Encrypted email company Skiff wants you to leave Google Workspace forever

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Skiff cofounders Andrew Milich (left) and Jason Ginsberg (right) are building an end-to-end encrypted coverall. They met while planning a hackathon at Stanford.

SkiffGoogle, Amazon and Facebook have somehow turned the private human experience into the raw material of the digital economy, says Jason Ginsberg, CTO of Skiff.

The world needs an alternative workspace to Google, says Dan Guido, a longtime user of Skiff, an end-to-end encrypted private email provider. Now, Skiff is taking a big step towards becoming a more private and secure replacement for the G-suite by adding end-to-end encrypted Calendar and Drive products to its suite, which also includes collaborative email and documents called Skiff Pages.

Google can see anything you type in documents, says Guido, CEO of cybersecurity firm Trail Of Bits. They can read every email you enter into Google. They do machine learning on it. They feed it into a giant model which they compute to produce advertisements. But Skiff can do none of that.

While it can’t guarantee users full immunity from hackers or surveillance, end-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a method of securing communication by encrypting data before it’s transferred from one device to another. It ensures that no one except the sender and recipient can access or view the data during the transfer. The list of mainstream services employing E2EE is growing rapidly, with tech giants like Apple and Meta (the parent company of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp) adopting it as the default for instant messaging and privacy companies Signal, Telegram and ProtonMail are gaining more popularity. In 2021, Proton surpassed 50 million users, Signal had 40 million active users, and Telegram had more than 500 million users.

Despite the widespread interest in E2EE communication apps, the security method has been scrutinized and criticized by government agencies and law enforcement agencies for hiding criminal and illegal activity. While other companies have focused on building messaging and email platforms, Skiff is one of the few working on an E2EE collaboration platform. While Skiff is missing some flagship features and products like its own encrypted messaging service, the startup has welcomed 300,000 users in the past six months.

Founded in April 2020 and launched in May 2022 by 25-year-old cofounders Andrew Milich and Jason Ginsberg, Skiff offers productivity tools like Pages, Email, Calendar, and Drive for free and through paid plans for added perks like storage. Users can pay $8/month for 100GB of storage or $12/month for 1TB of storage. The cofounders, who are Forbes 30 Under 30 alumni, met while hosting a hackathon at Stanford University. The duo lead a team of 15 employees based around the world in places like Egypt and Israel. Backed by Sequoia Capital, Skiff has raised $23 million in funding and is advised by leaders in the privacy space, including Signal CTO Ehren Kret.

One of the main challenges in building an encrypted version of Google Workspace is the complexity of encrypting different types of information. Encryption is something very fragile. Like, when it works, it’s great. But it can have a small flaw that can render the whole system non-functional, Guido says.

Skiff has yet to implement some essential email features such as autofilter that can sort promotional emails and tidy up your inbox. While users can create labels and folders for emails, Skiff doesn’t allow users to create a feature that automatically sends certain emails to a specific folder.

Super simple in design and user experience, Skiff also has a unique data storage method: users can choose to store their data on the cloud or use a decentralized method of data storage. If you store data on the decentralized network, we’ll use a network called IPFS or InterPlanetary File System, which has servers all over the world where you can access your data, says CEO Andrew Milich, who learned to code at age 5 .

The Skiffs product suite is used by a diverse range of consumers: cybersecurity professionals, journalists, Ukrainians, and even 14-year-olds. The San Francisco-based startup aims to protect sensitive content like medical records and financial information from tracking by tech giants like Google and Microsoft.

Google, Amazon and Facebook have somehow transformed the private human experience into the raw material of the digital economy, says Jason Ginsberg, CTO of Skiff. At any given moment, these services can basically target, produce and process emails, documents, pictures and private messages.

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