Tailscale, a startup that touts itself as a new kind of corporate virtual privacy network (VPN), has launched its product and raised $3 million in seed funding.
The seed round was led by San Francisco-based accelerator fund Heavybit, with participation from Uncork Capital and other undisclosed investors.
“Legacy VPNs were never designed with the modern workforce or fully distributed teams in mind,”
Founded in 2019, Tailscale is a startup that was created by a group of former Google software engineers. The company runs fully remote and was founded by Montreal-based Avery Pennarun, who serves as CEO, Toronto-based David Carney (COO), as well as David Crawshaw (CTO) and Brad Fitzpatrick, who are both based in the United States.
The idea behind Tailscale is to help remote teams securely access services without the “long setup times of traditional VPNs.” According to the company, its technology is based on Google’s zero-trust BeyondCorp architecture and built using the WireGuard protocol.
Tailscale’s technology requires no hardware or infrastructure and is meant to reduce VPN setup from weeks to minutes by using a team’s existing identity provider, such as GSuite and Office365. The company stated that this close integration with existing identity providers means there’s no separate list of authorized users to maintain, and onboarding and offboarding team members or adding two-factor authentication is simpler than traditional VPN offerings.
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“Legacy VPNs were never designed with the modern workforce or fully distributed teams in mind,” said Heavybit partner Joe Ruscio. “Tailscale’s platform is built on proven technology and is the fastest to implement, keeping employees reliably connected no matter their location.”
“Not every company can deploy Google-scale systems like BeyondCorp,” added Tailscale CEO Pennarum. “We built Tailscale to bring simple security to teams of any size.”
Tailscale’s official launch comes at a time when many companies have had to adjust to remote work. David Taylor, president and CEO of VersaBank, noted that Tailscale has become a key part of the bank’s business continuity plan.
“Our entire team can work from remote locations, avoiding any interruption in service,” said Taylor. “This is especially valuable in managing our business through the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Image source Firmex