He has raised $188 million, Series F round, and his startup has become Silicon Valley's new unicorn. The second one created by Italians in less than three months. Sysdig has been valued at $1.19 billion.

His name is Loris Degioanni, a degree from the Polytechnic of Turin, he started 15 years ago from Vinadio, in the province of Cuneo, and today his Sysdig bills, hires, charms investors and conquers the market. His cloud security product is used by the world's largest banks, telecommunications companies, and automakers.

"More than a unicorn, beautiful and perfect, succeeding in an instant, we are akin to cockroaches. Small, imperfect, but resilient. We've taken punches, worked for over 10 years, but we've never quit. 

Loris deals with cloud computing, or rather with an evolution of the cloud: it's called Container, it's an IT phenomenon that is exploding in this part of the Earth. "We are the world leaders in the areas of security and Container monitoring." He has a strong technology, a super-modern company, 300 employees, research and development in Italy and leading investors all ready to bet on it.

"Our country has created two unicorns in Silicon Valley this year: in the last three months, Kong and Sysdig have been valued above $1 billion. They are two very similar companies. They operate in the same industry (cloud computing), even though they do different things (Kong creates the infrastructure for passing data, Sysdig facilitates security). They both have an HQ in San Francisco and are created by expats. We studied in Italy. We are children of the Italian ecosystem. And today we can say that Italians are not only strong in fashion, food and design, but also in the most advanced software technology."

Both Loris and the Kong guys did what's known in the trade as pivoting. "We were doing one thing and now we're doing another. We've changed our mission, we've fallen and we've gotten back up. We're not technical geniuses with the light bulb on our heads capable of predicting the future. We jumped into a pool full of crocodiles and learned to swim. With a thousand changes of direction and a thousand difficulties". That's why to the metaphor of the unicorn, Loris prefers that of the cockroach. "They are less beautiful, but their characteristic is resilience."

Sysdig's latest round, which brings its total funding to $ 395 million, was led by Premji Invest and Third Point Ventures, with participation from large investors such as Accel, Bain Capital Ventures, Glynn Capital, and Goldman Sachs.

Loris will employ the new funds in Italy as well.

"I will hire talent. In the last 12 months, Sysdig's Italian employees have grown from 42 to 75. I have doubled the number of jobs (all well paid) in Italy. And I intend to create at least as many by Christmas. I like to think that, thanks to companies like mine, part of Silicon Valley's capital can be poured into the Italian economy. There are many ways to contribute, in such a difficult moment, to your country: this is mine. But I am not hiring out of gratitude. We have found in Italy the best mix of talent, cost of work and employee loyalty".

Sysdig is looking for software developers, technical team, software designers, product managers, highly specialized figures (here is the link to apply)

"We are considered brainiacs on the run, often portrayed as the ones leaving, abandoning the boat, but that's not the case. We are stories to follow. Kong will become a 10 billion company. I'm sure of it." How about you? Will we see you at Nasdaq? "Who knows? It would be arrogant to say, but in the end I am convinced that Henry Ford was right when he said: “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right!” 

The importance of attitude.