Joe Luong is co-founder and CEO of Crypta Labs – a security startup that is developing a quantum based encryption to secure the Internet of Things (IoT).
They focus primarily on what they call the ‘fatality market’ i.e. any IoT product that, if hacked, could kill. That includes transportation, driverless cars, normal cars, healthcare and critical infrastructure – all areas which are, in Joe’s words, “in desperate need of better or higher level of security and a higher level of encryption.” That’s exactly why Crypta Labs exists.
We caught up with Joe to find out more about his history, the story of the business, and the difficulties they’ve encountered when it comes to recruiting for a bleeding edge cyber security startup.
Identifi: Hi Joe. Before Crypta Labs, you founded iProsper Media – a full-service digital agency. That’s an interesting transition, how did you go from that into cyber security?
JL: Sure – but I will actually need to take one step back from that. I am an accountant by profession, and before iProsper, I was a roaming financial controller – basically a trouble shooting accountant, roaming the Earth to work in various different hotels. I did that for about 12 years before I decided to start my first company.
iProsper Media was essentially a digital agency specialising in financial services. We looked after banks, mutual societies, friendly societies, and helped promote their product. So there is a common thread there – accountancy to digital agency for the finance sector, and the financial sector is hot on cyber security, so your career path isn’t as unusual as it might first appear.
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Anyway, I ran iProsper Media for about seven years, and one of our main products that made the bulk of our revenue was called The Child Trust Fund. That was an initiative started by the Labour government to help families save for their children’s future – and that was taken on by the banks, the mutual societies, some of the big supermarkets. They all promoted this product and we played a part in helping the government promote it.
It ceased when the Conservative government came into power, and I decided to look around to see if there was anything interesting happening. I met up with three guys at the Google campus in Old Street, and, although we didn’t know it at the time, we were basically looking for each other.
One was doing a PhD in mathematics, one was in cryptography and the other was a developer; they had this cool idea around the cyber and they needed money and a bit of business expertise. Over the space of about six months we did some basic research about the area and each other, and then we started Crypta Labs in May 2014.
Identifi: So it was just four of you?
JL: Yes, indeed. As it developed we brought on new people. We brought in more developers, and after that, we brought on board quantum guys, and then guys who are in software and hardware development. Then we talked about building this on a mobile phone, so we brought in some mobile phone specialists. The team grew as the ideas kept on developing.
Identifi: Is the core idea that you had at the start still central to Crypta Labs?
JL: The initial idea was to use GPS location to develop a new type of authentication. Out of that came the idea of having a pseudo-random number as part of authentication.
As I was trying to understand what a pseudo-random number is, what effect it had, we were pushing the idea further. A pseudo=random number is actually quite a bad number, in the sense that it’s not a true random number. It is a number generated by a computer. If it’s generated by a computer, another computer can crack it, and if another computer can crack it, the encryption is essentially flawed.
So we pushed it to the next level, which is to make it into a true random number, and then the idea came to make it into a quantum random number which, in the quantum world, we believe it is the most securest way to generate random numbers.
Identifi: As recruiters, we’re interested in the business challenges of that early period too. Who were the first people that you got on board, and what were the big challenges to grow the business?
JL: Recruitment is undoubtedly a tough part of building any company, but for a science/tech startup like ourselves…finding the right people with the right expertise was, and is, the hardest. I did a lot of door knocking.
But with enough perseverance and persistence, we managed to find other people who were able to help us. This is where identifi have really helped. Pete has been able to find me the talent I need in an incredibly niche field. We needed world-leading quantum scientists and the identifi team have helped link us with the likes of National University of Singapore, Oxford University as well as specialist encryption hardware experts. Without that, Crypta Labs would never have been able to develop to what it is today.
Identifi: Is that a particular problem in cyber security, or in quantum encryption, or…
JL: Quantum is a hugely complex area and not everybody has the answer, that’s the thing that we found. Nobody – and we work with the world’s leading scientists – has the absolute answer to what we need, so my main job is to develop a team who can ask the right questions, and then go out and find answers.
That’s undoubtedly the positive of going into an industry that’s hugely complex but seriously needs help. The industry is led entirely by academia, and academics are notoriously slow at working on a commercial model. But what we’ve managed to learn is that our ability to draw expertise from literally every corner of the earth helps meet those challenges. We still face some, but less so now that we’ve got a reputation in the sector for doing something quite unique and slightly quirky.
Identifi: Your name attracts those kind of candidates, rather than you having to proactively go and plug the job market?
