Meet The Entrepreneur: Osmar Olivo
We are delighted to share the next segment of our Meet The Entrepreneur video series, which provides a candid view of the exceptional people behind tomorrow’s game-changing frontier technology companies. Hear how these entrepreneurs find inspiration, what advice they have for the next generation of entrepreneurs, how they balance work and life, and of course, their take on the age-old philosophical debate — cats or dogs?
In today’s episode, meet Osmar “Oz” Olivo, Vice President of Product Management at Inrupt, the platform company co-founded by John Bruce and Tim Berners-Lee and incubated by Glasswing Ventures. Oz explains what motivated him to join the revolutionary startup restoring balance to the web — empowering people to have control over how their data is used and stored — and his desire to help build something that would change the world.
Read the full interview with Osmar below.
My name is Osmar Olivo, but most people just know me as Oz. I’m the VP of product at Inrupt, Inc. The ultimate goal of the company is to restore balance to the web, with the goals of empowering people to have control over how their data is used and stored.
Tell us about your background.
I’m sort of a huge geek when it comes to data. It’s really kind of my passion. So I received a computer science degree from Brown University and started off my career writing software as an engineer. So first at the Goldman Sachs trading floor and later at my first startup, Mongo DB. Then I met Sir Tim Berners Lee and John Bruce, the founders of Inrupt, and I knew I would regret not taking the opportunity to come build something that would change the world with them.
What makes Inrupt unique?
We’re producing more data than we ever have, but we’re also seeing more violations with respect to people’s personal rights and privacy. It’s really time for users to take back control over their data. But at the same time, we have to be realistic about it. We can’t just throw away everything we know about data management and start over.
I think what really makes Inrupt unique is we take the status quo of how data is used industry-wide and we completely flip it on its head in a way that leverages existing well-known foundational technologies. Our products provide users with a personal cloud called a pod. That lets applications access the data so long as the owner of the data has consented to it.
So this lets us move to a new and better world where our data can provide the most value and remain secure, but with minimal disruption or learning curve to the tools and platforms we already use today.
What was your ‘Aha’ moment at Inrupt?
My ‘aha’ moment, I’d have to say, came up when I first was meeting with Tim. And he asked me to try an early iteration or version of the product. I made a profile, uploaded a picture, put my name in, all my basic info. You know, we’ve all done that a hundred times, right? So my ‘aha’ moment came when Tim said, ‘okay, that was the last time you’re ever going to have to do that.’
And he gave me a few links to a couple applications, and I gave the apps access to the data in my pod. And the apps just started working. And my profile picture, my name, my information was just automatically pulled from my pod. It blew my mind. That’s the moment when I realized that apps should come to me and ask me for access to my data. And that data should live in a place managed by me, and I should have full control over who has access to it.
What keeps you up at night? What gets you up in the morning?
So the answer to both is strategy and execution. So much of what you do at any startup is focused on executing your strategies efficiently and effectively. I get up in the morning because I know that we need to execute. There are key milestones that need to be hit, but then the thing that actually keeps me up at night is that greater goal. I want to be sure that we’re executing on the right things and that our strategies make sense.
Do you have a work-life balance?
I do, I do keep a work-life balance. I play soccer. I play billiards, pool, competitively. It can be easy to just power through with work. But at the end of the day, you only have one life, and you can’t forget to live it. So I do my best to stay physically active, connected to my loved ones and, you know, pursue the passions and hobbies I have as much as possible.
How do you approach mistakes?
When providing mission critical enterprise software, the margin for error tends to be much smaller. Best case scenario, the reputation and, brand of a company takes a hit, worst case scenario you might have cost a business or person dearly. A lot of my effort goes into validating our assumptions, plans, strategies, so that we can maximize confidence that we’re moving in the right direction.
But all that said, mistakes still happen. And when they do, I think it’s really important to approach them in a sort of ego-free, non-defensive way. Obviously, you have to address the mistake and course-correct, but even more important is to conduct a formal retrospective. So one mistake, if you handle it right, can prevent dozens of future ones.
What is your advice for future tech entrepreneurs?
I definitely generally like to encourage people, particularly early in their career, to join a startup. I think you just get such an acceleration in terms of personal growth. The number of hats you’ll wear and the exposure to different disciplines and aspects of the business will cause you to mature and grow almost as fast as the company itself is growing.
What is a highlight of your time at Inrupt?
It’s been a whirlwind, which is good. So I’ll say that the greatest highlight, it’s got to be taking our product to market for the very first time. There’s nothing like bringing a product to market. It really marks the beginning, and it’s the period in a product life cycle that allows for the most creativity and impact in the overall direction and strategy of the product and the company.
Meet the Entrepreneur provides a candid view of the exceptional people behind tomorrow’s game-changing frontier technology companies. Hear how these entrepreneurs find inspiration, what advice they have for the next generation of entrepreneurs, how they balance work and life, and of course their take on the age-old philosophical debate — cats or dogs?
