Safer by design: the case for digital IDs with Authologic's Jarek Sygitowicz

17:59Jarek Sygitowicz:So 14 states already have the infrastructure and adoption is growing. And right now, this is purely convenience-based. So you can go to the ESA quicker or you don't have to have a document. But I think that one of the things that we are doing is we will be doing this MD, also mobile driving license infrastructure for the relying parties. I'm looking for a better word. Relying party is basically a business that wants to have information from the wallet. And this kind of access network that we are being will provide like positive feedback for adoption rates, right? Because if you have more places where you can use the MDL, then you have like more users will actually enable MDLs in their phones to take advantage of this, of the NIT.

18:49Jarek Sygitowicz:So this will be like a marketplace dynamics that will play out. And the definitely most conservative right now is UK and the kind of slowest one. But I'm fully convinced that the whole world will eventually be there. There's no way you can envision the world in five years from today without EID infrastructure in place.

19:14Anna Wood:Yeah, I think especially as everything's becoming more digital, seeing the pushback on something like digital IDs when it will bring. I think convenience is, I think I was quite surprised when I saw how many people were pushing back on it because, yeah, it just does feel like the most convenient method.

19:33Jarek Sygitowicz:Yeah, yeah, exactly. So especially if you compare this to the thing you have to do to prove your identity and the risks of not having identity infrastructure, right? So everyone understands that we need to age-proof the internet, right? So we need to, because for everyone, it's very clear that not everything online be visible or accessible for children, right? And, you know, everywhere, Australia, you know, UK, European Union, US, everywhere, they are pushing the laws to age-proof. So how do you, at scale, do the age-proof internet without EADs? It's impossible to do so without huge implications to the privacy, because if you force people to scan their documents, then it's a disaster waiting to happen.

20:26Yeah, and I feel like it was near the end of last year and just after the Online Safety Act was put in and a bunch of people's IDs were leaked because there isn't that infrastructure in place, that it's just a picture of a driving license.

20:41Jarek Sygitowicz:Yeah, exactly. That's the risk. It's already happening. So put on top of that AI, put on top of that agents. Like you have a lot of pressure, regulations, AI agents and everything else. And you need to have like, there's an interesting piece and it's called identity infrastructure. And that's what we are building. So that's what our logic is building.

21:05Anna Wood:So what areas do you think EIDs will bring the most convenience?

21:11Jarek Sygitowicz:So there's three areas which we are focusing on. The first one is the one that we are using as an example, which is onboarding to services, right? So if you want to onboard to a platform or social media, you need to prove that you're a human and you're a team, for example, are over 21. But from the user perspective, this is like, okay, I do it once a month for whatever. I'm opening some kind of account. So it's not very high frequency use case. But the second use case is that digital identity wallets give you an ability to store digital credentials that are not only the EID. So we are focusing on mobile driving license or an ID or a POSP.

22:01Jarek Sygitowicz:but in the reality you can put any credentials so for example it could be a membership card it couldn't be access talk then to your site so for example authentication so if you're you know opening bank account and this will be a reality in in europe in december if you're opening bank account you can use the entity wallet and the bank will give you the access token that will let you in to this to your without username and password you basically could reuse the token and say okay i'm a member i have this account and and and this is the this this is very convenient and solves one of the one of the biggest problems we have which is passwords because you know first of all password leaks but you know to talk to anyone like they don't remember passwords they're using multiple different search creates a lot of problems because they reuse the password so if you leak the password then you lose everything like this is this is a nightmare so the identity wallets will solve that and the third use case with even higher frequency than authentication to services is payments because if you think about this payment card or no money transfer is basically an id check The bank or the payment service provider is actually checking if this is you authorized to push this amount of money from A to B.

23:27Jarek Sygitowicz:So identity wallet will be carrying around the tokens that will authorize the payments. So let's authorize the payments or money first. But eventually they will become the wallets just like Apple wallet, Google wallet and everything. You will have a tokenized payment methods like stable coins or card payments. and you will be able to pay for it. So basically, identity is much broader than just your ID or EID, you know, mobile driving license. It's all about the credentials that you can use for multiple different things. So we can move forward from that. So these are the three key, you know, use cases.

24:05Jarek Sygitowicz:But you have, you know, boarding pass, you have loyalty cards, you have coupons, you have many, many more things that can be and should be verifiable credentials. This will simplify the infrastructure, lower the cost of operating for the merchants and for the businesses, and improve security overall on the internet. And most of all, they will enable things that will be autonomous. So AI agents, AI doing shopping on your behalf, So paying with the wallet. So basically, we envision the world where you have the wallet thrown. So this is like your wallet. And the agents will have their own wallet.

24:52Jarek Sygitowicz:And they will be able to say that they are acting on your behalf. Your intent is, and you are sending an agent to book me an airline ticket, book me a hotel. This is my agent. He's acting on my behalf. This is my data. Because if you want to book a hotel or headline to give information about yourself, you know, all the details and ID to do that. So it needs to have a wallet to act on your behalf or open an account on your behalf and move money between the accounts to maximize yield, for example. So these are the things that we envision. And, you know, if we had this conversation six months ago, I would say this is like five to 10 years.

