NEW YORK, February 4, 2014 — Confide, a new startup created to bring off-the-record professional communication to the digital world, today announced it has closed $1.9 million in seed financing. The round, which closed on the heels of Confide's January launch, was led by WGI Group. Other participants include Google Ventures, First Round Capital, SV Angel, Lerer Ventures, CrunchFund, Lakestar, Marker, BoxGroup (David Tisch), Jeremy Stoppelman (Co-Founder/ CEO of Yelp), Doug Ellin (Creator of Entourage) and Billy Bush.
“We are excited to welcome these world-class investors into the Confide family,” said Jon Brod, Co-Founder and President of Confide. “This funding will allow us to more aggressively pursue our mission of bringing off-the-record professional communication online – across devices, across platforms, and across the globe.”
Designed for professionals, the Confide app allows anyone to send private, encrypted, screenshot-proof messages that disappear after they’re sent. Messages are revealed within the app by “wanding” over the words with your finger. This provides additional security and prevents screenshots.
Launched last month, the Confide app has already been used in over 110 countries and a recent update brings the total number of languages supported to 14 – English, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, German, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Japanese, Korean, Russian, Turkish, Swedish and Arabic.
“We are fundamentally changing the face of online professional communication,” said Howard Lerman, Confide's Co-Founder and Chairman. “There is so clearly a need to allow people to write online what they have only been willing to say offline. Our vision is to provide this off-the-record service ubiquitously and globally.”
Michael Walrath, partner at WGI Group and former Co-Founder and CEO of Right Media, will join the Confide Board of Directors.
“We are thrilled to be able to work with this exceptional team of entrepreneurs as they embark on this large and important mission,” said Walrath. “It is time that we challenge permanence as the default for online professional communication.”
To get your off-the-record messenger, download Confide from the Apple App Store: www.getconfide.com/ios
Confide, founded in 2014, was created to bring off-the-record professional communication to the digital world. The Confide app is a mobile messaging platform that combines end-to-end encryption with disappearing messages to foster honest, unfiltered and secure communication.
Confide was co-founded by Howard Lerman, Jon Brod and Dan Sutera and its investors include WGI Group, Google Ventures, First Round Capital, SV Angel, Lerer Ventures, CrunchFund, Marker and Lakestar. For more information, visit www.getconfide.com or follow @confide on Twitter and fb.com/getconfide on Facebook.
Contact:
[email protected]