Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Decoding Digital Identity, a Conversation with Riley Hughes, Founder & CEO of Trinsic
6 Plays2 years ago
It's easy to get caught up in defining your startup with industry buzz words. We're speaking with a founder who is fighting against being placed in a box. Join us in today's conversation with Riley Hughes, Founder & CEO of Trinsic, and investor Dalton Wright of Kickstart (a VC firm for startups in Utah, Colorado, and the Mountain West) as we bring you both sides of a Perfect Pitch. In this episode, we'll talk about:
Kickstart's announcement on opening an office in Denver this summer
What digital identity means and how it impacts you and your privacy
How Riley transitioned from a scooter handlebar startup to sovereign identity
Why entrepreneurs shouldn't worry about being the "pioneer problem-solver" in a market
Why many founders shy away from being labeled as a Web3 company
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Perfect Pitch Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
It's easy to get caught up in defining your startup with industry buzzwords.
00:00:05
Speaker
We're speaking with a founder who's fighting against being placed in a box.
00:00:09
Speaker
Join us in today's conversation with Riley Hughes, founder and CEO of Trinsic, and investor Dalton Wright, as we bring you both sides of A Perfect Pitch.
00:00:19
Speaker
Perfect Pitch is a podcast from Kickstart that reveals the minds of both investors and entrepreneurs throughout a startup's journey.
00:00:25
Speaker
I'm your host, Karen Zanlik, and I'm excited to introduce you to today's guests.
Riley Hughes' Journey to Digital Identity
00:00:30
Speaker
So we'll start with Riley Hughes.
00:00:32
Speaker
Riley, you graduated from BYU with a bachelor's in finance.
00:00:35
Speaker
And at the beginning of your career, you founded a company that solved a pervasive problem with scooter handlebars.
00:00:41
Speaker
And I can't wait to hear how you went from that to digital identity, because that is quite the pivot.
00:00:47
Speaker
And in more recent years, you were the venture lead at Self-Sovereign Identity Incubator, a startup accelerator focused on bringing self-sovereign identity solutions to market.
00:00:56
Speaker
And today you're the co-founder and CEO of Trinsic, the leading infrastructure for building ID tech products using digital wallets and verifiable credentials.
00:01:05
Speaker
And don't worry, listeners, we're going to talk about what that means later.
00:01:07
Speaker
So if that was a little bit of a, like a mind twister for you, we'll figure it all out.
00:01:12
Speaker
And then what else should we know about you, Riley?
00:01:15
Speaker
Professionally, I got involved with the Self-Sovereign Identity Incubator as a part of my role at Sovereign Foundation, where I was hired as an early employee, and that's really where I got my start in the digital identity world.
00:01:28
Speaker
Personally, I love Utah, but we ended up moving from Utah up to northern Idaho, a town called Coeur d'Alene, to be closer to lots of lakes and rivers and water, and it's been a blast.
00:01:38
Speaker
So I miss seeing you all down there in Utah, but it's fun up here too.
Kickstart's Expansion into Colorado
00:01:42
Speaker
Do you like ski?
00:01:43
Speaker
Do you fish?
00:01:44
Speaker
What was the draw to the lakes and rivers and waters?
00:01:46
Speaker
I'm just curious.
00:01:48
Speaker
Honestly, I like to sit next to the water and work on my laptop.
00:01:52
Speaker
Nice.
00:01:54
Speaker
I read an article once about how the water ions crashing together have a relaxing effect on people.
00:01:59
Speaker
So that makes sense.
00:02:01
Speaker
So Dalton, over to you before I start talking more about water and moving and all that.
00:02:06
Speaker
It's always great to have you back on the show.
00:02:08
Speaker
You always add a lot to the discussions.
00:02:09
Speaker
We're going to have a link to your bio in our show notes.
00:02:13
Speaker
And Dalton, Gavin gave us a little bit of a teaser in a previous episode, but I think it's time that we officially announced your latest big announcement.
00:02:20
Speaker
Tell us about what that is.
00:02:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:23
Speaker
You know, with this new fund that we raised, we made the decision to have a more
00:02:27
Speaker
focused effort on building our deal flow and our investment practice in Colorado.
00:02:32
Speaker
So Kurt Roberts, our partner, has done a fantastic job building our reputation and brand in Colorado.
00:02:38
Speaker
He's led some of the best seed investments in the state in recent years.
00:02:41
Speaker
And so I'll be moving my family to Denver this summer to open Kickstart's first non-Utah office.
00:02:46
Speaker
So this isn't in any way de-emphasizing the importance of Utah and our investment strategy, but really kind of elevating Colorado is another market that we think is similar to Utah in a lot of ways in terms of its ability to produce great seed stage companies and excited to move my family there and really roll up my sleeves and help make Kickstart one of the most active investors in that state as well.
