Why Saphire Ventures invested in Wandera

Our Investment in Wandera

Today, we are excited to announce our investment in Wandera. We are particularly excited to be finally partnering with Roy and Eldar Tuvey.

Background: Reuniting a Successful Team

The brothers previously co-founded ScanSafe, which was the first to deliver a secure web gateway service in a nascent market.

Several years later, when ScanSafe was aquired by Cisco, it was one of the fastest growing companies in the UK and the then dominant vendor in a well established space.

At Wandera the brothers brought the band back together. We find the team and their ability to navigate uncharted waters with pragmatic, iterative and relentless execution truly impressive

We first met Roy and Eldar when we evaluated ScanSafe, but the moment passed without an investment. We subsequently reengaged with them after our friends at 83North invested in Wandera.

And, over the past year, Roy has attended our CIO summit, where we bring together CIOs of leading corporations with startup executives, as well as our regular dinners with entrepreneurs and thought leaders in the Bay Area and London.

As we spent more time with Wandera on both continents, we recognized the uniqueness of their product in a marketplace changed by mobile.

The Shift to Mobile: A New Security Landscape

The world has moved to mobile. A world where usage seamlessly switches between personal and corporate. More than half of data traffic in enterprises today flows through mobile devices.

This has lead to more freedom, increased flexibility, new workflows and an improvement in productivity. Associated security risks have quickly developed an underlying threat landscape despite not having been top of mind.

A growing number of security incidents with increasing severity and visibility such as SLocker are changing the preception.

Enterprises are now increasingly aware of the requirement to install practices to detect and mitigate mobile security threats.

The emerging category of mobile threat defense and mobile security more broadly present a large market opportunity.

Wandera’s combination of a secure mobile gateway with an enduser application is well positioned to to capture this large market.

It’s complementary set of functionalities which span several use cases can help make the mobile world more secure for enterprises without compromising usability or employee privacy.

Introducing MI:RIAM: The Heart of Wandera’s Innovation

It was against this backdrop that we became intrigued by Wandera’s differentiated positioning. But it was when we met MI:RIAM that our excitement became elevated and we fell in love.

MI:RIAM is short for mobile intelligence: realtime insights & analytics machine. She — yes, she — ingests large datasets, analyzes them, detects traffic anomalies, triggers dynamic security policies and automatically reacts to threats by blocking or configuring devices.

MI:RIAM is rarely wrong and becomes smarter the more data she processes. She is designed to identify zero day threats and surface new insights using a sophisticated blend of machine learning and data science techniques which allows visibility into mobile data in real time.

Despite the underlying complexity, the appearance is surprisingly simple. Wandera’s mobile application is user friendly and helps inform and educate employees on their data usage.

It notfies users of policy updates and alerts them about security breaches. Talking to customers and partners alike, Wandera’s app received high marks.

We believe this will be a meaningful differentiator going forward. As with any security solution the human element is one of the biggest factors and a good first impression and an ongoing positive user experience are key for user buy in and adoption.

Vision for Wandera’s Future

A great team and a product addressing a large worldwide market is what we look for. We could not be more excited to have found it in Europe.

But this is only the start. We actively support our companies, especially with their international expansion and selling to enterprises.

At Sapphire, we pursue a true team approach when it comes to helping our companies. Our presence in the U.S. and Europe, our dedicated market development team and our global enterprise network put us in a unique position to provide this help.

Conclusion

We are looking forward to the next phase of Wandera’s journey and our active participation and hard work toward its success. It is easy to commit when you are in love.

You can read the rest of “Why we invested in” collection here:

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