Hunter Jensen, CTO at Permission.io - Helping Users Get Paid For Their Data

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:02) Hello, my friends. Today we're talking to Hunter, the CTO at Permission.io, and we discuss how Permission is helping users get paid for the data that they give up to advertisers, how partnering with Auth0 has allowed Permission to provide a secure and frictionless experience for their users, and what it takes to create, distribute, and protect a new cryptocurrency. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO Podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:35) Here we go. This is the Modern CTO Podcast.

(Hunter at 00:00:47) I first got involved in technology before there was the internet. I got started at a very early age. I was lucky enough to go to an elementary school that had a computer programming class in fifth grade. The programming language was QBasic, and I became fascinated at that time and have been involved in technology literally since the fourth grade. I continued to follow it, watched the internet be born. By the time I got to college, I was teaching myself computer programming on the side and picking up web development gigs off of Craigslist to help pay my tuition.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:35) Nice.

(Hunter at 00:01:35) I've been in it since the very beginning.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:38) That's cool. Did you ever have a little address book of all the email addresses on the internet?

(Hunter at 00:01:45) Yes, I absolutely had one of those address books. And just to date myself, I also spent a lot of time on AOL Instant Messenger way back in the day. That's how a lot of my schoolmates and I communicated after school.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:05) That's super cool. So when you were starting your career, did you jump right into a career in tech or did you do something else first? How'd you get going?

(Hunter at 00:02:13) Yeah, so I was at school at the University of Virginia. I started in the computer science program, but I learned something very quickly, which was that universities can be woefully behind what's actually happening in tech. They were teaching C++ and old school enterprise software, whereas I wanted to learn web because that's what was hot in 2000, 2001. So I left the computer science department.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:46) They weren't teaching web in 2000 and 2001?

(Hunter at 00:02:50) There was one Java class to do JSP, I think it was, or something like that, but it was really limited. It was all start with machine code and work your way into C++. And I just, it wasn't what I wanted to learn. So instead, I left that. I ended up with a double major in economics and philosophy of all things. But the whole time I was teaching myself, just literally checking out books from the library and teaching myself how to write code. I started my first company, I guess, while I was still in college. We were taking photos at college parties and then posting them online for people the next day to go look at the photos and buy a T-shirt with the photo on it or something like that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:46) Pre-social networks?

(Hunter at 00:03:48) Yeah, yeah. This is, again, early 2000s when that was still kind of a cool concept. So I had already started my freelance programming career while I was still in school. When I graduated, all that really meant was I was going full-time with that. And now I had all the hours of the day where I could just write code. And I loved writing code. I still enjoy it, although I don't do it very often. And so that's kind of how I got started. I was a freelancer. I was a PHP developer, and I did that for a few years and I loved it. But then I realized there were only so many hours in the day that one could bill for their time. And so at that point, I started a software agency called Barefoot Solutions.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:35) Oh, cool. So just continuing to do freelance work, but in a company setting.

(Hunter at 00:04:41) Exactly. I hired my first employee, grew everything organically. We were doing web design and development, and then we got into mobile very, very early. Then we got into IoT pretty early, and then into AI and blockchain. That was kind of the progression of technology. We always tried to stay at the forefront, not on the bleeding edge because companies don't pay for that very often, but more on the cutting edge, we'll call it. And that was the majority of my career prior to joining the Permission team.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:20) Cool. Yeah. So tell me about how you met the team at Permission and came aboard.

(Hunter at 00:05:26) My best friend from kindergarten is the VP of Marketing at Permission. And they were having internal discussions and wanted to bring somebody on, and Bobby recommended me and introduced me to Charlie, our CEO. And we ran with it from there. And so that was back in, I want to say, 2019 when we first connected, and I've been with Permission ever since.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:04) That's awesome. So can you give me an overview of the vision at Permission and what you guys are doing?

(Hunter at 00:06:10) Absolutely. So the mission of Permission is to enable users to profit from their time spent online and their data, mostly their data. For too long, the big tech companies—Google and Facebook and Amazon—have been profiting from our data, and we haven't seen a cut of it. And that needs to change. I think when certain events happened, you know, Cambridge Analytica and things like that, a lot of the world opened their eyes to how the internet actually works. The internet seems like this amazing place full of free services, but companies are making a lot of money, and they're making money on us. And now that that is understood by more than just geeks like me, there's a widespread movement to change that and to empower users to control their data. And if people are making money off of it, it's their data. They should be the ones making money. So that's the overall vision of what we're doing at Permission.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:22) So how does it work? Do the ad companies come to you and you're a kind of a broker for the individuals that are viewing the ads and getting paid for that? And then also, how are people getting paid? I just have a lot of questions.