00:03:05
Speaker
I'll just throw out a plug that if you ever decide to come to Idaho, Coeur d'Alene is a good place for maybe a third Kickstart location.
00:03:11
Speaker
Okay.
00:03:12
Speaker
Great lakes up there.
00:03:16
Speaker
Great to work by and sit in, yeah.
00:03:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:18
Speaker
Okay,
Understanding Trinsic's Role in Digital Identity
00:03:19
Speaker
let's dive in.
00:03:19
Speaker
We told listeners that we're gonna talk about Trinsic and help them unpack everything I said that you do in the bio.
00:03:25
Speaker
So Riley, what is Trinsic and what does digital identity even mean?
00:03:30
Speaker
I think most people, when they think of digital identity, they think of a username and password or a button that lets them log in with Google.
00:03:38
Speaker
But if you think about physical identity, real world identity, it is so much more.
00:03:42
Speaker
It spans everything from our government issued ID to how we self-identify on all kinds of traits to things that other people say about us, like whether we have a degree from a certain university or whether a background check company can vouch for our lack of criminal status or whatever that might be.
00:04:01
Speaker
That doesn't really exist online.
00:04:03
Speaker
When I got involved in this digital identity world, I just thought, wow, like we are sending people to outer space and we have now AI that can generate pictures of corgis in any location on earth or write better blog posts than I can, or we're editing genes.
00:04:19
Speaker
And yet I still can't even prove that my legal name is Riley Hughes on the internet.
00:04:23
Speaker
That feels like something's off to me.
00:04:27
Speaker
You know, fast forward into the future, when we get off of the SpaceX ship on our Mars colony, we're probably not going to pull a plastic card out of our pocket to prove who we are.
00:04:36
Speaker
Digital identity will be much better in the future than it is now.
00:04:40
Speaker
Originally, starting Trinsic was really as simple as we're going to figure out how to make that happen.
00:04:44
Speaker
How do you make that happen?
00:04:46
Speaker
What does that look like?
00:04:47
Speaker
If you think about the way that it works in the real world, we all carry around a leather pouch in our pocket or purse or backpack or whatever called a wallet.
00:04:55
Speaker
And we carry cards and credentials, which are really attestations inside of that wallet.
00:05:01
Speaker
And we pull those cards out of our wallet and use them throughout our life as needed.
00:05:05
Speaker
So if you want to get on an airplane,
00:05:07
Speaker
You pull a government issued ID out of that wallet and you share it with the attendant.
00:05:12
Speaker
And that TSA agent doesn't believe you because it was you handing them the card.
00:05:18
Speaker
They believe you because they believe that the DMV did a good job of vetting you before they gave you the card.
00:05:24
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:05:24
Speaker
So they trust the source of that credential.
00:05:28
Speaker
What we're doing is mapping that to the digital world.
00:05:32
Speaker
So our product is a suite of developer tools for building digital wallets that enable people to carry around digital cryptographically signed attestations of all different types.
00:05:44
Speaker
We have customers building use cases in verticals from finance to supply chain to healthcare to government and all sorts in between.
00:05:52
Speaker
The way that I would summarize that and the way that got my mom to understand what I do is you use the Apple wallet.
00:05:59
Speaker
Well, we are a company that allows other companies to add Apple wallet-like capabilities into their own products.
00:06:06
Speaker
And we enable other companies to embed those capabilities inside their own applications.
00:06:12
Speaker
It's really exciting and it's very interesting.
00:06:13
Speaker
And I love that you're able to distill it down to what it actually does.
00:06:17
Speaker
Dalton, what did you think when Riley first came in?
00:06:20
Speaker
What were your thoughts?
00:06:20
Speaker
What excited you about the company?
00:06:23
Speaker
We invested in Trinsic right before the pandemic set in.
00:06:27
Speaker
In fact, I've said before that the last in-person meeting that I did before we all went into lockdown was with Riley.
00:06:34
Speaker
And so we were really excited to close that investment before the world changed.
00:06:38
Speaker
And one of the examples that really stuck with me that's used when people talk about verifiable credentials is just the idea that we way overshare our information.
00:06:48
Speaker
So just the example of going into a bar
00:06:51
Speaker
You know, you pull out your ID, you give this credential.
00:06:54
Speaker
The bouncer who is looking over this is able to see your address, your weight, maybe your social security number.
00:07:04
Speaker
These things are all unnecessary in order to determine whether or not you can actually go into this establishment.
00:07:09
Speaker
Really, all they need to know is yes or no, is this person 21 or older?
00:07:14
Speaker
And yet when we give them this credential, they're able to see all this information about us.
00:07:18
Speaker
And that's not that big of a deal.
00:07:19
Speaker
Most of us aren't all that concerned about what people can see on our IDs.
00:07:24
Speaker
But when you get- Well, now we are that you pointed out how much we're sharing.
00:07:27
Speaker
We just don't think about it.
00:07:28
Speaker
I'm sorry, I got it off.
