October 20, 2024 • 39 mins
Revolutionizing Digital Identity with Port's CEO Aniruddh Balasubramaniam
In this eye-opening episode, we sit down with Aniruddh Balasubramaniam, the visionary CEO of Port by Numberless, who's on a mission to transform how we manage our online identities.
Episode Highlights:
Learn how Port is leveraging cutting-edge cryptography to put users back in control of their online identities. Whether you're a tech enthusiast, a privacy advocate, or an aspiring entrepreneur, this episode offers valuable insights into the future of digital identity and the realities of startup leadership.
Tune in for an inspiring conversation about innovation, perseverance, and the power of turning everyday frustrations into world-changing ideas.
In this eye-opening episode, we sit down with Aniruddh Balasubramaniam, the visionary CEO of Port by Numberless, who's on a mission to transform how we manage our online identities.
Episode Highlights:
- The COVID-19 lightbulb moment: How pandemic contact tracing exposed the need for better digital identity solutions
- From frustration to innovation: The birth of the Port Protocol and App
- Cryptography meets convenience: How Port eliminates the need for phone numbers in online identities & verification
- The power of partnership: Aniruddh's collaboration with his lifelong friend to bring Port to life
- Startup struggles and triumphs: Aniruddh's journey as a first-time CEO
- The unsung heroes: How family support fuels entrepreneurial success
Learn how Port is leveraging cutting-edge cryptography to put users back in control of their online identities. Whether you're a tech enthusiast, a privacy advocate, or an aspiring entrepreneur, this episode offers valuable insights into the future of digital identity and the realities of startup leadership.
Tune in for an inspiring conversation about innovation, perseverance, and the power of turning everyday frustrations into world-changing ideas.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the Startup Still Say podcast. Thank you for
tuning in to us a favor like subscribing YouTube LinkedIn
and be sure to give us your feedback.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hope you enjoyed this episode.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Come on to another episode of start if They'll Say.
And today I am co hosting again with Anthony and
we're welcoming under pallicuper Money today to our podcast. And
why don't you cut us into what your journeys be?
Then a bit about yourself.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Thank you so much for having me today.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
Well, okay, so in brief, I come from a math
and computer science background. So I did my undergrad at
Indian instru Science, Banglore, which is a four year like
Pure Sciences program. Typically the journey of somebody who goes
to a university like that at Pure Sciences University is to.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Do a PhD.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
Nineteen nine percent of the class that I graduated with
is actively doing a PhD right now. So yeah, so
I come from a very research oriented background.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
And primarily math.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
In fact, when I joined university, wanted to be a
theoretical physicist and a year and a half entered it.
You realize the field is so saturated. The number of
like seismic breakthroughs happening in recent times. I think the
last size with breakthrough maybe was like forty years ago.
The field is very saturated, and so I quickly shifted
(01:29):
focus over to math because my professor told me, if
you join math, you can do anything later in life.
It can be like the latest Nobel Prize in chemistry
went into like computational analysis of proteins or something like that.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
So like math takes you, makes you do anything.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
So yeah, So when I realized theoretical physics may maybe
not right for me, I quickly pivoted over to math
and computer science, and that's where my journey kind of starts.
So I graduated in the year twenty twenty. That's the
same year that COVID hit. So I was getting ready
to start applying for different PhD programs follow the same
(02:07):
part as my classmates. But that's the year you realize,
or even if I do join a good PhD program,
the first year year and a half is going to
be all online and you're not going to be getting
the full experience out of it. So I spoke to
my professor and asked him, Hey, I'm a little unsure
about this thing. You know, I'm going to be spending
the next five six years of my life pursuing a PhD.
(02:32):
And if the first year is going to be all online,
and if that's how it starts, I'm not sure I'm
going to be too enthusiastic about following up on this.
And so he tells me, why do you even want
to do a PhD in the first place?
Speaker 3 (02:43):
As somebody who's done a PhD.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
Let me ask you this, do you want to spend
five years of your crime, which is the twenties of
your life, marginally increasing the body of knowledge out there?
Speaker 3 (02:53):
And that kind of hit me, like, damn, that is
what a PhD is.
Speaker 4 (02:57):
You're spending five years of your prime marginal the body
of knowledge out there.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
And yeah, maybe one out of like like.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
Ten thousand PhDs might be something substantial and spectacle, but
you know, it's it's you never know what where you're
going to end up. So that made me pause and
thin for a bed, and I decided, Hey, let me
just take a year and decide what I want to do,
and in this year, after this year, if my interests
will lie in research, then maybe I'm going to go
ahead with my pH d program. But let me just
(03:28):
go into it with all kuns of blazing. Make sure
I'm properly motivated to get.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Into this thing.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
So I took a year, and in that year, we
were all stuck indoors, and it did kind of open
up a little bit. But every establishment that you went to,
like you go to a movie theater, the first thing
they're going to ask you is your phone number. For
the sake of I don't know if you remember this,
but there was this idea of contact tracing back then,
wherein wherever anybody went to, their phone number had to
(03:54):
be collected because if COVID kind of started spreading, use
those owe numbers to kind of create a map and
figure out how to a bit.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Like.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
I don't think it worked at all, because you know
what happened happened, But every establishment started collecting your phone number,
and the excuse was contact sharing. Hey, we have to
do contact sharding. You come to you've come to a restaurant,
let's get your number. You've come to a grocery shop,
let's get your number. So I was like, hey, look
now they're collecting my number because of the sake of
(04:24):
contact racing. But I bet you a year from now
when COVID's gone. This practice isn't going to stop. And
that's exactly what happened. Once these businesses realize the tremendous
benefit of having that piece of identify for you, they're
never going to stop. So I don't know what the
state is in the US, but in India, every single
establishment that you go to kind of asks for from
(04:45):
buying groceries to getting a cup of coffee. Now there's
this new trend of them making you download and app
every time you go to a different establishment. And it
turns out, even for like a like a five percent discount,
Indians are super happy giving out the number. And so
I just in that period of time, I just felt like, hey, look,
(05:05):
this is not healthy at all. It is not healthy
that everything we do online and offline gets aggregated around
one single identifier. Plus that's also the main identifier that
they can use to target stuff at you, call you,
bother view spam you.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
So we just figured out, we just asked ourselves, can
we figure out a way that.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
People can connect and communicate, maybe connect with businesses, connect
with other people without having to share any sort of
personal identifiers for themselves like a phone number or an
email idea or anything like that. And so the first
idea that you approached is maybe we'll create something like
a virtual identifier, something that's not so sensitive that people
can share, in which case they don't have to worry
(05:44):
about their primary identify, their phone number, being exposed. But
the problem there is the problem with any sort of
contact info. Once you have a unique personal identifier for
a person, even if that's a virtual identifier or something
more concrete like a phone number, they can be linked
with each For example, if WhatsApp comes out with WhatsApp
user names, your WhatsApp user name can be linked back
(06:05):
to your phone number.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
So it's only as good as.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
The first exposure event where it gets linked back to
your original identity. And all contact info has this issue.
If I give you my contact info, you now have it.
There's no way for me to take it back. Plus
I don't get to control who you then share it with,
Like I can't stop you from sharing it with Anthony,
I can't stop you from selling it to three thousand
other people. So the fundamental nature of contact info, any
(06:32):
contact info.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Is that.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
You have no control over it. You can't take it back,
you can't control who it spreads to you can't control
the data that gets aggregated aroound it. So any true
solution here for this problem would mean that we would
have to create something that does not use any sort
of contact info. And that kind of ignited that the
math brain in me kind of trying to figure out a.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Good cryptographic solution to this huge privacy problem. And that's
the birth of our company numberless.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
What we do is we build in NERDS speak, we
build authenticated identified less communication protocols. What that means is
I can connect with you, you can connect with me,
but there's no contact in for identify it ever exchanged.
So like we're creating a world where you are in
complete control of who we are connected to, how much
(07:23):
access they have to you, and whether or not they
can connect you with other people, and none of your
personal infoy is ever exposed.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
And yeah, that's our journey so far.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
It's incredible.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
You've definitely scared me off of PhDs.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yea, that is very true.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Right, Like most places, we are adding our phone numbers
for any sort of accounts, discounts, whatever it is.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
It's a very easy transaction to do.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
And you're right, we forget and or are these sensitized
about it's just a phone number, right, but there's a
whole lot of information that's connected to us.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
So that's a brilliant, brilliant idea of that. Sorry, Anthony,
I know you.
