Twistlock CEO Ben Bernstein
Twistlock CEO Ben Bernstein (courtesy Twistlock)

Twistlock has raised $17 million in new Series B funding to fuel future growth, and it plans to make that money go as far as it can by searching for talent outside the Bay.

Twistlock secured the $17 million in a funding round led by Polaris Partners and featuring existing investors YL Ventures, TenEleven, and Rally Ventures. CEO Ben Bernstein wants to double the startup’s current 40-person roster over the near future: “Every startup that reaches a B round needs to think about growth,” he said in a recent interview. Including this latest round, the company has raised $30 million in funding to date.

But Twistlock doesn’t plan to compete for talent in the white-hot Bay Area. While it maintains an office in San Francisco and does most of its engineering out of Israel, Twistlock plans to do a lot of hiring for sales and marketing professionals in Portland and Seattle area. It opened a shared office in Portland last year and plans to get its own space this year, Bernstein said.

“If you want to build a sustainable business, (the Bay Area) is not where you build a sustainable business,” he said.

Twistlock helps software development groups working with containers secure their applications throughout the development process. Security has been a big topic of discussion among developers who are moving containers into production environments, and DevOps groups working with containers and hybrid cloud can use Twistlock to secure applications across different platforms.

“We give you a promise that whatever platform you run on, we can secure it,” Bernstein said.

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