Personal, Inc. – Page 2

A New Round and Three Rock Star Board Members

This post was originally published under the same title on the Personal blog, A Personal Stand.

I’m excited to announce that Bill Miller of Legg Mason has led a new $4.5 million round in Personal as an individual investor and will be joining Personal’s board of directors. On top of that, Esther Dyson and Jonathan Miller previously joined our board.

Bill is a legendary investor, best known perhaps as the only person to beat the S&P 500 for 15 years in a row. He has started a new streak: the Wall Street Journal survey reported last week that for four consecutive quarters in a row Bill and his Legg Mason Opportunity Trust have had the best 12 months performance of any mutual fund. His investment in CLEAR, the biometric secure identity management company known for speeding travelers through airport security, is well aligned with our mission of empowering people with the data they need to power their increasingly connected lives.

Esther is one of the most recognized angel investors and thinkers in technology today and has been a pillar in the emerging personal data ecosystem for a long time. She serves on the boards of global marketing conglomerate WPP Group, personal genetics company 23andme.com, and Meetup Inc., among others. She has focused on new business models and new markets, and does business as EDventure Holdings.

Jon is a leading digital executive, having served as chief digital officer of News Corporation, CEO of AOL, and President of Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp. He’s currently a partner with media investor Shari Redstone in Advancit. Jon also serves on the boards of TripAdvisor (since its spinoff from Expedia) and Shutterstock, and was on the board of Tumblr until its acquisition by Yahoo.

Bill, Esther and Jon join our great backers to date, including Allen & Company, Eric Semler of TCS Capital Management, Steve Case’s Revolution Ventures, Grotech Ventures, Ted Leonsis and others.

What makes this moment special is the traction we’re getting with companies and organizations that understand the dramatic impact our user-centric model can have on their own success.

The model simply doesn’t work without trust, transparency, and, yes, privacy – or what I like to call “deciding who gets to see what.” We are building a bigger carrot, not a bigger stick, one that promises to allow more data, not less, to flow and be used with explicit permission by trusted third parties. We hope to catalyze a race to the top where companies compete for the privilege of partnering with individuals and their data.

I’ll finish by reposting these three quotes from our press release. I love the story they tell:

Bill Miller: “As a long-term investor, I have no doubt that Personal is building the most rational, sustainable model for the personal data ecosystem – one centered around the individual first and foremost. The fact that it is also so beneficial for use with trusted companies and apps – including improving their bottom lines, lowering their risks and enhancing their brands – really solidified my interest in investing.”

Esther Dyson: “To me, Personal represents the sea change from business-in-charge to consumer-in-charge – but with a business model that works. It requires not just vision but also scale and execution – and the ability to show a solid value proposition to both sides of the balance of power. I’m excited to help Personal deliver on its promise.”

Jon Miller: “Businesses, marketers and developers, especially those involved with digital media, are at a critical juncture where personal data is concerned. It’s one of their most vital assets, but current practices are not likely to be sustainable – and they are less compelling in any event than the promise of individuals bringing their own data to those experiences in a safe and convenient way. I am excited to help Personal go beyond being a productivity app into this new frontier of permission-based marketing and personalization.”

Check out our press release for more information.

Bills & Statements Now Available from 200+ Companies Using FileThis

This post was originally published under the same title on the Personal blog, A Personal Stand.

A few weeks ago, we mentioned that we would soon offer exciting new ways to help people access, share and easily reuse information from companies with whom they do business.

Today, we are excited to announce a new partnership with FileThis to automatically deliver bills and statements from the leading banks, credit card, insurance, utility, health and retail companies directly to your Personal vault.

Watch our VIDEO to learn more

Sign up for FileThis

Enjoy the peace of mind of a constantly updated archive of your records safely synced across all your devices, and rest easy knowing that your documents will be protected with the same encryption algorithms used by banks.

It’s ideal for paying bills, searching for transactions or securely sharing with a spouse, accountant or financial planner. For a company like Amazon, receipts from literally every purchase appear in less than 24 hours, while monthly or quarterly statements appear as soon as they are ready.

Also – import passwords, career and educational information!

In addition to our partnership with FileThis, we are also officially announcing Imports, a feature that makes it easy to automatically add and update information to your vault — everything from usernames, passwords and addresses to career and financial aid history and important documents — so that it’s always at your fingertips to reuse or share.

With our new “Add Data” button, you can also import:

Passwords from popular password managers to easily add your usernames and passwords to Personal
Education & Career History from LinkedIn and the U.S. Department of Education

Whether you’re adding bills and statements, passwords or education and career history, imports makes adding information to your vault quick and easy.

