‍Julian:Hey everyone. Thank you so much for joining the Behind Company Lines podcast.Today we have Archie founder and CEO of Cogni. Cogni is on a mission to provideeasy, transparent, accessible digital banking and lifestyle services on asingle platform. Archie, I'm so excited to chat with you. Not only what you'redoing within the digital banking space, which I think a lot of companies aregetting involved in it, but how you're kind of met.

Mirroring this,this web three capability and this technology. I'm so interested in how themechanics of the wallet actually works for people that are using it, whetherit's, self custody or not, or if it's held in, in cogni, whatever, kinda themechanics are there, but also what it means to have such a seamless kind of platform,not only, having traditional assets on it, but also.

Assets like Webthree and crypto and NFTs, all the things that are starting to become moreprevalent and popular, but also more usable and accessible and, and able toactually, use us as actual commodity or, or, or, or fiat or currency toactually opt into certain things and what that really means for users inbanking, in, in the whole industry and entirety.

But before we getinto all that, what were you doing before you started the company?  

Archie:So, before this I was working for a family office, investing in tech and realestate. And I've always been interested in financial services because, growingup everyone has a bank account. Yeah. And, and when you're first starting upwith your own financial independence Right, you're saving a little bit, butalso you're using that for your lifestyle services.

Yeah. And, andbanks typically aren't catered for people who are just coming, they're 21 yearsold. Right for the lifestyle services, want to experience things and, and dostuff. So I always wanted to create a financial platform that allows users tonot only bank, but also support them on their financial and lifestyle spaceand, and got me started.

Julian:Yeah. And what, and what do you mean by lifestyle? What are the things inexperimenting? Like what are the things that, you were seeing within the, thesefoundational institutions that weren't allowing you to maybe even use money in,in waves that are, are newer or nuanced. What were you seeing that just youweren't getting access to at that time?

Archie:So, at that point of time, this 20 12, 20 13, yeah. You had the whole conceptof peak economy. Yeah. Before. Before 2009, you didn't have a concept of gigeconomy. Everybody was just working. Yeah. So you can see a fundamental shifton lifestyle happening with people, the way you led your life and how you mademoney.

Right? Right.There's now, gig economy is not part of your lifestyle. It's not a uniqueconcept anymore. Everybody has a gig. They wanna make more money. They want tospend more money. Yeah. So, that's how Cogni was started. Why couldn't wecreate a platform that allows people to be creatively independent, not a onesize fits all solution.

And if you'reindependent, the way you're consuming product, service and content is throughthe internet. Mm-hmm. And that is very centralized through, ads and, and socialmedia companies. Yeah. So I to build out a financial platform where you couldbank and build out a product stack that allows users to consume product,service, and content.

But what happenedwas, in the last six years, with the, the blockchain slowly becomingmainstream. Mm-hmm. Especially the last three years. We, we have seen its upand down, but the most fascinating thing about blockchain is decentralization.You can own your own data. You can own your own assets.

It's not anintermediary party that, that, that owns those assets. Yeah. So once we buildadditional bank and I said, Hey, there's a better opportunity if we can moveour product stack from Oh, web two to web three. Yeah. Because it gives morecontrol to the user. Yeah. And, and that's how Cogni took shape. We launchedour digital banking in 2020.

2021. Yeah. Andthen we went into a full build mode where we started, building ournon-custodial wallet within a bank account. So the hardest thing with, with Webthree right now is that you have the crypto natives who are able to use Webthree service a lot more easily. Yeah. Because they spend time learning aboutWeb three.

Mm-hmm. But thecrypto curious and the non-native crypto users, the learning curve is too long.People don't have the time or effort or they, they let the knowledge gap to goand, and find out how to do it. Yeah. So really make it super easy for anaverage consumer to not only bank, but also get the benefits ofdecentralization.

Yeah. On thatexisting application without having to break the sweat and introduce a learningcurve. So that's how Cogni evolved as a platform from, me trying to say, Hey,let's build a lifestyle services on top of banking. Yeah. And with, as atechnology now, it gives us more power to empower a consumer to not only ownhis data, but also as assets in a much more decentralized way and having fullcontrol of how he wants to go about consuming this product services content.

Yeah. Andinternally, think of friction on the financial and the payments ecosystem aswell.  

Julian:Yeah. When you say lifestyle, is that just having better understanding of whereyour money is being spent, where you're earning your money, and justidentifying more so of those kind of inputs, outputs versus, I mean, I was justlooking at my traditional bank account last night and it was impossible tounderstand where I'm purchasing stuff.

