Yaron Samid, CEO and co-founder of BillGuard in New York, likens his company to Robin Hood and his merry band on a mission to return pilfered money to the masses. With $10 million raised in October in a Series B funding round led by Khosla Ventures, BillGuard has set out to further develop its technology, which combs credit and bank card transactions for suspicious activity. “Our big mission is to protect consumers from unfair and unauthorized charges,” Samid says.
BillGuard has been quickly gathering resources to pursue that goal. The company was founded in April 2010 and raised $3 million a month later in a Series A round. Other backers of BillGuard include Bessemer Venture Partners, IA Ventures, The Accelerator Group, Social Leverage, Founder Collective, SV Angel, Founders Fund, Innovation Endeavors, as well as individual investors Yaron Galai, CEO of content recommendation engine Outbrain in New York, and Joe Lonsdale, CEO of Addepar, a Mountain View, CA-based developer of a wealth management platform.
Samid says his company’s latest funding will support efforts to grow its user base and and sales in the United States, and to further business development. Currently BillGuard has a staff of 14 in Israel working on development and just two in New York. The company is hiring in marketing and sales in the States and is looking in Israel for more developers. “Roughly speaking, we’re going to double the size of the company in the next 12 to 18 months,” he says.
BillGuard identifies potential problems by comparing new transactions to complaints posted on the Web by other consumers about bogus charges. The system essentially crowdsources examples of fraud to screen for trouble, Samid says. “This is out there on Facebook, Twitter,
