Silent Circle, which provides encrypted email and messaging, has appointed Joshua Konowe, founder of Uppidy, as chief marketing and strategy officer.
“We are ecstatic with the new addition of Joshua to the team,” said Gregg Smith, CEO of Silent Circle. “Joshua is a proven leader in our market with incredible energy and is coming into Silent Circle at an important time to help expand our impressive global enterprise customer list and product offerings.”
Throughout his 20-year career, Konowe has coordinated several successful exits for both bootstrapped and venture-funded businesses. He also has guest-lectured on several topics related to entrepreneurship at nearly a dozen colleges and universities around the country, including Georgetown, American University and The University of Kentucky–including a 10-minute TEDx Talk he conducted on the subject of trust in Tauranga, New Zealand. Prior to his startup experience, Konowe worked at Nielsen, Katz Radio Group, TheDeal and Institutional Investor Magazine.
Uppidy, a venture backed startup that he founded in 2011, was subsequently acquired in 2014. Uppidy helped companies and individuals securely backup text/SMS messages to the cloud.
“I am really excited to dive back into the unified communications vertical,” said Konowe. “Following Uppidy’s acquisition, I have been anxious to get involved into the space again.”
Silent Phone’s application provides secure calling, conferencing, messaging, file sharing and video, while its Blackphone handset offers an enhanced Android operating system for security. Silent World providing out-of-theater secure calling to land and mobile lines of non-subscribers in more than 100 locations around the world, and Silent Manager delivers organization-wide user management via a web-based administration console.