What’s the Right Model for Personal Data Stores?

This post was originally published on Ctrl-SHIFT.

Last week the US based personal data store Personal announced it was moving from a free to a paid for service. We caught up with co-founder and CEO Shane Green to ask him about the background.

1. What does this move from Personal suggest about the evolution of the PDS market as a whole?

I think it signals the emergence of a robust, stable business model that both consumers and companies already understand – you pay for a service or product that is valuable.

We believe the heart of the current PDS or personal data vault market opportunity is around productivity and convenience, in the vein of Evernote or Dropbox. While we see incredibly interesting VRM-type opportunities on the horizon, we have found that people immediately understand the value of a PDS if their lives are made easier and more convenient by it.

For that reason, we’ve priced our core service – $29.99 per year – at a price point that individuals are already paying for similar type services. And given the sensitive and private nature of certain data in a PDS, we have also found that people have more confidence in the privacy and security protections offered when there is a cost associated. And, of course, they don’t have the lingering suspicion about “being the product” that is being sold as can be the case with a free service.

I would add that we have also found a meaningful appetite among companies in certain verticals, such as banking, insurance, health and education, to help pay for such a service if it brings value to their customers. The fact that they are willing to pay for the service while respecting the integrity and sanctity of an individual’s control over a PDS is a huge step forward for the industry as a whole.

For more background on our announcement, please see these two links:
http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/blog/techflash/2013/06/personalcom-is-now-charging-but-its.html?page=all http://blog.personal.com/2013/06/leaving-beta-becoming-a-paid-service/

2. What are the particular things that you think people will be prepared to pay for? (is it safe storage of my data, easy form filling etc.)

As I mentioned, it all starts with productivity and convenience that is demonstrable in their lives. Our paid service will give the user a number of benefits: secure storage of and constant access to important data, notes and files; secure sharing of this information with other people, apps and organizations; easy reuse of data through automatic form-filling; and easy imports of information and documents from companies and organizations they do business with. In addition, we will charge for additional services and benefits around security and other functionality. Stay tuned for details.

While our initial go to market partners see this as more of a value added service to offer their customers, what will take the paid service to the next level is evidence that connecting with customers via a PDS and private network can impact both their top and bottom lines.

3. It’s often said individuals are not prepared to pay for services like these. Is this conventional wisdom wrong? If so, why?

I think conventional wisdom reflected a certain reality that is changing. Quite simply, PDS services have not delivered enough tangible value to date. They have been too limited in the benefits they delivered, and most have been quite a lot of work to make useful.

But all of the hard work by the current wave of PDS providers is paying off, both because the products are delivering more value, and the macro trends could not be coming together more powerfully, whether it is the pervasiveness of smart phones in our lives, the explosion of connected devices and the data they generate, or the privacy and security discussions now dominating headlines.

Organizations like Ctrl-Shift, the World Economic Forum and the Aspen Institute have all been documenting this shift recently, including focusing on big companies and governments (such as the US and UK) that are innovating around ways to give data back to people. It all points to the fact that the concepts of data vaults and individuals gaining greater control and value over their information is becoming mainstream. Previously, people didn’t have the technology to properly leverage that information. That has changed with the emergence of a number of start-ups, including Mydex, Paoga, Qiy, Respect Network, and Personal. But this trend is not limited to start-ups. The World Economic Forum’s recent report highlighted Fortune 1000 companies that are also providing products and services that empower people with their information.

4. What areas will Personal be looking to develop with this new investment?

Our main focus is on making our PDS available when and where it is needed in a person’s life. We are super focused on the different contexts where people need data – or are creating data – and how to make the PDS seamlessly integrated while maintaining user control with privacy and security.

Ironically, many of those contexts involve companies, organizations, schools, hospitals, government agencies, apps, sites, etc. – third parties of all kinds. There is just no reason people need to manage such data interactions separately across what we call their “personal data graph.”

Just as the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement was inevitable, we believe the Bring Your Own Data movement is just an inevitable. But a BYOD world requires new kinds of permission and trust, and as that happens, I think you are going to see a wave of BYOD apps that are a magnitude better than current apps that either track us or require social data sharing. We are excited to help catalyze that ecosystem.

Note

Ctrl-Shift’s Personal Data Store report analyses the growth of the PDS market, while our Breakthrough Efficiencies research look at some of the benefits organisations can reap by linking to new personal data management services.

Leaving Beta & Becoming a Paid Service

This post was originally published under the same title on the Personal blog, A Personal Stand.

