“This is the biggest mission any of the entrepreneurs have presented in this competition.”
I heard these words a few weeks ago from one of the judges for the EY World Entrepreneur of the Year award program – whom I had the honor to meet during the final step of the world’s largest entrepreneur competition.
Of the initial 5,000 participants, finalists representing 43 countries gathered in Monaco to network and answer the final questions from the jury, who were judging us for our level of entrepreneur spirit, growth, impact and purpose. It was a surreal moment, as I was representing Sweden and the organizations I helped build at Yubico and SIROS Foundation.
The first big takeaway from the event I had was the immense delight of meeting the other entrepreneurs; a group of unfaltering and solution driven optimists, driving change across a wide range of industries, making the world smarter, cleaner, healthier, prettier or safer.
The second was learning that many of the entrepreneurs were using YubiKeys to protect their companies – and how much they loved the product!
The third was the unexpected joy when being asked to get up on stage to receive the winner trophy.
Yubico pioneered the hardware security key and the FIDO/passkeys open authentication standard — the only technology proven to stop account takeovers at scale for the modern and mobile web. Earlier this year I founded SIROS Foundation as a natural extension and partner to Yubico, focused on bringing FIDO/passkeys to global digital identity wallets.
The jury shared their winner statement on the EY award site, but I believe the words from the jury member is the main reason Yubico and SIROS won. We were not the biggest organisation among the exceptional finalists, but we have the biggest mission. And though the award has my name on it, it is an achievement made possible by a growing number of incredible people from all over the world.
I also want to extend my big thanks and gratitude to the global internet standards community that I have the honor to be part of, including developers and digital identity experts employed by tech giants, research organizations, innovation companies, and government agencies. Together we are building a next generation secure internet, anchored in secure logins and real verified content by real verified humans. To help save not only the internet, but democracy, human rights and free press.
My advice and winning formula to any entrepreneur and intrapreneur: Identify a problem that you are passionate about solving. Impact and purpose will give you the motivation to stand against most challenges and guide you to the best people who can help make your visions happen. Be kind. Dare to be bold.
