December 18, 2020
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - [18] December, 2020 - Very Good Security (VGS), the modern standard for data security, compliance and custodianship, announced today that it has raised $60 million in Series C funding led by Vertex Ventures US with participation from existing investors, including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Goldman Sachs Growth (GS Growth).
This funding will be used to support VGS’ accelerating growth, as the company more than doubled its customer base in 2020. VGS now processes billions of records of sensitive data, and its data under management has grown more than 10x year-on-year. Companies ranging from the Fortune 100 to innovators like Brex, Deserve, DoNotPay, Fast, and Mercury increasingly leverage VGS’ platform to build features instead of compliance overhead.
“Working with sensitive data should not require a trade-off between security and flexibility. Our customers are realizing they can finally have both. VGS is doing for data what credit cards and digital payments did for money: we have de-risked the ability to exchange the value of data, without compromising either functionality or security,” said Mahmoud Abdelkader, CEO and co-founder of Very Good Security. “Our customers can do more with their data and consistently get to market faster than those who are forced to do the heavy lifting of building and maintaining compliant infrastructure themselves.”
VGS has become a layer on top of cloud services to facilitate the secure exchange of sensitive data. For example, banking-as-a-service platform Unit Finance uses VGS to expedite connectivity to payments networks while offloading PCI-DSS complexity. And Fivestars has leveraged VGS to build the largest commerce network for local businesses, delivering magical omni-channel loyalty and payments experiences.
As organizations of all sizes transition to the cloud and face growing compliance and privacy challenges, the need for tailored solutions and services has rapidly increased. VGS has built the only infrastructure platform that simplifies cloud transformation by enabling companies to transfer custodianship while retaining ownership and control over sensitive data. This Zero Data™ approach eliminates the need for companies to store sensitive data within their own systems, streamlining regulatory compliance and certifications including PCI-DSS, SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA and more.
“VGS operates at the intersection of two multibillion-dollar markets experiencing high-growth tail winds: data security and compliance,” said Jonathan Heiliger, General Partner, Vertex US. “We believe VGS is uniquely positioned with the only ‘Zero Data’ platform, making it possible for enterprises to transact with sensitive data without the liability of securing it. By encrypting and tokenizing sensitive data, VGS not only eliminates the risk associated with data, the service increases its utility by activating and presenting it on a network. Network participants, who are clients on the VGS platform, transact with each other using aliased or tokenized data. We’ve backed VGS from the beginning and are thrilled to continue partnering with the team.”
From inception, VGS has been focused on enabling companies to achieve their business objectives by expediting connectivity and overcoming compliance obstacles. In addition to scaling its platform to support customer growth, VGS is developing several new capabilities to further automate compliance controls, delivering compounding efficiencies of scale to customers on its platform.
About Very Good Security Very Good Security (VGS) is a leading data security company whose developer-friendly Zero Data™ platform helps businesses use sensitive data without the cost or liability of securing the data themselves. VGS provides specialized infrastructure to act as a custodian for sensitive data, improving security while also accelerating business growth. Founded in 2016, the company is headquartered in San Francisco, California. For more information, visit https://www.verygoodsecurity.com/
About Vertex Ventures US Vertex US is an early-stage venture capital firm that backs companies transforming industries through software and data. With investments including LaunchDarkly, PerimeterX, and Desktop Metal, Vertex US brings pioneering experience to pioneering enterprises. In Sik Rhee and Jonathan Heiliger co-founded Vertex US in 2015. For more information, visit vertexventures.com.