WHY WE INVESTED IN DOCONTROL
By Roy Gottlieb and Noa Shamay
In the last couple of years, SaaS applications have become an integral part of any organization’s day to day work. It is almost impossible to imagine our life without using Google Workspace, Slack, Dropbox and the like. According to Blissfully, on average, a mid-market company (101–999 employees) uses 185 apps, and enterprises (1,000+ employees) use 288 apps. This trend of SaaS adoption has only been reinforced during Covid-19 with the remote and distributed workforce.
SaaS applications not only improve employees’ productivity and help scale up the business but also increase employee contact with sensitive data, leading to potential human errors, data loss, data leak, or compliance violations.
To handle these risks, cybersecurity teams need to track and analyze every engagement on the SaaS applications: who is sharing data outside, what data is being shared, what external users/companies have access to that data, and how it’s used. This task becomes extremely complex with more applications.
By automating data access controls, DoControl’s platform allows organizations to stay on top of all users, helping them to prevent data breaches without slowing down business enablement.
We backed DoControl for the first time 12 months ago and this is how it happened
An unorthodox way to originate a deal
While most VC deals are sourced by people within the VC network, DoControl simply reached out to us through a cold LinkedIn message. When Omri first reached out to us he wrote: “We are 3 co-founders, and we are working on a B2B cloud security company”. Back in early 2020 we had evaluated a few SaaS security companies and were somewhat fatigued about the sector. At first glance, DoControl seemed similar to other companies we had already seen. If an unorthodox way of approaching a VC and a competitive market weren’t enough, it was April 2020 and we were going through the first Covid-19 lockdown in Israel. Face-to-face meetings were not an option, so we felt our ability to evaluate the team was limited.
At Cardumen Capital, there are few things we value more than our entrepreneur’s time. As such, we directly addressed our concerns regarding the high level of competition in the market and our inability to meet the team face-to-face. We requested all information (differentiation, product, roadmap, validation, etc.) and started running reference calls on the team. What we then saw made all the difference.
A world class data room and competitive analysis
The level of depth of their competitive analysis was extremely thorough. DoControl had created a 25-page competitive analysis that described the market dynamics and their competitors in detail. To our surprise, the rest of their data room was just as good. With this command of the space, a clear positioning and product roadmap, they proved to us the potential to become a category leader. If the data room and materials were that good, we had to dig even deeper into the team.
A skilled team, with a high level of energy and complementary skills
When we met Adam, Omri and Liel we were highly impressed by their passion for the market and product, deep understanding of the space, amount of ground they had already covered, depth of thought and preparation. As said, we had never come across a team with such a comprehensive data room and with such a detailed flaw analysis of incumbent solutions.
Each data point they provided was supported by facts and the opinions/experience of tens of industry experts. They built a well-defined and well-articulated thesis tackling the problem step by step, and a plan that was extremely well thought through. The only thing we had left was to run these by the market and gather some feedback from cybersecurity executives.
Excellent feedback from cybersecurity executives
After talking to an extensive list of executives within mid to large size companies, we understood the pressure of their SaaS usage hypergrowth and the security issues associated with it. The positive feedback we received after connecting DoControl’s team to industry experts/potential customers gave us the confidence that this was right team to back. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive with most contacts asking to learn more after the meetings or even wanting to engage with them straight away.
Considering all of these — a known problem, simple story, an emerging market for a growing need and most importantly an astonishingly strong founding team with the right DNA — it was clear that this was a great company to invest in. We are very proud to have DoControl in our portfolio. We are huge believers in the value they deliver by helping enterprises become more secure while maintaining business agility, flexibility, and scale.
By the way, we recently met the team physically over dinner to celebrate the closing of a strong Series A round. Internally we also celebrated one more thing — our first “End-to-End Zoom Investment”.
Exciting times ahead!
Want to learn more about DoControl? Visit their website or get a demo here.
Cardumen Capital is a $70M VC fund focused on B2B early-stage deep-tech VC investments in Israel. Get in touch with us here.