Today is an exciting day for Personal. We’re announcing that we’re leaving Beta and will become a paid service.

We started Personal with a mission to empower individuals to easily and securely store, share and reuse their personal data. Today, thanks to lots of hard work and the help of many loyal Owners and supporters, we are making this vision a reality.

Recent improvements to our data vaults make them faster, more intuitive and easier to use. Our Fill It app is helping people save many hours filling out online logins, checkouts, applications and other forms. Companies across industries, as well as schools and other organizations, are partnering with Personal to empower their customers with these revolutionary tools.

The next step in this journey starts today, as we become a paid service. This will enable us to invest more in our growing platform of vaults, Fill It and other apps to make your information even more valuable and beneficial to you. It also shows that, unlike so many other online services, at Personal, you are definitely not the product.

For $29.99 (about $2.50 per month, or the price of a nice cup of coffee), individuals will be empowered with the best data vault and automatic form-filling tools on the market, including:

Private, secure web and mobile vaults synced across your devices
Unlimited data storage and secure sharing
50 MB of secure document and photo storage as well as integration with Dropbox for additional secure storage
Fill It app for automatic form-filling

As a thank you to our early Owners, we are keeping Personal free for anyone who has already signed up. Nothing will change for them.

New Owners, starting tomorrow, will be able to enjoy a 30-day free trial. If a new Owner does not subscribe after the free trial expires, they will still have a free Secure Data Viewer, so they can view the information they have entered and any information that others have shared with them, even after the free trial expires. More details about the Secure Data Viewer will be coming soon.

Finally, I want to thank our loyal Owners and supporters. Without them, we could not have reached this exciting place. We look forward to more great things to come.

For details on how the paid service terms will work, click here.

A Rising Tide of Data, Partnered With Privacy by Design, Will Lift All Boats

This piece was originally published on the Disruptive Competition Project blog (DisCo).

By Dr. Ann Cavoukian and Shane Green

Over the last year, we have started to see a remarkable shift in the way the world thinks about data and privacy. The old levies of compliance and binary permission settings are being washed away by a rising tide of data that is growing at a rate exceeding Moore’s Law.

In fact, more data will be created and captured this year than in all of human history. Fueling this explosion are connected devices so numerous that, according to a recent GSMA study, there will be more such devices throwing off data this year than there are people in the world.

In this rapidly changing data ecosystem, tools such as one-time notice-and-consent agreements and simple transparent disclosures are less helpful, perhaps becoming obsolete. Individuals can no longer be treated as passive data subjects who merely provide information for collection and use by an organization. Instead, more sophisticated approaches are required based on context-based approvals and, more importantly, informed individuals who are engaged with their data across their lives.

We too must evolve, and those companies and organizations that empower individuals to be full partners in this emerging personal data ecosystem will create tremendous value in the form of stronger, deeper and trusted relationships with their customers, thereby gaining new competitive advantages, including greater, not less, access to data.

The latest signs that these once revolutionary ideas are today becoming mainstream, and will tomorrow become the standard for doing business, are two recent reports by centrist, pro-business think tanks. Continue reading

Data Vaults Go Mainstream at World Economic Forum

This post was originally published under the same title on the Personal blog, A Personal Stand and can also be found on the World Economic Forum Rethinking Personal Data website

In the last six months, a fast growing and somewhat unexpected chorus has emerged around the need to give people greater control over their personal information.

Mainstream think tanks are now focused on it – see the recent Aspen Institute report, which focuses extensively on “the new economy of personal information” and the central role of individuals in it.

Governments are also catalyzing this new model. The Midata initiative in the U.K. and the Open Data initiative in the United States are giving back government-collected data to citizens in organized, reusable form.

But what’s most interesting is the growing realization among companies that their futures are tied to building new relationships with consumers who are increasingly empowered with and savvy about their digital data, and who have growing concerns about how their data is captured and used.

That’s why a new report released today by the World Economic Forum, whose membership is made up of Fortune 1000 companies, is so important. “Unlocking the Value of Personal Data: From Collection to Usage” is a product of the Forum’s multi-year Rethinking Personal Data Project, and was led by Forum official Bill Hoffman (see his blog today on the report) and a steering committee of the Boston Consulting Group, Kaiser Permanente, Visa, Microsoft, AT&T and VimpelCom. Personal also participated, and is a member of the Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Data-Driven Development.

