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F5 Inc

Jeffrey S. Hussey, An Investment Banker Behind The Idea Of Foundation Of F5 Inc.

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F5 Inc is an American software company that was established in 1996. The company was originally founded as F5 Labs and formerly branded as F5 Networks Inc. The main solutions offered by F5 Inc include application security, online fraud prevention, application delivery networking (ADN), multi-cloud management, network security, and many more. The headquarters of the company is based in Seattle, Washington, US. Apart from the headquarters, the company has 75 offices in 43 countries. Apart from the development of main software products, these offices are built to support marketing, sales, support, etc, especially on the international markets. Apart from America, F5 has a strong market in Europe.

About F5 Inc

F5 Inc was originally a provider of application delivery controller (ADC) technology. Eventually, the company expanded to other related sectors like automation and security services. F5 has landed some of the biggest tech companies in the world as its clients like Microsoft, Oracle, Tesla, and Meta. It also serves many companies from the Fortune 1000 companies and 48 out of Fortune 50 are also clients of F5 Inc. Apart from North America and Europe, F5 is also expanding its market to the Asia-Pacific region. F5 has also made a few significant acquisitions in the last few years. They include NGINX Inc for $670 million, Shape Security Inc for $1 billion, Volterra Inc for $500 million, and Threat Stack Inc for $68 million.

F5 Inc
Image source: golicense.net

History

The original brain behind the foundation of F5 Inc was an investment banker, Jeffrey S. Hussey. After he passed out from the University of Washington, he opened his business in Seattle. At the time when he opened his business in Seattle, that place was the hotspot for all types of IT activities, and his idea revolved around assisting businesses to help with internet traffic. When Hussey started the company, there was no initial product that he had in mind but he relied on the potential of the new economy that was to be formed with the rapid expansion of an internet-based world. After the company was established in 1995, he became the CEO, President, and Chairman of the company and started hiring employees. It took one year to build a product to market and then finally in 1997 the company was ready to roll out BIG/ip Controller.

Expansion

It was only a few months that F5 Inc rolled out its first product in the market that it came under the radar of its gigantic competitors. Companies like Cisco Systems Nortel Networks Corporation were already big companies but F5 got a foothold in the market and its product was good enough to compete with these tech giants. By the end of FY 1998, F5 generated annual revenue of $4.7 million from a single product. Shortly, the company released another product, 3DNS Controller and after launching these two products F5 Inc planned to go public. In April 1999, after the company changed its name from F5 Labs to F5 Networks it went public. By the time the company entered the 21st century, it landed more than 1,600 customers. There was a big change in the year 2000 as Hussey stepped down as the CEO of the company and his place was taken by John McAdam.

The company faced a decline in its sale and there was a loss of revenue in 2000. So, McAdam’s first priority was to improve the reputation of the company and turn around its fate. After a few years, from the mid-2000s, the company again started making profits and in 2004 its profit gain increased by 705%. In 2017, John McAdam was replaced by François Locoh-Donou and the headquarters shifted to the F5 Tower.

François Locoh-Donou – CEO of F5 Inc

François Locoh-Donou joined F5 Inc in 2017 and he has more than 20 years of experience in enterprise technology. Before joining F5 Inc, he was a part of Ciena and Photonetics, a French company. He also co-founded Cajou Espoir, a social enterprise. Donou completed his undergraduate studies in France and then Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Verkada

Hans Robertson, got the idea of Verkada when fifty iPads were stolen from his company.

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Verkada offers cloud-based consumer security solutions for businesses and organizations. Filip Kaliszan, James Ren, and Benjamin Bercovitz are the three Stanford graduates who co-founded Verkada along with Hans Robertson. Hans has co-founded another company before Verkada and served as the COO of the same. Currently, Filip Kaliszan is the CEO of the company and Hans Robertson is the Executive Chairman. Verkada was founded only five years ago and within a small time, it has become the talk of the physical security industry.

About Verkada Inc

Verkada is a physical security company that builds cameras, access control systems, environmental sensors, and alarms. The company builds cloud-based software platforms to access high-end hardware security products and make buildings safer. Verkada’s headquarters are based in San Mateo, California, and have customers across the globe. Their customers increased by nineteen folds between 2017 and 2018.

It has also received many awards and recognitions including Top Startups (LinkedIn), AI 50 Most Promising AI Firms (Forbes 2020), Enterprise Tech 30, etc. In January 2021, the company also became one of the 100 Best Places to Work in the Bay Area 2021 (Built-in). Last year the company crossed the $1 billion mark valuation after its Series C funding round.

Founding Idea

As it is said that every great idea emerges problem the problem, the story of Verkada is also somewhat similar. Before Verkada was founded, Hans was busy with his company Meraki (now Cisco Meraki). One day he found that fifty iPads were stolen from his company and that the video cameras in the security system were also not working for months. He realized the need for high-end security cameras in the market integrated with cloud-based software. So, Hans along with the other three co-founders decided to build a company to solve this problem. The goal was to keep data secure yet at the same time use AI to train the cameras for taking clearer photos, especially during suspicious situations.

