Greg Kidd - Global ID 0:00
I'm not the innovation, the disruption, I'm a messenger, this stuff is happening. And if you banks don't want to be turned into like dumb vaults to either you take a chill pill and embrace the disruption and start to do it yourself, or it's just a matter of time before, you're going to be on the wrong side of this equation, and you're gonna get turned into a dumb pipe.
The Detective 0:20
Imagine you're the CEO of global ID, a digital identity verification platform. Throughout your career, you've been tried and tested in the tech industry, from the bustling streets of byte messenger services, to the high stakes world of Silicon Valley, you've rubbed shoulders with industry giants, mentored future tech moguls, and even had a stint at the Federal Reserve.
Greg Kidd - Global ID 0:45
It just depends on how you look at risk. And you could say that's just FOMO. But if the person you're talking to really is sharing what is not just an idea, but really an insight about how the world could be different, it's kind of difficult to not take a swing of that pitch. I don't know you can be wrong 100 times. But when you're dealing with 1000 to one returns on successes, you're gonna write a lot of checks. Your journey
The Detective 1:07
has been anything but ordinary. As you stand at the helm of global ID, you find yourself at the crossroads of innovation, and tradition, decentralisation and centralization.
Greg Kidd - Global ID 1:22
Like Steve Jobs is like no computers could be for people instead of companies. Each of those are insights that if they're true, everything changes because the rules of the game are just going to be different. And that's way beyond an idea. And that insight often comes from the gut, it's just a feeling that the world could be very different. And it's not an intellectual type thing. It's more of a temperament.
The Detective 1:43
But what happens when you're faced with the daunting task of deciding between a top down, centralised approach and a bottom up decentralised one, in a world of tech, where talent is as diverse as it is dynamic? How do you spot and invest in individuals who can transform not just your company, but the world? And in an industry that's constantly evolving? How do you navigate the complex labyrinth of regulations and compliance? This is the story of Greg Kidd, a man who has not only faced these challenges, but continues to navigate them as the CEO of global ID, and this is the verification.
Ben Kaplan 2:32
Greg, you have a really interesting background of being involved in I think at this point, we could probably say hundreds of startups in some fashion, or form and various parts of your career. But it all kind of starts with dispatch management services, which is a company that you founded that eventually was taken public on NASDAQ, it deals with bike messengers and courier services, and take us through that experience to star and how that actually leads you to lots of other really important areas for the next couple decades that will influence other parts of technology and companies.
Greg Kidd - Global ID 3:06
bike messengers used to be all top down dispatching people telling the bikes what to do. But there were a few messenger companies in the world that did a bottom up, they just ran an auction and the messengers ruled the roost. And so the question was, what would it take to build software around bottom up decision making essentially a decentralised marketplace much like web three today. And so that was happening all the way back in the 1990s. Jack Dorsey was a young kid, he got interested, he kind of hacked in came to work for the company, he was also interested in text messaging and payments. And while we took that company public, that's all ancient history, what Jack then did for Twitter and Square, both of which I was just around a little bit at the beginning, kind of was the start of a whole nother set of generalising the concepts, democratisation of who could receive a message, and democratisation of who could take a payment, and just democratisation all the way through to the kind of innovations we're seeing in crypto now. And that's what really changed the course of my life. I did spend time also in regulation working at the Fed. And so that Nick's of a regulators view plus the Silicon Valley View has made a pretty interesting sailing
Ben Kaplan 4:15
early on, this is an interesting company in the 90s. Because essentially, this is looking at an early form of like an Uber or something like that, where you're gonna have this distributed services that are aggregated in some way to be more useful. So that's one two. It's interesting because you acquired 64 Different messenger companies to put them in the system. And of course, it's also interesting as a precursor to the text messaging that has to occur that eventually turns into Twitter, which of course is in the news a tonne now because of Elon Musk's recent acquisition, but then also payments because of the way that payments play a role in this too. So talk about those early days of that company, how Jack Dorsey comes on board and why this becomes actually a foundational experience for a lot of other stuff. that's going to transform how we think about technology and the future of startups.
