Photograph by Paul Myers
Despite the economic downturn, the Saratoga software company Click to Secure, co-founded by Saratoga resident Greg Hoglund (above), is expanding its staff and moving to a bigger location.
Local software company bucks the trend of faltering dot-coms
By Rebecca Ray
Click to Secure Inc., a Saratoga-based software company, received funding from venture capitalists last year and is expanding, a relative anomaly in the current high-tech market crunch.
Click to Secure, 14375 Saratoga Ave., produces Hailstorm, a software product that protects the infrastructure of computer networks from hackers. Venture capitalists invested in Click to Secure because it developed an important, unique product that customers would use in the future, said John Myung, product management director for Click to Secure.
During the dot-com boom, other companies abided by the "land grab" model, in which they bought space on the Internet and tried to retain customers with special offers and deals, Myung said. But Click to Secure operated under the traditional business model, in which the company distributed products and charged a price for them.
While other companies have developed products that combat specific attacks on networks, Hailstorm is the first product that allows users to protect networks from unknown attacks and vulnerabilities, Myung said. For instance, while other products can only prevent hackers from entering networks with known codes, Hailstorm can also prevent hackers from entering networks with codes that no one else has discovered.
Click to Secure recently closed venture capital funding with Hummer Windblad and JK & B Capital, and is closing one last round of funding with August Capital. Employees say they hope that in two years, Click to Secure will be profitable and will have expanded its clientele. The enterprise software company caters to large companies in the finance, technology, retail, health care, consulting, government and Internet services industries. Click to Secure is developing a family of products based on Hailstorm and plans to release Hailstorm 2.0 in October.
The company, which was founded in 2000, is growing, and will move from its 900-square-foot location to a 7,000-square-foot space in Campbell in October. Myung predicts that Click to Secure, which has about 15 employees--including sales workers in Boston and developers in Seattle--will have 25 employees by the end of the year.
Saratoga resident Greg Hoglund and Penny Leavy, who lives along the border of Saratoga and Monte Sereno, co-founded Click to Secure out of a garage converted into a home office. The home office was at 14598 Big Basin Way, the present location of Dancing Yogi, an art gallery and yoga studio. Hoglund, the chief technology officer, developed the concept of testing software to prevent security breaches, while Leavy, the vice president of sales and marketing, funded the company before venture capitalists chipped in. Leavy, who had been vice president of sales for FTP, a software company, also designed the early marketing plans for Click to Secure. Once Click to Secure released Hailstorm in November 2000, the company moved to its more spacious current location.
Click to Secure runs under the traditional business model because it worked at FTP, where Leavy helped increase sales from $5 million to $120 million. Although other companies realized the Internet could reach more people, Myung said, they didn't foresee people retaining their buying habits.
Since the recent terrorists attacks in the United States, Myung has realized a new role for Hailstorm. He said he envisions the software preventing cyber terrorist attacks and protecting the infrastructure of U.S. government networks.
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