Dive Brief:
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Tel Aviv-based cybersecurity startup Deep Instinct has tapped Goldman Sachs Group partner and software and internet analyst Heather Bellini as CFO, it announced Wednesday.
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Deep Instinct, which aims to use AI to prevent cyber attacks, is gearing up for an IPO within 24 to 36 months, a spokesman told Bloomberg.
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Bellini has been a Goldman partner since 2012, leading its technology research group and covering Alphabet, Facebook and Microsoft. She begins work at Deep Instinct's New York offices on January 1.
Dive Insight:
Deep Instinct said experience covering the IPOs of more than 20 companies, including Facebook, Atlassian, Dropbox and Slack Technologies is integral to its plans going forward.
"Heather established a phenomenal track record at Goldman Sachs, is highly regarded and well-known and joins us [on our] strong path to becoming the most comprehensive, integrated and innovative deep neural network cybersecurity company in the world," Guy Caspi, the company's co-founder and CEO, said in a statement.
Bellini began her technology analyst career over 20 years ago at Lehman Brothers, with stints at Salomon Smith Barney, UBS Investment Bank and ISI Group before arriving at Goldman in 2011.
At Goldman, she led the research diligence and investor education IPO process for over 20 companies, including Atlassian, Crowdstrike, Dropbox, Facebook, MongoDB, Slack Technologies, VMware and Zoom.
She was named to the inaugural Barron's 100 Most Influential Women in Finance in 2020, is a founding member of the Women's Circle at Columbia Business School, and a member of the steering committee for the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech.
Bellini will replace Naama Geva, who will become Deep Instinct's chief accounting officer.
Bellini's first priorities in the role will be "helping to put the financial and operational infrastructure in place to scale the business globally and set the company on the path to the public markets," she told Bloomberg.
Deep Instinct has raised nearly $100 million from investors, including Nvidia GPU Ventures, Coatue Management and HP Tech Ventures, according to Crunchbase.
The company said it had a 400% increase in annual recurring revenue and a 300% increase in customers last year, and it expects to double its annual recurring revenue by the end of this year.
"As the world increasingly migrates to all things cloud and digital transformation takes center stage, the need for best-in-class cybersecurity prediction, prevention, and protection has never been more important," Bellini said in a statement.
"Building the best executive team and coupling it with great technology is the key to building a company for the public markets," said Lane Bess, Deep Instinct's board chair. "Heather's skill and experience added to Deep Instinct's deep learning security platform will further the company's accelerating growth path. Having led similar disruptive security companies before, I know Heather will have a very positive impact."
Representatives for Deep Instinct and for Bellini did not immediately respond to requests for comment.