Things aremiscategorized and so it's really hard to get a clear view. And I, I canassume, especially as a gig worker, having the different points of, of, oftransaction being that much more complicated, and, and, rather than creatingthat bucket of understanding of information, what do you mean by lifestyle?

You have anunderstanding. What do you do with that understanding that that's differentfrom, previous kind of applications, models, banking, providers, what have you,what, what's different?  

Archie:Where does lifestyle? So lifestyle is basically how you lead your life. Right.Yeah. I'm just giving a 30,000 foot statement of what lifestyle is.

But yeah, goingback your statement, Julian, that categorization is super, super important.Yeah. Yeah. Right. Understanding where your assets are and how you're spendingyour assets are equally important. So there are a few things that we are doneon the web two side, which is very interesting because carbon can track carbonemissions on every single transaction.

Yeah, yeah. Ifyou're a carbon conscious person, that is super important. The second thingthat we released about actually one of the latest releases that we had about aweek ago was asset consolidation. Mm-hmm. So you could have your money, but itcan also have your dollars and your dollars and also your digital assets.

Mm-hmm. On onesingle screen showing you what percentage of allocations that you have, howmuch is in cash. How much is in your alternate assets? Yeah. And, and what arethose value for those assets? And it dynamically moves up and down because yourcrypto assets are, are, are, are quite fluctuating because of the cryptoprices, but your cash remains constant.

But for you to seein one, in, in one screen, yeah. Bridging your web two and web threeapplication was a, was a, was a phenomenal product release for, we are gettinga lot of really good feedback from that as well. So that's one component abouttrying to consolidate a view. Of your dollars and your digital assets in one place,but let's go beyond that, right?

What lifestyle is.So, as a millennial or Gen Z, you are consuming product, service, and content.And, if you look at the whole ecosystem of influencers first you had, the, the,the television. Mm-hmm. Right? Right. In television, the product, service andcontent were distributed through an aless celebrity.

Yeah. You have tobe somebody very big in the tinsel world too. Products. Yeah. And then came theinternet. And then with the internet and social media, you're influencers, soyou don't have to be that big. You could be a guy with a million followers andyou can distribute product, service, and content. And I think within the Webthree world Julian, I think you could be an influencer yourself without havingto have a million followers.

Sure. Right, right.And we seen that transition already happened. If I told you 30 years ago thatif you have a million people following you, you can be, as, you can, you canmake as much. Good. Money. As, as somebody in the, in the Hollywood space, it'dbe quite hard to the decentralized through the decentralization.

We think that, youare consuming product, service and content. You haven't, yeah. You, you spendmoney on that now. If you can own the data and, and, and rewrite thedistribution of product, service, and content through the webre space, it canprovide a lot better opportunity on Yeah. How you're consuming your lifestylefocused products and services, and for the brands to also specifically workwith you so they don't have to go to an.

Intermediary thirdparty who decimate that information and then provides you with offers.  

Julian:External.  

Yeah. Yeah. Andyou're thinking about, the ways that people are able to make income, especiallylike in that example, for, for sure as an influencer. Influencers, a lot ofthem are talking about, you're somebody who focuses on, financial content.

Where are theycongregating now? As, as you're seeing, there's a few different companies thatare say, closing their clauses to actually impact those influencer or pay themfor the activity that they generate for applications. Meta came out withsomething and some other applications as well.

Where are thoseinfluencers or congregate? What do you see in terms of these pool of peopleand, and how they've been able to kind of manage and adapt and, and where arethey kind of congregating now or, or how dispersed. Is that kind of wholeprocess in, in terms of, where they meet users, how they gain income as thingsare, moving in, in this direction where companies are no longer kind ofincentivized them, but they're trying to find unique ways to partner withbrands and things like, that'd love to hear response there.

Archie:Currently most influencers and common creators are congregating on traditionalsocial media platforms. Sure, sure. Yeah. Web three, the whole thing with webthree. There's a lot of issues. I mean, I wouldn't say issues, a lot ofchallenges that need to be solved. On the web three go mainstream one isbasically usability.

Yeah. Anddecentralized application built on top of protocols. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So oncethat start happening and people start seeing that, that payment system becominga lot more smoother, so you can stream to a, say you're reading a newspaper,you don't wanna read the whole newspaper, but just an article and you just wantto pay for it.

