CRN: KKR Invests Another $410M In Fast-Growing Security Firm NetSPI

On October 5, NetSPI CEO Aaron Shilts and VP of Business Development and Strategic Alliances Lauren Gimmillaro were featured in CRN’s article called KKR Invests Another $410M In Fast-Growing Security Firm NetSPI. Read the preview below or view it online.

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Private equity powerhouse KKR obviously likes what it’s seen since it first invested in cybersecurity firm NetSPI last year.

The New York-based KKR, which led a $90 million funding round for NetSPI in 2021, is now investing an additional $410 million in the penetration testing and attack surface management firm, NetSPI said on Wednesday.

The massive growth investment will be used to support NetSPI’s product development, talent hirings, possible company acquisitions and aggressive expansion of the firm’s channel program, said NetSPI chief executive Aaron Shilts.

Much of the money will also be used to effectively buy out previous majority owner Sunstone Partners, Shilts told CRN.

As for the channel, Shilts said less than 10 percent of the private company’s current revenues come from the channel. But NetSPI, which recently hired a new channel chief and launched a new partner program in August, is determined to boost its sales via various players within the channel, he said.

“It was the right time for us to double down on channel investment,” said Shilts, whose company was founded in 2001 but only received its first outside investment in 2017, led by Sunstone Partners.

Shilts said the firm decided to wait a bit after its first equity investment five years ago before moving from mostly direct sales to channel sales.

“We wanted to ensure that we had the maturity and the growth,” he said. “I think the worst thing that we could do is not have that [initial sales] mastery in place. It was just a matter of maturing over several years before we were ready.”

You can read the full article at CRN!