(Hunter at 00:07:39) Yeah, yeah. It's a new concept. It's a bunch of new concepts, and so it can be a bit to bite off in one sentence. But really, we believe that users should be compensated for sharing their data. The best way that we know to do that is with cryptocurrency. And so we have issued our own cryptocurrency. Ticker symbol is ASK, and you can buy and sell this crypto on multiple exchanges. And we reward users for clicking on ads or watching videos or providing data, explicitly giving permission to brands to market to them and being rewarded for it, being compensated for it and saying, "Okay, Nike, I am actually looking for tennis shoes right now, and I want you to know that, and I want you to show me some tennis shoes. But I want to be rewarded for giving you that data so that we can have a closer relationship between the brand and the consumer." Right? And so the advertisers will, yeah, I mean, they'll create campaigns, and they are campaigns that can be placed all over the web. Right? It doesn't just have to be on our website. And part of the mechanism of these ads is the reward component is rewarding users with our crypto ASK for sharing their data. And it's that simple at the high level. And then when you get into the weeds, it's actually incredibly complex because ad tech is a very complex world that's been around a long time and has some unusual ways of doing things. But that's the concept at the high level. We're just rewarding users for sharing their data, and we're doing it with crypto. Think of it like a rewards program. You have Starbucks points or Marriott or Southwest or all of these rewards programs that are incredibly successful for these companies. And they continue to invest more in their rewards programs than they do in going out to get new customers. They're trying to deepen their relationships with their existing customers, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:56) Right.

(Hunter at 00:09:57) And the problem with rewards programs is that they are siloed. Right? If I get Southwest points, it's awesome that I can buy a Southwest flight with it. That's about all I can do. With crypto, it's fungible. It's liquid. You can do whatever you want with it. You can trade it for other crypto. You can sell it for dollars and go buy something. It levels the field such that it's just a ubiquitous reward mechanism. It's so obvious that crypto should be how brands are rewarding their customers rather than these really siloed point systems. Right? And so that's kind of how we landed on the concept. We really were thinking about rewards initially and how it could be better for the consumer to get some sort of liquid reward rather than a siloed one.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:56) That makes a lot of sense. That actually reminds me of recently I was talking with the CTO over at a company called Deserve. They make the back end for credit cards. So if a company like, you know, airlines all issue their own credit cards, traditionally they have to go to a bank to do that, but Deserve is a cloud-based company doing that. And they partnered with BlockFi recently and put out a credit card with them where whatever cash back reward you get on your credit card is paid in Bitcoin, which is pretty cool. And I think it just shows that what you're talking about is a major trend. I think we're going to see a lot more of.

(Hunter at 00:11:40) Yeah. You know, there's just a few reasons why that's better even than getting cash back. Because the way that these very old financial systems work, there are so many middlemen, basically, to conduct a transaction safely. Right? It has to be backed by a bank, and it has to be insured and all of these other things. And what it does is makes transactions expensive. And so when you're doing small transactions, right, you just want to kick somebody a couple bucks back for a purchase they made, it's difficult and expensive to do that in just USD with a traditional financial system. But when you start looking at Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies where the cost of transaction is very low, you're not limited to just your country, or there's not a lot of complications around doing it internationally. And then there's also the speculative nature of it. Right? You know, if anything, the value of a dollar is going down over time, right? Whereas with cryptocurrency, you don't know, but there is that exciting, you start to build up reserves in crypto in the hopes that maybe, you know, maybe Bitcoin price will go up and the rewards that you got will be double what they were when you got them. You know? And so that's another of the alluring parts of using crypto instead of just cash for rewards, for transactions, or whatever it might be for.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:15) Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, a couple years ago, Coinbase started rolling out where you could do a little education thing to learn about a different currency and they give you $5 in the currency. And so I did all of them that they would let me do because I've been a crypto fan for a while, ended up with $30 total. And I just kind of ignored it for two years. And then I looked at it and it was $200, and I'm like, "Hey, that's a pretty good payment for learning about some different currencies."

