

Its thesis also falls in line with Accel’s focus on security companies. He also compared 1Password to other portfolio companies and fellow investors in this case: Slack, Qualtrics, and Atlassian.
1password history password#
“Īlso, as personal and professional lives continue to blur, the need for a password manager that can work on all platforms and both personally and professionally (not just one or the other) becomes increasingly important, Mathew pointed out. “Over time, particularly over the last four to five years, every organization, every company has faced the risk of being hacked and the chances of sensitive personal information getting out there is getting higher and higher,” Mathew told Crunchbase News.

Indeed, 1Password says it has created “secure vaults provide a safe place to share files and data too sensitive for email, while reporting and management tools give IT visibility into breaches and compromised accounts.” “The investment ended up being the single largest check, and largest initial investment, we’ve ever made.”ġPassword, Mathew noted, started out as a utility but evolved into a “core part of personal and increasingly corporate, security hygiene.”

“They weren’t looking for outside capital,” he said. The move to B2B was a brilliant one, according to Accel Partner Arun Mathew, who told me his firm actually approached 1Password about investing in the company. The company declined to provide its valuation.

Customers include IBM, Slack, PagerDuty, Dropbox, GitLab, and Roche, among others. In the past three years, 1Password’s enterprise business has grown over 300 percent and now comprises a majority of the company’s revenue. In three-and-a half years’ time, 1Password has grown to having over 1 million users, including 50,000 customers (including 25 percent of the Fortune 100) using its Enterprise Password Manager (EPM) product globally “to help employees maintain strong credentials, manage access to services and report on usage.” Growth Abounds This move took an already successful company to another level. In May 2016, 1Password evolved and began offering its services to business. Left to Right: Dave Teare, Jeff Shiner, Roustem Karimov and Sara Teare WIth his B2B background, Shiner realized there was an opportunity to take 1Password beyond its direct-to-consumer focus. That’s when they tapped Shiner to serve as 1Password’s CEO in 2011. The company says it helps users create “unique, strong passwords” and auto-fills logins for any site or app with a click, “so they can get more done without remembering–or even knowing–their credentials.”Īnd it’s done so without tracking users or “monetizing eyeballs,” according to 1Password co-founder Dave Teare.Īfter about six years, the founders realized they needed help in running the company. “1Password was started to solve a problem we all feel every day: the hassle of creating and remembering complicated passwords to access the apps we need,” he said. The company, which claims to have been profitable since its first year, emphasized user experience, noted CEO Jeff Shiner. They realized the struggle of keeping up with passwords.ġPassword started out focused on consumers only. BackgroundġPassword started in Toronto in 2005 and was born out of a recognized need.įounding couples Dave and Sara Teare and Roustem and Natalia Karimov came up with the idea while they were growing a company that built websites. Additionally, Atlassian President Jay Simons, former Google CISO Gerhard Eschelbeck and several other “notable angel investors” participated.įor a reporter who covers tech company fundings, this is an unusual story. I should note that Slack Fund, WndrCo and Atlassian founders/co-CEOs Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes joined the round. It also represents Accel’s largest single check written in one round. The financing also marks the previously bootstrapped 1Password’s first external round of funding in its 14-year history.
1password history series#
Namely, it’s a gigantic Series A even by today’s standards. This round is notable for a number of reasons. 1Password, a Toronto-based password manager, announced today it has raised $200 million in a massive Series A funding round that was led by Accel.
