Talk With Your Colleagues Anonymously, With Blind

Comment

Tired of being monitored by your company while wanting to dish with colleagues about said company? Or maybe you’re curious about what people with similar work experience are making at other companies. Blind, a two-year-old app founded in South Korea and newly available in the U.S., may be just the thing for you.

Its big idea: bringing anonymity to the workplace so you can “share the real you” with other employees. If you happen to figure out what’s really happening in the upper echelons of the company, so much the better.

Blind’s origins trace back to Naver, the South Korean Internet giant, which long ran a widely used employee forum but pulled the plug when employees began making less-than-flattering remarks about management.  When a group of Naver employees left to form Blind, many Naver employees embraced the platform, followed by employees elsewhere.

It’s been growing ever since, says Osuke Honda, a general partner at DCM, which led an unannounced Series A round of “single digit millions” in the company in May. Indeed, he says that another pivotal moment for Blind came late last year, when a senior Korean Air executive exploded in a rage after a flight attendant presented her peanuts in a bag instead of on a dish.

Interestingly, those Korean Air employees had to wait until 200 of their colleagues had signed up to join Blind before they were able to create their own chat room. Explains Honda, “The rationale is if it’s 10 people using Blind, it’s hard [to ensure that those employees are] anonymous.” At the opposite end of the spectrum, “If it’s 500 employees, the hurdle of opening a chat room is more difficult.”

The company may lower the number – slightly – as it seeks to attract U.S. users. But to date, that threshold has not proved too high. Blind says employees of nearly 800 companies are now actively using the platform, including Microsoft and Amazon.

While the company doesn’t break out how many employees that totals, it says 40 percent of its users return daily and 80 percent return monthly. Blind also says the average usage on the site amounts to 20 minutes a day.

The concept of an anonymous employee forum isn’t entirely new. Old timers may recall the Vault, a site that emerged during the go-go dot-com days and enabled people to post anonymous reviews of their companies. (The site is still ongoing, having acquired new owners along the way.)

Blind takes much greater pains to distinguish itself from the likes of Secret and other mobile anonymity apps.

DCM has backed the anonymous social app Yik Yak, and Honda says DCM is advising Blind based on lessons learned through that earlier investment, particularly when it comes to balancing the quality of interactions without “going too far in policing it,” says Honda. In the meantime, Blind says its workplace focus is a big differentiator.

“We’re in a professional space, so there’s very little ‘bad’ content,” says Alex Shin, Blind’s U.S. head of operations. “Our goal is really to flatten hierarchies within companies and give employees a chance to discuss what’s going on” — both in chat rooms that they set up for their own colleagues, and in so-called lounges, where employees from different companies can gather to talk anonymously.

Says Shin of the types of content posted to Blind: “It’s, ‘Microsoft just launched a new phone; how do you think I will do? Or ‘What do you think of our new Surface Pro stuff?’”

In the cases where those conversations take an unsavory turn, Blind has an answer for that, too, says Shin. “If people say things that are inappropriate, that content gets flagged. If the content gets flagged numerous times, it will disappear. If a user gets flagged seven times within a certain period, we’ll phase out that user, as well.”

Indeed, one of the biggest challenges to Blind would seem to be privacy concerns. No one wants to get caught bad-mouthing the boss. Shin insists it’s a non-issue. “We verify new users and match employers via email domain or LinkedIn/Facebook, then users’ email is encrypted and everything else is erased as soon as you’re verified.” Blind “has ever base covered,” he says.

There’s also the question of a business model, something about which “we talk about a lot,” laughs Honda of DCM. It’s also a question the company is putting off, for now.

“For the next year, it’s more about getting penetration – getting people to share ideas and create forums and what not,” says Honda. Later, one possible direction for the company would be into recruiting. “There are lots communications that go on about jobs and HR-related stuff.” He says he could see Blind ultimately embracing aspects of Glassdoor’s model. “We don’t want to move in that direction too soon, though,” he adds.

If your company isn’t using Blind and you’re interested in checking it out, you can establish a waitlist, or sign up for an existing waitlist, here.

More TechCrunch

Tags

Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. Happy belated Mother’s Day! Want to reach out with a tip? Email Aria at aria.techcrunch@gmail.com or send me a message on Signal at…

Apple devoted a full event to iPad last Tuesday, roughly a month out from WWDC. From the invite artwork to the polarizing ad spot, Apple was clear — the event…

Apple iPad Pro M4 vs. iPad Air M2: Reviewing which is right for most

Terri Burns, a former partner at GV, is venturing into a new chapter of her career by launching her own venture firm called Type Capital. 

GV’s youngest partner has launched her own firm

The decision to go monochrome was probably a smart one, considering the candy-colored alternatives that seem to want to dazzle and comfort you.

ChatGPT’s new face is a black hole

Apple and Google announced on Monday that iPhone and Android users will start seeing alerts when it’s possible that an unknown Bluetooth device is being used to track them. The…

Apple and Google agree on standard to alert people when unknown Bluetooth devices may be tracking them

The company is describing the event as “a chance to demo some ChatGPT and GPT-4 updates.”