Speaker 5 (07:58):
Were asking question all good, so so a rather brilliant story, right.
I mean, every every founder goes through that pain point
before you say okay, I mean this is a pain
point worth solving for, So thanks for sharing that. I mean,
having spoken to you for an hour or so, I
mean that that part didn't come out, so it's it's
(08:20):
it's a good learning. So based off of that, what
what made you decide saying okay, I mean you have
number less, right, I mean, this is the way you
want to solve Did you look for any existing technology
that might have existed for you to take and piece
it together to solve it? Because I mean the reason
(08:41):
I ask is you've also created a brand new protocol
called the port protocol as part of number less.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Right.
Speaker 5 (08:48):
I mean what so in a way, you're kind of
starting from scratch from the ground floor, if you will, right,
I mean, why why did you decide that you needed
a brand new protocol despite being so many other protocols available.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
Well, I think in this space, I don't think there's
a lot of protocols available. I think most of the
communication and authentication protocols out there rely on every individual
having a career public Even if we go web direction,
your public identifier is your public key, in your public
in your key are it's a publicKey, that's your identifier,
(09:24):
So you still have a unique public identifier that's exposed
to everybody else. So if the problem that we're trying
to solve for is data aggregation and stopping people from
aggregating data around the central identifier, I don't think there's
been a lot of protocols developed to kind of solve that.
So I think in that way, we were new and
I couldn't find too many examples of good protocols. There
(09:46):
are a couple of them out there, but just the
fact that they haven't been, you know, used enough, is
kind of an indicator that maybe the protocols not sound.
So that's what made us like reluctant to piggyback on
somebody else's protocol and maybe build our own protocol with
(10:07):
our own set of proofs that it is secure and reliable.
Speaker 5 (10:10):
Okay, Okay, that makes sense, and I mean just fresh
out of college in your case, right, I mean obviously
you said, I mean a lot of this happened during
the COVID time, but I mean, given that you were
math and science major, I mean, this is a huge undertaking, right,
especially for someone I mean who spent the year thinking
(10:30):
about what you did. You're also thinking about, Okay, how
are you going to you know, make ends meet? And
you jump into something so challenging, but at the same time,
I mean, the world needs this. What are some of
those things that spurred you on and pull together or
(10:52):
write people to kind of bring numberless together?
Speaker 4 (10:55):
Well, you're right, absolutely I had to make ends meet.
But thankfully, because it was COVID, one of the advantages
is you could just crash with your parents, and in fact,
they wanted you to live with them because they knew
you were saved and secure and all that. So I
didn't have to worry about rent, I don't have to
worry about food.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
I had no expenses at all, so there was no
financial pressures per se, so I could pursue things that
did not make sense in the movement.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
Plus, plenty of my friends were stuck at home to
all itching to do something can't get out, can't do
something out there, so they were all stuck at home.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
So I was really.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
Lucky that I found my co founder, who's who I've
known my entire life. So he was a University of frount,
a computer science guy, and he was also he was
close to his final year of university, again similar to me,
and he was also stuck at home.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
And it made a good team. I came with my.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
Math background so I could back up the theoretical foundations
of it, and he, with his computer science background, could
help me with the implementation of these protocols. So a
team was born and we spent about six to eight
months developing these protocols. And at that point COVID had
kind of lifted, but we had this MVP kind of
not you. I wouldn't even call it an MVP. It's
(12:11):
just proof of technology, proof that it can be done.
The first what we realized happened the first thing. West
time we suggested something like this, people thought, hey, can
this even be done? And so our first step was
to just show people that, yes, it can be done.
And so once we had something to show that it
can be done, such a technology is viable, then we Hey, look,
(12:32):
we have to raise more resources. We have to raise
more funding. So that's when we started shopping around and
we met a lot of people. We showed this too,
and the people who found it who were extremely supportive
and could see kind of the vision behind it where
folks at Catamounsers and so we raised our seed round
(12:52):
of financing with them, and then we had a lot
more resources to kind of get an office higher, more people,
put the product together in a more professional way, improve
the user experience. All of that improved some marketing efforts,
et cetera. But yeah, now that's where we are. We
were in the middle of it are product port launched
(13:16):
a couple of weeks ago and we're getting good users
growth so far.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
That's great. Congratulations with that.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
I really appreciate, right because right now with privacy, you're right,
most of the effort or attention goes to how can
we protect that unique identifier? But you're actually looking at
like how can I refuse a situation where you need
to aggregate it? So now like you know you have
all of this done in future, this is online, how
does that experience look like going back into the movie
theater saying I'm not going to give you the number.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
What does that look like?
Speaker 4 (13:45):
Well, yeah, so, because the protocol hasn't spread enough yet,
I still can't go to a business and say, hey,
I'm not going to give you my so right now.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
The practice is I just.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
Tell them I don't so they'd excuse.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Now, the brilliant excuse of getting my number is them.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
Saying, we're going green and so we don't want to
print out an actual movie ticket or a receipt. We'd like,
just send it to your raft phone, and that's why
we need your number. I'm like, that's okay. I don't
mind a little bit of global warming if you can
print a ticket for me. So I just asked them
to print a physical ticket. Now, same thing with grocery stores.
I don't mind a physical receipt. But yeah, But the
(14:25):
plan is we think a lot of businesses are actually
losing out on quality customers by taking their phone number.
Imagine the last time you encountered a website and you
wanted to know a little bit more about the service
they provided, the product they sell, and you know, you
opened up their chat pot or you opened up their
contact page. The first thing you saw was they're asking
(14:48):
for your number of personal information. How many of those
times where you turned off by that and you said, hey,
it's not worth me putting in so much of my
personal information just to know a little bit of information
about that. So I think businesses are actually losing out
on their best customers because they're asking for this information.
Because they're best customers people who are affluent and reasonably intellectual.
(15:11):
These people are people who would be super turned off
by giving away the personal information. So what we're trying
to do going forward is set up small pilot programs
where we can actually make the case improve the case
that hey, you will actually increase your net lead creation,
and you can you will actually increase the number of
(15:31):
customers onward just by not asking for their personal info.
And we were in the process of setting those experiments up.
It's still going to be a couple of weeks since
until we set it up. But yeah, if those experiments
go well in a couple of years from now, I
would love to go to a movie theater and not
give my number.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
More power more power to that, right, because especially right
coming up, like you said, right, intellectual afflent doesn't matter.
We also have protective population, right, Senior citizens' kids that
are coming into the space, I would love to have
a mechanism in place that protects them from giving out
that information, which.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Is going to be a huge thing. Right Yeah, that's the.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Point eventually for a lot of scams too. So that's
a really impa.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Think about AI. Think about the other side of AI. Look,
AI is only so powerful because of the data you
feet into it. And right now there's a lot of
data available because all of this data has been aggregated
around our personal identifiers. And right now, even though AI
is proceeding at a super good pace, the worst it
can do is still not that bad. The worst it
(16:37):
can do is like sell us on some stuff, not
just to do this or that. But it's going to
get even more sophisticated and complex, and I don't think
it's safe for us to be so vulnerable too. AI
is going bad. Think about it right now. The worst
thing you get is a spam or scam call. You
(16:58):
can most of the time you can tell something as
a scam that some of these calls and spam you
can easily identify spam, but only because most of these
spam calls are other humans on the other end trying
to orchestrate it.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
But as AI gets more and more sophisticated, these cams
are going to be harder and harder to recognize, and
it's going to be very hard to continue a communication
system where everybody.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
Is so accessible to everybody else. It's not hard for
people to get my phone number. My phone number is
published online. They just have to do a little bit
of googleg or the first business I have to give
my phone number two, they can just scrape my phone
number of that business.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
So it's going to be very easy for AIR to
reach me.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
Plus, all this data aggregated around the phone numbers is
going to make it very easy for AA to use
that channel of communication into me to make me do anything.
