Our founding team

Rigor’s founding team includes Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, academics, ex-military intelligence professionals, distinguished alumni from Stanford, CMU, UT Austin, the IITs and veterans from Google, Cisco, Microsoft, Meta, Palo Alto Networks, VMware, F5, ServiceNow, Lockheed Martin and other well-known companies. We collectively represent over 700 years of experience in engineering, research, and enterprise product development. We have previously secured data center, enterprise and access networks for over 4000 customers including Fortune 500 companies and government security agencies, representing over 10 successful startups, and over $1.5 billion in revenue.

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Sundar Iyer

CEO & Co-founder

Sundar is a serial technology entrepreneur, investor, and advisor. Previously, he was the Co-founder and CEO of Candid Systems, a stealth mode spin-in (acquired by Cisco in 2017), which applied formal methods for data center security and assurance (currently Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights), and Memoir Systems (acq. by Cisco in 2014), which built formally verified high-performance algorithmic memory.

Previously he served as the co-founder, CTO, and Principal Architect of Nemo Systems (acq. by Cisco, 2005), developing formally verified caching algorithms to assure internet switches and routers against adversarial traffic-based attacks. Prior to that he was a founding engineer and Systems Architect at SwitchOn Networks (acq. by PMC-Sierra, 2000), where he delivered algorithms for network security and deep packet classification. These products have generated over $1 Billion in cumulative revenues. Sundar received his BTech from IIT Bombay in 1998 and his PhD from Stanford University in 2008, and has authored over 20 publications and 30 patents.

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Navneet Yadav

CPO & Co-founder

Navneet is a serial technology entrepreneur and execution-focused leader. He has over 20 years of product management, marketing, and engineering experience with incubation and exits to Cisco, Juniper, and Palo Alto Networks. Most recently, he was the Head of Product for Advanced Wildfire, a malware detection sandbox, at Palo Alto Networks. There, he also incubated AIOps and formal models for security analysis. Prior to that he was the co-founder, product manager for security, and CISO for corporate compliance at CloudGenix (acq. by PANW in 2020), building a SaaS SDWAN solution.

He was also the head of product management and marketing at Candid Systems (acq. by Cisco, 2017). His startup and incubation stints have also generated over $1 Billion in cumulative revenues. Navneet received his BTech from IIT Bombay in 1994.

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Kollivakkam Raghavan

Head of Engineering & Co-founder

Raghavan has over 30 years of hands-on experience in building, growing, and managing global teams in enterprise, data center, and cloud products. He was responsible for the planet-scale infrastructure that handles all API requests at Google Drive, serving hundreds of millions of users and over a trillion API requests each month, while maintaining data privacy and compliance within the Drive API.

Raghavan led the team at F5 Networks responsible for the Access Policy Manager providing secure endpoint access to customers. Previously, at Candid Systems (acq. by Cisco, 2017), he was the head of engineering for the Cisco Network Assurance Engine (now Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights), which pioneered formal mathematical models for data center networks. Raghavan received his BTech from IIT Bombay, a Masters from Villanova, and a PhD from the University of Michigan, all in Electrical Engineering.

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700Yrs

Of Combined Industry Experience

4K +

Customers Served Across Diverse Industries

$1.5Bn

Revenue Generated Across Past Ventures

10+

Successful Startups Founded by Team Members