(Hunter at 00:13:47) Yeah. I know exactly the program you're talking about, and it sure is, you know, and that's the idea. And it's also a way to learn about new projects and, you know, you might, "Okay, well, I have this token now. I mean, what are they about?" Right? And it's good for the ecosystem, for the crypto ecosystem too, right, to get the word out, get people holding these tokens so that they begin to care and learn about the project and sometimes, you know, support it in major ways.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:17) Yeah. So, I mean, crypto is obviously a really hot commodity among general consumers. But I imagine it's also a pretty big target for hackers trying to get their hands on some. So what's your security strategy like at Permission?

(Hunter at 00:14:36) Yes. You're absolutely right about that. Security is first with absolutely everything that we do. It is, when you're a cryptocurrency, you are a target. And you're a target by some of the brightest minds of our generation. Right? These people in the blockchain and crypto space are two of the best developers in the world. And so, you know, you have to be incredibly mindful and serious about security when you're running a company with crypto, like Permission is. And so, you know, we talk about security every day. It is embedded into our culture, into our processes, into everything. And, you know, it all starts for us really with identity. You know, if we know who our users are, then it brings about a level of trust. And we feel good about rewarding them for engaging with these ads because they're real people, and they're sharing their data, and that's valuable to companies, and they should get paid for it. You know? And so we, very early on, actually when I came on board, this was one of the first really big decisions I made as CTO at Permission, which was to start working with an identity provider, Auth0. They do all of our identity for us—login, registration, "I forgot my password," two-factor authentication, mobile, and all of these things. And they have been a foundational part of our overall security apparatus. You know, we decided early on that we're innovating in ad tech and in crypto, but not in identity. Right? And if you're not innovating in something, then you might as well use the experts rather than try to build it yourself. Right? I could have built an identity management platform for our users, and it would have taken six to nine months and would have cost a fortune, and we'd have to maintain it the whole time. Or I could go with a provider like Auth0, and we were up in 45 days or something like that. Just crazy fast. And, you know, they're rolling out new features and they become a really fundamental part of our overall security apparatus. And, you know, we're in an interesting position, right, where there aren't many consumer-facing crypto companies. They're coming out now, but for the past few years, they've been few and far between. And the reason is how hard it is to keep it secure when you're consumer-facing. It's one thing to do a B2B thing or to do a layer-one blockchain, you know, which is all about code. But when you're dealing with millions of users, you have to provide a delightful experience for them. Right? Like, if security is number one, user experience is number two. And so, you know, those can sometimes be fundamentally opposed with each other. Like, the more secure it is, the more friction you create for your user. And, you know, as a consumer-facing company, we need to figure out both of those things. And, you know, and again I go back to Auth0. You know, one of the only identity management platforms that had such a strong focus on consumer identity, not just B2B or enterprise workforce or that kind of thing. And so that's what really drew us in there.

(Hunter at 00:18:13) Additionally, we have just crazy smart data scientists that are constantly identifying anomalies and looking for patterns. And we have really advanced bot detection and mitigation measures. And, you know, we introduced KYC, which is not popular. But we're of this standpoint that that's where the industry is heading, so we might as well get ahead of it. And it was able to integrate it really well with Onfido, and now we have pre-defended proof that somebody is who they say they are. And what we found out is that that makes them so much more valuable to advertisers than your typical publisher might be.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:01) That makes a lot of sense. You're able to filter out the bots like that.

(Hunter at 00:19:06) Yeah. I mean, it's a dirty little secret in ad tech, but half the traffic is from bots. It may be worse, you know?

(Hunter at 00:19:14) And so when we can tell our advertising partners, "Hey, they're actually uploading their passport and we're verifying it and all this other stuff," then the quality that we're able to bring because we do all of those things is just so much higher than kind of anonymous web traffic. And so while there was some resistance at first because it is friction and people don't like it, ultimately it's been a great thing for us.

(Hunter at 00:19:44) It's been one of the best things we decided to do because it just ups the quality of our traffic.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:53) So what does it look like from the user side? Is it like a web extension that you sign into and have running in the background, and that's how you're recognized when you're providing data or viewing ads or something?