Web three makes itreally possible for you to do it. Yeah. So what happens is when contentcreators. Have a much more let, let's say for example, right, content creatorson, on Instagram and you say you get kicked out and, and, and, and you lose allyour Instagram followers or your YouTube followers, right?

And you can't takethem to one platform and to another platform, right? So something holds thekeys to it. But in a decentralized world, your users and your followers areyour followers. Yeah. Yeah. It gives you a lot more creative control about it.Yeah. Yeah, so this makes it very easy. And also now the challenges of payingpaying for, what people are listening to.

Then anintermediate third party controlling that flow of payments. The, the fiction isreduced on a, on a, on a web three service for blockchain. So the, thepotential on, on, on expanding on how we do things can fundamentally changewith, with blockchain and, and, and ai. And we are very excited about what's tocome, but right now we are building the infrastructure to support such apossibility.

Yeah, so it's justdumbing it down really. Right now you get a bank account, you get anon-custodial wallet attached to a bank account. Yeah. You can move your Webtwo warranty to the Web three world. You can have a marketplace, you caninteroperate between your banking and your Web three space, a lot more smootherfashion, and you want to make it really, really super smooth and super easy foran average consumer to use it.

And as technologyand these other decentralized applications become a little bit more mainstream,you wanna slowly bring them on. That allows them to access a wide range ofservices. Yeah. From a single sign-on backend platform.  

Julian:Yeah. You mentioned something around attracting, emissions and things like, andseeing your kind of overall sustainability impact.

And obviously Iknow you're talking about the bear mechanics and sending out to infrastructurebets. I, I, I, it seems like you're kind of ahead of your time in terms of.Figuring out ways to incentivize people and reward them based on social impactand also giving them the insights there. Obviously we've seen some, legislaturepassing that reinforces people to think more socially conscious.

At least that'swhat, people kind of, kind of see it as a vehicle to do so. But how much moredo you think the gaining just not only I guess, I guess importance ofunderstanding your emissions and, and what you're purchasing and how thatimpacts you. How much do you see that actually gaining in popularity or isright now?

Is it just a trendthat people are kind of following, maybe it's nice to have. Do you see anyvalidity in actually people making, buying purchases in, companies that havemore sustainability for focused, say, procedure processes or values? How, howmuch of that is do you think is a fad?

How much of that doyou think is actually gonna gain traction and influence and impact people'spurchasing decisions?  

Archie:See Cogni is always on a mission, is to provide as much information to theconsumer Yeah. As clearly as possible. Yeah. And what they do with thatinformation is their own pro to do it.

Sure. Right. Sofrom a cogni standpoint, say if you're going and if you have a, if you'recurious about, hey, if you're making a transaction for a coffee and you wannasee what that carbon emission for that Yeah. Coffee is, so if you're using Lyftor Uber, you wanna see which is, which has a better carbon emission.

On a transactionlevel, it gives you information, but how do you choose to act upon thatinformation is your own discretion, right? Yeah. And, and we push people thatway, one way or another. Our job as a platform is to provide them with bestinformation that they can make better choices. Yeah. The same with financialservices, right?

You want to makesure that the asset classes are displayed a lot more easily on, on, on, acrosson, on one single screen. And so you can make better competitions and that'sexactly what we want to do.  

Julian:Yeah. You're shifting gears here thinking about, cogni and what you areoffering for your users and your customer base.

What's particularlyin exciting about how you've structured Cogni to be a non-custodial wallet, andwhat are some pros and cons that people might not be aware of that that allowsyou to do in terms of maybe flexibility, speed of transaction, but also,managing and holding your assets without relying on say, a third party?

Describe the, the,some. Some benefits that being a non-custodial wallet, but also maybe evensome, some cons that people might have to be aware of in, in how to, managethat piece of technology so that, being that it, it's completely different, todecentralize and, and has your ownership.

Describe some prosand cons there.  

Archie:Sure. When we wanted to go into the non-custodial route, we thought hardercare, should we do custody? And in-custody, right? Yeah. Yeah. Blockchain isall about you owning your own assets and it's being very decentralized and. Andless centralized intermediary coming and disrupting the flow.

Yeah. And you'veseen last year that so many centralized platforms collapse from fdx to, towire. People lost, tiptoe, they lost NFTs. And obviously for, for easy reasons,because, they've made that learning curve a lot more easier that you canactually hold your assets and it's somebody, somebody holds it on your behalfand you're expected to get it back Yes.

