Note: This transcript was automatically generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and therefore typos may be present.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Hey folks, Rob McNealy here and today I’m talking to Ruben Mira. He is the CEO of engrave, and they got a really interesting product coming out a new type of hardware wallet, which I think all my crypto listeners are really going to be excited about. So Reuben, welcome to the show. How are you today?
Ruben Merre – NGRAVE
I’m feeling sunny. Oh, good.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Well, very good. I’m excited to hear about what your new product is about. So today where where are we talking to you from?
Ruben Merre – NGRAVE
Belgium and more specifically, a very tiny village in the countryside. Where I’m hiding from movies?
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Well, I can understand, I think that’s a good thing. I’ve only been, I only landed in the airport in Brussels. I’ve only been about through Belgium. I’ve never really been in Belgium. But it’s on my bucket. It’s on my bucket list they used to, I used to live in Ireland. And then I’ve been to Switzerland and a bunch of other places in Europe over the years, but I actually have never really spent any time in Belgium. And it’s something I regret. But I think after all, this COVID stuff is kind of behind us. I’m going to probably take some time and do some traveling again, because I’m having that itch to go and get out of town, so to speak. So for my my listeners are a lot of entrepreneurs and not just crypto people. So we always like to talk about the the business piece the the entrepreneurial piece. So tell us a little bit about your background and how did you get started and what did you do before you did engrave?
Ruben Merre – NGRAVE
Yeah, so I started off studying business engineering. It’s something that doesn’t really exist, I think the other side of the of the world, but you can see it as a combination of basically during an engineering degree. And you add all of these business school classes on top. So, you know, like an MBA this they call an MBA Master’s in business engineering. So I did that for five years, got my masters, and then I started working. And I started working at Deloitte. So probably it’s a company you might still know, in the US. So I worked there as a strategy consultant for two years. And I also realized that during the, during my job, I could actually keep studying. So I’m kind of the lifelong learning tab, where I basically tried to do it an additional postgraduate degree every year. And I did that, I would say, up until the moment that I started in grief, because when I started in grief, that was really the moment that I just couldn’t combine it anymore. Nevertheless, I tried to read one book a week so that 50 books a year or so is still within my goals and I’m still achieving that. So yeah, I would say after after Deloitte, which was strategy consulting, like for CXO level in companies, I liked it, but for me it was most it was a bit too. But the organization was a bit too big and I didn’t feel that entrepreneurial vibe. So I joined a smaller management consulting company. Basically, it started at the time, I was one of the first 10 people. And eventually it made me I had a lot of liberty and freedom to help the company grow. So I went to Italy, I set up the Italian branch, I went to Germany set up the German branch, and I actually lived in different countries during my life also during my studies, so for example, in Spain and Mexico, so I basically mastered six languages professionally, and I could actually leverage that to help the company expand in all of these different countries. And let’s say a couple of years later and being a business in several countries, we kind of sold the business to cognizance, also all of those big behemoths. And I myself, actually, so I was a management consultant and innovation consultant. But I was in a unique seat, let’s say to choose a bit my projects. And I like to do those that were more like entrepreneurial. So in the beginning. So basically in parallel with my job, I launched the first automated investment platform in Belgium. It’s something that in the US is known as Robo advisory I don’t know if you’ve ever heard about that basically, basically means that you fill in sort of a questionnaire to determine what your risk versus adversities. And then based on that there are all these algorithms that work for you every day and they kind of rebalance your portfolio continuously to make sure you have the best portfolio that taking care of your risk and at the same time maximizing the return even that risk. So I built the first platform like that in Belgium. Then I also scaled it to A couple of other countries, and eventually one of the big financial players. They hired me to set a bollock a whole new business unit that was totally dedicated to algorithmic trading, automated investment platforms. And I did that for two year, two years. So I let the whole program there. And that was just before I started in grief. And I was supposed to become, let’s say, the piano leader of that, of that block. But the moment that we were starting to engrave I realized that the potential is so huge that I basically decided to completely shift everything. So I was actually not not really in the blockchain space before. I started in grief, just a little bit. And but nowadays, obviously, it’s the exact opposite. Now I live and breathe blockchain and crypto and the security some really excited that we can announce that in less than a month we will actually be launching this beautiful product.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So how long have you been in the crypto space?
