Institute of Free Technology

We are the Institute of Free Technology (IFT), a mission-driven tech startup studio that emerged from Status, which we, Jarrad Hope and Carl Bennetts, founded in 2017. Our initial goal with Status was to enable the free flow of information and protect the right to private, secure conversations. However, as we delved deeper, we recognized gaps in the existing infrastructure needed to fully realize these values. This realization led to an expansion of our project's scope and ultimately, the formation of IFT and the startups it now incubates. Our core mission is to support the development, adoption, and accessibility of solutions to digital age problems. We are guided by a strong set of principles: liberty, censorship resistance, security, privacy, and inclusivity. We actively seek to connect with and support innovators who are dedicated to defending our digital rights.

At IFT, we provide comprehensive support to take ideas from the drawing board to market. This includes financial backing, technical expertise, legal guidance, people operations, and brand-building assistance at every stage. We empower our startups to concentrate on their core strength: building public goods designed to safeguard civil liberties in the digital age. Our portfolio of open source projects is continually growing and currently includes prominent names like Status, Logos, Codex, Waku, Nimbus, Nomos, and Keycard. As a team, IFT has been completely distributed since its inception. We boast a strong core of over 220 contributors from diverse backgrounds, spread across the globe. We are deeply passionate about open source, and our organizational structure reflects this with minimal hierarchy and no fixed work hours. We champion a high degree of autonomy, encouraging our team members to work independently while aligning with the organization's overarching priorities.