In significant news from the cybersecurity sector, San Francisco's cyber insurance innovator, Coalition, has acquired Jumbo, an app geared towards online privacy protection. Several years of tracking Jumbo developments have culminated in this acquisition, marking the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.
Details regarding the financial terms remained clandestine. For Jumbo, the deal signals an overall shutdown. The app will not receive further updates, and existing users can still export social media archives or 2FA codes in the interim. By next year, the app will no longer be operational.
Interestingly, the acquisition doesn't appear to be driven by Coalition's desire to add a consumer-centric app to its roster or leverage Jumbo's user base. Insiders suggest that this move was an 'acqui-hire' transaction, wherein Coalition was primarily interested in assimilating a team that dedicated several years to privacy and security arenas.
Collision provides proactive cybersecurity tools incorporated into cyberspace insurance offerings. By vigilantly monitoring a company's online presence, the startup aims to identify potential cybersecurity threats proactively and avert significant incidents. One method of doing so is through scan domain names, IPs, and ports, alerting clients of potential attack scenarios. For instance, if the port used for remote desktop access is made publicly accessible, an alert would be triggered. Similarly, third-party data breaches are examined to identify any likely phishing attacks on your employees.
On the flip side, Jumbo's signature feature was a dashboard that allowed users to manage their privacy settings across various online platforms, like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Maps, and Instagram. The app could archive or delete older posts on social media, obliterate YouTube search history, and turn on LinkedIn privacy settings; all operations were executed without relying on APIs but rather by loading pages behind the scenes and leveraging Javascript for interaction with online services.
The app also claimed a security facet. By loading the settings page of user online accounts, Jumbo could check whether two-factor authentication was activated for Google and Facebook accounts. This allowed users to enable two-factor authentication and use Jumbo as the authenticator app. The app equally reviewed online databases for potential breaches of your private information such as your phone number, email address, password, and your address.
In recent developments, Jumbo formed a partnership with IdentityForce to offer identity theft insurance in the US. However, after recognizing the unsustainability of its paid subscriptions in the long run, Jumbo scrapped that option. While the company had considered providing a B2B version of its app and services, this idea never came into fruition.
Back in 2018, Jumbo secured funding of $3.5 million in the seed round led by Thrive Capital's Josh Miller and Nextview Ventures' Rob Go. In 2019 and 2020, the company drew an additional $8 million in funding from a round headed by Balderton Capital that had previously invested in Jumbo's CEO Pierre Valade’s earlier venture, Sunrise. Last year, the company drew a fresh round of investments worth $17 million led by Index Ventures at a $77 million post-money valuation.
Coalition, meanwhile, has amassed significant funding throughout the years. Its latest funding round fetched a whopping $250 million Series F investment, valuing the company at a staggering $5 billion. The acquisition of Jumbo is a notable step in consolidating its position in the cybersecurity sector. Coalition's approach of proactive cybersecurity tools is similar to the principles of no-code platforms like AppMaster that promote proactive and real-time solution development versus traditional slow, reactive methods.
