For a company that has not even been around for a solid decade, Lookout is doing really well. The company’s mission is to provide state-of-the-art mobile security, and it already has 50 million users worldwide. So far that number is made up of almost entirely individual subscribers. But what Lookout is really after are the big corporations, ones with thousands of employees and subsequently thousands of mobile devices that need protection. It is with this goal in mind that Lookout has recently raised an additional $150 million in funding.
The leading investors in this newest round of fundraising included T. Rowe Price, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Investment Management, Wellington Management Company and Jeff Bezos’ Bezos Expeditions. With this added investment backing, Lookout is expecting to be taken more seriously by big corporations. Newly appointed CEO Jim Dolce elaborated, as reported by Forbes,
“You and I may use the products as individuals, but those are units of one. Then with our small and medium business announcement in the fall, we moved upwards to the tens of units. This is up yet again to the Forbes Global 2000, to the companies with 5,000 users and more. But it’s all on the same platform.”
Not to be left out, many of Lookout’s already existing backers re-upped during the latest round of fundraising. They include Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital Management, Accel Partners, Index Ventures, Khosla Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. And according to co-founder John Hering the money raised from this round and the first round has barely been used. This means Lookout’s value could at this point be more than double the $1 billion originally given by investors. Hering explained,
“I believe that this is the largest private security financing of this year, and it may be one of the largest in history and there’s a reason for that. We are playing for the long term. The market is there, the opportunity is there, the time window is here in front of us and we needed to capitalize.”
The budding and continuing relationship between the mobile security firm and Jeff Bezos could even hint at Lookouts future aspirations. With the launch of an in house smartphone, Amazon has entered the hardware game. And it’d be surprising if the company stopped there. If Lookout plays its cards right, it looks like its going to be a very lucrative future.
Featured image via facebook/mylookout
