Hey guys, Welcome to this milestone episode of the Frontier Talk podcast. I'm Raj Hegde, and in this podcast we explore the intersection of identity people and technology. My guest on the part today is someone who I look up to and is known to fuel the fire of optimism in people. It is this combination of positive energy expertise and a bias towards action that makes him a serial winner. From serving as CTO at Saddle Microsystems to co-founding for Drug an identity ban that was recently acquired for Billions, My guess has truly been a frontier in shaping identity as we know it today. Hi, to share his take on the Metaverse company building and the future of Identity Lasa and Reason the founder and CEO of Indite Lasa. Delighted to have you on board.
Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to being here and I'll, I'll pay you afterwards for those nice words. That's fantastic. What, what, what a what a way to start the conversation.
Well, it's, it's your work that, that really showcases, you know, all that you've done, and it's just a testament of, of what you've achieved. So it's, it's, it's absolutely an honor to have you on the podcast. With that being said, let's roll. I'd like to start off by, by, by deep diving into the evolution of identity. You know, it is said that you can predict the future of any given technology by starting its past. The internet, for example, is progress from, say, being read only to read and write. And now with rep three being read, write, and own. So how would you describe the evolution of the identity ecosystem since the inception of the internet?
Wow. And then, and that's, you know, I, I've been part of that journey and so much kind of like happened over two last, last decades and Right. I, i kind of, and one thing that kind of you saw in, in the back in the, the old days was, of course it was very human-centric and it was very static and it was very simple, kind of like you, you were belonging to kind of like a sales department and you got access to the, these few kind of like applications and Yeah. And not a big kind of like dynamic, no context. And it was very only human was kind of like the synonym of identity, but wow, now kind of like everything's connected and everything has an identity and there's, there's more things kind of like out there within the identity. There's more bots out there, there's more APIs, and of course that is and makes a lot of opportunities, but all lot of challenges as well. How does, how do you secure it? How do you do they authenticate? How do you scale this thing? So now Ed, this is absolutely a space which never gets boring,
Right? You mentioned bots earlier on and you know, we are seeing a proliferation of bots beat on the internet or on social media platforms with research from Carnegie Mellon stating that roughly around 20% of all social media conversations involve some sort of bot involvement. Now, this is somewhat worrisome because many of these accounts somewhat spread disinformation and also make a point of view more popular than it already is. So my question to you is, what are the implications of malicious bot activity on society?
Yeah, because this is a very kind of like serious stuff and, and really tricky. And you know, also kind of like in, in the beginning on the internet, kind of like as you said, it was read only and you didn't need to kind of like have a lot of kind of like identity in as soon as kind of you start transferring money and actually getting, generating value on, on the internet, you actually need to know who, who's actually paying, who's actually transferring money. And the same thing will also happen with bots because if, if you speak to a medic magical bot and said kind of like, I have a headache today, what should I do? And they said, You should cut off your kind of like left arm. That's really, really bad advice. And who's accountable for all this stuff? So these bots need to be accountable for, and somebody's actually owner and somebody is actually created these bots. And of course the facts be able to prove facts also kind of like then you need to know who they are. I'm all for freedom of speech, but for Christ's sake, if you want to say something, you should also be able to identify you and, and do no harm. And there's too much bullying going on already on the internet. So yeah, I identity play a really, really fundamental part of make things safer and also better and even more fun.
Right. And speaking about identity, and Im per se, do you think present Im solutions have kept up with the speed with which software is being developed. What do you think are the implications of a lack of catching up with, with the development of software?
I think there are absolutely a big gap on underneath. Kind of like you mentioned, how many bots is kind of like online, how many kind of like internet of things is out there. Where you see still is that things are extremely fragmented and there are historically kind of like systems out there and people are still struggling. So I, I don't, I, and of course now with a metaverse you have a total new kind of like dimension that you, you need to secure and identify. And I think we really need to start using new technologies and leverage AI and machine learning knowledge graph and, and get away from this static way of looking on on identity, the, the identity systems. You actually reflect real life. And you know what, we, we all have different contexts every day. So at work I'm, I'm kind of like the founder at home, I'm a father and, and depending on what context you are in, you want to have different kind of like abilities and not to be securely kind of like protected in a different way. So yeah, there's lots of stuff to do and that's, that's why it's so fun to be in, in this, in this industry.