Greg Kidd - Global ID 5:03
Well, the key thing, the key, unlearned lesson of messaging was you could build this big computer algorithms that figured out who should do what. Or you could simply turn it around and let the people on the road the inmates run the asylum, and just keep score. And so that's a time on or debate. And look, I come from the operations research crowd where it's all AI and intelligence. The question is, when does the marketplace be top down decision making, whether by giant robot or by a giant autocrat, and in the messenger world, we learned that just making a market for the transactions, letting everyone communicate and work it out as a marketplace was superior to any type of AI kind of algorithm. And so it's kind of the markets versus the bots. And sometimes the markets win. And so I think Jack was heavily influenced by that. I certainly was. And so Twitter was, instead of having publishers determine what should be published, just anybody can get a Twitter account and become a publisher, instead of big banks or big organisations determining who could take a payment, square, just open that up to everyone. And so if you run the world bottom up, you get different outcomes if you run the world top down, and so, you know, crypto has been bottom up web 3.0 is bottom up. And, you know, we're just believers, not because like, I was taught that way, I came from the top down world of like, management consulting firms, the Ivy League institutions, big government working for the Fed. But you know, my experience has just been that like, bottom up does pretty well. You don't have to ask permission to innovate. That's the game plan.
Ben Kaplan 6:39
It has this democratic view of whether it's messaging or payments or coordination of a marketplace that has this more democratic viewpoint. And in your career, you took that company public, you went on NASDAQ, you did well with the company and you have this association now with someone who becomes an important player in Silicon Valley. Jack Dorsey goes on to found Twitter and Square and you also then become an investor in Twitter and Square correct and you're one of the kind of the early investors and that which leads to a career in investing.
Greg Kidd - Global ID 7:10
Well, that was back then. And then came the web 2.0 companies and crypto the ripples, the coin bases those in early for those and then starting the web 3.0 Like the protocol labs and and then finally, the new layer one protocols like the Solanas of the world, staking companies. Now, the metaverse, companies, all that has just flowed forth. It's kind of a Forrest Gump strategy if you're just around. And there's been a criticism that web 3.0 is the same people as web 2.0. And I'm guilty as advertised. Yeah, I was around for web 2.0. And that was a thing but like 10 years ago, and so now I can't help but to be investing in, in web 3.0. Even if it is crypto winter, we're always investing smaller checks, fewer of them during the winter. But it's not always springtime, over your
Ben Kaplan 7:53
career started out with Jack Dorsey hacking into dispatch because he was curious and then ends up living with him as roommates and working on things together. But then you've had others in your career to where you've been very early. And so one, do you just have a knack for spotting talent? Are you just good at choosing roommates, another one, Brian Armstrong, founder of Coinbase, another very successful kind of crypto company that grew really, really fast. You've known all these people you've invest in them at how do you sort of spot talent, and what's different about the folks that end up doing something that's not just a good company, but in some ways transformative for an industry,
Greg Kidd - Global ID 8:27
that's a little bit of a Woody Allen thing a lot of is just showing up. So if you're at Y Combinator, and you meet some of these people, and you sit down next to him at lunch, if they have a good idea, it's kind of the Benny Hill thing, I'd buy that for $1. You kind of feel like foolish if you didn't put something and look some of these guys, like, you know, Anatoly, over at Solana and Juan, they wrote a white paper. And I probably can't understand the whole white paper, but I usually can get through to the first page. And you know, it's one of those things. They say like, Well, how do you take all these risks? And I'm like, Well, look, if this idea is right, in his paper, what a risk it would be to not invest, right, like so it just depends on how you look at risk. And you could say, that's just Foma. All right, maybe it is a fear of missing out. But if you know, if the person you're talking to like, really is sharing what is not just an idea, but really an insight about how the world could be different had like a Star Trek kind of level, it's kind of difficult to not like, take a swing of that pitch. And so I don't know you can be wrong 100 times. But when you're dealing with 1000 to one returns on successes, you're going to write a lot of checks, and you're going to be at a few of the parties.
Ben Kaplan 9:33
Let's unpack this idea of the difference between an idea and an insight in your definition of an idea ideas is an idea for what an idea for a company idea for a business model idea for a business idea for a product, what do you mean by idea and then how is that lesser the insight,
Greg Kidd - Global ID 9:48
like an idea, we generally think that comes from a head like it could be it could be a really good idea. It might just be a feature. It could be a product, it could be for an idea for a business. It could be for even a platform but like an insight like see If jobs is like, well, you know, computers could be for people instead of companies. And if that's right, holy smokes, the whole world is going to be different. Or like, if you look at Bill Gates who said, We could write one operating system that could run on all the different computers, like each of those are insights that if they are true, everything changes, because the rules of the game are just going to be different. And that's way beyond an idea. And that insight often comes from the gut, it's just a feeling that the world could be very different. And it's not an intellectual type thing. It's more of a temperament. It's a belief that things could operate very differently. And whoever Satoshi is, he clearly had one of those bitcoin is not an idea. It's a real insight about the world and so that you could innovate without having to ask for permission in the realm of money. And like that insight people are talking about is not very fast. It's not cheap. It's like, Yeah, but the Insight is you can innovate without having to ask for permission. And that's fundamentally different in the world that didn't exist in the world of finance, you know, before 2008. And so whenever that bell goes off, I'm looking for a chequebook. If I have the money, I'm gonna borrow to invest in that. Because you know, that's a sleigh ride that, you know, you don't want to miss.
