Mike Clark and Geoffrey Arone are preparing to roll out a new startup – SafetyWeb – we’ve confirmed. The company has raised a small angel round from Battery Ventures.
Clarke was an early executive and SVP of Engineering at Photobucket and was there from the start and for two years following the $300 million acquisition from FIM/MySpace. Arone, a cofounder of Flock, recently sold his startup DanceJam to SportsNet. Both are now full time on SafetyWeb.
For now the two aren’t saying much about the product. Except for this: SafetyWeb will target parents who want to know what their kids are up to online. This isn’t about filtering and key logging the home computers, but rather a service that will monitor publicly available information on the Internet and report back to parents. The key goals are to understand how to interpret real v. perceived threats to children/teens, and also report back any anomalies that the parents should be aware of. For example, if they friend someone who is a known sex offender, etc.
This is a subscription product for parents, but will also give parents particularly worrisome content about a child for free when it is discovered.
We’re waiting to see a full demo, but our guess is parents are going to be more than willing to pay to see what their kids are up to. Competitors include ReputationDefender’s MyChild product