we can now prove that there is a significant number of people who are confident our concept works

Friday, 01 December 2017

Latvian tech startup DigiPulse has won a fast track place at the next final selection round held by Silicon Valley-based 500 Startups.

500 Startups, a global venture fund for early-stage tech businesses, has supported one unicorn (a business valued at over $1bn at IPO or sale), six centaurs (valued at over $100m at IPO or sale) and countless others who have capitalised at smaller, but still very significant sums.

Due to a pitching competition at the Digital Freedom Festival in Riga, DigiPulse will attend the final selection round of the next class of startups looking for funding, knowledge and support tools to grow their already successful business into a truly global enterprise.

Normunds Kvilis, DigiPulse CEO, said, “Early in the DigiPulse journey, we applied to a number of accelerator programmes without success and at one point were close to scrapping the idea and moving on. I’m glad that we didn’t, and that we pushed on with a token sale – raising funds through a sale of our own cryptocurrency – because we’re now in a strong position to create something that could change the way we look at the storage and protection of our digital assets.

“Myself and the team are delighted to have won the Digital Freedom Festival pitching competition, and welcome the opportunity to take our idea to Silicon Valley by pitching directly to 500 Startups. One benefit of having hosted a token sale is that we can now prove that there is a significant number of people who are confident our concept works, and willing to invest their own money in our success.”

DigiPulse provides the world’s first ‘digital cryptocurrency vault’, an inheritance service for digital and crypto assets. The company has just closed a token sale which raised 3,474 ETH, which at the time of going to press is equivalent to around $1.5million. It is arguably the first Latvian firm to do so.

Normunds Kvilis explains how the DigiPulse project was born: “Our service addresses one of the major flaws that cryptocurrencies themselves have, which is that in order to use cryptocurrencies you need to have a digital wallet.

“Cryptocurrency wallets consist of a public address and a password. If you lose either one of them, your assets are stuck in internet limbo. We offer, firstly, a way for you to pass your assets on, with an inheritance service, and secondly, a failsafe solution – in case your PC gets lost or your house burns down. You can still access everything that you have stored.

“We were in the right place at the right time and a lot of people were thinking about how to solve this problem. It was the opportunity to involve ourselves in a exciting, new and developing market: cryptocurrencies.”

Normunds Kvilis continues, “Our system is based on smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain, which are put together on top of our own blockchain which encrypts and stores the data in small chunks so it is practically impossible to hack.

“We are seeing a great deal of support from the crypto community because they are in need a product like this. As people begin to use cryptocurrencies for a broader range of applications and hold significant crypto assets for investment, we must ensure that their families or friends receive their belongings if the worst does happen.”

If the customer chooses to remain anonymous, there is no requirement for them to share their details and the system can work by tracking activity by their digital wallet.

The DigiPulse team is largely based in Riga, Latvia, with connections around the globe.

DigiPulse website: https://www.digipulse.io/

A short interview with Normunds Kvilis from a recent ICO event in London with Wirex’s Raphael Shalaby: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AMbsH9aZw8&t=164s

ENDS

Normunds Kvilis and Dmitry Dementyev-Dedelis are available for interview on request.

DigiPulse can be reached directly through Community Manager Maija Anna Ludbarza, who is contactable by email on maija@digipulse.io or +371 2943 6898.

Media information provided by Famous Publicity. For more information, please contact George Murdoch at george@famouspublicity.com, Tina Fotherby at tina@famouspublicity.com or Dom Hogan at dom@famouspublicity.com or call the team on +44 (0) 333 344 2341.

About DigiPulse

DigiPulse is a subscription based SaaS platform that allows users to store and encrypt information on the DigiPulse blockchain and make it inheritable (only accessible to the specified recipients).

Normunds Kvilis, Co-founder & CEO

Prior to focusing on DigiPulse, Normunds acquired a master’s degree in economics and was an analyst in a leading Scandinavian bank, focusing on financial market analysis and investment opportunities. Later, he took on the role of an IT project manager, with the focus on leading developer teams towards a bank merger. Cryptocurrencies have been on his radar for quite some time. As investor focus starts to shift toward this investment tool, this has brought new problems and opportunities arise, hence DigiPulse.

Dmitry Dementyev-Dedelis, Co-founder & CTO

Before the idea of DigiPulse and the fact that we spend half of our lives online with all the assets and valuables stored there, Dmitry worked in the fundraising sector for universities. By understanding the logic behind alumni giving and gamification, and seeing it from the IT perspective, he has gained the knowledge to merge these two worlds - digital realm and real-life behaviour - together. He is currently managing a part-time BSc in the field of Psychology to gain more in-depth knowledge about people's behaviours and their cognitive processes.