Sorry, that's just the first impression I got when I read your comment. I wouldn't say a new company with (presumably) no revenue, but $10 million in funding i

Sorry, that's just the first impression I got when I read your comment. I wouldn't say a new company with (presumably) no revenue, but $10 million in funding is a full scale business. Certainly more of a business than a hobby project, but at some point a business needs revenue to qualify as a 'business'. To be invested in, you need to convince your investors to give you money to do something. You have to explain what you are doing in a way they can understand and once they understand what you are doing, they need to be excited and want to invest (because they are interested in what you are doing or because they think they can make a lot of money off your work). In this case, the investors are very interested in public key cryptography and Keybase was able to explain to them what they are doing and what they need going forward to build what they are trying to build.