EMERYVILLE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Clear Skye® Inc today announced that the company has completed a $14 million Series A funding round, bringing total funding for the company to nearly $20 million since its initial seed round in 2020. This latest investment was co-led by Storm Ventures and Toba Capital with participation from Point Field Partners and Inner Loop Capital.
The company will use these funds to expand its team, global footprint, and to continue reimagining the approach to enterprise identity governance and security. To achieve this, the company has expanded its leadership team welcoming a new CMO, Erin Duncan, who previously led product marketing at Saviynt; Jackson Shaw, Chief Strategy Officer, who led product management at Dell, One Identity, and Forcepoint; Mike Tierney, Senior Vice President, Customer Success; and Jen Ilsley, Vice President, HR and Operations. Arun Penmetsa, Partner at Storm Ventures, will join Clear Skye’s board.
This news comes on the heels of Clear Skye’s record growth in 2021, driven by the demand for improved data compliance, workflow management, and security to meet the needs of a distributed, cloud-first workforce. Strategic, customer-driven product updates and new capabilities enabled the company to achieve 5x revenue growth last year. As a result, the company’s growing customer base includes ABB, West Fraser, Blackhawk Network, Premise Health, and more, who use Clear Skye to power their identity strategies.
“As the only IGA solution built natively on ServiceNow, Clear Skye has the unique ability to remove friction from business processes related to governing application access, all while increasing efficiency and extending our customers’ investments in their existing business platform,” said John Milburn, CEO, Clear Skye. “Effective and easy to use, Clear Skye eliminates the burdens associated with massive tech overhauls and starts delivering value immediately.”
"Today, workers have access to many more applications, which poses a challenge for identity and governance teams that are tasked with access control, managing compliance, and monitoring individual and enterprise-wide threats. Clear Skye addresses this need through a modern platform without the pain of replacing legacy IT systems,” said Arun Penmetsa, Partner, Storm Ventures. “Our investment in the company reinforces our belief in the value of extending identity beyond risk and security to embrace enhanced operations and IT workflows that improve overall business outcomes.”
The identity security market is expected to reach over $11 billion by 2025, but today, it’s dominated by siloed, on-premises solutions. In fact, 76% of customers are looking to replace their existing IGA solution, according to Gartner. It’s easy to see why; on average it takes an organization several days to weeks to remove access and weeks to months to complete an audit. Clear Skye enables companies to carry out these functions in just hours, empowering employees with what they need to get their job done and avoiding organizational silos that lead to disconnect or compromised data.
“Since working with Clear Skye, we’ve been able to simplify, standardize, and automate a manual process that took countless hours, dozens of spreadsheets, and hundreds of manual emails,” said Suneetha Golla, Director, Identity and Access Management, Premise Health. “Not only have we been able to reduce cost and increase security, but we significantly improved the lives of our team members responsible for user access."
Industry recognition of Clear Skye includes being named an inaugural Gartner Cool Vendor in Identity-First Security and a spot on the analyst firm’s Heat Index for “SaaS Delivered IAM" in the Security, Risk and Identity Management category. In Q2 the company will issue the results of its inaugural ‘State of Identity Management Report’ in partnership with research firm Gradient Flow. The research will help shed light on the benefits, trends, and challenges practitioners are facing when it comes to managing identity.
To learn more about Clear Skye, visit https://clearskye.com/.
About Clear Skye
Clear Skye is the only identity security and governance solution built natively on ServiceNow. The company reimagines enterprise identity access and risk management by enabling organizations to use a familiar interface, provide deeper identity control and insight, and build a bridge between the business and IT. By reducing siloes between functional areas like HR, IT, SecOps, and GRC, Clear Skye reduces friction, increases efficiency, and accelerates time-to-value. Global customers trust Clear Skye with their identity lifecycle management, governance, and security initiatives. For more information, visit https://clearskye.com, and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
About Storm Ventures
Storm Ventures is an early-stage enterprise focused fund based in Silicon Valley. For over 20 years, Storm Ventures has been the first or early investors in category-leading companies like Talkdesk, Workato, MobileIron, Marketo, Airespace, Tekion, Pipedrive, Algolia, Salesloft, and many others. The firm has invested in over 150 companies across Cybersecurity, healthcare, infrastructure, marketing, HR, sales and other enterprise sectors. Through 6 funds, Storm Ventures has generated top tier returns for investors and has built a unique strategy to identify, invest in and build global enterprise leaders.
About Toba Capital
Toba Capital is a single LP early-stage investment firm committed to helping create incredible technology companies. It looks for businesses capable of long-term growth and teams with the potential to fundamentally shift markets for the common good. Toba Capital was founded in 2012 by Vinny Smith and has offices in Los Angeles and Newport Beach, Calif. For more information, see www.tobacapital.com
About Inner Loop Capital
Inner Loop Capital is a seed-stage venture capital firm that invests in a range of enterprise technologies, with a particular focus on Cybersecurity, Cloud Infrastructure and Data Analytics. Since 2015, Inner Loop and its managing director have invested in 15 early-stage cybersecurity companies. Inner Loop Capital is based in Baltimore. For more information, see www.innerloopcap.com.
About Point Field Partners
Point Field Partners is a family office in Baltimore that focuses on making direct investments in venture capital, private equity, and real estate. With a permanent capital base, PFP looks to partner with management teams and other investors to create value for the long term.
