MarTech interview with Andrew Milich, co-founder of Skiff

Andrew Milich, co-founder and CEO of Skiff chats about the growing importance of digital platforms in the workplace in this quick chat with MarTechSeries:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat Andrew, tell us about yourself and more about Skiff, what inspired the platform and how it has evolved over the years

Thanks for having me! Skiff is an end-to-end encrypted, privacy-first workspace with Mail, Pages, Calendar and Drive products for communication and collaboration. I have been an engineer all my life; privacy and the movement to own your own data are deeply connected to my personal beliefs and time spent studying international security at Stanford, in Europe and in Asia.

Skiff has evolved from an end-to-end encrypted secure collaboration product to a comprehensive private workspace including email, notes, wiki, file sharing, scheduling and more. Going forward, we want Skiff to be an intuitive, easy-to-use, and beautifully designed workspace that protects freedom, privacy, and security.

Why is it critical for businesses today to focus on providing employees and distributed teams with more secure or encrypted communication/collaboration channels and tools? Can you share a few thoughts on how Skiff helps here.

In Skiff, no one else can access your work – your emails, notes, files and calendar events are end-to-end encrypted. This is not true of any other productivity product today, including the Google/Microsoft work suites. Our products are designed to accompany every secure practice an organization undertakes – using Signal for messaging, building anti-phishing and cybersecurity defenses, and training employees to be security-minded.

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What do you think about the future of digital workspace platforms; how will they need to evolve to meet changing market needs?

Digital workspace platforms aren’t just a necessity for tech companies—they’re already the infrastructure for every business.

Given this global shift to remote work, one of the biggest changes is how different types of collaboration and work are integrated. Spreadsheets, wikis, notes, email and calendars are integrated, combining multiple products together and creating a seamless product for getting work done. We’re seeing this shift in startups, incumbents, and big tech all at once.

Can you talk about some of the ways you’ve seen global leaders build digital workspace models/frameworks for distributed teams and what key takeaways other brands should take from these highlights?

Teams are becoming increasingly distributed and focused on asynchronous communications. Three tips critical to the Skiff team are:

1. Prioritize asynchronous meetings – Writing updates, using documentation, and creating reminders for people to review each other’s work.
2. Automate security – Choose products that are secure from the start. We’ve seen customers rethink their operating systems, browsers, e-mail products, collaboration products, password managers and more as they face a vast threat landscape, from phishing and malware to insider threats and leaks.
3. Be transparent about growth and finances – Especially in the tech world, explosive growth followed by turbulence has led to often fluctuating market conditions. We’ve seen successful leaders stay results-focused and transparent with their teams.

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What do you think about the future of the B2B technology industry?

I’m incredibly excited about the future of the B2B technology industry, especially as every sector looks increasingly competitive and fragmented. Legislative antitrust attention and lower barriers to entry are creating more competition in both B2C and B2B as new search engines, browsers, workspace products, spreadsheet products and B2B fintech platforms launch. Crypto and AI—two huge areas of innovation—are fueling many of these leveling innovations. So I see established companies facing increasing competition in the tech industry, which keeps me pretty excited about the future of B2B tech.