Ben Kaplan 11:10
There's a lot of CEOs or entrepreneurs listening. And I can envision them because they're thinking is my concept for my company? Is it an idea? Or is it an insight, there's usually some kind of fundamental belief in the world. But if it's an insight, most likely, you're not going to be competing on like, oh, we can make this cheaper, or we can make it incremental? Usually not, for instance, although it could be transformed if you make it cheaper, and suddenly you democratise it. And suddenly everyone in the world can get one and before only a very few cuts. So it's possible. But what is it if you want to check yourself? And there's probably other people besides the Jack Dorsey's and the Brian Armstrong's, and the others who maybe had an insight, but we don't know who they are, and their companies never went anywhere. But maybe they had the same belief. So what is it about an insight? And what is it about executing an insight for the sort of select few who are able to transform things with it?
Greg Kidd - Global ID 11:56
Well, it's a pretty lonely space, like when Twitter came out with this notion that you would just instead of, you're just put something out there, and anyone could follow it that wanted to follow it. And the original distribution method was text messaging went around Silicon Valley, no venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, none wanted to back Twitter, they're like, there's no proprietary technology that you're just using text messaging, there's nothing there, like Eric Schmidt called it like poor man's email later on. And the only folks that got it were like Fred Wilson, from Union Square, and Bjorn over at Spark, because they saw Oh, this is a media innovation. This isn't a technology, innovation. This is a media innovation, that freedom of speech, is based on the freedom to listen to who you want to listen to, it's not just speaking, freedom of speech is really about getting to choose who you listen to. And that's a counterfactual kind of way of thinking. And so most people just aren't gonna get it. And so it's super lonely. So if you have a real insight, you're going to find that most people think an idea is something that people can kind of say, Oh, well, that's cheaper or faster, or whatnot. But like, Twitter wasn't like cheaper, faster, it wasn't one of those. And like square, it wasn't really about the Swiper, it was about changing the criteria for who could take a payment. And yeah, the technology helped make that cost effective and whatnot. But they opened up to a whole group of people, and so did crypto. So these innovations now, this concept of like, like a file coin, or like a distributed form of storage, fundamentally different from Amazon, like, you should never have to worry that I lost my computer. And therefore I lost all my data, your data should be attached to your identity, and how in everything you've ever done every financial transaction, every exchange you've ever had, every credential you've ever earned, just exist out there in the internet attached to your identity. So you never had to worry that I lost my account at such and such, or this government kicked me out, and therefore I lose the bundle of sticks that's attached to my identity. Okay, like when I talk like that, they're probably going to like, roll the truck up to take me off to the loony bin. Imagine that world because that's how Star Trek works, then, then you're already living in that alternate reality. And usually, that's kind of on the border of being like a borderline personality disorder, but you have to be comfortable with that. And look, I'm not that person, I generally don't have insights. But like, when I see people who do, I don't like run from them, I run to them. Because I don't know, I just seems more fun living around that. And I can't help but to hang out around places in a Forrest Gump kind of way, where you might bump into one of those people.
Ben Kaplan 14:20
Do you make an effort to do that? Maybe 10 years ago, if we would have talked about kind of Silicon Valley, everyone says, Okay, you have to be in Silicon Valley, you have to be here, because you're just gonna have these happy accidents, these collisions and you can't put a price on that past 10 years, though, has shifted somewhat, you've seen pockets of entrepreneurs, venture capital, more distributed, VCs aren't making people move to Silicon Valley, maybe more Silicon Valley or San Francisco Bay area, because the burn rate is so high, it's going to be expensive. And for the certain type of company, that's not the best. So do you make an effort to put yourself in a place for serendipity to happen or how do you approach that because seems like you've been very skilled at that.
