There’s been a lot of buzz around Seattle about Doxo lately. And yet, the startup has managed to maintain some stealthiness around what it actually does—despite the fact that it has some big names involved. The company has ex-Qpass dream-team Steve Shivers, Roger Parks, and Mark Goris (also known as the “Qpass mafia“) for founders. And in November 2009 it garnered $5.25 million in support from Bezos Expeditions (the venture organization of Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos) and Silicon Valley-based Mohr Davidow Ventures.
Up until this point, all we’ve known about Doxo, is that the Seattle-based startup has some big plans for “going paperless”—making items like insurance policies and credit card bills manageable online.
How the two-year-old startup planned to do this was anyone’s guess. But wonder no more. Today it is lifting the screen, rolling out its services publicly, and shedding some light on its sizable mission.
So what is Doxo all about? Drum roll please… The company has developed a cloud-based service where consumers can manage bills and other correspondence that’s usually snail-mailed.
Through Doxo, a person can view and organize their personal and financial accounts, bills, privacy policies, and other important documents—everything from bank and credit card statements to utility, mobile, and cable bills, insurance information, investment portfolios, and frequent flyer programs—in one place, with one password.
For many, Doxo’s product may not sound revolutionary. In fact, vice president Kevin Frisch says the idea is so simple, he’s surprised someone else didn’t think it up first.
“It makes so much sense, I almost wonder why it hasn’t been around before,” he says.
Contrary to what we at Xconomy originally anticipated—and unlike similar companies in the paperless space, like Earth Class Mail—this product is being marketed toward consumers, not companies. And it’s free, for consumers that is.
Here’s how it works: through Doxo, consumers can connect and go “paper free” with providers who have already joined in, after which all bills and correspondence will be delivered electronically to their secure account. Users can also upload their own documents, and request that service providers that aren’t already on Doxo join, so that everything will be in one management hub. From there consumers can pay bills, schedule automatic transactions, and communicate with each account. Doxo then takes a small per-transaction fee from the companies and service. But even this, according to Frisch, pales in comparison to the money they’ll save in printing and mailing costs to their customers.
“Businesses spend a tremendous amount of money printing paper and sending out those bills,” Frisch says. “Using Doxo, they’re saving a tremendous amount.” According to Doxo, 55 billion
