About StayPrivate

Our mission

The way we use email has changed.

As the world has gone paperless, email accounts have taken over from postal addresses as the place where we receive and send important information, from password resets to sensitive documents.

Yet our email accounts remain full of spam and scams. And even when we don't fall for the tricks, we waste time sifting through all the rubbish.

Email is a proven technology, but it hasn't moved on. It's still largely the same as it was thirty years ago. The result is that email, although essential for us all, has become a source of ever-growing frustration and anxiety. Something to deal with and begrudgingly endure.

We are changing this. Together, we will make email better.

Our journey

We started out in the City of London, helping specialist financial services businesses, such as private banks, hedge funds and wealth managers, communicate safely with their clients.

We certainly didn't invent business email encryption, but we did change it. We made it simple to integrate. We made it affordable and accessible. And, crucially, we made it easier to use for the end client.

We now provide encrypted email, document signing, and file sharing services to thousands of organizations all around the world and across a wide range of sectors.

We hoped for, and expected, success in financial services. But we didn't predict how quickly businesses from other sectors would begin using StayPrivate. Nor did we predict how many individual customers would ask us if they could have their own consumer version.

This got us thinking. We all use email, and increasingly so, but personal email is no longer up to the job.

Our email accounts are disorganized and full of spam. They aren't private and aren't well-protected, yet they contain some of our most important and sensitive information. And whilst the big email providers continue to offer a free service in exchange for our data, they have little incentive to change things.

It was time for something better. So we decided to build it!

We took our existing platform, with its focus on ease-of-use, organization, privacy and encryption, and added all the extra features we wished to see in a modern, fit-for-purpose email service, including blocking, notes, file storage and file sharing.

Our founders

Andrew Brogden

Co-founder and CEO

Andrew was born in Manchester, UK. He has a first class degree in Mathematics and a master's in Mathematics, both from Cambridge University.

Andrew started his career as a management consultant, before moving into financial services, initially as a derivatives trader. He worked in large banks for over fifteen years, building and heading up businesses which specialised in creating retail investment products.

Andrew has a proven track record of advising, developing and investing in successful technology businesses, including Snap and Redgate Software.

In his spare time, Andrew enjoys travelling around the world supporting his triathlon-obsessed wife.

Rob Reid

Co-founder and COO

Rob was born in Scotland. He has a first class degree in Actuarial Mathematics & Statistics from Heriot-Watt University and is a qualified actuary.

Rob began his career as a risk manager before moving into financial product design. He worked for nearly twenty years in the banking sector, most notably at NatWest and Santander, running teams specializing in designing and distributing new products to the retail market.

Rob is married with three teenage children and a dog.

Huw Parker

Co-founder and Head of Information Security

Huw was born in Bristol, UK. He has a first class degree in Natural Sciences and a master's degree in Computing, both from Cambridge University.

Huw is a Certified Information Security Systems Professional with over twenty years' experience designing, developing and maintaining software solutions for the defence industry and other sectors, working for organisations such as the UK Ministry of Defence and NATO.

Huw is an expert in modern information security techniques and practices. His knowledge helps us to ensure that we do what we say and look after your information properly at all times.

When Huw is not reading cyber security manuals, he likes to spend time with his family and playing chess.