Greg Kidd - Global ID 14:58
Well, skilled or just sort of lucky like the I mean, I still hang around Silicon Valley. But now I hang around for the weather. I don't come here to find the entrepreneurs now. I can't just sit down on like South of Market and within five blocks just have people come to me or me go to them. Now I am spending time living around the world just going wherever it's becoming like hot and attractive for folks to like, be I can't believe the amount of time I spent in Florida and Texas in the last year, that would have been an absolute an No, no for me, like five years ago. And then just elsewhere all around the world, there is talent everywhere. And so the bulk of our investing and the bulk of my learning and whatnot is his shifted outside the US and you know, the world is the oyster now. And so you just go where the people are, because you want to meet the people and even in the world of the internet, you want to like you know, go to Roma Romania and find like who's doing like luik whether it's L Ron or something, and these guys are building a different blockchain and like how the hell and why the hell are they doing in Romanian stuff? And like, you just gonna go those places are like, is Nexo really something different from celsius and Voyager? Well, you better get on a plane and go to Bulgaria and find out who the hell are these chokers? And you know, like, so at the end of the day, you have to like go there. Look, people in the eye look at their backdrop and figure out is this real? Or is it smoke and mirrors. And so the fun thing is, is that talent is everywhere in the world. Now it's not like it was five to 10 years ago in Silicon Valley. With such a dominance. There's still stuff here. But there's talent everywhere now. And the tools, and COVID have just made it clear that you're not going to find it just hanging out in Silicon Valley. So I like it. It gives me an excuse to go all around the world and meet these people where they are as opposed to brain drain, all to hear
The Detective 16:40
from bike messengers to blockchain. Greg kids journey so far is a testament to the power of democratisation in technology. But what happens when your groundbreaking insight is seen as outlandish? Greg believes in embracing this, as it's often the unconventional ideas that change the world. Talent is everywhere, not just in Silicon Valley, is global pursuit of innovation continues undeterred by the potential crypto winter. Next, we delve into the complex world of regulation and compliance in the tech industry.
Ben Kaplan 17:25
This notion of the importance of compliance and regulation in helping something go mainstream, which has been a theme in your career, talk about that, and why usually people who are innovators, people with insights are visionaries. The last thing they want to think about is regulation and compliance because it's kind of a buzzkill. Do you want to do all these things, and a lot of people are gonna say no to you, or point out problems or things like that. So what is the role of understanding regulation and compliance in helping have transformative technology and companies
Greg Kidd - Global ID 17:58
in this world, we're going to go from sort of web 2.0 ode to like web 3.0, the web 2.0 got pretty far on a world of just like monetizing eyeballs. And you know, the Facebook's and the Twitter's and you have all these eyeballs, and you just put a bunch of ads in front of people. And that is not a regulated industry. And it's kind of a, we have the ills that happened with all the fake media and bots, and all this type stuff. And people are kind of sick of that. And at the same time, we see this, this model of monetization, like whether it was the Netflix model or whatnot, that was coming along, and that has its pluses and minus is two. But if you can flatten the world, and have creators, get in touch with their viewers and our audiences and whatnot, and you can flatten the world, you don't need to go through a third party. It's pretty amazing. But if you're doing all that with money that's off the grid money, you don't know whether like you're you're doing work, like merchants can take money directly with crypto or stable coins from someone who's paying. Now that person who's paying might be on the sanctions list. And you don't know whether you're like facilitating drug money or terrorist financing, or whatever other malignant activity and like on the margin that can be done at small scale, but at scale, if you're Walmart and you're taking money from a noncustodial wallet without identity, that's not going to look good, right? There are still despite all this technology, a world of laws and guys with guns and badges and at scale, doing things without identity without compliance is going to be breaking the law. And while you can get away with that at small scale, eventually there's going to be a knock on the door just like there's a knock on the door even for like board apes Gary Gessler from the SEC is coming around saying that might be an unregistered security. And I can tell you probably at the day when they were like cooking up board apes they weren't worried about like, oh my god, we should be so lucky for people to think that board apes is a security and that we're going to have the SEC in here like jank in our chain, but that day comes and so you can build and try to slap compliance And after the fact, but like as someone who was like the chief officer of ripple, and you're like, you come in there, and there's already a ledger, and people have all this money on it, and you have to explain to Treasury that you don't know who those people are, it's not a great visit to Treasury, like when you get to the big leagues, if you're not doing things by the law, and compliantly, it's going to end in tears. That's it. You know, if you want to play in the big leagues, you better start thinking about compliance. And one way to do it is you can bolt it on after or you can build it in from the start,
Ben Kaplan 20:26
who are the companies that have navigated this well, and they've increased a lot of their value, or they've been able to outflank competitors simply because they understood regulation and compliance better than other folks.
