Carbon Black IPO: Redefining Endpoint Security

Sequoia partnered with Carbon Black in 2012 and in 2018 the company went public.

In 2012, enterprises were beginning to rethink their approach to network security and cyber defense. With telecommuting and mobility on the rise, employees were more often working outside protected corporate networks—and with the growing prominence of the cloud, they were gathering sensitive data from an ever-increasing set of sources.

Companies including Palo Alto Networks, FireEye, and Barracuda were ramping up and redefining network security, but nearly every enterprise still had vulnerable endpoints that were increasingly attractive targets for attacks. Anti-virus products prevalent on devices were proving to be ineffective, creating an opportunity to transform endpoint security.

Enter Carbon Black.

Sequoia was fortunate to partner with the Carbon Black team (then Bit9) at a critical point in their journey, and together we began to think about endpoint security in a new way. We encouraged the team to go all-in on their vision of a broader cloud platform that empowered enterprises to identify, remediate and prevent attacks on the endpoint.

Six years later, the Carbon Black team has brought that vision to life, leveraging big data and analytics on its Predictive Security Cloud. They’ve built and defined a new security market, EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response), and also have one of the fastest-growing offerings in next-generation anti-virus.

We are thrilled to congratulate Patrick Morley, Mike Viscuso and the Carbon Black team on their IPO, and look forward to our continued partnership on the path ahead.