Notion acquires privacy-focused productivity platform Skif

Notion launched its new calendar based on cron last month, but its productivity suite may soon have more privacy-focused offerings. The company announced today that it has acquired Skiff, a platform that provides end-to-end encrypted file storage, Docs, calendar events, and email.

Skiff was started in 2020 by Andrew Milich and Jason Ginsberg. The company had raised $14.2 million in two rounds of funding from investors such as Alphabet Chairman John Hennessey, former Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang, and Eventbrite co-founders Julia and Kevin Hartz along with Sequoia Capital. Balaji Srinivasan, and Re-Ink founder Jenny Wang.

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In a conversation with the co-founders posted on the Notion blog, the company’s COO Akshay Kothari said that Notion had paid attention to Skiff’s work from the beginning.

“Skiffs started appearing on our radar at Notion right from the start. I actually tried to reach out to you in 2020 when you were building your Docs product. We never connected then, but I kept track of your progress. Then a few months ago, Ivan [Notion co-foudner] And I was talking, and the skiff came again. “I downloaded all the products you made and was really impressed by the attention to detail,” Kothari said.

While the company started as a secure alternative to Google Docs, it also created other productivity solutions like calendars and email.

Skiff mentions on its website that the company is joining Notion. On a support page, Skiff stated that the product would be discontinued after six months. It mentions that Skiff user accounts will not be converted to Notion accounts. Plus, users can easily export or transfer their data to other services.

Notion’s last acquisition in 2022 was workflow management tool Flowdash. Earlier, it had acquired Cron and India-based Automate.io, which had a suite of integrations with 200 services.