STRM Privacy

STRM Privacy, formally known as Stream Machine, was a data security platform headquartered in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The company was established in 2020 by co-founders Bart Voorn and Pim Nauts. Their journey began after experiencing the difficulties of incorporating privacy into data pipelines while working in data engineering, machine learning, and research at Ahold Delhaize and bol.com. Voorn, who served as CEO, has a background in People Analytics and leading R&D teams in AI and robotics, and was pursuing a Ph.D. in Economics and Business. Nauts brought experience as a product lead at the intersection of data science and engineering, with a focus on streaming data and machine learning.

The firm specialized in providing a data platform engineered for privacy-by-design, targeting data teams. Its core business was to help companies collect customer data in real-time through data streams with embedded privacy and usability. This allowed the data to be immediately available for applications like analytics, data science, and machine learning while adhering to privacy regulations such as GDPR. The platform operated by having legal and data teams collaboratively define policies on data usage, which were then encoded into every data point. This process involved transforming sensitive data to make it suitable for specific purposes, essentially creating purpose-bound data interfaces. STRM Privacy's solution aimed to resolve the friction between legal requirements and the speed at which data teams need to innovate. The platform supported both streaming and batch data processing.

The company's primary product was a data processing platform that integrated data contracts and privacy transformations. A key feature was the ability to apply privacy measures like pseudonymization or anonymization in real-time as data was collected. This was achieved by attaching metadata, including consent information, to each individual event, allowing for purpose-based access to de-anonymized data. STRM Privacy also offered a self-hosted option for clients who preferred their data to remain within their own environment. In November 2021, the company successfully raised €3 million (approximately $3.37 million) in a Seed funding round led by Singular and Data Community Fund, with participation from several angel investors. Despite initial customer acquisition in sectors like media and e-commerce, STRM Privacy announced it was shutting down, citing the slow pace of decision-making within organizations regarding data privacy and the competitive pressure from established platforms.

Keywords: data privacy, data security, privacy by design, data streaming, real-time data, data governance, privacy engineering, data contracts, GDPR compliance, data anonymization, data pseudonymization, sensitive data, data pipelines, data analytics, machine learning data, Bart Voorn, Pim Nauts, Ahold Delhaize, bol.com, data policy enforcement