Greg Kidd - Global ID 20:38
So as Kingman Brewster was the ambassador to the UK to Britain, then was the president of Yale, he gave a commencement speech at one of my school, he said, three lessons for like relationships in business is Be bold, be bold, don't be too bold. A good practitioner of that is probably like Sam over at FTX. He's been very aggressive, pushed into a lot of markets with derivatives and other instruments. But he hasn't gotten into as much trouble as like FTX. Or like ripple getting into trouble. He's starting to get in trouble now. But like, folks that got over the line, you know, maybe CZ over binance, maybe a little bit too far over the line. A lot of money for like Russian version of Silk Road, a lot of North Korean money passing through that network. So you got to pick just how radical today to gain market share without like, being too bold, right? And so Sam has been willing to be tactical retreats when like Germany says, we don't think you should be doing fractional derivative securities in Germany, he'll be like, okay, but he's pushing it. He's pushing it everywhere. So that's a great example of finding that balance. He set up a separate company for the US from the rest of the world, because like the rules are different everywhere else. And he didn't pick it all international or all us, he doubled up, right. So like he's made a bunch of covered debts. He's buying troubled companies. He's doing all these things to like pick through the rubble and pick stuff that's not too toxic, but has been innovative, or out there in the marketplace and trying to cobble together a future reality site. I often point to FTX as the poster child of trying to find that balance between super innovative super aggressive, but not like flying too close to the sun. And they might make a mistake and stumble but but Sam's played a pretty cool so far.
Ben Kaplan 22:22
Okay, of course, we're talking about Sam bacon fried, founded FTX. And now the world's second largest crypto exchange became a prolific billionaire around the way. And if there's this tension between, you're saying Be bold, but not too bold, be innovative. But be careful with, you know, a little bit associated with some interesting people, but not too interesting. What is your advice for CEOs and others? Who Are any of these lessons in technology applicable elsewhere? Or is technology its own beast, its own animals, especially fintech? Or do you think there's some universal lessons that can be applied outside of those sectors to people who are trying to innovate in other areas?
Greg Kidd - Global ID 22:59
I think so. FinTech and REG tech, a lot of venture capitalists stay away from things that have regulatory or legal risk. But if you're really going to tackle the big problems of the world, you better put your like you better buckle on a helmet and assume that you're going to face legal and regulatory risk, as well as technology risk, you better man up or woman up or whatever, for both and all of those and go in with your eyes open. So I encourage people to tackle the ambiguity in the legal system. Like right now. I'm trying to figure out what people you can can service like in the world today? Can you service Russians? Or are Russians banned from doing things like like, what is doable? And what is a reasonable way of doing it? You need to like go out there. And for me anyways, entrepreneurs just staying away from those risks. I'm like, Look, I'm a fireman, I run toward fires, not away from them. So if you're an innovator, I expect you to be tackling these hard problems and coming up with ways to solve them. I don't expect you to avoid risk, I expect you to manage risk. And so whoever's building great risk management systems and stuff, that's who I want to be behind. And look, I realise some of you may be crushed, right? And not make it but we'll learn from those of you who die, I'm sorry, you died. But like, you know, you were fighting the good fight, and someone else may make it over the finish line. I encourage people to like, go out there because otherwise, you know, it's that little song each day, I hope and pray that tomorrow will be the same as today. And so that's the type of insightful entrepreneur I'm looking for. And I like to work with
Ben Kaplan 24:28
as an entrepreneur, we think about innovation. That's the driving force, innovation, very poverty is a word like disruption, let's disrupt the status quo. If you're sitting across the table from a regulator, they're often their orientation is not towards that. It could be their orientation. Some other words all throughout there would be equitable pneus fairness, not playing favourites, not having unfair advantage or unfair competition. Their orientation is that and those are things that many of us would also say are good things. We want to be fair we want to be equal. Well, we believe in fairness to the world. How do you reconcile that? Or is this battle between innovation disruption and sort of fairness and being equitable and also allowing the benefits and the value generated the society to make their way to not just the maybe the elite few that are starting these companies,
Greg Kidd - Global ID 25:17
the way I tried to position it, when I'm talking to the the powers that be the regulators, etc, is actually saying, like, I'm not the innovation, the disruption, I'm a messenger, I'm here to tell you that this stuff is happening. It's already happened, right? You just haven't like fully felt it yet. Just like the telecoms used to have like their own app stores. And then the App Store came along from Apple and Google. And like, those phone days, it just basically turned the phone companies into dumb pipes. And if you banks don't want to be turned into like, dumb vaults. And if Facebook and Twitter don't want to become just basically dumb social networks, where the links on their systems take you to a place where everything happens, and nothing happens through Facebook and Twitter anymore, then you need to wake up and smell the roses, because this is like, not me doing it to you. I'm just telling you, I've met these folks out there, they're working on this stuff, because it's a lot more fun. It's a lot more Star Trek, and this change is coming. I don't know if it's gonna come this year, five years, 10 years, you can either open yourselves up and sort of embrace the disruption, right? Yeah, I hate to mention Sam, again, from FTX. But like, he works on distributed protocols and invests them, even though he's a centralised exchange himself, He's disrupting himself. So either you like, Take a chill pill and embrace the disruption and start to do it yourself, or it's just a matter of time before you're going to be on the wrong side of this equation, and you're gonna get turned into a dumb pipe. And, you know, maybe you're just gonna, like, live on SMS text messaging, as long as you can. But you know, there's these other things out there that are just gonna, like, eat that up. I'm just the messenger. So don't Killing me is not going to kill the message, or stop the progress. And so it's just trying to get those folks to realise this is happening anyways. And what they should start to do is work with it, as opposed to like, just sharpen their knives and try to kill it. And so you see that happening with regulators, they reach that tipping point where they actually realise that this is going to be part of the future, and they really try to get their heads around it. And it will happen just happens at different times in different countries with different regulators and the US now we're still at that point between like, is it too late to kill crypto, or we better acknowledge it's going to be here. So let's build a framework that lets it live side by side with the banking and card system that we have today as legacy systems.