00:07:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:30
Speaker
Well, yeah, I mean, people have varying degrees of sensitivity around all of this.
00:07:35
Speaker
But when you get into the digital world, one, Riley articulated this challenge that it's very hard to actually prove anything online.
00:07:42
Speaker
And yet we're spending so much of our time online.
00:07:44
Speaker
That's where our relationships are going in a lot of ways.
00:07:47
Speaker
It's where we're doing our loan applications, where we're getting our mortgages.
00:07:52
Speaker
It's where we're proving our credentials through our professional networks.
00:07:58
Speaker
And yet it's so hard to actually know if any of that information is accurate or true.
00:08:02
Speaker
And so I saw this as kind of twofold in the problems that are outstanding.
00:08:07
Speaker
One, it's hard to prove identity.
00:08:08
Speaker
And then the other problem is that we share so much more information than we actually need to.
00:08:12
Speaker
And that actually makes us more vulnerable to identity theft and
00:08:17
Speaker
having our data used against us by parties that don't have our best interests in mind.
00:08:22
Speaker
It also makes us susceptible to biases and prejudice, perhaps.
The Concept of Self-Sovereign Identity
00:08:27
Speaker
And so one of the things I really love about this idea of self-sovereign identity or ID tech is the better control over the use of our data and how we have control over it.
00:08:37
Speaker
And also, how can we share the minimum viable data set in order to perform a function online?
00:08:43
Speaker
You know, Riley had spent a number of years really at the heart of some of this development here in Utah with the Sovereign Foundation.
00:08:51
Speaker
And I really loved his scrappiness, resourcefulness, and his passion for this particular problem.
00:08:56
Speaker
And I felt like he was in a unique position to see where the opportunities were and where the deficits were in terms of the current state of development.
00:09:04
Speaker
So when we connected, it felt like Riley's an entrepreneur, has a very, very clear vision about what he wants to do in this world.
00:09:10
Speaker
And he also has the context of where the gaps were in the current state of the market.
00:09:15
Speaker
So we really saw an opportunity to partner up and go after this together.
00:09:20
Speaker
Yeah, and as you were talking, I'm just thinking about how much easier the life insurance application I just completed would have been had I been able to use this.
00:09:28
Speaker
It's just insane.
00:09:29
Speaker
And you're just like, and I'm just uploading all of this personal information.
00:09:33
Speaker
Please be careful with it.
00:09:34
Speaker
There's increased liability for the counterparties as well.
00:09:37
Speaker
The legislation has been passed in Europe, as well as California, that grants increasing liability.
00:09:44
Speaker
protection for the consumer, at the same time, it creates liability for the underwriters in this case who collect all this information.
00:09:51
Speaker
How is it being used?
00:09:51
Speaker
How is it being stored?
00:09:52
Speaker
Is it secure?
00:09:53
Speaker
What are their responsibilities when there are breaches?
00:09:56
Speaker
I hope that in the future that these counterparties are able to do their business without having to take on all that liability as well, that it no longer is necessary for them to actually see the data.
00:10:06
Speaker
They're able to actually confirm, though, through the network that certain conditions have been met.
00:10:12
Speaker
I've been setting up on how that's going to be rolled out in Utah and Colorado as well.
00:10:16
Speaker
So it's going to be the entire U.S. at some point.
00:10:18
Speaker
So this is really important stuff that Riley is working on.
00:10:22
Speaker
I want to get to how you started working on that, Riley.
00:10:25
Speaker
You started a company at the beginning of your career that solved a problem with scooter handlebars.
00:10:30
Speaker
How did you get from there to Sovereign Identity and then Trinsic?
00:10:35
Speaker
Well, the scooter handlebars goes all the way back to high school when I was really into riding scooters.
00:10:41
Speaker
This is sort of freestyle, razor scooter style, kick scooter style scooters.
00:10:46
Speaker
For anybody who's into action sports of most kinds, there's typically a trade-off between strength and weight.
00:10:54
Speaker
You want stuff that's lightweight, but you want it to be strong.
00:10:57
Speaker
And I came out with this idea, instead of using tubing for the handlebar that you hold onto, to use a solid extruded piece of metal, instead of using steel or chromoly, an alloy, which was used in most bars, we used aluminum.
00:11:12
Speaker
So it was lightweight aluminum, but typically aluminum was weaker.
00:11:16
Speaker
But because we were using a solid extrusion instead of tubing, it was not prone to snapping.
00:11:21
Speaker
I like it.
00:11:22
Speaker
My dad has his master's in metallurgy.
00:11:24
Speaker
People start talking about alloys and I'm like, Ooh.
00:11:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:27
Speaker
And I thought that that's what I was going to do with my life.
00:11:32
Speaker
I ended up a late high school, made some life changes and my
00:11:36
Speaker
ended up on a mission trip to Taiwan.