Right. You know, I really look forward to deep diving, more into the new ways of doing identity with, as you mentioned, you know, knowledge graphs and relationship based access management. But before that I'd just like to, to look at what changes do you expect for the identity market when it comes to managing non-human identities such as IOTs or smart devices, which you just mentioned earlier on.
I think first of all, kind of like IT and OT needs to kind of like cooperate and there needs to be a bridge. This has normally been into very different silos and, and on kind of like OT still kind of like little bit like kind of identity used to be protected by a firewall. It's kind of like that, that everything now is is is sterile trust and they, and there are, there are connection and humans are kind of like interacting with a lot of devices and, and things all the time. And very often also things, actions or processes have started without actually the human being actually doing it. So there's a big change in, in the way the use cases start and the whole processes and this, the, the kind of legacy vendors are still very, very human centric and think everything about, from like a process start with a human. But that's not only, that's not the case very often.
Right. I think now is a good time to explore your new baby inai. Yes. I'm really curious to understand what Inai is all about. What led you to found Inai in the first place and and what do you think is, is the, the special mode that I would say defines your organization per se?
First of all, I think the first part of your question, kind of like what led me to Star Cate was exactly the same thing that kind of like led me to start for work,
Right? Passion,
Passion, that's everything which is is driving me. And I, I'm kind of like, people ask me kind of like what keeps you at awake at night? It's kind of like hinting to that I'm worried about something. I'm not, I have told I've fear of missing out. So what drives me is passion and passion and, and I, I'm born curious and then, and actually getting, putting a, putting a great team together, go out there and, and come create fantastic technology. And in my old days I used to do playing a lot of bands. So I start a lot of bands and I see a lot of the kind of like similarities. You need to find great, great band members. You need to kind of get them to, to communicate you need, you need to help them to actually create a hit song. And when they go on stage and the audience go fucking wild, so my French, it's all good.
It's the same with, with creating great technology companies. You need to get the best of the best to together. There's a lot of diversity, which is great and you go out there and disrupt and so, so again, but Forge work was started with that, that passion indicate the same thing. And the good thing with starting a new company is that everything is greenfield. There's no technical depth. You can go and you can pick the latest or the greatest of technology, which is available today. You can make an architecture with without kind of like constraints that yet you had 10 years ago. So that is is a big, big plus doing a, doing a new company. And a lot of things has evolved of course in, in this space. So that's, that makes indicate very, very interesting and we probably should drill a little bit down on what we're doing differently, I think.
Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that's, well the passion is clearly seen in, in the way you describe a kit and I'm sure you're off to the races with it. Could you talk us through what makes Indite special from a technical point of view? Are you doing things differently from what traditional vendors are doing? What is your USP when it comes to building indite?
Yeah, I, there's a couple of things of course. First of all, I'm really, really committed to the design principles on, on web three. Kind of like the, the whole way of thinking decentralized at the start that's key to what, what everything we do. Making sure that that kind of like the information actually is owned by the owner of the information. And kind of like people can, people or businesses organization can share what they want to share when they want to share it with their consent, right? So that, so, so that giving, giving power back to the owner of, of, of the data. The, the other thing I think is the, the keyword has actually data. Cause you think about it when you, when you have a lot of identity data, you know, kind of like people's preferences, what they like, you know, where they live, what kind of car they have.
That's a lot of good knowledge and why don't you use it for much more than those security that say yes or no. You can do really, really starting use identity data to, to drive recommendations, analytics and hyper-personalization. And of course everybody knows Netflix and Amazon kind of like how you get this recommendations and behind the scenes it's an identity system. They just capture what films did you see and connect that to your identity. So when you come back you get, get recommendations. So I think identity is, first of all, it used to be kind of like liability problem for, for enterprises and it was handled by kind of like the security people only right now what you see, the same identity data is same business assets because you can make so much fantastic services on top of it. You can grow your top line revenue, you can get more customer loyalty.
And it's the same as long as you treat a look on what the data is and you make them actionable, you can use all these information of course to be secure, but you can also make use it to actually make better services for your customers, your, your citizens, whatever. So stop thinking about identity system only from a security level. Start thinking about it from a business value. You know, the more we know about each other, the better we can serve each other. And as long as it's on, on, on, in, in my choice, which again comes back to the privacy part. So I, I see tremendous opportunities here with new technology.
