So Pascal, thank you. It's a pleasure. That's how I started the interview with Tony as well. I immediately said to Tony, these interviews are super personal. I moved here to Paris seven years ago and made basically four friends: Hedvig, Bree, you, and Tony. And here we are now releasing Ledger Stacks with two of my four friends in Paris. Thank you for being with us here today. I think for the listeners, you've been involved with Ledger since its inception. You were the first person to write a check to Ledger for investment, and you've been CEO since 2019, is that correct? And why Ledger? Why did you write that first check to Ledger?
First of all, thanks back at you. It's a pleasure, and it's great that in business there are many concepts. Some people say you should never work with friends. I always strongly disagreed with that. I think working with friends is great, especially when your friends are really good. So it's a pleasure that we all share mutually at Ledger to work together, but especially with you since you joined early 2021. The impact is super visible, making my life a lot easier and helping me make the why of Ledger possible. That's a thank you and also a segue to why Ledger. It's also more fun, right? That was one of my promises to you in the beginning: we're going to have fun. Pascal and I both like to work hard and play hard, so that's maybe why we work well together. Having fun is key; life is short, so you might as well work with people you love. The why of Ledger for me was very clear from the beginning: it was just a concept, then with time it became a business. I met the Ledger team at the end of 2014, beginning of 2015, and they pitched me a simple story about security and using the chip and PIN technology to secure crypto secrets. I'm French, so a little biased: the French invented chip and PIN. We've been told since we were kids that this was the most secure technology to secure crypto secrets, and it is. It was just after the Mt. Gox incident, and for me, just starting my journey into crypto, it was obvious that endpoint security was the main issue. Crypto was designed for self-custody and peer-to-peer exchange. It seemed ludicrous to risk losing assets at any point during a transaction. That wouldn't scale. So I thought security would be paramount. Also, meeting the team at the time - Eric, Nikola, and the rest of the founders - they were all extraordinary people, great. The reason I was in business and joined crypto was to work with extraordinary people. I thought this is where the trailblazers would be, the most crazy and genius people. And the Ledger team was crazy genius, doing things not many people would do anywhere else, pitching this idea. They found someone almost as crazy as they were. My decision was taken in five minutes. They were surprised because they had been pitching so hard and nobody wanted to invest - hardware crypto seemed like a terrible investment. But I was sure: I love it. Here's $200,000. But I want a board seat. Eric was too happy to take my money and give me the board seat. I didn't know at the time that I was leading the round, but apparently I did. Eric told me years later that I was the lead in the founding round because I took my decision very quickly and looked so convinced that people thought I knew something they didn't. I knew nothing - I just knew that endpoint security would be important and chip and PIN was the right technology, and they had a great team. So let's go. That's how you build businesses - you need to take risks.
So you started as a board member at this new French company building hardware, ultimately you became the president and then the CEO. But I'm curious about that journey. Ledger has been around for seven years, and a lot has happened in crypto. Ledger, in my view, has had an incredibly steady hand. If I'm not wrong, you could look at the prospectus you said yes to and then look at the mission of the company today, and it would basically say the same thing: we're about security and self-custody of crypto and digital assets. Or do I have that wrong? Has a lot changed? Also, what was it like to be on the board of a crypto company over the last seven years through many cycles?
Wow, that's a big question. I apologize in advance for the monologue. But I think still in the 'why' just to finish on the question: there were definitely different steps in the journey of Ledger, and some steps were more operational, trying to figure out if it was something. Once you have that, you can work on the real why. Not every company starts with a why; every company starts with a maybe, stumbling upon something. At the board of Ledger for the first two years, the question was: is hardware really a thing? Every board we questioned that business model, trying to figure out if we could take the company elsewhere. For a long time, until somewhere in 2016 when the Nano S came out and we started to see a sign of light, and definitely in the bull run of 2017, it became clear that it was our business. But even after 2017 when the market became bear again, the question popped up: are we really doing hardware wallets? Is this really a business? To this date, you still have some naysayers, probably a little less after FTX. But it's very difficult to bring a business from zero to where we are, and it will be very difficult to take it from where we are to where we want to be. The other thing I want to say is that the 'why' also comes with execution. At first you're just trying to figure out if there is something, and once you have something, the why starts to make sense. The why of Ledger is really freedom. That's something I increasingly got passionate about. It's the reason I got into crypto in the first place: financial freedom for everyone. Bitcoin, but then I began to understand that this would never happen without Ledger. If you want to be self-sovereign, own your crypto, own your identity, switch from Web 2 where you've been dispossessed from your digital life to gain possession again, there aren't many other options but Ledger. Suddenly the why of Ledger becomes so much more important. We have a job to do, customers to serve, the world to free. It becomes super interesting because it's not just business. It has to be a for-profit company to fuel the why and invest in R&D. We are a company with a mission.
