November 2020: Bindle Monthly Update
Dear Friends of Bindle Systems:
November was another strong month for the company – across product development, partnerships, and sales. Please see requests for help and updates below.
Also, in anticipation of a Series A in 1H 2021, we have decided to raise an incremental $1M SAFE. We alluded to this possibility in a previous update and recently made the decision to move forward with it, primarily to allow revenue to scale a bit more before the Series A (see Revenue section below). If you are interested in participating in the SAFE, please reach out to Gus over the next couple of weeks. As with the first SAFE, we intend to move quickly and – accounting for the holidays – are targeting to have all wires in by mid-January.
Thanks as always for your support!
Team Bindle
Update
Revenue
Bindle Systems is now a revenue-generating company with the revenue pipeline growing along two vectors: COVID-19 testing labs and “facilitators” (our name for organizations that are helping companies get back to work and school). Both the labs and the facilitators are interested in bundling our digital credential/badging system into their own offerings. As of November 30th, we had contracts out for negotiation and signature which represent a test volume capacity of ~10,000 tests per day, at approximately $1 per test in revenue. This represents a very small fraction of daily testing in the US (~1.5M per day).
Vaccine Certificates
Operation Warp Speed recently announced that each vaccine will be accompanied by a paper certificate. The Bindle platform will enable people to transform these paper certificates into digital credentials. We are also exploring partnerships with software companies that help pharmacies and doctors’ offices report vaccinations to state immunization registries, with the idea that an individual would be able to “claim their vaccine certificate” via Bindle at the same time that the vaccine is reported to the registries.
K-12 Education: Post-COVID Market Validation
We are seeing a growing interest from K-12 schools which are quickly realizing that they cannot manage test screening for 100s or 1000s of students using spreadsheets. Importantly, one of the reasons Bindle is attractive to this vertical is the possibility of adding other vaccination information (Polio, MMR, DTaP, Chickenpox, etc) to the students’ digital wallets – an early confirmation that our self-sovereign identity platform will have many use cases beyond COVID-19.
Product Differentiation: HIPAA-compliant “Multi-Cert” Entry Passes
With support for vaccine certificates, test results, and symptom & behavioral attestations, we are within days of shipping a release that will make us the only platform that can transform multiple types of health certificates into a digital “entry pass” for a venue, all without the venue ever having to handle health data.
Business Model and Pricing Validation
Our business model is based on being a very small % of the cost of a test or vaccine (1%-10%, depending on volume) while also retaining comfortable gross margins because of the decentralized nature of our platform. This approach has been validated by both existing customers and our pipeline – for example, we charge roughly $1 for each of the tests mentioned above (most of which are PCR).
Biden Transition Team
We are working with our lobbying firm to approach the incoming Biden administration about the need for a national open standard for self-sovereign COVID-19 health credentials (vaccine and test results). A draft of that letter can be read here. Once we get initial reaction to the letter from a few representatives on Biden’s COVID-19 Advisory Board, we intend to add many other signatories, with the goal of sending a final letter to the entire Advisory Board no later than Monday, Dec 21st. If you know of any organizations that would be interested in signing on to support this effort, please send them our way.
Team Additions
Paul Christodoulou, Product Management
Paul joins Bindle Systems as Product Owner/Manager. He is going to be helping drive the product strategy and vision from inception to completion. Paul will be working with the Customer Success, Development and Leadership teams to prioritize and deliver what’s next on our product roadmap. Prior to joining Bindle Systems, Paul has spent time working as a Product Owner with JetBlue Airways, Dealer Inspire and Greenshades Software where he was responsible for delivering mobile and web solutions that had impact across internal and external customers. Paul is an avid Mets fan and a purveyor of all things pop culture. He resides on Long Island, NY with his wife Jean, son Colin and a Goldendoodle that responds to Fozzie. Paul enjoys live music, sporting events and travel and is excited to be a part of helping Bindle Systems get everyone back to doing the things they love the most.
Beryl Stoutenberg, Operations
Beryl joins Bindle Systems as Finance and HR Manager. She will be responsible for helping with bookkeeping, onboarding, and company culture. Prior to joining Bindle, Beryl spent the past few years working as the Office Manager for PhotoSound Technologies where she managed the QSP, import/export, accounting and HR policies. Before joining PhotoSound, Beryl worked for many years assisting in administration for a non-profit agency in Canada. She spent the first part of her career working as a professional dancer and now spends her spare time training student athletes. Still deeply entrenched in the arts industry, she looks forward to seeing how Bindle Systems can help safely reopen theatres.
James Chiappetta, Application Security Advisor
James Chiappetta started his career as a software security penetration tester and engineer. He has over 10 years of experience in Cybersecurity with deep subject matter expertise in Application Security. He has built a number of security teams across several types of organizations. He has focused on creating scale though lightweight but valuable security processes, automation, and developer enablement practices. His principles and philosophy is published on his blog betterappsec.com.