When you consider the organizations behind the report, its major conclusions are all the more dramatic:

Companies and governments need to put people at the center of their data, empowering individuals to engage in how their data flows through technology. This means giving consumers greater access to and control over their information as well as the tools to benefit directly from it.

We need to move past old notions of privacy that revolved around simple notice and consent. Instead, companies should adopt Privacy by Design principles that address every stage of product, technology and business development. This would ensure, for example, that apps feature user-driven permissioning of data and have greater transparency and control over how it’s used and valued.

The report blows a hole through the canard that e-commerce and privacy cannot peacefully coexist. It’s not a zero-sum game. Instead, it’s a win-win for businesses and consumers where even more data can flow between trusted parties.

Perhaps most exciting, the report detailed a number of use cases in which companies are helping consumers to leverage their personal information to improve their lives, ranging from health care (Kaiser Permanente) to financial data (Visa) to automotive price transparency (Truecar) to online reputational information (Reputation.com).

Personal was also profiled to demonstrate how personal data vaults can make the time-wasting tradition of form filling obsolete, saving literally billions of hours annually, and greatly improving the delivery of public and private sector services. Check out www.personal.com/fillit to see how your company or organization can participate.

We’re excited to see the model we have been building over the past three years start to catch fire, and we expect to see a lot more progress in the next six months.

Launching ‘Fill It’

This post was originally published under the same title on the Personal blog, A Personal Stand.

Today, I’m excited to announce the launch of “Fill It”, a new app built on the Personal Platform that makes it easier for you to save and reuse your personal information and passwords online.

Fill It for Easy, Secure Password Management

With Personal’s mobile and web data vault, you can already securely store, retrieve and safely share your logins and passwords. With Fill It, you no longer have to copy and paste passwords to log in to websites. Fill It does it for you in seconds.

Initially launched as a bookmarklet, Fill It automatically delivers usernames and passwords from your vault to log you in to websites in seconds. You can also create and save new passwords on the fly. Fill It enables you to get control of all of your passwords so you can stop using the same or easy passwords across sites, saving you time, while significantly increasing your security. (Mobile logins continue to use one touch copying to clipboard to paste into native and mobile web apps.)

Fill It for Fast Registration and Checkouts

Fill It also allows you to easily fill out registrations and checkouts by enabling you to securely reuse personal and work information, credit card and reward numbers, and other information from across your life. Fill It can help you reclaim dozens of hours of time each year, conveniently shop online and enjoy greater peace of mind by not having your sensitive information on so many sites.

Fill It for Longer Forms

Unlike other form filling solutions, Fill It can leverage thousands of different fields of data (and they’re growing by the day) from Personal’s web and mobile data vault, enabling much more in-depth form filling for a wider variety of forms, such as applications – and with a higher degree of protection.

It’s our mission to make the manual, repetitive, and time-consuming process of filling out forms a thing of the past. With your help – and that of companies, sites and organizations – we can. Just let them know about Fill It and that they should improve the forms on their sites according to best practices.

Getting Started

It’s easy to get started. Simply add Fill It to your bookmark bar. Then go to an online login or form and click “Fill It.”

When filling out a form for the first time, Fill It saves that information in your Personal data vault if it’s not already stored there. Whenever you need that information again, just click “Fill It” to automatically complete the form in seconds.

What does life with Fill It look like? Meet Sarah. Sarah’s a busy mom who uses Fill It to make her life easier – whether it’s logging in to websites, shopping online, storing her kids’ information or keeping track of shipping addresses around the holidays. Watch our video to learn more about Sarah and Fill It.

Calling All Developers, Companies and Organizations

We invite developers, companies and organizations of all types (government, schools, non-profits) to embrace and promote auto-completion of logins and forms with Fill It.

For every form you optimize for auto-form filling, you can save thousands of hours of time and hassle for your customers or constituents, and significantly increase your conversion rates and the quality of the service you deliver.

It starts with following best practices in how you design and implement forms and data fields. Check out the guide we created for you for more details.

Introducing the New and Improved Personal

This post was originally published under the same title on the Personal blog, A Personal Stand.

Today, I am excited to introduce the new and improved Personal. We have been getting it ready for you, the Personal community, and now it’s finally here. The new Personal is

Faster. New streamlined navigation, sorting and filtering gets you where you want to go in an instant.
Easier. View your Gems and Gems from your connections together in one easy-to-read screen and see who has private, secure access to them.
Personalized. Easily group your Gems using tags and other views like last updated, most viewed, alphabetical and connections.

