Protecting Your Home From Online Threats The Easiest Way With John Wu of Gryphon

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. You want tech and tacos? Tacos and tech you know we got tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keeper captains counting beans Contador quentan frijoles found us trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times a crappy my coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing coronado eating tacos El gordo, the taco standing puesto lucha libre and sombrero got a shout out to cost angels by the ocean watch the sunset La Jolla shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded when San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside, the Tijuana esti be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach Tech leaders believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the moon SD Tecos with your host, Neil Bloom. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started.

Welcome to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I'm your host, Neil Bloom, and I'm thrilled to have you here. On the Tacos and Tech podcast, we interview builders of technologies, of companies, of communities, and we do it weekly. So thanks for tuning in. Every Tuesday, a new interview, and on Fridays, we talk about what's new in the San Diego tech ecosystem from a news perspective. So make sure you join us there as well too. We also have a tech newsletter that comes out every other week@freshbroodtech.com you can subscribe to listen to it without further ado. Enjoy this episode. I am thrilled to be joined by John Woo, CEO and co founder of Griffin. Hey, John, thanks for being on the podcast.

Hey, Neil. Nice to be here.

Yeah, it's nice to. I know we've been orbiting each other in the ecosystem for years now. It was nice to finally get together and have some coffee together and now get to tell your story to our audience. So I'm excited to have this conversation. You want to give us a quick overview of what Griffin is.

Yeah, sure. So, Griffin, you know, with all the different connected devices now that we have in our homes, it's creating a really an environment where it's ripe for cyber crimes and just a bunch of inappropriate content that could come in. So, Griffin, what we do essentially in a nutshell, is we're taking enterprise level type of Security and bringing it into the home, making it really, really simple and affordable for really anybody to set up and secure their home network. You know, when we first started, Griffin, the average number of connected devices in the home is around six devices, and right now it's more than 14. That's just the average. I mean, it's, you know, typically people have dozens, a few dozen connected devices in their home. So, you know, we really think it's. It's really important in the next few years that network security for homes is going to be something that everybody's going to need at some level.

Super important and like you said, more and more devices, more and more attacks right around the world. I think we'll get into some numbers that we've seen since COVID of just how much the attacks have increased and going after. It used to be big corporate. Now it's finding, going after small business and individuals to get their way into big corporate as kind of a whole new path. So I'm kind of interested to talk through that piece as well. But how'd you start all this? I gotta imagine you weren't born one day and said, I'm gonna build, you know, a smart home firewall for families. There wasn't even WI fi in the home. When you first started your career, where did you start down this tech path?

I actually, I started working for a company called Motorola back then out of graduate school and worked with them on the CDMA chipset. So we're the team that actually built the chipset for Motorola to do cdma. So it was just voice only. Right. So at the time, you know, after a couple years, the dream was to basically to kind of transition from voice to data. You can have wireless data and you can, you know, use the Internet anywhere that you would like. You can use it at the beach, you can use it at coffee shops. So that was sort of the dream of wireless back then.

And this was Motorola, like, they had their own, like into their own handsets for kind of your everyday phone, flip phone, I'm guessing at the time.

Exactly. That actually the. They went into the first or one of the first flip phones that Motorola had. The.

Yes, I remember those. Got it. And was that in San Diego or was that elsewhere?

That was in Chicago. Huh.

Okay, got it.

So. And then I had the opportunity to move to San Diego to work for a startup called Novatel Wireless, where we were trying to build wireless data products. So basically enabling you to use wireless data anywhere.

Got it. Okay. So Novatel was headquartered in San Diego. And how Big of a size of a company.

When you joined, it was actually over 300 people. When I joined, a friend of mine asked if I wanted to come and work for a startup. And, you know, I took the opportunity to come out to San Diego. I mean, it's, you know, it's a nice place to be in, but it was right before. It was in 2000. And unfortunately, if you remember, in 2001, the whole Internet bust happened, so we almost went out of business. Went down from 300 some people down to, I think less than 30 people.

Whoa.

