San Francisco-based cybersecurity startup Coalition is acquiring Jumbo, a mobile app that lets you control your privacy on the web. I have covered Jumbo several times over the past few years, so it’s time to close the loop on this one.
Terms of the deal remain undisclosed, but Jumbo says that its app is no longer going to be updated. Existing users can export social media archives or 2FA codes and the app will be shut down altogether next year
In other words, Coalition isn’t necessarily looking to add a consumer-focused app or taking advantage of Jumbo’s user base. It is acquiring a team (or maybe just a part of the team) that has been focused on privacy and security for several years. A source told me this deal is a small, acqui-hire transaction.
Coalition offers cybersecurity insurance products that take advantage of proactive cybersecurity tools. The company tries to monitor a company’s digital footprint to detect cybersecurity risks before something serious happens.
For instance, Coalition scans domain names, IPs and ports so that it can alert you of potential attack vectors — alerts can tell you that the port used for remote desktop access is publicly-accessible for example. It also looks at third-party data breaches to identify if your employees will likely face phishing attacks and more.
As for Jumbo, the company’s flagship feature was a dashboard that helps you control your privacy settings across multiple online services, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Maps and Instagram.
The app could delete and archive old posts on social networks, remove your search history on YouTube and turn on some privacy settings on LinkedIn. Jumbo didn’t rely on APIs to control your online accounts. Instead, the app loaded pages in the background and used Javascript to interact with online services.
Jumbo also had a security angle. When the app loaded the settings page of your online accounts, it could see if you had turned on two-factor authentication on your Google and Facebook accounts. This way, you could enable two-factor authentication and use Jumbo as your authenticator app.
Jumbo also checked online databases for potential data breaches of your personal information, including your phone number, your email address, your password and your address.
More recently, Jumbo partnered with IdentityForce to offer identity theft insurance in the U.S. It also removed the paid subscription after realizing that it couldn’t become a sustainable business model over the long run. Jumbo floated the idea of offering a B2B version of its app and service, but that never materialized.
In 2018, Jumbo raised a $3.5 million seed round led by Thrive Capital’s Josh Miller and Nextview Ventures’ Rob Go. In 2019 and 2020, the company raised another $8 million in a round led by Balderton Capital. The firm had already invested in Jumbo CEO Pierre Valade’s previous startup, Sunrise. Last year, Index Ventures also led a $17 million round in the company at a $77 million post-money valuation.
Coalition has raised hundreds of millions of dollars over the years. In its most recent funding round, the company raised a $250 million Series F investment at a valuation of $5 billion.
Cyber insurance startup Coalition acquires privacy assistant Jumbo by Romain Dillet originally published on TechCrunch