00:11:41
Speaker
In Taiwan, I met my co-founder, Michael, whose dad is a co-founder of another Kickstart portfolio company called Clarivine.
00:11:48
Speaker
So Michael had grown up in the startup ecosystem in Utah and really introduced me to the world of tech startups as opposed to scooter startups.
00:11:56
Speaker
So when we got back from Taiwan, started at school, always had in the back of our minds that we wanted to do something together.
00:12:03
Speaker
In the meantime, as the first person in my family to go to college, I thought it would be a really useful thing for me to get a stamp on my resume, something like McKinsey or Goldman or something like that.
00:12:12
Speaker
So in order to kind of differentiate myself from all the other people that looked like me and talked like me at my university, also studying finance, I decided
00:12:22
Speaker
looked to go get the most off-the-wall differentiated job that I possibly could.
00:12:28
Speaker
And that ended up being at Sovereign Foundation, where I was the first employee.
00:12:32
Speaker
It was a nonprofit.
00:12:34
Speaker
It was blockchain meets identity project.
00:12:37
Speaker
What ended up happening, as I already mentioned, is that I got involved with Sovereign.
00:12:41
Speaker
And after about a couple of months of an internship, I realized, wow, there is so much to do in this space.
00:12:49
Speaker
I called up my now co-founder, Michael, and said, you've got to come join me here.
00:12:52
Speaker
So he joined me at Sovereign.
00:12:54
Speaker
He was the first software engineer.
00:12:55
Speaker
I was the first kind of business hire.
00:12:57
Speaker
And we helped grow that organization for a couple of years and then ended up seeing some gaps in the market that we thought we could fill.
00:13:05
Speaker
That was
Founding Trinsic and Market Innovation
00:13:06
Speaker
the start of Trinsic.
00:13:06
Speaker
So I think maybe a takeaway there is that we got really deep in a niche.
00:13:12
Speaker
And I just spent...
00:13:15
Speaker
Lots and lots of nights and weekends reading technical papers and diving really, really deep into this very niche thing that most people have no idea what is going on behind the scenes.
00:13:27
Speaker
So the idea for Trinsic was joining an industry that was growing at an important time, becoming somewhat of a subject matter expert as fast as we possibly could, and then seeing gaps in the market that we could help address.
00:13:43
Speaker
We are not the first ones to realize that digital identity online is broken, but I think we were the first ones to take some of the more innovative and newer approaches to solving the problem and productizing those into a really great developer experience that application builders really liked.
00:13:59
Speaker
I like that you highlighted the fact that yeah, you weren't the first people to realize that it was broken.
00:14:04
Speaker
So it's an important takeaway thing for entrepreneurs and Dalton, you can jump in here and correct me or add to it, but entrepreneurs don't have to be the first one in the space, but they have to understand the problem and the customer and everything enough to be able to do it orders of magnitude better than other players in the space.
00:14:19
Speaker
And that's what's so exciting about the way you're doing it at Trinsic and learning, I think for entrepreneurs, like don't be turned off if you're not the first person in the space.
00:14:26
Speaker
You don't have to pioneer space necessarily to be an entrepreneur.
00:14:29
Speaker
But you have to have an understanding of the problem.
00:14:33
Speaker
Yeah, I totally agree with that.
00:14:35
Speaker
You know, oftentimes when we ask the question to entrepreneurs that are pitching us, tell us about the competition, the right answer that they think we want to hear is nobody else is doing this.
00:14:45
Speaker
And more often than not, when I hear that we don't have any competitors, I think either you haven't actually surveyed the landscape well enough, or this isn't a market that people care about yet.
00:14:56
Speaker
So what we're looking for is the team that's likely to go win in that space, in a space that's coveted, valuable, and they have the right strategy for it.
00:15:04
Speaker
So I think novelty at times can be overrated, but when there's competition and really, really talented teams of people going out for an opportunity,
00:15:13
Speaker
It tends to signal that where there's smoke, there's fire.
00:15:17
Speaker
And you don't want to be the kind of lone voice in the wilderness crying out.
00:15:22
Speaker
You actually want to be in the game where people are paying attention to it, adopting solutions, and you're just going to move faster, smarter.
00:15:31
Speaker
They're doing it in a different way than the other people are doing it.
00:15:34
Speaker
Or it enables us to do something that we cannot do.
00:15:37
Speaker
In this sense, what is it that we're doing that is 10x better?
00:15:41
Speaker
Well, we're allowing verifications of credentials with zero knowledge sharing, with zero passing of data across the network, which completely eliminates the concerns around data breaches, third-party sharing of information, and so on.
00:15:56
Speaker
I think one thing that helped us tell our story in terms of the competitive landscape, especially given that I mentioned, we didn't just come up with this idea.
00:16:03
Speaker
We're not the first people to realize identity is broken.
