In The Loop’s Post

Transcript

Really excited for today. We have made Michaelson through actor of global sales at GK8A cyber security custody infrastructure for financial institutions and a really exciting company in the digital asset space and and it may some time ago and uh awesome web three event. She just moved over to Seattle and just was super interested in her overall story and the work that she's doing. What was your dream job as a kid, and did you ever expect getting to where you are now? Like, did this dream job turn into your job now? No. My dad owned a construction company. I was raised in construction sites like monitoring progress every time it goes away. So no, I thought I would work in construction on my life. Uh, build buildings. And yeah, I did not expect that at all. But my dad taught me a lot of. Physics doing the work. So I started my bachelor degree in physics when I was in 10th grade in telling the Israeli MIT all Technion. And that's how I got into check. I want to say so no. My dream job was to run a construction company. I did my bachelor degree eventually in Computer Science in Tel Aviv University. Umm, so I did not finish my physics one. That I did it in computer science. I was working in in Intel as an engineer, hated my life. It was really not for me and I did not know what to do because again, I. Study computer science. What should I do? And then I I published the post on Facebook saying uh. I don't know what to do with my life. Can you please tell me what are you guys doing? And then I heard about awesome and then I heard about business development. Investigated that a bit and said OK, this is development. Sounds like a. One position that might fit me, but where? Where should I do that? And then I say I heard about a a new company in Israel. They just raised the ground cold pinky. It was a payment keyboard for financial institutions to bridge the gap between the financial institution and the messaging app to actually bring the the banks to where the clients are spending their time. I contacted the CEO. We met. And ask him, do you have a business development department? He's like, no, he's like, great, Can I I want to open it for you. It's like, do you know what it means? I was like, no, but do you know what it means being the CEO? He's like, no, I'm like, great. Yeah, we're both gonna learn on the fly. And he gave me the shot. They send me to every conference possible to represent the company to be on the stage and every, yeah, every accelerator possible. Like I spent a month in Singapore when you'll be accelerator. I spend here a month and it's. I did have kids back then. It was very easy. Was there for four years and then I was contacted by Leo which is GK CEO that shared with me about GTA and new company that also just raised seed round for Malios. NAFTA is the cofounder of Checkpoint 2 security freaks that found a way to eliminate attack vector in the custody space of crypto. I personally invested in crypto for quite some time back then. I was super intrigued by it. I learned a lot about the custody. I talked a lot with a different investors to hear. Whether it's a should I check the battery, actually leave my job and join there and I decide to do so and I'm super happy. I've been with the company now for again four years so GK these galaxies self custody technology providing the most secure end to end self custody infrastructure to different financial institutions, central banks, exchanges. And that was my journey. I I saw this great person, we'll add it later and kind of as a link of what it actually means and web three and what it means in the real world. So could you just in the middle of a breakdown, what does custody mean or of like assets and such. I I think that would be really helpful to share. Every time you buy an asset, everybody you every time you buy crypto, you want to send it to your wallet, right? What is your wallet, your wallet is kind of like? The house in the cloud, right? Like the house in the cloud. They got an address like your house today and you send money over there. The only way to get funds out is through the private keys where the key to the house. This space of custody is divided into two main segments. Cold wallets and hot wallets. So cold wallets. It's a wallet that does not meant for day-to-day activity. It's meant for treasury management. It's supposed to be the most secure. Bunker that you have to say keep your digital assets. In addition, there is a thing called hot wallet which must have because. You contacted your, you go to your Binance account, next one to send out transaction to Sophia. You don't want to wait 24 hours, you want it to happen immediately. Yeah, yeah, that's what you need to have a hot wallet for high frequency transaction, right? Like your direct deposit. What do you think that's like a an equivalent term and a regular financial market? Exactly. Those like a, I play some sort of role in this technology that you're developing? Or do you expect it to be included in the product road map at some point soon? So, so definitely because if you think about what we're doing. Where is security for financial institution, which is a huge target for hackers? Hacking is all about ROI. We will see more and more hacking events happening because AI will be involved. So yes, our job is to make sure our clients will never be hacked. And I is a huge role in just protecting against those upcoming threats on a personal basis, like personal and quite dependent on JPT. I'm addicted. And yeah, I'm actually curious about that like. It's kind of like two form but like and I'm asking kind of the other way around so like what how have you been using AI in like your day-to-day so you mentioned you love chat should be I mean super helpful for me understand what custody is. I just searched and kind of go back and forth and explain it to me like a toddler make it into a nursery rhyme like you can make it in really fun ways of learning. I agree I I'm curious how have you been using it in your day-to-day. I've been using it a lot for research I've been using it a lot in. Rewriting complex. Technical explanations to sometimes not technical people. So like I have a lot of. Things they need to. When do is explain to the other parties, but again they're coming from different backgrounds, so it really helps in that perspective as well. Our space is constantly changing right like and you have to keep up to date. So like last week I was in digital asset time in London, two weeks before that I was in Denver and you constantly hear new terms, you learn new stuff and you try to write it down for yourself. So you can actually after what research and learn from it. For me, I have some people in YouTube or even in Telegram that publish like updates and I like to follow them. But yeah, I think in our space, if you don't educate yourself. Like few months afterwards, they have no idea what the people are talking about. It's exactly and that's the whole reason like why we made this