So I think going into this AI era, we have
to recognize the flip side of data aggregation and try
to make sure we're not just numbered sheep in the
face of AI. And there's some level of individual human protection.
Speaker 5 (18:04):
That makes sense on RUTH So especially in the in
the world of AI. Right, I mean, we we just
can't be feeding into that big machine.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
Right, So let's let's talk a little bit more about
the technology itself, or maybe let's just speak to the
poor tap itself. Right, So if I understand right, Let's
say you and I want to connect on it. Let's
say we meet at an event and we want to
stay in touch. You show me both of us download
(18:37):
the poor tap, You show me a QR code of starts,
I scan it, and you and I get connected. And
let's say tomorrow you don't want to keep in touch
with me, or you just want to lose me. I
mean you can just say, you know, lose Anthony or whatnot,
and you know I can never ever get in touch
with you, right, I mean, that's certainly, at least in
(18:58):
the face of it, that's what I've seen happening.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Right.
Speaker 5 (19:02):
First of all, I mean you can validate me if
that's right. But I mean, and secondly, maybe just for
the audience, I mean, just just tell a little bit
about how port works, what are some of the use
cases that people can use port for? And then maybe
once you're done with this, let's say phase zero or
phase one. I mean, what's your vision with quote if
(19:22):
you can talk about that a little bit lbs so.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
Sure sounds good support.
Speaker 4 (19:27):
The way we designed port is we want a port
to work in any situation that a phone number would work.
So the central idea behind the port app are these
instruments called ports.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
So typically when we.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
Want to connect with somebody, the connection instrument that we
use would be a phone number or an email ID
or a username. So the connection instrument in the port
product port app is something called a port. Now, the
difference between a port and a phone number is a
port is not a unique identifier ToView. A port is
a piece of single use cryptographic information. It can be
(20:00):
used to form a secure, intern encrypted connection. So and
that port so that information can be put into a
QR code, It can be put into a link, It
can be moved through NFC, so you can have to
phones touch each other and that information can get exchanged.
But basically a port is the information, not the modality itself,
like a QR code or a link. So so typically
(20:22):
if somebody were to meet face to face conventionally, they
would share exchange phone numbers. Here, you would put the
port into a QR code, show that QR code, the
other person's can sit and you're connected, as simple as that.
And once the connection forms, the port itself and the
information in it becomes unusable even to attackers, even to
anybody else. So now basically on the port app, you've
(20:46):
basically created this connection and turn encrypted secure connection.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
I know it is you on the other end.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
You know it's me on the other end, but there's
no phone number, there's no identify involved. So if I
want to stop talking to you, or if you start
bothering me and I don't want to talk to you anymore,
I can just disconnect, kill the connection and walk away.
And because there's no identify it for me, for you
to like spam back or target back, I don't have
to worry about unnecessary follow ons or unncessary spam, unncessary
(21:13):
unwanted things.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
All of that stuff.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
Similarly, if I met you online or LinkedIn something like that,
and typically I would exchange my phone number with you,
and unlets say LinkedIn chat or something like that, you
can send a port. I can send a port to
you as a as a simple link, you click on it,
we're connected. The third way people connect with the phone
number is maybe I want to connect you with somebody
else and I share your phone umber with somebody else.
(21:38):
In such a situation, you can I can basically share
a port that connects to you to somebody else only
if you allow it, so you are in control, so
only you can control who I can connect you with,
and as usual, you can take back. It's reversible, unlike
giving away a phone number, which is not reversible. A
port is completely reversible, so you can disconnect whenever and
walk away, and you have complete understanding of where every
(22:00):
connection came from, whether it's face to face where you'll
know if somebody connects you with somebody else, you know
exactly how that connection came to be because you know, hey,
this connection is via Anthony Prakash, So there is I
trust this connection because I trust the person who connected
me with this person. Yeah, so basically any situation you
would use a phone number, you can use a port.
(22:21):
Port's work offline as well. So if you're on a
train you have no internet access, you can still create
a port and show it to the other person and connect.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
So yeah, that's basically how ports work. Their piece of
cryptographic information that need to be exchanged to form a connection,
and you can do it in any situation that you
would be exchanging a phone.
Speaker 5 (22:41):
So under the whole, is there some sort of decentralization
or I mean, what is there a It.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
Is highly decentralized in the sense that if you download
the Portact, the first thing you'll notice is there's no
account creation process, so there's no submitting an email or
submitting a phone number, waiting for an otp adding a password.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
None of that exists.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
You just download the app, enter your name, and you're in,
and this name never gets sent to us our servers,
so in fact, our servers basically don't see any identifying
information about you. So even if let's say our services
are preached in any way, the worst that can be
done is maybe the service is down for a couple
(23:22):
of hours until we get it back up again, but
they can't get to know any information about you. Plenty
of other platforms, even let's say something like WhatsApp, which
claims to be into and encrypted, if their servers are compromised,
they might not be able to get the message data,
but they'll still be attackers with which phone numbers spoke to,
which other phone number at what frequency, what your social
(23:44):
graph is, so they can figure out who your wife is,
who your girlfriend is, who your son is.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
All of that stuff can be figured out very easily
just by understanding.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Yeah, yeah, so the metadata is almost no metadata is
available on the Port servers that does not make sense
to any attacker and cannot be traced back to the
original person.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
So in that sense, we're.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
Highly decentralized in that only the people and the people
that they're speaking to know what needs to be known
to speak with each other, and our serversion don't even
know your name. So we've made sure we've taken every
effort to ensure that people's individual privacy is respected and preserved.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
I wanted to dig into that, right, So you're right, privacy, right,
re issue.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
But then on on.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
The alongside, that is also the integrity or the authenticity
of the human behind it.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
So how's that guarded?
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Like you mentioned right, there's no account creation, there's not
personal information.
Speaker 6 (24:41):
So are you all already thinking about those protective mechanisms
to be in place but tomorrow or like, these are
not accounts people create, So.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
Even if a couple of fake accounts are created, what's
the damage they can do? In the sense that because
because of how Port works, there's no spam that's even possible.
So I can never reach you if you don't want
to be reached, because there's no identifyer that I can
reach you at So even if somebody were to create
(25:14):
a bunch of fake accounts, who would they connect to
is the question? Who would they bother? Who would they spam,
which itself is impossible. So the safeguard in port is
every connection involves implicit consent. When I'm meeting you face
to face and connecting with you, I'm consciously showing a port,
You're consciously scanning it, and that's.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
How the connection forms.
Speaker 4 (25:33):
So you know me on the other side is authentic
and you on the other side is an authentic person.
If I were meeting you on LinkedIn and there I
would like I send you a link, then you're determined by.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
The authenticity of LinkedIn, Like you have to.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
Be sure that the person on the other side of
your LinkedIn chat is real. So that's something that the
user has to be a little aware of. And contact sharing,
you know that the person, like I know I've connected
with Anthony and I know he's real, and if he
connects me with somebody else, I know that it's him
who connected me with somebody else. So I know you
(26:07):
have to be real as well, because I trust Anthony.
So every connection involves some level of implicit consent, and
because of that the risk of connecting with the fake
profile or somebody bad is very low compared to conventional platforms,
where the risk is huge. Tons of scamps happen today,
where some random number reaches out to you claiming to
be your long lost friend, blah blah blah. And yeah,
(26:30):
so all of that stuff can never happen because spamming
essentially becomes impossible on port, So you're never reached out
to by somebody you don't want to talk to.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
That's actually great, it's getting some of those human connections.
Speaker 5 (26:40):
Back, right, Yeah, yeah, In simple terms, I was going
to say, there's a handshake, firm handshake that needs to
happen before the you know, you start talking from A
to B R B two A right, without which it
doesn't get initiated. So enough of technical stuff. Let's talk
(27:00):
a little bit about the CEO, right. I mean, so here,
you're a math guy. You're a science guy, and somebody
who wanted to do PhD but in a way COVID
forced you to start a company, and obviously you love
your science and our math. I mean, so between abin
(27:21):
of who is your CTO and yourself and you guys
came together, how did you guys choose and pick saying
oh you've got to be CEO versus CTO.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
I mean, how did that come? Aback? I think it
was kind of.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
Because I was the one who approached Ubina and said, hey,
here's what I'm doing, here's the product I have in mind,
here's the protocol I have in mind. Kind of like
because I came up with the proposition, I think that's
kind of I would trust me. I would love for
the equation we flipp. I would love to just be
the CEO all day. It's not fun being apart from
(28:02):
the like the two seconds of prior do you get
from calling yourself CEO? Other than that, just not a
fun journey. Eighty percent of the jobs fun. But most
of the fun I get is out of working on
the tech. So yes, we just became because he was
better at me than on the tech stuff, and I
came to him with the idea.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
So I think that's how I fill in place.