00:16:06
Speaker
It really helped to, like Dalton mentioned, understand the landscape really well and where we fit inside it, because this market is very, very big of all the problems out there, which is the one that we are solving really, really well.
00:16:17
Speaker
And while we maybe aren't the only ones in the space, we have had to be novel,
00:16:25
Speaker
and take contrarian positions in the market that are differentiated from competitors and
00:16:31
Speaker
experiment with new frontiers and push the boundaries of what existed already in order to establish that differentiation.
00:16:37
Speaker
And I think the right way to maybe think about it or the way that I've thought about it is that we are standing on the shoulders of many giants that have come before us in our identity industry.
00:16:46
Speaker
And yet we also need to see a little bit further ourselves than what has been seen before.
00:16:51
Speaker
And then of course, figure out a way to productize that and take it to market in a way that customers will resonate with.
00:16:57
Speaker
You mentioned you have to really understand
00:17:00
Speaker
where you fit, how did you come to that understanding at Transic and what could other entrepreneurs learn from that?
00:17:07
Speaker
One thing was understanding the players, which customer segments they were targeting.
00:17:13
Speaker
And then again, seeing the gaps like Adobe and Figma, where Photoshop is one of the most iconic software brands and products ever.
00:17:24
Speaker
So how did Figma exist?
00:17:25
Speaker
Well, I think they probably took a fundamental concept of design that wasn't brand new, and they had some novelty that they brought in in terms of the multiplayer experiences, in terms of the customer segments that they were targeting.
00:17:37
Speaker
And some of those things enabled them to expand the pie by taking maybe another chunk of the market and then expanding that chunk alongside maybe some of the competitors'
00:17:48
Speaker
I think part of this understanding of the gap comes from just being in the fight and understanding what the customers are saying and how they're responding to the existing solutions.
00:18:00
Speaker
In my view, most breakthrough innovation or I'd say disruptive innovation generally occurs not from studying the marketplace.
00:18:11
Speaker
This isn't like a consulting play where you go out and you do the market map and you define the strengths and weaknesses.
00:18:18
Speaker
I think that's useful to do just to understand the landscape.
00:18:22
Speaker
But I think the entrepreneurs that really innovate are
00:18:26
Speaker
are probably not spending a lot of time trying to understand how their competitors are spending their time.
00:18:33
Speaker
They're more focused on their customers and really listening to the needs of their customer base.
00:18:37
Speaker
And so that would be the only thing that I would add is it's necessary to understand what your competitors are doing, but it's not sufficient in order to come up with innovation.
00:18:46
Speaker
You can be misled oftentimes by what the competitors are doing.
00:18:49
Speaker
They have their own legacy trajectories and momentum and reasons for doing the things that they're doing.
00:18:54
Speaker
And I think if you wanna be a differentiated category defining company, it'll generally come from the founders developing deep domain expertise and earning the right to innovate by staying close to their customers and testing different propositions with their customers.
00:19:13
Speaker
And I think it also comes from a deep conviction about why this problem hasn't been solved yet.
Aligning with Web3 and Technological Futures
00:19:19
Speaker
and why your approach is going to work.
00:19:22
Speaker
And that's the challenge of the entrepreneur is you can't find that by doing a landscape survey, a market map.
00:19:29
Speaker
You don't get to that level of insight by doing the kind of business consultant review of the space.
00:19:35
Speaker
You do it by rolling up your sleeves and getting in the fight.
00:19:39
Speaker
And over time, you earn the right to innovate because you gain more knowledge and perspective than anybody else out there.
00:19:46
Speaker
Thank you.
00:19:46
Speaker
Okay.
00:19:47
Speaker
So Riley, it sounds a lot like, and you used words like blockchain meets identity.
00:19:51
Speaker
Where does it fit into the web three context?
00:19:53
Speaker
Like, is it adjacent?
00:19:54
Speaker
Is it part of web three?
00:19:55
Speaker
Is it nothing like it at all?
00:19:57
Speaker
Like, where does it fit?
00:20:00
Speaker
I think that it depends on what you mean by web three.
00:20:04
Speaker
If you think about web three as a set of philosophical beliefs about user control and self-sovereignty,
00:20:13
Speaker
then I think, absolutely, sign me up.
00:20:16
Speaker
We fall under that camp.
00:20:18
Speaker
A lot of people, though, use the term Web3 in their day-to-day lives as shorthand for a set of technologies like blockchain, NFTs, DAOs, tokens, et cetera.
00:20:30
Speaker
And there's a lot of connotation that comes along with that and assumptions about which technologies are used and how and things like that.
00:20:37
Speaker
If you use the Web3 term in those terms, I think we are less of a Web3 company.
00:20:42
Speaker
Ultimately, it's probably mostly semantics.
00:20:45
Speaker
And I try to just spend most of our time talking to customers and understanding what they need and building those things.
00:20:50
Speaker
So I try not to worry too much about how we're labeled.
