Today on Decoder<\/em>, we\u2019ve got the first of a two-part series on the systems that run the world: I\u2019m talking with Bart Butler, the CTO of Proton, the company that makes private and secure productivity software.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n You probably know it best for Proton Mail, which is encrypted by default, but the company also has docs, sheets, a calendar<\/a>, and even a new AI assistant called Lumo, all built and marketed around the idea that they should be vastly more private than the products from Big Tech companies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n You\u2019ll hear Bart say pretty plainly that the thing Proton sells, at a high level, isn\u2019t really the products themselves, but actually trust. And trust in the software world isn\u2019t only about the people who run the companies, but also the technology they develop and sell and the corporate structure in place to make sure that technology is built against the right incentives. Pure Decoder<\/em> bait, in other words. The challenge is that Bart also says part of Proton\u2019s mission is very much to succeed at being a viable competitor to Big Tech, and that means the company has to grow and expand to competitive scale, all while preserving its core values.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This philosophy, and that challenge, is baked directly into Proton\u2019s structure and even its physical location \u2014 the company and its servers are based in Switzerland, in part because of the Swiss government\u2019s geopolitical neutrality. Two years ago, Proton also transitioned to a nonprofit structure governed by a foundation, which is a familiar model used by all kinds of companies that ostensibly operate in the public interest, but which has failure modes of its own, as we just saw with OpenAI<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Verge<\/em> subscribers, don\u2019t forget you get exclusive access to ad-free Decoder<\/em> wherever you get your podcasts. Head here<\/a>. Not a subscriber? You can sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n We talked about all of that, but I really wanted to talk to Bart because he\u2019s responsible for the technical construction of some very complex systems that interact with all these complex politics. I really wanted to know how you translate all these lofty ideals and concepts like user trust into real, privacy-centric products and features that can withstand all this policy pressure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n For example, earlier this year, the Swiss government requested payment data<\/a> that led the FBI to unmask a protester associated with the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta, Georgia, a request Proton complied with. So of course I had to ask Bart about all that, and what it means that the US government can use words like \u201cterrorism\u201d to coerce foreign governments to apply pressure on Proton \u2014 and how the company decides when and how to take on those fights.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This pressure manifests in all kinds of ways. Proton is on the record saying it will leave Switzerland<\/a>, and Bart says it would also consider ditching its operations in EU countries like Germany and Norway if various surveillance laws working their way through European courts continue to threaten Proton\u2019s privacy mission<\/a>. Bart told me these aren\u2019t just empty threats and that Proton is in the process of figuring out what it would mean to leave Europe if things get, in his words, more \u201cdystopian.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There is a whole lot in this one. We ran pretty long because we got so deep in the weeds. We first spent the time talking through the broad frameworks before talking about the very real problems of child safety, age verification, and AI \u2014 all of which are testing Proton\u2019s values with some of the highest-stakes problems on the internet today. But we took the extra time to get there, and I hope you\u2019ll think it was worth it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Okay: Bart Butler, the CTO of Proton. Here we go.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Bart Butler, you\u2019re the chief technology officer at Proton. Welcome to <\/strong>Decoder.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Thank you. Happy to be here.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I\u2019m excited to talk to you. It feels like Proton sits at the center of an escalating, spiraling debate about how we build technology systems, how we regulate them, and how consumers can protect their data or have any control at all over their data at the center of it.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Let\u2019s start at the very start. I think most people understand Proton as ProtonMail, but there\u2019s now a suite of office products and productivity products. Describe what Proton is and how you see all the products working together.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n So Proton is an ecosystem, if you will \u2014 a collection of products that all share the same DNA in the sense that they fundamentally are, in many cases, versions of products you can buy elsewhere, but that are privacy preserving, right?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Yes, we started with mail. We also have a VPN. We have a Proton Drive, which is our file storage, photos, and collaborative real-time docs. We have a calendar. We have a password manager called Proton Pass. We have Meet, which is a video conferencing software. So we have a whole collection of products that do things in some cases very similar to other products that you might be more familiar with, but are also privacy-preserving.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n One of the reasons I\u2019m excited to talk to you specifically as chief technology officer is the idea that there\u2019s a set of products that are familiar, but the company running them is going to behave better than the other company, is a familiar pattern in this industry.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n And Proton promises that the products are actually architected differently.