SimplifIDe: Identity platform start-up elects outside directors after closing $1 million seed round

Contact: Nick Fuhrman, Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer
TEL: (608) 440-4978
nick.fuhrman@simplifideinc.com

Madison – Madison software-as-a-service (SaaS) start-up SimplifIDe, Inc., which began operations in January, 2016 and closed a $1 million seed funding round on August 10, 2016, today announced the election of former Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen and former Wisconsin Chief Information Officer Matthew Miszewski to its Board of Directors effective immediately.

 

J.B. Van Hollen was elected Wisconsin’s 43rd Attorney General in 2006.  Re-elected in 2010, Van Hollen was elected by his peers in 2013 to serve as President of the National Association of Attorneys General.  In 2002, Van Hollen was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin by President George W. Bush.  Van Hollen continues his engagement with state attorneys general across the nation through a strategic alliance with international law firm King & Spalding.  Van Hollen began his career as a prosecutor in 1991 as Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin.

 

Matthew Miszewski was Wisconsin’s Chief Information Officer from 2002 to 2007, where he oversaw $400 million of annual Information Technology investments across state government.  Miszewski was most-recently Senior Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing at San Francisco-based Digital Realty Trust, Inc., the world’s largest real estate investment trust devoted to building secure datacenter facilities for the world’s largest cloud service providers and their customers.  Between 2007 and 2013, Miszewski was SVP of Enterprise Sales at Salesforce.com and GM for the Global Government Industry at Microsoft.

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SimplifIDe Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Jeff McAllister observed the agreement by Van Hollen and Miszewski to serve as the company’s first two outside directors was recognition of its early success and future promise:

“After delivering a working product and raising seed capital of $1 million in less than nine months, it is a pleasure to now add the leadership, market intelligence and depth of experience that J.B. and Matt bring to our board.

Van Hollen noted:

“Because millions of digital identities have been stolen by hackers, businesses need to protect consumers with easy and reliable biometric tools to identify themselves and protect their privacy.  By making a once-complex technology simple and user-friendly, SimplifIDe is positioned to achieve phenomenal growth.”

Miszewski added:

“The security, convenience and affordability created by SimplifIDe makes it possible for any business to use biometrics to replace usernames and passwords or secure their facilities simply by taking a selfie or talking into a mobile phone.  By eliminating the complexity of biometrics, the technology is now available to efficiently secure all enterprises whether large or small, public or private.”

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About SimplifIDe, Inc.

Based in Madison, Wisconsin, SimplifIDe created the world’s first Instant-Use, Cross-Platform, Multi-Mode, Device-Agnostic, Pay-As-You-Go, Cloud-Based identification platform that allows any size enterprise to use biometric tools and trusted devices to uniquely identify individual employees, customers and others accurately, securely and instantly without the expense and complexity associated with traditional biometric security firms.

Biometrics is the science of using physical characteristics, not documents that can be forged or data that can be hacked, to uniquely identify people.  The company was founded to provide an instantaneous, frictionless mobile and fixed-location identification solution for any use case.  70% of online businesses say they intend to eliminate traditional user names and passwords.**  SimplifIDe also easily adds identification integrity to financial service and access control systems.

*Key Terms:

Instant-Use                 Customers may enroll and verify users’ identities immediately

SaaS                             Software as a Service

Cross-Platform           Performs seamlessly on Windows (Microsoft), iOS (Mac), Android (Google) and others

Multi-Mode                Facial, voice, fingerprint, iris, palm, etc.

Device-Agnostic         Works on desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones

Pay-As-You-Go          No long-term contracts or device vendor lockdowns; customers only pay for what they use

**June, 2016 Survey by TeleSign, Inc.

 

Co-Founder Biographies:

 

Jeff McAllister – CEO

A seasoned CEO and sales executive, UW-Madison graduate Jeff McAllister returns to Madison after 22 years leading businesses across Europe.  As Managing Director of GTE/Verizon in Belgium and Hungary, as CEO of New World Publishing (450 employees in Prague, Budapest and Warsaw), as CEO & Founder of Stackable Sports Dolls, LLC (Exclusive licensee to the National Football League), and President – North America and United Kingdom for Cellum Global, Inc. (Mobile payments provider), Jeff is the combination of “vision meets the close” so rare in the SaaS start-up world. Jeff is also founder, director and producer of Witness Productions, LLC, whose library of over 175 HDTV interviews of WWII survivors across 15 countries is an ongoing passion. He and his wife have three young children who speak three languages.

Prathit Bondre – CTO

Prathit Bondre brings 10 years of IT executive management experience at Fortune 500 and start-up ventures on projects leading as many as 80 people on 4 continents. Prathit is a thought-leader in the SaaS and Amazon AWS environments, IT security architectures and project design and management.  Prathit earned his Master’s in Computer Science at the UW-Milwaukee and led multiple enterprise initiatives, including development of General Electric’s program lifecycle management environment that earned GE’s Global Recognition Award. Prathit’s ability to plan IT projects methodically and lead them with utmost integrity and fidelity to business drivers makes him a game changer for SimplifIDe’s SaaS ventures.

Nick Fuhrman – CMO

UW-Madison graduate Nick Fuhrman began his career at MGE Energy where he obtained R&D contracts for the University of Wisconsin and supported the company’s M&A defense. Appointed by U.S. Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, Fuhrman oversaw NASA authorization and oversight for the U.S. House of Representatives. Fuhrman managed the $6 million USAID democracy budget in Romania after running for the U.S. House in the late 1990s and before heading Georgia’s aerospace industry development agency and becoming a consultant to early-stage high technology companies in the radio frequency, biometric security and unmanned systems sectors.  As a “perception engineer,” Fuhrman has developed and executed media, social media, and direct marketing programs for numerous private and public sector clients in Washington, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Madison.