In a bid to create a suite of secure office products, US startup Notion recently acquired Skiff, a privacy-focused productivity tools platform that offers end-to-end encrypted file, document, calendar event and email storage. .
Founded in 2020 by Andrew Milich and Jason Ginsberg, Skiff raised $14.2 million in funding in two rounds from notable investors, including Sequoia Capital, Alphabet Chairman John Hennessy, and former Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang.
Skiff initially offered a secure alternative to Google Docs, but quickly expanded to create other productivity tools like calendar and email.
Skiff to close
After acquiring the company, Notion COO Akshay Kothari revealed that his company had been following Skiff's progress since its inception. Impressed by the attention to detail of Skiff's products, Notion decided to secure the platform to improve its own productivity suite.
In an announcement, the Skiff team expressed excitement about joining forces with Notion, seeing deep alignment with Notion's vision of building a connected workspace.
While Skiff customers will be able to continue using the product suite for now, they won't do so indefinitely. The company announced that its products would be shut down after a six-month blackout period and that user accounts would not be converted to Notion accounts. Users have been assured that they can easily export or migrate their data to other services, and Skiff has created a guild explaining how to do this.
Skiff users can claim a refund by opening Skiff Mail, Calendar, Pages, or Drive and clicking “send feedback” in the left sidebar. They just need to choose “Billing” as the category and enter the refund request there. By clicking Submit you will receive a ticket number.
TechCrunch notes that this acquisition is not the first for Notion, which previously acquired workflow management tool Flowdash in 2022. Before that, it took on Cron and India-based Automate.io, which boasted integrations with more than 200 services.
As Notion continues to expand its offering, it is clear that the startup is looking to carve out a space in the competitive secure office market. With its focus on privacy and security, Notion could appeal to users looking for an alternative to big tech solutions like Microsoft 365 and Google Apps.
