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Case Study:

Postini

“Our Summit team was just extraordinary. This is how investors should be.”

Scott Petry, Cofounder

Location:
Redwood City, CA
Leadership:

Quentin Gallivan

Scott Petry
Founded in:
1999
invested in:
2001
Status:

Acquired by Google 2007
Summit Team:
Harrison B. Miller
Case Study:

Postini

100x revenue growth in six years

Innovated to become one of the first successful cloud-based security providers, serving the world’s most demanding accounts at huge scale

Acquired by Google for $625 million

Postini initially specialized in providing anti-spam solutions to ISPs and other service providers. The innovative founding technology team built Postini on a solid foundation of highly scalable and effective cloud services. When rapid increases in spam and message-based attacks caused large enterprises to look for help, Postini moved quickly to provide a category-leading email security, encryption, and messaging management solution. With Summit’s help, Postini built one of the first highly successful cloud security companies of scale.

How Summit helped:

  • Advised founding CTO on product strategy
  • Instrumental in the hiring of CEO Quentin Gallivan, who worked with founder Scott Petry to broaden distribution and augment the company’s sales and marketing infrastructure
  • Advised on selection of investment bankers for IPO, and counseled management on merger negotiations when Google’s offer preempted IPO path

By 2007, Postini had become the largest cloud-based security provider and was an attractive IPO candidate. The company was in the late stages of finalizing its S-1, when a partnership relationship with Google blossomed into M&A discussions. After just a few weeks of negotiations, Google acquired Postini for $625 million.