One Peak backs DataGuard with $20m investment

The company plans to use the fresh capital to expand its customer base in Europe and the US. DataGuard will also develop its product further by developing new product categories more quickly, as well as increasing the automation and AI capabilities of the software.

David Klein, partner at One Peak, told Unquote: "The company has been growing fast and in a capital-efficient way, but it was time to provide them with external capital to accelerate their growth."

The GP has taken a significant minority stake in the company.

Klein explained why One Peak was keen to invest in the data privacy software market. "Data privacy and security is a big market, but it is relatively new, given the introduction of GDPR. The market is worth €4bn in Europe and €8bn globally. Given that it is new, it's not a replacement market but a greenfield, and we are really excited about providing the company with more capital to grow into a leader in its field."

The data privacy market is one that is expected to be fairly resilient to the current coronavirus crisis, Klein said. "In the short term, people are of course focused on saving and growing their businesses, and making sure they make it through the depth of the crisis. But given that many people are working remotely, this is a big challenge for data privacy. The trend towards remote working has been going on for a while. Quite a lot of people may be moving back to the office afterwards, but given that people now have all the infrastructure in place to work remotely, this will be different going forward. So it will be a net gain for the data privacy market due to the challenges that companies have."

The GP deployed equity from its vehicle One Peak Partners, which held a final close on its hard-cap of €250m in Q4 2014. The fund generally invests in technology-backed companies in high-growth markets such as enterprise software and IT infrastructure. The firm generally invests €5-30m per business in companies with run-rate revenues of at least €5m.

Klein told Unquote that DataGuard is expected to grow significantly: "Our investment criteria include companies with more than 30% projected growth and for DataGuard we expect growth to be closer to 100%."

Company
DataGuard provides a software platform for customers to manage their compliance with privacy regulations in their data processing operations. Its client base includes companies in German-speaking regions in Europe from the industrial, technology, professional services, healthcare, finance and government sectors.

Founded in 2017, DataGuard is based in Munich and has 100 employees. It reports revenues of less than €10m.

People
DataGuard – Thomas Regier, Kivanc Semen (co-founders).
One Peak Partners – David Klein (partner).

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