Brilliant. So you heard it first on the front, your talk podcast, you know, stop viewing identity as just a security paradigm, go above and beyond and view it as the potential business asset now. Yeah, please, please let it go
On. Yeah, and security, of course it, it's a table stake and it, it's necessary to actually build something on tops. So kind of like in everybody knows that there's more kind of like cyber security threat than ever. There's more hacking and there's more dalicious things going on. So of course you need to to to kind of like still raise the bar on on the plumbing, but but also look the other way on the other side of the coin, the utility side of the coin, knowing all, having all that information can also be used for something good. And I think there's to be too little kind of like focus on the good and too much people are just going to say, if you don't do this, you're not compliant, you go to jail.
Right.
That's fine. But also use it for, for something good and, and build business and better services.
Right. I mean that, that reminds me of this point made by Andrew Carle who'll be speaking at CSLs, the cybersecurity conference in Berlin. And he mentioned that cybersecurity in a nutshell is very, very hard to do because you're essentially facing a very dynamic opponent. Yeah. So my question is, you know, when it comes to Im, do they even have the time to look at applications beyond security? Because as you mentioned, they're dealing with this on, on a much more regular sophisticated basis that perhaps they don't have the time or resources to point their attention to other applications of identity. How do you navigate through this dilemma?
I don't think it's a dilemma. I think this exactly what exactly what is doing and what our technology is doing. Because kind of like if you build everything up on, on a knowledge graph and you start building kind of like identity digital twins of your profile of of all the things, all the bots, all the, the cars, the, the locations, and this is all connected in the, in the big graph. There's no difference if you query the graph and ask for a fine grain authorization decision or a recommendation is just what you ask it for. So I can ask the knowledge graph, is this person allowed to do this? Or I can ask what you, what, how will the, the other person with a similar profile actually done when they, they watch the movie or or whatever. And I'm in the car and I in in Japan and I I don't speak Japanese, I don't read Japanese and having a rental car for your, you hold kind of like info info system in the car is Japanese.
I can't even get it started or getting the music on or putting on the map. But if, if you have identity data, knowing that I'm an Norwegian and as soon as I get in the car that the car system kind of like know that Norwegian guy sitting there and you just switch the infotainment system to Norwegian just by in depth context there's a Norwegian in in the front seat and not a German guy. So it's just, and the rental car next time is eh, in the different context somebody else is in. Theres so things are very dynamic and based on context you need to have different decisions. But it's all is driven by identity data. It's just metadata identity data, which you can actually in real time pick up a query where today resides. I don't believe in synchronization. I don't believe in big data lakes.
You always gotta be never, never had the the kind of like the, the famous single source of truth. Oh my god. Yeah, the, yeah. Many people have tried and they try to synchronize stuff and copying stuff around and kind of like instantly they had two different kind of like copy of the database and it was not a copy anymore cause don't update how had already happened. So it's, so you need to just leave the data where it is. There's so many APIs, there's so many different system that need to interact and I think today the most important thing, we need to build bridges between these systems moving from the web two to the web three because there's gonna be a lot of systems already. Google is not gonna disappear tomorrow and the banking system will not. Right? So when we are building up new SSI networks, this for a very long time need to interact with the old world and I think be able to bridge this and just go where the data is and understanding the data in real time and understanding the context that's gets it really, really powerful. Both from a security perspective but also from a distance perspective.
Right. And that was a fascinating insight there. Lasa, I'm, I'm curious to get your thoughts on the decentralized identity ecosystem in a nutshell. You know, there is a deep, there's a deep dysfunction rather in institutions managing our data as you clearly articulated. What do you think are some of the top priorities for anyone looking to build decentralized identity solutions?
First of all, the lack of interoperability. Okay. And also, you know, kind of like I'm, I'm a hundred percent kind of like behind the whole all the privacy thing, but, but for so long people have only been kind of like out there with kind of like, oh, bad, bad, bad Facebook. And you know what? I don't think it moves the needle if you only go out there and kind of like with this kind of like danger flag, we need to kind of like use all these fantastic new technology blockchain for instance, when, when you, when you need it for actually do create use cases that actually changes stuff and not go after and and only talk about but that things. So getting use cases that actually people value and take advantage of, get them fast out. Try to, we have to make a lot of bridges and we need to have kind of like more standardization for interoperability is in, in now and it's even more kind of like broken than it used to be.
