Image by Rija 2.0 via Flickr
I first met Igor and Elena, the Cambridge, UK, based husband and wife team that runs Cronto (simple strong security), a couple of years ago when they first started working on their new encryption service. It is a very simple idea and relies on people keeping their mobile phones handy. Apparently they are rarely more that two metres from us! When you access your bank account, a pattern appears on a screen, which you photograph with your mobile phone. The Cronto software decodes the pattern and you key in the code; very simple and very secure.
It always amazed me that you could travel and access your bank account without informing the bank that you were away from home. With Cronto, you feel your bank account is safe.
Looking at the website, there is no sign of a VC and so I wonder what business plan resource they are using? As they are based in the University of Cambridge’s William Gates Building, do Cambridge Enterprise have any involvement?
The website is very busy and Grant Dain, internet marketing Cambridge, might suggest that it is simplified with clearer calls to action.
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Image via WikipediaGeoff Jones reports that a good house in Cambridge has fallen some £80k below the list price at auction – although not sure if it sold.
I was so lucky as a group of us owned a rent-controlled house and sadly the tenant passed away earlier this year. The agents took a very aggressive stance on pricing the house to sell and sell it did even if we had to drop a few grand just before exchange. If we had a held out for last year’s price we would be feeling like some of the banks but with no shareholders to cover our losses.
It reminds me of the problems of selling business. Sell at the top of the market or raise funds at the top like nCipher but in a few weeks the market can have dropped and the company is left with all the selling costs of due diligence and professional fees. No wonder the latter are unwilling to put a lot of resources in to close a deal until the last minute which explains the long nights of completion meetings with everyone locked in an office and with the local stock markets closed so hopefully nothing drastic will happen. No wonder that 26 June 1987 is so special to me. When the meeting starts it is deemed to be on the day it started providing it is continuous so we had a “36 hour day”! We then held our breath that the stock markets would not collapse until after we sold our shares on the Monday morning at 07:00 two days later.
Let us hope that this recession is gone soon before people start really hurting.
