http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2014/02/25/ex-googlers-at-shape-security-get-40-million-more-to-fund-their-war-on-bots/
By Andy Greenberg
Forbes Staff
Security
2/25/2014
Shape security spent more than two years working in secret before
officially launching its buzzy web security appliance last month. But at
its first public appearance at the RSA security conference this week, the
company is coming out of stealth with a bang.
On Tuesday, Shape announced another $40 million round of a venture capital
funding led by Norwest Venture Partners. That injection brings its total
investment to $66 million after previous investments by Google Ventures,
Kleiner Perkins and others, a sizeable war chest for a startup that only
recently saw the light of day. The company, founded by ex-Googler Sumit
Agarwal and ex-Oakley Network chief executive Derek Smith, sells a
pizza-box-sized appliance called a “Shapeshifter” that dynamically alters
the code on a customer’s website to confound any automated program that’s
attempting to exploit it; The company’s executives call their product the
world’s first “botwall.”
Shuman Ghosemajumder, a former Google click fraud czar and now Shape’s VP
of strategy, says that the money is intended to help Shape hire a larger
salesforce and develop its R&D team to prepare for the inevitable
cat-and-mouse game it expects to face with advanced hackers’ automated
attacks on customers’ sites. “We need to move faster,” says Ghosemajumder,
to “put out a worldwide salesforce, invest in engineering and meet the
demand we’ve seen since launch.”
Shape told me last month that it expects “ten-figure” bookings in 2014,
and says it’s on track to meet that number. The company current has 60
employees, and plans to double its headcount in the next 12 months.
[...]
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