We kind of hung on and.

Wow, that's crazy to see.

Yeah. And then eventually wireless data did tick off, so. And the company did really well.

Got it. So was San Diego already a pretty big hub for telecom at the time?

It was, yeah. Actually Qualcomm kind of started the whole thing. Right. So, you know, Qualcomm, and out of Qualcomm grew a bunch of other companies around San Diego, Novatel being one of them.

Got it. What eventually happened to Novatel? Are they still around?

They are. They changed their name a few years ago to NC Go. So they're still doing wireless data.

I know NCGo. I didn't realize that was Novatel. Oh, that's really cool. Interesting.

Yeah.

Okay, interesting. So you spent a long time there and all in San Diego. What were some of the trends you were starting to see that eventually seeded Griffin?

Just the proliferation of wireless data and IoT. So we were working on a whole bunch of wireless products, connected products, and just, you know, seeing that everything's getting connected, you know, in the homes and in our vehicles and stuff. So at the time when we first started, there was, you know, wifi was one of the newer technologies. Right. So it just had came on, came online by the time I left. You know, WI Fi is pretty much standard technology for connecting all sorts of devices in your home.

Got it. Yeah, man. I remember the first MiFi's coming around. You know, the enabled to bring Internet anywhere, connect your phone devices. Still big need. There's still, you know, not WI Fi everywhere that you want it. And I think still using the phone as the hotspot is still kind of lacking as well too.

Yeah, that product was actually, you know, the, that the concept behind that product was we wanted to make something really simple for people to use. So it's. It's basically a mobile hotspot that you can carry anywhere. And the big challenge back then was really trying to make a product that, that could last for, you know, for half a day. At least. Right. Because before we, we were looking at all sorts of chipsets and stuff for that product. And back then it was, you know, everything. WiFi was plug in. It was basically for your home. So there was no chipset that was power efficient to use as a mobile device.

Got it. Interesting. I think the big thing also that hadn't really developed was the software part, the cloud connectivity to these devices. You know, it was very much great. You had Internet connection and that's all that mattered. And still in certain devices, we don't look for that much of a software experience. You know, Tesla still kind of being this novel car thing of bringing an upgradable software experience to a car. Still a lot of devices out there where you really can't do much to them. I gotta imagine that's part of what you started to see as an opportunity for Griffin. Right. That we do not usually have much of a connectivity to our router to. We just plug in this hardware and we know it's gonna pipe in Internet. So take us through the software, hardware all coming together. Where Griffin eventually, like, when was it first an idea for you and when did you first take the leap?

Uh, I mean, we went full time in 2016, so. But the concept of Griffin is really, that's actually really simple. You know, you have. Your router is arguably one of the most important devices in your home, because that's where the Internet comes into your home and that's where all the connected devices are connected in your home. You know, every single device has to touch your router before going out to the Internet. So the idea was really, look, you have a really important device in your home where the traffic comes in. But right now, most people's routers, it's just letting everything come in, letting everything go out. So what if we put some control over that and create a software around that to allow you to easily manage and control that spigot that you have in your home. And that's really the concept behind Griffin. The, you know, all the stuff that's behind it, the cloud management, the machine learning that we develop for detecting the network threats and all that stuff. And all of that is really behind the concept of making it simple for the user to deploy. So you don't have to think about the fact that we're using a cloud behind it or the fact that we have machine learning in this device to detect the network threats. All you have to know is you install it, you scan the QR code, and you're ready to go.

Got it. And then can control things from an app if you want to, you know, put specific controls in.

Exactly. And you can control it from anywhere because it's cloud connected to your. To your gryphon.

Got it.

And it's end to end encrypted. So we make sure that it's, you know, for your privacy, we make sure that it's fully end to end encrypted. So the data flowing from your router to your app is encrypted through. Not even Griffin can see that. See that data.

Got it. So take us, maybe give us a few use cases, either some success stories that you've heard or intended uses that you've seen come to fruition.