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n That from the very beginning, the way the products are built is actually what makes and keeps the promise of protecting privacy, not a benevolent CEO or a benevolent board of directors. We\u2019ll come to that. There\u2019s some of that in the mix here.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n There\u2019s some of that, too. There\u2019s some corporate structure stuff, but yes, I also consider that there are actually, I would say, two primary structural\u2026 or maybe systems. You could call them systems engineering at a broader scale, but structural constraints on how Proton operates.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The first is that we encrypt all the data we can. So if we wanted to turn around and sell that data to somebody, we can\u2019t. It\u2019s mathematically not possible for us to do it, right? This also has other benefits. We can\u2019t easily lose it to hackers or other interested parties, and there\u2019s some data that we can respond to for, say, legal requests, but there\u2019s some data we can\u2019t. And this helps us; basically, we can\u2019t give up data that we don\u2019t have access to.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The second is the business model. I mean, there are other SaaS players, of course, that do this. I don\u2019t think there are a whole lot of B2C consumer-based SaaS players at our size who do this, but our revenue model is getting paid by our users, right? So we don\u2019t sell ads. The products are not carrots to get people to come in and give us their data so we can sell it to advertisers. And that means that those users \u2014 the ones who pay our bills, pay our salaries \u2014 allow us to grow the business.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n If we were to betray them, then that would essentially undermine the value of the business. We have tied the value of the business and the growth of the business to protecting our users so that our interests are aligned. This is also very important because temptations are a thing. People respond to incentives, and we have structurally arranged our company such that those incentives are aligned with the people to whom we have promised to protect.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n If I were to very reductively summarize what you just said, it is that we take money from consumers, and what we sell them is encrypted versions of popular services that they rely on, like email, a VPN, and an office suite.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Do you think consumers understand that what they\u2019re buying is the technology solution, or are they buying the promise of privacy? Or is it some mix? Because I\u2019m not actually sure consumers really understand at mass scale how it all works, right? They think their iPhones are listening to them.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n What I will tell product people and engineers in meetings about new features is that if you\u2019ve mentioned the word encryption to the user, you\u2019ve already failed. I mean, people don\u2019t understand what this is. That\u2019s fine. Our goal is to make products that are as usable and as functional as our competitors, or more functional.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I mean, I don\u2019t want to sound entirely derivative. We do have features that nobody else has that are often geared towards privacy and functionality for people who need confidential communications. However, in general, we\u2019re selling the promise. We\u2019re selling the promise that we\u2019re a different kind of company. We\u2019re selling the trust \u2014 and that trust is critical. Without trust\u2026 That is where the real value of the company is. Now, that trust is backed up by technology, right? But we\u2019re selling the trust.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The reason I\u2019m pushing on it, and specifically I\u2019m happy that you mentioned trust, is that the big tech players will all make the same kinds of promises about your data being private. Facebook will happily tell you that they don\u2019t sell an ounce of your data. It\u2019s actually not in their interest to sell the data because the ad targeting that they do depends on the data being theirs and not anyone else\u2019s. We can get into this for days and days and days.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I\u2019m just curious where you see that trust being expressed or where you feel like that trust is most communicated from Proton. Because if you ask me, as a more technical person, I do look at the architecture of \u201cit\u2019s all encrypted\u201d and probably mathematically, it\u2019s impossible to get into. Sure, we\u2019ll come to how much metadata can be shared with authorities because there\u2019s some debate about that.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n But that\u2019s the piece that resonates for me as opposed to trusting you or a board of directors. Some other people just look at the promises and take them at face value. Then there\u2019s some set of regulators that say, \u201cActually, we have a bunch of other interests in being able to see the data that goes on here, and we actually don\u2019t trust you to be a good player in the ecosystem.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n So when you think about trust, does it come down to \u201cthe data is encrypted, and that\u2019s the core promise we\u2019re making, and anything that breaks that also breaks the whole product\u201d? Or is there some other dimension of trust that is important at Proton as you build the systems?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n So end-to-end encryption is obviously important. It\u2019s the gold standard, and it\u2019s what we strive for. However, there are definitely features that we\u2026 privacy, at least to me personally, is about control. There are some times when I want an integration with an external service or something like this, and I mean, my choices are no integration or breaking end-to-end encryption.