ForgeRock: Identity at the Center of Everything

 The origin story of every great technology business is unique, and we’re fortunate to have seen ForgeRock’s unfold over the last decade. As the team rings the bell at the NYSE this morning, we’re celebrating their journey from a start-up founded in an unexpected location to a successful, global public company.

When ForgeRock was first founded ten years ago, the concept of identity management was largely limited to supporting employees using a company computer behind a firewall. However, the founding team was maniacal in their vision that identity management would need to evolve to support employees, customers and endpoints from any number of access points or networks. And they were right—in fact, the category has become far more strategic and essential to virtually all companies, even more so in today’s “work from home” world. The growing number and sophistication of cyber threats combined with the complexity of devices and network configurations has elevated identity management systems to mission critical status. 

It was through this prescient vision, coupled with grit, disciplined execution, and innovation, that ForgeRock succeeded and today, they have over 1,300 customers across every major vertical and 3 billion identities under management on their platform. 

ForgeRock is also a testament to our belief that exceptional teams can be built anywhere. In this case, the Accel team in London first got to know Forgerock’s leadership group in Oslo, Norway a decade ago. What was clear from those first meetings was the team’s expertise in identity management and proven track record of success having previously developed one of the best-regarded identity management products for large enterprises at Sun Microsystems. Rarely have we seen such strong domain experience, clarity of vision and a palpable desire to succeed. 

Accel led the first investment in ForgeRock in February 2012 and has proudly participated in every funding round since then, including leading a growth round in August 2017. As the business has grown, the company has also attracted star talent from different sectors of the security landscape, most importantly Fran Rosch, who joined Forgerock as CEO from Symantec in June of 2018. Over the past three years, Fran has helped to recruit an extraordinary group of execs across product, engineering and go-to-market. It’s this talented team that will be guiding Forgerock past this important milestone and setting the foundation for the company’s promising future. As their first investor, we couldn’t be more proud of what this incredible team has accomplished over the last decade, and we can’t wait to see how they continue to innovate in this highly dynamic market.