So parental control is built into it. So we allow you to manage screen time for your kids. And one of the most interesting use cases that we've seen is that parents are using Internet time as almost like a currency in the home. So, you know, if the kids are doing their chores, if they're doing their homework, you can give them some extra Internet time. Right. So it doesn't become something that's completely open. Internet is actually a privilege for your kids. And we have somebody who's, you know, using that to kind of reward their kids for good behavior. It's gotten to a point where, you know, the. If they're. If the kid's Internet stops, you know, he starts looking for things to do around the house so he can earn some additional Internet credits. I thought that was interesting.

It's a nice carrot and stick kind of dangling.

That's great. Yeah.

What about some major, you know, potential disastrous things that anything that you've kind of seen or heard that Griffin save people from?

I mean, we. We detected more than 12 million threats across all the Griffin routers that are out there. And believe it or not, I think the MacBooks actually have a lot of. We detect a lot of threats from MacBooks. A lot of times people don't think that their MacBooks could be compromised because of the. The perception that it's not. It's not being hacked. But we do see a lot of MacBooks. We have seen devices like the baby monitor. Sometimes they're scanning the network or they're doing something inappropriate on the network, which means that the device might have impacted too.

Interesting. I have definitely had friends tell me they've seen their camera move and they were not moving it. So I guess it would be nice to be able to go and say, oh, look up and be like, yes, something is actually happening right now on my network. Yeah, shut it down or something. Right. Is that kind of what you could be doing?

Yeah, exactly. So we monitor if a device is behaving correctly with the, with our machine learning algorithm. If it starts to behave abnormally, then we'll let you know about it. Like if it starts to scan the network, baby monitor should not be scanning your network or, you know, so if it's doing that, we'll let you know about it so you can quarantine that device, software, network.

Got it. Okay, take us through a little bit on the encryption side, like the importance of it for people who may not understand the value of that. And also what does that do to your data and speed? Is there some latency that's involved in encrypting?

Well, I mean, we encrypt the information that gets passed from Griffin to your app. So all the configurations, all the browsing history and all that stuff that's encrypted and that's done so that we. Nobody has access to that other than you. Right. So for privacy reasons, we want to make sure that only you have control over that data. So that's really, you know, built in to it at the get go so that it's part of the architecture. You know, we're not. All that information is not stored on our servers. But, but on top of that, we do have, you know, we do encrypt your data on the device itself as well so that it's, you know, in case something does get compromised, the hackers can't see the data that's on your device.

Got it. Okay. So you've, you're building hardware and software which is, you know, might as well make a harder challenge. And then on top of that, selling direct to consumer. Right. Which, you know, has its own challenges. What's that been like from kind of the start to now? What have some lessons learned around building both of those things?

Yeah, I think the, there's a, there is a positive and negative to selling a piece of hardware or having a piece of hardware. I think the, I mean, there's negatives of it is you have to manage the supply chain. It's, you know, there's additional capital that you have to invest for the hardware. But the advantages of that that we see so far is that once we have that piece of hardware that sits in your home, now we have that, and typically people keep their routers for at least five years, if not more. So we have that relationship now with our customers that we can continue to sell additional services to and to be able to work with our Customers adding new features and new services that we can provide for them. And in terms of going direct consumer, again, there's obviously advantages and disadvantages to direct consumer. With my previous company, we were B2B, so we're selling directly to carriers. And if you can get that channel, it can open up a huge marketplace for you. Right, because they have thousands of salespeople that can push your product. The disadvantage of that is that typically you only have a few of them. So if you lose a carrier or you lose one of the work one of your customers, it's a huge risk on the business. Right. So, for example, with Novatel, 80% of our business came from one customer. Right? So it's, you know, if you lose that one customer, that's your whole business. With direct consumer, you don't really have that problem, but you have to make sure that you're building a product that you're the customer's love and that they'll tell their friends about it so that you can get the product out. So there's a brand awareness that you have to build yourself. And the approach that we use was, I mean, first you have to build a good product that, that, that works. That solves a pain point, that solves a problem. I think we did that with Griffin. The other thing is we launched the product on Amazon. So because it's a new brand, you know, Amazon good or bad, it's kind of an equalizer for a lot of brands. So as long as you have good reviews, other customer validation on the platform, you could do just as well as any large brands out there.

