Cisco announces its intent to acquire Ascent VC Portfolio Company CloudLock

This is an exciting day as Cisco announced its intent to acquire our portfolio company CloudLock (read more here). It’s a story that warrants celebration, especially in the Boston-area, where it is another example of Massachusetts’ global leadership in the IT security ecosystem.

Since its founding in 2011, CloudLock has grown to be at the forefront of the cloud security sector, accumulating an enviable roster of leading customers and partners. The ingredients of their success story mirrors many that came before:

• hungry and talented founding team
• targeting a huge market disruption
• centered on strong product vision

But there are some elements of this story that deserve more attention.

At the top of the list is first-time CEO Gil Zimmermann, who crushed it.  Gil succeeded at CloudLock through a combination of strength of vision and strength of execution. Gil and his two cofounders, Ron Zalkind and Tsahy Shapsa, were early to identify the opportunity to provide security for companies transitioning to the cloud. Their vision evolved over time but they never feared flying in the face of conventional wisdom. This courage enabled them to maintain product leadership while battling much more aggressively capitalized competitors.

CloudLock rose to leadership in the cloud security sector with a pure play approach of being cloud-native while leveraging other cloud platform APIs in a collaborative fashion. They were a trailblazer of this approach while the competition often focused their efforts on extending legacy methods.

Why does this matter? It’s become increasingly critical for enterprises to tie together information from multiple security systems to effectively defend from cyber threats. API-driven CASB vendors like CloudLock are well positioned to meet this security orchestration challenge which gives them great strategic value in the broader IT security ecosystem.

But vision is never enough to drive success on its own.

Gil — named an E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year 2015 — has had an unshakeable focus on execution and helped guide the company through the inevitable highs and lows of startup life. He demanded excellence and expected results at all levels of the organization, while at the same time building a culture of ownership, growth and professional fulfillment. These efforts resulted in CloudLock being rated by Glassdoor as the #3 Best Places to Work in 2016. Team is paramount to any company’s success and Gil recruited an amazing collection of talent to make his vision a reality.

I am proud and honored to have worked in my own small way with this fantastic team of Gil, Ron, Tsahy, Rachael, Matt, Bernd, John, Ori, Jennifer, Vicki, Dan, and many more. Congrats to all the CloudLock team. I’m excited to watch you as you embark on this next chapter of growth.