Jumbo is an application that lets you manage your privacy online and is now hitting”reset” — kind of. Although the company remains committed to privacy and security users are now able to access all features at no cost since the premium subscription has ended. Alongside this price update, Jumbo’s most recent version includes identity theft insurance for free for those who reside within the U.S.
“Something we didn’t expect and we’re trying to address the moment is that a paid product can be a major barrier to entry,” Jumbo founder and CEO Pierre Valade told me. Valade was the founder of Sunrise which was a well-known calendar application that was purchased by Microsoft.
Jumbo’s main feature is an interface that lets you manage the privacy settings of various internet-based services. The app allows you in order to link to either your Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram account and change privacy settings, for example, the public visibility of posts that you’ve been tagged in.
For social networks specifically, Jumbo can delete and archive older posts. In particular, for example, you could utilize the app to remove tweets older than a specific threshold. Jumbo will save everything on your phone to an area of local storage called the Vault.
Additionally, Jumbo differs from other privacy aids because it doesn’t use APIs to manage the online account you have. In fact, Jumbo operates more or than a browser running in the background. Everything is done directly on the device (which is fantastic for security) and the start-up isn’t restricted to the capabilities of the official APIs.
In numerous different ways, Jumbo makes privacy options available to those who don’t even know the existence of these settings and don’t know the purpose behind them. Yes, everyone can visit Google’s account page to erase Google Maps activity, previous internet searches, and YouTube keywords.
However, Jumbo integrates all the settings within a simple user-friendly app. It continuously monitors your account’s activity and advises you to most likely turn on two-factor authentication to enhance your account’s security.
At the beginning, Jumbo thought that consumer subscription was the only strategy that could turn Jumbo into a viable company without compromising. It’s simple to see why companies make profits when they pay for a subscription.
“We attained 25,000 subscribers and realized it was a small number for a business that caters to consumers,” Valade said. “And there was another problem that was the issue of churn.”
Each year, about 40 percent of Jumbo users maintain their subscriptions. If you’ve ever run an online subscription company you’re aware that this isn’t a terrible churn. However, it also implies that the business had to pay for marketing and paid installation to cover this churn. Even after paying for subscriptions, Jumbo was not making profits.
Hence, today’s pivot. Moving forward, Jumbo will be a free consumer app, with an upcoming business product later in the year.
It’s not an easy choice. Jumbo is a small company currently, with just 25 employees. The marketing staff is being cut. Valade informed me that at one moment he considered ending his day and selling the business to the most expensive price.
“We found that we had been limiting our growth since we sell a premium product. The most effective business model available online would be B2B Software as a Service” Valade said.
The company has raised fresh capital in a $17 million round, led by Index Ventures with some existing investors as well as a number of angel investors also taking part. The startup has reached an after-money valuation in the range of $77 million.
An Unending Loop of Identity Theft
The ability to lower the cost of paying is something however, how will the public be informed about Jumbo in the near future? Pierre Valade is adding identity theft insurance to the app and is transforming this insurance service into a social function.
If you download the app, Jumbo now offers identity theft insurance that is free within the U.S. with up to $25,000 of coverage via IdentityForce. It is known as an identity theft major problem within the U.S. with malicious people opening credit cards in the name of another person’s name, as well as other crimes that can result in a significant amount of cash.
In present, the products for preventing identity theft are generally paid for. For instance, Norton offers LifeLock for $125 per year, while IDShield packages start from just $15 per month.
Jumbo’s latest insurance product works well with the other features of the app, as Jumbo warns you of a data breach that could include personal data (using the data of SpyCloud). When you discover a new data breach, you’re not sure know what you’re supposed to do.
Each time that you bring a person, or friend or family member into Jumbo the app, it will increase the amount of insurance coverage you have by $25,000 and has a fixed limit of $1,000,000. In essence, it makes it easier for Jumbo members to add their friends to join the application.
For the business offering? “Today we don’t know what features are available for companies for businesses. At the moment, I’m determined to show that the free software will grow exponentially more quickly than previously,” Valade told me.
A few companies may purchase Jumbo to motivate employees to implement two-factor authentication for individual accounts for example. I inquired about other security startups that focus on business such as Riot. “We are selling the simplicity of our products,” he told me. “Phishing training isn’t an option for consumers.”
Let’s examine how this B2B pivot can play out, considering that Jumbo is still primarily still a product for the consumer. It seems that Valade is more confident regarding his company’s current position.
“We were frustrated by our experience of having needed to make a big deal of selling the product to customers,” he said. “You end up having to scare people to make them believe in the product that you are the best, and we were getting uneasy about that.”