Speaker 5 (28:25):
You're not alone, because I mean I've come across so
many startups where it's it's deeply technical, right, I mean,
and both the founders are all the three founders are
all technical. I mean, they just want to move away
from the CEO of stuff and give it to somebody else.
They'd rather be coding twenty four to seven or work
on infrastructure twenty four to seven than do with the
(28:46):
day to day stuff. So, but having been the CEO,
how is the journey of benefit? I mean, orould you
do this again? I mean, what are the learnings that
you've told yourself saying okay, these are things? Is that because?
I mean, right now people are dependent on you. You know,
you've raised around of funding. I saw, you have a
(29:07):
wonderful team around you. You've got to build a culture.
There's so much more than you just thinking about Porte
and what Porte can do. I mean, you've got to
drive a company and build something right, I mean, how
does how has that evolved for you? And how's that
journey been for you?
Speaker 4 (29:25):
I think it's it's been kind of difficult in the
sense that I think I was kind of pushed into
the defend in terms of building a team and all
of that, so I had to learn how to swim.
So that's that's, in a nutshell, that's how it's been.
We've made plenty of mistakes in hiring people, plenty of
mistakes in not delegating work properly. We've made a lot
(29:46):
of mistakes in terms of not prioritizing your work properly
and kind of getting delayed. So it's been like like
learning the hard ware kind of thing. So it took us.
It took us six months to kind of be comfortable
in issues and make those mistakes and correct ourselves based
(30:08):
on those mistakes. So now I have a good team,
but it took us like ten months to build that
team properly. Plenty of people went, came and went, and
you know, you never understand how good somebody is until
you work with them for a couple of months. But
in case of an early stage startup, you only have a.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
Couple of months to work on something otherwise your runway
is going to run out.
Speaker 4 (30:28):
So there's a lot of challenges. But I think the
best learning for me is to try and figure out
how to trust your people. And maybe they don't get
it in a day, but if you keep spoon feeding them,
they wonn't expect that you will do it eventually, So
you just have to like delegate something and trust them
to see through.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
If they don't see through, then you know.
Speaker 4 (30:51):
Hey, if you're not able to delegate something of this
level of complex deed to your primary engineer. You know,
maybe they might not be best suited for that, but
if you cannot delegate properly, you cannot basically start building.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
And that's where I've struggled the most.
Speaker 4 (31:09):
And now I think over the last month two months,
I think I've become better at delegating stuff. Hopefully a
month from now, I would like to be completely out
of tech and just focusing on growth and technology adoption.
Even though I would miss tech like crazy, I think
that's where I should be given my role in the company.
Speaker 5 (31:26):
Right now, you can secretly code in the night and
do the would SEEO job.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
That was the maturity of now getting into the CEO,
right you already acknowledge where you need to focus and
let others pick up some of that burdens.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
So that's me great.
Speaker 5 (31:45):
Yeah, and given that this is your first rodeo so
to speak on it right after college, I mean, how
did how did your family take it? How did your
parents react saying, hey, you're not going to go work
in in a Google or a Microsoft instead of going
to work on a protocol. How did your family react?
Speaker 3 (32:05):
Being an only child, I think.
Speaker 4 (32:09):
It's uh, it's it's I think they've been incredibly supportive.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
Obviously, they get stressed out quite a bit. They're like
they see me working myself and they're like, how are
you working? Like how are your life?
Speaker 4 (32:20):
Sometimes literally ask me how for the first time in
my life, I'm getting scolded for working too much. All
through college is like study study, you're not working hard enough.
You have to go back and study and do that stuff.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
This stuff. Now I'm getting big lectures for working myself
with death and like take a break, do this, do that.
So I think.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
They kind of see that this is kind of like
I'm in the zone right now. I'm kind of working
on something that I believe in. I think that makes
them happy, and so they've been incredibly supportive, been blessed
that way. But yeah, they're they're not comfortable watching me
work very long hours and getting down healthy habits like
not eating, skipping meals.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
That stuff is something that bothers them more than anything else. Yeah. Good, Really, No.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
I was gonna say, I'm like they might.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
That would have been an incredible conversation explaining them this
concept because I'm sure right like like finally we've mastered
all these data clients and information and our communications work
just fine, and you're going to come in and do
the disruption. I don't know how that conversation would have gone,
but I'm glad that they're supportive because they see the passion.
Speaker 4 (33:38):
That's yeah. So what's happened now is so they're all
poor users. Now, my parents, my family, we have poor
groups and poor chats. So what's happened is they know
if I get a message on board, I'm kind of
obligated to reply to improve adoption. And so now the
(33:59):
frequent see at which I get messages from them has
just skyrocketed, like hey, what time did you sleep last night?
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Did you eat that stuff?
Speaker 4 (34:06):
And and I kind of have to reply because they
do this annoying thing where if I don't reply to
them quick enough, they kind of text me on WhatsApp
or signal or something like that.
Speaker 5 (34:19):
They know which buttons to push, ess, you know exactly, Yeah,
after all your parents, all right, so let's before before
we before we go. Uh, this is a great start
for you guys, And you know, it's a it's a
universal problem, right, not just in India where you know,
(34:42):
to your point, people are collecting their your phone numbers
for at every possible junction. But privacy is just obviously
much more than phone numbers, right, Uh, you you're I
think you would admit that. I mean, you're barely scratching
the surface with what trying to do with just sport.
But whether nonetheless as a company number lesson or the
(35:05):
port protocol, what's your like your long term vision that
you have in here?
Speaker 4 (35:10):
So the long term vision is I like to think
of the roadside vendor in in India. So somebody selling you,
let's say fruit on a roadside cart. All they care
about is you paying them something, and all you care
about is getting fruit from them. So the transaction is
(35:31):
really simple now the way the world is each transaction.
Let's say I want to buy fruit online. The transaction
is I give them all this information about me, including
where I lived, to my phone number, to all this
information attached to my phone number. I give them my
biodata just to get buy something from them.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
So same thing with communication, just to connect with somebody.
Speaker 4 (35:51):
In the olden days, it was like you mentioned a
firm handshake, Anthony, in the olden days, it literally was
a firm handshake. I introduced myself as a neither. You
introduce yourself as Anthony firm handscheck, and we're connected. Now,
I give you so much information about myself in the
sense of giving you my phone numit just to connect
with you. So the vision is to kind of regress
(36:13):
human nature a little bit, to make our digital transactions simpler,
almost as simple as our physical transactions. So with numberless,
I think that is something that's achievable. We can make
connecting some things seem very similar to a firm handshake,
in that I know your name, you know my name.
We're connected, We have a communication channel and that's about it.
You don't know anything else. And I want to expand
(36:35):
that into other digital places where things become simpler, the
transactions become simpler, as simple as these roadside when transactions.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
So that's where the broader vision is.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
But I know that's far away, and I know that's
a hard problem to solve. Sometimes market forces are in
your direction, sometimes they're not. But like you said, I
think it's like my professor said in your twenty is
just do something crazy, work on a crazy problem or
scarce scenario, don't solve it, and then you can do
something safer.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
So I just want to try it, try my hand
at it.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Okay, that's great.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
So for people who are listening to the podcast, investors
or anyone, what can they do for you?
Speaker 2 (37:23):
If you have an ask out there, check.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
Out Pard, try out Poard. Become a user who is
not actively sharing their personal information everywhere. Just start with
a good personal digital hygiene.
Speaker 4 (37:38):
That's the most you can do for us at this point,
a couple of months from now, if you believe in
this movement, if you believe in the technology that we're building,
and we're a couple of months from now, we're planning
on raising more resources to kind of put this vision
at play. That's when I think we would be raising
more resource in terms of not just money, but connection
(38:00):
and send doors to be open for us, and there
they can help us a little bit as well.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
But first, just download port see if this makes sense
to you, to you as a user.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
That's all right, Anthony anything or.
