Six months after launching its end-to-end encrypted document editor, Skiff has bagged one other $10.5 million in recent funding to construct out personal and collaborative workspaces for its burgeoning buyer base.
We wrote about Skiff last year forward of its launch: Skiff is an internet app that has a lot of the identical document-writing and sharing capabilities as Google Docs however is constructed on a basis of end-to-end encryption, so Skiff doesn’t have entry to customers’ paperwork like Google does. The startup already has greater than 20,000 individuals utilizing its platform, leaps forward of the 8,000 waitlisted customers it had once we first spoke to the corporate final Might.
However it’s the end-to-end encryption platform that Skiff depends on that holds the keys to the corporate’s future. Now with $10.5 million in Sequence A funding within the financial institution, Skiff’s co-founders Andrew Milich and Jason Ginsberg inform TechCrunch that the corporate is working in direction of changing into the “utility layer for the decentralized net.
A core a part of the corporate’s efforts have been on decentralization, a course of that permits its customers to take possession of their knowledge. Over the previous 12 months Skiff has partnered Protocol Labs to supply decentralized storage, referred to as IPFS or the Interplanetary File System, which permits Skiff to encrypt their paperwork and scatter them throughout a community of storage hosts, in addition to integrating MetaMask, letting customers to check in to Skiff utilizing a transportable crypto pockets as an alternative of an e mail handle.
“The best way we take a look at it’s Net 2.0 is absolutely about shifting info round and Web3 is about shifting worth round,” mentioned Ginsberg, Skiff’s CTO, in a name. “Information is essentially the most priceless factor on the web, and our objective is that you simply actually ought to personal your personal knowledge.”
Ginsberg mentioned the corporate is concentrated on rising its product providing, equivalent to communication, and permitting customers to share extra sorts of information on its platform.
“We see tons of of tens of millions of individuals selecting privateness merchandise probably not assembly the wants of working collectively remotely, and in order that’s actually the place we see Skiff coming in. There’s tons of various merchandise that we may do alongside these traces. We’re most proper now in exploring merchandise that not simply take care of the doc facet of issues, but additionally the communication facet,” mentioned Ginsberg.
Milich, the startup’s chief govt, mentioned the spherical — led by Sequoia as a returning investor — will assist the corporate construct out these new merchandise that additionally depend on end-to-end encryption, like communication. Skiff at the moment has a workforce of 15 workers dotted throughout the globe, Milich mentioned. The Sequence A brings Skiff’s whole funding to about $14 million.
“Skiff is constructing a tremendous workforce and visionary merchandise to guide this second,” mentioned Konstantine Buhler, a companion at Sequoia. “We couldn’t be extra excited to double down.”
