The founders of Inkling Markets, a prediction market platform and a Y Combinator alum, found that their staff needed a secure chat room every day to work together on private issues within their business but most of the collaboration apps send an email when they’re updated with a message, which while is convenient, is not necessarily secure. They also wanted an uber-simple email collaboration tool that was secure across all email clients and could be accessed from a laptop or an iPhone. The looked into Basecamp and Google Groups, but found the interface too clunky for simple email correspondence.
So they created Tgethr, a simple, easy-to-use secure, free email collaboration platform that can be used between family members or within an enterprise. All you have to do is set up a group name, i.e. “techcrunch@tgethr.com” with a distribution list of whomever you want to participate, and write to it. You can write from your own email client or from Tgethr’s interface. Tgethr will keep a private archive of everything you write on the web. You can cc: or bcc: to it, tag your correspondence, search for emails and keywords, and it’s secure with both ssl and email encryption. And the interface is sort of like a chat room.
Nathan Kontny, co-founder of Inkling Markets, says that the tool is aimed to be the anti-fancy email collaboration app. Most importantly, Kontny, says was to build in security capabilities so both email and web traffic would be encrypted and users could feel better about sharing sensitive information – something that is missing in other collaboration solutions. Ideal users could be project teams, families, friends, and clubs, or enterprises whose staff work remotely. Startups which have launched similar applications include Cc:Betty (which we wrote about here) and FamSpam.