Speaker 5 (38:16):
Thanks so much, honey for jumping on on a holiday
in India. So happy sort as they say. So, we'll
speak to you soon in good luck with everything you do,
and to you and your team for number less in
Port and we'll be sure to publish all these details
on the podcast as well. Thanks any good luck to
(38:38):
you guys as well. I've been listening to some of
your content.
Speaker 4 (38:41):
I've been doing a great job, so I'm looking forward
more content coming up. I just subspect to you guys,
so I'm just going to keep seeing your content now.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
Yes, weekly, okay, perfect, See you guys.
Speaker 5 (38:57):
Bye Ba
This is the Startup Still Say podcast. Thank you for
tuning in to us a favor like subscribing YouTube LinkedIn
and be sure to give us your feedback.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hope you enjoyed this episode.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Come on to another episode of start if They'll Say.
And today I am co hosting again with Anthony and
we're welcoming under pallicuper Money today to our podcast. And
why don't you cut us into what your journeys be?
Then a bit about yourself.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Thank you so much for having me today.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
Well, okay, so in brief, I come from a math
and computer science background. So I did my undergrad at
Indian instru Science, Banglore, which is a four year like
Pure Sciences program. Typically the journey of somebody who goes
to a university like that at Pure Sciences University is to.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Do a PhD.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
Nineteen nine percent of the class that I graduated with
is actively doing a PhD right now. So yeah, so
I come from a very research oriented background.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
And primarily math.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
In fact, when I joined university, wanted to be a
theoretical physicist and a year and a half entered it.
You realize the field is so saturated. The number of
like seismic breakthroughs happening in recent times. I think the
last size with breakthrough maybe was like forty years ago.
The field is very saturated, and so I quickly shifted
(01:29):
focus over to math because my professor told me, if
you join math, you can do anything later in life.
It can be like the latest Nobel Prize in chemistry
went into like computational analysis of proteins or something like that.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
So like math takes you, makes you do anything.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
So yeah, So when I realized theoretical physics may maybe
not right for me, I quickly pivoted over to math
and computer science, and that's where my journey kind of starts.
So I graduated in the year twenty twenty. That's the
same year that COVID hit. So I was getting ready
to start applying for different PhD programs follow the same
(02:07):
part as my classmates. But that's the year you realize,
or even if I do join a good PhD program,
the first year year and a half is going to
be all online and you're not going to be getting
the full experience out of it. So I spoke to
my professor and asked him, Hey, I'm a little unsure
about this thing. You know, I'm going to be spending
the next five six years of my life pursuing a PhD.
(02:32):
And if the first year is going to be all online,
and if that's how it starts, I'm not sure I'm
going to be too enthusiastic about following up on this.
And so he tells me, why do you even want
to do a PhD in the first place?
Speaker 3 (02:43):
As somebody who's done a PhD.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
Let me ask you this, do you want to spend
five years of your crime, which is the twenties of
your life, marginally increasing the body of knowledge out there?
Speaker 3 (02:53):
And that kind of hit me, like, damn, that is
what a PhD is.
Speaker 4 (02:57):
You're spending five years of your prime marginal the body
of knowledge out there.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
And yeah, maybe one out of like like.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
Ten thousand PhDs might be something substantial and spectacle, but
you know, it's it's you never know what where you're
going to end up. So that made me pause and
thin for a bed, and I decided, Hey, let me
just take a year and decide what I want to do,
and in this year, after this year, if my interests
will lie in research, then maybe I'm going to go
ahead with my pH d program. But let me just
(03:28):
go into it with all kuns of blazing. Make sure
I'm properly motivated to get.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Into this thing.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
So I took a year, and in that year, we
were all stuck indoors, and it did kind of open
up a little bit. But every establishment that you went to,
like you go to a movie theater, the first thing
they're going to ask you is your phone number. For
the sake of I don't know if you remember this,
but there was this idea of contact tracing back then,
wherein wherever anybody went to, their phone number had to
(03:54):
be collected because if COVID kind of started spreading, use
those owe numbers to kind of create a map and
figure out how to a bit.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Like.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
I don't think it worked at all, because you know
what happened happened, But every establishment started collecting your phone number,
and the excuse was contact sharing. Hey, we have to
do contact sharding. You come to you've come to a restaurant,
let's get your number. You've come to a grocery shop,
let's get your number. So I was like, hey, look
now they're collecting my number because of the sake of
(04:24):
contact racing. But I bet you a year from now
when COVID's gone. This practice isn't going to stop. And
that's exactly what happened. Once these businesses realize the tremendous
benefit of having that piece of identify for you, they're
never going to stop. So I don't know what the
state is in the US, but in India, every single
establishment that you go to kind of asks for from
(04:45):
buying groceries to getting a cup of coffee. Now there's
this new trend of them making you download and app
every time you go to a different establishment. And it
turns out, even for like a like a five percent discount,
Indians are super happy giving out the number. And so
I just in that period of time, I just felt like, hey, look,
(05:05):
this is not healthy at all. It is not healthy
that everything we do online and offline gets aggregated around
one single identifier. Plus that's also the main identifier that
they can use to target stuff at you, call you,
bother view spam you.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
So we just figured out, we just asked ourselves, can
we figure out a way that.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
People can connect and communicate, maybe connect with businesses, connect
with other people without having to share any sort of
personal identifiers for themselves like a phone number or an
email idea or anything like that. And so the first
idea that you approached is maybe we'll create something like
a virtual identifier, something that's not so sensitive that people
can share, in which case they don't have to worry
(05:44):
about their primary identify, their phone number, being exposed. But
the problem there is the problem with any sort of
contact info. Once you have a unique personal identifier for
a person, even if that's a virtual identifier or something
more concrete like a phone number, they can be linked
with each For example, if WhatsApp comes out with WhatsApp
user names, your WhatsApp user name can be linked back
(06:05):
to your phone number.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
So it's only as good as.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
The first exposure event where it gets linked back to
your original identity. And all contact info has this issue.
If I give you my contact info, you now have it.
There's no way for me to take it back. Plus
I don't get to control who you then share it with,
Like I can't stop you from sharing it with Anthony,
I can't stop you from selling it to three thousand
other people. So the fundamental nature of contact info, any
(06:32):
contact info.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Is that.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
You have no control over it. You can't take it back,
you can't control who it spreads to you can't control
the data that gets aggregated aroound it. So any true
solution here for this problem would mean that we would
have to create something that does not use any sort
of contact info. And that kind of ignited that the
math brain in me kind of trying to figure out a.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Good cryptographic solution to this huge privacy problem. And that's
the birth of our company numberless.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
What we do is we build in NERDS speak, we
build authenticated identified less communication protocols. What that means is
I can connect with you, you can connect with me,
but there's no contact in for identify it ever exchanged.
So like we're creating a world where you are in
complete control of who we are connected to, how much
(07:23):
access they have to you, and whether or not they
can connect you with other people, and none of your
personal infoy is ever exposed.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
And yeah, that's our journey so far.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
It's incredible.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
You've definitely scared me off of PhDs.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yea, that is very true.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Right, Like most places, we are adding our phone numbers
for any sort of accounts, discounts, whatever it is.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
It's a very easy transaction to do.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
And you're right, we forget and or are these sensitized
about it's just a phone number, right, but there's a
whole lot of information that's connected to us.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
So that's a brilliant, brilliant idea of that. Sorry, Anthony,
I know you.
Speaker 5 (07:58):
Were asking question all good, so so a rather brilliant story, right.
I mean, every every founder goes through that pain point
before you say okay, I mean this is a pain
point worth solving for, So thanks for sharing that. I mean,
having spoken to you for an hour or so, I
mean that that part didn't come out, so it's it's
(08:20):
it's a good learning. So based off of that, what
what made you decide saying okay, I mean you have
number less, right, I mean, this is the way you
want to solve Did you look for any existing technology
that might have existed for you to take and piece
it together to solve it? Because I mean the reason
(08:41):
I ask is you've also created a brand new protocol
called the port protocol as part of number less.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Right.