Here are a few ways to use some of our favorite new features, like tags:

Home and Work. Use tags to separate your Gems for home and your Gems for work. For example, you can tag computer, wi-fi and alarm passwords, and other information from around the office with a work tag. Tag the passwords for home computer and other electronics, alarm and wi-fi for around the house with a home tag. Share Gems with family members and co-workers so everyone has easy access to the information when they need it.
Kids. You can create a tag for each of your children so that you and your family members can easily access the right information when you need it for school forms, applications and doctors’ appointments.

Take the new Personal for a spin, let us know what you think and read our FAQs for additional information.

We would love to hear about your favorite tags and features, as well as what you would like to see in the future.

‘Personal for Education’: Helping Schools and Families From Preschool through College

This post was originally published under the same title on the Personal blog, A Personal Stand.

Today, Personal launched ‘Personal for Education,’ a set of tools for families and schools to easily organize, securly share and reuse their important personal and educational information. From scholarship and financial aid information to student directories and events, Personal is making your data more accessible, accurate and available on the go.

We were especially excited to launch ‘Personal for Education’ at the White House ‘Education Datapalooza,’ where we were one of several companies invited to present ways that individuals can put their own federal education data to use.

Fast Form Filling for Scholarships and Financial Aid

Soon, you’ll be able to import your federal education data, including information you’ve previously submitted while applying for financial aid, directly to Personal. In an instant, Personal will transform a jumble of data into categories of organized and helpful information. You can then use and reuse your information whenever you want, whether for completing next year’s aid form in seconds or calculating student loan payments. Check out this video to see how it works.

I’m especially excited about our scholarship and financial aid application tool because of the impact it will have on students like Alfredo Loris. Alfredo is an operations intern at Personal. He and his family, like so many, have struggled their way through FAFSA and other aid forms each year. Now in college, but having to apply for aid each year, this product will make a real difference for him and millions of other students. Learn more about Alredo and Personal’s fast form filling for education by watching his video on our Personal for Education page. While you’re there, check out a second moving video about Sharon Gatobu and her sister, both of whom have struggled with financial aid applications.

Secure Sharing for Schools and Families

I’m also proud to say that preschools are already using Personal to securely share and keep parents, teachers and administrators updated with constantly changing information, from key contacts and resources at the school to student directories and event schedules. If the school updates anything, say a change in address or phone number, it’s automatically updated for everyone who has secure access to the information through Personal web and mobile. No more showing up on the wrong day or time for soccer, a play, or your parent-teacher conference.

Want more information? Click on Personal for Education, check out our press release, or email partners@personal.com.

Personal and the World Economic Forum’s New Report

This post was originally published under the same title on the Personal blog, A Personal Stand.

When I learned of the World Economic Forum’s first report on personal data in early 2011, I was surprised to see an organization comprised of Fortune 1000 companies highlight the many cutting-edge problems we were addressing at Personal. Their report went so far as to call personal data a “new economic asset class,” and made a bold assertion that individuals needed to be empowered with their data to create balance, fairness and stability in the new digital economy.

We were delighted to then be asked to participate in the Forum’s Rethinking Personal Data Working Group, which today released a new report, produced in collaboration with The Boston Consulting Group, entitled: “Rethinking Personal Data: Strengthening Trust.” You can see the Forum’s press release here, and our own here.

The report broadly defines personal data, including data that is directly or indirectly known about you and your family, friends, work, values and beliefs, location/GPS, car, home, finances, spending, browsing history, app usage, health, education – you name it. It further examines the growing instability that comes from a lack of trust and transparency in how personal data is captured and used by companies and governments, while highlighting benefits for all stakeholders, including people, if a better framework emerges that balances the competing needs and interests of all parties.

While startups are famous for “making sausage” – the idea that the reality is messy behind the scenes even when the outcome is good – I think it is fair to say we made some (very good) sausage over the last year. There were a wide range of passionate and thoughtful views on most every subject that touches personal data – ownership rights, consent, the primacy of the individual, the right to be forgotten, transparency, privacy, data security, national security, sovereignty, public safety, regulation, public health, political freedom, and, last but far from least, innovation and economic growth.

Many of the report’s recommendations focus on much needed improvements to the current model, where companies and governments are central. Others point to ways to explore new models that could give individuals a better seat at the table and that can create, through enhanced trust, even better outcomes for companies and governments willing to abide by new rules.

We were delighted to both participate in this important endeavor and to see Personal, along with companies like Dropbox, Reputation.com, Mydex and Qiy, be highlighted as an innovator working to empower people with their data. We are confident that the benefits will be magical for all involved as people are able to effectively manage and use this “new economic asset” across their lives.