Published : 10 years ago, on 04/07/2014

Series A funding to boost ground-breaking reputation standard

Traity, the creator of the ground breaking reputation standard that enables individuals to own their own online reputation, has announced a $4.7M Series a investment.

The investment has been led by ACTIVE Venture Partners through its Amerigo Innvierte Spain Ventures Fund , together with Horizons Ventures, the venture investment arm of Mr. Li Ka-Shing; KRW Schindler Private Ventures with Philipp Schindler as a cornerstone investor, Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments (BDMI); Lanta Digital Ventures; 500 Startups; Lisa Gansky , US entrepreneur; Juan Lopez , Chief Digital Officer at Pearson; Matthew Bothner, Chair of HR and Leadership at ESMT; and Dalibor Siroky, Australian entrepreneur.

Juan Cartagena

Traity’s purpose is to empower people across the world by enabling them to trust one another in a safe and transparent environment as part of the growing collaboration economy, reducing risk and increasing peace of mind. The Traity online community sets the reputation standard, helping people to maintain the time and effort they have spent in establishing their credentials and delivering an accurate online reflection of their skills, their reliability and their personality qualities. Founded in Spain and San Francisco by entrepreneurs Juan Cartagena, Jose Ignacio Fernandez and Borja Martin in 2012, Traity will use the new investment to support its dual approach to expansion. The first element of this is to further populate the consumer focused reputation passport on which people can build, manage and most importantly, own their reputation; and the second is to partner with collaboration economy businesses so that users can leverage and use their reputation anywhere, whilst supporting startups in building trusted communities that enable their users to transact more often, quickly and safely.”

“We aim to help in creating a world where we can trust one another, by building a reputation standard”, said Juan Cartagena, founder and CEO at Traity. “In order to do that we must grow a community around personal reputation that is exceptional, both in terms of the detail, the accuracy and the depth of information as well as the opportunity for collaboration economy businesses to benefit from early involvement and assist them in verifying their own users in ways that help them to transact safely and without friction. The new funding enables us to expand our world class team to propel the Traity community, which we hope will be hugely beneficial to society as a whole”.

Crucial to the success of Traity is its commitment to both transparency and privacy. It gathers information including identity verification, social network analytics, existing review status, e.g. stars earned on sites like eBay and AirBnB, endorsements about personal strengths from friends and personality traits; it also builds a fortress around this data to ensure users have control and the ability to leverage their reputation on the sites where they want to be trusted by using their reputation passport.

Christopher Pommerening, Founding Partner at ACTIVE Venture Partners, said: “Traity is setting the worldwide reputation standard and we are very excited to support the team on their inspiring mission. It is our belief that there is an increasing demand for accurate and safe online transactions between people and that Traity’s disruptive and ground-breaking reputation passport will be of great value for its community and the whole collaborative economy.”

Juan Lopez-Valcarcel, an experienced digital transformation executive and Chief Digital Officer at Pearson is investing in Traity in a personal capacity. He said: “Your online personal reputation is the key missing puzzle piece for the future of the digital economy. Traity has assembled a smart team with incredible traction in delivering a solution for companies and individuals. It is also exciting to be backing a company that started in Spain and is already global.”

Collaboration economy Guru, Lisa Gansky said: “We are in the midst of a fundamental shift in our global economy. From one based on ownership and debt to one where access to goods, services & talent trumps ownership. In this hyper-connected world, the coin of the realm is reputation. Traity has created a platform for all of us to track, manage, transact and protect our increasingly public and inherently valuable reputation.”