Perimeter 81 - Founding Team of the Year

Company: Perimeter 81, Tel Aviv, Israel
Company Description: Perimeter 81 provides businesses with access to local networks, applications, and cloud infrastructure. With cutting-edge technology, we help to transition from outdated, expensive hardware, to a simplified cloud-based SaaS solution to simplify network security for the modern and remote workforce.
Nomination Category: Entrepreneur Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Founding Team of the Year - Business Products Industries

Nomination Title: The Founders Defending the Worlds Cyber Perimeter

Co-founding a startup with your best friend can be a tricky endeavor, but Amit Bareket and Sagi Gidali have successfully done it - twice. As Sagi has shared with Fast Company: “Some might say that my cofounder Amit and I are like an old married couple as we have been working together day and night for almost a decade.”

Amit and Sagi’s story begins when they met while studying Computer Science at Tel Aviv University. The two developed an app together for a class assignment, submitted it to a Microsoft competition, and won one of the top prizes.

Afterwards, they began to receive considerable recognition and interest from investors and VCs, and saw the potential of their working relationship and professional synergy. So, following graduation, while working part-time for large enterprises, they decided to build a business together. Both shared the dream of becoming independent business owners and contributing to society in a meaningful way.

Prompted by the huge demand they saw with the rise of Internet censorship, privacy breaches, security threats, and geo-restrictions, they decided to build a consumer VPN service, SaferVPN. After two years of bootstrapping, SaferVPN became one of the world’s leading consumer VPN services, with tens of thousands of customers and millions of downloads in the app store.

In 2018, Amit and Sagi decided to bring the signature simplicity and speed of their consumer VPN service to the business world. They were inspired by their experiences working part-time at larger enterprises and having to deal with cumbersome legacy VPN technology that was complicated and difficult to install. And so, Perimeter 81, a leading cybersecurity platform contending in a space race for Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) dominance, was born.

In 2019, Amit and Sagi sold SaferVPN to media conglomerate J2 Global, enabling them to serve the outstanding demand for Perimeter 81.

Perimeter 81 now provides powerful and cost-effective secure network access to thousands of organizations across the globe. And the arrival of the company couldn’t have been more timely for those in need. The unfortunate disruption of the pandemic created an explosion in the world of remote work, but companies of all sizes had difficulties adapting to this new normal. More and more companies needed to protect their remote workforces and secure network access. Amit and Sagi ensured Perimeter 81 was already primed to support this new paradigm shift in workplace transformation. After only launching Perimeter 81 in 2018, the company quickly grew exponentially, seeing 400% growth year-over-year.

Perimeter 81 was quickly recognized as a Gartner Cool Vendor for ‘Network and Cyber-Physical Systems Security, Frost and Sullivan Software-Defined Access Technology Leadership Award Winner, and was named by Deloitte as one of the Fastest Growing EMEA Tech companies. The company continued to expand its service offerings and operations to Europe and the U.S from its headquarters in Tel Aviv. To date, Perimeter 81 has acquired over 1,500 customers ranging fromhealthcare organizations to Fortune 500 corporations.

After continued success and recognition in the marketplace, Perimeter 81 closed a 40M Series B investment round in August 2020 from Insight Partners. This brings the total investment in Perimeter 81 to $65M in less than two years, matching its growth and innovation. The prominence of Perimeter 81 led to other impactful opportunities to help bring greater cybersecurity to the world.

As we’ve seen over the course of the past year, the world and industry are bound to evolve, but one principle remains certain: Amit and Sagi will always strive to continue providing innovative and effective solutions that truly help businesses securely solve their most critical challenges and exceed expectations.

-Sold SaferVPN to media conglomerate J2 Global
-Perimeter 81 recognized as a Gartner Cool Vendor for ‘Network and Cyber-Physical Systems Security
-Achieving continual 400% year over year growth
-Closing $40M series B investment round in August ‘20 from Insight Partners, bringing total investment to $65M in less than two years
-Acquiring over 1,500 customers to date from companies of all industries and sizes
-Recognized as Frost & Sullivan 2019 Best Practices, Software-Defined Access Technology Leadership Award winner
-Named by Deloitte as one of the Fastest Growing EMEA Tech companies
-Launching distribution agreement with Ingram Micro following finalist status in Ingram Micro’s Comet Competition
-Launch on the AWS Marketplace, joining the Microsoft Intelligence Association and going live on the Azure Marketplace
-Launch of new Global Channel Partner Program
-Launch of Zero Trust Application Access and Firewall as Service capabilities to further strengthen SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) market offering