History

AnchorFree was founded in early 2005 by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, David Gorodyansky and Eugene Malobrodsky, who wanted to put users in control of their own data online, and to significantly impact user privacy on the Internet. Their passion for revolutionary technologies evolved over the years and brought them together to start AnchorFree.

AnchorFree set out to enable consumers with revolutionary privacy and to enable advertisers with new innovative ad targeting capabilities. Together with friends from Stanford, San Jose State, and USF the team started developing the technology for users to be truly private online and for advertisers to have an effective communication vehicle with users across the web. The company set out to differentiate from every other media company, by focusing on consumer privacy and data protection as the first priority. Thus AnchorFree has been able to launch the most private online media network in the world.

In late 2005 the founders met with Bert Roberts, the former Chairman & CEO of MCI and formerly a board member of News Corporation. Bert Roberts and the AnchorFree founders decided to work together towards turning AnchorFree into a global media leader and setting new privacy standards online for millions of people around the world.

Since then AnchorFree has launched the world's only free ad-supported virtual private network client called Hotspot Shield. Utilized by millions of people in over 190 countries, the Hotspot Shield sets new privacy standards online for users world-wide. Hotspot Shield is powered by AnchorFree's global media network bringing new unique innovations to advertisers around the world. Advertisers interested in reaching traveling business people that get online on wired and Wi-Fi connections utilize AnchorFree as the solution.

Currently AnchorFree powers hundreds of millions of page views per month which are sold to advertisers looking for global reach and innovative engagement opportunities. Advertisers use AnchorFree to target online advertising video and display campaigns, targeted specifically to audience segments, channel verticals, contextual websites, and across all domains visited by our users. AnchorFree's technology enables ad targeting across all domains, thus many advertisers utilize AnchorFree as a central hub for media buying across multiple domains and circumstances online.

AnchorFree has raised two venture rounds, and is funded & advised by industry thought leaders including: Bert Roberts (former Chairman & CEO of MCI); Esther Dyson (Board Director of WPP); Rick Roth (CEO of Ogilvy Action); Greg Coleman (former SVP Global Sales Yahoo); Craig Vachon (former COO Nextel); Denis Nayden (former Chairman of GE Capital); Richard Rainwater (President of Rainwater Inc.); Renaissance Capital Group.