New highs today - and a new CEO interview CONTINUED24 Jan 2020 09:39
At the same time, consumer web companies, such as Netflix, helped pave the way, by teaching the market that paying for a high-quality product is better than getting it for free in exchange for forgoing privacy and a sub-par ad-infused experience, Erlichman said. According to him, Kape now has 2.5 million paying users, 60% of them from the U.S., with an 85% renewal rate on its annual $50-$70 subscriptions.
With several acquisitions of smaller companies under its belt, Kape is still a medium-sized company. “We are just starting out,” Erlichman said, explaining why the company is not looking to be acquired. In the next three years, Kape might triple its number of clients and potentially undermine the market hold of traditional anti-virus companies like Avast Software, currently traded at GBP 5.2 billion (approximately $6.5 billion), he said. “We want to be the privacy company, like Google is the online search company and Facebook is the social media company.”
Internet companies have the practically unlimited ability to track users, without their consent or even awareness, Erlichman said. According to him, while some people are fine with giving up their privacy in exchange for services, what Kape does is offer tools to help them evaluate and decide for themselves if and when the exchange is worth it.
As examples for misuse of the trust given to internet companies by consumers, Erlichman mentions the practice of selling health-related search histories to insurance companies who would then increase clients’ premiums, or a pregnant teenager that looked for information on her condition online without telling her parents, but started receiving baby product-related pamphlets to the family’s home. “We want people to be able to roam the digital world freely, so that they can use it to their advantage, without being used as well,” he said.
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According to Erlichman, Kape does not track its customers or gather information on them, instantly deleting all data instead. “Even if a government entity was to request this information, we could not help, even if we wanted to,” he said.
Most of Kape’s clients are young people, aged 15-35, which is a testament to the growing awareness of privacy concerns, Erlchmann said. For this reason, Kape avoids using ads and prides itself on the fact that over 50% of users arrive organically, through word of mouth or by recognizing its two strongest brands, German subsidiary CyberGhost SA and the aforementioned Private Internet Access VPN service.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3777794,00.html
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