Henry Vogel, Co-Founder & Managing Partner at DVx Ventures

There has never been a better time to innovate and build breakthrough businesses than today.

At first blush, you may think we’re suffering from some novel Coronavirus-induced delusion. The world is suffering from a global pandemic that has caused a health crisis affecting millions, economic shutdowns creating unprecedented unemployment and reduced take home pay for tens of millions, and business carnage in almost every industry. Many companies, both large and small, and including some once-high-flying innovators, are on the brink of insolvency or taking drastic actions just to survive. And across America, we’re experiencing profound community upheaval from decades of on-going racism, police abuse and socio-economic plight.

These epic events are not only remarkable because of the depth and intensity of their impact on our daily lives. Their impact is even more acute on our physical, economic and emotional well-being, our psyches and our souls because they’re all happening on a global scale and simultaneously. It’s like we’ve been struck by the Spanish Flu of 1918, the Great Depression of the 1930s and the race riots of the 1960s all at the same moment and in the span of just a few months.

But crises often provide the launchpad for meaningful change, and some of the most innovative and durable businesses have been created during these times. For example, the 2008 great recession spawned the birth and initial funding for many of today’s unicorns. It’s been true for previous shocks and other non-technology companies, too. The Great Depression of the 1930s saw the rise of many of the top companies and global brands for the past century including Disney, GM, IBM, Kraft and many others.

While a crisis is nothing we would ever wish for, it can provide catalysts and create opportunities for innovation which help spur breakthrough business building.

There are three main reasons for this: solving major frictions, the ability to innovate at warp speed, and the opportunity to access the best resources. These three principles are also at the core of our unique approach at DVx Ventures.

1. Solve Major Frictions — Crises lay bare many shortcomings of current solutions. At DVx, we focus on building insanely great products and services that solve big pain points, address unmet needs and delight latent desires for millions of people
2. Innovate at Warp Speed — When routines are disrupted by fundamental changes, people are more open to try new things and form new habits. We see this as an opportunity to build new businesses at warp speed.
3. Access to the Best Resources — The costs of starting a new business are lower during downturns. More importantly — and with the right talent magnet like the DVx platform — attracting top teams of world-class experts dramatically increases the probability of success for new companies.

1) Solve Major Frictions

For the past three decades, I’ve led and been part of teams that have successfully launched and rapidly scaled many new, disruptive businesses across sectors and geographies. Many of these have been early-stage startups. More recently, I’ve helped many large enterprises design, launch and scale new corporate ventures which have also introduced innovative products, services and business models to both their existing customers and new consumers in adjacent markets.

The common pattern and most important ingredient to the success of these new businesses is that they all solve material frictions impacting large numbers of people.

Consumer frictions fall into three categories:

• Pain Points. These are big deficiencies with existing products and services which force customers to do things less easily, more expensively or with less satisfaction. Put simply, they cause pain for the consumer. These pain points are visible when observing customers using a given product and trying to accomplish their goals. But, you need to know how to look for them. For example, organizing emails in your inbox and storing them in folders so you could later access them used to be a time-consuming, anxiety provoking and difficult chore for many millions of people. Google solved this massive pain point and upended an enormous market for personal productivity tools with Gmail.
• Unmet Needs. Even when there are no pain points to observe, there are often solutions consumers are looking for to make their lives easier or more efficient. If you know how to ask the right questions, you can learn these insights from consumers. For example, millions of consumers used to be constrained by how many songs they could easily access and listen to while on the go — in their car on a cassette, on a portable boombox at the beach or a walkman on a run. Being able to buy individual songs (vs. being forced to buy an entire album) and having access to thousands of songs and playlists in your pocket was simply impossible. Apple’s iPod player and iTunes store solved these unmet needs and revolutionized the music industry and consumer electronics market.
• Latent Desires. Sometimes, pain points aren’t observable and consumers can’t easily articulate their unmet needs clearly. But, they still have many latent desires which surface when they’re presented with a new invention. Henry Ford famously said something to the effect of, “if you asked horse and buggy consumers what they wanted, they would have told you faster horses.” People couldn’t imagine ‘horseless carriages.’ But, when they saw their first car, they were blown away! And, the introduction of automobiles went beyond just moving us from point A to point B; it began decades of innovations and a love affair with car culture that continues to this day.

All three types of frictions become more apparent in the light of social and economic disruptions. And, we intensely focus on trying to urgently solve them. As the proverb goes, necessity is indeed the mother of invention. When there’s a clear need and strong will, people find a way.

Market dislocations and disruptive events also encourage people to ‘shine a light’ on other areas to expose and solve even broader frictions. The 2008 great recession revealed the significant shortcomings in our mortgage financing system — and the entire residential and commercial housing market which relied upon it. The financial crisis also exposed many other areas where information was asymmetric, incentives around risk/reward were misaligned, data was siloed, transparency was lacking, and simplicity and understanding were missing. These same frictions proved to be very common in many other sectors and industries which spawned innovations in wholly new ways leveraging cloud computing and gig economy marketplaces, just to name two examples which could aptly be used to categorize many of the large and successful companies which were started near the end of 2008 and into 2009.