(Hunter at 00:20:09) Yeah. That's a big part of it. So we launched a Chrome browser extension that will serve as your wallet where you can manage your crypto. And with that installed, when you come across a rewarded ad, it creates a very seamless experience. If you choose to engage the ad, if you choose to share your data, then you will be rewarded via that browser extension.

(Hunter at 00:20:36) We also have a mobile app coming up in the works. That'll come out in Q4 and serve a similar purpose in the mobile app space. But really, we don't want to tie anybody down to a specific product. So even if you don't have anything installed, there is still a workflow that could lead to you earning your rewards for engaging with those ads even if you aren't yet a permission user. Some of that is live now and some of it's rolling out in Q4. But again, user experience is everything for us.

(Hunter at 00:21:11) And

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:13) the

(Hunter at 00:21:13) big challenge is creating really engaging, relevant, and delightful experiences for our users. And if we can't do that, then all the other stuff that we're doing isn't going to work. And so that's why we put such a high priority on UX when we're doing anything.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:33) That makes sense. I think that's a really smart approach because, I mean, cryptocurrency in general, the people that have studied it and looked at it have known, "Hey, blockchain tech is gonna do huge things in the future." But the thing was ten years ago, if you wanted to own any, it was a crazy convoluted process to have a secure wallet. And you only really could buy and sell cryptocurrency if you really knew what you were doing. And yeah, just the way it's gotten out to the masses is that friction has been reduced.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:08) And speaking of Auth0, I had the privilege of interviewing their chief product officer a couple weeks ago, Shiv. And the big thing he was talking about was reducing friction while keeping security at the forefront is really the only way we're gonna get security out to everyone.

(Hunter at 00:22:29) Yeah, and that's exactly right. I actually listened to that, and it was spot on. And if we need mass adoption of advanced security measures, the only way you get mass adoption to anything is if you make it really easy for people. And so we have all these really advanced security measures that nobody wants to do, and that's not gonna work.

(Hunter at 00:22:55) So now the challenge is how do we make it super easy or even transparent to the user, or only escalate things when red flags go off and otherwise make it simpler for folks and look at ways to kind of provide security without being super interruptive to someone's experience, right? And that's kind of where the technology is now. It's matured enough that we know how to do things securely, right?

(Hunter at 00:23:23) MFA has been around for a long time, but how do we make it so it's not such a pain? And we've seen in the past few years even, there's real strong adoption for 2FA, and people are starting to look at passwordless stuff. And I think that we're gonna see a lot more innovation in that space in the coming years. I mean, like you said, crypto ten years ago was a nightmare.

(Hunter at 00:23:50) If you are not a developer, good luck buying and securely storing your crypto, right? But these days, it's as simple as signing up for a web account. Come to permission.io, and you provide your username and password, and there you go. You get a crypto wallet and you get some ASK in it, and you're off to the races.

(Hunter at 00:24:12) It's literally that easy. And so we're crossing the chasm right now. We're in the middle of it, if not towards the tail end of it, where crypto is just adopted by the masses. And it's like, get on board. And we're seeing this across all these major financial institutions and these big corporations. Everybody's hiring blockchain and crypto people and rolling out programs and putting Bitcoin on their balance sheets and all of that. I mean, it's here. This is the time where it becomes where my mom might be able to get some crypto.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:52) Yeah. I was watching a news piece recently on ransomware, and a point they made was how ransomware attackers have incredible customer service because when they go after elderly people, doesn't matter who their target is, they need to get paid in Bitcoin for obvious reasons. And so it was funny, they're complimenting the customer service of these ransomware attackers because they're able to teach your grandma how to buy Bitcoin because that's a part of the process. I know that's a little bit off topic, but...

(Hunter at 00:25:38) Well, I mean, I guess the word is out that providing an excellent customer experience gets you the results that you want, even for bad actors, right? They're seeing how the Internet works these days. And if you can provide an excellent experience, then people will do it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:01) That makes a lot of sense. So one thing I'm curious about is why issue your own currency rather than use an existing one for the purpose of paying your users for their data?

(Hunter at 00:26:17) Yeah. I mean, it's a really good question, and it's something that was debated extensively. And there's a few reasons for it. And one is to be able to control the experience a little more closely, right? We can build all these tools around our crypto specifically that would be more difficult to do if it was Bitcoin, if it was something else. And the other is the financial model. If you have to go out and spend US dollars to buy BTC to then reward users with that, then it's really not all that different than just giving them USD for what they're doing, right?