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Our goal is to make it so the user has an informed choice and control over who sees their data. So it\u2019s not the same as never sharing your data or never sharing your photos with anybody. But the point is, instead of sharing your photos with somebody like Facebook who might monetize them, it\u2019s sharing your photos with grandma and grandpa, and only grandma and grandpa.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That\u2019s not to say that encryption is everything, but I think we\u2019ve set up\u2026 I don\u2019t know if we want to get into the corporate structure right now. But we\u2019ve set up the fundamental engineering, which backs up the trust. People like you look at the architecture and say, \u201cOkay, this is encrypted. This is important to me.\u201d And then you go tell somebody else, and to that other person you say, \u201cI trust Proton because of this, this, and this.\u201d The other person, all they know is, \u201cHey, I know Nilay, I trust him, and he says Proton is good.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There\u2019s a whole cohort much, much greater than the techie cohort. The techie cohort is our core, of course, and has been since the beginning, but there\u2019s a whole cohort of people who trust Proton because of other people they know. And by now, I mean it might just be people they trust on Reddit, right? But other people they know say Proton is there.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And what I\u2019m trying to say is we have set up… We\u2019ve all been getting object lessons in the rules, bylaws, laws, other things that can be worth something, but ultimately are worth something when they are… Personnel really matters, right? Who enforces them really matters. So we have the technical layer, which is designed to constrain what we can do technically, and then we also have the legal and corporate structure layer, which is its defense in depth, basically. It\u2019s defense in depth. All of these things are interlocking guarantees to our users that we are trustworthy. Ultimately, that\u2019s the most important thing about the business.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I do want to come to the corporate structure. It is <\/strong>Decoder<\/em><\/strong> after all, but just one more turn on the product set itself. You started with ProtonMail. You\u2019ve got the other suite of products, including now an AI Assistant.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n You talked about the fact that the business model is the consumers paying money directly for the products. Is ProtonMail still the core product that\u2019s making the most money? Are the other lines of business growing? How does this look?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n So we don\u2019t disclose direct financials. Mail and VPN are the two oldest products, and as you might expect, they are the two largest products still. But we also have a lot of people who buy bundles and buy multiple products. We try to make the products work well together in an ecosystem. Some products are more tightly bound than others.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The new products, the more recent ones like Calendar, are very tightly tied to Mail, of course, but we also have Drive and Pass. Those are not as big as the older products. They have less of a head start, if you will, but they are growing rapidly. So they all contribute, but yeah, they contribute differently. Often, I\u2019m not going to say it\u2019s exactly how old they are, but those that have had the bigger runway are usually bigger, right?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n One of the patterns with consumer productivity software is that the suites get bigger, the bundles get bigger, and then the companies realize the class of customers that will actually pay for increased productivity is enterprise.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n We see this over and over again in this space. Notion did it, Dropbox did it. I can go on and on and on about companies that we\u2019ve covered as consumer software companies that eventually pivoted to being enterprise companies. Does Proton feel that same pressure, that you\u2019re going to have to go have more corporate clients, enterprise clients, to grow? Or are you still focused on consumer?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n This is a very, very interesting question. I think we definitely feel the pressure. There\u2019s\u2026 what is it? I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s apocryphal or not, but the old John Dillinger quote like, \u201cWhy do I rob banks? Well, it\u2019s where the money is.\u201d There\u2019s a little bit of that in \u201cWhy do you go B2B?\u201d Well, it\u2019s where the people who have budgets and are willing to pay for this are.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I think we\u2019re definitely considering it. Even as a primarily consumer-focused business, we have a lot of people in small businesses, in particular, who use our products for business purposes. You just use the consumer. And we\u2019ve also made forays into small business offerings and things like that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I think this is something that growth will probably demand. And I think there are a lot of businesses for whom things that we offer \u2014 confidentiality, non-US-based and European sovereignty type stuff in particular, and just our reputation \u2014 are very appealing to those businesses. That said, we have to strike a balance. And today, our business is B2C. We\u2019re not going to jettison the B2C business. I also think that having the B2C business as strong as it is is a competitive strength.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I mean, as you said, there are several that have transitioned to B2B from B2C. But at the same time, I think there are a lot more B2B players that start B2B and stay there. And one of the things that we\u2019re looking at\u2026 Communication between businesses and their customers is certainly important, and confidentiality is important there. You see things like WhatsApp\u2019s forays into having businesses connect to consumers who have WhatsApp. I think that when the time comes to really make a push to B2B, the B2C user base and product suite will be a benefit to us.