrong.” Musk repeated some of the primary talking points that he has been stating since he first announced the acquisition in April. He believes in Twitter’s potential as a “common digital town square,” but he is worried that “social media will splinter into far right wing and far left wing echo chambers” as traditional media continues toward its “relentless pursuit of clicks.” “That is why I bought Twitter. I didn’t do it because it would be easy. I didn’t to it to make more money,” he explained. “I did it to try to help humanity, whom I love.” None of these declarations are particularly illuminating — Musk said in April that he “doesn’t care about the economics” of buying Twitter. Spending $44 billion on a struggling business isn’t the greatest business move, but it’s something that you can accomplish out of a sense of warped obligation to humanity when you are the richest guy on the planet (and eventually on our neighboring red planet too, probably). But Musk actually slipped in something here that is mildly reassuring, though it’s generally a challenge to take him at his word. Musk has continually touted the importance of free speech in his acquisition of Twitter, even mentioning it in his letter to the company board when he first announced his intent to acquire the platform. “I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy,” Musk wrote in April. “However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form.” “… Twitter has extraordinary potential,” he added. “I will unlock it.” Yet Twitter’s existing content guidelines aren’t as stringent as his declarations would lead you to believe. Beyond prohibiting illegal activity, the platform bans hateful conduct (attacking or threatening people based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability, etc.), depictions of graphic violence, promotion of suicide or self-harm, etc. The platform doesn’t even censor pornographic content, so long as it doesn’t appear in a live video or a profile header. In today’s letter, though, Musk seems to be somewhat aware of the fact that “anything goes!” is a content moderation policy that’s doomed to fail. “Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!” he wrote. “In addition to adhering to the laws of the land, our platform must be warm and welcoming to all, where you can choose your desired experience according to your preferences, just as you can choose, for example, to see movies or play video games ranging from all ages to mature.” It’s unclear how he plans to make Twitter “warm and welcoming,” though, without flouting content guidelines that aim to protect the most vulnerable users on the platform. He ends the letter by telling advertisers that Twitter aspires to “be the most respected advertising platform in the world that strengthens your brand and grows your enterprise.” Finally, I have to take a cheap shot… Musk did not use alt text when posting these three text-heavy screenshots of his letter to advertisers this morning. To be fair, most people I follow don’t regularly use alt text (but they should!), so this is a good chance to call our presumptive bird app overlord in. Hey, Elon! If you really want Twitter to be a public town square, you should use alt text to make sure that people with vision-related disabilities can engage in the conversation too!

5 tips for launching in a crowded web3 gaming market • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Column, Crypto, EC Blockchain, EC Column, ec gaming, Gaming, play-to-earn, Startups, web3 gamingNo Comments

The first wave of the play-to-earn (P2E) gaming boom seems to be coming to an end. There are still plenty of blockchain studios staging successful multimillion-dollar raises around the globe, but competition for funds has tightened to the point where only standout projects are winning backers. With great strategy more important than ever, here are a few tried-and-true steps you can take that will help set you apart when you’re seeking capital and preparing for liftoff. Leverage experience in the traditional gaming studio sphere The blockchain gaming market is full of builders who are experienced in crypto but haven’t built traditional games. I’m a prime example. Pegaxy was the first game I worked on and the first I launched. Like many other web3 games of its time, its mechanics and graphics were fairly basic at the start. But while simplicity was fine with the web3 gaming crowd, it has become increasingly clear that P2E will need to attract traditional Web 2.0 gamers if it is to scale, and these gamers demand much more. To please this demographic, builders will need games that have it all: superb graphics, strong mechanics and rich lore. You can have the best team and the best game, but without a solid monetization strategy, those mean little. That’s why a founding team that pairs an understanding of web3 fundamentals with experience in building and monetizing Web 2.0 games for mobile, desktop and console platforms will set you apart in this market. It’s also why, after Pegaxy was launched, we founded Mirai Labs. We wanted to assemble an expert team to build games that appeal to the traditional gaming community. Develop a clear, straightforward monetization strategy Most traditional P2E games have fairly simple revenue models that rely on users buying and holding the token that serves as the in-game currency. This means that when large groups join and play a game at once, token prices and revenues rise in tandem. But when market conditions change — or when players just lose interest in a game — there can be a mass exodus of users. This is bad for revenue and can be catastrophic for token prices. Therefore, building a game that succeeds in the long term means developing monetization strategies that can weather market ebbs and flows, those that couple the best of web3 tech with proven Web 2.0 revenue models.

