They went out and raised $10 mill and are now for-profit.
The group is converting to for-profit status and selling the bulk of its newly created stock to Accel Partners, the venture capital firm that backed eBay and Facebook.
Fran Maier, chief executive, Truste. (Credit: Jim Wilson/The New York Times)The group hopes to use the money to expand by coming up with more automated ways to help smaller Web publishers develop privacy policies.
Terrible idea? Of course. Truste’s reputation in the security industry is certainly quite poor, and this will not help. (For some light reading, you can read some of Ben Edelman’s past posts on the subject of Truste here and here.)
I like the folks over at Truste, and I would only tender one piece of advice to them now that they’re going to be looking for cash: The security game is not an intellectual one, with fair games and trust. There are too many sleazy bastards out there. Start being the tough, uncompromising, hard-assed organization that we expect you to be, and you’ll earn our respect, as well as the respect and trust of the consumer.
Alex Eckelberry