Iain Martin is a senior editor who covers tech, startups and venture capital out of London, England. Iain edits the Midas List Europe, Midas Seed and Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe Technology.
or years, security executives at some of America’s largest corporations — Freddie Mac, Kraft Heinz, Colgate-Palmolive and Fidelity, to name a few — were happy to hear from Gili Raanan , the founder of a boutique Israeli venture capital firm called Cyberstarts .
Logistically easy, perhaps. But the move was a major reversal for Raanan and his firm, which for years have maintained that Cyberstarts’ adviser program was neither unusual nor ethically fraught. Inside the swanky The Soho Hotel in central London in June, just weeks before suddenly shutting down the payments system, Raanan had struck a defiant tone. “We are very, very proud of our practice and our business model,” he told.
In an October interview, Raanan disputed these claims — “Nobody buys software because they’re doing someone a favor,” he retorted. Plus, he pointed out, many of its advisers didn’t take the money at all. In June, he’d toldthat about half of Sunrise’s advisers had opted into payments. But in October, he said the number was really only 20%, or about 15 people. Only a small handful of advisers had left the program since, he added, while a few others had joined.
“Entrepreneurs were building solutions in a vacuum. They fell in love with their technology, built it and then retrofitted it in terms of the problem, the pricing and the right channel,” Raanan said. “And security practitioners were used to meeting vendors only when they had products to sell.” After Cyberstarts’ investment, NoName’s founders went on a meeting tour with Sunrise’s executives to determine how their product could best help corporate giants. “The biggest company I’d ever worked for was maybe 1,000 employees,” Golan said. “Hearing from the platform executive responsible for the largest companies in the world was eye opening.”reached annual recurring revenue of at least $40 million before selling to Akamai for about half its peak valuation earlier this year.
Chipotle, New American, Armis and BNY Mellon all said in statements that their executives had received no compensation from Cyberstarts; Takeda said that it had robust compliance policies and declined further comment. JLL declined to comment.
Cyberstarts Venture Capital Cybersecurity Wiz Cyera Chipotle Fireblocks Island Sunrise
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
RWA Issuer Midas Expands Tokenized Products to Retail Users with Regulatory Nod in EuropeKrisztian Sandor is a reporter on the U.S. markets team focusing on stablecoins and institutional investment. He holds BTC and ETH.
Read more »
TikTok Sets Aside $1 Billion To Cover Future European Data Privacy FinesIain Martin is a senior editor who covers tech, startups and venture capital out of London, England. Iain edits the Midas List Europe, Midas Seed and Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe Technology.
Read more »
Midas List Europe 2024: Submissions Are Now Open For The Definitive Ranking Of Europe’s Best Venture CapitalistsIain Martin is a senior editor who covers tech, startups and venture capital out of London, England. Iain edits the Midas List Europe, Midas Seed and Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe Technology.
Read more »
Hackers Have Uploaded Thousands Of Malicious Models To AI’s Biggest Online RepositoryIain Martin is a senior editor who covers tech, startups and venture capital out of London, England. Iain edits the Midas List Europe, Midas Seed and Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe Technology.
Read more »
'Midas Man' Trailer Dives Into the Life of The Beatles' Infamous ManagerMakuochi Echebiri is a writer at Collider who focuses on television, classic movies, epics, superhero movies and sprinkling of horror.
Read more »
‘Stuck in the past’: Is Warren Buffett losing his Midas touch?The legendary US investor’s aversion to new-economy stocks might be a reason for the underwhelming returns for the world’s ninth-richest man.
Read more »