Self-Sovereign Identity Incubator (SSII) today announced the names of the four startups selected to participate in the world’s first incubator for digital identity. Teams from Domi, MetaDigital Inc, Spaceman ID Inc, and Xertify were chosen from almost 100 applicants for an intensive 12-week program focused on fast-tracking technologies that use self-sovereign identity (SSI) to transform the way we verify identity and handle data online.
The Incubator is a joint venture between the Sovrin Foundation and investment firm Hard Yaka. It connects startups worldwide with leaders and mentors in the SSI movement and offers $180,000 investment to each of the selected participants.
“SSI is a revolutionary technology giving safety, control, and autonomy over data and our digital identity. Our goal is to spot the possibilities across a wide landscape of unique use cases and disrupt the broken identity systems we see online today,” said Hard Yaka Founder Greg Kidd. “If a solution can improve the customer experience and tackle real identity challenges or opportunities, we then look to supersize it. The result is a positive collision of scale and innovation. And for a technology like SSI that’s attracting more and more companies seeking to solve the identity problem, innovation speed matters.”
The selected teams were chosen based on their potential to deliver decentralized identity solutions focused on customers, products, and processes.
The four startup projects are:
- Domi (Berlin): Digital passports for landlords and tenants that would create a fairer rental market.
- MetaDigital Inc (Toronto): An Intelligent Healthcare Platform that would eliminate medical prescription and insurance claim fraud with real-time digital verification.
- Spaceman ID Inc (Chicago): Tools for companies to easily implement private, secure, and portable digital credentials.
- Xertify (Bogotá, CO): A network where people and institutions can exchange trusted information based on blockchain technology.
“We are thrilled to welcome these outstanding teams to San Francisco as the first participants in the SSI Incubator,” said Sovrin Foundation Chief Executive Officer Heather C. Dahl. “The work these companies will undertake at SSII will have a far-reaching impact beyond the identity community. From housing to education to healthcare to overall enterprise adoption, these startups have the opportunity to replace outdated systems of digital data exchange while respecting individual data rights.”
Members of the public are invited to the SSI Incubator’s kickoff event on Tuesday, September 17, 2019 in San Francisco. The event is sponsored, in part, by Hyperledger, whose Executive Director Brian Behlendorf will moderate a discussion on: "The State of Digital Identity: Bringing Blockchain, Decentralization, and Self-Sovereign ID to the Internet.”
Panelists include:
- Daniel Buchner, Senior Project Manager for Decentralized Identity at Microsoft
- Pelle Brændgaard, Chief Technology Officer of uPort
- Heather C. Dahl, CEO and Executive Director of the Sovrin Foundation
- Greg Kidd, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of globaliD
Phil Windley, Chair of the Sovrin Foundation Board of Trustees will emcee the evening’s events. Tickets are available here.
Please visit SSI Incubator’s website to learn more about the program and sign up for a weekly newsletter, the SSI Sweep, which provides the latest news from around the SSI community and updates on the 2019 SSII participants.
About Hard Yaka
Hard Yaka is an investment firm focused on digital identity, payments, and marketplaces. Founded by Greg Kidd, an initial investor and advisor for both Twitter and Square, Hard Yaka has investments in over 90 companies including Ripple, Coinbase, Robinhood, Dwolla, and globaliD, where Greg is the co-founder and CEO.
About the Sovrin Foundation
The Sovrin Foundation is a nonprofit organization established to administer the Governance Framework governing the Sovrin Network, a decentralized global public network enabling self-sovereign identity on the internet. The Sovrin Network is an open source project operated by independent Stewards and uses the power of a distributed ledger to give every person, organization, and thing the ability to own and control their own permanent digital identity.
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