Cloud Trust And Data Anxiety

Ehsan Darweshi 0:00

everyone knows, everything is in the cloud, and the cloud is just a different computer from someone else where my data is stored. And question is, can I trust the company? Can I trust, the employees of these companies that my data is, secure and secret?

Joeri Billast 0:16

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories podcast. My name is Joeri Beelars. I'm your podcast host, today it's a special episode because I have two guests. Hello, Esam. Hello, Georg. How are you?

Ehsan Darweshi 0:32

Fine, thank you. Thank you for the invitation.

Joeri Billast 0:34

it's always fun, of course, to do something different. Guys, if you're now wondering who I'm speaking with today, well, I'm joined by Ehsan Derashti, founder and architect at Cannat, and by Georg Schmekal, leads the growth and is also part of the founding team. Cannat is building technology that gives people and businesses more control over their data, digital identity, the value they create online. instead of leaving those assets scattered across platforms and controlled by third parties, Cannat wants individuals and organizations to be able to own, manage, share them on their own terms. For founders and marketers, this is not just a technical conversation, but it's also about trust, customer relationships, AI, how dependent our businesses become on the platforms we use every day. Georg, welcome to the podcast. Let's dive straight in.

Why Rebuild The Internet For Data

Georg Schmejkal 1:36

Thank you

Joeri Billast 1:37

Ehsan, after, years in large enterprises like Volkswagen and Carat, what made you conclude that the internet itself needs to be redesigned?

Ehsan Darweshi 1:49

It's always about data, and every time when big companies, even small companies, building great ideas, innovations, the most, anxiety is we have, to losing data. this is what I experienced more than 15 years. every time I joined or I, initiate a, innovation product, project, it was, confidential. And, every time a new tool comes online, like Miro, Trello, Jira, and so on, and if you want to use it, we could increase our efficiency, but, yeah, the problem was, okay, what will happen with our data? everyone knows, everything is in the cloud, and the cloud is just a different computer from someone else where my data is stored. And question is, can I trust the company? Can I trust, the employees of these companies that my data is, secure and secret? And that's why, big companies, suffer- a lot with new tools, new AI solutions to implement them into their daily work. And this is what I like to change with Canut, and, we want to build an infrastructure, or we already are in building this infrastructure, and it's real, yeah. What we build is something where you don't have to rely on Canut, you don't have to trust in Canut. Canut is not storing any private, data. When you make an account on our platform, then it's locally, your private keys are locally. So the whole ecosystem is about to, secure privacy at the end, yeah. And make it comfortable, right? Like Web 2.0 is still most, in most case, the best solution, for people, for employees, where they don't have so many skills. So this is what we want to combine with our technology. We have the convenience on the one side, from the Web 2.0 and the technology, the zero trust, zero knowledge technology, the decentralization from the Web 3.0

Joeri Billast 3:46

Yeah. love that. The best of both worlds. And I can see, Esa, that you're really passionate, like a, founder with any project. and thank you for sharing the vision.

The Myth Of Owning Your Data

Joeri Billast 3:58

now, Georg, most people believe they own their digital lives, huh? is the biggest illusion we still have about data ownership today?

Georg Schmejkal 4:09

Yeah. Joeri, thank you, first of, that you have us here in the podcast. A good question as well. So usually we agree when we use like a Web2 service to certain terms and conditions we often don't understand or don't even read. And when we use these services later, we get advertisement or certain things where we are surprised, how this can happen. But usually we give the control and the ownership of our data away. often it's said when we don't pay for something, we are the product, and it's often our data, and there's still a misconsumption that things are free for use. But at the end, there's a huge collection of personal data which can be used to, form certain profiles, digital profiles of ourselves, which can then be used to, send us advertisement or influence us in certain ways we might not want or might not want to approve. And we have, no transparency over this, where our data lands and who really uses this at the end. And this is something we want to change to give the person full transparency and full ownership over their own data and privacy. So yeah, at the end, they can decide who sees their data, who gets their data, and on which terms they get it.

Joeri Billast 5:18

Okay. Yeah. makes a lot of sense, because today are really not realizing how they are paying with their data. Now, you often talk about digital

Privacy Versus Digital Sovereignty

Joeri Billast 5:29

sovereignty rather than just privacy. What is the difference, and why does that distinction matter for entrepreneurs and business leaders?

