Venture Capital Firms

Confidela Launches Watchdox.com, a Way that You Can Send Files to Specific Users

We live in an age where information can be sent from one person to another within seconds. This information technology in our Information Age can be great by providing instant telecommunication and we can share photos or text with friends and relatives who are physically far away. Though this is good, it does come with a few pitfalls as well. We all have heard stories about our files being intercepted by hackers and even some people have been rather shy about putting personal information out on the internet for this very reason. Well, Confidela aims to change all that with its new service, known as Watchdox.com, which is a file sharing and email authentication service. Watchdox.com is still undergoing public beta testing and will give you a free trial period for one month.

After or during the free trial period, you have the option to upgrade your account. The first option is the Watchdox Pro, which has a monthly fee of $14.95 and allows for safe and secure file sending, which means that you can send a file to whom you want and you can also set the file in a way that the person with whom you are sharing the file with can be controlled. You can allow the other person to edit the file or change things in that file, or you can allow the other person to only view that file. This is what Watchdox allows you to do. The Pro version also allows you to send files up to 25 people at the same time. The Pro version also allows for document encryption and tracking.

The next version that Watchdox offers is the Business version, which has a monthly fee of $29.95, but unlike the Pro version, the Business version requires a minimum of ten users to enroll in this program. The Business version also allows for more storage space than the Pro version. The Pro Version allows for 10MB as the maximum file size, whereas the Business version allows a file to be 20 MB as the maximum file size. Furthermore, the Pro version has a maximum storage capacity of 500 MB, whereas the Business version has a maximum storage capacity of 2 GB storage space online.

The top of the line version of Watchdox.com is the Business Premium. This is the highest quality service available by Confidela’s Watchdox.com and you need to contact the company to find out the price of the premium service. The Business Premium allows a maximum of online storage space to be up to 4 GB and allows you to send a file with the maximum size of 20MB.

The online file storage is also a great feature, because computers do crash. Many of you have experienced computer crashes and those of you who have Windows also probably have experienced file loss. With Watchdox, you can store files safely on a server online which allows you to have access to them from any computer anywhere.

Watchdox was launched by Confidela in 2009 as its flagship service designed to work as an SaaS or Software as a Service that allows individuals and businesses to store and share files with their associates without having to deal with any security issues or deployment hassles. Confidela likes to stress the importance in the easy use format of Watchdox.

The creator of Watchdox, Confidela was founded by both Moti Rafalin, who also works at the company as its CEO; and Noam Livnat, who also serves the company as its vice president of products.

Before Mr. Rafalin took part in founding Confidela, he worked as the General Manager of Applications Business Management at EMC, where he oversaw the transformation of nLayers technology, after nLayers was acquired by EMC. While working with nLayers’ technology, he was able to transform it into a successful business and in the end was able to increase the company’s revenue by over four times. nLayers was not the only acquisition that Mr. Rafalin was involved in at EMC. Mr. Rafalin also led the acquisition of Smarts and OEM. Mr. Rafalin graduated from the Technion, Israel School of Technology with a Summa Cum Laude BSc in Aerospace Engineering and then went on to Harvard Business School, where he received an MBA. Mr. Rafalin also spent over seven years in the Israeli Air Force, where he held several engineering positions.
Noam Livnat came from Cyota, Inc., which was later acquired by RSA, which is the security arm of EMC. At Cyota, Mr. Livnat was Senior Product Manager and oversaw the company’s entire product line from the very beginning to the point of maturity and introduction to the marketplace. Cyota was a company that led many innovations in layered authentication solutions and it was because of Mr. Livnat’s work that enabled RSA to acquire Cyota for $145 million in 2005. Like Mr. Rafalin, Mr. Livnat also spent some time in a branch of the Israeli military. Mr. Livnat served in Talpiyot, which is the most prestigious intelligence corps in the Israeli Defense Forces. Mr. Livnat graduated from the Tel Aviv University in Israel with a Magna Cum Laude BSc and a Summa Cum Laude MBA in Industrial Engineering.

Confidela’s investors include angel investor Shlomo Kremer, who is the cofounder of both Check Point and Imperva; and Gemini Israel Funds, which invested $5.5 million in series A funding in August of 2008.

Besides being involved in the above mentioned round of funding, Mr. Kremer also invested the seed funding that Confidela needed to get off the ground and also serves as the chairman of Confidela’s board of directors. Besides being an entrepreneur and founding Check Point in 1993, Mr. Kremer has also invested in several other security software companies.

Gemini Israel Funds is a vc firm that mainly invests in seed and early stage Israeli companies in the communications, wireless, consumer electronics, enterprise software, internet, and semiconductor industries. Gemini Israel Funds was founded in 1993 by the Israeli government’s Yozma Program to develop Israeli business and support Israeli entrepreneurs. Other companies in Gemini’s portfolio include Massive Impact, RADLive, Autotalks, Modu, Neocleus, and others.

For more information about Confidela, click here.

Comments