00:20:53
Speaker
If others label us as Web3, I'm happy with it.
00:20:56
Speaker
And if they don't, then that's fine too.
00:20:59
Speaker
Dalton, how do you think Trinsic fits into a Web3 context?
00:21:03
Speaker
I would guess that the next version of a lot of these companies that we're talking about will not want to be branded Web3 because it's so loaded.
00:21:14
Speaker
This category is very controversial.
00:21:17
Speaker
even among our investor base, you'll find investors that say, I absolutely hate this category.
00:21:23
Speaker
And you have others that say, I think that this could be the future, which to me actually makes it more interesting.
00:21:29
Speaker
I like when there are extreme positions on things.
00:21:33
Speaker
And if you talk to somebody who's a Bitcoin maximalist, they will think that anything outside of Bitcoin is complete heresy and garbage.
00:21:42
Speaker
The next person who doesn't believe it at all in crypto, they'll think that the Bitcoin maximalist is completely insane.
00:21:48
Speaker
And then you talk to somebody who's deep into the Ethereum network, and they're going to think that the Bitcoin maximalists have completely missed the boat on being able to upgrade their networks to be more serviceable for a variety of needs and use cases.
00:22:02
Speaker
So it is a category that's full of ideology.
00:22:06
Speaker
and strongly held beliefs.
00:22:09
Speaker
And it's also jam packed with scams and rug pulls.
00:22:13
Speaker
And particularly we're very sensitive to this as investors, we have reputations on the line.
00:22:17
Speaker
We don't want to participate in rug pulls and scams.
00:22:19
Speaker
What we're looking for are companies and entrepreneurs that are solving important problems using the technologies at hand.
00:22:29
Speaker
And I do think that blockchain has a place to play in this world and that there are problems that can be uniquely addressed through decentralized systems.
00:22:37
Speaker
For me, the people who are most passionate about crypto, privacy, preservation, empowering users, decentralizing power sources so that it's more fair for those who are participating in a network.
00:22:49
Speaker
I see a lot of that in what Trinsic is doing.
00:22:52
Speaker
And I don't think we'll be talking about Web3 10 years from now.
00:22:55
Speaker
I do think we'll be talking about decentralized systems and we'll be talking about self-sovereignty 10 years from now, no doubt in my mind.
00:23:03
Speaker
My first meeting with Kickstart was with Gavin.
00:23:07
Speaker
About 15 minutes into the pitch, Gavin said, oh, you sound like this other company that uses blockchain.
00:23:12
Speaker
Have you ever looked into that?
00:23:14
Speaker
I said, well, yeah.
00:23:15
Speaker
You know, and I explained how the platform works.
00:23:18
Speaker
And he asked, did you just pitch me a blockchain company without saying the word blockchain in the first sentence?
00:23:23
Speaker
And I said, yes.
00:23:25
Speaker
And then, you know, there's, you know, one thing led to the next and here we are now.
00:23:28
Speaker
So for what it's worth, our platform supports both the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains.
00:23:34
Speaker
It also supports the traditional DNS infrastructure and non-blockchain-based systems.
00:23:38
Speaker
So we play nice with all the ecosystems that are out there and are pretty agnostic to the specific technical implementation.
00:23:44
Speaker
But as Dalton said, we do have some strong opinions about our ideological beliefs about Bitcoin.
00:23:49
Speaker
the way that we want the future to pan out.
00:23:50
Speaker
And regardless of what you believe the future iteration of the web is and how that future will pan out, whether you think it's crypto native on chain, there will still be needs to present your off chain credentials in an on chain context, your university diploma to prove that you are eligible to do certain work for a DAO.
00:24:10
Speaker
Or if you believe the future of the internet is based on generative AI.
00:24:13
Speaker
And if you've seen any of the generative AI created LinkedIn accounts, you know, with fake Harvard degrees, or if you've seen GPT-4 can hire TaskRabbit people to fill out CAPTCHAs for it so that it can pass the, are you a robot tests?
00:24:28
Speaker
There's a need for identity in the future of that web as well.
00:24:31
Speaker
Or if you think the future of the web is an IoT-based, hardware-infused world where there are sensors and things everywhere, you'd imagine identity touches everything there.
00:24:39
Speaker
If you want to hop in a self-driving car, you'd tap your phone, open the door, hop in.
00:24:44
Speaker
And that's all you need to do as opposed to sort of signing up for brand new applications every time you want to get on a different scooter to drive down the road two blocks or whatever.
00:24:52
Speaker
These are all future iterations of the web that I think will probably all be true to some degree.
00:24:58
Speaker
But regardless of how you see that panning out, identity touches it all.
00:25:01
Speaker
So it's important that we are compatible with and play nice with all the different systems of where the web is going in the future.
Prioritizing Problem Solving over Trends
00:25:08
Speaker
As this conversation went on, like, I love the highlighting of the fact that you have values that you stand for.