Verkada
Image source: prnewswire.com

Towards the Success

They started working on the product right away and launched beta testing in 2017 with two camera models. The company had to struggle very hard especially during the seed and Series A funding round because only a few could see the vision and potential behind the idea. Investors started showing interest in Verkada after it appeared in the Forbes 2019 list of Next Billion-Dollar Startups. It also became one of the top companies in the AI category (Forbes). After these two big features, the company successfully raised $40 million in Series B funding and the valuation of the company became $540 million.
In January 2020, the Series C funding round of Verkada took place (led by Felicis Ventures) in which it raised $80 million. The total funding received till Series C summed up to $139 million and the valuation of the company became $1.6 billion. Verkada became a billion-dollar company only after three years of launching its first product. Later in 2020 the company also launched its first access control device. The idea behind this new product is to integrate security cameras and lock in a single platform. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the company also decided to distribute free surveillance kits to important organizations (like healthcare and medical businesses).

Recent Events

In October 2020, news about the Verkada breach broke out in the news as the whole world witnessed the compromise of its security systems. A group of tech-savvy hackers infiltrated the camera systems of Verkada everywhere from hospitals to jails. This included 150,000 cameras in active surveillance. The hackers not only broke into the live surveillance feeds but also gained access to the archives of Verkada cameras. Later the hackers claimed that they founder Verkada’s super admin password publicly available on the internet.

Filip Kaliszan – CEO of Verkada Inc

Filip Kaliszan is a Standford graduate who completed both his bachelor’s and masters in computer science. He was also a computer science research assistant at the university for several months. In 2007, he founded CourseRank Inc which came under Chegg after three years. In 2010 Filip joined Chegg as the Director of Product Management and also worked at Guidebook Inc until co-founding Verkada.

Verisign

Verisign – The American Company Famous For Web Domain Name Registry.

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Verisign is a famous American company known for its authoritative domain registry business. While surfing the internet, we visit several web pages every day. If we notice the URL of these web pages, we can find .com, .net, etc at the end of the addresses. These are known as domain names and when an individual or a company wants to launch a website online, it needs to be registered under a certain domain name. Verisign is responsible domain name registry for two of the most extensively used domains, namely, .com and .net. It is the main business of the company apart from which it offers a variety of security services. 

About Verisign

James Bidzos established Verisign Inc in April 1995. The company’s headquarters is based in Reston, Virginia, US. It is responsible for operating a diverse array of network infrastructure with two top-level domains in the internet root nameservers. It is also responsible for country-code top-level domains like .cc and .tv and also back-end systems for top-level domains like .gov and .edu. This is the core business unit of Verisign and apart from that it offers distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), security services for cyber threats, etc. 

Verisign also had an authentication business unit that was sold to Symantec in 2010. The deal was closed at $1.28 billion and it included Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate, Verisign Trust Seal, public key infrastructure, and Verisign Identity Protection Services. The ownership again changed in 2017 when Symantec sold it to DigiCert. Verisign also let go of its Security Service Customer Contracts to NeuStar Inc in 2018. 

Verisign
Image source: wikimedia.org

History Of The Company

Verisign was originally a part of the RSA Security certification services business unit. The parent company is an American-based business that specializes in network security using encryption. Verisign was formed as a spin-off in 1995 and this newly formed company received the RSA-held licenses for key cryptographic patents. These licenses were set to expire in 2000 and it was also a time-limited agreement. The new company that was formed operated as a certificate authority (CA) to ensure trust for the internet through digital authentication. 

From 1995 to 2010, Verisign operated on a large scale and in various sectors from military to retail applications. It had more than 3 million certificates that making it the largest CA in the world. But in 2010, it sold its authentication business unit to Symantec, and the same year the company announced that it would be moving from California to Northern Virginia. Verisign started acquiring different companies after a few years of the spin-off. In 2000, it acquired Network Solutions that was responsible for operating the domains .net, .com, and .org. The company operated these domains under an agreement with Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and the United States Department of Commerce. 

Business Growth And Expansion

The acquisition of Network Solutions formed the powerhouse of the core and the largest business unit of Verisign. After three years, Verisign decided to divest the Network Solutions retail but at the same time retained the business of domain registry. It was a very flourishing business and since it became the center of Verisign the company put its maximum focus on domain registry. By the end of 2010, the company reported annual revenue of $681 million which was 10 percent more than that of 2009. Verisign, over the years, has also faced many controversies regarding domain names, especially from the US government. 

James Bidzos – Founder And CEO

James Bidzos is the founder and CEO of the domain registry company, Verisign. Initially, he was not appointed the CEO of the company. But, after the resignation of Mark McLaughlin in 2011, James became the next CEO. He is also the Chairman of the Board of Directors at Verisign. In 1986, James joined RSA and according to him, the company was a big failure as there was no product and customers. It was under his leadership that RSA developed an encryption toolkit and landed contracts with Motorola and Novell. He also served as CEO of RSA before the spin-off in 1995.