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Founded by Ex-Googlers, Tailscale Launches to Secure and Simplify Remote Network Access With $3M
[April 02, 2020]

Founded by Ex-Googlers, Tailscale Launches to Secure and Simplify Remote Network Access With $3M


Tailscale, a new kind of corporate VPN, launched today to help remote teams securely access the services they need, without the long setup times of traditional VPNs. Based on Google's (News - Alert) zero-trust BeyondCorp architecture, and built using the WireGuard protocol, Tailscale makes network security accessible to teams of any scale.

"It is critical that our networking infrastructure scale quickly without sacrificing security," says David Taylor, President & CEO of VersaBank, one of the world's first branchless financial institutions. "Tailscale's VPN lets employees connect seamlessly and securely to the bank's servers from multiple offices and cloud providers, using the Office 365 and Windows client/server applications we already had in place. They've become a key part of our business continuity plan and our entire team can work from remote locations, avoiding any interruption in service - this is especially valuable in managing our business through the COVID-19 pandemic."

Tailscale reduces VPN setup from weeks to minutes by using a team's existing identity provider such as GSuite and Office365. Tailscale connects authorized devices in a peer-to-peer mesh, minimizing latency and improving reliability. The product's close integraton with existing identity providers means there's no separate list of authorized users to maintain, and onboarding and offboarding team members or adding two-factor auth is as simple as using existing workflows.



Says Avery Pennarun, Tailscale's CEO, "Not every company can deploy Google-scale systems like BeyondCorp. We built Tailscale to bring simple security to teams of any size."

Established in 2019, Tailscale is a fully remote team. Avery Pennarun (CEO), David Crawshaw (CTO), and David Carney (COO) have collectively held engineering management positions at Google Fiber, implemented core network features in Fuchsia OS, and are WireGuard project contributors.


Alongside the launch, the company announced a $3M (News - Alert) seed round, led by Heavybit with participation from Uncork Capital and others.

"Legacy VPNs were never designed with the modern workforce or fully distributed teams in mind," says Heavybit Partner Joe Ruscio. "Tailscale's platform is built on proven technology and is the fastest to implement, keeping employees reliably connected no matter their location."

Uncork Partner Andy McLoughlin adds, "Tailscale connections are fast and rock-solid without sacrificing ease-of-use and security. This team has been building secure networking tools for over 20 years, and it shows in Tailscale's mature security design."

About Tailscale: Tailscale is a new kind of corporate VPN that requires no hardware or infrastructure and sets up in minutes. Founded in 2019 by ex-Google engineers, the company is backed by Heavybit and Uncork Capital. Tailscale aims to make every app secure by default. For more information visit https://tailscale.com

"WireGuard" is a registered trademark of Jason A. Donenfeld.


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