Finjan, a veteran in the Israeli software landscape that’s been around since 1996 has announced a $22 million sixth round led by HarbourVest, one of its first investors. Several other funds participated in the round including: Benchmark Capital, Israel Seed Partners, Benhamou Global Ventures (Eric Behamou’s VC fund), and Cisco. The company said it will use the proceeds to accelerate growth in the global Secure Web Gateway market, but questions about the size of the round have emerged.
Finjan provides secure web gateway solutions (SWG) for the enterprise market, helping financial institutions prevent crimeware, malware and data leakage using patented real-time content inspection technologies and a proprietary anti-virus module. The SWG industry is estimated to be a billion dollar market a year.
The high amount of money raised by Finjan also raised a few eyebrows – the company does not develop its own hardware, so its operating costs aren’t that high – why would it need $22 million? Globes assumes that the money will be spent on acquisitions.
In the official press release John Vigouroux, President and CEO of Finjan, said:
“We are excited to close this investment round now, especially considering the current economic downturn. Thanks to Finjan’s employees and executive team, we achieved record sales as well as major competitive wins. Our patented technology is favored by analysts and customers alike, which enables us to provide outstanding products and solutions. We are proud of our ability to maintain our exceptional high-level of customers’ satisfaction and of the high renewal rates with existing customers – all achieved with an efficient operational structure. Since the market evolved from URL filtering and Anti-Virus into a composite SWG market, Finjan’s Secure Web Gateway is perfectly positioned to serve this $1B market with its unique product offering.”
Another recent victory for the company was won in the court of law. Finjan recently won a legal dispute around patent infringement against Secure Computing. According to the settlement, Finjan will receive 16% of the sales made by Secure Computing.
I'm a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups.
I'm also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we've built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.
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