OpenAI’s ChatGPT announcement: Watch here

A human safety operator will be behind the wheel during this phase of testing, according to the company.

GM’s Cruise ramps up robotaxi testing in Phoenix

OpenAI announced a new flagship generative AI model on Monday that they call GPT-4o — the “o” stands for “omni,” referring to the model’s ability to handle text, speech, and…

OpenAI debuts GPT-4o ‘omni’ model now powering ChatGPT

Featured Article

The women in AI making a difference

As a part of a multi-part series, TechCrunch is highlighting women innovators — from academics to policymakers —in the field of AI.

5 hours ago
The women in AI making a difference

The expansion of Polar Semiconductor’s facility would enable the company to double its U.S. production capacity of sensor and power chips within two years.

White House proposes up to $120 million to help fund Polar Semiconductor’s chip facility expansion

In 2021, Google kicked off work on Project Starline, a corporate-focused teleconferencing platform that uses 3D imaging, cameras and a custom-designed screen to let people converse with someone as if…

Google’s 3D video conferencing platform, Project Starline, is coming in 2025 with help from HP

Over the weekend, Instagram announced it is expanding its creator marketplace to 10 new countries — this marketplace connects brands with creators to foster collaboration. The new regions include South…

Instagram expands its creator marketplace to 10 new countries

You can expect plenty of AI, but probably not a lot of hardware.

Google I/O 2024: What to expect

The keynote kicks off at 10 a.m. PT on Tuesday and will offer glimpses into the latest versions of Android, Wear OS and Android TV.

Google I/O 2024: How to watch

Four-year-old Mexican BNPL startup Aplazo facilitates fractionated payments to offline and online merchants even when the buyer doesn’t have a credit card.

Aplazo is using buy now, pay later as a stepping stone to financial ubiquity in Mexico

We received countless submissions to speak at this year’s Disrupt 2024. After carefully sifting through all the applications, we’ve narrowed it down to 19 session finalists. Now we need your…

Vote for your Disrupt 2024 Audience Choice favs

Co-founder and CEO Bowie Cheung, who previously worked at Uber Eats, said the company now has 200 customers.

Healthy growth helps B2B food e-commerce startup Pepper nab $30 million led by ICONIQ Growth

Booking.com has been designated a gatekeeper under the EU’s DMA, meaning the firm will be regulated under the bloc’s market fairness framework.

Booking.com latest to fall under EU market power rules

Featured Article

‘Got that boomer!’: How cybercriminals steal one-time passcodes for SIM swap attacks and raiding bank accounts

Estate is an invite-only website that has helped hundreds of attackers make thousands of phone calls aimed at stealing account passcodes, according to its leaked database.

10 hours ago
‘Got that boomer!’: How cybercriminals steal one-time passcodes for SIM swap attacks and raiding bank accounts

Squarespace is being taken private in an all-cash deal that values the company on an equity basis at $6.6 billion.

Permira is taking Squarespace private in a $6.9 billion deal

AI-powered tools like OpenAI’s Whisper have enabled many apps to make transcription an integral part of their feature set for personal note-taking, and the space has quickly flourished as a…

Buy Me a Coffee’s founder has built an AI-powered voice note app

Airtel, India’s second-largest telco, is partnering with Google Cloud to develop and deliver cloud and GenAI solutions to Indian businesses.

Google partners with Airtel to offer cloud and GenAI products to Indian businesses

To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch has been publishing a series of interviews focused on remarkable women who’ve contributed to…

Women in AI: Rep. Dar’shun Kendrick wants to pass more AI legislation

We took the pulse of emerging fund managers about what it’s been like for them during these post-ZERP, venture-capital-winter years.

A reckoning is coming for emerging venture funds, and that, VCs say, is a good thing

It’s been a busy weekend for union organizing efforts at U.S. Apple stores, with the union at one store voting to authorize a strike, while workers at another store voted…

Workers at a Maryland Apple store authorize strike

Alora Baby is not just aiming to manufacture baby cribs in an environmentally friendly way but is attempting to overhaul the whole lifecycle of a product

Alora Baby aims to push baby gear away from the ‘landfill economy’

Bumble founder and executive chair Whitney Wolfe Herd raised eyebrows this week with her comments about how AI might change the dating experience. During an onstage interview, Bloomberg’s Emily Chang…

Go on, let bots date other bots

Welcome to Week in Review: TechCrunch’s newsletter recapping the week’s biggest news. This week Apple unveiled new iPad models at its Let Loose event, including a new 13-inch display for…

Why Apple’s ‘Crush’ ad is so misguided

The U.K. AI Safety Institute, the U.K.’s recently established AI safety body, has released a toolset designed to “strengthen AI safety” by making it easier for industry, research organizations and…

UK agency releases tools to test AI model safety

AI startup Runway’s second annual AI Film Festival showcased movies that incorporated AI tech in some fashion, from backgrounds to animations.

At the AI Film Festival, humanity triumphed over tech