Jack Templin, co-founder of Providence Geeks, RI Nexus and ThoughtCap, his own small consulting firm, talks about Lockify, a free data-encryption service.
PBN: The last time we talked, you had just gotten back from the Launch Conference in San Francisco, which garnered Lockify some national press (NYT’s Venture Beat, ReadWriteWeb). How has Lockify progressed since then?
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TEMPLIN: We’ve been focused on ensuring that Lockify is easiest way for business and individuals to encrypt, send, track, and control sensitive messages and files of all types, e.g. financial account information, passwords, contracts, tax info, health info, etc.
To that end, we’ve been conducting a small private beta, about 900 users, which has exceeded our expectations. Our users seem to love Lockify, which has been very gratifying. Even more importantly, they’ve given us tons of invaluable feedback on how to make the service better. Our team has been heads down implementing around this input. We really can’t thank our private beta testers enough.
This is actually a big week at Lockify. On Monday we’re presenting to approximately 1,000 people at the Web Innovators Group in Cambridge. In conjunction we’ll be significantly expanding our private beta in preparation for our public release late this summer/early fall.
We’d be happy to include any PBN readers in the private beta (they just need to email us at PBN@lockify.com).
PBN: You mentioned then that you were in some initial talks with investors, any bites?
TEMPLIN: We’ve had a lot of interest from both East and West Coast investors. We’re figuring out the best configuration – people, money, structure – for a significant angel round. More soon.
PBN: What’s the business model behind Lockify? Right now, it’s a free service – do you plan to keep it that way?
TEMPLIN: We’ll always offer individuals and solo-professionals a free version of Lockify.
Soon though we’ll start providing small and medium businesses with premium accounts that include things like multi-user support and industry-specific regulatory compliance features.
PBN: Having a safe way to send someone your credit card number or bank account information seems like an obvious need in this day and age … what similar Web applications are out there? What makes Lockify stand out?
TEMPLIN: There are some solutions out there, but few – if any – employ the level of security and simplicity of Lockify. On the security front, our patent-pending local encryption technique makes it so that your sensitive information never leaves your computer/device unencrypted. This means that even we can never see your sensitive information. Most services have access to your sensitive information.
With regards to simplicity, Lockify has made encrypted communications as simple as creating a link. In fact, some have referred to Lockify as a Bit.ly or TinyUrl.com for sensitive communications. This is a far cry from the frustrating user experience of many of our competitors.
PBN: Lockify right now doesn’t allow users to send attachments in their messages, when we will be able to see that feature? What other developments do you have planned?
TEMPLIN: Not surprisingly, support for files has been the No. 1 request. I’m happy to announce that we’ll be previewing this feature on stage Monday at Web Innovators Group in Cambridge and adding it to the private beta later this month! We’re very excited about it.
We have a bunch of other exciting features in the pipeline that we can’t talk about yet. Stay tuned.