Speaker 5 (08:48):
I mean what so in a way, you're kind of
starting from scratch from the ground floor, if you will, right,
I mean, why why did you decide that you needed
a brand new protocol despite being so many other protocols available.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
Well, I think in this space, I don't think there's
a lot of protocols available. I think most of the
communication and authentication protocols out there rely on every individual
having a career public Even if we go web direction,
your public identifier is your public key, in your public
in your key are it's a publicKey, that's your identifier,
(09:24):
So you still have a unique public identifier that's exposed
to everybody else. So if the problem that we're trying
to solve for is data aggregation and stopping people from
aggregating data around the central identifier, I don't think there's
been a lot of protocols developed to kind of solve that.
So I think in that way, we were new and
I couldn't find too many examples of good protocols. There
(09:46):
are a couple of them out there, but just the
fact that they haven't been, you know, used enough, is
kind of an indicator that maybe the protocols not sound.
So that's what made us like reluctant to piggyback on
somebody else's protocol and maybe build our own protocol with
(10:07):
our own set of proofs that it is secure and reliable.
Speaker 5 (10:10):
Okay, Okay, that makes sense, and I mean just fresh
out of college in your case, right, I mean obviously
you said, I mean a lot of this happened during
the COVID time, but I mean, given that you were
math and science major, I mean, this is a huge undertaking, right,
especially for someone I mean who spent the year thinking
(10:30):
about what you did. You're also thinking about, Okay, how
are you going to you know, make ends meet? And
you jump into something so challenging, but at the same time,
I mean, the world needs this. What are some of
those things that spurred you on and pull together or
(10:52):
write people to kind of bring numberless together?
Speaker 4 (10:55):
Well, you're right, absolutely I had to make ends meet.
But thankfully, because it was COVID, one of the advantages
is you could just crash with your parents, and in fact,
they wanted you to live with them because they knew
you were saved and secure and all that. So I
didn't have to worry about rent, I don't have to
worry about food.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
I had no expenses at all, so there was no
financial pressures per se, so I could pursue things that
did not make sense in the movement.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
Plus, plenty of my friends were stuck at home to
all itching to do something can't get out, can't do
something out there, so they were all stuck at home.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
So I was really.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
Lucky that I found my co founder, who's who I've
known my entire life. So he was a University of frount,
a computer science guy, and he was also he was
close to his final year of university, again similar to me,
and he was also stuck at home.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
And it made a good team. I came with my.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
Math background so I could back up the theoretical foundations
of it, and he, with his computer science background, could
help me with the implementation of these protocols. So a
team was born and we spent about six to eight
months developing these protocols. And at that point COVID had
kind of lifted, but we had this MVP kind of
not you. I wouldn't even call it an MVP. It's
(12:11):
just proof of technology, proof that it can be done.
The first what we realized happened the first thing. West
time we suggested something like this, people thought, hey, can
this even be done? And so our first step was
to just show people that, yes, it can be done.
And so once we had something to show that it
can be done, such a technology is viable, then we Hey, look,
(12:32):
we have to raise more resources. We have to raise
more funding. So that's when we started shopping around and
we met a lot of people. We showed this too,
and the people who found it who were extremely supportive
and could see kind of the vision behind it where
folks at Catamounsers and so we raised our seed round
(12:52):
of financing with them, and then we had a lot
more resources to kind of get an office higher, more people,
put the product together in a more professional way, improve
the user experience. All of that improved some marketing efforts,
et cetera. But yeah, now that's where we are. We
were in the middle of it are product port launched
(13:16):
a couple of weeks ago and we're getting good users
growth so far.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
That's great. Congratulations with that.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
I really appreciate, right because right now with privacy, you're right,
most of the effort or attention goes to how can
we protect that unique identifier? But you're actually looking at
like how can I refuse a situation where you need
to aggregate it? So now like you know you have
all of this done in future, this is online, how
does that experience look like going back into the movie
theater saying I'm not going to give you the number.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
What does that look like?
Speaker 4 (13:45):
Well, yeah, so, because the protocol hasn't spread enough yet,
I still can't go to a business and say, hey,
I'm not going to give you my so right now.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
The practice is I just.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
Tell them I don't so they'd excuse.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Now, the brilliant excuse of getting my number is them.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
Saying, we're going green and so we don't want to
print out an actual movie ticket or a receipt. We'd like,
just send it to your raft phone, and that's why
we need your number. I'm like, that's okay. I don't
mind a little bit of global warming if you can
print a ticket for me. So I just asked them
to print a physical ticket. Now, same thing with grocery stores.
I don't mind a physical receipt. But yeah, But the
(14:25):
plan is we think a lot of businesses are actually
losing out on quality customers by taking their phone number.
Imagine the last time you encountered a website and you
wanted to know a little bit more about the service
they provided, the product they sell, and you know, you
opened up their chat pot or you opened up their
contact page. The first thing you saw was they're asking
(14:48):
for your number of personal information. How many of those
times where you turned off by that and you said, hey,
it's not worth me putting in so much of my
personal information just to know a little bit of information
about that. So I think businesses are actually losing out
on their best customers because they're asking for this information.
Because they're best customers people who are affluent and reasonably intellectual.
(15:11):
These people are people who would be super turned off
by giving away the personal information. So what we're trying
to do going forward is set up small pilot programs
where we can actually make the case improve the case
that hey, you will actually increase your net lead creation,
and you can you will actually increase the number of
(15:31):
customers onward just by not asking for their personal info.
And we were in the process of setting those experiments up.
It's still going to be a couple of weeks since
until we set it up. But yeah, if those experiments
go well in a couple of years from now, I
would love to go to a movie theater and not
give my number.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
More power more power to that, right, because especially right
coming up, like you said, right, intellectual afflent doesn't matter.
We also have protective population, right, Senior citizens' kids that
are coming into the space, I would love to have
a mechanism in place that protects them from giving out
that information, which.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Is going to be a huge thing. Right Yeah, that's the.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Point eventually for a lot of scams too. So that's
a really impa.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Think about AI. Think about the other side of AI. Look,
AI is only so powerful because of the data you
feet into it. And right now there's a lot of
data available because all of this data has been aggregated
around our personal identifiers. And right now, even though AI
is proceeding at a super good pace, the worst it
can do is still not that bad. The worst it
(16:37):
can do is like sell us on some stuff, not
just to do this or that. But it's going to
get even more sophisticated and complex, and I don't think
it's safe for us to be so vulnerable too. AI
is going bad. Think about it right now. The worst
thing you get is a spam or scam call. You
(16:58):
can most of the time you can tell something as
a scam that some of these calls and spam you
can easily identify spam, but only because most of these
spam calls are other humans on the other end trying
to orchestrate it.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
But as AI gets more and more sophisticated, these cams
are going to be harder and harder to recognize, and
it's going to be very hard to continue a communication
system where everybody.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
Is so accessible to everybody else. It's not hard for
people to get my phone number. My phone number is
published online. They just have to do a little bit
of googleg or the first business I have to give
my phone number two, they can just scrape my phone
number of that business.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
So it's going to be very easy for AIR to
reach me.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
Plus, all this data aggregated around the phone numbers is
going to make it very easy for AA to use
that channel of communication into me to make me do anything.
So I think going into this AI era, we have
to recognize the flip side of data aggregation and try
to make sure we're not just numbered sheep in the
face of AI. And there's some level of individual human protection.
Speaker 5 (18:04):
That makes sense on RUTH So especially in the in
the world of AI. Right, I mean, we we just
can't be feeding into that big machine.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
Right, So let's let's talk a little bit more about
the technology itself, or maybe let's just speak to the
poor tap itself. Right, So if I understand right, Let's
say you and I want to connect on it. Let's
say we meet at an event and we want to
stay in touch. You show me both of us download
(18:37):
the poor tap, You show me a QR code of starts,
I scan it, and you and I get connected. And
let's say tomorrow you don't want to keep in touch
with me, or you just want to lose me. I
mean you can just say, you know, lose Anthony or whatnot,
and you know I can never ever get in touch
with you, right, I mean, that's certainly, at least in
(18:58):
the face of it, that's what I've seen happening.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Right.