The magnitude of pain caused by the COVID-19 virus today is acute, quite literally. This crisis is also exposing frictions across the entire healthcare system. To name just a few, squads of pioneers across the globe are working to …

• Invent reliable tests, prophylactics, vaccines and therapeutics to help prevent infection and cure this invisible killer
• Quickly boost our supply of personal protective equipment
• Develop creative manufacturing solutions to build and retrofit ventilators
• Come up with smart ways to improve the scale and trustworthiness of contact tracing while maintaining individual privacy

Beyond just finding a vaccine and cure for the COVID-19 killer, this crisis is also providing a catalyst for entrepreneurs to uncover and solve frictions across our entire healthcare system and in many other areas, too.

We call this effect Ripple Wave Innovation.

Crises create the impetus for innovators to see frictions and ask “What if” questions to develop new solutions and capture many new opportunities. We expect to see a wave of pioneers discover, refine and adopt many new solutions.

For example, we see a wave of pioneers working to leverage these tools to discover, refine and deploy new solutions for disease and wellness management including: virtual treatment administration and remote monitoring, patient biometric data capture, at-home testing solutions, labor efficiency and automation solutions like Physician Assistant protocols and AI-enabled diagnostic tools, trusted and private contact testing and tracing, personal custody of electronic medical records, and many other infrastructure requirements to implement these new solutions securely, simply and confidentially (e.g., cyber security platforms, price transparency solutions, virtual collaboration and visualization tools, etc.).

This crisis moment will also help innovate and develop solutions to address broader opportunities in other industries and across society to make these solutions more accessible to more people. The same improvements in VOIP and video conferencing helping tele-medicine and remote patient monitoring are also being leveraged to address other needs including remote-first work-from-home, online distance learning, collaborative virtual conferencing and networking, remote and on-person live video monitoring, and immersive virtual reality entertainment and socialization to name just a few. And, we’re not only seeing innovation make these tools better, but also innovation to provide them to all the communities that need them and to use them for social and equal justice.

We think it’s fair to say that not only how we get healthcare, but how we live our daily lives, communicate, learn, work, collaborate, police and socialize more broadly will never be the same. We hope and believe it will be much better.

Later this summer, DVx will introduce Curbee, a new mobile car maintenance and repair service whose goal is to reinvent car care to build trust and inspire love of ownership. In a time when we all have increased expectations for contactless and convenient services, Curbee will deliver on this ‘new normal’ and provide peace of mind with curbside car care from the comfort of your home — and when we return to work — your office.

2) Innovate at Warp Speed

As these frictions are met head on and solved, people start to use and experience new solutions. And, as they do so, new behaviors and habits are formed.

It’s well known that changing habitual behaviors is very difficult. Even when there are material frictions and great new solutions to solve them, most people are very hesitant to try new things. That said, changes in behavior — and the formation of new habits and related product/service/brand relationships — are often started when pre-existing routines are disrupted by fundamental changes in our lives. It’s for this reason that marketers often target consumers going through key life events to gain trial for their products and services — teenagers leaving home, young adults starting to cohabitate, new parents starting families, older adults downsizing after their children have left the nest, even older adults heading to retirement, and many other people when either upscaling or downsizing due to various personal, social and economic changes in their lives (e.g., getting divorced, being laid off, moving, …). In all these types of life events, there is some dislocation of existing habits which make people aware of new needs, more willing to try new things and change behaviors.

Crises brought upon by external shocks like many people are experiencing today — separated from friends and family, lost incomes and facing much greater stress and uncertainty about their future than ever before — affect consumers on a massive scale. We’re seeing people hungry for, in fact demanding, change.

This newfound willingness to try new things presents a perfect opportunity for pioneers to invent new solutions to change the status quo and solve material frictions. It’s a time for entrepreneurs to create breakthrough businesses that address people’s demand for change and introduce new innovative solutions

Take for example Moderna’s mRNA-1237 vaccine. This promising new class of vaccine is being created by a portfolio company of Flagship Pioneering, one of the inspirations for DVx Ventures, that also believes innovation is a repeatable process that can be taught and executed systematically by teams of world class experts and entrepreneurs.

While far from proven yet, Moderna’s innovations are happening at warp speed. When the COVID-19 virus first appeared and the magnitude of the global pandemic became apparent in late 2019, the Moderna team began exploring how their mRNA technology and approach to entrepreneuring could develop and produce a vaccine. As soon as more information became available, they mobilized.

• January 11: Chinese scientists release the genomic sequence of the virus online
• January 13 (48 hours from sequence selection): Moderna and the US National Institute of Health (NIH) team finalize the sequence for mRNA-1237, the first vaccine design
• February 7 (25 days): first clinical batch produced and analytical tests begin
• March 4 (51 days): US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) allows phase 1 clinical trials
• March 16 (63 days): Phase I clinical trial led by NIH begins and first participant is dosed
• May 1 (109 days): Moderna and Lonza announce partnership to manufacture mRNA-1273 with goal of producing first batch by July 2020 and up to 1 billion doses per year
• May 7 (115 days): FDA allows phase 2 clinical trials, expected to begin laster in May
• May 18 (126 days): Moderna announces positive interim phase 1 data
• May 31 (139 days): Moderna doses its first phase 2 participants in each age cohort
• June. 11 (150 days): Moderna and NIH finalize protocol for phase 3 human trials, including feedback from FDA; study to begin later this summer

There are several reasons why Moderna can innovate so quickly. First, speed is a hallmark of Flagship’s systematic method, disciplined approach, practiced process and experienced teams. Second, their technology is inherently faster because mRNA vaccines use the sequence of the virus, instead of the virus itself. As a result, Moderna doesn’t have to test in people upfront and can do the basic science, develop clinical trials and manufacture, test and iterate a vaccine much more quickly. Third, the intense sense of urgency around this crisis fostered partnerships across scientific communities and with federal, state and local government agencies who helped break down bureaucratic barriers and provided significant support. And fourth, the disproportionate amount of funding, focus, resources and energy devoted to solving this problem clearly helped.

