5 channel startups to watch in 2023 and beyond
CRN speaks to five interesting startups in the channel about their history and business strategy
As the IT channel continues expanding, CRN looks at some of the most interesting new players to learn more about their history and their approach to market.
Here's five start-ups to watch out for in 2023:
Abnormal Security
Specialising in behavioural AI to detect and block email attacks, including social engineering attacks like business email compromise, vendor fraud, and credential phishing, Abnormal Security has been around since 2018.
The company has raised $284m (£227.65m) to date, including from Greylock, Insight Partners, and Menlo Ventures.
It raised its Series A in November 2019, its Series B in November 2020, and its Series C in May 2022.
Abnormal was co-founded by current Evan Reiser (current CEO) and Sanjay Jeyakumar (current CTO).
Since the company started, Abnormal grew its revenue by more than 100%, and in July, it crossed the $100m (£80.16m) ARR milestone. Abnormal claims it is now the second-fastest growing cybersecurity company ever, behind only Wiz.
To support this growth, Abnormal has recently been bulking up its leadership team, bringing on board industry veterans Michael Decesare as president and Maya Marcus as chief people officer.
Abnormal is 100 per cent channel-focused for the EMEA region.
5 channel startups to watch in 2023 and beyond
CRN speaks to five interesting startups in the channel about their history and business strategy
Pentest People
Found in 2017 by Andrew Mason, Anthony Harvey (director), Gavin Watson (technical director), Robin Hill, Pentest People focuses on penetration testing services using its trademarked PTaaS methodology.
Since its beginnings, the firm has not had any public funding, but has managed to grow revenue every year from £84,000 in its first year, to £7.3m last year.
A significant part of its business comes through the channel where the company has been working to build relationships, onboard IT partners, and work on co-marketing opportunities.
5 channel startups to watch in 2023 and beyond
CRN speaks to five interesting startups in the channel about their history and business strategy
Wiz
And speaking of Wiz, the cloud security startup began trading in 2020 and is already a powerhouse of the security market.
With a $10bn valuation, Wiz is currently the world's largest cybersecurity unicorn and fastest growing SaaS company - it reached $100m ARR in just 18 months.
The company recently announced it had achieved a series D funding of $300m.
Headquartered in New York City, Wiz works with 35% of the Fortune 100 and has a global presence.
Wiz launched the Wiz Partner Programme in March 2023 as its network of cloud service providers, value-added resellers, global SI's and boutique security partners continues to grow. The prorgamme is structured in 3 tiers: registered, focus and premier.
The company was founded by the current leadership team Assaf Rappaport (CEO), Ami Luttwak (CTO) Yinon Costica (VP product), Roy Reznik, (VP R&D).
The startup was recently in the spotlight as it said it was considering a potential bid to buy SentinelOne following reports that the cybersecurity vendor was looking at strategic options.
5 channel startups to watch in 2023 and beyond
CRN speaks to five interesting startups in the channel about their history and business strategy
AppFactor
Cloud migration/modernisation, distributed systems and enterprise architecture startup, AppFactor, was founded in 2021 by Keith Neilson (CEO), Attila Vajda (VP of engineering) and Gabriel Ciuloaica (CTO).
The company closed its pre-seed round of funding in February 2023, led by Haatch Ventures, supported by daFund, Syndicate Room and angel investors from UK, US and Europe.
While AppFactor is still very early onto its journey they've already established a GTM partnership with a UK based systems integrator and built a pipeline of opportunity and customer need.
It's also in the process of establishing partnerships with both AWS and Microsoft, and with Google on the horizon.
"We are currently exploring other partnerships which help compound our growth and equally help demonstrate the valuable outcomes AppFactor delivers," a spokesperson tells CRN.
The firm's go-to-market approach is primarily through cloud providers who are established as trusted advisors in the majority of enterprise accounts.
The company aims to tap into programmes that cloud providers already have in place to help fund software to accelerate migration and modernisation efforts.
This provides an insertion point as the company gets brought into their deal flow without having to spend heavily on demand gen programmes.
"We then help them accelerate projects, recognise more cloud spend, and increase the success rate of applications moving up the cloud maturity model," a statement from the company to CRN reads.
"The beauty of this model is that it benefits the cloud providers, benefits their enterprise customers, and at the same time drives the adoption of the AppFactor platform."
5 channel startups to watch in 2023 and beyond
CRN speaks to five interesting startups in the channel about their history and business strategy
Wasabi
Self-proclaimed "serial entrepreneurs" David Friend and Jeff Flowers founded cloud storage startup Wasabi in 2015 and launched services in 2017.
After founding the online backup company, Carbonite, Friend and Flowers were looking to start a company that would cut the cost of cloud data storage and make it faster and simpler.
Wasabi specialises in simple, predictably priced cloud storage. The company highlights the fact that it does not charge fees for egress or API calls, meaning billing is simpler and more predictable each month.
Wasabi has raised over $500m (£400m) in funding to date.
In September 2022, Wasabi raised $250m (£200m) in new funding on a valuation of $1.1bn (£880m).
Since service launched in 2017, Wasabi has grown to include over 16,000 partners, 300 employees worldwide, and 13 storage regions across North America, Asia Pacific, and EMEA.
Wasabi has over 4,000 new partners in Europe. In the UK specifically, Wasabi launched its London storage region in 2021 and has built out an entire UK based operation and full team. In just the first half of 2023, the amount of data stored in the UK has more than doubled.
Wasabi's 'channel-first' approach in EMEA focusses on building tier-one partner and customer-bases with predictable, affordable cloud storage without fees for egress or API requests.
In the UK, the company has partnerships with Exclusive Networks, Veeam, Climb, Equinix, Softcat, Autodata and more. As the company continued to see success in the UK, Wasabi in 2023 appointed Jon Howes as vice president and general manager for EMEA to build on the company's growth and expand its channel presence.