Former Apple privacy engineer Mark Xue teams up with ex-Stanford social media scholar Tessa Brown to put people in control of what they share online

Selected by TechCrunch Disrupt - Startup Battlefield to showcase their new multi-identity technology for end-to-end encrypted messaging

Germ Network, a benefit corporation on a mission to promote healthy communication, gives people new autonomy to choose how they identify, who they are discoverable to and what they share with whom. This week the company announced the launch of its messenger on Messaging Layer Security and the release of its open-source library, making it the first standalone consumer service on the IETF standard. The integration unites MLS’s standardized end-to-end encryption with Germ’s unique identity technology, which enables users to create multiple profiles and manage multiple partitioned social networks for private messaging. Today Germ announces pre-seed funding from investors K5 Global via partner Daniel Marcotte, Mozilla Ventures, Gaingels, and angel investors including Nick Sullivan, Jessica Millstone of Copper Wire Ventures, and Adam Sah.

Says cryptographer Sullivan, founder of CloudFlare Research and a contributor to MLS, "I invested in Germ because they're making secure consumer communications as natural and intuitive as a conversation itself, seamlessly embedding trust into every interaction.”

End-to-end encryption has become a standard in digital communication, as it secures data from one “end” of a conversation to the other so that it cannot be read by anyone besides participants. E2EE is lauded by civil society organizations like Amnesty International and GLAAD for protecting the right to privacy and free expression. Germ’s deployment of MLS positions it with access to industry-leading cryptography and resistance to post-quantum computing, competitive with those of leading E2EE messengers like Signal, Apple’s iMessage, and Meta’s WhatsApp.

But end-to-end encryption is just one tool that Americans need broader access to as they navigate data breaches, addictive product design, consumer stalkerware, and deepfakes that expose and exploit personal information. 1 in 3 American women are stalked, 4 in 5 Americans don’t trust how companies collect and store information about them, and 96% of deepfake videos are nonconsensual pornography of women, which are increasingly used by minors to harass one another. Germ gives users new freedom in how they connect and what they share online, offering users a DM alternative that protects them from sharing unique identifiers like phone numbers and handles, or needing to navigate addictive products just to talk to their friends.

Germ’s efforts to bring autonomy back to digital communication stem from CEO and co-founder Brown’s research into young adults’ communication practices and CTO and co-founder Xue’s time as a privacy engineer at Apple on iMessage, FaceTime, and other secure products. Besides its co-founders, the company just hired its first employee, developer Anna Mistele—Brown’s former Stanford student. Germ’s pre-seed funding will propel its mission to expand its messenger and give more people more ways to consensually connect online.

Reach out for comment at hello@germ.network, or find us at TechCrunch Disrupt in booth O22.

Featured