Ruben Merre – NGRAVE
I’ve been in the crypto space Since the top of the market, so I joined when I think Bitcoin was just around floating around $19,000.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So fairly new, we actually I got into crypto probably not that much before that either, as well. So I’m not going to give anybody a hard time. We jumped right in with launching our project, right? Like literally New Year’s Day of 2018 is when we launched our test project. So it’s like, yeah, I can understand anything in there that that, so to speak. So I’m telling you about engrave. What do you what are you doing with engrave?
Ruben Merre – NGRAVE
Yeah, so I had to say, for example, my founders have been in the space way longer than me, gave you, for example, has been in the space since 2013. And so he was also one of those victims of Mount Gox where they lost 850 thousand bitcoins in total, a lot less.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
That’s expensive.
Ruben Merre – NGRAVE
Yeah. And the thing is that in 2016, he did an ICO which is projects. The risk 76,000 ether, so respectable amount I would say. And in 2017, they, he opened up the smart contract balance of his company, and everything was gone. So everything was stolen, hacked, empty balance. And you can imagine that the moment you do that in front of your computer, you’re extremely shocked. And they beat me it was 44,000 aetherium that they lost. And it wasn’t a parity hack. It’s one of those more famous hacks in the crypto history. And basically, he got his head together with a couple of other white hat hackers. And what they did is they automated the heck, they attacked themselves 500 other projects, and they stole $200 million from these projects. And obviously, they did that with all the best intentions, basically, to protect these guys from the bad hackers. And so eventually they gave back this $200 million worth of crypto obviously with the let’s say, the welder side note that if the Police would have gotten before they gave it back here they would they would probably be in prison right now. And that’s also a bit like Genesis story of engrave. So Xavier eventually became CTO of that project. He became extremely passionate about security. And when I joined the space, which was actually fairly later, so in 2018, I did realize quite quickly that there were some really big issues going on in the in the industry. And so the three of us basically brainstorms on Okay, let’s assume that we have our very first or very last Bitcoin, let’s say we have 100 Bitcoin each, and we have to put it somewhere where we would completely trust that it would still be there in the next day, we opened up the wallet, and we just couldn’t find an answer to that. So what we decided to do at that very moment in April 2018, was let’s build that solution that’s built the best security solution in the world for crypto. Have you understood, obviously That just the three of us, we would never be able to do that, or pull that off just by ourselves. So we Ghana went looking for the best players in the world for their specific niche. And we took two months to build our own prototype, we built it on the Raspberry Pi, we took the time as well to, let’s say, make a business pitch and so on. And we went knocking on the door of the world’s leading research and development Institute’s I make and they are so the r&d leader there for nano electronics. And to just give you like one, one example, in 2018, the tape the first atom size chip to the first chip in the world size of an atom three nanometers big they made it and so we went knocking on their door and we said hey, we are looking for a good partner to build this with. And they also have happened to have a tech acceleration program, one of the top five in the world and so they said Okay, let’s let’s, let’s go for it. Let’s put you in the program. Let’s see how it goes. And after a couple of months, they also realized that actually, we were really not kidding around. And the the approached us with the ask, can we co develop this with you guys. And as from that moment, so let’s see, Summer 2018, we basically have been in a code Development Partnership with ionic. Whereas the IP, the intellectual property still remains fully. There are sort of three of us. That’s just a, let’s say, the start of the story that I guess you have any questions for me?
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
I got a few. So how are you funding this? Did you did you go and do a raise somewhere VC funded or did you sell fund in bootstrap?