3) Access to the Best Resources

No doubt, starting and scaling a business during an economic downturn introduces many challenges and requires persistence, agility, and discipline to succeed. Not least of these challenges is being able to raise capital when overall markets are down and investors are trading off making new investments versus deploying capital to help struggling portfolio companies.

Crises also presents several opportunities when compared to doing the same during a go-go hype cycle. teams get battle tested and trained to have the grit, frugality and ingenuity to overcome any obstacle. Often, top talent also become more available to startups. And, building teams from the ground up allow companies to create more diverse teams that reflect people and perspectives from all communities.

In addition, lower costs make it easier to stretch runways and provide time to iterate in search of product-market and go-to-market fit for new solutions. There have been secular trends reducing the costs of starting a new business for the past 30+ years. This is especially true for technology companies where costs have declined along with the decrease in the overall cost of computing. Moreover, new Software-as-a-Service solutions, open source software libraries and third party APIs have also made it easier, faster and simpler to develop and test new technology solutions. Also, access to local gig economy workers and global marketplaces for knowledge workers (e.g., engineers, designers, etc.) have made accessing talent easier and less expensive for startups. And, new shared resource solutions like co-working real estate or remote-working virtual solutions have also reduced fixed overhead costs. IN this way, economic crises act as accelerants and make all of these productivity-enhancing solutions even better and more affordable.

Crises like we’re living through today also provide one other great accelerant for new business creation: they make top talent more available and accessible … for the right talent magnets. For example, even with the plethora of great talent living in Silicon Valley over the past 50+ years, one of the hardest things to do and single biggest constraint on startup success, has been the ability to recruit, motivate and retain top talent. And, with the inexorable rising cost of living here, salaries, perks and ‘prima donna cultures’ have all risen, too. This has combined to increase the cost and reduce the productivity of teams available to startups.

The response to the COVID-19 shelter-in-place quarantines across the world has opened up the question on location and how the freedom of remote work can benefit not only the individual, but also organizations. Companies can better reach a more diverse pool of top talent than just in high-cost talent centers. Knowledge workers and companies alike are unconstrained to tap into this dynamic and create economic benefits for more people, especially those in under-represented groups. Not only are there productivity gains from removing commuting times and savings in recruiting, real estate and other fixed costs, but companies are able to open the door to more people from more diverse geographies, race and socio-economic groups.

Innovation at DVx Ventures

In this context, and for all the reason above, we can’t think of a better time to launch DVx Ventures.

Our mission at DVx is to build a company that launches and scales a portfolio of game-changing businesses that have a positive impact on our society and the world at large. Our multiplier effect changes startup velocity with our team-first approach, network of world class experts, proven methodology, repeatable processes and company creating platform.

The DVx team has created more than a dozen companies, generating tens of thousands of jobs, delivering a 9x return to investors and creating billions of dollars in value. We’re not only inventors and entrepreneurs, we’re also operators and scalers; our founders bring experience from key roles in growing Tesla, Lyft, eBay, Google, Lululemon, BCG and Symantec among other great companies.

We’ve built a platform to bring companies to life that’s based on these principles of innovation:

• Team-First Philosophy. We empower our world class team of multi-disciplinary experts to win together. Diverse teams with a broad set of experience, perspectives and backgrounds that reflect the marketplace will have the best chance to win. We firmly believe that while individual MVPs may win games, teams win championships.
• Proven Processes. We’ve built a “way” — a repeatable method to explore, incubate, launch and scale breakthrough businesses. We leverage rigorous research methodologies to define businesses that meet our stringent criteria for desirability, feasibility and viability.
• Bias for Impact. We solve challenging problems at unprecedented speed. If we can’t find a way, we make a way and battle through, around and over obstacles. We lead to learn because improvement is a discovery process and there is always a better way — our challenge is to find it.

We’re excited to have several companies in our pipeline and our teams are already innovating and building in the heart of this crisis and at record speed. Through our mission and unique approach, we believe we will create the next version of 2008’s unicorn chart.

Now is the time to innovate and build breakthrough businesses.

Henry Vogel is an entrepreneur, investor and executive who has founded and scaled several businesses, leading companies from early stage formation to hyper growth scale. Henry was an early partner at BCG Digital Ventures, founder and CEO at Raved (BCG) and Apptera (Soleo), CRO at Quigo (AOL) and VP of Corp Strategy, Business Development and internet Marketing at eBay. Today, Henry is Co-Founder & Managing Partner at DVx Ventures.

