Skyhigh Networks, looking to accelerate its growth, has raised a $40 million Series C round of funding. The new traunch of capital was co-led by Sequoia, and Greylock, firms that had invested in the firm’s $20 million Series B that took place last May.
Joining the two venture firms in the investment is Salesforce, making the SaaS firm a strategic investor in Skyhigh.
I spoke to Skyhigh CEO Rajiv Gupta about the funding, which is notable for both its size, and its close proximity to the firm’s Series B round of capital. Gupta indicated that his company wasn’t running on low on funds before the new round was put together.
Instead, Skyhigh is betting on an acceleration, intending to deploy the bulk of its new monies on sales efforts, marketing, and international expansion. Gupta told TechCrunch that the company currently has more than 200 customers.
I also chatted to Sequoia’s Aaref Hilaly about his firm’s investment. He stated that when you create a new product category, you want to quickly overtake the market. This, of course, deprives oxygen from potentially competing companies. Skyhigh and its backers view the company as something distinct in the security market. That perspective rests on the idea that cloud security will be as diverse and broad as cloud applications themselves, making Skyhigh’s products useful to a wide customer base. More simply, the larger the cloud itself grows, the more potential work exists for Skyhigh, in its view.
The company has now raised more than $66 million to date.
Skyhigh shared a few growth metrics, including that its revenue has increased 362% since 2013. In conversation Gupta stated that the correct figure is actually larger. Skyhigh is a young company, making it easier to grow its top line by such percentages than it would be for a mature firm. It will be more interesting to see the multiple of its 2014 revenues that the company can tally next year.
Skyhigh fits into the industry trend of employees taking larger control over both the devices, and services that they use. The more cloud products bouncing around your firm, of course, the more vectors exist that are potentially open for exploit.
Gupta’s firm now has a boatload of capital, and runway for days. It’s now up to Skyhigh to execute.
IMAGE BY FLICKR USER JESSICA PATERSON UNDER CC BY 2.0 LICENSE (IMAGE HAS BEEN CROPPED)