INTERNAL Raises $5M to Solve the Problem of "God View"

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- INTERNAL, a new no-code SaaS tool for rapidly deploying a company's internal console, launched today to enable employees to interact with customer app data in a secure and compliant interface. INTERNAL raised a $5M seed round led by Craft Ventures with participation from Pathfinder (Founders Fund's early stage investment vehicle) and other angel investors. Starting today, the product is available with a free trial by visiting internal.io.

INTERNAL's announcement comes as companies like Facebook, Uber, and Snap have come under scrutiny for their "God View" tools that were abused by employees to spy on users. Tools like "God View" are built in-house at most tech companies and provide employees with broad access to sensitive customer information. While many employees require this data to do their jobs (for example, to fix issues, complete tasks, and respond to support cases), most companies fail to limit their access. INTERNAL provides high quality, out-of-the-box internal tools necessary for customer-facing teams to interact with app data — while controlling access and protecting customer privacy to fix the "God View" problem.

INTERNAL was founded by entrepreneurs Arisa Amano and Bob Remeika, who have worked together at three technology companies in the past including Harbor, Zenefits, and Yammer, and have repeatedly built solutions in-house to increase employee productivity and protect sensitive data.

"Most companies end up hacking together mediocre tools with no controls to prevent employees from abusing customer data," said Arisa Amano, co-founder at INTERNAL. "This is a real problem that tech companies are obligated to fix but most of them will never dedicate their own engineering resources to do it right. We created INTERNAL so companies don't have to build these tools in the first place. They can be up and running in minutes with better tools for their employees to get work done, that also helps protect customer privacy." 

INTERNAL connects to existing databases and allows customer-facing teams to dive deep into individual records without lengthy implementation time or engineering work. INTERNAL integrates with business applications such as Google Sheets, Salesforce, and Zendesk — deep linking related records to create powerful views of the customer.  Every piece of data is protected with granular access controls and audit logs to ensure employees only access the data they need, when they need to. These powerful data protection features are also necessary for companies to meet core requirements of GDPR, HIPAA, and SOC 2.

"The dirty little secret in Silicon Valley is that an alarming number of employees at tech companies can access your information," said Bob Remeika, co-founder at INTERNAL.  "These companies don't have bad intentions, but they're always faced with a choice: build customer-facing products or better internal tools. With our software you don't need to choose anymore."

Key INTERNAL product features include:

• Powerful database browser
• Search and filtering
• Auto-generated tasks and team queues
• Edit mode
• Custom views
• Granular permissioning on every field
• Redacted fields for sensitive data
• Audit logs on every record

"The talented INTERNAL team spun out of Harbor earlier this year and we are excited to be one of their first customers," said Josh Stein, CEO of Harbor, a digital platform for alternative assets. "Partnering with INTERNAL allows us to free up engineering resources and focus on accelerating our business. INTERNAL provides a robust system for managing customer operations tasks with important security and compliance controls for protecting customer data."

"The need to control employee access to customer data, while also allowing them to do their jobs servicing those customers, is a huge problem," said David Sacks, co-founder and partner at Craft Ventures. "In the same way that SaaS tools emerged to deploy internal dashboards, a new breed of SaaS tools are emerging to deploying internal consoles. Arisa and Bob have identified a clear market need and we are excited to invest in their new startup."

About INTERNAL
INTERNAL is console as a service, allowing companies to rapidly deploy an internal console for their employees to securely and compliantly interact with customer app data. It's no-code internal tools that combines a database browser with productivity tools to connect company data in useful, actionable ways while controlling access and protecting customer privacy. INTERNAL was founded by Arisa Amano and Bob Remeika. INTERNAL is headquartered in San Francisco.

Contact:
Kelsey Cullen, KCPR
kelsey@kcpr.com
650.438.1063

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SOURCE INTERNAL