Nord Security started as an obscure, bootstrapped company in a part of the world where tech champions are rare: Lithuania.
But it didn’t take long for it to become mainstream with its niche (and sometimes expensive) cyber security and virtual private network (VPN) products.
Tomas Okmanas and Eimantas Sabaliauskas saw this opportunity in 2012 while pursuing careers in IT and decided it was worth exploring.
Nord applied simple logic to help it grow: People rely on the internet for everything, which means the need for online security will only increase with time. Indeed, it did—Nord found a huge market among privacy-hungry internet surfers.
Okmanas admits that when the company was founded, “no one cared” outside of a few tech companies that took cybersecurity seriously.
As they continued building Nord, the use cases and demand grew. That also meant the founding duo had to become adept at more than just engineering.
“I've now had to learn [about] finance, the legal world, corporate governance, and then how to run teams and companies,” Okmanas told Fortune last year.
Best known for its VPN software, Nord allows users to use the Internet while protecting their data and IP addresses. That means more privacy for the average user when browsing the web—but the technology is also highly controversial.
VPNs can be used to circumvent government restrictions on the web and have been attacked by Hollywood film studios for their use in piracy and copyright infringement.
But Lithuania-based Nord isn’t bogged down by these legal and ethical concerns. It focuses on bolstering its primary use case of securely using the web. The company’s servers don’t log user data—which is part of the privacy spiel. It has argued that ad nauseum, and told Fortune that people using VPN solely to access blocked or unavailable streaming services is “outdated.”
Okmanas says that Nord’s tools are rarely used for illegal or wrongful purposes. The company also has systems in place to prevent security breaches and other online threats.
“Our goal is really to connect as much people as possible to this Nord cloud network, where people could use it in a very safe way,” he said.
The VPN world and more
The broad strokes of Nord’s growth are remarkable: in 2022, 10 years after its founding, it achieved unicorn status, has over 15 million users worldwide, and is one of Lithuania’s most well-known companies (Vinted is another one).
Okmanas said Nord has seen “tremendous growth” over the years. In September 2023, the company raised $100 million at a $3 billion valuation, nearly double the amount it raised when it became a unicorn a year earlier.