Why We Invested In Ordr's Series C
Today we announce our Series C investment in the connected device security company, Ordr. While we’ve believed in the company strongly since our first investment in their Series A, today we are even more confident in their vision, mission, and ultimate success.
A little history: in 2018, we led the $12.5 million Series A to help Ordr develop its mission to provide enterprises with complete visibility and control over every class of network-connected device and system. We invested again in 2019 in the Series B round led by Battery Ventures. Today we announce our participation in the Series C round, driven by our absolute conviction that the time is right to put our foot on the gas and accelerate towards a position of independent market leadership in connected device security.
What makes the opportunity to invest more now so compelling? Critically, Ordr is in one of the very “right” spaces at this moment in history (in our terminology, a uniquely appealing innovation “racetrack.”) Because of accelerated digital transformation, connected devices are exploding. While we expected that growth in 2018, today’s numbers exceed our expectations. Insecure connected devices are a significant and growing problem that needs to be solved.
Beyond the market dynamics, however, Ordr has the most comprehensive product (in our terminology, “horse”) to solve this problem and the larger connected device security race. CISOs don’t want to only gain visibility into devices and risks – their broader objective is to be able to translate these insights into action. Here, Ordr is unique, offering powerful, automated response functionalities that are unparalleled in the market. Security and HTM teams can block traffic, terminate sessions, quarantine devices, and enable Zero Trust policies with one click. Important customers like Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic depend on Ordr every day for this kind of actionability.
But finally, as the market opportunity grows and our product proves its strength, the (historically confused) competitive field is evolving dramatically in our favor. After a wave of early tuck-in M&A amongst other security providers, followed by an aggressive growth investing-led binge (and purge), the track has opened for Ordr to take control of the IoT space. Momentum among buyers has broken in our favor due to the product’s strength, technology, and the team’s dedication to their customers. Our Series C investment in Ordr is a classic example of finding the right window and circumstances to focus on significant expansion via sales and marketing resources and truly break away from the pack.
We are at just the right time, with just the right cap table and balance sheet, to become very aggressive. Our patience created optionality and now, opportunity. By building our products and customer base to where they are now in 2022, we have the conditions for substantial value creation simply from scaling the go-to-market execution engine. Ordr will expand beyond its strong traction in the healthcare segment into other areas of critically important infrastructure. Ordr also has a massive opportunity to develop its technology alliances further (as the company recently did with Cisco), creating additional go-to-market channels. We see more untapped opportunities and growth acceleration from significant strategic partnerships in MSSP, healthcare, and other security platforms.
Our co-investors, including Battery, Wing, and Northgate, see the opportunity similarly and join us in this investment round. We’re proud to be in the company of such proven investors on this one, thrilled we all see what is to come for Ordr and its products. We all know it is time for Ordr to become the market leader who makes every organization dealing with the risks and management headaches of network-connected devices sleep a lot easier at night. We can’t wait to see what’s next.
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