The post was originally published in Russian on Startup of the Day. Alexander kindly agreed to republish what we think is of great value to our readers.
WhatsApp introduced end-to-end encryption in 2016. The release date of secret chats for Telegram isn’t so easy to google, but it also happened by far not yesterday. Since then, messengers promise to safeguard our correspondence: so long as the device is with us, nobody can read it, the messages go to the server already encrypted.
Preveil, the American startup of the day, wants to translate a similar approach to other communication methods – methods and cloud storage. Its proprietary counterpart to Dropbox or Google Drive looks the same as the original, but only those with whom the keys for deciphering the files were shared, have them. A hacker or a police worker can only get them if they have access to the client device, aiming at the server access is useless.
Preveil’s mail works in a similar way. The startup distributes its plugin for Outlook and other widespread mail clients to the users, and the mail between the users now goes encrypted. At that, nothing needs to be done, except installing the plugin, you can use the old addresses.
The startup’s main market is, naturally, corporations. Its subscription price begins at 20 dollars per month per person. This is three times as much as Google Workspace which includes many things apart from the drive, but for many, security is priceless. In its recent round, the startup brought in USD 20M of investment.
#roundb #productivity #saas #usa #tech #security
Translation: Kostiantyn Tupikov
Alexander made his career in Russian internet companies including Mail.Ru, Rambler, RBC. From 2016 to 2018 he was Chief Strategy and Analytics officer in Mail.Ru Group. In this position, he worked on M&A, investments, and new project launches. In 2018 he became Deputy CEO in Citymobil, a Russian Uber-like company that was invested by Mail.Ru Group and Sberbank (the biggest Russian bank), then he left the company to launch his own projects. Now Alexander is a co-founder of United Investors – the platform for co-investments in Russian early-stage startups. His blog #startupoftheday (#стартапдня) is one of the most popular blogs about startups in Russia.