OneTrust, an Atlanta-based privacy, security and third-party risk technology platform, has raised a $200 million Series A from Insight Partners, which now values the startup at $1.3 billion. The company joins the ranks of other unicorns in the city.
The funding will be used to continue to build out more modules, privacy strategy and a third party risk management product, according to Chairman Alan Dabbiere. OneTrust plans to continue its global expansion, acquire more companies and grow its headcount.
"We are currently at about 1,000 employees. About half of that is almost all R&D, and another half of that is service and support," he said. "We’ve gotten to that scale in just three years ... If you compound our growth, it’s been phenomenal for our software company, and we expect to continue that kind of growth in the foreseeable future."
Founded in 2014, the company has passed some notable milestones in the past three years, including several acquisitions, more than 50 patents, eight offices around the world and more than 3,000 customers in over 100 countries.
For Dabbiere, this is his third Atlanta company to achieve a billion-dollar valuation. He founded Manhattan Associates, a software company which has about a $4.5 billion market cap, and a second software company called AirWatch, which was sold to VMware for $1.5 billion in 2014. With the new funding and unicorn status, the question of, "Is your company viable?" will disappear, he said.
“Clearly, an investment like this with a very reputable group like Insight, it really just takes that question off the table," he said.
OneTrust basically works as a dashboard for a company's privacy department, Dabbiere said. Most times when we think about our data, we're concerned about security, he said, where there's a clear definition of right and wrong; Someone is trying to steal your data and you're trying to stop them.
"Privacy on the other hand, the enemy is very often within," he said. "And if you ask your marketing department to use all means available and all this great information that you’ve got about your customers to sell more products, guess what they’re going to do? They’re going to go out and use all that data to sell more products. And very often in doing that, they don’t think about, ‘Well, gee, have I collected more information about my customer or used more information in an inappropriate way?’"
This problem goes beyond a company's internal IT and marketing department, Dabbiere said, because in advertising campaigns, third parties are often involved. New regulations will force companies to think about their customers’ privacy as part of the way they market, he said.
The Global Data Protection Regulation in Europe is already in place, but the California Consumer Privacy Act---which will go into effect Jan. 1, 2020---is going to be the game changer. The law will require companies to disclose to California residents what personal data is being collected and whether it's sold or disclosed and to whom. Residents will also have the opportunity to say no to the sale of their personal data, access to the data and receive equal service and price, regardless of whether they've chosen to exercise this right.
Dabbiere said even if a company isn't based in California, if it caters to customers there or has its revenue tied to residents in any way, it has to conform to this law. Essentially, any company of scale in the United States will have to revisit its privacy policies.
"The challenge for a privacy department is very often finding these problems. [It's] like finding a needle in a haystack," he said. "You’ve got so many things going on in a company that’s dealing across the board with technology and marketing and third parties, how do you even find the problem?"
That's where OneTrust comes in, Dabbiere said, to serve as a magnet that pulls all the needles out of the haystack. With OneTrust, privacy departments can answer questions such as, "Are we collecting too much data, dropping cookies on your computer without approval or consent or inappropriately gathering way too much data and not really telling you about it in our terms and conditions?"
"Onetrust is a whole set of technologies that helps companies comply with all the new regulation and more importantly to be good citizens in the way they treat their customers’ data so they can manage their reputation," he said.
While our hub of a city is well-known for cybersecurity and fintech, Dabbiere said Atlanta is gaining traction in the privacy field.
"Interestingly, Atlanta has the second number of certified privacy professionals in the world and that is actually almost completely due to OneTrust being based in Atlanta," he said. "Atlanta is really emerging as a global center for privacy innovation."