25:36Jarek Sygitowicz:But, you know, every week, you know, we are being presented with new information and AI is like, you know, almost vertically. Like this is mind blowing how fast it develops. So I have no idea how quickly this will become reality. But this is, you know, this is closer than anything.

25:59Anna Wood:yeah I feel like it's come to a point that every month there's something new and tech is developing so rapidly that so many companies are having to also develop even more rapidly than that and it's quite an exciting time for innovation but I think sometimes looking at it it can seem quite scary especially like a lot of people have felt with digital ideas but I think how you described it is basically like a wallet on your phone which most people already have most people already put their their debit cards and all their membership cards into their either apple wallet or

26:33Jarek Sygitowicz:google wallet and they haven't thought twice about it exactly exactly and now the the driving license is a problem to put it into the wallet like why but you know i have my car keys in my apple wallet so like you know put everything there and it should be you know robust secure it shouldn't like if you lose your phone it should be it should be very it shouldn't be accessible etc so we the cyber security part is there as well. Yeah, so this is something that is already happening. I just have one comment because you said every month is something happening. I'm not sure if you remember that CNN, so Daily Newsnet that was 24 by 7 was reporting about news was launched during the Iraq war.

27:19Jarek Sygitowicz:So there was a lot of development and people glued to the TV and every day they were linking to news. So I'm not sure if you are aware of tbpn so this is a new network for technology and i listen to every day and there is every day something new happening so it's not like every month it's every day you have a news service that is live streaming for three hours reporting on the news that happened that day so this is the pace of innovation like not every month something that's every day and every hour you can on the random thursday you know anthropic can tank the market because they launched something and it made IBM go down 10%.

27:59Jarek Sygitowicz:Every day is something groundbreaking happening right now.

28:05Anna Wood:Yeah, definitely. So Orthologic positions itself as a kind of global ID hub rather than a verification provider. What was the strategic decision behind that framing?

28:18Jarek Sygitowicz:So the strategic decision is very simple. So we divided the world into the issuing side. So the governments are issuing identity and the acceptance side. And we decided to build the acceptance network because we thought that this is where the private company can play a role. We don't want to compete with governments on issuing credentials. And interestingly enough, this is changing right now with the scope of the things that you can issue while it is broadening. So issuing is becoming interesting. But in essence, we want to build our acceptance network for governments that are issuing the credentials.

29:00Anna Wood:Great. So I kind of wanted to move on to more of the journey of the business. What challenges have you faced on the journey so far and how have you managed to overcome them?

29:11Jarek Sygitowicz:So I want to quote Marc Andreessen that said that running a startup is basically switching between the horror and the euphoria. You don't have anything in between. So this is a kind of a meme in the startup world. But in reality, the typical challenges is, you know, instability. Like one of the biggest things that we faced was, you know, at one point there was there was this collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. And we had all of our money in the Silicon Valley Bank and we had to move it in the span of hours to the company. So this was one of the, you know, things that happened to us. So like, you know, these are the crazy things that happen when you run the company.

30:00Anna Wood:and kind of on the flip side of that what would you say have been some of the biggest highlights

30:04Jarek Sygitowicz:so far so the biggest highlights i think are when we uh every time we get a customer and we every time we talk to the customer and he's happy with our services as a is a huge highlight like wings right so this is this is something that is every day a motivation and i think that that's one thing the other one is like you know when we were starting we were basically four people team for for for for extended period of time and then we started hiring but the the team was quite small so when we raised series a we hit in fiction point and we started to grow you know in terms of the team in terms of number of clients and and the the i remember the feeling when i and we had a we have a team off site and I saw the team like, you know, 30 odd people in one room and I was like, whoa, okay, so this is a lot of people right now.

31:03And we are growing right now still.

31:05Jarek Sygitowicz:So this will be, I'm looking forward to the next team off, which will be in March.

31:10Anna Wood:Yeah, that's really exciting. And earlier on, you mentioned how you've started a company before. So you're a serial entrepreneur. What would you say have been some of the biggest lessons that you've learned so far?

31:23Jarek Sygitowicz:I think that the biggest lesson was to give people what they want. You know, we started to build something people want. This is the mantra from YC, Y Combinator. We went through the YC in the early days. And basically, you know, the reason why we created a hub instead of a, you know, single method was that we tried this, actually. We wanted to have an open Bankic ID. and the customers told us that, you know, this is great, but we need more information, more data to fulfill our, you know, AML obligations or regulatory obligations. So, and we thought about this and we changed the direction of the product to give customers what they wanted.

