eBlocker was founded back in 2014 with the vision to enable completely anonymous and tracking-free surfing on any device – from PC/Mac, to tablet, to SmartTV and IoT. At the same time, we aimed to protect children from unwanted websites and block internet threats, such as malware in the entire home network. This vision has already become reality with eBlocker today.
However, there have been many ups and downs along the way:
Successful crowdfunding campaigns
After founding and receiving initial funding from an innovation fund, we ran two very successful crowdfunding campaigns on Indiegogo and Kickstarter that allowed us to develop the prototype into a finished product.
Things went on really well after we delivered the crowdfunding “perks” (eBlocker devices and software licenses) to all backers. eBlocker had grown in headcount to around 20, our eBlockerOS received more and more improvements and we won countless awards. Customer growth was also continuing and we were on target with our revenue and sales plans. However, the startup was not yet profitable and funding was only secured until spring 2019
Lead investor cancels financing round
For further growth financing, we had planned a significant venture capital financing. The lead investor had given the green light in January 2019 after months of reviewing the company. However, a few weeks before the notarization, the investor has pulled out of the deal completely unexpectedly. In the end, we lacked the time to find alternative financing and eBlocker GmbH was closed by the insolvency administrator. The startup was at its end in June 2019 and we all lost our jobs – but luckily all employees quickly found new opportunities.
Restart with different signs
Because we did not want to leave our thousands of customers alone and as we believe in our vision, we founders took over all the intellectual property of eBlocker GmbH from the insolvency administrator and started again in January 2020. However, with completely different signs: without costly hardware production, without permanent employees and without offices – only with voluntary commitment and our vision of the future: a free internet without data collectors for everyone, open source, free of charge and financed by donations.
Current project status
Today, 18 months after the relaunch, eBlocker is a non-profit organization, driven by about 20 volunteers and supported by donations alone. The eBlockerOS software is completely open source and free of charge. It is significantly enhanced, has many new features and runs on the former commercial “white cube eBlockers” as well as on almost all Raspberry Pi mini computers. The operating costs for the technical infrastructure, commercially licensed filters for malware and parental control, as well as daily updates are financed by donations – which is not always easy, because there is no hidden business model.
To make it clear: Today, eBlocker is an ambitious hobby project where nobody gets a salary. We do it all voluntarily and altruistically out of passion for privacy protection. We can only afford this hobby, because we all have other well-paid jobs.
Supporters are very welcome
Therefore, we are very happy about every supporter or sponsor, like the German DEVK insurances, which for example finance the Personal Device Firewall, that we expect to release with eBlockerOS 2.7 in late summer 2021.
For the future we are planning further innovations for privacy protection with eBlocker 3 and are happy about our constantly growing user community. Get all the important information about the progress via our monthly newsletter. And if you want to contribute or support us, you can find all the information here.