When you need it.Unfortunately, it didn't go that way. Yeah. It went the other way. Right.People chose a centralized route because it's easy. And if we could bring thatdecentralization that an average consumer can consume and, and own and, andeasy to use, we see a much larger application. Because the core concept of youowning your own assets is always, it's, it's great, right?

Mm-hmm. Obviouslyyou talk about your security you just wanna pass the honors of this. Ofsecurity of somebody else so that you can go back and, and, and ask them, Hey,what happened? But in this instance, you can't, you lost it. Yeah. Yeah. Right.So Cogni allows for the users to own those decentralized allows the users toown those digital assets through a non-custodial wallet, within their ownapplication.

Yeah. And, and youcan have your seat phrase it on that, that allows you to Get your wallet. Andyou can also move that non-custodial wallet to somewhere else. So in case sayCogni goes bust, you would still have your assets. Yeah. Your assets don't go.So it allows for you to have a complete control of your own digital assets.

But we also made itto be a lot more easily interoperable within your backing application. Yeah.This last, and since what's happened in 2022 with all the centralizedapplications going down, I think decentralization is a way to go.  

Julian:Yeah. And when you think about, the adoption of, web three and thesetechnologies, what are some of the, the challenges you see just, creatingservices in the country?

Like, the US forinstance, who has a lot of regulations, a lot of compliance, we have a lot ofstructure around it, wants to manage it, but also you see kind of, companycountries like Columbia for instance, adopting a whole wallet for, I think itwas Columbia, if I remember correctly. Is it Columbia?

There's, there'sone country in particular in South America that essentially adopted a wholewallet excepted Bitcoin as not only a, a national currency, but also an abilityto pay taxes and things like that. Obviously, there's, there's pros and cons tothat. But in terms of, making the adjustments and adapting, what's beenchallenging about building in at least the US and, and all the regulations andcompliance that come up and how do you stay ahead of that so that you cancontinue to grow and scale without having it directly impacts, say, theusability of whatever you're doing in your business.

What are somechallenges that people may not be aware of as you're building in thisspace?  

Archie: Yeah,I mean, reg regulatory issues are the major component, especially here in theUnited States, right? People are, yeah. The regulator is still trying to figureout what regulations to implement, what lost to pass, what cryptocurrency lostto pass.

Europe recentlylaunched mica, which is a digital assets Yeah. Compliance piece. So we'll haveto get our act together here in the United States. But yeah, until thathappens, which is, which is, which is taking its own course we wanted to be asa platform, our, our consumers get an F D I C insured banking platform, so,The, the US dollars that they hold within cogni are F D I C insured?

Yeah. The digitalassets not DIC insured. So that disclosure is always very important. Yeah. Sowhen you own your own assets, you are responsible for your own assets notcogni. So you have full control of it. And we still want to keep thatdecentralization going. We do not want to hold custody of NFTs or, or cryptoassets.

And, and, and thiscurrently, the regulations allows. For us to do so as far as what crypto andyou could potentially, get through a cogni exchange that we are currentlytrying to build. Yeah. That, that we have to look at it from a case by casebasis and what could Assets that they can, they can, they can do, but otherscurrent point of time we are really focused on crypto curious users andnon-native crypto users and some crypto users as well, but we are reallyfocused on the usability and interoperability.

With those twochannels that you can hold your bank account at the same time, you can alsohold your NFTs and your digital assets on one easy single application. Yeah. Asthe regulations become a lot more clear, we would be able to supercharge inbuilding other services on top.  

Julian:Yeah. Yeah. And, and just to shift gears here, give the audience a little bitmore context.

Describe to uswhat's been exciting about the traction you've seen up to this point. Obviouslyyou did a lot of work to build kinda the infrastructure, the layer but now you'regetting a lot of customers, a lot of adoption. How many customers are youcurrently working with? And what's particularly exciting about the next phase?

That obviouslytalked about, the interoperability of of, of, web three technology and how thewallet works. But what else is kind of on the horizon? Where the traction is upto now, and then what do you have predicted for the future?  

Archie:Yeah, so for us on the, on the web three side, we've been slowly onboardingusers because it's a new it's a new wallet within a banking application.

It has to work alot more smoothly. So we've been tinkering around on the usability side andwe've been slowly onboarding users and, and, and trialing it, how they're usingit. We haven't put a lot of dollars into marketing on customer acquisition, butwe've been getting organic growth every single day, which is, which is good toknow, and we are learning from them a lot because the hardest thing to do issimplicity.

