Entrepreneurship in Heavy-Duty Technology: Digital Asset CEO Yuval Rooz (Part 2)

Yuval Rooz: I landed at DRW, a trading company based out of Chicago. I quickly fell in love with the company because it was an entrepreneurial company. The owner, Don Wilson, allowed the employees to explore new ideas as long as those ideas were aligned with what the company does. I enjoyed that environment.

Within three years, I ended up running a sizable team at the company. We were doing algorithmic trading. I was willing to take more responsibilities. Three years after school, I was running and managing a team. That was a good experience for me.

At the end of the day, my passion has always been to create something new. Sitting and thinking about algorithms and trade stocks was not fulfilling. Five years into my tenure at DRW, I went to Don and told him that I was leaving.

He asked me what I was going to do next. I told him that I was going to figure that out and that I had some ideas for companies that I wanted to start or invest in.

This is where I am very fortunate to have found such a good boss, mentor, and friend. He told me to start a venture group together with him and see if it works and, if it doesn’t work, he was willing to help me with whatever I wanted to do next. 

Sramana Mitra: What year was that?

Yuval Rooz: That was in 2012. 

Sramana Mitra: What happened next?

Yuval Rooz: We started investing in startups. I went and used a lot of my network in Israel. I invested in a few companies in Israel and a few companies in the US. At that time, Bitcoin and cryptocurrency started coming up. Don had an employee who convinced him to start trading cryptocurrency.

Those were the days when the bank would close your account if you told them that you were trading cryptocurrency. That was very early days when DRW started trading cryptocurrency. Today, they are one of the bigger players in the space.

On the venture side, I started looking for companies in that space to invest in. We invested in a couple of companies. We kept on developing the thesis on what technology can mean to the world. We’re looking for companies that are doing what we think should be done. We couldn’t find any such company for two years. In 2014, with the support of Don, I left DRW to start Digital Asset. 

Sramana Mitra: When was that?

Yuval Rooz: October 2014 is when we created the company that I am running now. 

Sramana Mitra: When you say with Don’s support, does it mean that he invested in the company? What was the nature of the support?

Yuval Rooz: First of all, he supported the fact that I was leaving DRW because I was running a significant operation there. Second, Don invested. To this day, he still sits on my Board. We both thought about what needs to be done and we both developed the idea for this company.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Entrepreneurship in Heavy-Duty Technology: Digital Asset CEO Yuval Rooz
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