After 10 years without any outside investment, cybersecurity firm iboss is finally raising its Series A. The company’s president said that even now, the company, which has been profitable since it launched, really “didn’t need the money.”
The cloud-based security platform just raised a $35 million Series A from Goldman Sachs’ Private Capital Investing group.
“We’re kind of a bat more than we are a unicorn,” Peter Martini said of the company’s fundraising efforts. On that note, Martini declined to discuss the company’s valuation in the round, only specifying that it was “more than $500 million.”
So why did the founders of iboss, twin brothers Peter and Paul Martini, cut their total equity just to raise some cash that, according to them, they didn’t really even need?
“Raising money when you need money is great,” President Peter Martini said. “But when you don’t it’s kind of a hard proposition, like ‘why do I need you?'” Martini says the motivation was largely in terms of developing relationships with investors as the company looks towards an IPO in “roughly the next 24 months.”
Nevertheless, where’s all that new capital headed towards? Well, for starters the company just dropped $13 million in cash on a new global headquarters in San Diego to handle its ever-increasing R&D efforts.
The company’s technologies work by “actively monitoring all network traffic,” which allows it to “prevent large-scale data breaches caused by malware that has made its way into the network and is poised to steal data,” according to a company statement.
The raise was also about validation, according to Martini, especially as the company looks to further expand its global operations. “We wanted someone who was a global brand, had to be ‘tier one’ and was a major powerhouse,” Martini said. “Goldman represented that for us.”