Cloud security startup Zscaler on Friday hired Remo Canessa as chief financial officer, tapping a person who has helped lead two big tech IPOs in the past.
Zscaler's previous CFO, Sydney Carey, left the San Jose-based company last summer for another IPO-bound company, San Mateo sales management software startup Apttus. She had only been with the company for 17 months.
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Canessa joins Zscaler a few weeks after former Cisco Systems executive Charles H. Giancarlo joined its board, which was taken as another sign that it might be getting closer to an IPO. He is on the boards of several publicly traded companies, including Accenture, Arista Networks and Imperva.
The two companies that Canessa helped to take public as CFO were Santa Clara-based Infoblox in 2012 and Sunnyvale-based NetScreen Technologies in 2001. Infoblox was taken private in a $1.6 billion sale to Vista Equities last year. NetScreen was acquired in 2004 by Juniper Networks for $4 billion.
Canessa's most recent CFO gig only lasted eight months. He joined Sunnyvale-based Illumio just last July.
He told the Wall Street Journal that while Illumio was a “great” company, he felt ZScaler was a better fit given its momentum.
Zscaler hasn't done a funding round since 2015, when it raised more than $100 million at a valuation of more than $1 billion. It has raised a total of $148 million from investors who include Lightspeed Venture Partners, CapitalG (formerly Google Capital), EMC and TPG Growth.
CEO Jay Chaudhry founded the company in 2008 and for its first four years it was backed entirely by internal investment.
The company says it is used by more than 5,000 organizations, including 50 of the Fortune 500, protecting more than 15 million users worldwide against cyber-attacks and data breaches.
“We are proud to have someone with Remo’s background and expertise to lead our financial team,” Chaudhry said in a statement. “Remo’s track record of leading companies through rapid growth and expansion are perfectly suited to help us scale our business to meet the rapidly increasing market demand. With Remo on board, we now have the leadership team to take our company to the next level.”