Greylock Partners ditched Cisco Umbrella for dope.security — and closed in 27 days
You know what's a fun story? When a VC firm you once pitched for funding becomes your customer.
That's exactly what happened with Greylock Partners, one of the most iconic venture firms in Silicon Valley. The same people who backed LinkedIn, Discord, Figma, and Workday just chose dope.security to protect their team. We went from "hey, would you like to invest in us?" to "hey, welcome aboard." Life comes at you fast.
The problem: Cisco Umbrella wasn't cutting it
Greylock's IT and security team had been running Cisco Umbrella. And look, Cisco Umbrella isn't a bad product. It's just a product built for a different era.
DNS-level filtering alone misses HTTPS traffic. That's a real coverage gap when your entire workforce runs on cloud apps. And the SWG component? Still backhauling traffic through Cisco's data centers. For a lean, fast-moving VC firm where everyone's working from laptops in different cities, that architecture adds latency and complexity that nobody asked for.
Greylock needed something faster. Something simpler. Something that actually matched how their team works — distributed, device-first, no-nonsense.
Why dope.security
We sent Greylock two proposals: SWG only and SSE+ (which bundles our SWG with CASB Neural and Dopamine DLP). Their team reviewed both, asked questions, and moved fast.
Here's what stood out in the process:
Speed matters. dope.security runs directly on the endpoint. No backhauling. No pit stops through a data center in Virginia. Traffic flies direct, which means Greylock's team gets security without the latency tax.
Deployment is actually easy. Jithan was working through Intune deployment as part of the evaluation. Our team jumped in to help — and for context, we'd just helped another Cisco Umbrella customer roll out to 2,000 machines in two days flat. No six-page deployment manuals. Push the agent, confirm policies, done.
We showed up. Our CEO Kunal personally stayed engaged throughout the process, checking in and keeping the relationship warm. When the deal closed, he sent a note that said it all: "What a proud moment for me personally — once upon a time we pitched to Greylock." That's the kind of full-circle energy you can't fake.
27 days from first touch to signed deal
Let that sink in. Greylock went from initial proposal to signed contract in under a month. Jithan evaluated the tech. Their team coordinated internally, and when they were ready, the message was simple:
"We are signed! We are excited to be working with you and the team. Thanks for always checking in and keeping this partnership warm. Let's go!"
That's not a corporate procurement email. That's genuine excitement. And honestly? We felt the same way.
What's next
Greylock is starting with a phased rollout — getting the agent deployed to their team before scaling to full production. It's the smart move, and it's exactly how we recommend doing it.
For us, landing Greylock isn't just another logo. It's validation from a firm that evaluates technology for a living. They see hundreds of startups a year. They know good architecture when they see it. And they picked dope.security over the incumbent.
If one of the sharpest tech investors in the world trusts dope.security to protect their team — maybe it's time you took a look too.
Ready to ditch the backhaul? Book a 20-minute demo and see why teams are making the switch.