Yeah. You know, we, we spent, I don't know how many years do we, do we spend, before we had standardized kind of like O I D C and it, it was great whenever we, everybody got there and the same things need to happen in, in the web three world. You can't have ev like a lot of companies making their own version and having their own protocols. There needs to be interoperability, there needs to be standards and it also needs to be bridges to existing systems that already exist. The, they will hang around for a while. There's still mainframes out there, you know.
Right. I mean, just as Harry Barons, our guest on the first episode mentioned that identity is a means and not an end. Yeah. The, the point about privacy really hits a chord with me because, you know, I'm curious to understand how can organizations in the space move beyond privacy to actually articulate the case for decentralized identity beyond say privacy. How do they create competitive differentiation and and you've raised venture funding from, you know, some of the finest investors out there. So, so what's required to make decentralized identity a serious venture case?
I think first of all, any case where you can kind of like actually show value really, really fast and help kind of like growing the top line revenue for, for a company right. Will, will always go faster than the opposite. You. I I I normally say that people only buy for two reasons. That could be, could be a customer or eventual capitalist is greed or fair. That's the only two that things that actually moves moves the, the needle. Okay. And, and there's no doubt about it that kind of like use cases that actually are on the happy side, making you better services, make more money, customer retention, all that stuff in a secure way. Those projects and use cases will move much, much faster than the other one that say, if you don't do this, you go to jail.
Right. Okay.
That doesn't mean you should stop, don't think about that side of it. But, but you can do both things at the same time because it's, it's the same identity data and if you query for asking for somebody is allowed to do this or query it for kind of like what you think las would like for dinner today, it's just a different question to the same data.
Right. Brilliant. I think now is a good time to check out the cool stuff. Let's explore the meta words. It's, it's a term that is gaining more and more prominence over time. However, there are three schools of thought when it comes to the metaverse. You have on one side the gaming side of things. On the other hand you have meta Microsoft with their ar vr point of view. And then finally we have web three with the more decentralized point of view when it comes to the metaverse. So which school of thought do you subscribe to and what do you think is the metaverse, where are we actually heading with this?
That's a great question. Yeah, maybe I'm absolutely in, in camp number three and Okay. Unfortunately, I, I'm, I'm not a big gamer, but, but that's just kind of like my personal kind of thing. And, and, and of course the, I like the real world better than actually I like the virtual world. It's kind of like, again, using my music background, being at the live concert and actually kind of like both feel it and the base is kind of like popping in in your chest and I, I get go pop just thinking about the live concerts and I think that live thing is much more interesting than kind of like showing concert with avatars jumping around, but of course. Right,
Right.
The the good stuff is that we, we are all different. So I think there's some place for, for, for both of this world. I, I see a lot of the, again, the whole VR thing has been been a holy grail living in province for a very, very long time. That
Is
True. And still have some time to go. I, where I see it moves mostly now is, is actually in kind of like education and training where you're kind of like, have kind of like a walkthrough through through a hospital before it's, before it's actually is is built. You can test it. Is this wall actually on the right place or you, or you are actually having security kind of like, what do you call it, education programs, how to, how to behave and where should you find the exit so you don't have to physically be, have to be in the location. So I see a lot of, lot of educational thing is now starting to,
So you see more an enter, you see more of an enterprise take to to VR rather than consumer
Is that, Yeah, I, I think for vr I see that, but of course like entertainment movies is always also is a big kind of like vertical that they're gonna have, have, make, make, make a lot of money. So I don't think the other one of them is not gonna kill the other one. Again, there is, we are humans and we all have different kind of like things that we like what we don't like.
That's true. Right. But
Again, from a, if you look on the metaverse thing, regardless of, of which kind of like school you go with, you need, you need identity because if you're gonna monetize something, who, how you gonna be able to authenticate who's actually going into the metaverse, what you do in the metaverse. So there's still gotta be need for identity error, which is of cro. Every thing you put online that has a value will need identity.
Right. And how do you see this identity paradigm evolve, assuming, say we take a giant leap into the metaverse is say my online representation restricted to only physical characteristics or can we go beyond this?
