Good morning dealmakers, thank goodness it’s Friday!
It’s Obey Martin Manayiti here with the newsletter.
I’m focusing on cybersecurity and tech deals today, first with a Q&A that I had with Michael Fosnaugh, senior managing director at Vista Equity Partners, who details the firm’s plans for KnowBe4, a cybersecurity training company the tech-focused PE firm recently took private for $4.6 billion.
To cap things off, we’ll look at five HR tech deals rounded up by my colleague, Georgina Tzanetos. The targets aim to simplify work for human resources folks in different sectors.
But first, let’s look at the morning’s deal announcements.
Fresche Solutions, an IT company backed by American Pacific Group, a Larkspur, California PE firm, announced this morning the acquisition of Silveredge Consulting, another IT consulting services provider. Fresche is based in Montreal, Canada; while Silveredge is headquartered in Westchester, Illinois.
Integreon, a cybersecurity firm with multiple global offices that is owned by New York headquartered EagleTree Capital, just announced the development of CyberHawk-AI, an advanced automated technology designed to streamline extracting and analyzing sensitive data following cyber breaches.
Integreon also announced that it is partnering with RadarFirst, a Portland, Oregon based privacy incident management company.
New York based Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe (WCAS) invested in ImageTrend, a Lakeville, Minnesota software provider in the public safety and healthcare communities. The investment seeks to help ImageTrend accelerate growth.
Cybersecurity: Earlier in February, Vista closed its previously announced buyout of cybersecurity awareness training provider KnowBe4 in an all-cash transaction valued at $4.6 billion.
To discover more about the tech-focused PE firm's plans for the company in particular and cybersecurity investing in general, I spoke with Michael Fosnaugh, senior managing director and co-head of Vista's flagship fund.
How do you expect to grow the company?
We believe KnowBe4 possesses outstanding fundamental growth drivers. KnowBe4 delivers a best-in-class solution in a large, fast-growing and extremely underpenetrated space. The company has also developed a number of add-on products that enhance its core platform to allow security teams to more easily manage and automate responses to social engineering and phishing threats across their organization.
Finally, KnowBe4 has a strong leadership team headed up by its founder and CEO, Stu Sjouwerman, with a demonstrated track record of marrying strong vision and execution, which has translated into the business’s excellent financial profile.
Problem Solving: HR tech is suddenly on everyone's minds, and private equity firms have noticed. Human resource departments have had their hands full the last few years, thanks to the pandemic. Work from home, hybrid work, return to office – it's all made managing employees more difficult than ever before. There's been one saving grace, however, and that's technology, Georgina reports.
She covered five HR tech deals announced over the last six months.
Are you ready for some football? That’s it for me today. Have a great weekend.
I know many of us are looking forward to the Superbowl on Sunday between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs. I will be rooting for the best team.
And looking for the best ads.
MK Flynn will be back with the Wire on Monday.
Cheers,
Obey
Read the full wire commentary on PE Hub ...
