Lately, stories about data privacy are everywhere. GDPR created an impetus for companies to safeguard their collected data. But what tools can companies use to meet privacy requirements? Data-driven startup BigID provides a perfect solution. The company has developed a machine learning-powered automated solution that analyzes primary and secondary data sources like log streams to provide organizations with relevant information and more importantly, a clear understanding of the data they possess to execute decisions on how to manage and protect.
AlleyWatch spoke with CEO and cofounder Dimitri Sirota to learn about its recent round of funding and the expanding privacy services market. This NYC security startup has had an extremely exciting year; it is only two years old and it raised its Series A round less than 5 months ago. As of now, this startup has raised $46.1M in total funding over four rounds with its Series B announcement.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
We raised $30M in new funding led by new investor Scale Venture Partners. Ariel Tseitlin of Scale Venture Partners joined our board as well. Our existing investors BOLDstart Ventures, ClearSky Security, Comcast Ventures, Information Venture Partners, and the SAP.iO Fund also participated in the round.
The new funding came less than five months after we closed our Series A round of $14M.
Tell us about BigID’s product.
BigID is the leader in data-driven privacy automation. Our platform uses machine learning and identity intelligence to provide enterprises a first-of-its-kind ability to address critical privacy requirements like right-to-be-forgotten and data usage record keeping at petabyte scale across any data on-premises or in the cloud.
What inspired you to start BigID?
BigID’s big idea is that companies can’t safeguard personal information without intelligence into what personal data they collect and process. Surveys and spreadsheets cannot provide privacy protection because they are detached from the data. Good security requires good knowledge, and good data security requires good data knowledge. Privacy is no different. To operationalize privacy is to make it data-driven. That has been our mantra at BigID since our founding two years ago, and we are thrilled that the market is reaching the same conclusion.
How is BigID different?
Data privacy approaches in the past were based on policy and processes to determine what sensitive data an organization stored, rather than whose data an organization collected and processed. That is why we developed the first product to apply identity intelligence and smart correlation to personal data discovery and classification – providing organizations with the content and context needed to make decisions on how to manage and protect data.
BigID scans both primary (on-premises and in the cloud) and secondary data sources like log streams to provide organizations with visibility into their customer identity data, associated risk, and usage activity. The solution provides organizations with a privacy and data protection command console to monitor and analyze privacy and risk around personal information (PI), regardless of where it lives.
What market is BigID targeting and how big is it?
The market for privacy services and security of sensitive data (include breach mitigation) is over $10B in size. The market for broader data governance and management is larger.
What’s your business model?
We have a classic enterprise business model with annualized subscriptions.
How has GDPR impacted your business?
Many companies are now rushing to understand how the EU GDPR impacts their operations, and increasingly how to automate and integrate what were disparate, siloed processes that are all too often disconnected from the underlying data processing and data sources.
As putting in place a practical GDPR compliance program becomes more urgent, BigID enables a data-driven approach to fulfilling data subject access requests, Article 30 record keeping, privacy risk management, and breach notification.
This is a major aspect to the market momentum that investors recognize and attracted the funding.
What was the funding process like?
It was pre-emptive. We weren’t raising and had barely touched our January funding. But after winning the prestigious Innovation Sandbox for the most innovative company at the RSA Security Conference, being named a 2018 Gartner Cool Vendor for Privacy Management, and being named a CB Insights Cyber Defender coupled with GDPR coming into effect May 25, we received multiple expressions of interest. Everything came together in a few days.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Candidly, the secret to raising capital is to not be raising and instead, being ready to capitalize on catalytic events.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
Customers with sizeable ACV that can show both degree of pain and value of solution plus a partner channel that can show accelerating scale.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We plan to use the funding to scale our global go-to-market and accelerate product introductions.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
New York is no longer just for consumer, ad tech, and fintech. It’s become a major investment destination for all things tech.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
The Series B funding provides BigID with the financial strength to scale the business globally and accelerate our leadership in the market. For our customers, the new funding ensures BigID has the capital resources to support them globally with more resources for product innovation. The oversubscribed Series B now means BigID has years of financial resources and the wherewithal to deliver on our vision at scale.
What’s your favorite restaurant in the city?
Babbo
