Building Trusted Relationships

TrustFabric has joined the ranks of ambitious new Silicon Cape startups. The venture seeks to have a global impact on how people interact with the businesses around them.

“Starting a new technology business is not trivial, so it helps if entrepreneurs have a strong passion for solving a real problem.” says co-founder Joe Botha, over a coffee at a bustling café on Kloof Street. Joe explains how they

set out to solve a problem most of us encounter daily: inefficient business relationships, “the frustration, duplication and wasted energy when dealing with businesses.”

If you think of all the forms you keep filling in, all the faxes people make you send, and trying to keep track of all the different places you need to keep your information up to date, they may be on to something. TrustFabric seeks to facilitate trusted relationships between businesses and individuals. According to Joe, his company provides a trust layer and a convenient way for customers to manage their personal information. “Who better to keep your information up to date than you?” asks Joe.

Businesses use CRM systems to manage relationships with their customers, while TrustFabric in turn allows individuals to manage their relationships with businesses. The startup recognised a need to offer individuals a platform to represent their side of the business relationship. TrustFabric makes these relationships more efficient, while giving customers control of their personal information.

TrustFabric’s business model is about showing businesses savings. “Less customers on the phone to call centres. Better data quality. Happier customers.”

TrustFabric has a .com + .org model, similar to WordPress. There is a hosted service at TrustFabric.com and soon you will be able to download their Open Source code at TrustFabric.org. “I like to think we are fixing a few dents is the universe. Hacking the fabric of business, in a good way.” says Joe.

The two founders, Joe and Jonathan, started talking about TrustFabric towards the end of 2009. They went on to build a proof of concept to test their ideas, before they started working on TrustFabric full-time in January 2010. Three months later they launched their Alpha service by inviting friends to start using it. “They say that if you’re not embarrassed by your first release you did not launch soon enough. Looking back at our screenshots, I guess we are optimally embarrassed.” says Joe.

Before starting TrustFabric Joe co-founded an ISP, an outdoor fixed wireless networking company and went on to be a co-founder of South Africa’s first vendor neutral data centre business, which raised R100m to start the business.

TrustFabric is a team of six people. Two full time, two part time, and two experienced advisors. Their office is in Bakoven. “We love living and working in Cape Town. We’re probably the only startup in the world with a cave leading to a beach.” says Joe. TrustFabric has a working product and three clients at the moment. They opted for a self-funded incubation, but Joe believes now is a good time to look for outside investment. “I think it was William Gibson who said: The future is already here - it's just not very evenly distributed. I feel like I wake up in the future every day, but it feels a bit broken without something like TrustFabric.” says Joe.

They are currently running a Private Beta service, but Silicon Cape readers can contact the company for an invite.

Watch their explainer video at: www.trustfabric.com and follow them on Twitter: @TrustFabric

Article written by Garreth Bloor

Tags: Trustfabric, newsletter, startup

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Comment by George Gombay on April 13, 2011 at 9:04: Their video is catchy and fun to watch as I have found out.

It does seem to me, however, that the principal factor which is going to make or break them is whether the business community will adopt their model. In a way, it is going to expect businesses to address themselves to a third party for information about you, when the natural inclination would be for them to get their data directly from the horse's mouth as it were.

This will become all the more of a challenge when emulators of Trustfabric will start popping up, as they inevitably will do, and this will then multiply the number of such external "agencies" where the consumers' current accurate data could be stored.

What speaks in Trustfabric's favour is the precedent which businesses were willing to adopt, whereby they and consumers exchanged certificates or tokens with a third party to enable the authentication required to facilitate payment transactions. As that is what led Shuttleworth to fame and success, it should cheer up the foundesr of Trustfabric. :- )