When Sylvain Mansotte uncovered a $20 million fraud just months into his job at a construction company in 2012, he hadn't imagined that years later he will be helping whistleblowers like him with a safe and secure platform to report wrongdoing.
His company, Whispli, provides an anonymous, secure and safe platform for employees to speak to a company and establish a two-way communication between the organization and the employee.
"The idea is to have a courageous conversation from an individual to an organization," CEO and co-founder Mansotte said.
Founded in 2015, Whispli is headquartered in Sydney, Australia with offices in Paris, France and one here in Boston. Whispli decided to build its U.S. headquarters during its Y Combinator training this summer. They moved to Boston in July 2018.
Whispli works like this: When an employee starts using the platform as an informant, they get an inbox, just like an email inbox to communicate with the organization anonymously. Features of the platform include sending documents, text messages as well as audio messages which change the sender's voice for anonymity. All messages are encrypted.
Mansotte said he wants to build the platform such that Whispli users can be whistleblowers for life. Which means, the platform is not restricted to intra-company communication. A Whispli user can reach out to any organization to report wrongdoing. "Whispli is a whistleblowing network," said Mansotte. "Even when an employee changes jobs, they can use Whispli through an integrated inbox."
Who does the company work with? Manufacturing companies where people can report child labor, universities and colleges, government agencies and banks.
And the company went about acquiring a lot of these customers using a top-down approach -- through the Big Four management consulting companies to be a part of their offering for clients.
"It's like we built the Eiffel Tower upside down," Mansotte said. The company today has 180 clients where a majority of the contracts were earned from the Big Four. One of them is Australian carrier, Qantas Airlines.
Mansotte noted that the time is right for Whispli to shine especially in the markets it has chosen: France, Australia and the U.S. as these countries are in the midst of legislating on a whistleblowing policy or have a strong demand for one.
When asked about how Whispli engages with investigations, Mansotte said that apart from building a case management workflow tool, the company would do little to be involved with the next steps.
"Whispli is like a smoke alarm," Mansotte noted. "We are just an enabler, we cannot be involved in the investigation, the responsibility of that lies with the case manager."
The company, which raised a seed round after its stint at Y Combinator to “validate its sales model,” plans to double its sales team and is looking to hire three to five people in the Boston office.
