Guardz: A Game-Changer in Small-Business Cybersecurity

Finding a solution to a long-standing problem is rare. We’ve listened to countless pitches, and were often left disappointed. This is why we were so excited when we met Guardz, and their innovative solution immediately grabbed our attention. Glilot Capital is thrilled to lead their $18M Series A round through our early-growth fund Glilot+, and here’s what got us excited.

An Underserved Market Segment

From our first meeting with Guardz, it was evident that they had the ideal team and strategy to tackle a challenge we at Glilot have closely monitored for years: the increase in cybersecurity threats targeting small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). While enterprises enjoy healthy budgets for establishing experienced cybersecurity teams and buying top cyber protection solutions, SMBs operate under more stringent conditions, with many lacking awareness of cyber threats altogether. The growing trend of attacks against SMBs in recent years was further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the rapid digitization it imposed on many sectors, including fragmented ones that are dominated by SMBs. Despite our exploration of solutions, none has effectively been able to address the unique requirements of SMBs, while recognizing the cyber expertise gap in this market segment.

Managed Service Providers (MSPs) as the Gatekeepers

SMBs ultimately rely on MSPs for their IT needs – outsourcing IT service companies, which in turn are also responsible for securing the SMB tech infrastructure. Guardz correctly identified that many MSPs themselves lack cyber savvy and comprehensive offerings. Even those that provide cyber capabilities to their SMB customers do so in a fragmented, cumbersome and costly way, often stitching together various separate cyber solutions. Large enterprises have entire security teams to manage their security tech stacks – MSPs usually don’t, and must do so across numerous SMB customers with varying environments, needs and risk profiles.

By offering a unified cybersecurity platform to MSPs that brings together every cyber protection tool a small business needs – for endpoint, email, network, data, cloud, identity – Guardz made deploying cyber protection into the SMB market segment intuitive, quick and cost-effective. Moreover, the Guardz solution now allows many SMBs to be eligible for cyber insurance coverage, which is a growing requirement by vendors, business partners and customers for conducting operations digitally.

A Compelling Investment Opportunity in a Stellar Team

Ultimately, it all starts and ends with the team, and at Glilot, the team is always the #1 factor for any early-stage deal. Dor Eisner, Co-Founder and CEO of Guardz, has been a “family member” at Glilot for many years. A key executive at IntSights, one of the fund’s major success stories (sold to Rapid7), he was responsible for all MSP sales and knew their cyber challenges inside-out. Joining forces with Co-Founder and CTO Alon Lavi, a cyber veteran and the first developer at Argus Security (now part of Continental), they assembled a superstar team of cyber and SMB sales & marketing experts as their first employees and advisors. Then, they got to work on the product and MSP go-to-market strategy.

Within less than a year, the Guardz team successfully brought a comprehensive solution to market that saw quick early adoption. Even during our due-diligence process, we couldn’t ignore the fact that sales were taking off at a remarkable rate. Numerous new users were on-boarded within just a few weeks of initial discussions. This, combined with the overwhelmingly positive feedback we got from early MSP customers, who were doubling down on the solution months after first trying it, led us to a clear conclusion – the SMB market, widely recognized as the toughest nut to crack in cyber, was yielding to the Guardz solution.

Why Glilot+? Why now?

For our early growth fund Glilot+, Guardz had all the ingredients we looked for: a compelling B2B software solution in our core sector of cybersecurity, real product-market fit with early go-to-market success, and an entrepreneurial team that was thinking big. The timing for leading Guardz’s Series A couldn’t be better, too – in an era where online GenAI-powered attack tools have become commodities and hackers work at scale, Guardz was providing the SMB sector, through their MSP partners, the cyber protection they needed after years of neglect.

Leading the company’s Series A round at their inflection point of early growth has been a privilege and a pleasure. We see our investment not just as a financial one, but a testament to our belief in Guardz’s mission to secure the digital world for those who need it most. We couldn’t be happier to be working with Dor, Alon, and the rest of the Guardz team in helping them better secure all SMBs out there.

Lior Litwak, Managing Partner of Glilot+, Glilot Capital