Got it. Is that still a main channel?

Is Amazon currently still our main channel? We're now selling more on our website just because we built up a little bit of brand around our product, around our service. And we're also looking at going into other channels, other retail channels as well, some strategic retail channels that, that we can tell our story and not just sit on a shelf.

As Covid affected, obviously people's awareness and urgency and priority on cybersecurity and protection.

Absolutely. We saw our business double through Covid. So, you know, people are upgrading their home network equipments, a lot of it. Cybersecurity was a little bit less of a concern, but a lot of concern was around. My kids are now, you know, using the Internet at home, doing schoolwork. How do I manage and control that activity? Making sure that they're not watching YouTube when they're at school or playing Roblox. And so that was a major concern with a lot of Parents and that's part of the reason why our business kind of double good to have a.

Fortuitous outcome out of a, you know, negative.

Yeah, it's definitely unforeseen, but it was good on that side. And you know, we had lots of supply chain issues like everybody else as well that we had. You know, things like just can't get chips to shipping and delays in LA ports with the ships that are waiting out in the ocean for weeks, you know.

So has it made you want to near source anything like. Or is it still everything is really in Asia and you kind of, kind of going to always have to depend on that?

Yeah, I mean it's, the supply chain goes beyond just, you know, chipsets, there's you know, screws and boards and so. So a lot of that stuff is still made in Asia, unfortunately. So, you know, the supply chain is pretty long and it's, it will take some time to kind of move everything over.

Okay, got it. That'll be interesting to watch. What if so, you know, double the revenue, double the growth. What does that made you want to do kind of building new products or where you, where are you kind of taking the company from here?

So right now we believe that, you know, security and privacy is important. Right. That's our kind of a core and we actually just recently launched a Indiegogo pre order campaign for our new product which is a Griffin 6 with a blockchain. And what the blockchain really is that it does is really where you can run it on just a standard router like a Griffin. But it, you can use it to build Web2 applications but using Web3 blockchain, so things like password manager. So instead of storing on a centralized server, you can now store that on the Metasafe blockchain across thousands of Griffins. It's virtually unhackable and completely private because you don't, you're not, you're not sending it to a central server. It's on the blockchain and it's encrypted with your private wallet. So even if somebody hacks into my password, they don't have access to your passwords.

Got it.

There's other applications that we can build on top of it too. You know, one of the things that we built into this blockchain is proof of bandwidth. So what that's used for is you can imagine building out a peer to peer vpn, completely private VPN network. Right. So your communication is going from one Griffin to another Griffin before going out to the Internet in an Encrypted packet and completely private. Yeah. So you're not sending it to a central VPN server. You're gonna have to trust anybody. It's all peer to peer traffic.

Got it. Super interesting. But obviously now a new complexity with, you know, the crypto aspect. What are you kind of first, I mean unrelated to like crypto markets right now. Right. Because that's whole different kind of thing. The fintech part, the economy part, not worth talking about. It's really the complexity of the crypto part. What else do you kind of see from an industry? Is this where you think a lot more cyber is going to move to in terms of decentralized saving of information?

Yeah, I think decentralized approach can improve a lot of the, a lot of the security and privacy issues that we now currently see with, with lots of centralized storage. But we kind of see, you know, aside from the cryptocurrencies and things, we kind of see the blockchain as a technology that can enable that. And so, so really it's a utility blockchain. So there's some intrinsic value that we're building into this blockchain. So it's not using it to move a number around, it's really using it to improve the privacy and security of your network.

Yeah, I mean it's exactly what Bitcoin was built for. The more to incentivize that the more nodes there are, the more computers you gotta break into to break in the database. Right. Same thing with password protection. So I totally understand that. In that regard. What's interesting in the community right now, Ethereum is moving from right proof of work to proof of stake. This idea that you don't have to be doing solving algorithms to make it safe, you just have to be on the network to make it safe. Which kind of sounds like similar to you. Right. In that regard you want just more devices on, but not necessarily in this algorithmic heavy load of a GPU to make it, it's just more proof of stake. Does that make sense in that regard?