(Hunter at 00:27:04) And so but when you can build a community around a new cryptocurrency, then the model just makes a lot more sense that way.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:15) Yeah. That makes sense because at the end of the day, you're trying to avoid the inefficiencies of the financial system. And if you're using an existing currency, that means that you have to start with US dollars anyway.

(Hunter at 00:27:34) Exactly. Exactly. And so then, yeah, then half your business model is still stuck in that financial system, right? And it's slow, and it's expensive. And when you can issue your own currency, all that goes away. And we didn't just issue a token on Ethereum. I mean, we run our own blockchain, and we run our currency on that blockchain. And again, that enables us to provide very, very fast transactions, very, very low transaction costs, right?

(Hunter at 00:28:07) Whereas gas fees on Ethereum right now are out of control. And there's a lot of cool projects that are working to fix that, and the Ethereum Foundation themselves are working to fix that. And so I think that's going to change. But at the time, that was a good decision to make so that we could, again, make the experience great for the user, right? Nobody wants to be spending $20 in gas fees to execute Ethereum transactions. So yeah, it all comes back to the user for us.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:38) So I might not get it if we get too into the weeds. So explain to me like I'm five, what goes into forking Ethereum to make your own currency? Because that just sounds really crazy and interesting to me.

(Hunter at 00:28:56) Yeah. And if we got into the weeds, it gets really complicated.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:02) I imagine. Yeah.

(Hunter at 00:29:03) But okay, like you were five, we take a copy of Ethereum. We need to change the consensus mechanism because Ethereum only works with thousands and thousands of people running nodes and processing transactions, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:22) So you wanna copy the protocols of Ethereum, but not necessarily all of the nodes that's on it?

(Hunter at 00:29:30) Not necessarily the proof of work. So instead, we go to a proof of authority consensus mechanism. And that allows us to run our own blockchain based on Ethereum. I mean, it's Ethereum.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:44) Mhmm.

(Hunter at 00:29:45) Right? But it allows us to run it on our own kind of network.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:49) Okay. That's really interesting. So is everyone that is making money with permission a member of the network, like helping run consensus?

(Hunter at 00:30:01) No. No. You know, they can be, but just your general users are earning ASK every day for engaging with ads and sharing their data. So it's not just for developers. It's not just for people running nodes. It's not really even about that for us, right? There's a lot of people out there that that's what they're doing, and that's not what we're doing. We wanna be the most widely used cryptocurrency in ad tech. That's our goal.

(Hunter at 00:30:29) And so we're encouraging just your everyday Internet users to come create an account and earn ASK that way.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:40) That's awesome. I like that goal. Shooting big. Most widely used crypto in ad tech.

(Hunter at 00:30:46) That's right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:46) I guess that brings me to my tough question of the interview. Because when I first started reading about you guys, I had actually heard about basic attention token first. So I was like, "Oh, this kinda sounds like basic attention token." So how are you different from basic attention token?

(Hunter at 00:31:04) Yeah. No. That's a great question. And I'll start by saying I'm a huge fan of Brave and BAT. And I use Brave Browser sometimes, and they were leaders. They are leaders in the space, and they're doing really great work. There are some fundamental differences between what they're doing and what we're doing. Brave is focused on privacy. They wanna provide a private browsing experience for their users. Our focus is on compensation.

(Hunter at 00:31:43) You know, Brave doesn't want the data to leave the browser, right? They're gonna keep it locked down for you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:50) Okay.

(Hunter at 00:31:51) But that means they don't have data. Meaning, it's tough to serve relevant ads. It doesn't work in the existing advertising ecosystem, right? And so that's not what we're focused on. It's not about privacy. We're trying to encourage users to share their data with companies, and we're very, very transparent about that. And if you're not into that and you wanna just browse the web privately, then we're not—that's not us, and Brave has a great solution for that. But if you want to continue to participate in the data economy of the Internet as it is today, only get compensated for it, then come to permission.

(Hunter at 00:32:31) That's the fundamental difference between the two of us. You know, it's a different mission, right? It's the same space, but it's a drastically different mission. I think it speaks to different types of people who are interested in different things.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:44) That makes a lot of sense. So permission is more for if you just wanna kind of keep doing the web as you're doing it now, but get paid for it as you should because it's your data. While Brave is for the people that are like, "It's my data and I don't want anyone to see it." And those are both valid viewpoints.

