Kurt Long has worked on the Hubble Space Telescope and launched three Tampa companies. Now, he’s launching a new venture: Bunkr.
Bunkr is a security app that manages personal information storage and messaging. The app officially launched Oct. 5, but it has been in the works for more than two years. It has over 15 employees and is funded through a family investment.
It’s doing “great on funding” and revenue, but Long has no immediate plans to seek outside investments, he said. It is not yet profitable. The app costs 99 cents to avoid having to earn revenue in less consumer-oriented ways, like advertisements or data tracking, he said.
The app has been available in app stores for a few weeks. It already has a “few thousand” users in over 28 countries, Long said.
Long is back in the entrepreneurial game for a specific reason.
“The taste of doing good and helping people while prospering is addictive,” he said.
Before Bunkr, Long founded and served as CEO for 14 years at FairWarning, a cybersecurity firm that protects medical records. He enjoyed helping secure private information, like medical records, against bad actors. At FairWarning, the company was making money “doing good things,” he said. He wants to be part of a company that helps people secure their data again.
The app was also inspired by a time in 2019 when his phone was stolen. A man ripped the phone out of his hand, along with his digital passwords and information. The urge to prevent this for other people led to Bunkr, he said.
“I’ve traveled to about 50 countries all over the world and have never been robbed,” Long said. “And I got robbed in San Francisco.”
Long said he’s still a traveler, but the company won’t be. All of his companies have been Tampa companies and Long plans for Bunkr to be a Tampa company, too.