32:11Jarek Sygitowicz:So this is, I think, the biggest lesson compared to the previous startup. When we had like a grand vision and we, like nobody was looking at the market, rather than the vision because we were so in love in the session. The solution was great, by the way, but you know, you should be in love with the problem you're solving for the customers you're solving it for and not your solution. Solutions should be fluid and not up to the market.

32:37Anna Wood:Yeah, definitely. So what advice would you have for other founders looking to build a startup?

32:44Jarek Sygitowicz:So I think the biggest advice and I think the most important one is that to decouple yourself from your idea. So you should focus on the problem and on customers and you need to understand the problem. So most people, when they think about the problem, they come up with a solution and it's like the first thing that came to their minds and it's not really that good. And you need to deep understand about the problem to come up with something really elegant and really solving the problem in an elegant way. And I think that you need to be very flexible in terms of, you know, how you put this to the customers or present this to the customers.

33:29Jarek Sygitowicz:So you are always focusing the thing that you are trying to help with, right? Instead of the solutions. You can come up with a different idea or different approach. And if you are kind of married to your solution, it's hard to get rid of it. or just and if you're i'm always saying that you have to be like like a scientist you know put your scientist white coat on and you you can try it okay so this problem is is is this make this will solve the problem no it doesn't okay okay let's let's try something else right so and and and i see this like many for in many startups they come up with a with an idea and they they are so focused on an idea and they think that, oh, market doesn't understand me because my idea is so brilliant and they don't want to buy this.

34:21Jarek Sygitowicz:So they are immature or something. That isn't the case. It's like your idea sucks and you should focus on the problem and come up with something else because clearly if no one wants this, then, you know, it's not good.

34:36Anna Wood:Yeah, kind of. No matter, even if it is a great product, if there's no product market fit, it's not going to succeed either way.

34:44Jarek Sygitowicz:So you need to be a kind of a scientist and try different things and different configurations to achieve this product market fit. Once you have this, and this is the crazy part of our times, like, you know, the pace of change is so quick that you need to probably achieve product market fit during your lifetime. So this is crazy because, you know, the things are changing. At this moment, three years ago, you designed a system that should work for humans. Now, what about AI agents? You redesigned this, and who are the AI agents? You need to find product market fee among the different customer base.

35:30Jarek Sygitowicz:Probably you need to understand still focus on the problem you're trying to solve, but you need to reinvent yourself because the platform is changing. So these are the things that, you know, from the perspective, this is very fascinating. And there is a lot of content and opportunity from the entrepreneur perspective. This is like, you know, we need to be on our toes at all times because basically the growth is shifting all our feet. So, yeah, it's interesting.

36:01Anna Wood:Yes, definitely. So that kind of leads me on to my last question, which is what's next for Orthologic and what goals do you have for the upcoming year?

36:10Jarek Sygitowicz:So during the premiere of our new product in early April, we'll be showing the new generation of Orthologic form. And we will be focusing on, you know, building the infrastructure that is compatible with the new regulations, basically. Okay, so this is the immediate future, let's say. We are growing very fast so that the organization will grow and we expect the markets to really blow up because the new regulations in the European Union are mandating around 100 ,000 businesses to adopt EIDs. and we calculate that there's between 1 ,000 and 2 ,000 specialists that understand that. So this will be a challenge to make sure that this whole thing will be implemented on time.

37:10Jarek Sygitowicz:And, you know, I'm just talking about EU, right? And the same thing happens globally, you know, UK, US, Canada, Australia, everywhere else, Asia, Middle East. So we need to fail to capture this market. And yeah, this is the challenge and immediate, you know, kind of road ahead. The stakes are high because if we get it right, basically the human civilization is at risk, right? Because, you know, the current landscape of trust is completely changed by AI. And if we don't build the infrastructure for the new world, then you cannot trust what you see, you can trust you hear. The whole, you know, glue that stick kind of keeps the society to there, which is trust, will just disappear.

38:04Jarek Sygitowicz:So this kind of new generation trust infrastructure that we are building is super, super important. So we need to be on time and we need to be in scale. So there's a lot of work ahead of us that hopefully will succeed.

38:20Anna Wood:Yes, hopefully so. So it is very much a critical time right now. So it's quite exciting getting to talk to companies that are kind of getting us ready for almost this new era of how we experience kind of everything.

38:34Jarek Sygitowicz:Exactly.

38:36Anna Wood:So, and my final question is, is there anything else that you wanted to add or plug at the end of the podcast?

38:42Jarek Sygitowicz:I just, the final thing, you know, stay tuned for the release of Apple Logic 2.0 or the name will be revealed in early April. So I invite you to visit our website at alphalogic.com and sign up the newsletter and wait for the news that's coming.

39:06Anna Wood:Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Yadik, for coming on the podcast today. It's been really fascinating talking more about digital ideas and how it's reshaping everything.

39:15Jarek Sygitowicz:Thank you very much. Thank you for the invitation. Have a good day.

39:19Anna Wood:Thank you. Bye.

39:21Jarek Sygitowicz:Bye-bye.

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