Ben Kaplan 27:42
What is your opinion on market downturns? Market upturns, if we're talking about crypto, we might be talking about a crypto downturn in a so called crypto winter now, do you think regardless of the space for the industry, does that affect good entrepreneurs or innovators? Should they be paying attention to that? Should they ignore it? What is your advice for other CEOs listening? You know, because there's macro economic factors from inflation in the war in Ukraine and any number of things? Does that affect a good entrepreneur? No.
Greg Kidd - Global ID 28:11
The downturns always wash out the fairweather sailors. So we're going through that period right now. They also create clarity. Like if anybody thinks Facebook's advertising model is just a great model for like the next 10 years. I don't think so I don't think anybody at Facebook even thinks that now like the market is now beginning to punish the legacy models and realise they're not going to be what they were 10 years ago, it doesn't shine a light yet for this new crop of entrepreneurs like what is going to be the next set of successes that come out of this downturn. We saw what came out of the downturn from like 2000, like 18, back when 2018 was happening, FTX and so on, are both made it through and man, they have done so much in three years, we don't know what is going to come out of this crop when people are innovating now in a downturn, because it's gonna take three to five years to see which of those come through just like if the.com crash, you know, the stock price of Amazon and Google was in the tank. But you know, they made it through and they became huge and amazing companies. So I don't know what's going to come out of this downturn. We're trying even though we're writing fewer and smaller checks, because you know, our chip stack is down along with everyone else's in the marketplace. But I can tell you, there's a lot of dry powder out there and kids that are graduating from school or have the skills to participate in this. They're not saying like, Oh, well gee, how do I go work for Goldman Sachs or McKinsey, they're working on this stuff. I mean, you have the top talent, I can't help to think and history kind of proves this out that something's going to come from all those people working on these new tools that allow you to innovate without having to ask permission that can only lead to good things. I don't know how long the winter will last. I don't know how long it will be before the next uptick takes. But this seems like the natural natural order of things,
Ben Kaplan 29:56
and what is your sense of the you know, the world of web 3.0 All NF t's the biggest fad, it kind of goes away you deal with more of the industrial plumbing of this, of how this all this operates as opposed to all the stuff on the surface. What do you think about the latest? You mentioned board apes or other things like that. How much of this is fat? Or what are you pay attention to? And what do you recommend other CEOs pay attention to?