Persona expands beyond identity verification with new suite of services • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in digital identity, Enterprise, identity verification, persona, SecurityNo Comments

Persona, a four year old identity startup, has done pretty well for itself with its original identity verification idea, an API that lets companies capture various documents like a driver’s license or passport to prove who you are online. It went so well, the company announced today that it has expanded into a full blown platform of identity-related services. In addition to the core verification product, the company now includes a set of services on the platform that customers can mix and match as they wish. These include a risk assessment engine, an identity workflow tool, a graph database aimed at link analysis and fraud detection and a marketplace, an app store of sorts, for external developers to help connect their business tools to Persona’s identity tools. Persona co-founder and CEO Rick Song says that the company has been developing these tools over time, but this is the first time it’s presenting them as a platform. “It’s been a work in progress for two plus years as we continually have built out each of these components piece by piece, but none of these have ever really been formally launched. They were kind of hidden behind the scenes,” he said. “We’d have a blog post talking about how you could utilize something, but never really consolidated it into a single platform. So the actual ‘platformization’ has really been a lot of work for us over this past year.” He says that while most customers are primarily using the identity verification service at this point, he is starting to see some expansion into the other products. “These days, we’re actually finding more customers who are adopting the Persona platform for nothing related to verifications at all. Instead they are using our suite of tools to run a manual [identity] review or use our graph product, which allows you to import data into our system and find fraud rings and suspect behavior within your population, or our automation orchestration tool and now the marketplace, which enables you to pull in a lot of different data and automate decisions.” The company founders used to work at Square, and they have FinTech customers like Square and Robinhood, but Song points to companies like Doordash, Coursera and Sonder Health as examples of broader customer use cases. In fact, he says that was the plan all along. “One of the earlier strategic goals for us was actually how can we not just build a FinTech identity platform, but rather a universal identity platform that could really work for any use case out there in the world.” Along the way, Persona has raised over $200 million including a $150 million investment last year at a healthy $1.5 billion valuation. Perhaps investors were willing to put so much capital into the company because it had this broader vision beyond identity verification.

New York Post says its site was hacked after posting offensive tweets • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in cyberattack, data breach, news organizations, SecurityNo Comments

New York Post, one of the biggest New York City daily newspapers, said it was hacked on Thursday after several offensive articles and tweets were published to the newspaper’s website and Twitter account. The articles and tweets, which were racist and sexually violent in nature, were pulled a short time later. ZebethMedia is not publishing the contents of the tweets, several of which called for the assassination of politicians and public figures. The New York Post has been hacked. We are currently investigating the cause. — New York Post (@nypost) October 27, 2022 It’s believed the New York Post’s content management system, used for publishing stories and articles, may have been breached. The offensive tweets were sent via SocialFlow, a popular website plugin used to push stories to social media sites. The tweets also contained links that pointed to web pages on the Post’s website, but which were no longer accessible at the time of writing. A spokesperson for News Corp, which owns the New York Post, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The breach comes weeks after Fast Company’s content management system was breached to push offensive Apple News notifications to readers. Fast Company pulled its site down for more than a week to rebuild its systems following the compromise.