Of course we can and that could probably absolutely be fun specifically on a Saturday night. Like, like today. I'm just kidding. Yeah. So no, but I, I, but I also, I think back to the digital twin and, and also little bit back to security. I think security risk and, and kind of like, yeah, not, you don't, we have all these programs for educating people who don't click on that link or don't do that or whatever. I think we need to come to a place where, where I have my little identity or digital twin on my device that first of all knows me, but also learn really, really fast and on what threats is out there, what is is the newest scam that has just been identified. Right. And sounds like helps me. And I even tell me, don't click on that link or prevents me to doing it. I think technology will make decisions faster than human brains or training programs. So having my my good digital twin that actually know who I am, know what I, what I like, it can be very, very helpful and, and that's not so hard to do. That's really kind Right. Air future.
Right. And how big a role is AI going to play in this ecosystem? Do you see room for machine learning AI to build more Yeah,
They're
Build real relationships. Yeah. In the metaverse
There's still a lot of challenges of course and also ethical challenges. That is true. But, but it's kind of fun. I don't think machine learning is something that is sitting on the side, if you know what I mean. You know,
When you are developing software, you, you have an ide so you have a kind of like development environment, you're using some tooling. I think actually machine learning is just be a natural thing to have in your, your toolbox that you apply to where it actually fits. Right. And nothing, nothing that is an afterthought or something that's going on in, in the basement. It, it's actually part, part of software development. As, as we go go forward. I don't see any software being developed without using machine learning techniques going forward. It, it is just 2023. That's how we do it. We use that technology for, for making things easier.
Right. Let's shift gears now and focus on, on company building. You know, from a conversations I see you as someone who lives a fun flamboyant in fast life fla that I flamboyant. I'd say why not? I mean, with interest such as speed boarding in rock music, I mean, you're up for the races. I mean, come on. Absolutely. So, so I'm curious to learn, what are some of the learnings from your hobbies that have say percolated into your working career?
It, it's absolutely the music stuff, no doubt about it. And I, there's so many similarities kind of like being, starting a band, starting a company or kind of like be a manager for, for a company or, or trying to, to managing a band. And I think I have so many samples to that, but I, some, some of them is kind of like sometimes have people on my team and coming, coming and complaining about a developer. This, this guy or this girl. She's kind of like, she's so out there, this conflicted. Right. She don't, don't follow any rule. There's no way I can lead this person. Yeah. And then I said, and then I say, you know, what, do you think it was easy to be kind of like the manager for Keith Richard? Probably not, but guess what, they, they one of the biggest rock band in, in the history.
Absolutely. So just deal with it. And without that diversity on stage, actually the music would be really, really boring. And, and that, that is every, every band. That's why you need these different type of, of, of people coming together. The trick is, is actually to have people collaborating and listen to each other in the band or in the company. I don't know if you played music, but if the drummer and the bassist don't communicate and they're offbeat, it doesn't get groovy. I can't promise you. And the same thing is in, in business kind of like if engineering or product management or sales and they are not communicating
Great
Company. So, and actually getting, so it's all about getting the best group of diverse strange people. Find them where they are, let them let them of course grow, get them out of bed on stage, create a hit song and, and perform together. And that's kind of like what creates a hit song and the the crowd gets crazy. It's also in the software industry, when you have that same thing going on, that's when it's catching people actually buy your software. So it's Right. It's very similar.
Wow. Okay. I'd like to run a little thought experiment with you. So, you know, imagine you're, you're starting from scratch and you know, you have a pen show for doing legendary things and that's cool. But my question to you is how do you get or attract this world class team from the ground up? So how do you find them, how do you get them to be attracted to your idea, to your proposition, and then how do you get them together to riff and eventually create like a monster hit?
That's three questions, not one.
That's true. I mean, I like to package a lot of questions into one.
That's good.
That's a good observation. Yeah.
Just, just forgive me if, if if I forget to answer the last one,
It's all good. No worries. It's all good. It's all
Good. But, but kind of like, I think on the first one, it, it's basically, I, I'm born curious if you know what I mean? Absolutely. I I, I don't read kind of like a lot of books from kind of like from page one to page 360, but I read a lot of snippets and very often when I start in the morning and I see, see something, and that actually leads to another link, to another thread, to another chat, I can just kind of like, go on this mental, mental trip and follow that on and then Right. And then you, then you, there's so much interesting things going on. And I think the other thing is that there's, I don't, I'm not afraid of asking if I find an interesting article or interesting stuff on LinkedIn, I I kind of like, I just go and say, Do you have time for a coffee? Right. And the worst thing that can happen is that
They don't, they say no reply. Yeah. Or they don't reply. Yeah.