And, and making itsimple for a consumer to use. So this allows us to learn very quickly andcreate on the designs between the web three and the web two side as well. Sothat's where we've been fully focused on, on on on how we build this platformup and how we scale. So these early adopters have been super useful for us inproviding that, that knowledge on how we can do from an application standpoint.

So that's beensuper, super helpful. And, and we are looking forward to seeing, this adoptionslowly start scaling and as some of the decentralized applications that we arelooking to onboard in the next few months to see how many users are going to,have not only your credit account, but use your digital assets to try out some,all those decentralized applications.

So that's where thebiggest question mark is gonna come from, right? Have we done a good job? Havewe made it super simple for people to interoperate? So that's, that answer isyet to be given.  

Julian:Yeah. When you think about whether it's external or internal, what do you viewas some of the biggest risks that, Cogni faces today?

Archie:The biggest risk which keeps me awake at night is reducing the learning curveYeah. Of a consumer. So, if the users don't understand, if the user's notlearning, then, then we will have to find ways to make it easier for them tobreak it down for them, because these users have not had their late adopters.

They're veryskeptical about how to own their own digital assets. There's multitudes ofreasons that they would have an issue with. So our job is to make sure that ourproduct team and our customer acquisition team worked very closely to make surethat, they're able to understand.

And, and, and, and,and create a much easier and, and easier platform for them tointeroperate.  

Julian:And how do you do that in, in, obviously, that's a pretty broad question, butin terms of just like understanding consumer behaviors, understanding whatthey're actually coming to your platform for, and building and coursecorrecting towards that.

What are some of thesignals that you see to help you guide into building? Being that, there's a lotof wallets out there, there's a lot of wallets that are non-custodial, but whatabout, cogni in particular kind of gets this influence or organic traction thatother companies obviously have as well, but.

Seems to be kind ofa, a benefit or, or or kind of a reality that you all see, which is thatorganic traffic is such a huge funnel for new acquisition. How are you able toactually attract those individuals and then build around them? Being that it'shard to, some people say like, oh, I have a great product.

People are justgonna use it, and they just gotta acquire more customers. But it's not likethat. There's a learning curve. There's education, there's community. What arethe strategies that you deploy and what signals are you seeing to really buildtowards your customer that. Maybe other companies that you know, don't do aswell?

Archie:No, I, I think every company has their own strategy in, in, in implementingtheir, the go to market. Right. Obviously there's a lot of wallets out there.The Cogni is the only non-custodial wallet that is within a banking platform.Yeah. But obviously your banking, your US dollars or Fdrc insured, but yourdigital assets are not, right.

Mm-hmm. So all theweb three wallets are all independent. They, they're on the app store that youcan just go sign up, you get a wallet at Cogni, you have to do a Ks, you get abank account and a non-custodial wallet. So we are really trying to make itvery easy for the crypto curious and the non-native crypto users to, be as partof their normal user flow.

So that's what webasically focused on and, customer acquisition in the Web Two World and the Webthree world is different. The Web two world, you're just advertising. On socialmedia, on the Web three world, it's all about community. Yeah. Now we've beenbuilding infrastructure on top of Cogni within the wallet, the kyc, et cetera.

Now we are gonna bereally, now from number one, we are really focused on building out a communityas the decentralized applications that go onto the Cogni platform. Buildingthat community will help create that flywheel, bridging the web two and webthree cap, because also the web three users need access to bank accounts.

Yeah. Yeah, theystill need to use an OnRamp and offramp, right? Right. Typically what happenedin the last one year is we've been on a, we've been, we've been, it's been likea casino business, right? You've been cutting all day long, right? There's amuch better use cases for the crypto assets and NFTs that you own.

Now, you can, youcan hold NFTs within a Cogni application. Now, how could you use those NFTsfor, within any, at any retail locations, or you want to, for any membershipor. Et cetera, or using any of the decentralized application. Now we arelooking at building all those marketplaces that allows them to actually use thecrypto.

So the flywheel,not only on the web two side that you could potentially use traditional socialmedia channels, but on the web three side, the DAPs and others will allow us tocreate the community, which will have much more of a flywheel effect connectingthose two simpler fashion. But in saying that, it is a challenge by itselfbecause you're dealing with two different cohorts of people.

