Sukhman & his co-founder both worked as data consultants where they helped companies understand their customers. This included analyzing consumer behavior, habits, and demographics. While in these roles they started to see the blatant disregard for consumer privacy to prioritize marketing and profits. The work they did exploited customer data and directly provided millions of dollars in value to these companies. They felt like villains at work.

This is when they started researching ways to protect their own online privacy and realized how difficult this task was. The onus was continuously on the average person to follow best practices, which often required tons of conscious effort and ruined the user experience.

This is why they came up with Cyder. Cyder is a browser extension that makes privacy, and data ownership simple, free, and accessible to everyone. Their mission has always been to create an internet where users own and get compensated for their data.

We talk about building Cyder, disregard for consumer privacy, expectation vs reality of being a founder, going viral with YC application video, and much more.