From left: Eoin Hinchy and Thomas Kinsella. Image: Tines
Although Tines was not actively seeking funding, Blossom Capital has invested in the company, which will now accelerate its global expansion.
Dublin-based cybersecurity automation company Tines announced that it has raised $4.1m in Series A funding.
The company, which was recently featured in Siliconrepublic.com’s Start-up of the Week series, was founded by Eoin Hinchy and Thomas Kinsella in 2018. The funding round was led by Blossom Capital.
In a statement, Tines said that it will use the funding to hire engineers in Dublin, with the aim of improving the platform through R&D and building the customer base with companies in the US and Europe.
Tines is also working closely with clients, considering ways in which the platform can be expanded to suit other IT departments or even sales and HR departments that rely on incremental steps or repeated tasks to get the job done.
‘Too much work, not enough staff’
Hinchy and Kinsella worked for more than 15 years at what they call “the most attacked companies on the planet”, including eBay, DocuSign and PayPal.
Based on their experiences, the founders recognised a need for a platform that security teams could use to improve their workflow, and created a product that would have helped them when facing thousands of alerts and threats in a day.
“There are three big problems in security: too much work, too many alerts and not enough staff,” Hinchy said.
“Inevitably there will be breaches in this situation. But by automating repetitive work, cyber teams can refocus on higher impact activities, dramatically increasing their efficiency and their ability to respond to incidents and attacks.”
According to Tines, some clients are saving as many as 300 hours per week by using the start-up’s automation platform.
‘Bring innovation to the enterprise sector’
When Hinchy spoke to Siliconrepublic.com in September, the co-founder said that funding wasn’t a huge priority for Tines at present. He added that if the company was to accept investment, it would be done to build strategic partnerships and accelerate existing plans.
“We’ve been profitable since day one and we’re expecting to increase revenue tenfold this year. Being bootstrapped has really forced us to focus on making our early customers successful, which has been so vital to the traction we’ve developed to date,” he said at the time.
In this week’s funding announcement, Blossom Capital echoed this sentiment. Imran Ghory, partner at Blossom Capital, said: “We are delighted to be working with Tines, which is exactly the sort of company that we want to invest in.
“Eoin and Thomas weren’t looking for funding but they impressed us with the quality of the product and their ambition in going after global customers, and we knew we wanted to work with them.
“Their company aligns with our vision to back European firms that are using technology in ways to bring innovation to the global enterprise sector.”