Ehsan Darweshi 5:38

Imagine you have a house, where you can lock the door and make a party inside the house and it's fully private. You can drink, you can dance, you can wear anything what you want, nobody is looking at you and make some, opinions about you. And, to having this party in this closed setup is privacy. to make party everywhere and changing location without feeling anyone is, investigating you is sovereignty. So sovereignty means having the control to choose. privacy means, in my view, making something without having the fear someone else knows about it. And when we transform this, image, what I created, into technology, into, daily business in the internet, it means, are just trying to find a solution where no data gravity is, in place. That means when you use today AWS, you use Web 2.0, services like, Trello or you use Claude, then the data remains on their platform. Now you want to change the platform and take your data with you, maybe what the LLM learned in the past, it's just impossible. So you have to build a bridge, but the bridge means the data stays where it was created, and you transform it into the next LLM, and then it has its own data gravity. So you cannot choose at the end. You cannot just change something and you are even not private in this platform because they need your data to, increase their revenue So this is what I see, and I see it a lot, when it comes to B2B businesses, that companies are really locked in. They, the software and platform into their business, into their supply chain, and then changing it is just a horror, yeah? it costs a lot, it's taking time a lot, and yeah, stay where they are and, they have no options to choose, another platform. And this is what we decide to do not this, yeah? I know, many investor want to have us in a hyperscale condition that we have this lock-in, that we have this data gravity, most, venture capital want to see that we dominate the market, but we see that, in the future, people choose the system based on the sovereign grade, yeah? how sovereign is this, what I use or not? How private is this or not? And I think this has a lot of value, for people who are using our system when they know, okay, I have all the private keys in my, local machine. I can just decrypt the data, take it out of the ecosystem and use another ecosystem. And, we think this is the new way to provide, an ecosystem for companies and as well for private persons, yeah.

Freedom As The Real Principle

Joeri Billast 8:29

Okay, Georg, I have a question for you. with a background in consulting, blockchain and, and, and even yoga and mindfulness. But my question for you is, Georg, is, yeah, what connects personal sovereignty and digital sovereignty?

Georg Schmejkal 8:43

Okay. That's, that's a very nice question. I would say one, big aspect of spirituality is freedom. we are all born and have our, certain experience in life which shape our behavior, which sh-shape our personality, and also shape our egoic mind, and then we have certain tendencies. And part of the spiritual path is to become free from these tendencies, to decide from a place of freedom and sovereignty, I would say, how to act and what we do instead of grasping for things or trying to avoid things. so there's a big aspect of freedom, and I would say this is also part of the digital sovereignty, to really decide, how I live my digital life. To have not the dependency, on certain vendors, on certain applications. To decide really, how I want to live my life there and make the decision, based on my preferences and not based on, preferences made by certain vendors. So yeah, I think the freedom aspect, to choose freely, is something which can be kind of a bridge for these topics

AI Makes Ownership Non Negotiable

Joeri Billast 9:48

so Ehsan, you already mentioned Claude. Does the rise of AI make the problem of data ownership more urgent than ever?

Ehsan Darweshi 9:57

Yes, absolutely. When AI has access, to everything, is implemented into the company, the AI becomes an internal employee, yeah, without a contract. Today, employees have a contract, and they sign NDA, and, it's also clear when a small number of people working on a confidential, project, then when something information leaks, they know, okay, this was these people, then we can investigate where's the leak come from. But when is so integrated in everything, it's hard to say. And when third parties have access to this LLM, they can make prompt injection a-and everything else, yeah, to get access. And LLM tries to deliver the best solution to everyone, yeah. So this is why we said, "Okay, this is not, we cannot stop this." Yeah. This is something which is commodity, which is also good in our perspective because, we get more efficiencies, we get more better solution. helps in many cases very well. It makes totally sense to use it, but, in a private condition, and this is why we built in our, ecosystem, the private AI. That means you can now, easily-- set up his own AI on own machines or on servers and run it, and the data stays in this ecosystem, yeah. And, it's totally clear who owns the data and even who puts which kind of data into the system. this is not possible to control when you use Claude, But, yeah, I think it's not about to, cut Claude or something else. It's about to how to use in which use case, what kind of solution, and how to integrate or make private LLMs for companies, matter if they are big or small, if they have much, budget or less budget to provide an alternative for them, yeah.

Joeri Billast 11:50

Yeah, I love that mission because, you know, now it's all these big companies that have their private LLMs, but if it's accessible for people with less budget, would be amazing, of course, at the ideal world where you don't have to go to these big providers like, Claude and OpenAI.

When Sovereignty Becomes National Policy

Ehsan Darweshi 12:06

Thank you

Joeri Billast 12:06

Georg, you had a UAE roadshow, and you noticed that digital sovereignty is becoming a national priority, I read that somewhere on your LinkedIn. Why is that conversation moving from tech circles in governments, institutions, and enterprises?

