Duo Security Hires Former Zendesk COO Zack Urlocker To Run Operations

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Two-factor authentication startup Duo Security recently raised a $12 million round of funding to quickly grow its business and customer base. To help with that, the company hired seasoned tech exec Zack Urlocker as its new chief operating officer. Urlocker has 25 years of experience in the tech world, most recently as the COO of SaaS help desk company Zendesk. He spent two-and-a-half years there before leaving last year, right around the time of the company's IPO. Prior to Zendesk, he held executive roles at companies like Sun Microsystems, MySQL and Borland among others. The move came after Urlocker relocated to Michigan last year and became an adviser to a number of startups in the local tech ecosystem, including Duo. He said he'd come into the office every couple of weeks and meet with the founders to discuss product and strategy. After a bit of a courtship with the founders over the last several months, he'll now be leading a number of aspects on the business side of things, including sales, marketing and customer success. For Duo, the creation of the COO position comes at a time after the company has proven product-market fit and is looking to ramp up a more active enterprise sales organization. Duo now has about 90 employees, 75 of whom are in the Ann Arbor, Mich., area, and plans to grow its Silicon Valley presence soon. The company is also focusing more on building out its sales and marketing teams thanks to new funding that it raised in the second half of last year. It brought on $12 million in funding from Benchmark and added Matt Cohler to its board in September to accelerate growth. Other investors include Google Ventures, True Ventures, Radar Partners and Resonant Venture Partners.
Ryan Lawler

Ryan Lawler is a Writer at Gigabuzz, focused on covering early-stage startups, especially those with a technology focus and great perks.

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