In an interview with Insights Success, the co-founder and COO of CapLinked, Christopher Grey shares his insights behind his rewarding voyage as a tech strategist. This acknowledged industry leader has driven his company’s product offerings to a global scale with his modern and innovative management and operational expertise.
Below are the highlights of the interview conducted between Christopher and Insights Success:
According to you, what aspects should an ideal technology strategy include?
An ideal technology strategy should include a high level vision, a detailed road map to achieve that vision, and clear metrics at each stage for measuring progress along that road map.
How do you diversify your product offerings that appeal your target audience?
We look to our clients for honest feedback on what they like about the platform and what they think it lacks. All users’ perspectives are unique and equally important. We invite our customers to share their feedback and suggestions with our customer success team from the opening of their account to closing to ensure we provide the best user experience possible. All customer feedback regarding usability, processing, and support is reviewed by our team internally and considered for product or service improvements. We work to deliver new features and updates based on customer demand and being ahead of the game for applications in the industry.
What were the past experiences, achievements or lessons that shaped your journey?
Originally, the company was set up to improve the process of raising money for startups. In 2012, we decided to enter the virtual data room industry to empower businesses to retain control of their assets wherever they go with an intuitive and advanced platform at an affordable cost. With this change we have been featured as one of the 10 best collaboration technology solution providers and named as “the go-to place for setting up and closing deals” by the Wall Street Journal.
What were some of the biggest challenges and roadblocks that you faced during the initial phase of your journey?
Our biggest challenge was finding the right people for the team. Everything starts with that. Today we are fortunate to have a very strong team. Another lesson that shaped our journey was focusing too much on what particular investors, customers, or founders wanted to do and not being truly data driven. We wasted a lot of time and resources on ideas that would not have been supported by a data driven approach.
How do you think the role of a tech strategist has changed over the years?
I think technology today is so embedded in every aspect of almost everyone’s life. Many people spend more time interacting with technology than they do with people. So the technologist today must be substantially more concerned with the psychological and social impact of technology on humans and their lives than in the past. Understanding how technology impacts people and how people interact with technology is the key to success much more than the technology itself.
Where does CapLinked, Inc see itself in the near future and what are its future goals?
We aim to continue to be the leaders in the enterprise communication and information control markets and expand our virtual data rooms and secure document sharing solutions across the globe. Also, we are developing a new product for issuer of tokenized equity in the block chain industry. This new product, called TransitNet, would help security token issuers manage their post issuance compliance and investor communications.
Provide one line that best describes your style and approach to business?
My approach to business, summed up in one line: Combining real data with sound reasoning and open discussions is the best path to outstanding results.
What is your advice for budding and emerging technology strategists?
Start with what you understand or what you do that is better than anyone else. What is your advantage? If you can’t find a clear advantage in what you are doing now, you should try doing something else until you find it. Once you find it, push that advantage as hard as you can until it stops working. Then begin at step one again and find a new advantage.
About the Strategist
A technology strategy is the core necessity of any business to attain productivity, adaptability and excellence. An ideally effective tech strategy creates, delivers and captures value in the situation it is applied. Designing such a strategy and drawing profitable insights from it is what an ideal tech strategist strives to accomplish.
One such exemplary technology strategist of the rapidly changing business world is the Co-founder and COO of CapLinked, Christopher Grey. Holding an Economics degree from Stanford University, he exhibits a coherent understanding and recognized expertise in devising contemporary technology strategy.
Previously, he was a senior executive and managing partner in private equity and corporate finance for 15 years and was directly involved in the deployment and management of billions of dollars of debt and equity investments in various industries.
Christopher has founded two companies, Crestridge Investments, a private equity firm that made debt and equity investments in micro-cap and middle market companies, and Third Wave Partners, which made debt and equity investments in distressed situations, and was the managing director of a subsidiary of Emigrant Bank, the largest privately owned bank in the country.
About the Company
Founded in 2010 by Eric M. Jackson who was PayPal’s first head of US marketing and Christopher Grey a former private equity and investment banking executive, CapLinked is based in Los Angeles. It is an enterprise software company offering an information control and risk mitigation platform for the sharing of confidential or sensitive documents and communications outside of the enterprise. It empowers businesses to retain control of their assets wherever they go; including the security perimeter of the company.
CapLinked’s secure platform provides companies with easy-to-use tools for capital raises, asset sales, mergers and acquisitions, real estate deals, investor and board reporting, business development negotiations, and other types of complex business transactions. The organization acts as a “risk buffer” by serving as a trusted third party for sharing information with outsiders. Companies that are completely reliant on in-house solutions to share data are carrying hundred percent of the risk by acting as a trusted intermediary. Initially the organization was founded to improve the process of raising money for startups.
However, later in 2012 the organization shifted its focus on disrupting the stagnant, outdated multibillion dollar per year virtual data room industry. Currently, CapLinked is focused on organic growth that is customer driven. Recently the organization has expanded into the block chain and crypto space, developing a new product called TransitNet to offer the next generation of its products to this rapidly growing market.
CapLinked makes it faster, safer, and easier to manage business transactions in the cloud. The Wall Street Journal called CapLinked “the go-to place for setting up and closing deals,” and Inc. Magazine named CapLinked to its list of 5 Back-Office Tech Innovations.
The company’s investors include Peter Thiel (co-founder of PayPal), Hercules Technology Growth Capital, FF Angel, Siemer Ventures, 500 Startups, Joe Lonsdale (founder of Palantir Technologies), David Sacks (CEO of Yammer), 7th Rig, and Wasabi Ventures.
Source :-The 10 Most Influential Tech Strategist of 2018
