Shape Security Raises $20 Million Series B Funding Led by Venrock to Transform Web Security

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., January 7, 2013-- Shape Security, a startup developing a new type of web security technology, announced today that it has closed a $20 million Series B financing round led by Venrock, with additional participants including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Allegis Capital, Google Ventures, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt's TomorrowVentures and former Symantec CEO Enrique Salem.

Ray Rothrock, partner at Venrock, has joined the company's board of directors, which includes Series A investors Ted Schlein, managing partner at Kleiner Perkins, and Gaurav Garg, special limited partner at Sequoia Capital and personal investor in Shape.

The new funding brings Shape's total amount raised to $26 million. The company previously raised a $6 million Series A round in April, led by Kleiner Perkins. Additional participants in that round included TomorrowVentures, Google Ventures and Baseline Ventures, as well as top executives from Dropbox, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

"The rise of botnets and crimeware-as-a-service have led to an untenable situation where websites are now cheap to attack and expensive to defend," said Rothrock. "Shape's technology will alter this balance. It is unlike anything the industry has ever seen before."

The number of large-scale web security incidents has increased exponentially in the past decade. Symantec estimates the overall cybercrime market at $388 billion per year. Last month, the FBI took down a single botnet which alone stole over $850 million.

"Signature and heuristic-based detection have proven unsuccessful in keeping pace with the complexity of modern web attacks," said Salem. "I'm excited about Shape's technology because it will allow websites to deflect attacks automatically, using a far more sophisticated approach."

Over the past year, Shape has recruited several key executives, including Google's former click fraud czar, Cisco's former VP of Application Delivery, and Walmart's former chief information security officer.

"Cybersecurity is one of the biggest challenges of our time. Every week, major corporations that have invested millions in best-practice security technologies still get hacked," said Derek Smith, Shape Security CEO. "This doesn't have to be the case. We now have the opportunity to completely change the economics and efficacy of web security."

About Shape Security

Based in Mountain View, CA, Shape Security is a startup developing a new type of security product for modern website protection. Shape was founded in 2011 by executives from the Pentagon, Google, and major defense contractors. Visit shapesecurity.com to learn more.

News Index

Downloadable Venture Capital Database