Speaker 5 (19:02):
First of all, I mean you can validate me if
that's right. But I mean, and secondly, maybe just for
the audience, I mean, just just tell a little bit
about how port works, what are some of the use
cases that people can use port for? And then maybe
once you're done with this, let's say phase zero or
phase one. I mean, what's your vision with quote if
(19:22):
you can talk about that a little bit lbs so.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
Sure sounds good support.
Speaker 4 (19:27):
The way we designed port is we want a port
to work in any situation that a phone number would work.
So the central idea behind the port app are these
instruments called ports.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
So typically when we.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
Want to connect with somebody, the connection instrument that we
use would be a phone number or an email ID
or a username. So the connection instrument in the port
product port app is something called a port. Now, the
difference between a port and a phone number is a
port is not a unique identifier ToView. A port is
a piece of single use cryptographic information. It can be
(20:00):
used to form a secure, intern encrypted connection. So and
that port so that information can be put into a
QR code, It can be put into a link, It
can be moved through NFC, so you can have to
phones touch each other and that information can get exchanged.
But basically a port is the information, not the modality itself,
like a QR code or a link. So so typically
(20:22):
if somebody were to meet face to face conventionally, they
would share exchange phone numbers. Here, you would put the
port into a QR code, show that QR code, the
other person's can sit and you're connected, as simple as that.
And once the connection forms, the port itself and the
information in it becomes unusable even to attackers, even to
anybody else. So now basically on the port app, you've
(20:46):
basically created this connection and turn encrypted secure connection.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
I know it is you on the other end.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
You know it's me on the other end, but there's
no phone number, there's no identify involved. So if I
want to stop talking to you, or if you start
bothering me and I don't want to talk to you anymore,
I can just disconnect, kill the connection and walk away.
And because there's no identify it for me, for you
to like spam back or target back, I don't have
to worry about unnecessary follow ons or unncessary spam, unncessary
(21:13):
unwanted things.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
All of that stuff.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
Similarly, if I met you online or LinkedIn something like that,
and typically I would exchange my phone number with you,
and unlets say LinkedIn chat or something like that, you
can send a port. I can send a port to
you as a as a simple link, you click on it,
we're connected. The third way people connect with the phone
number is maybe I want to connect you with somebody
else and I share your phone umber with somebody else.
(21:38):
In such a situation, you can I can basically share
a port that connects to you to somebody else only
if you allow it, so you are in control, so
only you can control who I can connect you with,
and as usual, you can take back. It's reversible, unlike
giving away a phone number, which is not reversible. A
port is completely reversible, so you can disconnect whenever and
walk away, and you have complete understanding of where every
(22:00):
connection came from, whether it's face to face where you'll
know if somebody connects you with somebody else, you know
exactly how that connection came to be because you know, hey,
this connection is via Anthony Prakash, So there is I
trust this connection because I trust the person who connected
me with this person. Yeah, so basically any situation you
would use a phone number, you can use a port.
(22:21):
Port's work offline as well. So if you're on a
train you have no internet access, you can still create
a port and show it to the other person and connect.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
So yeah, that's basically how ports work. Their piece of
cryptographic information that need to be exchanged to form a connection,
and you can do it in any situation that you
would be exchanging a phone.
Speaker 5 (22:41):
So under the whole, is there some sort of decentralization
or I mean, what is there a It.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
Is highly decentralized in the sense that if you download
the Portact, the first thing you'll notice is there's no
account creation process, so there's no submitting an email or
submitting a phone number, waiting for an otp adding a password.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
None of that exists.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
You just download the app, enter your name, and you're in,
and this name never gets sent to us our servers,
so in fact, our servers basically don't see any identifying
information about you. So even if let's say our services
are preached in any way, the worst that can be
done is maybe the service is down for a couple
(23:22):
of hours until we get it back up again, but
they can't get to know any information about you. Plenty
of other platforms, even let's say something like WhatsApp, which
claims to be into and encrypted, if their servers are compromised,
they might not be able to get the message data,
but they'll still be attackers with which phone numbers spoke to,
which other phone number at what frequency, what your social
(23:44):
graph is, so they can figure out who your wife is,
who your girlfriend is, who your son is.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
All of that stuff can be figured out very easily
just by understanding.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Yeah, yeah, so the metadata is almost no metadata is
available on the Port servers that does not make sense
to any attacker and cannot be traced back to the
original person.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
So in that sense, we're.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
Highly decentralized in that only the people and the people
that they're speaking to know what needs to be known
to speak with each other, and our serversion don't even
know your name. So we've made sure we've taken every
effort to ensure that people's individual privacy is respected and preserved.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
I wanted to dig into that, right, So you're right, privacy, right,
re issue.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
But then on on.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
The alongside, that is also the integrity or the authenticity
of the human behind it.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
So how's that guarded?
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Like you mentioned right, there's no account creation, there's not
personal information.
Speaker 6 (24:41):
So are you all already thinking about those protective mechanisms
to be in place but tomorrow or like, these are
not accounts people create, So.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
Even if a couple of fake accounts are created, what's
the damage they can do? In the sense that because
because of how Port works, there's no spam that's even possible.
So I can never reach you if you don't want
to be reached, because there's no identifyer that I can
reach you at So even if somebody were to create
(25:14):
a bunch of fake accounts, who would they connect to
is the question? Who would they bother? Who would they spam,
which itself is impossible. So the safeguard in port is
every connection involves implicit consent. When I'm meeting you face
to face and connecting with you, I'm consciously showing a port,
You're consciously scanning it, and that's.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
How the connection forms.
Speaker 4 (25:33):
So you know me on the other side is authentic
and you on the other side is an authentic person.
If I were meeting you on LinkedIn and there I
would like I send you a link, then you're determined by.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
The authenticity of LinkedIn, Like you have to.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
Be sure that the person on the other side of
your LinkedIn chat is real. So that's something that the
user has to be a little aware of. And contact sharing,
you know that the person, like I know I've connected
with Anthony and I know he's real, and if he
connects me with somebody else, I know that it's him
who connected me with somebody else. So I know you
(26:07):
have to be real as well, because I trust Anthony.
So every connection involves some level of implicit consent, and
because of that the risk of connecting with the fake
profile or somebody bad is very low compared to conventional platforms,
where the risk is huge. Tons of scamps happen today,
where some random number reaches out to you claiming to
be your long lost friend, blah blah blah. And yeah,
(26:30):
so all of that stuff can never happen because spamming
essentially becomes impossible on port, So you're never reached out
to by somebody you don't want to talk to.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
That's actually great, it's getting some of those human connections.
Speaker 5 (26:40):
Back, right, Yeah, yeah, In simple terms, I was going
to say, there's a handshake, firm handshake that needs to
happen before the you know, you start talking from A
to B R B two A right, without which it
doesn't get initiated. So enough of technical stuff. Let's talk
(27:00):
a little bit about the CEO, right. I mean, so here,
you're a math guy. You're a science guy, and somebody
who wanted to do PhD but in a way COVID
forced you to start a company, and obviously you love
your science and our math. I mean, so between abin
(27:21):
of who is your CTO and yourself and you guys
came together, how did you guys choose and pick saying
oh you've got to be CEO versus CTO.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
I mean, how did that come? Aback? I think it
was kind of.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
Because I was the one who approached Ubina and said, hey,
here's what I'm doing, here's the product I have in mind,
here's the protocol I have in mind. Kind of like
because I came up with the proposition, I think that's
kind of I would trust me. I would love for
the equation we flipp. I would love to just be
the CEO all day. It's not fun being apart from
(28:02):
the like the two seconds of prior do you get
from calling yourself CEO? Other than that, just not a
fun journey. Eighty percent of the jobs fun. But most
of the fun I get is out of working on
the tech. So yes, we just became because he was
better at me than on the tech stuff, and I
came to him with the idea.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
So I think that's how I fill in place.
Speaker 5 (28:25):
You're not alone, because I mean I've come across so
many startups where it's it's deeply technical, right, I mean,
and both the founders are all the three founders are
all technical. I mean, they just want to move away
from the CEO of stuff and give it to somebody else.
