The saying, “Think globally, act locally” – attributed to the Canadian futurologist Frank Feather in 1979 – has been applied by the head of WISeKey since February 1999, the date of the formation of the company in Geneva. Nine years later, it is more than ever the reality, as WISeKey, now one of the world leaders in electronic security, gets set to enter the stock market.
Even if for reasons of confidentiality the details of this operation may not be revealed at this stage, it has been clear for quite some time that the WISeKey management has not been hiding its ambition to make a great strike. Or, as Carlos Moreira, founder and CEO of the Geneva specialty company, boldly puts it: “Europe has ceded too much territory to the United States – it’s time for the competition to get organized.”
It’s been a decade since WISeKey started to refine its business model, an approach that is both technological in nature (electronic security) and humanoriented (placing the individual in the center of the action), all the while taking the key steps that have led it today to the gates of the market. Several months ago the dream was just taking shape.
A media-oriented business model
“WISeKey’s entry onto the market represents a major push forward at this stage of its development. To be sure, to get all the expected benefits, it's a matter of preparing well, of making good choices regarding the market and setting up a route map for the company,” Moreira explains.
If, in the life of a company, this phase represents both the culmination of a journey – one that is often long and full of pitfalls – and a springboard to future growth, it also is no less a risky strategic operation, especially in the current conditions of a depressed market. The chances of success of entry onto the market actually determine the price set on the company, the interest of investors and consequently the amount of subscription.
“Up to the present time we have favoured the stock price,” comments Moreira. “Today we would like to reduce our vulnerability by increasing our capital by 75 million francs, to be used to finance strategic investments.” Since its founding, Wisekey has raised CHF 50 million, of which 24 million have been particularly devoted to R&D, the launch of new products, setting up data centres in Geneva and in Bilbao, acquiring licences and to the construction of a network of affiliates. Around CHF 25 million have been used up in operations, an average of 2.7 million a year.
WISeKey’s future entry onto the market is based on a new business model, developed in collaboration with Deloitte, that expects to profit from the strong growth of the global market for digital identification by means of contracts in the sectors of the media, publicity, mobile telephones, digital television, mobile communications and the Internet. A massive migration to the publicity mode is also predicted for 2009–2010. “Everything is combined for the improvement of the operational efficiency, acquisitions, and cost reduction,” Moreira confidently says. “All to grow our margins and our profitability starting next year.”
The success of Web 3.0
As much as Carlos Moreira is now experiencing one of the most exciting moments of his life as an entrepreneur, it is also one of the most delicate moments of his career. “It is gratifying to see that an idea that I have believed in and still believe in is bearing fruit.
WISeKey has shown good growth, and should interest investors with acquisitions and with a significant project of organic development.” For the world is on the move. And very quickly at that, especially in sectors like security.
Unlike the traditional PKI key – which presents consumers and citizens with a unique universal identity, managed in a partially centralized fashion – and unlike Web 2.0 – in which internauts have user names dispersed around the world, generally protected by passwords managed in a isolated fashion by the various sites – WISeKey from now on is concentrating on the implementation of the principles of Web 3.0 for the management of identity.
This semantic web, as defined by Tim Berners-Lee, co-inventor of the World Wide Web at CERN, allows the computerized treatment of “what is said” rather than “how things are said.” In this new world of convergence, each user will be able to coherently manage the many facets of his or her identity directly on the Web, independent of the constraints imposed by each method of authentication.
The success of this global project heightens the basis of identification of persons and of information. The company at the head of the line will find itself in a position to play a crucial role in this revolution. What remains, however, is the risk factor, both at the level of the product itself (speaking from a technical point of view) and at the level of acceptance by the market. An additional matter of decryption for WISeKey.