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Thursday night,\u00a0at a StrictlyVC event<\/a> in San Francisco, I sat down with Confide<\/a> cofounder and president Jon Brod to talk with him about his decidedly topsy turvy 2017. Though his three-year-old messaging app was the belle of the ball at the start of the year\u00a0\u2014 Wired<\/a>, the Washington Post<\/a>, and Axios<\/a> were among others to note it was a hit with frustrated White House staffers \u2014 its\u00a0positive momentum was abruptly thwarted\u00a0by security researchers who\u00a0published a report saying the app\u00a0wasn\u2019t living up to its claims<\/a>.<\/p>\n It was later reported that Confide had quickly addressed those vulnerabilities.<\/a>\u00a0Roughly one month later, a separate lawsuit<\/a> followed, claiming that another of its features isn\u2019t foolproof.<\/p>\n I\u00a0discussed that\u00a0ongoing case with Brod. He also talked about the app\u2019s future, which may include video (assuming Confide\u00a0can shake off the suit first). More from our chat below, edited for length.<\/p>\n TC: You\u2019d worked for the NBA, for AskJeeves, for IAC, then you spent four years at AOL, including as the cofounder of AOL Ventures. How did you wind up\u00a0running a secure messaging app company?<\/strong><\/p>\n JB: I\u2019d spent four years at AOL in various executive positions and I was going to leave and serendipitously, Howard Lerman, who\u2019s also the founder and CEO of [newly public<\/a>] Yext, emailed me about wanting to hire someone who used to work with me at AOL. It took many missed phone calls and traded emails before we connected six days later [because we didn\u2019t want to discuss anything sensitive online], and that was sort of the \u2018aha\u2019 moment for Confide. So we gathered up some engineers, prototyped Confide, and started the company.<\/p>\n TC: How much funding have you raised?<\/strong><\/p>\n JB: We initially raised just less than $2 million, including from SV Angel, [investor] David Tisch, GV, [Yelp CEO] Jeremy Stoppelman, WGI, and First Round Capital, among others. A year ago, we close a $1.5 million seed extension round, so $3.4 million all in.<\/p>\n TC: How many people use Confide?<\/strong><\/p>\n JB: You know I\u2019m not going to tell you that. [Laughs.] We don\u2019t give out user numbers but also, as a confidential messenger service, we actually can\u2019t track a ton of stuff. Almost everything we track is in aggregate and anonymous, so we do know how many\u00a0active users [we have] and how many messages get sent on the platform, but . . . things are going quite well.<\/p>\n TC: I love\u00a0Confide, but I use it for very specific use cases. How often do people open and use it on average?<\/strong><\/p>\n JB: There\u2019s this cohort for whom this is what they use as everyday messenger and the [daily and monthly active users] on that is fantastic. Then there are people, I guess like you, that, when there are confidential sensitive things, you use Confide, and you use other messenger platforms and email [for other communications]. I use iMessenger all the time, but\u00a0when it comes to sensitive material, I mean, you\u2019re insane if you\u2019re still using regular text and email.<\/p>\n TC: Speaking of leaks, you had some amazing press earlier this year, with a number of accounts about all the unhappy White House staffers who use Confide. Were you aware that it had taken off in Washington or did you see it in the news?<\/strong><\/p>\n JB: Here\u2019s how that went down: I got a Confide message in December from a\u00a0former high school classmate, and he says, \u201cDid you know a lot of Trump\u2019s transition team is using Confide?\u201d And I said, \u201cNo, how do you know?\u201d And he said, \u201cThey\u2019re contacting me on Confide.\u201d<\/p>\n Not long after, Axios reached out to me and said, \u201cWe\u2019re on Confide and we\u2019re noticing a stream of GOP political operatives coming on to the system and we\u2019d love to talk with you about it.\u201d So I do that interview; [Axios cofounder] Mike Allen runs it in his daily newsletter, and everyone starts calling us.<\/p>\n Not long after, I\u2019m sitting at home one weekend\u00a0and watching the numbers as all CEOs do, and I see we get to the next stratosphere [in terms of users]. Something is going on. So\u00a0I start searching for Confide and see that Politico has written a story<\/a> that [White House Press Secretary] Sean Spicer had called a meeting at the White House with all of his lawyers and all the White House staff and it was a phone check meeting. And he apparently said, \u201cEveryone, take out of your phones and if you have Confide on your phone, that\u2019s a problem.\u201d And he said, \u201cJust so\u00a0know this is a widespread policy, I\u2019m even going to delete Confide from my phone.\u201d So that was the number one story on CNN and Google News and that was pretty extraordinarily.<\/p>\n TC: I\u00a0believe Spicer also warned them that disappearing text messages involving\u00a0anything government related was a violation of the\u00a0Federal Records Act<\/a>. Did you hear from the White House about this?<\/strong><\/p>\n JB: No, we haven\u2019t been contacted by the White House, but\u00a0you raise an interesting point that also receives a lot of press attention, which is the legality of this. My position is pretty straightforward:\u00a0There are certain people in certain industries for whom certain communications are regulated\u00a0\u2014 maybe\u00a0FINRA in financial services or the Federal\u00a0Records Act if you\u2019re a member of the executive branch of the government. If you\u2019re regulated, please<\/em> use Confide in a way that complies with that regulation, just as you would any other communication device.<\/p>\n TC: So there\u2019s all this excitement around Confide. But as your profile is rising, security researchers are following you more closely\u00a0and by mid February, you\u2019re slammed in the press by a report that says there are holes in the app. In\u00a0layman\u2019s terms, what exactly happened, and how did you resolve it?