Goldman Sachs just gave a gigantic vote ($25 million worth ) of confidence for the company that insures its wide customer base from credit fraud and identity theft. The three-year-old, Tempe, Arizona-based company has already raised $6 million Series A round led by Bessemer. That was before the $6.85 million round led by Kleiner Perkins.
Lifelock is a successful consumer web story first because it’s a great product, but more importantly, the team always ‘got’ marketing. They took a webby idea and took it off web to sell it. It boggles my mind how many people are aware of the ad campaigns, where CEO Todd Davis gives away his social security number (457-55-5462, in case you were wondering) as further testimony to the flawlessness of their service.
The Company is continually perfecting and adding to their services. Now, they even guarantee the safety of your wallet with WalletLock. Lose your wallet? Not a worry. One of their WalletLock specialists will contact each credit card, bank or document issuing company, cancel your accounts and complete the paperwork and any further hassles for you. Even replacing your goods, including credit / debit cards, driver’s license, social security, etc…even traveler’s checks. No charge.
In case you haven’t caught it in my previous posts, I am an angel investor and participated in the Kleiner Perkins round with our Knighstbridge fund. This is also great news for venture and start-ups in Phoenix.
If they keep this up I will be a thousandairre in no time. If it proves one thing it’s that if you stay in the game and keep swinging the bat, you might hit one out of the park. Still a long way to go before I can call it a winner, but it feels good just the same.
I love the Walletlock benefit that Lifelock just added at NO charge. When I last visited the marketing team we were chatting about it and could not wait until it launched.
Fifth, hassling with lost or stolen wallets is no longer a problem with WalletLock™. If ever your wallet goes missing, just give us a call – anytime, anywhere – and a WalletLock specialist will contact each credit card, bank or document issuing company, cancel your affected accounts and complete the paperwork and steps necessary to replace your lost documents*, including your credit/debit cards, driver’s license, social security card, insurance cards, checkbook – even travelers checks – at no additional cost.
Awesome.
If they can announce STOCKLOCK (I pitched it down at HQ) that guarantees me higher stock prices (kind of like China and India)…we can finally get to an IPO.
As the internet evolves, I am getting less and less excited about the ‘freemium’ or ‘user’ model and only looking at customer driven models. I guess that means a lot more ‘NO’s’.
It’s not enough to have a cool product or application or service, you have to know how to market it. Period.
Lifelock is sure to be attracting competitors as the growth has been staggering, but true segment and industry leaders continue to improve the product, services, marketing and innovation and when you do that, first mover means a lot. That’s what Lifelock is doing everyday.
Check out the Lifelock gift certificate program . i know it’s viral because 4 friends who are customers sent me the link after they bought it for family members. If you have a family member spending oodles of time on the web, this is a great gift. If you have kids on Webkinz, Club Penguin, MySpace and Facebook…same thing. Buy it.
I spent the day down at Lifelock yesterday. I have never seen anything like this in my 20 years of personal investing. It was fun catching up with the biz dev and sales leaders over lunch and hearing the product roadmap. I have been brainstorming with them on financial partnerships.
It has been about 18 months since I became an angel to the start-up. They had 8 employees and a few thousand customers. Today there are 170 employees and and they have moved three times to bigger space in the last 12 months, settling now in north Tempe in a sweet part of the city. A young Austin, Texas in the making in Tempe (in terms of tech). They have taken in over $15 million in venture money as well.
I can’t reveal the customer numbers but it rhymes with many hundreds of thousands.
Americans pay for peace of mind and it is fun to be a part of this one. You really should sign-up. Use Wallstrip as a discount code.
I bought a car recently and forgot about me having Lifelock. Sure enough, I get a call from the Finance company a few days later (I have the car…sweet) that they can’t get the deal done until I clear it with them and Lifelock. I love that.
The best advantage that Lifelock has brought me is when I tried to get my iPhone set-up. When I logged in to install through iTunes, AT&T could not approve me so I prepaid $49 and did not have to sign up for a two-year contract.
If this is what I think it is, I will save a pretty penny over the three years I woud have had to have a contract. The Lifelock Loop it’s called over in the Lindzon home for now. I am awaiting a call from an AT&T representative but until that happens, no bills…hallelujah!
Disclosure – Angel and Series B Investor in Lifelock
I have an angel investment in Lifelock that I have talked about on this blog. Our venture firm Biltmore Ventures was an investor in the latest round with Kleiner Perkins and Bessemer.
With respect to whether you can trust Lifelock, David says:
As a veteran investor of Verisign, Postini, Counterpane, Cyota and several other security service providers, I know what a challenge it is to overcome the suspicions raised by sensational journalism, and the allegations of competitors who covet success. Lifelock embraces every practice we can to operate transparently and in the best interest of the customer–including ISO 27001 certification of our call center and data infrastructure–and surely we still have many lessons yet to learn. But even when we do, we will always have to endure conspiracy theories.
Mike Arrington of TechCrunch has chosen to carefully craft a post that implies me being accused of some bad things as it relates to Lifelock and the recent gossip. It’s just wrong, a lie and a real sloppy, shitty thing to do (but definitely premeditated). He obviously has a bone to pick with me and is thinking of me often. I thought he hit a new low a few weeks back , but as with most new lows, they tend to go lower.