Time to Innovate! was originally published in DVx Ventures on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Thanks, @mflaxman for your Tweets, presentations and challenge for a better, more secure and easier to use crypto hardware wallet. We totally agree with you when you said, “storing bitcoin private keys is really hard, and unfortunately every hardware wallet I’ve seen sucks.” In our view and with the offerings on the market today, we think users are forced to make a compromise between security and convenience. That’s Why we Built Keevo.

We believe Keevo is the most secure AND convenient hardware wallet. And, although there’s no such thing as a 100% failure-free and hack-proof system, we truly believe Keevo offers a significant advancement in security and ease-of-use. We detailed some of the features and benefits we believe back up this claim here. We went through your 6 requests, and while we’re not yet at 100%, we scored ourselves meeting a bit over two thirds or a smidge over 4 out of 6 of your requests. We hope to get to 100% soon.

See below for more details on our thoughts and how we scored ourselves. We’d be curious to know how you would score us and how you would compare Keevo to the other leading hardware wallets on the market.

Request #1

Simple support for m-of-n multi-sig (where m is > 1 and includes competitors’ hardware wallets). If you go from 1-of-1 keys using a “great” hardware wallet and add a lousy hardware wallet but make it 2-of-2, you immediately improve your security (multi-sig security is additive).

Keevo: We totally agree. While users can generate multi-sig wallets using bitcoin core client or some GUI clients like electrum, we agree these are not easy solutions. Both the Keevo One Vault and Keevo desktop app will support BIP174 (bitcoin multi-sig script), so users can utilize Keevo as one of their m-of-n multi-sig wallets. We are also on an easy-to-use desktop GUI for users to do bitcoin transactions easily. At launch and beyond Keevo’s multi-sig solution for beneficiaries (see more below), generating m-of-n wallets will not be offered right away, but we plan to support it in the near future.

Beyond bitcoin multi-sig scrip, Keevo will provide an m-of-n secret sharing solution that leverages our Multi-Factor / Multi-Sig Authentication (“MF/MSA”) system. This isat the heart of the Keevo security and privacy solution.

Keevo’s private master key is never stored in the device or anywhere else. It is only and always backed up and restored through secret sharing. Our MF/MSA system is based on Shamir’s Secret Sharing Algorithm — essentially an application of the Lagrange Polynomial. Keevo’s MF/MSA system then introduces a second tier — actually multiple additional tiers — of factors and signatures as needed.

At launch, MF/MSA enables Keevo to be the world’s first and only four factor hardware wallet and authentication solution (“4FA”) to store, access and transfer cryptocurrencies. It also enables two signatures for each factor — one for the owner and one for a beneficiary named by the owner. But, our MF/MSA system is highly extensible to any k-of-n factors and m-of-n signatures and we plan to introduce additional signature and factors over time. Our white paper details more of the specifics behind our MF/MSA system.

We’d give ourselves half credit or 0.5 “points” on this request.

Request #2

Have a true air-gapped, meaning that it is eternally quarantined (and gapped with air) from an internet connected device. To accomplish this, it must use QR codes. An SD card, audio cable or bluetooth can work, but given how cheap/easy QR codes are there’s no reason.

Keevo: We agree in principal, but have not adopted this protocol for our first Keevo One Vault. Keevo does not connect directly to the internet, but for convenience, we will let users connect their Keevo One Vault hardware wallet to out downloadable desktop app through BLE 5.0 and USB. This communication will use U2F two-way encrypted connections. We will only have a connection when in use and will disconnect when idle, but the device will not be fully air gapped at launch. We will look into adding a camera to leverage QR codes for ease and to completely air gap Keevo for more security in the future.

We wouldn’t give ourselves any credit for this request at this time.

Request #3

Make it easy for users to input their mnemonic and passphrase (a few hard to click buttons are not sufficient). Otherwise, users won’t remember/test long mnemonic/passphrase and will instead rely on less secure PINs.

Keevo: the Keevo One Vault has a 2.8” (71 mm) diagonal LCD, 320 × 240 pixel, capacitive touch screen display. This allows users to easily input long pass phrases easily. Below is a picture of our LCD display and PCB during recent testing.

In addition to this display, we actually think needing to backup, safely store and access/re-enter a long mnemonic seed phrase is both incredibly inconvenient and actually introduces another significant security and privacy gap with every other hardware wallet on the market today. While we will still enable users to create and write down a seed phrase, Keevo’s MF/MSA introduces the first paperless recovery solution by encrypting and storing partial signatures on our Carbon Key. Using this second device and 3 out of 4 factors and signatures instead of a mnemonic, Keevo can restore any private key. After launch, we plan on introducing additional factors and signatures which can introduce further user-created entropy and unique sub-keys to make Keevo even more secure.

Moreover and with today’s solutions, if you want to transfer your cryptocurrency to a beneficiary without sharing your private keys, seed phrases or account information with them — before you die — you can’t. It’s impossible to transfer your crypto with today’s hardware or software wallets without actually transferring the crypto to another public address or giving another person — whether the beneficiary or a custodian or executor of a will etc. — access to your private keys or information to access/restore your keys.