00:25:13
Speaker
Like, this is why we're doing what we're doing.
00:25:15
Speaker
And Dalton, your point of like, people don't want to be associated with Web3, but there's some things they'll say, but it might be like, oh, are you Web3?
00:25:21
Speaker
Because it can be tempting for entrepreneurs to chase like the next big thing.
00:25:26
Speaker
where it's like, okay, web three, that's it.
00:25:27
Speaker
I'm going to do a web three company or web five or whatever it might be.
00:25:31
Speaker
I think the lesson here for those listening is that it's not about being part of the next big thing.
00:25:35
Speaker
It's going back to what Riley said earlier about like, I was really deep into this problem and I was really able to figure it out and to solve it and figure out how I could do this better and make a space for me.
00:25:44
Speaker
And this is where I fit into that space.
00:25:46
Speaker
And I think that is the takeaway for those listening.
00:25:49
Speaker
I'm not sure if either of you have thoughts on that.
00:25:52
Speaker
At Kickstart, we've always been focused on trying to solve meaningful problems, real problems.
00:25:58
Speaker
And so I think that whenever there's kind of a new exciting category, there's this tendency to think that if you just slap the label on it, it makes it important, relevant.
00:26:10
Speaker
It communicates useful information about what you're doing.
00:26:13
Speaker
And there is some truth to that.
00:26:15
Speaker
But I also think that to the example that Riley just gave when he first pitched Trinsic, he pitched us a self-sovereign identity company that relied to a certain extent on blockchain technology without ever even mentioning blockchain technology.
00:26:29
Speaker
And I think that you see this right now with AI as well.
00:26:32
Speaker
You know, it's every pitch deck we see now has those letters in it somewhere, it feels like.
00:26:38
Speaker
And almost every analytics company now will say that they're AI, whether or not that's actually the case.
00:26:44
Speaker
And so I just feel like it's important to look past these buzzwords that we apply to our businesses and instead focus on what is the deep problem that we're addressing?
00:26:55
Speaker
And why is this a compelling, valuable solution that's being developed?
00:26:59
Speaker
And then you can get into why AI is the answer or why blockchain is the answer.
00:27:06
Speaker
For me, it never starts with, oh, you've got an AI company or you've got a Web3 company or you've got a SaaS company.
00:27:10
Speaker
It's, well, get me excited about this problem.
00:27:14
Speaker
Let's talk about the solution and then tie it out for me why the new technology or these new trends that are emerging lend themselves particularly well to solving that problem.
00:27:25
Speaker
That's where I get excited.
00:27:26
Speaker
But if you start with the solution or kind of the buzzwords, I think oftentimes you risk coming across as somebody who's just trying to participate in a momentum story.
00:27:35
Speaker
as opposed to a deep conviction about a problem that you really, really, really want to contribute to the solution of.
00:27:43
Speaker
The entrepreneurs that build iconic companies, they are relentlessly focused on serving their customers over a longer arc, and they don't actually really care that much whether the solution happens to be AI-driven or it's an analytics solution or it's a blockchain solution.
00:28:02
Speaker
They're laser-focused on the actual customer and their problems and how they're going to help them have a better life.
00:28:08
Speaker
You can decouple that from the technology.
00:28:11
Speaker
As you were talking, you're kind of going about like, you want to hear about the problem, then you want to hear about this, you want to hear about this.
00:28:15
Speaker
I think that's actually a really great format for a pitch meeting.
00:28:17
Speaker
So hopefully people were taking notes and then they can present in that order, which would be interesting.
00:28:21
Speaker
This has been such an engaging and fun discussion.
Personal Practices for Success
00:28:24
Speaker
Really appreciate the insights and you being willing to come on the show and share your story and talk about trends like
00:28:30
Speaker
And we'd like to end with one question that we ask every guest on the show.
00:28:33
Speaker
And that is, what is an effective practice that you've implemented in your work or personal life that you think has had a great impact on your success?
00:28:42
Speaker
Well, first, let me say, I love this question because as I listen to your podcast, I take some of the insights from other entrepreneurs and have applied them in my own life.
00:28:50
Speaker
So thanks to everybody who's been on your podcast in the past, and hopefully something I say will be helpful.
00:28:55
Speaker
I think the meta point here is I had a boss who would say, easy choices, hard life, hard choices, easy life.
00:29:02
Speaker
And as I look back, I think I tend to sometimes choose things that are hard for me.
00:29:08
Speaker
Things are very challenging, obviously starting a company being one.
00:29:11
Speaker
And I think that there's merit to that.
00:29:16
Speaker
I think a tactical thing that I do is I wake up really early and try to make meaningful decisions
00:29:24
Speaker
progress on my most important priority every single day before my kids wake up and before the slack messages start coming in and before the flurry of the day just starts happening.