<\/strong><\/p>\n JB: A security research firm comes and tries to find vulnerabilities in Confide. We\u2019re able to detect them coming and are able to fix most of their issues in real time. There are some that we can\u2019t, and they notify us, and then through a responsible disclosure<\/a> \u2014 which is generally how these work with security firms\u00a0\u2014 they give us a little time to fix the problems. We fix them incredibly quickly. Then they go out and publicize their research paper. Importantly, no Confide user was impacted throughout any of this. We made all the changes, and that\u2019s what happened.<\/p>\n TC: One concern of a colleague of mine at TechCrunch, our security reporter<\/a>, Kate, is your use label of \u201cmilitary grade\u201d security in marketing the app. What does that mean?<\/strong><\/p>\n JB:\u00a0It\u2019s hard to describe encryption and security, so we use terms that give people a general sense [of what it means], and \u201cmilitary grade\u201d is one of those terms that we use. Basically, this is end-to-end encryption, and what that means is that as soon as you hit send on a message, it gets encrypted, and the only thing that can decrypt that message is a unique key that is generated on and never leaves the device of the recipient. Then once the message sort of detects that key, it gets decrypted. That\u2019s what we mean by end-to-end, or military grade, encryption.<\/p>\n But then after we decrypt something, we go another step. Ater we decrypt a message, there\u2019s an ephemeral component. So once you read a message, you hit close or reply, and the message is gone forever. We delete it from our servers and wipe it from the phone. We also have screenshot protection; we\u2019ve gone to great lengths to prevent screenshots, because they\u2019re the enemy of the disappearing. So fundamentally, we\u2019re trying to take the privacy of the spoken word and we\u2019re trying to port that to the convenience of digital communication.<\/p>\n TC:<\/strong>\u00a0Before we get into this screenshot protection, another feature of your technology that concerns Kate\u00a0is why you\u2019ve created your own code, rather than use tried-and-tested protocols. Relatedly, she mentioned that because Confide\u2019s encryption protocol hasn\u2019t been publicly tested and hacked and audited to ensure that it\u2019s strong, it could be hard for you to sell to enterprises. Wickr went public with its own code in February<\/a> for that same reason.<\/strong><\/p>\n JB: So open source is kind of a double-edged sword. In one respect, you put the playbook out there, which gives people increased confidence. On the other hand, it creates vulnerabilities, particularly around the ephemerality and the screenshot protection. So to this point, we\u2019ve elected not to open source our code; it\u2019s the same philosophy that some\u00a0other end-to-end encrypted messengers, like iMessage, have. But it\u2019s something we continuously discuss and we\u2019ll continue to evaluate.<\/p>\n TC:<\/strong>\u00a0Do you want to go after enterprises eventually? Is that where the money is?<\/strong><\/p>\n JB: Our business is really good right now and it\u2019s focused on the consumer; it\u2019s a freemium model. In-app subscriptions is the greatest business model that I don\u2019t think enough entrepreneurs fully understand or\u00a0appreciate. So that\u2019s where our focus is. We do have an enterprise solution. After the Sony hacks<\/a>, we received a number of inbound inquiries from businesses; we built a solution for them. We have customers. But the freemium model is really our focus.<\/p>\n TC:<\/strong>\u00a0You\u2019ve mentioned your screenshot protection a couple of times. But you\u2019re facing a recently filed class action lawsuit that alleges it doesn\u2019t work, and the former customer who is suing you is represented by a law firm known for its scorched-earth tactics<\/a>. In fact, Y Combinator president Sam Altman has characterized its founder as\u00a0a \u201cleech tarted up as a freedom fighter.\u201d What\u2019s happening? And do\u00a0you settle this thing?<\/strong><\/p>\n JB: I can\u2019t comment on the lawsuit other than to say it\u2019s completely unfounded and meritless. It\u2019s equivalent to a shakedown. This is what this [law firm] does; it goes after high-flying and other tech companies. This will get thrown out of quickly rather quickly, and I look forward to that day.<\/p>\n TC:\u00a0What\u2019s on the roadmap? You sent me a text earlier today with an emoji, which is the first time I\u2019d seen that.<\/strong><\/p>\n JB: We do have stickers as part of Confide plus, which also includes unlimited attachments and photos and all of that. We\u2019re about to launch an iPad app, which is going to be great; it\u2019s one of the top things our customers are asking us for.<\/p>\n We\u2019re also playing around with video, which is something else we\u2019ve been asked for a lot. We think it\u2019s super interesting, and we\u2019re playing around with screenshot protection on video and hoping to do something innovative and interesting there.<\/p>\n TC: Is\u00a0illicit material being sent over your platform a concern?<\/strong><\/p>\n JB: That\u2019s really tricky. The short answer is that anything illicit and illegal is obviously against our terms of service and privacy policy. The challenge is\u00a0that\u00a0these are encrypted messages; we couldn\u2019t read them if we wanted to. So that\u2019s not something \u00a0we\u2019ve encountered; it would present an interesting challenge for us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com\/2017\/05\/33681864893_4f635d74aa_k.jpg?w=2048&h=1365\")
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Thursday night,\u00a0at a StrictlyVC event in San Francisco, I sat down with Confide cofounder and president Jon Brod to talk with him about his decidedly topsy turvy 2017. Though his three-year-old messaging app was the belle of the ball at the start of the year\u00a0— Wired, the Washington Post, and Axios were among others to note it was a hit with frustrated White House staffers —… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/img><\/a>
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