(Hunter at 00:33:07) Yeah. That's exactly right. You know, the experience we wanna provide is, yeah, just go about your day on the Internet and check your balance at the end of the day and see that you earn for doing the stuff that you already do. You know? Because that's fair. That's how it should be. And it wasn't set up that way originally, so it's disruptive to do it that way now. But that's where we're headed, and that's our mission.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:34) That's really cool. So, man, I gotta set up a permission account because I'm pretty stuck in my ways. And...

(Hunter at 00:33:40) Perfect.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:40) Okay. So one thing that I wanted to get your take on is NFTs because we actually have a company called Masterworks coming up on the podcast soon. And they're a part of a wave in the financial industry that I think is really cool, and that's opening up different areas of investment to the broader public. Because a while ago, we had a company called Yieldstreet that is more generalized opening up, like you could do partial real estate investments or partial art investments and stuff. But Masterworks is art only. And because a lot of extremely wealthy people's portfolios are a large portion of it is art in their investments, which is something that I didn't even know about until recently as an investment class. But anyway, the guy does not believe in NFTs as sound investable assets.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:44) And since they kind of rose to fame in the past year, I've pretty much only heard positive things about them. So I was really interested to hear this hot take that we have coming up. But as someone such as yourself, a long time member of the crypto community, what do you think about NFTs and what role do you see them playing?

(Hunter at 00:35:10) It's a great question. And NFTs are young in terms of their adoption in the overall crypto ecosystem, right? They're hot

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:22) Yeah.

(Hunter at 00:35:22) like, right now. And so what I see out there is a lot of experimentation within NFTs. And I think the market will find some winners and losers in terms of the best use cases for NFTs. Like, they don't solve everything, not even close, but I think they have some really strong use cases. And one of the things I like the most about NFTs is that, you know, coming up the way that I did in software and building products is I got the opportunity to spend a lot of time with digital artists, right? Graphic designers, animators, just these wildly talented people that a hundred years ago would probably be painters or the like. And they had no good way to actually get paid for original digital art.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:25) Yeah.

(Hunter at 00:36:26) You know, you're uploading photos into Shutterstock and services like that, or you're getting paid for kind of custom bespoke work. Sure. But that's not pure creativity. That's applied creativity to somebody else's concept, right?

(Hunter at 00:36:46) But to be able to create digital art purely from your own creative energy and find a way to sell that in a way that is actually meaningful to you financially is incredible. It's disruptive for digital artists. You know, that is one of the most exciting use cases to me of NFTs, again, like you said, in art, but not the—I mean, the fine art stuff is interesting, and I did read that like 20% of billionaire portfolios are in fine art or something insane. Yeah, I had no idea either. I just read that recently.

(Hunter at 00:37:28) We must have read the same thing. But yeah. But, you know, in digital art, I mean, because digital art has a problem that fine art doesn't have, which is that it is very easy to copy digital art. And it's a lot more difficult to counterfeit, you know, physical art. And so this kind of—I mean, in a way, it combats counterfeit art and also enables these artists to actually get paid for their work in a way that wasn't possible before NFTs existed. So to me, you know, there are a lot of use cases.

(Hunter at 00:38:06) Like you said, financial instruments are interesting. You know, they're doing stuff in insurance and tokenization of assets and all sorts of stuff. But the one that I'm most interested in at the moment is digital art and watching these artists finally—you know, I guess it kind of goes back to the mission of Permission, which is it bugs me when people aren't getting what they deserve based on what they're providing, right? And underserved people, you know, where this decentralization of technology is allowing a lot of these kind of undercompensated, underserved people to get what's—you know, get their cut, get what's theirs.

(Hunter at 00:38:52) And so to me, that's one of the most exciting parts of NFTs. Sorry, that was a pretty long answer.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:57) No, dude, that was awesome. Yeah. I mean, it's always really cool when a new technology comes out that's able to actually empower people rather than just be used by the people that are already in charge, you know?

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:14) And that's kind of the whole theme of decentralized tech in general, which is why I've been a fan for years.

(Hunter at 00:39:23) Yep.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:24) So do you have any thoughts on other kind of wild out there potential future use cases for blockchain tech in general?

