Toopher

Toopher was an Austin, Texas security software company that built automated two-factor authentication intended to reduce online fraud and identity theft. Its system used the location awareness of a user's smartphone as an additional authentication factor alongside a password: at login, it compared the location of the computer being used with the physical location of the user's phone. Once the mobile app had learned a user's normal locations, the user did not need to interact with the phone for subsequent logins from a known machine, which the company positioned as a lower-friction alternative to conventional two-factor methods that require an action at every login.

The product was delivered primarily as software-as-a-service for organizations with secure login requirements, with an internal enterprise deployment option also described. Authentication was extended beyond login to verify identity during security-sensitive actions such as transferring funds or making purchases, and the system was designed to be installed on a corporate website with a small amount of code. Reported technologies associated with the company included Ruby on Rails, Google App Engine compatibility, jQuery, Snap.svg, GitHub Pages, Cloudflare CDN, Fastly and Google Analytics.

The company operated with a small team — six employees at an early stage and seven at the time of its acquisition — and was acquired by Salesforce in April 2015, after which it stopped selling its products and shut down its service.

Founding story

Evan Grim began developing the technology as a personal solution for protecting his own sensitive data online while working on a PhD in software engineering in UT Austin's Mobile and Pervasive Computing Lab, having earned his MS at UT ECE in 2012 and previously worked as a research engineer at Southwest Research Institute. He took leave from his doctorate to launch Toopher in 2011 with Josh Alexander, an adjunct professor of finance at the McCombs School of Business who became CEO.

Business model

Toopher sold its two-factor authentication technology to organizations as a cloud-based software-as-a-service, with an internal enterprise deployment option for companies requiring on-premises or hybrid control. Integration was designed to require minimal code on a customer's website.

Revenue came from selling authentication software to organizations on a SaaS basis, with an enterprise/internal deployment option; annual revenue was estimated at under $1 million.

Traction

Toopher raised approximately $3 million in total funding and reached seven employees by the time of its acquisition. Deployments included the University of Texas at Austin, which integrated the product to protect sensitive services such as employee payroll applications as a test case, and the Texas Advanced Computing Center. Estimated annual revenue was under $1 million.

Latest developments

Salesforce acquired Toopher in April 2015 for undisclosed terms; the company stopped selling its products and shut down its service, and the founding team joined Salesforce, where the technology was intended to strengthen Salesforce's security tooling alongside products such as OpenID Connect and Login Flows. Reporting indicated Salesforce granted 37,408 shares to Toopher's seven employees, worth roughly $2.5 million at the time, and that Salesforce paid $33.1 million in total for Toopher and Tempo AI combined. Co-founder Josh Alexander subsequently served as a Director of Product Management at Salesforce.