Yeah. But if youcan get some of the users to interoperate in a lot more easier fashion, go backand forth. Right? Yeah. It makes it super easy to create more adoption on thenon-native crypto users coming into the Web three world, right?  

Julian:Right. Well, it seems like your, your values are super in line with theincentives of, of your users, right?

They want to puttheir money in a, in a vehicle that not only they can know more about theirspending and their income, but also what, proportions of things that you know,that, that, that they're that they're working with, but also thinking about theproportion of the crypto assets that they hold and how that impacts theirlives.

It's interestinghow you've kind of funneled these two parties and these two camps in a veryunique way, which is pretty slick. And I'm curious about where you kind of,bring these two parties together. Being that both parties care to have theirassets in something that they can use easily.

It, it works withmodern technology and it's applicable with other technologies alike. Those areindividuals that they kind of learn and educate into Web three or web three.Individuals who want to use web three want a better wallet warrant, moreaccessibility. How do you navigate the challenge of educating, both being thatthey both, they have.

Similar andsentenced, but different vehicles to actually utilizing the money that they're,that they're making, earning or what have you. How do you kind of funnel thatin? Where do you funnel it in? Is it on Discord? And how do you educate bothparties and, and continue the same message consistently being that it, it, itis challenging as there's updates and things like that.

Archie:See everybody has a view that, cryptocurrency ownership can, is a good way todiversify your assets. Sure. I would not say a hundred percent, but it's a verysignificant number. Right, right. And, and, and there's a very, so there's ageneral consensus on that, but cryptocurrency is fun to own of basically cryptocurious people.

Yeah. Right. Hey,this could be some use cases here. Let's let's figure out how to do it. And,and the native crypto users think that cryptocurrencies or digital assets arethe future of their money, right? So people have different opinions about howthis market ecosystem goes, right? For a native crypto user, they're looking atmuch more of the usability aspect of things that can they use it, can theyit's, it's a lot more easier than, meta mask.

Or something else.Right. So some people still have meta mass because they're used to meta mass becauseit provides what they, they required. Yeah. But you know, from a companystandpoint, how we are looking at it is that hey you can have your cryptoassets, but you can interoperate that with your banking.

Yeah. So thisprovides a much more of a. Accessibility and usability component. Yeah. Whichcurrently that's not there in the market. So that's our niche differentiatorthat we want to really push forward with. But for the non-native crypto users,well, I use basic banking services. I have everything that Carney provides.

But hey, but Iwanna see how I can try this decentralized application or this decentralized,game or go into the metaverse. But I can't do it from a Chase Bank account.Yeah. Or from Bank of America. But I find it too complicated to go downloadMeta Mask or any of this wallet, and I don't even know, how do I go from there?

Where to buy acryptocurrency and put them in and then save your passwords and then, use awallet connect and then do all that stuff. It's just so much steps. But itcaught me. These users not only bank with us, but you know, you also have anon-custodial wallet attached to it, so you don't have to go through the wholething.

And you can, youcan save your keys on the cloud and, or you can write it down and now you know,you can, you can IOP operate your cash to crypto. Yeah. And then all assets.And then from there it's just connecting into wallet connected. Then you cantry it out, right? So it, it reduces all of steps that you need to have thenaverage Chase customer or Bank of America customer saying that, okay, now whatdo I need to do?

I wanna, I want togo to those metaverse that everyone keeps talking about. But I have no way, I'dhave no understanding to go about how to do it. Right. Meta mask. What's metamask? How do I bring crypto over? There's so much unanswered questions andlearning curve that is still, that exists. We wanna reduce that curve for massadoption.

Julian:Yeah. Yeah. And if everything goes though, what's the long term vision?  

Archie: Ithink we are in a very exciting space right now. The blockchain technology,mass adoption is. Is slowly becoming a reality. There's a lot of work that needto be done, but when it becomes truly decentralized, I think we are gonna see afundamental shift on the distribution of product servers and content ownershipof data digital assets, different unique ways with which you could, buildapplications on top.

So, for example,when internet. Got really mainstream. You could throw a website on top of it,call it amazon.com and turn it to a trillion dollar company. Right? So withinthe blockchain space, it's totally rewriting the rules on computer. Yeah. So,which is really exciting. But to make that to happen, multiple components willhave to work and, and multiple functionalities and, and products will have tobe bought.

