Entrepreneurship in Heavy-Duty Technology: Digital Asset CEO Yuval Rooz (Part 4)

Yuval Rooz: For the past five years, we’ve been developing an open-source language just to describe the interconnected application. The second component of our product is compatibility. When you want to run these applications, there are all kinds of technologies that you can run it on.

Let’s take the analogy of Java language. You can use Java in different databases. You just need to install a driver depending on which database you use. We have similarly developed all these drivers to our language for different technologies out there.

The core product that we monetize are these drivers, but the language that we created is the most unique offering because there is nothing like it. 

Sramana Mitra: What you have described is a horizontal platform, a language, and drivers. In your go-to market strategy, did you go out with a platform strategy or did you go out with a use case or an application that you built on top of that? How was the go-to market?

Yuval Rooz: We went with a use case. This is the backstory for how the language was created. Why would you create a language? That sounds like a complicated thing to do. When we started building the products on the distributed ledger, our Australian client came to us and said that they wanted to digitize the entire Australian equity market.

They wanted every publicly traded company in Australia, which is the ninth biggest economy in the world, to run on the distributed ledger technology. They wanted us to build it for them. 

Sramana Mitra: Why would they come to you? 

Yuval Rooz: They were looking to replace the system that they had in place. It was working well, but it had reached its end-of-life. They were looking to replace it. At that time, this idea of distributed ledger technology started coming to life. There was a lot of information about it.

Australians are adventurous and they like to push their boundaries. They realized that if they replaced their system every 15 to 30 years with yet another off-the-shelf technology, by the time they implemented it, they would get left behind because distributed ledger technology would be the go-to technology. That would be a big mistake on their part. They could explore what it would mean to replace their system with distributed ledger technology. If they conclude that it’s not good for them, they always have the option to buy something off the shelf.

I met the team that came to New York. They knew about us and other companies as well. We had a meeting. I remember the meeting very well because the deputy CEO at the exchange, who is now sitting on my board, asked me how I would test if this technology would work for them and how I would choose the vendor.

I could’ve said that we were the best and that they should work for us, but I didn’t. I remember what I proposed to Peter. I said that there was nothing better than having someone come to your office and work with you for a period of time for you to know what they are made out of.

I came up with a shortlist of companies and told him to invite them to Australia to work with them for a week to integrate a piece of the functionality into your system and, by the end of the week, choose the best one. We were invited with two of our competitors and at the end of the journey, they selected us.

We worked together for half a year, and then they did a feasibility study to determine if this technology is capable of replacing their massive system. That went smoothly, and it was announced that we would be replacing their system. We needed to get approval from the Australian government to do this project. 

Sramana Mitra: I have a question on the nuance of this particular episode. What was the structure of the engagement? Was it a professional services contract? 

Yuval Rooz: To some extent, yes. The reason I’m saying to some extent is because we didn’t give them any IP. We told them that if they wanted to work with us to prove their specific use case, they needed to pay for our time. We were building our product but it was more of verifying that our product is applicable to them. 

Sramana Mitra: This was the first client?

Yuval Rooz: Correct. 

This segment is part 4 in the series : Entrepreneurship in Heavy-Duty Technology: Digital Asset CEO Yuval Rooz
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