Technology

Posted on June 18, 2018 by staff

Blockchain firm backed by Gumtree co-founder raises £1.4m

Technology

A London-based blockchain software start-up backed by the co-founder of Gumtree has raised £1.4 million in seed funding.

Gospel Technology has developed an “enterprise-grade” security platform, underpinned by blockchain, used by clients across a range of sectors including retail, finance, automotive, government, healthcare and manufacturing.

The Gospel ledger and the data on it can only be accessed by those who can prove their identity and who have been given permission by the data owner.

Every time an approved person accesses or changes the computable ledger, the transaction is recorded.

“For manufacturers and other businesses dealing with critical data there is a problem of trust in data systems, particularly when there is a need to share that data outside the organisation,” said founder and chief executive Ian Smith.

“With Gospel technology we can provide an immutable record store so that trust can be fully automated between systems of forward thinking businesses.”

The £1.4m round was led by VC firm LocalGlobe, which joins existing angel investors including Gumtree co-founder Michael Pennington and Vivek Kundra, the chief information officer for the US government during Barack Obama’s administration.

Remus Brett, venture partner at LocalGlobe, added: “The problem Gospel is solving is how big companies stop critical data from being compromised when traditional ‘hub and spoke’ or centralised approaches to data security are failing them.

“Using blockchain technology Gospel can secure company data, thereby solving one of the biggest challenges of data trust that companies large and small face today.”

The seed funding will help the company to develop its software further and it expects to double its headcount from 25 over the next 18 months.

Gospel founder Smith sold his first company, Butterfly Software, which developed applications that help organisations discover, analyse and migrate data centre infrastructures, to IBM in 2012.

After the sale, he worked at IBM for three years where he lead product management and technical sales for the systems division.