They either say yes or they don't reply. So that's, that's easy.
That's much easier actually.
Yeah. Yeah. And, and of course specifically kind of like I've been as, you know, spend a lot of time in the Bay area and there's very open culture for four. I'll, I'll take a coffee. I don't know who this strange guy is, but
Yeah, he happens to be the co-founder of Forger, which is recently acquired for Billions. I would be stupid to miss out on coffee with him. Yeah,
Absolutely. Whatever the No, so it's, and yeah, sometimes it's actually both expensive bad coffee and, and 30 minutes of your life never get back. But, but very often it, it leads to kind of like the next interesting thing. So the, so that's kind of like, I think how I find people and the, and I think the how, how, how do I trick them to join it? I don't that's your next question.
That was actually your, you're doing very well. I mean go ahead, keep
Track. I think that is my blue eyes.
Is it?
Oh, just
Kidding. I mean, I know quite a few people who have blue eyes, but they're still finding their way. So
No, I, you know, honestly, I, and thank God we, we are kind of like that we are very, very different. I, I'm, I'm, I'm sure that there are a lot of people that never to follow me, even to, to go on a bus trip, if you know what I mean. Right. Have different, different passions. Absolutely. For Truck had a very kind of like great culture and, and people that liked that excitement and that type of culture. And they start talking about this and they, they, they talk to their friends and you find fun other people that likes, likes the same something I, when you see your, your team members actually are using kind of like the, the t-shirt with the logo when they are actually off work, then you, then that's a good sign that they actually,
You're doing something right. Absolutely.
Yeah. But you have a logo and you, you turn your t-shirt around
The other way around. Yeah. That's, that's not a
Good, you don't wanna see, say I'm working at Oracle. No, I'm just kidding. No, that's, that's a different story. So it has to be people that are kind of like attract to, to the, to the, to the same thing. And again, back to music, kind of like, it's hard to kind of like recruit punk, punk guitarist in into a country investor band. So there needs to have something in common.
That was a, that was a brilliant answer. I needed a great job, by the way, by answering all the three questions that I asked. So kudos on that front. Finally, you know, you've, you've had a lot of entrepreneurial success and you know, you've explained your playbook in some detail on this podcast. My question to you is, how do you increase the odds of entrepreneurial success finding you, on one hand, you know, you mentioned you have passion and there are things that you put out in the world to create a dent in the universe. But how do you, like, how do you put yourself in the position where luck finds you, where this entrepreneurial success finds you? Is it about going through the fences, like swinging through the fences, going all out? Or, or like, like what's your mantra in this front?
I never have a plan B,
Which translates to,
To that. When I come up to something, when I see something I'm full in and I, I kind of like, but I have no ego and I adjust all the time. So, so, but soon as you're starting to, to kind of like say, if this doesn't work, I'm gonna do that. You have already failed. So,
Right.
So having just kind of like one plan adjusting all the time. And if somebody in a meetings tell you, LA what you just just said is just stupid and showing me some different data and I say, Wow, you're right. Let's do the other thing. So constantly kind of like navigating and, and taking, taking input and, and not be afraid of say, Oh shit, forget what I just told you that was stupid based on right. The new data I just got from you guys, let's do this. This is much smarter. But so I, I adjust my plan. I at least kind of like five times every day, but I never have a plan B, I know where I want to go, how I get there, I'm not sure about and
Right.
And I said, said, there's no way to do, do do a safe startup. And I, I kind of like look on this as, I don't know, are you into base jumping, kind of like jumping of cliffs and stuff like that?
Not really. I mean, perhaps when the money comes in I would have curated such interest, but for now I'm happy staying on ground. But please go ahead. Really curious,
What's little bit back to do is you can't do, do a, do a safe startup, but this is probably also to help you go kind of like parachuting, kind of like when you jump, when you jump, you jump,
You jump and then you just pray that the parachute opens up on, right?
Yes. And okay, so that's, yeah, there's, if you, Yeah, so that's the startup life and of course it's an emotional rollercoaster of, of ups and down and passion and that's what I enjoy in life. You really feel alive and of course you and everything you do and self-inflicted pain. So it's, it's, it's fantastic. I I could be more happy.
That's, that's a great way to move on to, to our final segment of the podcast. It's time for Frontier Fire, where I put my guests on the spot and ask them a series of rapid fire questions. So Laer, are you ready?