A reality thatincludes payment reconciliation. It includes, some of the AML anti launderingstuff, B3, passport from web two, the web three, but this is a very excitingspace, and from a cogni, from Cogni perspective, we were like, Hey, let's builda very solid, easy infrastructure with which people can jump.

We don't have tobuild everything. It's an, it's an ecosystem and there's simply products builtin the ecosystem and see what, what, what products that we could build, whatdecentralized applications that we could bring on. That allow the users toYeah. Learn and play out this new stuff.

Julian:Yeah. Yeah. I like this next section I'll call my founder faq.

So I'm gonna hityou with some rapid fire questions and we'll see where we get. So I always liketo break it in with a heier one. What's particularly hard about your jobday-to-day?  

Archie:Good question. I just get up in the morning and then I go to work and I, I facethe challenges as it come along. And that's makes it very exciting. Right?Right. Yeah. I wouldn't say anything is hard, it's just you have to managethat. Yeah. Yeah. With a smile on your face.

Julian:Hey, I, I guess, more so what, what's something that you you spend a lot oftime on that you wish you could spend less and something you spend little timeon that you wish you could allocate more to?

Anything come tomind?  

Archie:Yeah. So for me We have a lot of good leadership team that is within Coney,right? Mm-hmm. So, as a founder, you're trying to hold everything together andyou're trying to, get it to the finish line. I, I need to slowly, bring it up ateam and make it their responsibility.

Yeah. To do that. Iwant to give them the freedom to operate a little bit more than I'm currentlydoing. This is frank conversation, right. So, yeah, and, and, and more that Ineed to spend on is which is something that I've been doing anyway quite a lot,is, block off more time yeah. To get a lot of my work done because you'reworking throughout the day.

And we havemeetings right across the whole, the whole day can block off some time to kindof like recalibrate and, and plan for the next, getting some of those thingsdone. Yeah. Yeah. It's trying to. Time. It's, it's always a difficult thing,right?  

Julian:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, fathers talk about, that about all the time.

And, thinkingabout, one way that kind of the Web three ecosystem changes, the userexperiences, the idea about cooperating brands or businesses, and how do yousee that? Changing already being that people are able to now opt in theirinformation, have this whole relationship with a brand, but this experience maytie into another community who's associated with another brand.

A lot of, web threecompanies. And thinking about how these communities interop operate and howbrands coulds look, think about waves that they can collaborate in, in adifferent mechanism to build more brand trust, more brand recognition, newexperiences and things like that. How are you seeing a lot of companiesstarting to cooperate in.

Advertise a sharedexperience within Web three or if, if that's something that we'll see in thefuture. What are your thoughts on how users will be able to use and opt in andalso actually generate communities between different, say maybe not associatedbrands, but maybe they collaborated and, and do some new experience and nowyou're within this conjoined community.

Are you seeing moreof that now, or will we see more of that in the future?  

Archie:So I think the first thing is wallet consolidation need to happen. Right.People are not gonna have 20 different wallets have 1, 2, 3, probably four,five wallets at a max. Yeah. Yeah. Is is my is my guess. And, and walletconsolidation is gonna be the most important thing.

So we are reallyfocused on providing that wallet ecosystem that can interoperate within yourbanking application. Yeah, that's number one. The second thing that we arereally focused on is identity management, which is you can take your web twoidentity into the Web three world. So once you take it to the web three world,you don't have to do multiple sign-ons every time you need to use anapplication.

So you would beable to take the identity and, and, and, and pass it on to applications thatwhich you want to use without having to go through the whole system. Yeah. Thisallows for multiple, decentralized applications or brands to interact. With theconsumer a lot more easily and also allows the user to share their informationwith the brands that they want to share.

Yeah. So it givesthem that flexibility and ownership of that. And so this is actually, this is,this is the first floor, right? Right. Second floor is all about brands. Nowbuilding upon that and finding creative ways to interact with that data toprovide better services, and obviously those digital assets have to go in achain.

Cogni Cognis walletis multi chain. Yeah. So you would be able to, you'd be able to put thosedigital assets into their wallet a lot more easier. Yeah. And use it. Sothat's, that's how we are seeing it. Right. And, and it has not gone throughmassive brands getting on the chain, but there's definitely been a lot ofinterest, as you can see.

Yeah. But so manybrands are now getting into web three and, and NFTs and rewards going intospace. So we see all, they see that happening. And for us, having that rightinfrastructure will accelerate that growth.

