How Stratumn Plans on Becoming the “Heroku of Blockchain” — and how they found their first Node.js engineer on talent.io
This article was first published in August 2016 — Since then, Stratumn raised €7M, the largest raising fund in the European blockchain and data security ecosystem.
Very few innovations have attracted as much attention as blockchain has since its launch in 2008. Among other things, it forms the basis of Bitcoin and when Stratumn, a Paris-based startup that makes this storage technology available to a wider audience, used talent.io to recruit their first Node.js engineer, we took the opportunity to ask a few questions of François Dorléans, the company’s co-founder and COO.
Hello François, thank you for accepting our invitation. First things first: what exactly is Stratumn?
Stratumn provides a platform that allows blockchain technology to be embedded in any application and to demonstrate that a business process has been executed. We call it Proof of Process.
Can you remind us what blockchain is used for?
In essence, blockchain is the protocol that records transactions that use Bitcoin, the digital crypto-currency. Blockchain is a technology that makes it possible to confirm that any kind of data (including transactions and contracts) is valid, thanks to its non-changeable nature and the fact that it is distributed over a network. In concrete terms, the data is distributed across thousands of “nodes,” all of which share the same data history. This technology is based around reaching a consensus on the status of the data. As such, if an individual tried to update a piece of data unilaterally, or to add a fake transaction, the request would be rejected.
It’s a revolution: until now, the internet age was all about information, i.e., it involved exchanging a potentially infinite number of duplicable data packets. With blockchain, you can sign a piece of data and give an identity to something as intangible as a piece of digital data. Blockchain, therefore, amounts to a way to build trust over the internet.
What role does Stratumn play in this context?
We have created a blockchain application development platform, based on a PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) model. We’ve developed all the layers necessary to connect a client application to blockchain. We enabled developers to create features or entire solutions that are built on blockchain technology.
What are these layers that you’re referring to?
On the one hand, there is a client application, with the blockchain on the other end. Stratumn makes it possible to integrate this technology into the app with three layers:
Chainscript is an open-source standard developed by Stratumn, which makes it possible to describe each stage in the customer’s business process. Chainscript will cryptographically link each step in the workflow with the others so that the process cannot be altered or modified.
Then, there is a software layer, which is a kind of “agent” that contains all the functional rules that form the business process. Developers will write the business logic to describe this process.
Finally, we have a transactional layer, or “fossil”, that is in contact with the blockchain and allows thousands of individual pieces of data to be aggregated into a block. The fossil metaphor is used because the data is “fossilised” in the blockchain, which also contains the proof of its existence and the date and time stamp. Thanks to the blockchain, you can return to the original data years later to audit the existence of that data.
What kind of organisations make use of your services?
Stratumn is aimed at all kinds of businesses, from startups to major corporate customers. We work with major accounts in the financial services and healthcare sectors in particular.
Who makes up the team behind Stratumn?
We are a team of four co-founders and we launched Stratumn in summer 2015. Richard Caetano, the CEO, is originally from California and has been based in Paris for five years. He’s a Bitcoin and Blockchain specialist — he’s literally written a book about them. There’s also Sébastien Couture who is the CMO, as well as Stéphane Florquin, the CTO, and me, the COO.
Our technical team is made up of Stéphane Florquin (CTO), Anuj Das Gupta (Platform Architect) and Sébastien Couture (CMO). Gordon Cieplak has just joined us from New York as VP of Product. Two back-end developers with blockchain experience will be joining us over the next few weeks.
“TechCrunch recently ran a headline that we were building a Heroku for blockchain.”
What is your roadmap for developing Stratumn?
We launched the beta of our product in March 2016, and we expect to open the product fully by the end of September.
TechCrunch recently ran a headline that we were building a “Heroku for blockchain”. Our goal is to create an easy-to-use development platform that contains all the services required to create solutions that are built on blockchain.
What is your tech stack?
Our tech stack consists of Node.js, MongoDB, Redis, and React.js and will soon be complemented by Golang. Our architecture is broken down into microservices and is hosted on AWS. We automate our deployments and infrastructure using Terraform, Ansible, and Consul.
“The candidates on talent.io are great. They always answer to our offers, and their salary expectations are always relevant to the market.”
A question for developers reading this interview: why should they join Stratumn?
Working on a disruptive, innovative technology is very exciting. Lots of people are familiar with the Blockchain concept, but very few genuinely have had the opportunity to use it. In the next roles that we’re recruiting for, prior knowledge is always a bonus but it’s not a requirement. First and foremost, we’re looking for developers who show a lot of interest, who are ready to learn — and we’ll train them in the new technology.
You recruited a Node.js developer via talent.io: can you tell us about the experience?
We signed up for talent.io because we had very specific recruitment needs and we were under a lot of time pressure.
We could either have posted ads all over the place, and received a lot of CVs that weren’t particularly relevant, or we could have targeted ads at engineering schools — but that would have taken time that we didn’t have. On talent.io, we had access to a relevant pool of candidates to choose from.
The support that we received made it possible to keep in touch with candidates and ensure that we got a response, which took a lot of the pain out of the recruitment process.
What did you think about the profiles that you viewed?
The candidate profiles were very well placed in relation to the market, and very strong compared to unsolicited applications, which are often highly variable. The candidates generally responded well to our offers, and their salary expectations were always in line with the market.
What candidate profile did you settle on?
We hired Anuj, a Node.js developer with an unusual background. Originally from India, Anuj spent ten years working in the banking sector in New York and, while he wasn’t familiar with blockchain technology, he was extremely interested in the project. Today, he has rapidly increased his skills due to the profound intellectual curiosity that motivates him, as a result of which he has made enormous contributions to the product.
Did you try to recruit using other solutions?
We didn’t use an agency to recruit this time around. The experience using talent.io is just better: you can log in any time, you have one-to-one access to all the candidates you could want to contact, with no intermediary. The process is completely frictionless and transparent.
Thank you once again for accepting our invitation. Good luck for the future, and hopefully we’ll hear from you again soon!
Learn more at https://stratumn.com
If you’re clueless about blockchain, we recommend that you watch this introductory video.
