€900,000 pre-seed round for heylogin to abolish passwords
We have successfully closed our pre-seed round with 900,000 €. The initial investment was made by IBResearch, a pool of business angels from the Institute for Operating Systems and Computer Networks at the TU Braunschweig, where I did my PhD. This early trust in heylogin’s potential allowed us to enter the market.
Today, we are proud to announce that these first investors are joined by Mozilla and several business angels, including Dr. Alexander Hach, Dr. Ingo Luge and Thomas Neuerer. They all support the growth of heylogin and believe in our vision.
Our vision
Everyone wants a passwordless Internet. But it will be several years before the necessary technologies, such as WebAuthn and passkeys, are available everywhere. This is due to the Lindy effect, i.e. the fact that passwords as a technology have been around for so long that they are only slowly being replaced by something else, even if we don't actually want them anymore. The Strategy of Security blog has a more detailed discussion of this topic.
Because of this challenge, we developed heylogin. With our password manager we do not only fix the problems of our competition, like slow synchronization and complicated user interfaces. We go one step further and eliminate the need to type in passwords. Instead of a master password, a swipe-to-login on the smartphone is enough to log in anywhere. heylogin already provides the user experience of a passwordless login without requiring websites to implement new technologies. Instead, we solve the problem on the user's side.
Single Sign On & Password Manager
For a passwordless login experience, until now companies could only connect their SaaS solutions with a Single Sign-On (SSO) service. This more than doubles the required software budget, well documented at sso.tax. Even if the budget is available, many websites do not support SSO functionality. For social media, government agencies, shopping portals and similar sites, only password managers remain as a solution. These require users to come up with a particularly complex master password that needs to be typed in regularly.
heylogin solves this problem. Although we are technically a password manager, we offer the login experience of a single sign-on. heylogin utilizes the smartphone's secure element instead of a master password to provide 2-factor security. This technology has not only interested Mozilla, but also over 900 organizations that regularly use heylogin. We are proud that our first idea has developed so far.
Our journey so far
We started by developing solutions for critical infrastructures that used smart cards to replace passwords. In doing so, Vincent and I quickly realized that these solutions were very secure due to the use of hardware, but also expensive and complicated to implement. We wanted to develop something that anyone could use, no matter how much prior technical knowledge they had. With this experience, we outlined heylogin. Our participation in borek.digital accelerator was a great start to understand markets and business needs. Funded by a research & development grant, we were able to develop heylogin. The first version finally went online in spring 2021 and was available in the app stores. Thanks to user feedback, heylogin has been continuously improved until today.
Our next steps
A large part of the money goes into product development. In order to grow, we need to become an attractive alternative for a broader market and new customers. Our next goal is to be used in medium-sized companies. That's why our focus will be on supporting larger teams, Azure Active Directory connectivity, better recovery options and flows, and implementing enterprise policies for admins. These features will be gradually rolled out to the first mid-sized companies in the coming months.
Another share of the money is going into our marketing. With our current number of users, we have successfully entered the market and proven initial product market fit. Now we need to grow and expand our successful marketing tests.
Finally, a big thank you to all our loyal users. Without you, this journey would not have been possible. Your feedback has made heylogin what it is today. And in the coming years, it will only get better. We are looking forward to this new stage of our ride.
