Tanium Lands $120M In VC Funding, Says Partners Are Key To Continuing Growth

Just six months after its last round of funding, Tanium is at it again, landing $120 million in additional funding to continue driving the astronomical growth the endpoint security management startup has seen in recent months.

The funding was led by TPG Capital, Institutional Venture Partners and T. Rowe Price Associates. The funding adds to the $52 million raised from Andreessen Horowitz in March and brings the company's total funding raised to $262 million and putting its valuation reportedly at $3.5 billion.

In the months since its last funding influx, Tanium has hit some pretty incredible growth rates, with 200 percent year-over-year growth overall and certain sectors, such as its federal business, hitting 500 percent to 600 percent growth year over year. The Emeryville, Calif.-based company has also grown its head count from 175 in March to around 300 employees today, with goals of hiring up to more than 400 employees by the end of the year.

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To continue that growth, investing in the company's channel partners is key, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Orion Hindawi said, especially as it looks to reach the right customers and transact effectively in the federal and global markets.

"The channel plays a huge role [for Tanium]. That's even more true now," Hindawi said.

Since the company's last round of funding, Hindawi said, Tanuim has added 13 new dedicated channel management employees as well as set up a channel account manager architecture that is 100 percent compensated on channel sales, resulting in more than 90 percent of the company's deals over the past six month flowing through its channel partners.

"We're really putting our money where our mouths are, not to just enable the channel with margins but to build an ecosystem within Tanium where they have strong advocacy," Hindawi said. That will continue going forward, he said.

In particular, Hindawi said, Tanium will be investing in enabling partners to add value on top of the platform. The company already has four or five partners certified to create unique content on top of the platform. The company will be investing in training and other steps to help more partners embrace this approach, he said.

One area that Tanium won't be investing in is building a services business, Hindawi said. While other vendors in the space have made investments in services businesses that could compete with their partners, Hindawi said, that is not an approach Tanium will ever take.

"We're not in conflict with our channels and our VARs," Hindawi said. "Tanium is very clear about that. ... We want to enable our partners ... and not be competitive with them."

From a technology perspective, Hindawi said, partners can expect to see Tanium "double down" on delivering best-of-breed modules to add to its platform.

"[The platform approach] gives a really nice model for our partners because once they sell a customer with the platform, they can go to the next quarter and upsell the next use case," Hindawi said.

Hindawi said partners can expect Tanium to release four to five new modules by the end of the year, with the next one being one focused on unmanaged assets.

PUBLISHED SEPT. 2, 2015