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n One of the tensions there as AI infiltrates more and more businesses is that frontier model companies want every ounce of data. I think a bunch of big enterprises are very leery of giving a bunch of data to frontier model companies. The AI works best when they have a bunch of data, and so there\u2019s this big choice about how much of your business you will expose to Claude. How much of yourself will you expose to Claude to get the most value out of those models?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Proton sits right in the middle of that with a technical architecture that you\u2019re saying would provide choice, but it also seems like the game for a lot of these companies is to just hand everything over and say, \u201cGo run my business, AI.\u201d How do you see that working with your enterprise customers today?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Yeah. I mean, it\u2019s a fraught decision. It\u2019s giving all their sensitive data over. And they feel like, in many cases, they don\u2019t have a choice. In some ways, that\u2019s why we developed Lumo, our AI offering, which I think may have been left off the list before, unfortunately. I think we just launched Lumo 2.0, which is a big revamp of the models we use. And part of that is\u2026 The goal of the Lumo project in general is to have something that integrates with the rest of our products and can do this in a safe way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This is to address this sort of trade-off between whether I give random AI companies \u2014 possibly in different countries, possibly having compliance problems, all those other things \u2014 do I give them all my sensitive business data, or can I do it in a way that is still more protected? Now, in many ways, there are still trade-offs on our side to make, but we keep it in-house within Proton with the guarantees that we give. That should be a more attractive option for those kinds of workloads, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re hoping for as we develop Lumo.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I think this does bring us to the <\/strong>Decoder<\/em><\/strong> questions about structure and organization because that\u2019s where it feels like the structure has to be, where the trust lies, not necessarily the technical architecture. So how is Proton structured today? How many people are there?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n So, Proton today is approximately 650 people total. That includes engineering, support functions, marketing, et cetera. It also includes customer support, which we do in-house. We always have. We are a corporation called Proton AG, a Swiss corporation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n However, a controlling stake in Proton AG is held by the Proton Foundation, which was seeded with shares from Andy, our CEO, and other early employees. There are other fellow travelers with, I would say, somewhat similar structures. Signal and Mozilla, and our reasons are the same.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Proton Foundation\u2019s controlling stake in the Proton company means it is empowered to protect the mission. It\u2019s a Swiss foundation. I\u2019m not a lawyer, but I\u2019ve been told it\u2019s very difficult to change. Its job is the guardian of the values and the mission of Proton. So if Proton, the company, were to stray from that mission, the Proton Foundation would be empowered to correct course, if that makes sense.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n No. Thus far, no. We have our founder and CEO, Andy Yen. Andy founded the company, and as long as he is in charge, I don\u2019t think that\u2019ll be necessary. But if he gets hit by the bus, there\u2019s a corporate structure that is designed to protect the mission going forward and to make sure the company doesn\u2019t stray regardless.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Because of this ownership model, too, the company is insulated from, say, some sort of takeover or purchase that could also redirect its priorities. I think that factor, the tech, and the business model basically are interlocking protections against us betraying the compact that we have with our users.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n One of the things that strikes me as I talk to more and more companies that have transitioned to this kind of foundation model is that that structure is essentially there to insulate you from the rapacious demands of capitalism. You aren\u2019t being pressured to make as much money every quarter as possible to do the things that would lead you to make the most money, and that means maybe the technology can develop in a pure and idealistic state of protecting privacy instead of chasing the dollars.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Do you feel that insulation? I mean, you do have to make money and pay your employees and grow in some way, but what\u2019s the dynamic for you architecting the products?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n So the short answer is no, and the reason for that is that part of the mission for us is that we have to compete in capitalism. Our main competitor is Big Tech. Even though we are much smaller than Big Tech, where our users come from when we convert people, when we get new customers, they\u2019re [coming from] Big Tech in general.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We have to play the same game. This might be a little cheesy, but our corporate motto is \u201cPrivacy by default.\u201d That \u201cdefault\u201d part is doing a lot of heavy lifting. I mentioned before that our goal is to design products that are easy to use and secure. There are plenty of tools that are secure, and nobody \u2014 but a few experts \u2014 uses them. And that\u2019s fine. I\u2019m not criticizing the existence of those tools, but our goal is to make tools that everybody can use without understanding the cryptography, without even knowing that it\u2019s cryptography that they can use, and that are as easy to use and as feature-filled as our unencrypted and essentially data-mining competitors. It\u2019s a tall order.