Grip’s SaaS identity risk management is a hot one, which has helped their growth, as has the continued evolution of their channel-centric strategy.

Boston-headquartered Grip Security, a SaaS identity risk management with Israeli roots, has announced it is raising $41 million in Series B funding, to bring their total funding to $66 million. The new funding round was led by Third Point Ventures, with participation from YL Ventures, Intel Capital and The Syndicate Group. The two year-old company has posted strong growth to date, and while their intent had always been to evolve to a channel-centric model as Grip moved beyond their proof of concept stage, they have taken multiple measures to deliver on that and drive channel growth.

“We are seeing tremendous growth on our side because of the need for security solutions to secure SaaS,” said Lior Yaari, Grip’s CEO. “Before, everything was hosted in a corporate network. Now people consume applications by signing up on the internet. We want to be able to meet that demand, so we are taking another influx of capital.

Grip’s original Seed Round of $6 million was led by YL Ventures, which funds many Israeli startups with high growth. The A round, in which YL also participated, was $19 million and led by Intel Capital. The new round of $41 million, which brings total investment to $66 million, was led by Third Point Ventures.

“Third Point Ventures is renowned and has been been behind some multi-billion dollar companies like Sentinel One,” Yaari said.

Grip, at only two years old, is still a very young company, with bookings growth between 2022 and 2023 at over 400%.

“I’m very proud of this number,” Yaari indicated. “We want to maintain this type of rate over time. We think it is very doable because we serve a need that every company in the business world needs to address.”

Yaari noted that even though Grip has an excellent track record, they still found raising money more challenging than it used to be, which has been a persistent issue for startups in today’s economy.

“Even with the demand we have had, it hasn’t been easier to rise capital,” he said. “Market expectations are significantly higher than they were even two years ago. We do have an advantage compared to companies who don’t have the right backing or the right customers or who haven’t sold as well. This has allowed us to to upsell more and to sell faster.”

When Grip first came to market, the company was positioning itself as a CASB replacement. That has evolved, slightly, with the broader emphasis on SaaS identity risk management

“We aren’t positioning ourselves in the same way because we listen to the market,” Yaari said. “We haven’t changed because we are chasing trends. Today we position ourselves as a SaaS identity risk management tool, and CASB is now an integration partner more than a tool we are trying to replace. We are focusing on the fact that we help organizations with two big issues, SaaS and identity.”

Grip continues to sell to a broad range of customers up and downmarket.

“Grip’s biggest customer is 3000x times larger than our smallest customer,” Yaari said. “Our customers extend from the Fortune 10 to the SMB. While the company focus is on the enterprise, we want to be able to service the needs of anyone who has a SaaS challenge.”

As they have gone to market, Grip has evolved their Go-to-Market model to be completely channel-centric, while also welcoming partners as investors.

“One of the biggest changes since two years ago was that we shifted to be almost exclusively focused on the channel,” Yaari indicated. “In addition, partners have invested in the company through TSG – The Syndicate Group – an organization that helps the channel align with channel-centric startups.”

“We sell not just through the channel, but with the channel, and help them consolidate risk,” said Young-Sae Song, Chief Marketing Officer at Grip. “They build a trusted source of innovation We want to give them an opportunity to solve big problems that no one else can.

“We are looking for partners with an expertise we can invest in,” Song added, “We have about 50 that we are working with, with most being regional, some national, and some relatively small.”

“Most of our partners sell Palo Alto Networks,” he noted. “Many of them have an identity practice internally, but having this unique expertise gives an opportunity for Grip to help them. We help partners that sell standard security software become innovators. Our product is amazingly easy to deploy and is probably the only enterprise security product you can be working on in 10 minutes. We can train a partner how to work on it in an hour.”