Entrepreneurs Al Yang and Adar Arnon met at Harvard Business School and quickly realized they’d a typical interest: cybersecurity.
“We have experienced a changing business climate that has brought with it an unprecedented need for improved security processes,” Arnon told TechCrunch. “The importance of security has increased exponentially… (it’s) non-negotiable for technology buyers.”
Yang and Arnon decided to show this interest into something more, in order that they began SafeBasewhich was accepted into Y Combinator's accelerator program in the course of the pandemic.
SafeBase announced Tuesday that it has raised $33 million in a Series B round led by Touring Capital. The company helps customers fill out security questionnaires. These are checks that corporations typically perform before purchasing recent software. It's a governance and compliance thing.
Security questionnaires might be tedious, taking weeks or months for more complex pieces of software. But Arnon argues that SafeBase can save time through automation – and AI.
SafeBase employs AI models which are “specifically trained in safety documentation use cases” to read, interpret, after which mechanically answer safety information and inquiries to safety questionnaires. “(Our platform) eases the cumbersome security review process by empowering security, governance, risk and compliance, and revenue teams,” he said.
Being the cynic I’m in relation to AI, I asked Arnon concerning the accuracy of those models. AI is, in any case, a notorious liar. He claimed it was superior due to a “mixture of enormous and small language models” that provided “greater response coverage.” Take that as you’ll.
Beyond custom models, SafeBase offers an engine that permits a company to assign “rule-based behavior” for customer access, in addition to dashboards that provide insights and evaluation into the organization's security posture.
SafeBase isn't the one provider offering tools to automate security questionnaires and reviews. Competitors include Conveyor, which recently raised $12.5 million; Kintent; and Quilt, which claims it will possibly automate due diligence reviews along with security checks.
Arnon didn't seem too anxious. Perhaps that's due to SafeBase's customer list of 700 corporations, which incorporates Palantir, LinkedIn, Asana, and Instacart.
“SafeBase has experienced tremendous growth lately,” said Arnon. “Customers love the product and acceptance continues to extend. The company will profit from increased visibility across its supplier network as more major customers adopt trust centers that eliminate tens of hundreds of manual security checks.”
SafeBase, based in San Francisco, employs 55 people.
The company's Series B included participation from strategic investor Zoom Ventures (Zoom's corporate enterprise arm), NEA, Y Combinator, Comcast Ventures and Cerca Partners, in addition to angels including former Salesforce Chief Trust Officer Jim Alkove. This brings SafeBase's total revenue to over $50 million. Arnon says a good portion will go toward expanding the team.