With the Keevo Carbon Key and our Premium Plus Membership Beneficiary service, we solve for this . And, while users do need to rely upon us as a third-party to validate your death and transfer your Carbon Key to a named beneficiary, you can do so without ever having to share your private keys or account information with us, your beneficiary or anyone else. And, given our MF/MSA system, only the beneficiary you named and who encrypted their strong PIN and biometric fingerprint information on your Carbon Key can restore your master private key and access your crypto upon your death when we transfer your Carbon Key to them. You can learn more about our beneficiary solution here.

While we’d like to give ourselves more than a point here — or technically we would add two additional requests — one for paperless recovery and one for a private, native beneficiary transfer service — which we think are must haves for any next gen hardware wallet, we’ll be conservative and only give ourselves one “point” for this request.

Request #4

Maintain user privacy by not requiring you to query a third party service to fetch balance and UTXO data. The obvious solution here is to by default use Bitcoin Core’s new PBST feature with a watch only wallet.

Keevo: At launch, we will have an in-house bitcoin provider to fetch balance and UTXO. We would never store/track any user requests, so user privacy would be fully respected. In the near future and for users with enough network bandwidth and spare disk space, we plan to support local blockchain data syncing so users can potentially query their local blockchain, as well.

We would give ourselves a full point here.

Request #5

Don’t trust, verify. A wallet shouldn’t sign anything that the end-user hasn’t verified. A blind-signing wallet is security theater.

Keevo: Any transaction will be fully displayed in both the 2.8” LCD display on the Keevo One Vault and on the downloadable desktop app. As such, we will allow users to easily verify the complete details of every transaction. And while this verification step still requires the user to take ownership of their own safety by comparing the information themselves, we make it easy for them to do so and will also remind them to do so before confirming any transaction.

We would give ourselves a full point here.

Request #6

There are lots of extra features that would be nice to have, but aren’t needed to be decent: a secure element, a defense against a chosen-nonce attack, support for coinjoins, a GUI (vs command-line only usage), support for altcoins, etc.

Keevo: The Keevo One Vault has a dual-chip architecture which includes two triple-core secure processors for performance and security. These two separate and embedded high-end security micro control units from leading microprocessor suppliers are the same MCUs used to secure passports and credit cards (CC EAL5+ certified). And, with this dual chip architecture, your private keys and encrypted signature sub-keys are completely segregated and never leave the Keevo device. All private keys are safely divided and isolated inside the Keevo device’s two secure elements.

We are going through all existing know attacks, including a chosen-nonce attack and will have a threat model and defense solutions to maximize our protection. We will be providing more details as we get closer to launch. As we said above, no hardware wallet can be 100% immune to attacks and anyone who claims this wouldn’t be credible. using commitments (https://medium.com/cryptoadvance/hardware-wallets-can-be-hacked-but-this-is-fine-a6156bbd199 Fix 1).

We believe we’ve designed a simple, intuitive and elegant GUI for both our Keevo One Vault 2.8” color LCD and the user interface on our downloadable desktop app.

At launch, we plan on providing support for ~100+ cryptocurrencies including all Bitcoin forks, Ethereum and many altcoins. We solicited feedback from our community of interested customers in the past few months and think we’re capturing the vast majority of the 80/20 volume (by value and transaction size/frequency, …) curve to start. We are finalizing the list now and will publish it soon. And, we will be adding to it over time.

We would give ourselves three quarters of a point here since we won’t yet offer all of these feature requests and all of the altcoins available at launch.

What a crazy last week in June!

Crypto markets went wild for sure. We’re all glad to see some movement, even if the markets are down from the highs last week.

But that’s not the only — let alone top — reason this has been such a crazy week for the Keevo team.

Keevo pre-order invites

Our new e-comm website is nearly ready to take pre-orders. We were hoping to launch it last week and release our first batch of invitations. But alas, we hit a temporary road block…

Ironically — or maybe not — accepting online payments for anything related to cryptocurrency is easier said than done. Just mentioning cryptocurrency on an e-commerce website causes all sorts of delays and account reviews — even after the initial approvals and testing.

Our commitment to you is to make sure the pre-order process is as smooth as possible. We don’t want anyone who signed up to the waiting list to miss out on getting a Limited Edition Keevo because of a problem with a payment gateway or not supporting enough payment options.

We are currently testing several payment gateways.

We expect to know more later this week and will keep you posted via email for those of you on the waiting list and on Telegram.

In the meantime… lots of product updates!

The Keevo hardware and software product teams reached several important milestones on the way to manufacturing and delivering our first Keevos in September!

Below are the latest pics of our Keevo hardware Proof of Concept (POCs). A POC is a model used to test, iterate and verify the final manufacturing product and processes.

On the software side

The Keevo software development team delivered the next version of the Keevo Operating System. With this, we also created the first Keevo account, private key and secret sub-keys using our first multi-factor/multi sig authentication system on our test boards!

It may not seem like much to the casual observer, but it’s great progress and the culmination of countless long hours and many nights and weekends working as a team across multiple geographies. We’re looking forward to posting some videos of this account number 1 setup process soon.

Up next

We expect to have an update for you later this week on the results of our coin vote, contest winners and status of our first invitations and pre-orders. Meanwhile, thanks again for all your continued interest and support.

Please continue to stay tuned for additional posts in the coming days on our technical specifications, production and delivery roadmap, partnerships, pricing, pre-order launch and more.

