Shoring up morale and opening up the technology: An exclusive interview with Digital Asset's new CEO

Digital Asset, the New York-based blockchain company, has found a new chief executive officer to replace Wall Street veteran Blythe Masters, who stepped down from the position at the end of 2018, the company announced Tuesday.

Yuval Rooz, the firm’s former chief operating officer, was appointed CEO, according to a press release. Rooz, a former high-frequency trading executive, takes the firm’s reins after a number of key personnel exits, including the head of its European business, Gavin Wells, who left in March. In February, James Powell, its former CIO and CTO, left in February, as reported by CoinDesk. 

Blythe, the former CEO, was a force in the cryptocurrency market, joining Digital Asset from JPMorgan after a 27-year career. She led the firm's global expansion and convinced investors that the firm's vision to lure Wall Street banks into the blockchain market would be a formidable business. 

Rooz played a key role in growing the company since its earliest days to its 175 headcount across six offices and securing its $155 million in funding to date.

Still, he has a big job of not only filling Masters' shoes but also convincing investors and employees that the firm has a clear path ahead. 

In his first media interview since taking on the firm's reins, Rooz outlined how he is managing the firm's transition, some of his short-term goals, and how he wants to make Digital Asset's technology more open. 

[Editor's note: The following has been edited for clarity and length.]

Chaparro: How has the reception been. There's obviously been some big exits. How do you mollify concerns that you might face from employees?

Rooz: At the end of the day I think that there has been a period of uncertainty, and that's understandable. Every company goes through these phases, and just generally speaking I think a lot of companies lose people as just part of the business as usual. Some of the people we knew for a while that they were planning on leaving and actually the timing ended up happening right after Blythe left. For some of them, we knew for 18 months that they were in the process of leaving because they wanted to do something else and actually they were willing to commit to working with us for 18 months. 

Internally I said, and I am going to speak to employees this week in an all-hands, that my number one priority is always going to be relationships, and the way that I think about relationships is it's both internal and external. So yesterday, for instance, I had a meeting with one of our investors and I said making sure our investors feel happy with their investment from a relationship perspective is important. And it is important for our employees to feel that their time and investment in the company is also being managed properly and they feel that they have someone who's taking care of them.

So it is my top priority right now. I am focused on employees.

There are unfortunately some people, at least because of uncertainty, that leave. But there are also people that just leave because they're looking for the next opportunity in their life and that's just part of business.

Chaparro: These are some top executives that have left. Do you believe there's a mismatch between what is being reported and what's actually happening within the firm?

Rooz: Yes, absolutely there is. I mean there's just a pure misrepresentation of facts. There's calling employees executives when they were never executives, for instance. But I just want to be clear that it doesn't mean that every employee at Digital Asset is the happiest person in the world with the work environment. Now my job is to make sure that I make it as best as possible.

And there's also going to be some very exciting hires coming up.

Chaparro: That was my next question — what type of talent are you hiring?

Rooz: There's going to be a focus on engineering hires. And I am excited about the things in the pipeline for the company in 2019. And all of the hires that are going to be focused around that strategy. What you're going to see from Digital Asset in 2019 is much more openness about our technology.

There are going to be some very exciting announcements coming up, some this month, and some shortly after.

Chaparro: What are some of your short-term strategic goals for 2019?

Rooz: So morale is one thing. I will tell you that since even before the announcement we had internal conversations about our direction in 2019, and from a morale perspective I would say that most of the company almost unanimously is super excited about the direction. They wanted to see us taking steps in that direction for a long time. 

Chaparro: Outside of shoring up morale, what are you looking to accomplish?

Rooz: If I were to have one headline message for you, it is we want DA technology to be much more open and have many more partners work together with us in this journey. Some that might be surprising to the blockchain world. I just can't share too much right now because, as you can imagine, we are working with partners and there is a process around making that information public.

Chaparro: What do you mean by open?

Rooz: So historically, I think that if  you were to ask people what do you think about Digital Asset they would say it is proprietary, closed. I think that what you will see moving forward is much more openness.

Chaparro: One last question I have has to do with something in the industry that I view as a fundamental threat, potentially, to Digital Asset. You see announcements like JPMorgan's JPMCoin, and it is clear that financial services firms are more comfortable with this market and appear to be deploying blockchain technology alone. As a technology partner, is this a threat in your view?

Rooz: I actually love your question. From my perspective that is what I want to see. I want to see companies that are able to move fast by themselves and what I want to prove to them is that we have the technology to enable them to move by themselves. If Digital Asset had to be involved in every project, the scaling of this company wouldn't be something that I would be interested in. That's kind of the point of being more open to work with other partners. At the end of the day if you're a technology firm you have to keep on innovating and proving that the technology is worthwhile.

Being closed and saying you have to work on every project will never achieve the scale of some of the interesting companies on the West Coast. So from my perspective what you described is actually the future that I want to go towards, which is banks being able to move quickly by themselves. And that they believe the tools and technology that we can provide is going to allow them to move even faster. And those are some of the things and some of the relationships I've been working on quite a lot in the last year.