Dashlane, a stealth start-up out of Paris, is still a few weeks away from unveiling its product, but the company is happily talking up its flush financial situation. The company announced Wednesday it has raised $ 10 $ 5 million from Rho Ventures, FirstMark Capital and Bernard Liautaud, the co-founder and former CEO of Business Objects.
Dashlane, which launched 18 months ago and is now opening a U.S. office in New York, is not explaining what it does exactly But it has provided some general details about its technology which purportedly tackles the growing problem of inputting information, passwords and payment data into websites from desktop and mobile devices.
Dashlane will offer an application that allows users to quickly and securely enter credit card details, names, addresses and login details for commerce, social and other websites. The company is focusing on the opportunity in mobile as more users struggle to repeatedly enter in information from devices that often don’t have traditional keyboards.
Emmanuel Schalit, Dashlane’s CEO, told me the application will be helpful particularly in transactions. He said 2/3 of people who begin a mobile transaction online abandon it before checkout. The startup’s new money will go toward accelerating development of the product, which will go into private beta in a few weeks. Habib Kairouz, managing partner at Rho Ventures, and Rick Heitzmann, managing director at FirstMark will join private Liautaud on the board.
I’m curious to see what Dashlane can do. As we shift to a “post-PC” world, it makes sense to focus on some of the friction people encounter as they rely more on tablets and smartphones. Particular in the case of mobile commerce and mobile payments, it’s good to streamline the process of entering in payment information while still maintaining security. Apple’s App Store and iTunes are good examples of how simplicity can spur on a lot of transactions. So we’ll have to see if Dashlane can actually deliver something that’s worth using — but I think the opportunity is big if it can.
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