Where did the idea of Keeper Security come from and what was the factor that caused you to develop it into a company?
Keeper was created on a 40 hour flight to China in 2008 by myself and my co-founder, Craig Lurey. The iPhone was just released and the App Store was set to debut. On the flight, I looked over and noticed Craig was coding something, which turned out to be a mobile application to manage passwords. There were no mobile password managers at the time. Craig and I discussed a vision for how pervasive mobile was going to become and instantly knew we were onto something massive. By the time the flight landed, the first version of Keeper was born. Today, tens of thousands of iterations and millions of users later, we have the same passion and vision as when we started the company.
What was the primary focus once the company formed?
Days after we put the first version of Keeper up in the App Store, we were blown away by the positive response. The product started to take off with zero PR/marketing efforts. Since there was obvious demand for this product, we spent many late nights and weekends building out Keeper. Our primary focus to start off was keeping up with demand. We hired a few more engineers and a small customer support team. Since then, we’ve built a world-class product and grown into three offices with top tier executives from cybersecurity companies like Symantec and MobileIron.
What do you see as your largest obstacles for Keeper?
A major obstacle for Keeper has been brand awareness among the IT community - this is what prompted us to join Spiceworks. We’ve always focused on building a great product, which lends itself well to word-of-mouth marketing and happy customers, but not everyone is aware of the breadth of our security architecture - SOC-2 auditing and zero-knowledge encryption are huge competitive advantages for us and the benefits to end users’ privacy are enormous.
How do you define success for the company?
We have a hugely successful consumer business with over 8.5 million users, more than any other password manager in the industry, and have a rapidly growing enterprise product used by Global 2000 companies. Keeper is sold in over 100 countries and localized in 18 different languages. We’re vetted, audited and certified by world class companies and preload Keeper software on devices distributed by AT&T and Orange. We are very proud of this, but above all, success means protecting our customers and honoring their privacy.
What has been the major challenges of developing Keeper?
In terms of developing the software, the biggest challenge and success has been building a product that is both secure and easy-to-use. Convenience and security are opposing forces of the universe - our customers tell us everyday that we’ve built an amazing product that encompasses both of these. For every feature we build and every business decision we make we ask ourselves two questions - 1) “Is this going to enhance product security and honor our customer’s privacy?” and 2) “Is this going to maintain product simplicity and ease-of-use?”
What external resources (colleagues, websites, etc) do you keep up with to help you stay informed?
Our engineering team in Northern California is comprised of experts in cybersecurity, cryptography and application development. Our team is sensational.
Chunky or smooth peanut butter?
This is a funny question because I literally used to travel with a jar of chunky peanut butter from Trader Joe’s. Now, I travel with Justin’s (creamy hazelnut w/chocolate) which comes in single-serve packets - they rock.
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