1Password: tech talent on a mission to make the internet safer

Those two stats combined add up to a significant level of risk for people around the world—especially when you consider that four out of five global data breaches are perpetrated from weak and stolen passwords. Recent trends, side effects of a global pandemic and cybersecurity statistics reveal a significant increase in hacked and breached data from sources that are increasingly common in the workplace and at home, like mobile and IoT devices. Additionally, recent security research suggests that most companies and individuals have poor cybersecurity practices because the need to keep track of strong, unique passwords has become increasingly complicated.

This rapid growth led to a second round of investment in July 2021, when it was announced that the company had raised an additional US$100 million of funding at a US$2 billion valuation. Investors include Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures; Tobias Lütke and Harley Finkelstein, Shopify’s CEO and president respectively; Anthony Casalena, founder and CEO of Squarespace; and Kevin Hartz, co-founder and chairman of Eventbrite. At the close of the investment, Brandon Chu, VP of Product Acceleration at Shopify, said, “1Password is an incredible success story of the Canadian tech ecosystem and has massive potential ahead of it.”

“Ontario has a great foundation for technology and innovation,” Jeff Shiner, 1Password’s CEO, told us. “The first round of investment gave us the opportunity to grow and grow up as a company. We’d always been profitable and grown organically. Now, however, we’ve accelerated our growth in a province rich in talent.”

Although the province’s talent pool is deep, the competition for top-class talent is intense, which is why 1Password’s ability to attract the best talent through the clarity of their mission and values has been so vital to their continued growth. “We help people stay safe online. That’s an important mission that people want to be a part of,” Shiner explained. “And culturally, I always say we’re the best mix of startup and mature company. We’re nimble in our approach, and everyone has the power to evolve and grow in new ways, but we also have stability, benefits and career pathing opportunities.”

This focus on the human experience of work and 1Password’s services is reflected in the organization’s vision for the coming years. “When it comes to internet security, we believe the secure way should be the easy way. Our job is to continue finding ways to make our customers’ experience better,” explained Shiner. In the near term, this includes adding new services to their offering, including providing actionable insights to their enterprise-scale clients. “As a password manager, we want individual customers to come for the security and stay for the convenience; and for commercial clients, they should come for security and stay for the infrastructure.”