SGNL.ai secures $12M to expand its enterprise authorization platform • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in authorization, Costanoa Ventures, Enterprise, identity and access management, Security, startup, StartupsNo Comments

SGNL.ai, a company developing enterprise authorization software, today announced that it raised $12 million in seed funding led by Costanoa Ventures with participation from Fika Ventures, Moonshots Capital and Resolute Ventures. CEO Scott Kriz said the proceeds will be used to develop the company’s core products and hire the initial team, as well as work with design partners to refine SGNL’s solution. In an interview with ZebethMedia, Kriz asserted that authorization is increasingly becoming a concern for management at every level. He’s not wrong. According to Gartner, organizations running cloud infrastructure services will suffer a minimum of 2,300 violations of least privilege policies — i.e. when a user is given privileges above what they need to do their job — per account each year by 2024. Meanwhile, the average global cost of a data breach reached a record $4.24 million in 2021, IBM recently reported, increasing by 10% from 2019 as more people transitioned to remote work. Kriz and SGNL’s second co-founder, Erik Gustavson, spent roughly a decade developing identity solutions at Bitium, which they co-launched in 2011, before conceiving of SGNL. After Google acquired Bitium in 2017, Gustavson joined the tech giant as an engineering manager working on “next-generation” identity access management for G Suite (now Google Workspace). Kriz also spent several years at Google on the product, identity and authorization team. “From our vantage point working in multiple, identity-focused areas at Google, it was clear to Gustavson and I that few companies had been able to effectively solve enterprise authorization at scale,” Kriz said. “Seeing a critical need to help companies keep user and customer data safe, we founded SGNL in 2021 to address the challenge. We quickly attracted a core team of identity industry experts who are passionate about pushing the boundaries of what is possible in enterprise authorization.” SGNL aims to provide “just-in-time” access to enterprise data to a company’s employees based on business context, such as business needs or justifications. Rather than relying on relatively static roles or attributes, the startup’s platform only grants access to software resources and data when a user needs them. A glance at SGNL.ai’s dashboard, which lets admins review authorizations across teams, divisions and individual employees. Image Credits: SGNL Beyond this, SGNL attempts to unify existing systems-of-record such as corporate directories, HR directories, customer relationship management platforms and ticketing systems, building a graph of workforce and customer data that can be used to determine dynamic access rights. Access can be audited in real time, ostensibly making it easier for managers to produce compliance reports and analyze historical authorizations. “The pandemic and broader shift in working patterns — hybrid, remote work, extended workforces, etc. — makes the problem of authorization and access management more urgent for the enterprise. The modern workforce is no longer operating from inside a corporate firewall using only on-premise applications,” Kriz added. “This creates ideal conditions for bad actors to exploit overly broad ambient access rights to attack the enterprise … SGNL’s platform helps contain the blast radius by reducing ambient access and determining access to sensitive data on a just-in-time basis.” Kriz declined to reveal the size of SGNL’s customer base or the company’s current revenue. But he noted identity management has attracted much investment over the past few years as new hurdles emerge across the enterprise security landscape. According to Crunchbase, $3.2 billion in venture dollars went into the identity management space in 2021, about 2.5 times the amount of investment from 2020’s $1.3 billion, which was already a record. SGNL’s challenge will be attracting customers away from rival vendors like Opal, whose software automatically discovers databases, servers, internal tools and apps to delegate access requests to employees. ConductorOne, another identity and access management automation platform, recently nabbed a $15 million investment. Identity and access management software provider ForgeRock filed for an IPO last September after raising over $700 million in VC cash. Kriz says he’s confident, though, that the current slowdown in tech will be a tailwind for SGNL as companies face pressure to purchase solutions instead of building them in-house. To his point, there’s some evidence to suggest IT teams are overwhelmed with tasks related to managing identity and access. For example, in a 2020 poll conducted by 1Password, responding IT personnel said that they burn a full month of work — 21 days — resetting passwords and tracking app usage. “The number and cost of data breaches is only increasing … SGNL is positioned well with the shift in most enterprise organizations to increase security, ensure compliance and reduce expenses,” Kriz said. Palo Alto-based SGNL, which currently has 28 employees, expects to hire seven more people by the end of the year.