What is your Startup about?

Futurae Technologies AG develops user-friendly, fast and secure authentication solutions that are cost-effective for businesses to implement. Our mission is to empower companies to deploy state of the art IT security while improving the customer journey for end-users. Our core technology SoundProof compares short ambient sound sequences on the users mobile phone to authenticate the user.The end-user does not need to interact with his mobile phone while this happens. The solution can be used for any web access, basically everywhere where sensitive user data is stored such as online banking, insurance portals, online retail or patient data repositories. The authentication is comparatively very easy to implement and decreases the time to 5 seconds for the additional authentication step, down from 20.

How did your team come together?

Claudio and Nikos both know each other from their PhD at the System Security Group at ETH Zurich. We all met in a conference in San José (CA) last year.

How did you get the idea and why did you wanted to create it?

Claudio and Nikos came up with the idea during their PhD theses two years ago. We want to make IT security easy to use while not jeopardising on the security aspects. That's our motivation. Despite the various recent hacks of sensitive user data, second factor solutions are still not adopted by end-users where not mandatory. We are convinced that this can be changed by the roll out of simpler and faster solutions that improve the customer journey in an online session.

What were you doing before joining F10?

Claudio and Nikos both did their PhD at ETH Zurich. After obtaining his PHD title in 2015, Claudio focused on the technology and business aspects of SoundProof. I was in San Francisco working for the Swiss State Secretariat (Swiss Business Hub) doing business development for Swiss companies accessing the US market and I helped US companies accessing the Swiss market. I was also responsible for ICT as industry within Switzerland Global Enterprise.

Why did you choose to apply to F10?

The F10 program is well structured and enables early stage startups by providing a good mix of coaching, business contacts and small funding. We liked the concept of the F10 accelerator as it does not misuse startups for marketing purposes as other formats do. Also F10 does not take equity in the companies. This mix convinced us to apply. In our view it is a great platform for companies seeking access to the Swiss Finance scene.

How is your journey so far and what have you learned or achieved?

We had intense two months so far. The program proved to be very valuable as we gained a lot of additional industry insight.

How is life for a startup in Zurich and at F10?

A startup life is definitely challenging, juggling the financial and resource constraints at once. To found a company in Switzerland with all elements that involves, is still a very manual process. It helps to have a strong network of lawyers, insurance specialists to navigate through all the elements.F10 is great as a work environment as we have the direct exchange with other startups in the same phase of business venture as well as with industry people passing by the accelerator. Also the weekly exchange with the F10 mentors is very valuable.

How do you find the infrastructure?

The F10 infrastructure is great. We have all we need at this stage. Also industry contacts appreciate to see a different work environment and love to come by the F10 accelerator.

What do you like most about F10?

There is a great amount of people we already met through the F10 accelerator program. From the F10 team to the other startups to the partners and larger industry contacts.

What do you want to achieve or what is your goal for your Startup?

Our short term goal is to complete three to four Proof-of-Concepts with potential customer organisations. We are also building up our relevant multiplicator network. In the long run, we want to enable companies and individuals with easy-to-use Cybersecurity products. IT security can be very intuitive and cost effective.

What is your message to the world?

Don’t jeopardize your customers data. Intuitive Security, today - Futurae.