Ruben Merre – NGRAVE
Yeah, so we are really, really conscious of the fact that dilution is the last thing you wanna you want to have in the company. So what we did today, and we’re actually pretty proud of that is we were able to raise all the money. We needed to do this without having to go to VC. So what did we do, we got a little bit of an investment in from the very beginning from ionic itself, then we basically got a bank to bank us up, let’s say in that, simply put, we got a small Angel round in the beginning with a couple of business angels. And eventually, we also got European Commission backing this, the Belgian government backing us, and even the web three foundation. And right now we have, let’s say, a modest amount of convertible notes running, we have raised quite a bit of money and more than a million, let’s say to keep it simple and still a bit enigmatic, but So our idea was we have to first do a sales round. And after that sales round, we can basically validate the demands. That’s when we want to do around and right now we are three weeks away from the start of that sales round. So we will be launching on Indiegogo, the 20 Sixth of May. And there you will be able to buy our engraves yogurt and Griffin combo solution at 50% discount on the very first day. And after that Thursday then obviously the discount will decrease gradually or the price will increase gradually. And for us it has been quite the roller coaster, let’s say to get to this point to build something so secure that is in hardware and security and crypto. It’s like the worst three niches in the world put together for an entrepreneur. But we so we basically made it this far and now it’s about getting those sales and then after that we already have a crowdfunding in place. So we will likely do that first. So get a bit more debt and then we will go for a round. So Alright, these to do a first big round by the end of 2020.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So I definitely see that ease of use and crypto security are pretty vital, especially for mass adoption and and I’m not just talking Kaster. I’m a co founder of a community crypto project. So I’m always, you know, trying to figure out what would make it easier for the artists, our community to, you know, get pushed out to the mainstream, and how do we protect those people? So, tell me about the product. What makes the engrave wallet better than other options that are on the market now?
Ruben Merre – NGRAVE
Yes, well, there are actually many, many different innovations that we bring and retract, we’re going to try to spoon feed these to the markets. Because what we did and I think it’s also something that is different from all the other players is we don’t consider security as similar as all the others do. So if you think about it, in our opinion, security is not a secure crypto exchange. Security is not a secure hardware wallet. Security is a end to end approach where you think of what’s the first step until what’s the very last step and the first step is how do I create a private key or let’s say, a crypto wallet in a completely secure way. The last step is what if tomorrow I pass away? How can my family get access to my crypto in a secure way? and everything in between? So what we did is we we thought initially about, okay, how are keys generated? And we understood that actually already there, there were a couple of issues. So we resolve those issues with a couple of innovations. One of them is called the engrave perfectly. So we actually step away from the mnemonic seed phrases, we support them, so you can still use them, you can still make one but we actually introduce a whole new key, and we use that key throughout the entire lifecycle of let’s say, your cryptocurrencies. So, if we if we start at the very beginning, we have three products. The first one is the angry zero hardware wallets. So what is it it is a touchscreen device, it is one for example. And we build it from scratch together with amongst others I’m McKesson, world leader in nanotechnology, to make sure that every single detail about security user’s experience was thought about and was integrated in the in the circuitry of the chip of the electronic circuitry boards and everything else. But so I would say if he would summarize it, so we are an end to end solution, we have a offline hardware wallet. And we have something to replace paper wallets in case you lose your hardware wallet. And we also have an app to take care of the last mile communication with the blockchain. But if we start with this beautiful thing here, so first of all, it is 100% offline, meaning you will never need to connect it to a computer to transactions or anything else. So there is no USB required, there is no 4g Wi Fi, Bluetooth, anything like that. There simply is a simple on and off button on the side. You turn it on, and you can do your thing. And if you need to do, let’s say a transaction or sync and accounts, you just create the QR codes on the screen. And you can scan that with your app. QR codes, the ones we make will never contain any information on the private keys. So obviously, the private key is the most important thing of your wallets. We make it offline, we never expose it. So there are basically zero remote attack vectors. Nobody can attack this device because there simply is no way to make a connection to it. For us, that was the first thing we needed to do bring everything offline. The second thing we did was we made this device physically tamper proof, because one of the questions is what if somebody finds my device? We military grade tamper proof does they say I find it a bit not I don’t find it very nice words military grade. So I would say we have put in place several cumulative layers of anti tampering to make sure that if even at some points you get that far the device will know it’s under attack, it will bite the keys. And just to be sure, we introduce something entirely new as well, which is the high security certification. Any of these wallets has ever gotten, Ill said. So, to put that a bit in contrast, banks and governments have on average five or six out of the seven levels, there are a ledger nano x, for example has five on a secure element. We have seven on this on the secure firmware. So if you try to attack this device, it is one of the most difficult things you will probably have to do in your life. And this thing is is the only one that has this L seven certification in the whole blockchain world. So that’s how serious we take your security. And obviously then we have the ease of use parts that comes to mind.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So tell me about how I would physically use that. So you have this. It looks like a slick little device. I got some pictures ahead of time and, and I think the interface looks really, really good. So do I need to For instance, if I’m going to go shopping and I want to go to a retailer, do I need to take this device with me every time everywhere I go?