Yeah, for the MetaSafe actually we took out proof of work as a consensus algorithm. So right now metasafe uses proof of stake, proof of bandwidth and proof of memory. And the reason we have proof of bandwidth, proof of memory is so that, so those are the resources that we want you to offer up to the community. Right. So for the peer to peer VPN for storing of passwords, we need memory for that, we need bandwidth for that. So you're basically saying I'm going to turn on metasafe on my Griffin and those resources are going to be shared with the Griffin, with a community of people who are using the actual password manager or the VPN service.

Got it. So incentivizing people to connect to other people's Griffin when they're out in public, potentially a little bit. At least businesses to say, hey, if you're going to offer Internet anyway, you know, might as well incentivize the business owners to do that. But in a safe, secure environment, not just connect to anyone's WI Fi that is unlocked.

Correct? Yeah, exactly. You know, it's completely private and you know, it's encrypted and safe. Right. So, you know, creates a safe environment, but incentivize it through the Metasafe tokens.

Got it. Yeah. I mean, I think for a lot of us who are out there on phones or even traveling and you see a ton of these public WI fi's, be kind of nice to have like a Griffin certificate. Right? Or a Griffin. You know, you got to want to be like, oh, only if they've got the Griffin blue check mark or something. So looking forward to seeing where that goes as an industry standard for all of us for the public wifi. But we'll make sure we link to the new product pre launch that you're offering here. You've been building in San Diego for a long time. You have to have had a taco or two in your off time. Got a favorite or many favorites?

I've had many a taco and it's kind of hard to choose because San Diego has so many good taco places. But we as a family, we typically go to Yasenhos and in Kahual Mountain. I don't know if you've been there. And my favorite taco from there is the Al Pastor Taco.

Yeah, Yesenia's is, I think, a hidden gem over there. I think they've got a few of them throughout San Diego. I feel like I've seen their name a few times.

I think there's a few. Yeah, there's a few. Yeah.

No solid one. I don't think it's been mentioned on the podcast yet. So we will add it to Taco Database as a new entry, which is great. And John, really appreciate you coming on. One thing at the end here. Just thinking through a little bit. San Diego has started to become a bit of a cybersecurity hub for a bunch of companies around that. Does it feel like that to you or you kind of been heads down building Griffin and haven't seen A lot of other cyber companies.

I have seen some other companies. ATTCK IQ is headquartered here. They are up and coming, actually. They're growing quite rapidly. ESET is here and there's a few others that are here as well. So starting to feel like there's a mass of cybersecurity experts here. So that's good to see.

Yeah. In fact, we just recorded an episode with Lisa Easterly of the San Diego Cybersecurity center of Excellence. It's a trade organization for cyber companies and They've mapped almost 700 cyber firms related in San Diego.

In San Diego.

In San Diego alone with tens of thousands of cyber related talent. A lot of them starting in Navy's Naval Warfare Center, Navor, and then spinning out to kind of the private sector. So hopefully you can continue to gain from that talent which is growing here. And sounds like maybe we should connect you with Lisa as well from ccoe.

I appreciate that. Thanks. Of course.

Well, John, thanks so much again for being on the podcast. I'm really excited for you guys to continue to not just build a good company, but protect our homes. So thank you and we'll talk soon. Thank you.

Yeah, thanks, Neil.

Thanks for tuning in to the Tacos and Tech podcast. You can find all of our episodes on freshfoodtech.com as well as on Channel Twitter at Tacos and Tech Pod.

Also follow Fresh Brewed tech on all.

Of your social platforms and make sure to share and give a review on Apple Podcast, Spotify and Google Play. Thanks again.

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. You want tech in tacos, tacos in tech, you know we got it.

Hey.

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. You want tekking tacos, tacos and text, you know we got it.

Hey.