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I\u2019m not saying we\u2019re 100 percent there yet, but that is the goal. But the default word in \u201cprivacy by default\u201d means growth. It means we have to be at the scale where we can offer a real alternative to Big Tech. And small startups, small scaleups, being 100 times or 10 times smaller than Big Tech, are not going to cut it. In order to do that, we need to grow.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So growth is actually part of the mission, if you will. That means that we have to be\u2026 the word is not rapacious, but we have to be as hungry, efficient, and growth-minded as we possibly can because that\u2019s part of the mission to grow big enough to actually challenge the current paradigm. I mean, we can talk about all kinds of ways capitalism is broken right now, but we have to play the game.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Yeah. All right. I\u2019m going to make a comparison that you are going to hate. I\u2019m just letting you know. I know you\u2019re going to hate it.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Maybe the most famous \u201cwe\u2019ll build a foundation to protect ourselves from the demands of the market and make sure the thing is healthy\u201d idea is from OpenAI, which <\/strong>basically killed that structure in order to chase an IPO<\/strong><\/a>, right?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Maybe they still have really important and idealistic ideas about how AGI should be developed. Maybe some people in that company really feel that way, and it just didn\u2019t work, right? They needed to chase growth in very specific ways for whatever reason they felt. Maybe it was money, maybe it was just to take on Google Search the way that OpenAI felt like it wanted to; they had to change the structure of the company.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n That obviously happened. It\u2019s like one of the most apocalyptic foundation moments that has ever happened. This thing just exploded or imploded onto itself. When you look at that, and then you look at, \u201cOkay, we have to grow. To be the default, we have to grow to be big, but we\u2019re making this promise that Google doesn\u2019t have to make, or Microsoft doesn\u2019t have to make,\u201d where is the tension in that? How does that express itself as you design the architecture of the products, which might preclude some opportunities?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n What could also be our corporate motto \u2014 it\u2019s not, but it could be \u2014 is go big or go home. We certainly don\u2019t set modest goals in that regard. But I think that there are a couple of things that make it different. I mentioned before a lot of constraints, but one thing I didn\u2019t mention is that we don\u2019t have VC investors. We don\u2019t have private equity investors. We aren\u2019t burning other people\u2019s money with VCs breathing down our necks that we must exit soon, or otherwise we go belly up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We built a sustainable business. We reinvest the profits from that business back into the business. And this insulates us from some of the pressure, which I\u2019m sure OpenAI felt given that they were lighting enormous stacks of money on fire all the time, right? But that said, personnel is policy. I think that there\u2019s certainly always this risk. At the same time, we found out a lot recently that sometimes rules, norms, or guidelines aren\u2019t written. Unwritten or not, they\u2019re not worth the paper that they\u2019re written on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But that\u2019s also where the architecture comes in. We make choices about the tech stuff, and obviously I\u2019m on the tech side of this business, but we have made choices, and some of that is for business competitive reasons, right? We want to sell products where we say, \u201cWe can\u2019t access your data. We don\u2019t have access to data. We can\u2019t lose it. We can\u2019t sell it. We can\u2019t do this.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But that also constrains us from deciding one day to turn around and sell it because we have locked it in a box, and we can\u2019t access it, and therefore we can\u2019t turn around and say, \u201cYou know what? Sorry guys, we changed our minds. We\u2019re actually going to mine all this data and go.\u201d Now, is anything perfect? No. But I mean, the structure is designed such that we have these interlocking, as I said, controls.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I think the other thing is that even if, say\u2026 The Proton Foundation is barred from selling Proton AG, as far as I\u2019m aware, but even if, for some reason, something happens, the value of Proton is in the reputation. And we said this, and it has been a deliberate choice. The value of Proton is in the trust that we have. If Google bought us, it would have no value because Google does not have the credibility to run Proton. Do you see what I mean?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That\u2019s just the default of Google buying anything. I just want to be very clear about that.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n [Laughs] No, they shut it down and then it\u2019s gone, right?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The clock would start ticking that day.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Yeah. I know. It\u2019s happened before, it\u2019ll happen again, I\u2019m sure. But the Proton Foundation structure is designed to say that \u201cNo, the company cannot be sold to a buyer.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That\u2019s the macrostructure. Just tell me about the more tactical structure inside the company that\u2019s building a product. How is Proton itself structured? Is there a team that makes the Lumo assistant? Is there a team that makes email? Is it divisions? Is it functional? How does that work?