Ruben Merre – NGRAVE
Well, the use case of a hardware wallet is basically for your huddle part of your portfolio. So if you think about you, let’s say your traditional wallet, your traditional fiat money, you have a current accounts, let’s say 10, maybe 20% of your money. And then 80% or more of all your money is actually somebody in a savings account or an investment account. And hardware wallets were invented to take care of the parts that is long term. So basically, what you normally do is you put in a USB stick in your computer, which has which specific security protocols, and you can send your crypto to the accounts on the device. By doing so, you basically put them offline and you put them away for a longer period. And anything you need to do transactions with you can keep that on your exchange account, or let’s say on a software wallet app that you take with you into a shop. So you wouldn’t need the hardware wallets, per se. And so let’s say that for us, obviously the use case is exactly the same. So the ID or the intention of a hardware wallet is not to take it with you. But because it is so variable, basically, it’s a pocket size. You could have, for example, two of these wallets one year to keep at home, and one that you can have with you and with which you could, in fact, go and purchase stuff in the shop. It is not our intended use case. But you can always you can always do so. But we don’t really recommend it. I think the best thing you can do with your current account is just have it on your app or have the money in your portfolio, in cash, and just be that way. The only thing is you will be risking, let’s say a small portion of your money, because it can be hacked. It is online.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
I couldn’t agree more. So you say you’re going to be launching this in three weeks. Oh, where will it be launched? Is it going to be in Europe first or will be able to be purchased by say Americans or what’s the first target markets that you’re going to be launching.
Ruben Merre – NGRAVE
Yep, no, everybody will be able to purchase it. Because we’re actually doing it through Indiegogo. So you know, Kickstarter is one of those big crowdfunding platforms. Indiegogo is more or less the same size, or at least in the same year. But they’re mostly focused on not just hardware, like, let’s say, backpacks with more like hardware technology. So basically exactly the niche we are in. It’s a huge platform, it’s worldwide. So it doesn’t really matter from where you are buying. You can buy from wherever you want. And for us, it’s it gives this extra interesting dimension. Because if there is, let’s say, in the Philippines, a huge number of people who actually love waterfalls, it’s something we might not know today. They can, they can reveal themselves. And we have some sort of a pull strategy where the customer can tell us, hey, you exist, we want one of these we want them to and if you would say apart from that Indiegogo strategy, our main goal would be in the first place to go for Europe and Northern America and then expand from there from there.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Well, very cool. Ruben, where can people find out more about your new engrave wallet?
Ruben Merre – NGRAVE
Well, you have the website, which is very straightforward. Engrish mg R a v.io. If you add slash like a backslash and then subscribe, you can subscribe right now to the waiting list to select your shirt you can get 50% off on the day that we launched on the 26th of May. And we actually also have a competition going on right now a giveaway, where if you enter it you have you will be able to win one of 10 potential combos so the hardware wallets and also our backup solution. That will be you can you can enter the competition until somewhere like the week of the 20th.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Wonderful, Ruben, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I think our listeners are going to have to take a look at what you’re doing with the engrave wallet. And I really do appreciate all your time. I think you’ve been very informative and I’m always active To see about new technology and solutions for safe storage of crypto assets and, and it looks like this is going to be a winner. I can’t wait to get my hands on one myself.
Ruben Merre – NGRAVE
Yeah, definitely buy one or read one if you can. Right now is really the time for all of that.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
I will try my hand. All right, thank you so much Ruben. This is Rob McNealy. Thank you for listening. Folks check sent to the web at RobMcNealy.com and we’ll catch you next time.