JL: Yeah. For example, I’ve got a US General on my board of advisors; that by itself has its own attraction. When you’re working in a security sector, trust is the most important commodity, and when you have people like that being part of Crypta Labs, that builds trust for us.
Then we have the University of Bristol. We’ve been working with them for about two years – we brought them on board to deliver a bespoke product for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and again, those names build trust between everyone involved. We brought on board prominent people from our sector to help us so that when we do recruit, when we speak to people, they understand what we’re doing is high-end, has relevancy, and can save lives.
Identifi: Your role as CEO is building these partnerships – do you get involved in the recruitment process for new hires as well?
JL: As a CEO for a start-up I get involved with everything! I make a mean cup of tea…
But yeah – I get involved with everything from initially looking for people onwards. Now that I know the sector fairly well, it’s not that difficult to find the expertise. It’s more that with new hires – especially when you’re trying to integrate them into your core management team – it’s actually quite hard for them to understand the idea of working for a startup, or working to a specific product vision and then taking that to a commercial level. Because of that I’m not necessarily looking for the main expertise. I’m also looking for people who have got cultural values that are aligned with ours.
“We can literally put in all of our resources into any project that we see has an immediate return on investment.”
That’s incredibly important with a startup, because the goals keep shifting all the time – but the goals can also be met very quickly. We can literally put in all of our resources into any project that we see has an immediate return on investment, so we can move very fast. But from a person who doesn’t understand the idea of working for a startup and having that agility, that can be quite challenging, so we looked for people who are able to change as and when needed.
Identifi: Adaptability is one of the characteristics you look for, then?
JL: Absolutely. Flexibility, adaptability and focus. In many ways it’s contradictory because you need to be focused on the right thing, but you also need the ability to be a generalist, to understand the ecosystem and adapt to it. But when we do focus, we focus absolutely…
Identifi: You need to focus on the right thing, but the right thing could be different tomorrow?
JL: Exactly. That’s exactly it. That’s what I mean when I said working for a startup is incredibly hard. It’s not for everybody, and I’ve had several teams that have come in and out because they don’t understand how the startup mentality works. Everybody wants to run their own company but nobody knows what that means.
Identifi: What does your team look like now?
JL: The biggest part of any startup is the team, you need to be able to trust each other, listen to each other and challenge each other at every turn. I’m lucky to have a fantastic team with me at Crypta Labs.
We’ve got Oliver Maynard, our CTO, who is a very experienced “traditional” CTO, in the sense that he is very technical but he’s also built and sold numerous business in the past. And he is essentially our tech brain – he understands some of the hugely complex products that we’re building. It also helps that Olly and I have been friends for many years where, in our previous lives, we worked together at iProsper Media.
Our Head of Operations is Anna McLaughlin. Anna is lawyer by profession that moved onto startups several years ago. She now specialises in managing all aspects of our grants, government projects and helping us taking the product to market.
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Then we have our legal manager, Samara [Zimmerman]. Pretty much everything we do requires some form of compliance, especially when we come to cyber security and government work. It is a hugely bureaucratic and compliance-led sector, so we brought a legal manager on board.
We’ve also got our first technical hire beside our CTO, Mayeul d’Avezac our Head of Research and Software. He has a PhD in physics, but he’s also got expertise in software development, so he kind of crosses the chasm between the tech and the science.
Then we have various people who deal with the special projects for us. Here the team expands exponentially, because we now hire probably about 15 to 20 different experts around the world. We have two or three guys in Singapore – Alex Ling is world renowned in the field of quantum encryption, for example. He’s one of our main consultants we work with.
Identifi: So these experts, they’re pouring their research and their expertise into what you do. Are they advisors, or are they contractors, or are they short-term hires?
JL: They’re contractors. I mentioned Alex, but under Alex there’s his team that do other work with him. I mentioned Bristol Uni: there we have four guys who formed a breakaway company called KETS who are essentially the nano-quantum team of the university. We’re also working with guys from Oxford University – two guys that we’ve commissioned there. We work with guys from Newcastle to do testing on encryption for us.
The point is we can pretty much find people that can answer any question we ask. The problem for any business is asking the right questions. This is why we surround ourselves with clever people to ask the questions, because then we can go out and find the right expertise.
Identifi: You have an interesting approach to the skills gap in that you’re incredibly proactive in finding the people who are already proven and researching in that field. It sounds like you’re probably not going to get someone who has 70% of what you need and train them in-house because you haven’t really got time to do that.
JL: Yes and no, funnily enough.
I will say yes first, in a sense. Everybody who works for us is incredibly smart. I don’t hire half-baked people. I don’t have time, and the product that we’re doing is hugely complex.