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n So we do have a division structure, a business unit structure. We have certain products that are bundled together, like mail and calendar, so they\u2019re bundled into the same division. The others are separate. So we have Lumo, we have Drive, we have Pass, and we have VPN. These are separate divisions. You make choices about corporate structure based on what communication you want to be the easiest. So that\u2019s designed to allow people to move fast and to have autonomy and make decisions within their product.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We also have cross-organizational teams, support teams, and things like that. And on that side, the trade-off of the business unit structure is that we sometimes have to work harder. It\u2019s a little bit like corralling cats, right? Where you have to make sure that, \u201cOkay, I\u2019m building this feature that touches all the products. I need to make sure that all the products are on board and they have it in their planning so that we can ship them correctly.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So you make decisions about that. We\u2019ve made a deliberate decision to prioritize in-product communication. And then we try to compensate for the shortcomings of that in our cross-product communication. Then, as we transition to more and more ecosystem-based stuff, we may make different choices about the corporate structure to support that. The whole Conway\u2019s law thing<\/a>. You ship your org chart, but sometimes you want the best of both worlds, and this is where process comes along. It\u2019s not always sexy, but you find it super important as you scale organizations, for sure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n You might be the first <\/strong>Decoder<\/em><\/strong> guest to make the connection directly between the fact that I ask everyone how their company is structured and you ship your org chart, which is why I always ask, because it\u2019s the fundamental truth.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n You do, and we struggle with that to some degree. We try to compensate for it. But yeah, you do ship your org chart. And therefore, if you want your products to look different, you should adjust your org chart to support that difference, right? I mean, ultimately.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The other <\/strong>Decoder<\/em><\/strong> question I ask everybody is about decisions. You have a lot of decisions to make. You are trying to build a new kind of product architecture against a lot of the same constraints as your competitors. How do you make decisions? What\u2019s your framework?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n How do I make decisions? We are a founder-led company. Andy started Proton. I was, I think, employee six, I want to say. That\u2019s a funny story in itself. You know how I met Andy?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n He was my grad student at CERN. I was a postdoc at Harvard, and he was my grad student. And then he comes and finds me in Silicon Valley after I left physics and says, \u201cHey, you want to join my startup? You can be CTO.\u201d Anyway, and here we are 11 years later.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But he\u2019s still heavily involved. He has a lot of input on product direction strategy, and he\u2019s a visionary. I think he\u2019s responsible for a lot of Proton\u2019s success. He\u2019s willing to take risks, that kind of stuff. I obviously believe in his leadership, or I wouldn\u2019t still be here after 11 years. That said, I think one thing that sometimes happens with visionaries is they need to surround themselves with people who will challenge them when they get maybe a little too far over their skis, or to also make sure that we have ideas from other places.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n One thing that we really try to make sure of is that ideas are judged on their merits, not their origin necessarily. And so we have a senior leadership team whose job is to, yes, execute but also bring new ideas and sell them and things like this. I\u2019m not going to say that we\u2019re perfect in this because nobody is, and we have plenty of things that we can improve, but we try to push decision-making down the org. The whole point of an organization is that you have a way to align lots of different people in the same direction.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The trick is always: how do you get alignment in the same general direction while still having autonomy so that you\u2019re not micromanaging everything? And I\u2019m not saying we always get the balance right, but that\u2019s the goal here. When we do this sort of orientation when we hire new people into Proton, one of the things we always say is: I want to hear\u2026 You\u2019re not used to our way of doing things yet. So I want you to look at our way of doing things, and if you\u2019ve experienced another employer or you think this is either crazy or inefficient, I want you to tell us. And we\u2019re very clear, yes, of course we have a hierarchy, and part of this is our size, but we very rarely have more than, say, three or four levels of management.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We always say, \u201cLook, if you need to ping me, you need to ping the CEO, you need to directly talk to people, just do it.\u201d It\u2019s another thing, and again, I\u2019m speaking for myself, but I think this is common throughout Proton: I tell people, \u201cI\u2019m not promising or obligated to agree with you, but you\u2019re never going to regret telling me what you think,\u201d basically.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So we try to do that. And I credit Andy with this, but we have very little internal politics. Maybe this is just because we\u2019re not very big yet, but we have zero tolerance for fiefdoms or internal politics, and that also makes things easier. There\u2019s very much a sense that we\u2019re all pointing in the same direction, and that it\u2019s not my division that I\u2019m trying to grow, it\u2019s Proton in general.