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, which has developed a software platform to help businesses proactively address physical safety, announced today it has raised $12 million in a Series A funding round led by .

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All existing backers participated in the round, including , and . The financing brings the Austin-based startup鈥檚to $16.7 million since its 2017 inception, according to 附近上门 data.

Ontic describes its platform as 鈥減rotective intelligence software.鈥�

If you鈥檙e like me, you are probably asking yourself, 鈥淲hat is a protective intelligence software platform?鈥� In a nutshell, Ontic helps identify potential physical threats to an organization’s employees, facilities and assets such as workplace violence or insider threats. The company does this by connecting to hundreds of real-time and historical data points, which it then curates to actionable intelligence for security teams. Early threat detection is the end goal.

鈥淚t is critically important to aggregate and make sense of the data [that] security teams need to proactively connect the dots before it鈥檚 too late,鈥� said CEO and co-founder

Building momentum

Last year was a good one for Ontic. The SaaS-based company saw its annual recurring revenue grow fivefold due to increased demand from both new and existing customers, according to Quanstrom. It currently has 46 employees, up from nine at this time last year.

For obvious reasons, Ontic won鈥檛 name its customers, saying only that it works with global Fortune 1000 clients across many sectors, from technology, financial services and retail to media and entertainment.

In recent weeks, Ontic鈥檚 customers across all industries have seen a 300 percent increase in COVID-19 and threat-related data, said Quanstrom. This is not shocking when considering remote and mobile workforces are 鈥渁lways on鈥� across time zones due to shelter-in-place orders, as well as the increasing number of unemployed people, he noted.

Delivery drivers and companies have also become easy targets.

鈥淓xecutives are not traveling, and have become easier targets for threat actors working from home,鈥� Quanstrom told 附近上门 News. 鈥淭here鈥檚 concern over the exploitation of empty facilities. Laid-off and current employees are expressing frustration and threatening companies based on action or inaction” via social media, on the dark web or within a client鈥檚 proprietary data, for example.

Increased demand

A recent report by the Ponemon Institute found that the overall cost of insider threats is rising, with a 31 percent per incident increase from $8.76 million in 2018 to $11.45 million in 2020.

Also, a January 2019 report from Stephens Inc. noted that both the frequency and scale of terrorist attacks have increased substantially over the last decade.

“The number of injuries attributed to terrorist attacks increased nearly threefold and the number of fatalities increased roughly fourfold,” it said.

Ontic鈥檚 aim is to give security teams the ability to better identify pre-incident indicators, assess risk, and both investigate and mitigate potential threats, or as it puts it 鈥渢o protect their people, properties and reputation.鈥�

The company plans to use its new capital to fuel expansion across enterprise businesses and family offices, while ramping up product development and expanding sales to enter new markets. It also plans to use the money to explore new verticals such as health care, manufacturing and higher education.

鈥淥ur business focus has not changed, but there has been a rise in threat-related data,鈥� Quanstrom said.

Investor POV

Victoria Treyger, general partner and managing director at Felicis Ventures, said her firm was impressed with Ontic鈥檚 ability to attract such a high caliber of customers within 18 months of product launch鈥揳nd with just $4.6 million in seed funding.

鈥淚t鈥檚 rare as an investor to find a company that, within 18 months, has dozens of Fortune 1000 customers,鈥� Treyger told 附近上门 News. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a very strong statement of their product market fit and market opportunity.鈥�

Indeed, Felicis was also drawn to the space that Ontic is tackling.

鈥淲hen you look at the security space, what broadly struck us was that with cybersecurity, for example, the funding was tens of billions of dollars over the last 10 years and more than $5 billion per year over the last two years alone,” Treyger said. 鈥淏ut this area of intelligence and protective security has literally had no VC investment and very little competition. Threat data is exploding, and making sense of it for a security professional is more important than ever.鈥�

Felicis also tends to invest in capital-efficient companies and considers Ontic to be one, said Treyger.

鈥淚t鈥檚 impressive they have achieved this kind of traction on just a seed round,鈥� she said.

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