The “no” answer is that nobody, and I mean nobody, within Crypta Labs knows all the answers to what we’re doing. We have Alex, world renowned quantum scientist. We ask him questions. He’ll just turn around and say, “Joe, I don’t know the answer, that’s not my area, I specialise in this area but I don’t know the answer to that area, let me introduce you to people that can help you.”
We are all very much specialists in what we do. Combined we have the answer, singularly we don’t. If someone comes to me with 80% of the answers or 70% of the answers I will take that person without a shadow of a doubt. That 70% means that this person understands quantum, understands chip development, understands software, understands encryption.
“They need to understand quantum encryption, because that’s our future.”
We cross over many different sectors, so it’s such an important skill for someone to be adjustable, to be amenable to understanding other areas that they know little about. A person coming in with a cryptographic background needs to understand how quantum works. That may well be not within their comfort zone but they need to understand quantum encryption, because that’s our future.
Identifi: That’s a challenge of being on the leading edge of technology, isn’t it? No-one does have the answers.
JL: Yes, indeed. No-one should know all the answers, and if someone does come in saying they know all the answers then quite frankly I don’t want them.
Identifi: Talking about that leading edge – you work in the IOT, you work in cyber security, you work in quantum computing. What are the biggest challenges – or the most exciting developments – in those fields, for you?
JL: The biggest challenge is always to build a product that someone wants to buy. I think that’s why, dare I say this, we’ve taken a slightly different approach than a university. Literally every company that is in quantum has been a breakaway from a university, and it tends to be academic led, and they look for perfection. They look for being the biggest, the baddest product.
In a commercial world that’s not what we want. In a commercial world what they want is a product that fits in with their requirements. For us the big question is “how do we meet their requirements?” We build our technology and our science around that, rather than ‘hey, look at what we’ve built, who wants to buy this?’
Our biggest challenge, which we are looking to overcome in the coming weeks and months, is to work with industry and build a product around them. That for us will give us our first product to market, and that for us is survival. If you don’t sell your product then you won’t survive.
Identifi: That’s a good point. The quantum space and the IOT are still in their infancy, so there’s a lot of that “first product” work that needs to be done. Throwing AI into the mix… is there anything you’re looking at in that space?
JL: Well, the most exciting thing that we are doing… we call them the moon-shot projects. They’re funded by government, which helps us to build something without the fear of having to fully fund it by selling it.
We’re currently building an encryption solution for driverless cars. Pretty much every single car manufacturer in the world right now has a driverless car section or department – they’re all looking at making their technology the most safe, the most secure, the most cool. And they’re all looking at companies like ourselves and asking us “can you help us to secure our car?”
Our remit is to look at securing the CANbus. Rather than making your existing CANbus better, we tear it apart and start from the beginning, and rebuild the security angle from bottom up. That’s what we’re doing right now. We’re working with Coventry University to build the encryption for these cars.
The other product that we are building, again, is a moon-shot. And it’s possible because we were one of the first companies to commercialise; one of only two in the world that can generate a quantum random number on a mobile phone.
We’ve just completed a project with Oxford University to create a self-generating quantum random number. We are now developing this into the world’s first quantum seeded encryption phone which will make your iPhone and your Android phone a military grade encryption device.
For us as tech providers, the ongoing issue is “how do we make our data more secure?” Looking at a fully-fledged military grade encryption is obviously one of the areas that we’ll be looking to push for.
Identifi: So, what are your plans from here? Are you looking for hires – and if so what’s the next lot of people on your list? Who do you need?
JL: We are always looking for people to build our business, and we have many projects soon to launch. If we are looking to build the next stage of our driverless car encryption, we’re now going to need car expertise; those who design cars from scratch. Then we’re looking at the security angle. Then we are looking at guys who are looking at encryption on these cars.
We are also about to pilot our quantum seeded encryption phone which means we need partners, in house experts who can help us take this product to the next level. And we’re also about to launch a quantum seeded hardware security module (HSM) to help secure a product for a utility client which means, again, we’ll need specialist help to make it the most secure HSM in the market.
It’s really exciting times for us right now, and we’re always on the lookout for the best and brightest talent to join us on the journey!
Many thanks to Joe for his insights. We’ve been recruiting for Crypta Labs over the last xx months. As Joe says, “we’ve been using Identifi almost on an exclusive basis because purely Pete has pretty much been able to find me people that it’s pretty much almost impossible to find in the area of quantum encryption, in the area of quantum physics, in the area of cryptography.”
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Images via Pixabay and Unsplash