They'd rather be coding twenty four to seven or work
on infrastructure twenty four to seven than do with the
(28:46):
day to day stuff. So, but having been the CEO,
how is the journey of benefit? I mean, orould you
do this again? I mean, what are the learnings that
you've told yourself saying okay, these are things? Is that because?
I mean, right now people are dependent on you. You know,
you've raised around of funding. I saw, you have a
(29:07):
wonderful team around you. You've got to build a culture.
There's so much more than you just thinking about Porte
and what Porte can do. I mean, you've got to
drive a company and build something right, I mean, how
does how has that evolved for you? And how's that
journey been for you?
Speaker 4 (29:25):
I think it's it's been kind of difficult in the
sense that I think I was kind of pushed into
the defend in terms of building a team and all
of that, so I had to learn how to swim.
So that's that's, in a nutshell, that's how it's been.
We've made plenty of mistakes in hiring people, plenty of
mistakes in not delegating work properly. We've made a lot
(29:46):
of mistakes in terms of not prioritizing your work properly
and kind of getting delayed. So it's been like like
learning the hard ware kind of thing. So it took us.
It took us six months to kind of be comfortable
in issues and make those mistakes and correct ourselves based
(30:08):
on those mistakes. So now I have a good team,
but it took us like ten months to build that
team properly. Plenty of people went, came and went, and
you know, you never understand how good somebody is until
you work with them for a couple of months. But
in case of an early stage startup, you only have a.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
Couple of months to work on something otherwise your runway
is going to run out.
Speaker 4 (30:28):
So there's a lot of challenges. But I think the
best learning for me is to try and figure out
how to trust your people. And maybe they don't get
it in a day, but if you keep spoon feeding them,
they wonn't expect that you will do it eventually, So
you just have to like delegate something and trust them
to see through.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
If they don't see through, then you know.
Speaker 4 (30:51):
Hey, if you're not able to delegate something of this
level of complex deed to your primary engineer. You know,
maybe they might not be best suited for that, but
if you cannot delegate properly, you cannot basically start building.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
And that's where I've struggled the most.
Speaker 4 (31:09):
And now I think over the last month two months,
I think I've become better at delegating stuff. Hopefully a
month from now, I would like to be completely out
of tech and just focusing on growth and technology adoption.
Even though I would miss tech like crazy, I think
that's where I should be given my role in the company.
Speaker 5 (31:26):
Right now, you can secretly code in the night and
do the would SEEO job.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
That was the maturity of now getting into the CEO,
right you already acknowledge where you need to focus and
let others pick up some of that burdens.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
So that's me great.
Speaker 5 (31:45):
Yeah, and given that this is your first rodeo so
to speak on it right after college, I mean, how
did how did your family take it? How did your
parents react saying, hey, you're not going to go work
in in a Google or a Microsoft instead of going
to work on a protocol. How did your family react?
Speaker 3 (32:05):
Being an only child, I think.
Speaker 4 (32:09):
It's uh, it's it's I think they've been incredibly supportive.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
Obviously, they get stressed out quite a bit. They're like
they see me working myself and they're like, how are
you working? Like how are your life?
Speaker 4 (32:20):
Sometimes literally ask me how for the first time in
my life, I'm getting scolded for working too much. All
through college is like study study, you're not working hard enough.
You have to go back and study and do that stuff.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
This stuff. Now I'm getting big lectures for working myself
with death and like take a break, do this, do that.
So I think.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
They kind of see that this is kind of like
I'm in the zone right now. I'm kind of working
on something that I believe in. I think that makes
them happy, and so they've been incredibly supportive, been blessed
that way. But yeah, they're they're not comfortable watching me
work very long hours and getting down healthy habits like
not eating, skipping meals.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
That stuff is something that bothers them more than anything else. Yeah. Good, Really, No.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
I was gonna say, I'm like they might.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
That would have been an incredible conversation explaining them this
concept because I'm sure right like like finally we've mastered
all these data clients and information and our communications work
just fine, and you're going to come in and do
the disruption. I don't know how that conversation would have gone,
but I'm glad that they're supportive because they see the passion.
Speaker 4 (33:38):
That's yeah. So what's happened now is so they're all
poor users. Now, my parents, my family, we have poor
groups and poor chats. So what's happened is they know
if I get a message on board, I'm kind of
obligated to reply to improve adoption. And so now the
(33:59):
frequent see at which I get messages from them has
just skyrocketed, like hey, what time did you sleep last night?
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Did you eat that stuff?
Speaker 4 (34:06):
And and I kind of have to reply because they
do this annoying thing where if I don't reply to
them quick enough, they kind of text me on WhatsApp
or signal or something like that.
Speaker 5 (34:19):
They know which buttons to push, ess, you know exactly, Yeah,
after all your parents, all right, so let's before before
we before we go. Uh, this is a great start
for you guys, And you know, it's a it's a
universal problem, right, not just in India where you know,
(34:42):
to your point, people are collecting their your phone numbers
for at every possible junction. But privacy is just obviously
much more than phone numbers, right, Uh, you you're I
think you would admit that. I mean, you're barely scratching
the surface with what trying to do with just sport.
But whether nonetheless as a company number lesson or the
(35:05):
port protocol, what's your like your long term vision that
you have in here?
Speaker 4 (35:10):
So the long term vision is I like to think
of the roadside vendor in in India. So somebody selling you,
let's say fruit on a roadside cart. All they care
about is you paying them something, and all you care
about is getting fruit from them. So the transaction is
(35:31):
really simple now the way the world is each transaction.
Let's say I want to buy fruit online. The transaction
is I give them all this information about me, including
where I lived, to my phone number, to all this
information attached to my phone number. I give them my
biodata just to get buy something from them.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
So same thing with communication, just to connect with somebody.
Speaker 4 (35:51):
In the olden days, it was like you mentioned a
firm handshake, Anthony, in the olden days, it literally was
a firm handshake. I introduced myself as a neither. You
introduce yourself as Anthony firm handscheck, and we're connected. Now,
I give you so much information about myself in the
sense of giving you my phone numit just to connect
with you. So the vision is to kind of regress
(36:13):
human nature a little bit, to make our digital transactions simpler,
almost as simple as our physical transactions. So with numberless,
I think that is something that's achievable. We can make
connecting some things seem very similar to a firm handshake,
in that I know your name, you know my name.
We're connected, We have a communication channel and that's about it.
You don't know anything else. And I want to expand
(36:35):
that into other digital places where things become simpler, the
transactions become simpler, as simple as these roadside when transactions.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
So that's where the broader vision is.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
But I know that's far away, and I know that's
a hard problem to solve. Sometimes market forces are in
your direction, sometimes they're not. But like you said, I
think it's like my professor said in your twenty is
just do something crazy, work on a crazy problem or
scarce scenario, don't solve it, and then you can do
something safer.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
So I just want to try it, try my hand
at it.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Okay, that's great.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
So for people who are listening to the podcast, investors
or anyone, what can they do for you?
Speaker 2 (37:23):
If you have an ask out there, check.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
Out Pard, try out Poard. Become a user who is
not actively sharing their personal information everywhere. Just start with
a good personal digital hygiene.
Speaker 4 (37:38):
That's the most you can do for us at this point,
a couple of months from now, if you believe in
this movement, if you believe in the technology that we're building,
and we're a couple of months from now, we're planning
on raising more resources to kind of put this vision
at play. That's when I think we would be raising
more resource in terms of not just money, but connection
(38:00):
and send doors to be open for us, and there
they can help us a little bit as well.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
But first, just download port see if this makes sense
to you, to you as a user.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
That's all right, Anthony anything or.
Speaker 5 (38:16):
Thanks so much, honey for jumping on on a holiday
in India. So happy sort as they say. So, we'll
speak to you soon in good luck with everything you do,
and to you and your team for number less in
Port and we'll be sure to publish all these details
on the podcast as well. Thanks any good luck to
(38:38):
you guys as well. I've been listening to some of
your content.
Speaker 4 (38:41):
I've been doing a great job, so I'm looking forward
more content coming up. I just subspect to you guys,
so I'm just going to keep seeing your content now.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
Yes, weekly, okay, perfect, See you guys.
Speaker 5 (38:57):
Bye Ba
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My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
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Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com