Amid Real-Time Context Crisis Across the SDLC, Heeler Aims to Fix Fundamentally Broken Application Security

Heeler Security Inc., a pioneering startup in the application security space, today announced the successful closing of an $8.5 million Seed Series funding round, led by Norwest Venture Partners with significant participation from Storm Ventures.

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Pictured (from left to right): Chris DeRamus, Chief Strategy Officer; Chris Hertz, Chief Executive Officer; Trever McKee, Chief Technology Officer; and James Green, Chief Product Officer (Photo: Business Wire)

“Application security requires a new approach that focuses on runtime visibility and that’s exactly what Heeler has done,” said David Zilberman, General Partner at Norwest Venture Partners. “The founders of Heeler have storied backgrounds that demonstrate an ability to execute. They have launched application security and cloud security products at enterprise scale and have started and grown companies from initial stages to acquisition and IPO.”

The growing complexity of modern applications has created an expanding and often obscure attack surface, overwhelming security teams who lack the real-time context needed to secure them. This results in fragmented security insights across the software development lifecycle (SDLC), heightened risks of breaches and vulnerabilities, and reactive firefighting.

To address these escalating challenges, founders Chris Hertz, Chief Executive Officer, James Green, Chief Product Officer, Trever McKee, Chief Technology Officer, and Chris DeRamus, Chief Strategy Officer, launched Heeler in June 2023, driven by a vision to fundamentally transform application security by delivering:

• Real-time security and business context
• Detection, enrichment and posture management
• Response orchestration

“We are uniquely positioned to seize a massive market opportunity by creating a platform that offers comprehensive SDLC security at the convergence of application and cloud,” said Chris Hertz, CEO of Heeler. “This round of seed funding will support our execution of that vision.”

Heeler’s patent-pending ProductDNA technology unifies the code, behavior, and business context of applications in real-time. ProductDNA delivers what was previously impossible: a frictionless chain of custody between the intended state in code and the running state in production. Acting as a shared operating platform for both security and developers, it embeds security seamlessly into the development lifecycle, benefiting both security and developer teams alike.

For the first time, Heeler enables organizations to fulfill their mandate of customer trust by enhancing security and availability while maintaining speed and efficiency. Heeler automates the repetitive and time-intensive task of assessing the impact of security issues on business applications, significantly reducing noise and false positives. Developers can now understand the security impact of their changes as they code, allowing guidance and development of resilient applications.

“Heeler is making it effortless for security teams and developers to easily collaborate on preventing and managing security risks throughout their entire SDLC, ” said Justin Pagano, Director of Security Risk & Trust at Klaviyo. “As innovation accelerates cloud and application complexity, Heeler’s ProductDNA provides a scalable and simplified approach to maintaining a holistic, real-time view of SDLC security and lineage with quickly actionable ownership, integrity, and security risk context.”

Heeler’s ProductDNA is already used by design partners, ranging from unicorn startups to Fortune 500 firms, and will be generally available in Q4 2024.

Heeler Security will be displaying its solution at Black Hat USA 2024. Interested parties are invited to meet the founders at booth SC316 in Startup City to learn more about the company’s vision and upcoming product launch. Schedule a demo here: www.heeler.com

About Heeler:

Heeler is an application security startup dedicated to developing innovative solutions that help organizations protect their applications from evolving threats. Founded by industry veterans, Heeler Security aims to set a new standard in the application security space.

About Norwest Venture Partners

Norwest Venture Partners is a global venture and growth equity investment firm managing more than $15.5 billion in capital. Since its inception, Norwest has invested in more than 700 companies and currently partners with more than 230 companies in its venture and growth equity portfolio. The firm invests in early- to late-stage businesses across key sectors with a focus on enterprise, consumer and healthcare. The Norwest team offers a deep network of connections, extensive operating experience, and a wide range of impactful services to help CEOs and founders scale their businesses. Norwest has offices in Menlo Park and San Francisco, Calif.; Mumbai, India; and Tel Aviv, Israel. For more information, please visit www.nvp.com.

About Storm Ventures:

Storm Ventures is a Silicon Valley VC firm investing in early-stage B2B software companies. Storm has successfully worked with many founders across the globe in navigating the journey from inception to industry leader, and was an early investor in 12 unicorns, including Algolia, Marketo, Talkdesk, Tekion, and Workato. For more information, please visit www.stormventures.com.

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