(Hunter at 00:39:37) Whew. You know, that's a good and a tough question. You know, I'm a fairly practical technologist, and I think I'm realistic that blockchain doesn't solve all the world's problems.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:58) Yeah.

(Hunter at 00:39:59) It is a tool. It is an incredibly powerful tool, and it's created this amazing community and ecosystem around it. But at the end of the day, it is a tool. And so, you know, when I think about where we might have interesting use cases, you know, it's just all over. It's not necessarily completely brand new things.

(Hunter at 00:40:29) It's just improving the things that we already do. Cryptocurrency is not completely new. It's an improvement over fiat currency. NFTs are not completely new, but it's an improvement over physical goods and things of that nature. And so, you know, I think blockchain is going to do amazing things in identity.

(Hunter at 00:40:49) I think, you know, there is a world here where all of us manage all of our identities, our medical records, our finances, all of that in some sort of decentralized identity platform, you know, where I can take it with me wherever I go. I can choose what I share to whomever I'd like, but ultimately I have control, and it's validated by the blockchain consensus mechanism itself. And so I see a world where identity becomes fully decentralized, in fact, and that we can travel to different countries and do all of these things and still have complete ownership of our information and our digital identities. So I see very big things in that space. And then I see a lot of smaller opportunities as well. I mean, I think, you know, I mentioned counterfeiting earlier. I think blockchain's got some amazing applications in preventing counterfeit.

(Hunter at 00:41:50) And proving chain of custody. I think we're going to see, you know, again, chain of custody in the legal field, but not for another 15 or 20 years. It's got to be very mainstream before we see that. So I do see just all sorts of interesting applications of it. As it becomes more ubiquitous, everybody gets smarter, the tech gets better, and, you know, like I said, we've got some of the greatest minds in the world working in the blockchain space right now. So I just could not be more excited to see what comes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:23) Yeah, absolutely. So another area of future tech that we've had on the podcast actually a decent amount, quantum computing. A big concern that's brought up a lot is quantum computers are going to be capable of decrypting cryptocurrencies. And so we actually had on the CTO of Ripple, the currency, and he was like, "Nah, that's not a problem for another 10 years." But then, I forget, we got the opposite opinion from someone else that I trusted on it too. So it's kind of all over the place in terms of what I see people saying about it. And I'm curious, what's your take?

(Hunter at 00:43:10) Yeah. Well, you know, I will start by saying that doesn't keep me up at night at the moment. I do believe that's feasible. You know, I've read some papers that does make it look like it might be possible. But, you know, let's keep in mind that there's two sides to that coin.

(Hunter at 00:43:33) You know, when quantum computing becomes more available, it's going to be integrated into all of our cryptographic measures as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:40) Yeah.

(Hunter at 00:43:41) Right? And so, you know, it's an arms race when it comes to the cryptographic world, but digital security in general is always an arms race. And that's kind of actually okay because it forces innovation, right? It drives innovation at such a rapid, rapid pace because it's like, "If we don't fix this soon, it's going to be a problem for us."

(Hunter at 00:44:06) And so, you know, for me, like I said, that doesn't keep me up at night. It'll be interesting to watch. But all the tech that might go into decrypting it can also make the cryptography more powerful.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:19) Right. Yeah. I think that's a really cool perspective on it, how it just forces innovation because, man, that's just so fun. While you're rapidly advancing your computing powers, you're also rapidly advancing your security measures. And I know that there's already quantum-resistant algorithms, but right now they're just kind of slow, so we don't use them because we don't have to. But I can totally see how when we do have to, we'll probably see them speed up pretty fast, just because they'll have to. They'll be forced to.

(Hunter at 00:44:54) Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It does drive innovation, you know, and it's a threat, right? And protecting yourselves from threats can often lead to amazing discoveries and inventions and wild new things.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:07) So before we wrap up, I just want to ask you a couple leadership questions because you're CTO at this company, leading quite a few people. For some context, how many people are at Permission right now?

(Hunter at 00:45:20) Oh, gosh. It changes a lot. But, you know, I think there's about 20-odd people right now, and they're kind of distributed globally, although we have our headquarters in San Diego, in La Jolla, California.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:39) That's really cool. So are your direct reports engineering managers or people still in the weeds themselves?

