Interview - Greg Bolcer, Co-founder of Encryptanet
Greg Bolcer was a co-founder of Endeavors Technology and latterly held the position of Chief Technology Officer. He has a strong background in Information Technology and was a pioneer in peer-to-peer infrastructure software.
He is currently working as the Chief Software Architect and Founder of Encryptanet, Inc., a high-tech software company building secure access solutions for premium content using digital certificates. Encryptanet is his second startup company, the first being Endeavors Technology, Inc. which was sold to UK-listed company Tadpole Technology in early 2000.
His doctorate and bachelor's degrees are from the school of Information & Computer Science at UC Irvine. In 2004 he was awarded the Lauds & Laurel's Distinguished Alumnus Award for the Donald Bren School of Information & Computer Science. He also has an M.S. degree in Software Engineering from U.S.C.
Q. It's now just over 2 years since you left your role at Endeavors Technologies, what have you been up to since then?
Greg: Clay Cover, my co-founder at Endeavors, and I started a new venture around Web and security protocols. We had an idea how to build secure, timed-access to any digital content without the unnecessary step of logging in. It's very similar to how Apple iTunes authorizes individual machines to play song files or Sony recognizes approved games for execution on their ps3.
During the course of raising money, the venture capital funds quickly focused on tagging Web content and permitting access based on a proof of action--such as a payment confirmation. It was on this concept that we raised a small round of financing from Sevin Rosen and Palomar Ventures in July '06. We used the money to architect the core technology platform using some of the key Stamps.com technical team here and in India.
Right now we are working on building the consumer-friendly front ends for specific application of the technology.
Q. Apart from your obvious skills in technology, you seem to have a skill of getting in front of people in high places in large companies, does that have a lot to do with re-connecting with your peer group from University days?
Greg: Partially. At the university and afterwards, I was involved in a variety of different communities: academic, government, commercial, military/military-contractors, and startup/venture. The interesting thing about these communities is that each has their own network, people, and priorities. Despite sharing an interest in high tech, they hardly communicate with each other. I was very fortunate to make some key contacts in each and have since become a cross-community gateway for all sorts of introductions.
Q. You have set up a new company Encryptanet with former colleague Clay Cover, tell us what inspired you to do that after your previous experience of setting a company up. What is your product and how does it fit into today's marketplace?
Greg: Both Clay and I are very interested in how early stage technology can be crafted into a new business model. Inside of Endeavors, we had some opportunities to experiment with new product launches, but never had the opportunity to really nurture or capitalize on them. We chose Encryptanet from a list of ideas we had for a new venture based on a variety of criteria.
The idea was basically this: there's only two types of content online, free and subscription. Free isn't really free as advertisers are paying for it. Subscription is hard to set up and users are resistant to making these purchases due to trust, privacy, and security concerns. We invented 'Paycloud' a new way to capture 2-3 times more revenue for digital content than using advertising alone.
The benefit to the digital content vendor is that there's no upfront implementation costs because there's no upfront implementation. Your first sale is your first profit. The benefit to the user is that there's no recurring charges, no disclosure of private information to the site, and no annoying account registration, and no forgotten passwords.
Most of our effort to date has been focused on what happens after a user makes a payment. That's the part where most vendors have to integrate a payment system and then implement user account management, content provisioning systems, and user interfaces.
In terms of market acceptance, Forbes.com is our reference customer for downloadable books. Documen.tv is our reference customer for online movies, and we have a few other customers doing online photography, comic books, licensable artwork, virtual maps, news, and social networking. Even before we've been able to fully launch our offerings, we've had fairly good market acceptance.
Q. There are other methods of collecting small payments online, what makes your different?
Greg: The biggest difference is we don't do small payments. We use PayPal, Amazon, and Google. We're a security and access control company. We were one of the very first partners with PayPal for their micropayments program. There are multiple other companies that are trying to reinvent the wheel, we're not one of them.
Q. It would be safe to say that your parting from Endeavors/Tad would have left a sour taste in your mouth, why then have you agreed to become part of Endeavors Technology Advisory Group TAG and what benefits do you see for both yourself and Endeavors through it's creation?
Greg: I believe Peter Bondar has taken a very objective approach to cleaning up the company. I like his straightforward manner. The benefit to Endeavors is that Peter gets an earful of free advice from an independent outsider. The benefit to me in participating in the advisory group is that I get to keep in touch with some of the senior industry contacts that I made over the years and introduced to new ones.
Q. TAG was launched just some 6 months back. Its still early days, but is it drawing interest from significant visionaries in the supplier marketplace, and if so could you tell us the sort of ideas TAG is playing with?
Greg: TAG thus far has been informal. Neil Gardener will be hosting the first formal TAG meeting sometime in June. To date it's been more of an independent sounding board for product strategy. I'm sure that'll change as more key advisors are added.
I can't speak for Endeavors, but we used the same approach for Encryptanet. We currently and previously had high profile advisors from Stamps.com, Overture/Yahoo, Veoh, Friendster, Myspace, and several others. They've been extremely valuable in helping us forge our strategy.
Q. How many players have joined the club? Are there some luminary Companies and organisations shareholders might recognise?
Greg: I'm sure Endeavors will announce more when they're ready.
Q. Do you think streaming has now come of age and do you see a correlation between Encryptanet's offering and Endeavours' AppExpress?
Greg: The streaming market has forever changed. In particular, there's new ROI models for the technology, greater market acceptance of streaming for applications, validation of streaming for applications by Microsoft, WYSE, and Citrix, and greater consumer demand for universal access.
We're experimenting with some of the Endeavors tools. The issue is that the application express tool is an application provisioning system based on user identities. Encryptanet implements a general digital content provisioning system based on anonymous access.
There are some areas we can add value. For instance, you could lock an account to a single machine to prevent password sharing. That may be something the software publishers may demand to help with license compliance--one of the biggest fears by the software owners about streaming--but to this point it's not clear if that's something application streaming customers want.
Q. Other than Encryptanet, are you working on any new or current projects that you can talk about just now?
Greg: I'm focused solely on getting Encrytanet launched, successful, and generating a good return for my investors.
Dr. Gregory Alan BolcerFounder & Chief Software Architect, Encryptanet, Inc.mailto:Inc.gbolcer@encryptanet.com
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I'd just like to thank Greg for his participation and agreement to being interviewed and I hope we can get a bit more out of him as Encryptanet progresses and as TAG formalizes and grows.
