After announcing our oversubscribed seed round, we reflect on what we achieved and what’s to come
By Heather Dahl
It was a race toward the next big thing—except it felt like everyone was jogging in circles. All of the talk was about decentralized identity solving all the big online problems—verification, privacy, security—but where were the solutions? We had been talking and jogging for years and the finish line for the technology wasn’t getting closer.
It was time to up the pace, to lead a group of talented, like-minded individuals—and to get the technology to a stage where enterprises and organizations could start implementing working solutions. That was the sense of opportunity and need that drove the creation of Indicio two years ago.
There was a lot to do. It would have been overwhelming if we hadn’t broken it down into a roadmap of small steps, each building on the other, each extending the technology, each adding a community of builders, each bringing more customers and collaborators into the mix, and all feeding a virtuous cycle of innovation and growth.
The initial investment was conservative; but customer revenue was instant and scale was rapid. We focused on building solutions, starting with our customers’ simplest problems and use cases. And when those solutions worked, and our customers saw what the technology could deliver, they asked for more and to deliver new features; they began to think of new applications and opportunities.
The success of decentralized identity technology lay in each of our customers being successful. Each successful customer deployment was a victory, each advanced the technology, and each created new opportunities.
This was our strategy: the more we built solutions, the more customers we’d have, and the more they’d ask us to do. It worked; indeed, the investment community liked this strategy so much, our seed round ended up oversubscribed.
Actionable data now
Normally, a startup would use a seed round to launch a business; but we were already up and running: we had customers, products, and services. That’s what excited our investors: if we had come so far on so little, how much faster would we go with more?
Well, we’re excited too. We’ve completed what we set out to do two years ago: finish the technology’s foundation and create a full, open source ecosystem around it. You can issue, share, and verify data through verifiable digital credentials today. You can layer this on top of your existing identity and access management systems now.
We’ve also developed machine-readable governance to simplify managing complex information flows and governance processes offline and in ways that meet the needs of regulatory authorities. Governance for decentralized identity has often been a sticking point in the marketplace because it reads like a bigger problem than the problem decentralized identity is supposed to solve. Not any more.
Even the language around this technology has shifted to resonate with what the market understands and needs. It’s not just about engineers talking to engineers anymore; it’s about the value we create in trusted digital interaction, the efficiencies that come with verification, and the protean capacity of the communication protocols to manage this interaction in new, secure ways; it’s about actionable data and digital relationships.
In short, we’ve made it easy and cost-effective to begin a powerful process of digital transformation that creates trust. These flexible, customizable “Trusted Digital Ecosystems” can be deployed rapidly by being layered on top of your existing identity systems. This means creating digital transformation in weeks rather than years. They are easy—surprisingly easy—to use. They deliver value fast and set you up to manage the wider digital change of coming with web 3 and the spatial web.
Creating magic
In many ways, closing this seed round is the end of the beginning, we’ve warmed up for the real race and we’re going to run it fast. Because we now have the foundational interoperable framework to drive use and adoption of verifiable credentials and decentralized identity, we can start demonstrating the real power behind this technology to businesses, governments, and organizations.
History has shown that with a small set of robust, interoperable components, you can create magic. And that’s what we’re going to do with this seed investment.
Finally, none of this would be possible without a stellar team all pulling together. Our architects and engineers are at the top of their game because the business side is at the top of its game. It means our passion and expertise are in sync. It means we approach problems and build solutions holistically.
The result is that people like working with us. We make their needs ours, we give them everything, and together we get things done.
