Spurred by his own painful past, Kieran Donovan co-founded K-ID to empower kids worldwide with a seamless and safe online experience
A lawyer by training—and an award-winning one—Kieran Donovan left a position as a partner at a Hong Kong law firm when he found his third calling. Leveraging his legal background, the cybersecurity entrepreneur founded K-ID, a company that provides developers with the technology and architecture that simplifies their compliance with laws globally.
With K-ID, he has one singular goal: to protect and empower children online.
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After becoming a father, memories of his painful past experiencing childhood sexual abuse re-emerged, but it also spurred his resolve to transform the online environment for kids and teens around the world. K-ID was the sum of Donovan’s legal career over the past decade.
Donovan shared his story and work at an up close and personal content session onboard the Tatler Catamaran during the Tatler Gen.T Summit 2023. Here are the highlights from his talk.
On concerns about child safety online
“I’d been advising some of the world’s largest tech companies on privacy, online safety and particularly building kids experiences online for the better part of a decade. My big concern was that compromises were being made [as] penalties were getting really scary. My nervousness was that in a worst-case scenario, platforms would say let’s just exclude kids entirely because it’s too scary.”
On taking the problem into his own hands
“If I were to fix this for the entire industry, [it would be] hugely ambitious. But I was going to fix this for everyone so that kids can have a better and safer experience online. And that’s what sort of kicked me off.”