Learn more and pre-order your Keevo HERE

Invitations and product updates are being released first to people who sign-up.

Keevo POCs are in the House was originally published in Keevo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Introducing Keevo Premium Plus Membership

Read Part 1 HERE for an overview of the Keevo team and vision.

Read Part 2 HERE for more details on Keevo’s solution, the tech behind the device and our Multi-Factor / Multi-Sig Authentication system.

And, before diving into Keevo Premium Plus Membership — what it’s all about, what benefits you get, why it’s totally unique and super cool, etc — let’s start by getting two things out of the way:

1. While membership is exclusively available to Keevo owners, it is entirely optional.
2. Whether or not you choose to become a member, the Keevo Vault and Carbon Key remain 100% self-sovereign, totally private and still the most Secure AND Easiest way to manage your digital identity and virtual assets like cryptocurrencies.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way … why are we so excited to announce our Keevo Premium Plus Membership?

If Multi-Factor/Multi-Sig Auth and paperless recovery weren’t enough, we believe membership in Premium Plus takes Keevo to an entirely new level and provides a roadmap to the future of decentralized identity management and blockchain security. There’s nothing else like it on the market today and the benefits from this membership further help break the forced compromise between security and convenience. And, while we’re excited about the initial DApps that we’re building and will offer Premium Plus Members, we are working to make Keevo Plus a platform upon which many other blockchain developers will build ever more innovative and beneficials DApps in the coming months.

At launch, we are including the first year of Premium Plus Membership as part of the Special Limited Edition Keevo we’re offering at a 60% discount (more on Keevo pre-order pricing in our upcoming posts) so users can give it a try. We’re also offering subscribers an opportunity to win a free Lifetime Premium Plus Membership by participating in our community. The deadline for entering this contest is coming up soon, so sign up now. For those of you who decide to purchase the Standard Keevo, while you will miss out on several significant discounts and exclusive benefits to being a launch member (more on those below), you can still choose to join Keevo Premium Plus in the future for an annual fee of $24.99. And, it’s still a great deal. For just $2.08 per month or less than a cup of coffee, Premium Plus Members will get access to a wealth of benefits to protect their crypto and enhance the ease of managing their digital identities.

As the saying goes, membership has its privileges. And we believe Keevo’s Premium Plus Membership brings many. More specifically, our initial Special Limited Edition Keevo pre-order customers will get access to five significant benefits with their Premium Plus Membership.

First

Members will get a Discount Key with exclusive, early access to the Keevo DApp Store and discounts on Services specifically designed to leverage the Keevo Vault and our Multi-Factor / Multi-Sig Authentication system. These services offer ever greater security and convenience for Keevo Plus Members.

All members will be automatically enrolled into KeevoCare. While every Keevo comes with repair coverage through its limited 90-day warranty, KeevoCare members will get an expanded warranty for the full year of their membership. In addition, KeevoCare provides extended coverage for loss or theft by enabling members to order a replacement Keevo for $129 (or 67% off the full retail price of $399) during the term.

Second

Premium Plus members who pre-order our Special Limited Edition Keevo will also automatically be enrolled in the Premium Vault Storage DApp and their first year of storage service will be included with their membership. With this DApp and service, members can store their Carbon Keys in one of our enterprise-grade, geo-dispersed storage facilities. This allows for redundant storage with full end-to-end, private and secure chain-of-custody for their encrypted sub-keys. And, given the security protocols and encryption of the data on the Keevo Carbon Key, even if someone were able to get a hold of their Carbon Key or access their data, there’s nothing they can do with it. And, even if you were say not to trust us, that’s okay: we won’t take it personally. But, there’s still nothing we can do with your Carbon Key. You still have 100% privacy and unique control of your information. The encrypted sub-keys on a your Carbon Key can only restore your master Private Key if combined with at least two other signatures from two of your three other factors (e.g., your strong PIN, fingerprint and/or Keevo Wallet). However and importantly, if something were to happen to one of those factors, we’d still have you covered. All you as a member would need to do is initiate our restoration service to get your Carbon Key so you can restore your master Private Key by signing in with the other factors.

And while we’re including this as part of our Special Limited Edition Keevo bundle at launch, Keevo owners who decide to join Keevo Premium Plus later can still opt in to purchase Plus Secure Storage for as low as $5.99 per month. So here too — and for less than the cost of breakfast sandwich along with your coffee — Premium Plus Storage members can have peace of mind that your Carbon Key is safe and secure, but also readily available if you need to restore your private keys.

Third

Members who pre-order our Special Limited Edition Keevo at launch will also gain access to the Keevo Premium Plus Beneficiary DApp and your first year of Beneficiary Service included with your membership. Members can then name a beneficiary (e.g., a spouse, significant other, parent, child or friend) and enable them to set up their own Keevo account, create a strong PIN (which only they know) and enter their biometric information (a fingerprint unique to them). All of this data for their beneficiary’s sub-keys will then be encrypted and stored on a member’s Carbon Key which we will store for you in one of our Premium Plus vaults. In the unfortunate case of a member’s death, a beneficiary can authenticate themselves with Keevo to access their account, provide valid proof of the member’s death with an original, apostilled death certificate and request that we send them the member’s Carbon Key to their recovery address associated with their Beneficiary account. Beneficiaries will also have access to the member’s discount key to purchase a replacement Keevo Wallet at a 67% discount. In this case — and without ever having to give the beneficiary — or anyone else — access to your private account information, PIN or fingerprint — you as a member can still enable your Beneficiary to restore the master Private Key and gain access to your digital assets after your death.

