Meet the CEO of Wire
I’m Morten Brøgger, CEO of messaging and collaboration platform Wire. Unlike the likes of Slack and Microsoft Teams that are used by every organisation under the sun, Wire is specifically only used by large-scale enterprises, governments and financial services companies globally who need their communications to be as secure as humanly possible.
What’s the most common problem customers approach you with?
With the majority of employees now working remotely, businesses are coming to us because they want assurance that their remote communications are as secure as they would be from the office.
Unlike mainstream collaboration tools, Wire can avoid man-in-the-middle attacks by encrypting messages on individual devices, and not in the cloud. Each message - or, more broadly, transaction - via Wire, has its own encryption key, which can never leave users’ devices.
As a result, ever since we pivoted to focus purely on enterprises, we’ve been getting some great momentum. Ultimately, we want to be the best communication tool for enterprises and for work. We want to make that type of communication secure. That’s what we’re best at and that’s why prospective customers come to us for a truly secure collaboration platform.
How do you set yourself apart from other businesses in your industry?
Wire is the most secure collaboration platform, with security at the heart of everything we do. We offer a dynamically encrypted messenger, voice, video and conference calling, file sharing and external collaboration - all of which are protected by industry-leading end-to-end encryption, securing all data that passes through our platform.
Unlike larger collaboration providers in the enterprise market, our encryption keys only exist on the devices of our users. Wire cannot access these encryption keys - meaning no man in the middle vulnerability. Whereas other providers, in reality, can access encryption keys and read your content.
For more than 1,000 enterprise customers, we provide secure and scalable collaboration. This includes custom deployment options to cater to enterprises and governments looking to protect their documents, as well as to secure their communications across teams, with partners and with clients.
Keeping an eye on the numbers in any business is important. How do you ensure that you’re always up to date?
We run internal weekly, bi-weekly and monthly reviews of the different key functions of our company. For example, do we have our weekly VP Sales call every Tuesday to understand where we are with regards to our forecast, key deals and pipeline generation. We also review our product delivery, marketing, PR demand generation and operations regularly.
What plans do you have for Wire over the next two years?
We grew more than 500% during 2019, and I believe we will see a similar or potentially even higher growth rate in both 2020 and 2021. Secure collaboration for work is clearly in high demand, and no one does it better than we do.
It has been a challenging time for all of us at Wire managing this explosion in demand and customer requests during the pandemic, while we - like the rest of the world - are all working from our home offices, our living rooms, dining tables or even balconies. But we have adapted through our collaborative culture and high-customer orientation, by supporting a record-breaking number of new customers.
Any new product launches we should know about?
We have just soft-launched the beta version of our video-conferencing capability. The feature will be launched in full to our enterprise customer base later in October.
The new capability will enable organisations to host high-quality, fully end-to-end encrypted video calls for up to 10 participants and audio calls for up to 25 participants. Unlike other productivity-focused communication tools, our open-source platform is built with a security-first infrastructure that incorporates zero-trust protocols and always on end-to-end encryption, with perfect forward secrecy.
How do you believe the evolution of tech will affect your industry over the next 10 years?
The biggest evolution I believe we’re going to see will be the specific impact of regulation on technology. Privacy concerns, coupled with the need to comply with such a new and complex set of data protection and data localisation laws, are forcing private and public organisations to radically rethink their commitment to, and use of, the cloud. With the instinctive (but not exclusive) solution being to move to the on-premise cloud, privacy concerns may ultimately result in its demise.
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and China’s Cybersecurity Law - two of the most comprehensive packages of data privacy regulations - have already had cascading impacts on businesses in these markets and on all of their trading partners.
And this is just the beginning. In the last few years, over 70 countries have passed new or updated data privacy laws in some form of data localisation.
How much time do you spend on things that don’t add customer value?
I really try to minimise spending any time on items that are not generating customer value. It is hard to put a precise number on it however because as a CEO this varies over time. But as a rule of thumb, I would like to spend less than 20% of my time on areas that do not directly drive customer value.
What would be your top marketing tip to grow a business that is niche?
Focus on your niche. Speak personally to as many of your customers and prospects as you can, as these conversations always tell you what will work and what does not work. Be ready to listen to the things you don’t like to hear.
What do you think gives a brand longevity?
Brands now not only have a responsibility to protect shareholder value (by protecting company assets held digitally) but also to protect the business from the regulatory and personal liabilities that could arise from cybersecurity vulnerabilities, which are far more extreme than they’ve ever been.
High-profile examples include Uber’s $148m fine or the disruption to business continuity that comes from a CEO being forced to resign in the wake of an incident. This means senior individuals in organisations must take a closer interest in the efforts of the company to secure itself and in its preparedness in the event of a crisis.
How important is company culture and what is your top tip to get it right?
It is super important. Company culture helps to ensure that everyone is aligned, ready for change and collaborative in problem-solving. It is important to spend time on defining this and nurturing it.
Do you have a morning routine or ritual to get your day started on the right foot?
Working out first thing is always a go-to for me.
