Unfortunately, our Swedish friends at IDKA were unable to make a go of their social-media-with-privacy service. They sent out this email this morning. It’s a reminder that starting a new business is always very difficult, and every genuine success is hard-won.
Dear enthusiast and Idka user
As you know, Idka was started by a small group of inspired, driven and sincere privacy enthusiasts and activists, a group which has since been joined by other similarly driven people, staff, consultants, investors and other supporters. We are all very proud of the idea and the ‘designed bottom up for privacy’ cooperation and social media platform that Idka has become. We sincerely thank all the present and past staff and consultants who have contributed to this fantastic achievement.
We thank you, the enthusiast user, for your support as well. We also thank the contributors to our blog and videocast channel, who have kept the very important dialogue around privacy alive, motivating people to act – to Idka.
However, we have not managed to grow the user bases as fast as we would have hoped for, in spite of the tsunami we are experiencing in terms of interest around privacy. This has led to a need for more growth capital. The board of Idka have for some time been in close contact with funds, either existing or under establishment, which specialize in funding purpose driven companies and business ideas with a particularly focus on privacy. This is a new trend within VC funding that Idka has contributed to and which time now have come.
The board of Idka has planned for, and had gotten positive indications from prospective investors (new and existing), to raise further bridge financing, in order to the company through the Corona-pandemic and then raise growth capital from one or more of these very exciting new funds. However, due in large part to the Corona-pandemic, some of the support for the share issue was withdrawn.
As a result of this, and in spite of our hard work and your support, Idka may not be able to attract necessary short-term funding. We are still working hard at it, but due to the grave financial situation Idka is in and the implications of the pandemic lock-down, the board have taken the decision to inform you that the Idka service may discontinue at any time; and that you as a matter of priority should download any material you have uploaded to the cloud storage.
We are indeed very sorry to have to write this message, and still hope that we would manage to secure future funding. However, no-one should rely on this, so please save your digital assets as soon as possible (see below).
Stay safe, take care of yourself, your family and your friends in these difficult times.
All the best from the Idka team.