[jibcage]

It’s not Tesonet, Proton is wholly self-owned and managed. Proton VPN was briefly sharing employees with Tesonet during initial app bringup, and that partnership is long over. Naturally due to competition and the huge importance of privacy in this space, people still bring this up, but Proton VPN does not and never will sell or share your data with anyone.

Source: I am a Proton VPN employee.

[ashirviskas]

So, why were the employees shared?

EDIT: I'm not saying being related to Tesonet is bad, but it is a fact that you cannot run away from.

[ivanmontillam]

> Proton VPN was briefly sharing employees with Tesonet during initial app bringup

I assume they needed the experience in how to run a VPN company, so that initial partnership was needed.

[dchftcs]

But why would tesonet spend resources to help a competitor to start? I'd be surprised if there wasn't at least an equity deal.

[the_mitsuhiko]

> But why would tesonet spend resources to help a competitor to start?

I thought tesonet is venture / seed fund?

[dchftcs]

Then the question becomes why would they help a company that competes with their portfolio companies. And even stronger case that they got some shares in return.

[Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe]

One reason is that helping contributors that you know will survive (as proton was already well known) grows the market. Basically give the competitor of piece of the cake because they will enlarge the cake for everyone.

[mdavid626]

What the hell is employee sharing?

[fragmede]

It's when your director goes and tells you not to tell anyone but to report to another building to another team for a month or three, and help them with whatever they ask, because you have a very specific set of skills. (In this case, setting up VPN backend infra.)