Fourth

Keevo Premium Plus Members will also be able to use your unique Discount Key to gain exclusive discounts and early access to future Keevo products and services. We’re working on a lot of new products and platform DApps that we’re excited to build and offer in the coming months. Some of these include:

• Unique access to crypto exchanges with discounted fees
• Exclusive ability to invest in select crypto hedge funds like TradeTerminal and other investment or algorithmic trading accounts which users couldn’t otherwise access as a small, private investor
• Affordable insurance plans for crypto stored with your Keevo
• Private Keevo community chat and investment tools
• Secure, self-sovereign and non cloud sync’d password management service
• Decentralized and secure notary document verification services
• Estate planning services including secure digital document vault and co-participant management of assets via Keevo’s MF/MSA system
• Additional Keevo Carbon Keys and storage for redundant recovery
• Exclusive early access to future Keevo products
• Keevo Gift Keys with pre-loaded crypto assets
• Member to member crypto loans
• One click staking as a service
• And, exclusive early access to many other new DApps and services (e.g., secure encrypted document storage for important digital assets like real estate titles, loan documents, medical records, photos, …)

We look forward to sharing more details in the coming months as we launch these additional DApps and services and these solutions and benefits become available to Premium Plus Members.

Fifth

Last but not least, we will also grant members who pre-order our Special Limited Edition Keevo at launch and become Keevo Premium Plus Members a price guarantee that ensures their $24.99 annual Premium Plus Membership renewal fees will never increase. As our initial pre-order launch members, we will always be grateful for your support and committed to giving you access to the best-of-the-best at this initial launch price.

In sum, our mission and purpose with the Keevo Premium Plus Membership is to build a platform that allows members the ability to have self-sovereign control and complete privacy over their digital life in a way that offers them the best security and the most convenience. The Keevo vault is just one piece of this solution. Our Multi-Factor/Multi-Signature Authentication system is the foundation that enables us to start bringing these capabilities and benefits like paperless recovery, secure Carbon Key storage and native beneficiary services to our members. But, they’re only the start of the ecosystem we’re building and planning to deliver value to our members.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -

Please continue to stay tuned for additional posts in the coming days on our technical specifications, production and delivery roadmap, partnerships, pricing, pre-order launch plan and more.

Learn more and pre-order your Keevo HERE

Invitations and product updates are being released to people who sign-up. Pre-order invitations will start going out later this month (June, 2019).

Why We Built Keevo (Part 3) — Premium Service was originally published in Keevo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Breaking the Compromise Between Security and Convenience in Cryptocurrency

I’m Henry Vogel, co-founder and investor in Keevo. I want to introduce you to some of the amazing people on the Keevo team and explain a few things about our project including why we’re building Keevo and why we think Keevo is a significant step forward in cryptocurrency security and convenience.

The Keevo team is over 20 engineers, co-founders, contributors and co-investors. We’re a group of experienced entrepreneurs, blockchain developers, security experts, designers and crypto investors and enthusiasts.

You can see some of the team on our About page or chat with us on Telegram or Twitter.

Together, the Keevo team has over 200 years of cumulative experience working for companies like Google, Amazon, AWS, Cisco, Texas Instruments, Nike, FitBit, Boston Scientific, eBay, Yahoo, AltaVista, Apptera and more.

Some of us started mining Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as early as 2014. Others have been advising and investing in various startups in the blockchain space. Many of our developers, industrial and product designers, product managers, operations and business teams have known each other and worked together for years on various endeavors including a new enterprise blockchain platform for a large technology company, several DApps and other ventures.

Why we got into blockchain… and why we believe it’s the inevitable future

We’re passionate about the disruptive power of blockchain technology that enables users to securely own cryptocurrencies and easily transfer their self-sovereign digital stores of value anonymously and without the need for any 3rd party intermediary like a bank or central government. In doing so, this will unleash a new economic foundation that is going to have far reaching impact on global economies, governments, wealth distribution and the balance of power. And while it’s been a bit of a “crypto winter” with the value of Bitcoin, Ether and other altcoins coming down over 75% off their peaks since December 2017, we’ve seen a nice recovery in the past few weeks and months and still believe the blockchain revolution is just getting started.

And, beyond this financial revolution, we believe cryptocurrency is just the first use-case for blockchain technology. We see tremendous potential in applying the ability to securely digitize and provide incentives to validate transactions for many other B2C and B2B applications, industries and aspects of life.

But to reach this full potential and to truly decentralize digital identity and virtual asset management, we need to fundamentally break the compromise users are currently forced to make between security and convenience.

Breaking the compromise between security and convenience

While all actions on the blockchain are immutable and visible to all participants, much of the other data — in particular users’ private or master keys — must be kept secure. Investors, developers, miners or just regular users face many challenges when looking for a safe AND easy-to-use solution to manage their private keys which they use to own and transfer their cryptocurrencies today.

On the one hand, online exchanges and software wallets are very convenient because users can access them from almost anywhere and any device with an internet connection.