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I think that some of that comes with being a mission-driven company. I don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve ever had this experience, but for those of you who haven\u2019t, I\u2019ve had both. I was a physicist as part of the CERN collaboration a long time ago, and there you have the fundamental nature of the universe. I consider that a mission-driven occupation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I also had a stint in Silicon Valley afterward, which had fun and interesting technical problems, but I missed that. And with Proton, the mission is really\u2026 We have to be careful that it doesn\u2019t paper over organizational problems that we should really solve, let\u2019s put it that way. But it really does make the job easier when everybody is aligned in that regard.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Let me ask you a question about that, and then I want to come to the pressures that Proton feels and how you put all of this structure into practice to resist those pressures. Early on in my career, I had no idea how to manage anyone. I went to a bunch of people and asked them a bunch of questions. One of the smartest mentors in all this sat me down and told me very seriously, \u201cLook, you don\u2019t hire people to make them like you. You hire people to change your organization.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I\u2019ve taken that to heart, and maybe at 15 years into this, I\u2019m like, \u201cThat\u2019s actually a pendulum. You need people to buy into what you\u2019re doing. Otherwise, every new person you hire is going to radically disrupt what everyone else is doing because they\u2019re maybe over-empowered and they\u2019re not actually on the same page.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Proton has a mission, right? You\u2019re describing it as a mission-driven company. How do you strike that balance of wanting to hire new people and get the outside perspective on what you\u2019re doing wrong and then not actually get knocked totally off track? Because it seems very important within a company like Proton.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I mean, culture is extremely important. It\u2019s extremely important. That comes from the top as well. Andy, if you were to ask him what the most important thing in any business is, he\u2019s very likely to say culture. As a result, we try to be very careful about who we hire. We hire relatively slowly. I wish we could hire faster.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I think hiring is one of the things that we could be better at, but we don\u2019t do these massive hires, massive layoffs, things like this because… And we don\u2019t hire so fast that we dilute the culture. We want to integrate people into the Proton culture, not necessarily\u2026 And yes, sometimes we have to change it, sometimes we have to evolve it, but we want that to be done in a deliberate way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I also had maybe a similar evolution as a manager. I\u2019ve been there through all of Proton\u2019s growth phases. So early on, I wrote a lot of code, and then I was effectively a team lead. Then I was a manager of managers. At some point, I was running all of Proton\u2019s engineering. Then I handed off some of the management things, but kept the CTO technical direction stuff.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In that course, I definitely made a lot of mistakes too, right? Early on, I had to teach myself not to make other people like me, not to, maybe not micromanage, but not to just tell people what to do and have them execute it. And then I went through a phase later where I realized that, okay, people need to learn, people need to make their own mistakes. I want to import people with expertise; I\u2019m not infallible. Let\u2019s do this. That was probably too permissive. We had some\u2026 nothing catastrophic, but we had some expensive mistakes that I had a bad feeling about, but I let go through anyway. Because I was trying to do this.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So I think moderation doesn\u2019t tend to be the sexiest thing to sell, but it is. It\u2019s a balance. You don\u2019t want to mandate how things are done, but you also want to make sure that you\u2019re there to stop people from making truly catastrophic or expensive decisions. You can see the brick wall in the distance, and you want to make sure that doesn\u2019t happen. Yeah, it\u2019s not the most dramatic answer, but a lot of this is finding the right balance there, moderation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The reason I spent so much time on the technical and corporate structure side, as well as the culture, is that Proton faces a lot of pressure. And all of this, as you\u2019ve described, is designed to resist that pressure and designed to build products that can\u2019t be broken by that pressure in different ways. Let\u2019s just start with, I don\u2019t know, the governments of the world, which put a lot of pressure on Proton, and have found lots and lots of ways to get past the kinds of controls you put in place to protect user data.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n So we\u2019ll just start with the splashiest one. In March, a <\/strong>report from <\/strong>404Media<\/em><\/strong><\/a> found that Proton handed over the payment data of an account called Stop Cop City, which is located in the United States. They handed that data to the Swiss authorities, who then gave that data to the FBI, and that led to their identification. And this is metadata; I don\u2019t think it\u2019s actually the data, the contents of the emails.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Proton\u2019s argument is, \u201cLook, we never actually gave anything to the FBI. We just complied with a legal request from the Swiss government.\u201d Let\u2019s start at the very basics. What is the Swiss government legally allowed to request from you? And does the fact that they can just serve as a proxy for the United States government undermine any of this trust or put any novel kind of pressure on your structures?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n So any company anywhere is going to have a jurisdiction and be subject to jurisdiction. No company or individual is above the law. And no company is going to go to jail for you. That said, you can arrange structures such that there are safeguards here. And our safeguard, for instance, is that we are a Swiss company. And we\u2019ve actually been asked repeatedly, \u201cHey, can you just respond to requests from friendly government agencies?