Julian:Yeah. And what do you think about, in terms of, what your objectives are? Isit, building partnerships?

Is it gaining morecustomers? Is it becoming, the, the one stop kind of wallet that people can usefor both their personal and, and, and, well, not personal banking, it's allpersonal banking, but for their, traditional assets and the crypto assets. Onething I think about is when you're, moving to building within this phase,there's all these traditional mechanisms.

Say my rcu, my, mycredit union bank account, can I add a wallet onto that? Can I partner withcompanies and, and build so that I don't have to have customer adoption and,and kind of create a new way people bank, but also partner or connect withwaves that other companies are already banking. Do you think about, that in termsof.

What are youthinking about right now? Partnerships? Are you thinking about customeracquisition at any cost? Differentiating yourself in the market? What's kind ofat the top of your mind at this moment in time?

Archie:So we are really working on partnerships at the moment because Web three is allabout ecosystem and partnerships.

We are currentlyworking with medical decent life applications that could exist within thecarbon ecosystem, providing users with a better access to, to products indecentralized. World. So, which is what we are super focused on at the moment.We are bringing a couple of decentralized applications on board cogni, which,which in the next two months we'll be very excited to announce about that.

So this gives a consumernot only to bank, but also use these decentralized application without havingto download, reduce the learning curve and, and go over and use out in a littlebit more easier and more safer way. Yeah. So that's how we are really thinkingabout executing. Mm-hmm. Our product roadmap.

And yeah, that'show we see it.  

Julian:Yeah. Yeah. I always like to ask the next question cause I love how foundersextract knowledge out of anything that they ingest, whether it's early in yourcareer or now, what books or people have influenced or impacted you the most?

Archie: Imean, a lot of people have influenced me technology entrepreneurs from thevalley. Sure. And the whole concept of decentralization is an and, and, andhave the ability to keep the freedom of information transparent and access todata control of your data and your.

Digital assets andyour money is super, super important. Those things inspire me a lot. It'smaking, payments as transparent as possible and as easy as possible. A lot ofpeople are doing especially people in the web three space, they believe in thatethos a lot. Right. And it all started with, when Net with Netscape, with MarkAndreen.

Yes. Protocols andamount of challenges that he had to face was just phenomenal. He overcame thoseodds. And, and, and those pioneers are paying, I mean, we we're seeing thishistory being rewritten again. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And, and to use thoselearning lessons that they had and then implement them for furthering thedecentralization as a concept and a thesis is, is very, very exciting.

So people acrossthe ecosystem inspire me. Who are building during the Bay Market inspire mebecause they're building it against all odds that they see the vision for thefuture. And those, those inspire me to do better. And also that my team my teaminspires me every single day because they all came from cloud and they couldhave chosen to do anything that they wanted to do, but they chose to do this,and, and I'm excited to work with them every single day.

Julian:That's amazing. And I know we're coming to the close the episode, so I wannamake sure we didn't leave anything on the table. Obviously we'll talk aboutyour plugs and where to find you. But before we go into that, is there anyquestion I didn't ask you that I should have or anything that we didn't talkabout that you wanted to bring up?

Anything left onthe table here today?  

Archie:No, man. I thank you so much for your time. I don't know crypto native users,we'd love for you to try and give feedback. Our platform and non-native cryptousers, we would, love to take your feedback on how to make things a lot moreeasier.

And, and that'swhat we are here to do. So Julian, thanks for having me on your podcast andtalk about what we are doing.  

Julian:Amazing. It's been such a pleasure, Archie not only talking about your leagueexperience, but also what you're building at Cogni. Where is it currently at,but what are the future kind of possibilities of this application, applicationsalike?

That will,obviously impact users in a really positive way. Last little bit is where canwe find you? Where can we support and be a fan of Archie, give us yourLinkedIns, your Twitters, give us all your plugs. Where can we be a fan of youand what you're building?  

Archie:Sure. My LinkedIn is Archie Ravi Shankar.

And my Twitter is what?My Twitter is. It's Archie a r c h r a v, which is a R C h r a V is myTwitter.  

Julian:Amazing. Archie, it's been such a pleasure talking about you kind of Websterecosystem, what, what you're, giving in terms of accessibility and opinteroperability with other applications and, and lifestyle choices and thingslike that.

Been such apleasure talking with you. I hope you enjoyed yourself and thank you again forbeing on the show today.  

Archie:Thank you, Julian.  

Julian:Of course.  

Thanks for yourtime.

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