Strategic competition firm Strider nabs $45 million Series B
By Joe Uchill | published in SC World
Utah-based strategic competition intelligence platform Strider announced a $45 million Series B investment Monday. The new investment was led by new investor Valor Equity Partners, and increases the stakes of existing investors DataTribe, Koch Disruptive Technologies, and One9 Ventures.
Costa Saab, from Valor, will join the Strider board of directors.
Striders’ products revolve around analysis of open-source information to find nexuses between governments and technology investments, including mechanisms to used by countries like China to artificially inflate competition or outright steal intellectual property. That includes the Strider Shield platform designed to flag employees who have ties to governments and may be risks for insider threat espionage operations.
With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, enterprises are seeing the broader risk of potential collisions with foreign nation’s interests more than ever, said Eric Levesque, co-founder and chief operating officer of the firm.
“There’s definitely an adversary point of view. But then there’s also just a reality that that, from a business standpoint, the cost-benefit analysis has changed. You need to know what is the cost and the benefit of doing business in some of these geographies. And is it actually inhibiting long term competitive goals,” he said.
Levesque noted that the risks in Russia right now may not be espionage as much as Russia’s desire to maintain its economy during sanctions, and may come from business partners outside of Russia. For example, Russia is now allowing for parallel imports of products — products that are not counterfeited, but whose export was not sanctioned by the brand owner.
Strider was founded in May of 2019, but saw accelerated growth in 2021. According to the company, it quintupled its annual recurring revenue in 2021 and achieved 100% customer retention.
“Four years ago, the strategic competition was more niche. Today, it’s become part of the mainstream discussion for corporate executives and government officials,” said Levesque.
The new capital will go to product development and geographic expansion. The company is currently building out new offices in London to pursue the European market.