But in order to gain that ease of use, users have to give up their privacy and entrust a third party intermediary to keep their private keys and account information secure. In doing so, it’s really no different than almost any other centralized solution today like a bank or brokerage firm that holds fiat currencies, stocks and other assets in user accounts.

Unfortunately — and all-too frequently — these centralized “honey pots” have been subject to hacks and attacks. Whether it’s Mount Gox back in 2014, Coincheck last year or the attempt just recently on one of the largest exchanges, Binance, it seems no online exchange or software wallets are safe.

Moreover, your online account access stored on your laptop or mobile smartphone is equally at risk. As Kate Rooney recently reported in CNBC …

Over $1.1 billion in cryptocurrency has been stolen [in the first half of 2018] and it was apparently easy to do.

Below is an analysis completed by Autonomous Research and the Wall Street Journal highlighting the growth in stolen cryptocurrencies from 2013 through the first half of 2018

Take for example, the spear phishing attacks favored by the infamous North Korean “Lazurus” hacker outfit and which are the most common type of attack on online exchanges and software wallet services. In these attacks, “fraudsters deliver malware under the cover of CV spam [with an attachment] that has a malware embedded in the document … After the local network is successfully compromised, the hackers browse the local network to find workstations and servers used working with private cryptocurrency wallets.”

Put simply, we’re all susceptible of getting hacked on exchanges and with software wallets; having an online wallet or account with an online exchange sitting on any connected computer — no matter the type of device (laptop, smart phone or pad) or security protocols in place — is constantly at risk of being infected and breached. No doubt it’s a ‘cat and mouse’ game with attack vectors and security patches, but accessing your virtual assets with a connected device is inherently compromising your security and putting your assets in jeopardy of being stolen.

Given the risk of infection to individual user’s computers, several software wallet solutions have introduced multi-sig authentication as a possible solution to thwart hackers. But, the notion of needing many on-device wallets to approve and execute transactions is very difficult to make work from a usability and security perspective. Transactions requiring multi-signature (multi-sig) and escrow can be complex to execute in various public and private blockchains. As applications scale, uncertainty around response times and availability make design and architecture difficult.

On the other hand, hardware wallets which are air-gapped, less frequently connected to the internet and which control their own operating systems with the sole purpose of protecting the encrypted data on them offer users a more secure solution. But, they’re traditionally much less convenient.

And, are the hardware wallets on the market today really safer? Based on all the wallets we’ve used, we don’t think so.

The problem with existing hardware wallets

First, almost every hardware wallet comes with the risk of failure or loss.

In most cases, those are single points of failure that are unrecoverable. As a result, almost every hardware wallet on the market suggests that its users write down and store a seed phrase, 12–24 random words in a particular order, on a piece of paper. In fact, most ship their device with a recovery seed card or booklet so you can write down and store multiple copies. This is not only inconvenient, but it’s also incredibly insecure.

In fact, we think it’s absolutely ridiculous! Just think about it. You spend all this money on a hardware technology that’s supposed to keep your private keys safe and secure, but then, you have to rely upon a piece of paper as a backup.

Really?! A piece of paper? Keeping that secure isn’t only inconvenient, it’s incredibly insecure.

Some hodlers have resorted to storing their seed phrases in metal cases like Billfodl, ColdTi, Cryptosteel and Crypto Key Stack. Some have developed detailed manuals that espouse the safety of paper while encouraging users to follow elaborate instructions for how to keep paper recovery seed phrases safe. These include storing multiple paper copies in tamper-proof, fire-resistant bags or splitting seed phrases into several different parts and securing the parts in traditional bank safety deposit boxes and home safes.

It all seems quite cumbersome and complex.

And at the end of the day, if only one person knows the password or way to piece together the recovery seed phrases and that person dies — like apparently was the case with the founder of Quadriga who died with sole access to cryptocurrency for his 115,000 account holders that was valued at hundreds of millions of dollars — then you’re out of luck.

So … how do you pass along your cryptocurrency when you die?

Turns out, with current hardware wallets, if you want to transfer your cryptocurrency to a beneficiary without sharing your private keys, seed phrases or account information with them — before you die — you can’t. It’s impossible.

Fortune recently investigated and reported on the death of one bitcoin owner whose heirs discovered his hardware wallet and knew he had made a small fortune. But, they were entirely unable to access that inheritance since he hadn’t entrusted them or anyone else with his password or seed phrase.

Many methods have cropped up to try and address this issue via third party commercial services or by using estate planners with keys to safety deposit boxes holding passwords and such, but all of these solutions require owners to entrust their executors or the beneficiaries themselves with their private information. This is incredibly inconvenient, susceptible to various points of failure and fundamentally insecure.

As crypto hodlers ourselves, we thought: there has to be a better way!

After years of development, Keevo was born to solve our own problems and hopefully yours as well.

Stay tuned for Part II in the coming days on our solution, Keevo’s Premium Plus service, technical specifications, production and delivery roadmap, partnerships, pricing, launch plan and more.

Learn more and pre-order your Keevo HERE

Invitations and product updates are being released to people who sign-up. Pre-order invitations will start going out later this month (June, 2019).

Why We Built KEEVO (Part 1) was originally published in Keevo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.