(Hunter at 00:45:49) Yeah. So typically, my direct reports are engineering managers. We are small enough of an operation that I talk every day to the engineers directly, although they are not, you know, technically my direct reports. But yeah, I mean, we have a very powerful distributed engineering team that's built a lot of product over the last couple of years.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:18) So what would you say are the one to two most important culture items to you at your company?

(Hunter at 00:46:27) So one of the things that I really value at the company is—and it may sound a little weird at first, but—is pride. You know, being proud of the work that you do and making everyone feel that way about the work that they're doing, I think is just paramount. I think it's incredibly important. And the reason is that, and it's not for the pride itself, it's not egotistical.

(Hunter at 00:46:56) It is that so many good things happen when you're proud of what you're doing. It means you're telling the truth because you're not going to be proud of not telling the truth. It means you're doing great, high-quality work because you're not going to be proud of producing crap. You know, it means that you're doing the best that you can and the team is running as best as it can because you wouldn't be all that proud of anything less than that. And so I try to instill that sense of pride into my team and, you know, we've built a culture around that—that we want to be really proud of the work that we're doing, our mission, our products, our code, you know, down to the everyday.

(Hunter at 00:47:39) You know, everything matters is another thing that I believe, which is that the small things are very, very important. You know, everything matters. I learned that from my eighth grade soccer coach of all places, and it stayed with me this entire time. You know, it was like tying your shoelaces nice and tight. It's important. You know, running out the ball even though you know it's going to go out of bounds, just keep running all the way until the ref blows the whistle. You know? And that kind of thinking, you know, when I applied it to engineering, it's actually very easy to apply it to engineering, right? The details are so important. The quality is so important. You know, those are two kind of big things in our culture: be proud of what you're doing, and everything matters.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:29) Reminds me of that one really famous Navy SEAL speech about making your bed in the morning. You ever come across that?

(Hunter at 00:48:36) I think I have actually. I think I have. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:39) Something like, if you can't make your bed in the morning, how do you expect to do anything else?

(Hunter at 00:48:45) Right, exactly. Exactly. I mean—

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:48) It sounds like those two things are a really good recipe for having great employee engagement and having them really care about what they're doing. That's just been top of mind for me because I had to do some market research a little while ago, and I think it was a Gartner report on employee engagement that was talking about how companies with higher employee engagement are just significantly more successful on a variety of metrics. So if you find whatever you can to increase employee engagement, that's a real recipe for success. So I think those two things of pride in your work and everything matters are really good ingredients for that.

(Hunter at 00:49:35) Yeah. And, you know, the other thing that I try to do—I can't wait for my team to listen to this and chuckle—but, you know, another way, because you're right, the engagement of the team is everything. You know, you can't get anything accomplished without a really engaged team. And the way that I choose to do that is empower them and get out of their way.

(Hunter at 00:50:02) Right? Make sure they have the authority and the tools and the access they need to do great things and support them, and then get out of their way and let them do awesome things, right? And so, you know, I try to make that a part of the culture as well because, like you said, when they have some ownership over what we're doing, right, it makes them engaged. It makes us all engaged. We want to feel like we're part of something bigger than just ourselves. And we want to be proud of what we're building and we want to have some ownership on that. And so, you know, that's another big, really important piece.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:40) Yeah. And I can quickly advocate for that on the other side of the employee side because that's something that has come up on the podcast for years, prior to me ever even being at the company here. And the founder of the company, Joel, is taking that to heart. And he has given me a lot of freedom and authority to kind of take this where I want to go. And I've learned and grown a lot from that as an employee and now starting to lead. And I think, yeah, you can just treat me as a case study there. It works. But all right. So before we wrap up, is there anything else that we want to get out there that we didn't get to touch on today?

(Hunter at 00:51:35) The big mission for us is actually crystal clear. Users should be compensated for their data. You know, the how is more complicated, and that's what we've built, and that's what we're continuing to build and execute on. But the writing on the wall is very clear that this is the direction that we're heading in.

(Hunter at 00:51:59) You know, you only have to look at the iOS updates recently that people, you know, you have to explicitly ask permission to use their data. It's all coming. It's all converging right now. And, you know, and so it's just a really exciting time to be, you know, not just a leader at a tech company, but also a consumer. It's a really great time to be a consumer of digital technology because, you know, we're taking some of it back.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:36) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you would like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email, [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.