Greg Kidd - Global ID 30:20
Well, yeah, I mean, NF T's can look like a fad right now it goes up it goes down like the current thing that's most most sales the biggest sale item on open seas right now is people buying like domain names like from from like unstoppable domains and stuff. And so, but what that tells you, is there something there? And so the question is, do you think in the future, that all the registries from homes and cars and diamonds, everything else are all going to be a little silos? Or is there a technology out there that says everything that's owned, has essentially a title to it, which is an NFT. And all those entities have got to belong to some ultimate beneficial owner, like a person, which is represented by a unique name, so there's no confusion? Well, I don't know how else we get to the future without something like that. Like we've seen glimpses of it. But now the question is, how long is it going to take from us to get to that? Eight years ago, when Apple launched Apple Pay? People were like, no, nobody really uses this, this isn't really catching on. It's gonna take forever, never really going to happen. And then COVID came along, and now everybody like, pays was like contactless payments. Now everybody's like, holy shit. You know, the future of payments is contactless and it's just going to be sitting in your phone. And so WUWM COVID, Nate, all the planets align. And so we don't know which next Black Swan event is going to basically jumpstart us to a more decentralised reality. But it's hard to believe that it's hard to believe that the current 2.0 dominant companies that are toll bridges and toll gates, on everything are going to basically be extracting the monopoly rents they enjoy today, 10 years from now, they're already under incredible regulatory heat. They're under market pressure. The overall market is down. And so that concept that they're going to be able to, you know, to pull that off 10 years from now. Like, I'm not betting on Facebook being a top 10 market cap company and like, nothing against Mark, but I don't think you guys are gonna be the ones who are gonna like nail the metaverse, right. So if you think that's your saviour, good luck, I do believe that the future we're all in on, I won't call it web three. I'll call it just the decentralised web, because it goes back to the bike messenger thing, like when we set up one centre, even though the companies were competing with each other, for customers and couriers, we found that like putting the back office together and creating a marketplace to let everybody like participate, made everybody better off customers got better service couriers made more money, and the companies made more money and grew faster. And so web 3.0 Looks to me like how you're gonna get a future Uber or Airbnb, that doesn't have to go through a centralised operator. That worked for me like 30 years ago, everywhere ever since I've always seen places where marketplaces went out, over top down solutions. And web three makes everything possible to be a connection between sender and receiver payer and payor in a flat world and in that flat world, as long as you have good search engines, and you can find each other like why do you need all these other rent seeking participants? I'm not like anti immigration, I'm not anti government, but you just don't need that stuff. Is that your
Ben Kaplan 33:39
projection of future where everything kind of works seamlessly? You're not thinking about the episode how like interspecies interactions and communications, and everyone's talking to each other. And everyone's assuming that we're I don't know, when you're at like, the coffee shop on this planet that you can just pay for your whatever alien brew that you're gonna get is that what you're convinced is the sort of interoperability this way of connecting all of us together? That doesn't mean like we need our Facebook account. And that's what we do to to do all this is that your fundamental thesis and belief and you're not sure how we're going to get there who's going to win who's going to not but you know, that identity to your company, global ID is going to be important in some fashion and somehow this is going to all work together, break down all the silos between us.
Greg Kidd - Global ID 34:22
Yeah, was that saying that English was good enough for Jesus? It ought to be good enough for everyone. You know, that kind of thinking that like, and so it's not true, but But it feels true, right? And there's a movie Demolition Man in which the future like when they go out for dinner, it's Taco Bell, and Sylvester Stallone says, Why are we going to Taco Bell? It sucks. And he's like, Well, Taco Bell won the Food Wars. So everything's Taco Bell now. So if you don't want to live in like a world where you think everybody speaks English because Jesus did or Taco Bell, want, you want to have a future where everything is interoperable, but there are still standards and ease of using it. You don't want to have to like the future is not like doesn't look like Metamask right? It's got to be something that's easy and accessible. Everybody needs a seat at the table, it would be nice if it's bottom up. So you don't have these big dominant Taco Bells like running the world. And so we can either like wish that it happens, or we can actually work on on building it. And so I'm ultimately an optimist. And I think it's not only possible, but desirable, but I think it doesn't just happen in and of itself, because there's a lot of legacy forces at work. So I do believe people make a difference to these new, innovative type companies and business models make a difference, I just want to like, see as much of that happen and pull it forward. I don't know how the world works. In the future. If we don't have interoperability and portability, it just basically looks like a bunch of Glug, it looks like the future looks like CompuServe and AOL. And we know there was something better than CompuServe and AOL, we didn't stop at that point in history, thank God, the World Wide Web came along, or else we'd still be on AOL Instant Messenger. And so you know, but we have to build it, we have to slay the debt that the dragons of the legacy world, and you know, and our dragons will subsequently be slayed by you know, other dragons. And so we're all part of that creative disruption. And the companies that I was proud to be a part of, you know, years back are now getting disrupted today. And that seems like the natural order of the day. That's what life and generations are about. So that's what gets me out of bed each day.
The Detective 36:19
We've dived into the thrilling transition from web 2.0. To the uncharted territories of web three. We've grappled with the critical role of compliance and regulation in this brave new world. As a seasoned tech veteran, Greg issues a bold call to arms for entrepreneurs to face legal and regulatory risks head on, and strike a daring balance between innovation and compliance. Greg paints a captivating picture of a future where the boundaries are shattered. Everything is interconnected. And identity is key. Buckle up as we plunge deeper into the exhilarating future of the tech industry.
