Paris- and New York-based Dashlane has raised $22 Million from Bessemer Venture Partners as well as existing investors for their password protection solution, the company announced this week. Born in 2010 as a project by co-founder Bernard Liautaud as Paris engineering school Ecole Centrale de Paris, Dashlane has grown to a service with more than 2 million users, “[enabling] over $1 billion in e-commerce transactions,” as the company points out in their statement about the fundraising.
[INTERVIEW] Bernard Liautaud: CEO, Board Member & Investor
While Dashlane battles with players like 1Password, their $100 Million+ valuation beckons the question of where the company will go. Their “universal ID” (users sign in via Dashlane across multiples services on multiple platforms) may be of use to larger players, though the biggest ones – Google, Microsoft, Facebook, … – already have their own Universal ID, while Apple offers its cloud keychain services across all Apple products.
One such explanation may be that user retention on Dashlane is particularly strong; after all, once you’ve allowed Dashlane to manage, and even choose, your passwords, are you really going to leave the service and re-memorize (or learn for the first time) passwords to dozens and potentially hundreds of services.
Having recently investigated Dashlane for our own purposes internally, I was a bit disappointed with Dashlane’s enterprise offer (especially in comparison to 1Password), so I’m hoping that they will develop a stronger enterprise offer to allow companies to manage access to various services.
Dashlane has now raised a total of $30 Million, with previous investors including Rho Ventures and FirstMark Capital.