00:29:34
Speaker
And I find that if I can start the day having really made meaningful progress on something, it just sets the whole rest of the day up for a whole nother level of success.
00:29:44
Speaker
And that's been really helpful for me.
00:29:47
Speaker
How early are you up?
00:29:48
Speaker
3 a.m.?
00:29:50
Speaker
No, no, not that early.
00:29:51
Speaker
No.
00:29:51
Speaker
I try to get a two-hour deep work session in before things start happening.
00:29:54
Speaker
So, you know, 435.
00:29:55
Speaker
That's amazing.
00:29:57
Speaker
I aspire to be able to do that someday.
00:29:59
Speaker
So you've inspired me.
00:30:00
Speaker
Stelton, any thoughts on that?
00:30:02
Speaker
I'd be a hypocrite if I said, oh yeah, get up early before your kids are up.
00:30:06
Speaker
I mean, so often I'm scrambling in the morning trying to get the kids to school and I can see the value in that, certainly.
00:30:12
Speaker
What I'm doing right now in my life is I'm trying to hold to what feels like competing ideas at the same time for myself, which is
00:30:20
Speaker
One, I matter, and my work really, really matters, and it's important.
00:30:25
Speaker
And then, on the other hand, I don't matter that much.
00:30:29
Speaker
And I'll be forgotten one day.
00:30:31
Speaker
Life continues to go on.
00:30:33
Speaker
And so...
00:30:34
Speaker
It helps me take the pressure off.
00:30:35
Speaker
So I wanted just enough pressure to stay hungry and motivated and chasing meaning in what I do.
00:30:42
Speaker
At the same time, I don't want to get ill thinking if I don't do this perfectly or if I'm not good enough or if I don't perform, then I'm a failure or the future of the world hangs in the balance on whether or not I'm working hard enough.
00:30:56
Speaker
And so for me, I'm trying to get to that point of equanimity where I know that my work is important and it matters and I'm leaning into it and I do my best.
00:31:05
Speaker
And at the same time, I'm doing it with a peace of mind, knowing that at the end of the day, everything fades away to a certain extent.
00:31:12
Speaker
I have to keep my own existence in perspective in this grand scheme and not let this delusion of my own importance become its own burden upon me.
00:31:22
Speaker
I think every entrepreneur could benefit from a similar mindset where we have to both hold in our minds that what we're doing is really important and that we're going to have a big impact on the world without letting your company be your whole identity and your whole life.
00:31:36
Speaker
So yeah, I appreciate that, Dalton.
00:31:38
Speaker
Thank you.
00:31:38
Speaker
Yeah, I love that insight.
00:31:39
Speaker
I've been thinking a lot too about duality and what that means and holding two ideas in your head.
00:31:44
Speaker
So I really appreciate that thought.
00:31:46
Speaker
But Riley and Dalton, thank you so much for joining our discussion today and for all that you shared.
00:31:50
Speaker
Riley, you've done a really great job of not only helping it so that your mom can understand all this, but so that I can understand all of this.
00:31:56
Speaker
So we're really grateful.
00:31:57
Speaker
But if people really want to dive in and learn more about the work that you're doing, where can they go?
00:32:03
Speaker
I'm always happy to connect on LinkedIn or Twitter.
00:32:07
Speaker
You can just search my name.
00:32:08
Speaker
We also have a podcast we started recently called the Future of Identity podcast, where we interview some of our customers or other players in our ecosystem who are building ID tech solutions.
00:32:18
Speaker
And I think there's some really interesting conversations there that if you enjoyed this topic, listeners might also enjoy some of those conversations as well.
00:32:26
Speaker
We'll check it out and we'll be sure to include a link for that in our show notes.
00:32:29
Speaker
So thank you for sharing that.
00:32:30
Speaker
And yeah, now I'm like, oh, I hope that I podcasted well with you since you're a pro.
00:32:36
Speaker
So thank you for joining us on the show today.
00:32:38
Speaker
Thanks a lot.
00:32:39
Speaker
This was an awesome conversation.
00:32:41
Speaker
Love Kickstart and appreciate the invitation.
00:32:44
Speaker
Thanks for having me, Karen and Riley.
00:32:45
Speaker
Thanks for joining.
00:32:46
Speaker
That was really fun.
00:32:47
Speaker
And of course, thank you for listening as we dive deep into what it takes to create the perfect pitch.
00:32:52
Speaker
If you want to learn more about our investor Dalton Wright from Kickstart or our CEO Riley Hughes from Trinsic, we'll have a link to the company and a longer bio in our show notes at kickstartfund.com.
00:33:03
Speaker
You can listen to more episodes of Perfect Pitch wherever you listen to your podcasts.
00:33:06
Speaker
And if you like what you're learning, leave us a reviewer rating.
00:33:09
Speaker
We'll be back next time with more insights from entrepreneurs and the investors who fund them.
00:33:13
Speaker
So be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a thing.