…Bessemer Ventures and little know Biltmore Ventures (that’s me, Morris and Adam). We are small but pesky people and appreciate the opportunity to make our first fund investment with a few legends. I am double excited as an angel investor in the Company. Here is the deal:
LifeLock Announces $6.85 Million Series B Funding
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Leads Group of Venture Capital Firms Investing In LifeLock
TEMPE, AZ — (April 26, 2007) — LifeLock today announced that it has secured $6.85 million in Series B funding from a trio of prominent venture capital firms led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. LifeLock will use the funding to support the company’s dramatic growth and further its mission to increase consumer awareness and adoption of LifeLock’s guaranteed services.
“We see significant potential for LifeLock given its unique and guaranteed offering,” said Ted Schlein, KPCB partner. “Increasingly innovative criminals, the digitization of society and the rapid growth of the Internet will fuel the need for the effective and sophisticated services that LifeLock will deliver for years to come.”
Along with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the additional investors included Series A lead investor Bessemer Venture Partners and new investor, Phoenix-based Biltmore Ventures.
“This investment provides financial strength that will allow us to sustain our rapid growth and solidify our position as the industry leader in protecting Americans from identity thieves,” said Todd Davis, CEO of LifeLock. “We will use these funds to improve service for our existing customers and to connect with the millions of potential customers who believe they may be at risk of identity theft. We thank Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Bessemer Venture Partners and Biltmore Ventures for their investment and commitment to helping us combat one of the fastest growing crimes in the U.S.”
LifeLock (www.lifelock.com) was founded in 2005 by seasoned veterans of the banking, payment, credit and security industries. These individuals have set out to defend American citizens from the onslaught of identity theft at a time when personal information is increasingly compromised through low-tech fraud, security breaches and the Internet. The founders crafted a simple, proactive service that can help prevent identity theft that is offered to the public for just $10 per month or $110 per year. To date, more than 100,000 adults and children have already enrolled in the service.
LifeLock helps consumers to render their personal information useless to thieves, backing up its service with a million-dollar guarantee. Located in a secure facility in Tempe, Arizona, LifeLock is a private company registered with Dun & Bradstreet, Verisign, ScanAlert, HackerSafe, and the BBBOnline Reliability Program, and is a corporate sponsor of the National Crime Prevention Council. Recently LifeLock was named to the Red Herring 200, as one of the 200 most innovative and promising private ventures in the United States and Canada.
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Since its founding in 1972, KPCB (www.kpcb.com) has backed entrepreneurs in over 475 ventures, including AOL, Align Technology, Amazon.com, Citrix, Compaq Computer, Electronic Arts, Genentech, Genomic Health, Google, IDEC Pharmaceuticals, Intuit, Juniper Networks, Netscape, Lotus, LSI Logic, Sun Microsystems, Symantec, Verisign and Xilinx. More than 150 of the firm’s portfolio companies have gone public. Many other ventures have achieved success through mergers and acquisitions.
About Bessemer Venture Partners
Bessemer Venture Partners (www.bvp.com) is the oldest venture capital practice in the United States, carrying on a tradition of hands-on, active investing that has continued since 1911. The firm manages two billion dollars of venture funds from offices in Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, Shanghai, and Mumbai. Over 100 Bessemer companies have gone public, including Blue Nile, Ciena, Gartner Group, Ingersoll Rand, International Paper, Maxim, Parametric, Perseptive Biosystems, Staples, VeriSign, Veritas and W.R. Grace.
About Biltmore Ventures
Biltmore Ventures is a Phoenix-based venture firm chartered to grow the Arizona private capital marketplace. The firm provides capital to local entrepreneurs focusing on high-growth businesses with an integral Internet component. The Biltmore team has over 50 years experience as entrepreneurs, investors, architects, and team builders.
There are not many Companies I despise. You can hate tobacco, guns, porn, but I choose to hate these guys. They have a virtual monopoly in messing with your life.
Selling one’s name and information is a lucrative business and these animals have had a free ride with their evil cousins.
Thing is, evil is good for stock prices and my hate has blinded me to the great investment.
Stupid.
If you can’t beat them join them and in this case…own it.
I think the stock offers a great long term entry down 10 plus percent from a recent all-time high. I am already longer than I need to be so will pass for now, but it meets my criteria. Here is the Google Finance start page on Equifax .
Brian has a detailed look at Equifax’s technical picture for those looking to be more precise with their entry:
Here is the downside:
1. Consumer awareness – unlikely. We act like lemmings despite their evilness
2. Governement Intervention – hopeful but unlikely because it makes sense in this case
3. Very acquisitive – in the end this depends on integration.
The recent acquisition of TALX is interesting for it’s inherent conflicts. They paid $1.4 billion to help get them into the identity theft business (wink), yet make their money from selling names and info that lead to identity theft.
If I own a stock like Equifax, I want them to sell names and information aggressively, not hedge their bets and diversify.
Is Equifax hinting that identity theft protection is a bigger market than creating an identity theft problem?
Time will tell. My opinion is that they could care less about identity theft as a business (all about PR). Bad news for you, good news for Lifelock and those fed up with their antics.
Disclosure – No positions in Equifax, Long Lifelock