Yeah. You tricked me into this world, but I'm, I'm bored. Ready?
Perfect. I mean, you answered three questions in one shot. I mean, you definitely are ready. So let's, let's get started. Let's get started. What's your mantra in life? Laer
Happiness.
Right. And what's the best advice you received?
Oh, if, if, if you, if you don't like your job, quit.
Okay. Despite not having a backup option, I just
Yes. Life's too short.
Okay. So we are all temporary. I emotional. That's a good way to put it out. A person who inspires you and why
It has been Scott Mcneley from, from former company, founder of
The founder of Sun,
Microsoft Microsystem, just, just his, his style, his his, his attitude and always betting on innovation of course. And that's actually how you move things forward and you, you can't do everything right, but you're willing to try.
I wanna segue a bit from this frontier fire section to just ask you for some insight that is really stuck with you when it comes to working with the likes of Scott Mcneley.
I think again, it is the culture. How you actually build something that people like to identify them and on identify them with being proud of and, and kind of feel you're doing something which is larger, larger than, than yourself. And, and this is of course all innovation is more or less kind of coming out of open source, which is a great thing because then you actually are part of something. You can actually create stuff that you couldn't do alone. So that right. That belonging and creation and innovation and interaction, it was makes, makes life interesting. So if you can get that culture into your company,
Right,
A lot of things goes really, really well.
Brilliant. Okay. So back to back to the frontier fire. So you've spent time shuttling between Oslo and, and the Bay Area. And I'd like to get your thoughts on the contrast between the EU and the, the United States software ecosystem per se. The eu, for instance, is not software centric traditionally. Could it be the hotspot for decentralized identity though?
I'm not sure. And the thing is that things move so much faster and kind of like on the west coast versus kind of like in eu. And, and again, people are, are also failing faster, but they don't care if they kind of like, they just go up and, and, and they try again. Right. But of course EU and, and Europe has a little bit more kind of like
A stigma
Step my step way of doing things. And of course that that also can work on the other side. If, if you go kind of like couple of years back looking on EU versus US, kind of like, like nobody actually in the US even cared about privacy, couldn't care less, which of course eu and this has been been kind of like something that's been part of our, our generation for a long time and then one of, one of our, our values so to speak. Absolutely. But now these are, so we see a lot of in kind like the European culture when it comes to this from privacy is absolutely also been, been shipping and, and things are started moving a lot, I will say the three last years in, in the US when it comes to this topic.
Brilliant. And finally, Las, what's your advice to anyone listening to this podcast?
Don't do what I did. No, just kidding. Actually, I think it, it's the opposite. If, if you have something that you are really passionate about, ab please go do it. You, even if you fail, if you don't do it, you will regret that, that you didn't try. And, and if you can find some mentors that, that can help you, that is fantastic. Just make sure that they kind of like, still are kind of like hopefully are doing or still operating because things are moving so fast. So yeah, just make sure that you have, talk to people that are still in the industry and still kind of like running a company or doing something because then you get more fresh advice than people that, that kind of like have only been doing nothing for for a long time.
Right. So the moral of the story is that we are all temporarily immortal and we all have to go out and chase our dreams irrespective of the outcome. That's a beautiful way to, to end this podcast. Lasa, I just wanna take this time again to thank you. It was an absolute honor speaking with you and thank you for being really honest and open about your experiences, about your new venture, indie kind. And I wish you and your team the very best of luck as you go out and about to reshape the future of identity. Thank you so much LA really appreciate it.
Thank you. Really being a pleasure to talking to you.
That was La Andreen. I hope you enjoyed this conversation that dabbled around the metaverse. We explored playbooks for successful bunch of building and also looked at how identity can go about and beyond just being a security paradigm if cybersecurity is something that interests you, check out CSLs, the Cybersecurity Leadership Summit where the conference explores topics like cyber leadership, resilience, disinformation, implications of non-human identities on society and much more. It's going to be an amazing conference and you can grab tickets by the link in the description box down below. I'd like to announce that this will be my final appearance on the Frontier Talk podcast. And all I can say is that it's been an exhilarating ride. The Frontier Talk podcast would not have been possible without the love, support and feedback of you audience. And on behalf of the entire copping goal team, I'd like to personally thank you for joining me on this journey to redefine the eye in identity. Thank, thank you, and goodbye.
