Wire is an end-to-end encrypted messaging app and service. It has raised a $21 million Series B funding round led by UVC Partners. As the company said a couple of years ago, the company is focusing on the enterprise market more than ever.
Wire started as a consumer app, but unlike its popular rivals in the market, it never managed to attract hundreds of millions of customers. It wasn’t because the wire is a bad app.
Some features worth mentioning
Wire gives a lot of emphasis on encrypted communication and you securely talk with other people using text messages, photos, videos and voice messages. Even video calls can be made (both one-to-one and in group rooms) and file can be exchanged with other users.
Since everything is end-to-end encrypted by default, even the company can’t decrypt your conversations, can’t hand them over to a court, or can’t expose your conversations to a potential hacker. In today’s time when precious client information is sold to third parties, this level of privacy is to be highly valued. The source code is also viewable on GitHub.
From 2019 to now
The company had said in an interview that the goal was to open a holding company in the U.S. to raise some funding to double down on enterprise customers to find a clear path toward profitability. This idea hasn’t changed since then.
Wire’s CEO Morten Brogger said, “If I think back on the evolution of the business – three years ago we had zero revenue and zero customers – whereas today we’re announcing a B round and we have clearly established a well-recognised enterprise brand amongst the likes of Gartner, which is one of the things I am extremely proud of”.
He further added, “I also think that with the focus on a revenue-generating, enterprise business, we avoid situations like WhatsApp, where the only model you can ultimately turn to is monetizing data”.
Is Wire’s model really working?
When it comes to revenue growth, it seems to be working well. At present, Wire has 1,800 customers. Wire has seen a growth in customers by almost 50% over the past year.
The focus of the company is on large customers, such as big corporations and government customers with a ton of potential users. Five G7 governments are currently using Wire. Overall, revenue has tripled in 2020.
In addition to working on Messaging Layer Security (MLS), Wire has been focused on improving conference calls and real-time interactions. The startup wants to offer a service that works well across various scenarios as the company believes messaging apps and real-time collaboration apps are slowly converging.