Georg Schmejkal 12:23

It has been, I think, two, three months ago, Essen and I have been in the UAE, and we have been on a conference and meeting with different, people there, regarding, yeah, business opportunities and to understand the market a little bit better. And what we got to learn is that, during COVID especially, the UAE, discovered that they have a lot of dependencies which can be really a weakness, re-regarding to food supply and certain things. So at this point, they decided to rethink and have more sovereignty in different levels. So with regards to food supply, they're having their own projects of growing grass and even producing milk and even exporting milk. so they wanted to be more independent, in the future. And now with the conflicts also with Iran, they realized also that like data centers, could be a potential target of, war interactions. And there's also big dependency because if you're s- you cannot reach a server or, certain information and your machine is not running, there are huge costs and, big dependencies and big risks, and therefore also, very much looking into the digital sovereignty aspect accelerated now through this crisis and has been everywhere. we, met a lot of people who have been very interesting looking for solutions. We have with the cybersecurity council there and, they want to implement something which makes them more sovereignty also in a digital way

Joeri Billast 13:40

So it looks like, are entering a world where digital sovereignty becomes just as important as energy sovereignty, food sovereignty, and financial sovereignty, right? now, as many listeners of the podcast are marketers or founders who heavily rely on platforms like Google, LinkedIn, Meta, OpenAI, what does digital sovereignty look like in practice, without disrupting everything they already use?

A Practical Sovereign Toolchain Roadmap

Ehsan Darweshi 14:10

this is what we thought a lot about, yeah, because we know that, when you set up your tool chain, then you're used to, you optimize it and, helping you every day to provide solution to your clients Then nobody, think about, okay, do I, do I sh- shift to get more sovereignty, yeah? It's not obvious, yeah? It's sometimes you don't have the budget, the time to do this, yeah? So th- this is why we, find solution where we said, okay, you don't have to leave your preferred solution, stay there. But with, our technology on, on behind, yeah, you can, make it safer. So this is what we say, okay, there's some kind of sovereignty stages, yeah. Stage one, two, three we define. Stage one is you stay on your, platforms, but what you can do is to encrypt the data on this platform so that the services just still work, but you have the control. And now to the marketeers, when you build your chain in Figma, in any ticket system, and then you have some automation regarding marketing, in LinkedIn and Instagram channels, et cetera Then, you are logged in. So, where we can he-help in stage one is, to give you some, some more protection against your data. it's not, the end of the road. Stage two would be we make a hybrid solution. We also offer some services you can use, for example, to automate something to use service, services, w- on Docker, Linux, et cetera. This is also what we can provide automatically. You don't have to be a techie. In s-stage three, this is a vision to say, okay, you, you just have this w- CANAT ecosystem where you can build your own system, you have your own private AI. y-you can use, strong AI models, you just pay what you, consume and not just a, a high subscription. So this is what comes next in our roadmap. But yeah, this is something you have to decide for your, for yourself what is important for you. I say in the future, it's, it's not only important to have fully automated tool chain and everything is working fine with APIs. In my opinion, it's also to have a sovereign tool chain that you can ensure that your business works twenty-four seven. Yeah

Joeri Billast 16:27

Okay, that makes a lot of sense.

Data Ownership As Brand Trust

Joeri Billast 16:29

Georg, you, you know probably or if you read maybe on LinkedIn, so I've written this book, "The Future CMO", and in the book, it's endorsed by Philip Kotler. in that book, I argue that trust is becoming one of the most valuable business assets. So how does data ownership influence trust between brands and their customers, over the next decade?

Georg Schmejkal 16:53

Yeah. Yeah, I think trust is a very relevant, theme. And I think in the Web2 world, some companies have, lost the trust for the clients because they have misbehaved the da- with the data they collect. so in the future, like a company should have transparency, over which data is collected and how, and not change the terms, in the middle on the road. And the best thing would be, like, which is our approach, to have a zero trust system where the company does not collect any data, because sometimes they don't even need the data. sometimes it's enough to, use zero trust, ensure that you maybe are 18 to, be allowed to use the service, but you don't have to show your address and your IP and certain interests you have because it's not needed for the service. So the companies who gain the most trust accept like services we offer or connect to our services, where the consumer or the company is in full control over their digital life and their data and all the information. So I think this builds the most trust because there's no reason to collect any information, more than needed to provide the service

When Digital Sovereignty Goes Mainstream

Joeri Billast 17:59

so guys, maybe you saw it on LinkedIn. I'm not only running or hosting this podcast, I also have a retreat here in Sintra. It's a mastermind retreat where we come together with other founders, senior marketers, discussing challenges and trends. now imagine we are five years later and we are discussing digital sovereignty. Imagine that picture. My question for you is, what would need to happen for you to say that digital sovereignty has finally become mainstream?

