1Password: Defining the Future of Human-Centric Security

ICONIQ Growth
ICONIQ Growth
Published in
4 min readJan 19, 2022

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Written by Will Griffith, Ben Bernstein, Murali Joshi, Richa Mehta, and Nathan Wu

Source: 1Password

Our passion for 1Password is personal. Many of us on the ICONIQ team have been fervent users of the platform since its days as “1Passwd” for MacOS. As early fans, we were delighted by the product’s ability to reduce friction in our web experiences through a powerful and elegant identity solution that protects our privacy and personal information. Over the years, 1Password’s rapid pace of innovation has helped it forge a new category well beyond cross-platform credential management with human-centric security at its crux. The product nurtures habits that strengthen companies’ security postures from within and allows everyone to work productively, leveraging myriad tools, confident that their private data remains protected. With our workflows increasingly migrating to the cloud, we believe the company is boldly defining this visionary approach to human-centric security, disrupting today’s environment of confusing, complex and siloed authentication methods with a comprehensive identity and access management platform. ICONIQ Growth is thrilled to support 1Password’s bold vision by leading their $620 million Series C financing, the largest in Canadian history.

We are honored to partner with Jeff, Dave, Natalia, Roustem, and Sara — 1Password’s visionary founders — and the entire 1Password team as they relentlessly work to transform how solo users, extended families, agile teams, and multinational enterprises secure their critical infrastructure, protect identities, and streamline access management.

When we first met Jeff Shiner, co-founder and CEO of 1Password, the company was in no hurry to take on external funding, having grown profitably and successfully as a bootstrapped business for nearly 14 years from inception. We instantly became enamored with Jeff, the business’ exceptional self-funded journey, and the team’s product vision for the future. From a humble passion project started by two families in a garage to the world’s most beloved identity and access manager today, 1Password’s dazzling ascent to category leadership has been characterized by nonstop innovation fueled by genuine customer compassion.

Already trusted by millions of consumers, 1Password has also become increasingly mission-critical for businesses. As organizations have adopted new tools enabling remote work, users and IT administrators collectively took on the responsibility of managing, securing, and sharing the resulting influx of new passwords and credentials. Teams discovered 1Password and became captivated by the product’s robust enterprise security posture matched with its incredible user interface and breadth of functionality. Accordingly, adoption has accelerated across both small and large enterprises alike and been embraced by diverse functions spanning sales, customer success, engineering, and more. The company’s collaboration features have further extended its reach to users far beyond the company’s initial target market.

1Password’s popularity is in no small part due to the team’s unwavering focus on user privacy, online security, and customer experience. Their customers echoed our own firsthand experiences: the company’s security standards and encryption technology are unparalleled, exemplified by the team’s long-standing, unclaimed top bug-bounty prize for identifying critical vulnerabilities.

We believe that beyond having a maniacal focus on technical specifications, the team consists of exemplary product visionaries. They recognized that clunky user experiences quickly degrade consumer engagement of cybersecurity tools and thus developed a sleek and intuitive “Apple-inspired” interface that empowers users to conveniently access their applications without compromising on security. Despite 1Password’s incredible success to date, the team remains tremendously humble and focused — never wavering in their commitment to customer care and continually soliciting feedback from the community to inform the product roadmap. The result of their herculean efforts is a vibrant and passionate ecosystem of millions of devoted 1Password consumers in addition to over 100,000 global business customers.

Even with 1Password’s distinguished history, we think the company is just at the beginning of another phase of extraordinary growth with new products: Secrets Automation will empower developers to take charge in securing critical infrastructure secrets through the existing sleek interface of the core password management product; Psst! will enable teams to frictionlessly collaborate across organizations without needing to deal with bureaucratic red tape. We believe these new products, combined with a slew of emerging integrations, will not only unlock more value for current 1Password customers but also invite into the community new developers and users who will subsequently build, expand, and evangelize the 1Password platform.

We are grateful to be a part of 1Password’s journey alongside our friends at Accel, Tiger Global, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Backbone Angels and others as well as notable individuals and operators including Ashton Kutcher, Ara Madhessian (Co-founder and CEO at ServiceTitan), Chris Evans, Frank Slootman (CEO of Snowflake Computing), Gabriel Iglesias, George Kurtz (Co-founder and CEO of CrowdStrike), Jeff Dunham, Jeff Weiner (Executive Chairman at LinkedIn), Jennifer Xia Spradling (Founder and Co-CEO at FreeWill), José Balvín, Justin Timberlake, Kendra Tucker (Chief Operating Officer at Truckstop), Lucy Suros (CEO at Articulate), Mary Barra (CEO at General Motors), Matthew McConaughey, Pharrell Williams, Rachel Carlson (Founder and CEO at Guild Education), Rita Wilson, Robert Downey Jr, Robert Iger (Former CEO and Executive Chairman at Disney), Ryan Reynolds, Scarlett Johansson, Therese Tucker (Founder and Executive Chairman at BlackLine), Tooey Courtemanche (Founder and CEO at Procore Technologies), Trevor Noah, and more.

We are excited to support 1Password on its journey to build the future of human-centric security for businesses and individuals around the globe!

Find more on the announcement here.

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ICONIQ Growth
ICONIQ Growth

We partner with exceptional entrepreneurs and leaders to effect global impact and change. Follow us here: linkedin.com/showcase/iconiq-technology-investing