When I was talking to Charles, something incredibly interesting came out: the original architecture. You mentioned chip and PIN earlier. Chip and PIN has been used very successfully for tens of years to protect the secrets of banks and governments, in our credit cards and passports. Fundamentally, what Ledger does is use the same security model and the same sorts of chips to protect the secrets of individuals. So it's interesting that at the very heart of the company is that freedom and the shift from banks and governments to individuals. Is that what you mean when you talk about securing freedom and the ownership of individuals?
Yeah, 100%. The motto of Ledger for a long time has been 'In Vs Numer' or 'Don't Trust, Verify'. We took the ethos of Bitcoin and the cypherpunk narrative of being your own bank and your own sovereign individual. As a reaction to the 2008 crisis and the fact that nothing is too big to fail, you shouldn't trust centralized propositions. It's all more true today with FTX going under in such a debacle. Lehman Brothers, Mt. Gox, FTX - every seven years you get a reminder that you should not trust your digital life with anyone. Why could you trust third parties when they can fail on their own or be hacked? So trust yourself, but you need the right tools. That's the future we're building toward. Is it perfect? No. We have a lot of work to do on UX/UI, but security is strong. The future is owning your stuff, protecting yourself, being self-sovereign. Before FTX people questioned this; after FTX, people get it.
I have to say, even for myself, when FTX launched a custodial NFT site last year, I was really thinking: maybe I'm wrong. Maybe some of these guys will be good, they'll scale, they'll have a centralized value prop, and it's sort of like America Online - easier for newbies. But it's incredible that you and the Ledger team have stuck so true to those North Stars. There were probably lots of places in the history of the company where you could have chased a shiny object for near-term revenue. The fact that the board had the resolve to stick all the way through is commendable. You mentioned the product - I want to turn to that now. Ledger has these core values built on freedom, but execution is everything. Ideas are cheap, execution is hard. We have a hardware roadmap and just announced Ledger Stacks this week. We've got Ledger Live, Ledger Connect, the developer platform, services built on top - buy, sell, swap, stake, lend, a credit card from a self-custody proposition. We have our NFT business connected to Ledger Enterprise, and other services for the future. How do you decide what Ledger should do and what isn't Ledger's business to do? How do you decide what's in and what's out?
That's a billion-dollar question. First, when you run your business, you have to understand your most precious asset, where you have a clear differentiator, an edge. I come from online advertising; my previous company was Criteo, listed on NASDAQ in 2013. After that I wanted a new career. I knew a few things: I wanted to work from France, on something very international with high scalability, reach a hundred billion valuation, and have an edge while doing it in France. Ledger is exactly that. In France, we have the best hardware engineers and crypto engineers. It's about the people. Luck is part of business. Without you, Tony, the diversity of the team in Paris - it wouldn't be possible. I was lucky we got to be friends. But you create your luck and seize opportunities. I tried to get you in the business for three years before you decided to join. The triptych to build great businesses is ambition first, resilience second, then perfect execution. On ambition: when you join, you know that we're shooting for 100 billion. Building big businesses is knowing it's possible. People who have done it before know it's possible. Resilience comes from the fact that it's not about money. I want to build something. There's no overnight sensation; everything is hard work. You have to admit quickly when you're wrong and move on, but if you feel you have something that is working and solving a problem, put in the time and work. Overnight success stories are always false. I love the story about Billie Eilish - she was a little overnight sensation they'd been working on for three years. The iPod was not an overnight success; Apple had less than 2% market share, and it took years. Everything is about hard work and resilience. When people look at Ledger and say nice things, I remind them it was hard and took time, and we're not anywhere yet. We have places to go. It's not time to be complacent; it's time to work hard, serve customers, do the right things. Ledger has a strong responsibility in this market, especially after everything that happened. We owe our users to work twice as hard to fulfill our destiny. Finally, perfect execution is very hard because you have to know what you don't know. Figure out what you don't know and find people who know that thing well. Perfect execution is all about people. People change companies; it's not AI or robots. You need the best people and the best team. It's like 'The Last Dance' with Michael Jordan - the team, the organization, how they win championships. I take the most pleasure in learning from my team.