Ehsan Darweshi 18:33

I think, when we go into the future five years and, seeing how people interacting and what they using and how-- I think, AI is completely integrated in daily lives. and, when people, use this kind of tools, this kind of technology without having, fear that, this can use against them, yeah. when they use it freely, without, having the fear that maybe a bad g- government can misuse the data, or, your job is not, in danger that you lose your job because you said something political, in social media. so that you can be more free like you are in the park playing, tennis or soccer. you are free in a digital, environment, and you can be as you are without, yeah, having this anxieties. And I think today we have a lot of digital anxiety,

Joeri Billast 19:29

Yeah

Ehsan Darweshi 19:30

in people minds, yeah

Georg Schmejkal 19:32

maybe I can add something to this because, the fear you mentioned and that they don't have to worry I think this would also accelerate innovation because now if there's something new on the market, you have to check is it reliable, But if you have like the foundation, like a sovereign foundation in your technical stack, then you can easier also explore certain solutions and be more creative in combining them you know under the surface everything is under your control. So it could be also like, yeah, this could be a time of more inspiration, exploration, and also innovation, which can drive, new solutions and make the world a better place with certain applications or things we have not thought of yet

Where To Learn More And Pilot

Joeri Billast 20:09

Yeah. Makes sense. Well, it's a lot of wisdom here in this podcast episode, and certainly, at the end. Guys, if my listeners with everything they heard, they have questions, you know, about Kanat, about everything that you're doing, that you're building, yeah, where would you like me to send them?

Georg Schmejkal 20:29

first of all, if they want to gain more information, they can visit our website at canat.io, and they are more than welcome to also join our community on Discord. They will find the link also on the website or follow us on X. And actually, great that you bring this up because I think in many ways this has been also somehow a technical discussion with, we touched some use cases, but there's much more under the surface So we would be very happy with people who are, really truly interested in this topic and which is relevant for them if they want to join our community, if they like to reach out because we are happy, to introduce, more what we have built and what we are aiming for. And right now we are also doing several, POCs and pilots. So if anyone is listening who is, a certain position in the company or have their own business and is looking for a solution which helps them to bring their digital sovereignty, we are also very open to have a conversation

Joeri Billast 21:25

Thank you, Georg. as my listeners know, there are always show notes, so all links, everything you mentioned will be found in there. If you want to read, some more about the concept of digital sovereignty, you can find it under my Ubil page on my blog. Georg and Edson, thank you so much for joining

Ehsan Darweshi 21:43

Thank you. Thank you. also a pleasure and, thank you for your time. And I think just to add something, is the best time to think about digital sovereignty because the next lock in, is AI, yeah? So don't get too used to your, AI provider before you do this and put everything into this. And people are proud to say, "I trained the AI with my information." yeah, but this information is not exclusive for you. it's for everyone. So, just think about it. Maybe make two, one, two steps, lower and really think about what is digital sovereignty for you in your private life and for your business, and choose wisely, yeah? And hopefully, CANAT could be a alternative for you as well.

Share Review Subscribe And Hackathon

Joeri Billast 22:31

Important message at the end of the podcast episode. So guys, check out the show notes. also, if you think that this conversation is useful for people around you because, you know, it's so important, a lot of people use this AI, a lot of people are building an AI, well, be sure to share this episode with them so that they can also learn and realize what is happening today with your data and, learn about the concept of digital sovereignty. If you haven't given me a review yet, well, this is a good time to give me a review, to give me these five stars so that I can even reach a bigger audience. course, hit the subscribe button if you haven't

Georg Schmejkal 23:11

Day.

Joeri Billast 23:11

I would love to see you back

Georg Schmejkal 23:13

Cool

Joeri Billast 23:13

Take care.

Ehsan Darweshi 23:14

Bye-bye

Joeri Billast 23:16

PS, I also wanted to give an update about RYO, which is the main sponsor of this podcast, about their virtual hackathon. The Ryochain Virtual Hackathon gives developers the opportunity to build on an existing AI-powered on-chain intelligence platform and help expand what Ryochain can become. It's not only a competition, but it's an opportunity to help advance the Ryochain ecosystem and explore what a platform can become For more information, check out the socials of Ryocoin