Orca Security hires new CFO to bolster IPO aspirations

While Orca won’t be seeking to go public any time soon, the cloud security firm is taking a step in that direction with the appointment of Oded Edri as finance chief, Orca executives tell CRN exclusively

Orca Security has hired a new CFO with experience in taking companies public, as part of laying the groundwork to pursue an initial public offering in coming years, according to Orca co-founder and CEO Gil Geron.

Executives at the cloud security unicorn exclusively told CRN US that Oded Edri — formerly the chief accounting officer at publicly traded Payoneer — is joining the company as its new CFO, effective 1 November.

The hire comes amid expectations that cloud security will remain the fastest-growing area of cybersecurity spending both this year and in 2024, according to Gartner.

In a joint interview with CRN US, Geron and Edri each pointed to a potential for Orca to grow into a strong candidate for going public in the future.

The company — which expects "triple-figure growth this year" and employs 500 — is aiming to build "a long-lasting company that hopefully in the years to come will also go into an IPO," Geron said.

Edri said that companies with the strengths and opportunities of Orca are rare.

"It's not that often that you find this unique combination of a company holding cutting-edge technology, operating in a hyper-growth environment, coupled with strong leadership," he said.

Founded in 2019, Orca was able to rapidly become a go-to vendor in the cloud security market with its "SideScanning" technology.

The agentless offering collects data from workloads in cloud environments and analyses the workloads for security risks without impacts to performance, according to the company.

Orca most recently received a valuation of $1.8bn in 2021, in connection with its $550m Series C funding round.

Building a ‘long-lasting' company

The CFO hire also comes on the heels of Orca Security's unveiling of a new channel strategy earlier this year, which has included a commitment to generate 100 per cent of its revenue with the help of partners.

"I don't know of a single security company, which is substantial and long-lasting, that has done it without a very good partnership with the channel," Geron said.

Geron was named CEO of the company in March, shortly before the new channel strategy was rolled out, succeeding Avi Shua in the role.

Shua, who is also a co-founder of Orca, is now the company's chief innovation officer.

Orca's shift to a 100-per cent channel model is a "huge plus," said Alpesh Shah, global vice president of cybersecurity solutions at Myriad360, No. 163 on CRN US's Solution Provider 500.

"It is exactly what we want [to see]," Shah told CRN, noting that Myriad360 has seen "strong" growth with Orca this year and expects the business to accelerate in 2024. "We expect to do more and more with Orca."

Orca's technology rates highly when it comes to deployment — thanks to its agentless approach — as well as the visibility it provides into cloud security risks, he said. Orca's platform also integrates well with other key cybersecurity tools, according to Shah.

For securing cloud environments, "their overall vulnerability protection is, we find, superior to other technologies out there in the market," he said.

As for the hire of Edri as CFO, his public company experience should definitely prove valuable in the event Orca pursues an IPO in the future, Shah said.

‘All of the pitfalls'

Edri was most recently chief accounting officer at content creator technology firm Jellysmack, and before that held the same role at Payoneer, an online payment processing firm, for more than four years.

Payoneer went public in 2021 through a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company.

Earlier in his career, at 3-D printing firm Objet, Edri led the preparation of regulatory documents to be submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in the lead-up to a planned IPO.

Objet ultimately completed a reverse-merger acquisition deal with publicly traded Stratasys.

Additionally, Edri's resume includes a three-year stint as finance chief at well-known 3-D printer company MakerBot.

As for Orca Security, Edri said he "absolutely" sees the potential for a company that could go public down the road.

Edri, according to Geron, will give a major boost to Orca's IPO aspirations, given that he has "seen all of the pitfalls" when taking a company public.

When asked about whether Orca Security might be looking to pursue an IPO as soon as 2024, Geron responded that he expects "it will be later than that."

Still, "if we go out toward an IPO, we want to do it in a healthy way," he said.

"You need to do it over several years and not over several months."

Edri is succeeding Pini Karuchi — who is departing for a role at an unnamed company — as CFO at Orca Security.