Ben Kaplan 37:08
What is your advice to CEOs that want to tackle this? What else have you seen for people that want to tackle some of these things? But I'd rather not be the stepping stone on the way to the person who cracks the code? I'd rather crack the code. What is your advice? Just what you've seen from the Jack Dorsey's the Brian Armstrong's the others of the world that you've seen, what should CEOs be thinking about? Now,
Greg Kidd - Global ID 37:28
I think about your cap table, right? At the end of the day, if you were just desperate to raise money, and you got people that were just as happy be like, investing in pantyhose.com, if it makes a 10x return is what you're doing, then you're gonna have a hard time feeling like your board is, you know, is behind you. And also, when you're looking at the people that you've got on your team, you know, are you looking for people that are looking for the next pantyhose.com? You know, or are you looking for folks that want to build the next, fill in the blank that actually moves the dial? And so it's lonely if you're going to be in a space, like, you know, and I don't mean to like be fanboys for Steve Jobs or the founder of Tesla. But they have a vision that is more Star Trek like than not, and you have to just decide, do you want to be a guy that's like carrying the water for something that's just, oh, it's a bigger market, and we're going to bigger, faster? Are you really interested in doing things differently, and it's okay, there's a lot of work out there to be far bigger and faster, just know what you're comfortable with, and know what you can sleep with at night. And just choose because it's really bad to think you're one but you're really the other and then you don't fit in your skin. And if you are going to do it, like whichever one you do, don't take it so personally, right? Because the planets may not be aligned. In addition to doing everything right, you also need to be lucky that it's the right time. There was a right time to be zoo, it was like in the middle of COVID Well, maybe the planets aren't so aligned anymore, but to get lucky, you have to do the work first so that when luck happens, you're ready to jump through the hoop in a loop and I think maybe an
Ben Kaplan 39:01
underrated quality in CEOs and entrepreneurs is being able to deal with uncertainty and just generally being okay with it that things don't always have to be certain there's not always a clear answer, and you can just operate on that basis and it's okay
Greg Kidd - Global ID 39:17
it's okay and don't take it also personally like It's like open see there was like they were going nowhere then the window opened then the window closed again. So it's like you know, it's like a sugar high up down don't take it personally the markets just gonna do what it's gonna do. Don't take it personally.
Ben Kaplan 39:33
You've been a CEO yourself. You are a CEO. You've been around a lot of successful CEOs. But let me do the other side, which is the investor question if someone wants them and looks at your background says Wow, I'd love to invest in some of those companies and Greg kids portfolio and I want to try to find a way to navigate maybe I'm starting small I'm just starting out what is your advice for investing in this and trying to navigate the for real companies in the less than real companies?
Greg Kidd - Global ID 39:58
Well, I would just treat investing as part of your education that just like continued on after school, when you lose all your money on something, just treat that as a lesson learned that the really dangerous thing is when you have some initial success and you think you know what you're doing. But as long as you're basically treating everything you do, especially the failures as education, then you're in the Michael Jordan world of like, you know, I fail over and over and over again, that's why I'm successful. It's just you're getting educated. And then one of those educations turns out to be like, it's like, whenever I do business in Russia, I say, I always lose all my money, but I have a lot of fun. You know, that's been my history, eventually, you'll actually learn enough and be lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. So just pick good failures. That's it, pick good failures, and then the planets will come into alignment at some time, whether they do before your life is over or not, I can't tell you that's just like, life is cruel in that way. But don't put all your chips on one thing. You can put them all on one thing at one time in your life. But life is very different five years ago, five years from now, just don't take it personally and be ready to know that the cheese has moved and what you thought was absolutely true. Yesterday is absolutely wrong today.
The Detective 41:07
In this episode, we've journeyed alongside Greg Kidd, the dynamic CEO of global ID. We've seen him grapple with the intricate balance between centralised and decentralised approaches and how he champions the power of the people and the bottom up approach.
Greg Kidd - Global ID 41:24
Do you want to be a guy that's carrying the water for something that's just bigger market and we're gonna bigger faster? Are you really interested in doing things differently? And it's okay, there's a lot of work out there to be for bigger and faster. Just know what you're comfortable with, and know what you can sleep with at night and just choose.
The Detective 41:43
We've delved into a unique talent spotting strategy investing in transformative insights rather than just ideas. We've seen how he's navigated the ever changing landscape of regulations and compliance, emphasising the importance of building it into your business from the start. through the lens of Greg's experiences, we've gained a deeper understanding of the tech industry's challenges and the innovative solutions that drive it forward.
Greg Kidd - Global ID 42:09
The downturns always wash out the fairweather sailors, they also create clarity. We don't know what is going to come out of this crop when people are innovating now in a downturn because it's going to take three to five years to see which of those come through.
The Detective 42:24
This story is a testament to the power of resilience, the importance of adaptability and the transformative potential of forward thinking leadership. We're left with a richer understanding of the journey of anyone who's not just shaping the future of tech, but also challenging the status quo of industries. And with that, it's CASE CLOSED.
New episodes will always updated regularly
