BillGuard said Tuesday it secured $10 million in a second-round financing led by Khosla Ventures. Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors also participated in the round, as did existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners and IA Ventures. The company, which is developing online technology for determining erroneous credit card charges, has now raised a total of $13 million.
PRESS RELEASE
Vinod Khosla, Peter Thiel, Eric Schmidt Back BillGuard in $10M Series B Financing
Silicon Valley’s Most Successful Investors Join Crowd-Powered Fight
Against Unfair and Unauthorized Merchant Charges
NEW YORK – October 18, 2011 – BillGuard, the personal finance security company, today announced it has secured $10 million in second-round financing led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors and existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners and IA Ventures. BillGuard’s full list of investors can be found here. The funding will be used to accelerate growth and support marketing, business development, sales and R&D expansion.
Launched in May 2011, BillGuard’s crowdsourced approach to identifying deceptive, erroneous and unauthorized charges on credit card bills has earned it industry-wide acclaim. The company most recently won the coveted “Best of Show” award at Finovate, the “Big-Data Startup of the Year” award at O’Reilly Media’s Strata Conference, and the Runner-up award at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC.
BillGuard harnesses the collective knowledge of millions of people posting billing complaints online and via a transaction flagging system directly in electronic statements akin to anti-spam technology. In its first four months, the free consumer service has saved its users nearly half a million dollars in hidden charges, billing errors, misleading subscriptions, scams and fraud. The company projects that consumers lose tens of billions of dollars annually to such charges. Phone bill protection, a top requested feature, is also in the works.
“At Khosla Ventures we love entrepreneurs who dare to tackle large problems with disruptive, bottom-up methods,” said Vinod Khosla, founding partner of Khosla Ventures. “BillGuard is one of the most exciting recent examples of this, and we’re looking forward to assisting Yaron, Raphael and the Guardians in building an important, category-defining company.”
“In 15 years of company building I have never seen consumers react this emotionally to a service, literally from the first login,” said Yaron Samid, founder and CEO of BillGuard. “BillGuard provides a peace of mind that can only come from the collective vigilance of millions of consumers. We’re proud to facilitate this movement and honored to be joined by a dream team of the world’s top investors and thinkers.”
For more information, please visit www.billguard.com.
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About BillGuard:
BillGuard is a personal finance security company facilitating a people-powered movement to protect everyone from deceptive, erroneous and unauthorized merchant charges. The company’s self-learning, big-data mining algorithms harness the collective knowledge of millions of consumers reporting billing complaints online and in their electronic statements. Free to consumers, the web-based BillGuard.com scans user’s credit and debit card activity daily and alerts them to hidden charges, billing errors, misleading subscriptions, scams and fraud. Founded in April of 2010 by Yaron Samid and big-data expert Raphael Ouzan, BillGuard is privately held with offices in New York and Israel. For more information, please visit www.billguard.com or follow the company at @BillGuard.
For more information, contact:
Tracey Sheehy, Breakaway Communications for BillGuard (212) 616-6003 | press@billguard.com
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