Take away the hype around digital cryptocurrency—some claim it’s bogus, given that the virtual coins aren’t backed by anything but the value people give them—and what’s left is blockchain technology. Defined as “an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions” by Don and Alex Tapscott, authors of “Blockchain Revolution,” the technology allows digital information to be distributed but not copied.
Nubeva Inc. executives believe the company can make a dent in the market with cloud-based cybersecurity product Nubeva StratusEdge. The San Jose-based company plans to scale commercialization by growing its sales and marketing team, which is based in Orange County.
“Cloud is relatively young; security delivered on the cloud is younger,” said Chief Marketing Officer Steve Perkins. “We use enterprise application of blockchain to allow programmable and trusted information to flow inside the cloud.”
Cybersecurity spending is projected to exceed $1 trillion from 2017 to 2021, according to research firm Cybersecurity Ventures.
In the fashion of a modern technology company, Nubeva operates with a remote team. Its headquarters is in the Bay Area because that’s where founder and Chief Executive Randy Chou already was, and its research and development is in Sydney, Australia, Chief Technology Officer Greig Bannister’s home base.
“I am in Orange County, and our CFO [Juliet Jones] is in Vancouver, Canada,” said Perkins, “which is great because we provide 24/7 customer service, and we’ll have market knowledge when we expand our geography.”
Chou, Bannister and Perkins met at a company where they formerly worked together.
Nubeva has fewer than 15 employees. Perkins said it’s in its second wave of expansion. The largest increase will be on his team, which will add about 10 people.
A serial entrepreneur in the cloud, security, storage and networking industries, Chou founded Nubeva in 2016—“nube” is “cloud” and “va” is “go” in Spanish, a reference to Chou’s childhood as the son of a diplomat and having lived in Spanish-speaking countries—funding the company with his own money and angel investments. He co-founded cloud data management and storage company Panzura in Campbell, Calif., in the Bay Area after being on the founding team at Aruba Networks, which was acquired by Palo Alto-based Hewlett-Packard Enterprise in 2015 for $3 billion.
Distribution
Perkins said Nubeva doesn’t have its eyes set on competing with the big boys of cybersecurity, the likes of Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO), whose market cap is $197 billion. Instead, it provides security software that’s “simple, easy” and economical, according to its website.
“We are not one of those large enterprise companies with over 50 cybersecurity softwares, so we don’t want to vendor lock-in a company,” requiring customers to use its services, Perkins said. He indicated that competitors include Zscaler Inc. (Nasdaq: ZS), with a $3.3 billion market cap.
Perkins said the company wants to keep its distribution team small because it plans to diversify revenue through licensing of its technology.
Annual software subscriptions range from $250 to over $2,000 a year.
It introduced the product last year and continues to grow its customer base. The company has no plans to go public in the U.S. but was added to the Canadian TSX Venture Exchange last month. Its market value at close on April 5 was about U.S. $8.5 million.
Perkins said international reporting standards are more favorable to a small company. It has a market cap of approximately $57 million.
