The Most Secure Call You'll Ever Make

Silent Circle launchedsix months ago and has movedthree times toaccommodateits head count.The company allows you to make encrypted calls from anywhere in the world using 2G, 3G, 4G, or WiFi. (No word on if that includes red phone booths in London.)

Silent Circle CEO and founder Mike Janke, snapped last week at his National Harbor, Md., office overlooking the Potomac River, says his startup is selling the first global encrypted communications service. The bootstrapped company has 44 employees near DC, Palo Alto, and London; customers in 115 countries; and household names in business making acquisition offers. And itwill release six new products this year, including an encrypted video teleconferencing app, an encrypted voicemail app, and an encrypted email app.

Mike, a former Navy Seal and founder of SOC, a large Chantilly, Va.-based defense contractor, wooed encryption talent like Jon Callas, who created Apple's Whole Disk Encryption and Phil Zimmermann, the inventor of PGP, the world's most common email encryption software. Mike got the idea for the company after working on government projects all over the world and not being able to find a secure way for employees to use their own laptops and smartphones because of the sensitivity of the government data.

See that cloud poof on the screen? That's a sensitive file being automatically deleted after it was texted. (He might find a customer in certain congressmen.) The company started building its base with consumers who can buy calling plans and moved into enterprises and government agencies like DOD and cyber commands and foreign governments. Mike says the company, which alsoprovides its service pro bono to human rights groups (like at-risk women groups in need of secure communications), wants to be the second or third alternative to the AT&Ts and Samsungs of the world. It's challenging though because Mike is also in need of about 90-people worth of talent.