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We have repeatedly said no because it can\u2019t be our job to decide what is legitimate and what is not. That is not something that we can take on. So what we do is we engineer our products to have, within constraints, like making a product that people want to use and can use and does the job, but we engineer our products to be as private as possible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We are subject to Swiss jurisdiction. Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty requests, MLAT requests, come in from governments. The Swiss authorities decide what is legitimate and what is not. We have no stake in that. And then they issue an order, we comply with those orders, and that\u2019s the way it has to be. We very deliberately chose our jurisdiction in a way that the Swiss are famously neutral. Every government is made up of humans, but they have a reputation for being reasonable people, and that system has worked pretty well.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In general, there are countries that are less trustworthy than others, and those requests\u2026 We don\u2019t have a lot of visibility into where the requests are coming from, but those requests we have on good authority are usually not honored. Whereas peoples\u2019 opinions may vary these days, the FBI requests, they tend to be given a certain presumption of legitimacy, but they\u2019re still evaluated by the Swiss authorities. And then what we do is we comply. We have no discretion here. And this would be the case for anything, but we have arranged the system such that we think it is one of the safest that can be constructed and stay legal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So let me just ask you about that, because you are a systems person; you\u2019re describing a system.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The failure point in that system, as you\u2019re describing it to me, is that the Swiss government is going to make a bunch of decisions about what you have to comply with. The United States government, in this case specifically, I think, has realized that if they just say that everything is terrorism, the floodgates open on the mechanisms for data sharing.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n So in this case, this is an account called \u201cStop Cop City.\u201d They said this is terrorism. Here in the United States, whether or not the government\u2019s claims of everything being terrorism are legitimate or not, I think, is wide open for debate.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n But it feels like they found what you would describe as an attack vector on the Swiss government\u2019s mechanisms, where if you say these magic words, the Swiss government will come to you and start asking for metadata. Does that feel appropriate? Does that feel survivable?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I think a lot of this stuff, at some point, is going to be up to people. We\u2019ve done the best we can, and I don\u2019t think\u2026 People are going to have different opinions about which requests are legitimate or not, but we\u2019ve done the best we can in saying that, \u201cOkay, the Swiss authorities will decide, and then we will comply with whatever they say because we are a Swiss jurisdiction.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In the meantime, we do and can arrange \u2014 and, of course, there are laws that govern this \u2014 but we do whatever we can to minimize the amount of data that we can give. I mean, with payment data, we can encrypt it. We use payment processors. They can get it from lots of different sources. So if you have a credit card attached and there\u2019s a legal request coming in, there\u2019s not a whole lot we can do, right?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n You mentioned systems\u2026 because I think this is important. What\u2019s important to me, and I realize this\u2026 I don\u2019t want this to sound callous for a specific hypothetical abusive case that might not have been… Mistakes can be made, of course. But I want a system like the system we have, which is that if the government has some sort of reasonable cause and can convince people in a defined process to give data, then yeah, the data should probably be given. What I really worry about is that we often live in a world where basically the government can instead ask, \u201cGive me all your data, and I\u2019m going to look for problems. I\u2019m going to look for a crime.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The word wiretap comes from a time when they had to literally go to your house and tap the wire. I don\u2019t think it was really thought of at the time, but that \u2014 the actual physical act of having to do this \u2014 had a barrier to the fact that you couldn\u2019t surveil everybody at once. It was simply logistically impossible. We live in a world today where you can surveil everybody, so we want to build services and systems where this is impossible, right? Where the default should be privacy, as I said, privacy by default.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Yes, we are also responsive to legitimate law enforcement requests, however you define legitimate. And that legitimate question will always be a matter of process, in which we, of course, are only one player in this process. But I think that\u2019s the-<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Well, there\u2019s legitimacy, and there\u2019s a market dynamic here. So the Swiss government has applied a lot of pressure to Proton in the last few years. They want you to basically have an unencrypted VPN and be able to decrypt user data that was traveling over VPN. I believe Proton has <\/strong>threatened to leave Switzerland over this<\/strong><\/a>, and then you announced that you were going to <\/strong>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/chorus\/uploads\/chorus_asset\/file\/24792604\/The_Verge_Decoder_Tileart.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400\"\/)
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