podcast right? Staying in the loop. And we really want to share with our audience, like how like Max and I, what are we reading? What podcasts are we watching? And so can you go a little bit deeper into what you were saying before and what events you like to go to, what podcast, what newsletters you like to read and just kind of share with the audience? How do you stay in the loop? Yeah, sure. So I try to go to big conferences of. Traditional financial institutions. This is one, but also crypto. More crypto focus type of events. So if Denver was one that I went was was amazing and the speakers over there were amazing and the amount of knowledge I acquired in those days were mind blowing. I'm going to go to East Boston as well. You have Paris Blockchain week coming up. You have the Guitar Acid Summit, you have token 2049 in Dubai if you follow Galaxy like they classically publish researches. That provide you amazing knowledge of everything that happened in the industry, but very deep technical that they know how to simplify. So they're ahead of research. Alex is amazing. They have amazing people in their research lab. They're constantly publish more and more information and that's like more deep crypto knowledge I want to say. So I follow some once they leave the researchers then just publish a lot of information that simplify them for you and then you know how. How the industry is changing? What does that mean? All those terms and they constantly say and of course you have coin Telegraph, you have all those websites that keeps you up and up to date with. Just day-to-day activities, what does your role really look like? What is it day-to-day, but also there's travel involved and also learning and absorbing what's going in the market. Like yes, there's the title Director of Sales, but what does that actually mean? So I love my job and what it really means is so I'm, I'm the Director of Global Sales for GED in Latin America and in the US what it means that basically I'm in charge of the expansion of the company in those those regions. So in the US for example, we want to target. The top financial institutions, The top 50 biggest banks in the US. So I need to get in contact with them. How do I get in contact with the head of digital assets off? I don't know. Being why melon off, Citibanks off? Of those type of financial institutions. So then it's on me, I need to find a connection how to meet them, whether it's they're speaking in a conference and I'll go there and I'll try to. Talk to them, hunt them down once they go out of off of stage or or through partners and then talk to them, explain to them a little bit, but what do you K schedule more calls And then to basically complex cell, umm talking to the business side, talking to the security side, talking to IT, talking to operation. Show them what why we can be the best fit. To execute their current and future blockchain strategy, negotiation of terms, talking to product, to really maybe modify some of the stuff in our solution to fit exactly their needs. Max and I smile because that sounds very similar to what we do. I'm getting spammed and sales sales is, they're very similar in sales is how I explain it. Yeah and and also taking care of the brand awareness. So going on stages so everybody would know. Who we are and what we're doing. So if they're looking into custody or building something, they know we could be their ideal partner. My role I I worked a lot of like how do we serve our financial customers and this digital transformation and we spoke a bit offline how it's not the fastest moving space especially, but like that's how it is with highly regulated institutions and that makes sense and I'm happy about that. So how have you kind of seen that especially being a new nascent technology coming into this space and if you're focus are these. Institutions like, how have you navigated that? Well, we're like some of the kind of the big glasses you've really taken away and didn't meet them where they're at. I use a lot of LinkedIn to actually contact them directly, but a bit by bit Like you have your network off like Head of Digital Assets, CIO, CDO of the Banks. Then you get to see in every conference that you get to take. Sometimes for dinner at through Galaxy. We're meeting a lot of super relevant people as well, so Galaxies being an amazing resource for introduction. But Sales Navigator is still a great tool. It can organize for your list. You can send their messages for people who are not in your network, which is also super comfortable. So when I say that through that I actually get in direct contact with the people. With the right stakeholders in the financial institutions and then you need to do the research. What is City Bank is doing now? What is Bank of America is doing now? How do you speak exactly to the project they're they're doing and if they're doing maybe custody today with someone else what is the difference between the two of you and what can what are the other capabilities that you can provide them You hear a lot where what three is the solution trying to find its problem when a lot of the times when technology or how things work is you have a problem you're trying to find a solution. You probably also hear this too with some of the customers that you're kind of meaningless like what is this really solving? Um, So I curious your thoughts around there, there's many interesting project in web three that really could really solve many. Many tough problem in the world today, but you need to have brand names to actually lead that. So people will will adapt them. So institutions will adapt them. Like suddenly you see the not website, but like suddenly you see the ETF with Black Rock and you see massive adoption because you have the name Black Rock. But I I can say what? What will prevail? What will win? What will really change the industry overall. And all this even in AI we all don't know. And so just to end our time here with uh another fun question and and something that I think Max and I can also learn a lot from you is what advice would you give your younger self what I recently learned and. Is I learned how to learn. Um, a lot of this stuff. I thought that if I'm not coming from this background I probably will not have extended or you know you're sticking down yourself or or you're bringing technical expert with you to different calls because you say like they know they check well. But no, you can actually be a source of information for everything you need but you just have to educate yourself and educate yourself well. Be confident in asking question. People like to want to explain to people who really wants to learn and and take the effort. To learn and write it all down. So I found myself recently educating myself on every field of information. I'm lacking expertise and that's really changed also the way my confidence, but also just the way I. I I approach every situation or? Where everything in my life. So yeah, that's that's a typo would give for myself.