Vinny Lingham Leaves Gyft, Raises $2.75 Million for Identity Startup

Funding Rounds

▤ Summary

Bitcoin Foundation board member Vinny Lingham has announced that he has stepped down as CEO of the popular mobile gift card service Gyft to pursue a new business venture. Based in Palo Alto, Civic has already received $2.75m in funding from Social Leverage, along with a number of VC firms active in the bitcoin and blockchain space. The digital identity protection startup, which focuses on online solutions for US Social Security numbers, is expected to launch this spring, according to Lingham. The premise of the app, according to Lingham, is that customers will provide Civic with their Social Security number for safe storage in exchange for greater monitoring capabilities. “We use all the industry best practices, from high-level security to cryptography,” he said, adding: To achieve adoption, Lingham said Civic will seek to partner with select financial institutions.

$ Funding

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Amount $2.8M Total raised
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Date January 27, 2016 Announcement date
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Investors Founder Collective, Propel Venture Partners, Shutterstock, Social Leverage, Digital Currency Group, Block Chain Space, 7blockchain Venture Capital, Future Perfect Ventures, Sound Ventures, Pantera Capital Lead investors
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Company http://www.civic.com Funded company

▥ Classifications

industries
Fintech & Banking
applications
AI & Machine learning

◇ AskAI Classifications

Labels
Identity Verification Software Authentication Software Blockchain Technology

▦ Linked Companies

Civic
$1M to $5M