Jay:  Today’s show guest is Michael Proper, chairman of ClearFoundation and founder and CEO of ClearCenter. Over the past 23 years, Michael has founded and built numerous successful companies in the IT sector. Prior to founding ClearCenter, he started DirectPointe, an IT services company purchased by Hewlett Packard, and DPFS, an IT leasing company which has funded more than $140 million in IT infrastructure. Today he joins us to discuss his latest ventures, ClearCenter and ClearFoundation, and the vision that drives him to change the world.

Michael, welcome to the show.

Michael:  Grateful to be here. Really am.

Jay:  In preparing for today’s talk, it was actually a bit challenging because you’ve actually been doing a lot of work for many, many years, and as I was building out this whiteboard of all the things that you’re involved in, I was trying to decide the best way to organize our discussion today. And we have a lot to go through, but I think the best way to start is maybe with a little bit of your background and how you came up. You’re obviously a serial entrepreneur, and now you’ve built a couple of companies, and now you’re kind of working on your grand company. So maybe you can walk us through the early days of Michael Proper and what led you up to this point in time.

Michael:  The early days, I’d have to be real simple and just say we’re basically all the same. We’ve all kind of been brought into this world in one form or another at a similar time and frame. And early on my life, I just had a real solid understanding of the things that I was to focus my efforts and time on. I think that’s probably one of the unique things about me as an individual. I wasn’t brought up or focused in the normal education system and world and kind of had an early opportunity to look at the big picture, if you will. I don’t know if that makes much sense, but this is kind of all I’ve ever done my whole adult life, if you will.

Jay:  Do you think that is due to any sort of circumstance or something from your childhood or maybe the way your parents raised you or a certain passion or extreme interest to you had, maybe in tech or computers or reading? What do you think caused this clarity that you had from a young age?

Michael:  I grew up in foster homes, starting at age nine, and I think having to be forced to reflect on one’s purpose and meaning early in life absolutely had bearing on it. And then really just trying to ask and understand why we’re here and what’s the purpose of this whole life at a really young age, I think absolutely helped kind of create a solid foundation, if you will, for simplicity of merit and basis, so to speak. So, yeah, I definitely think that the childhood… I was emancipated from the State of California at age 16, hitched from LA area — which is in California for those that aren’t aware — to Utah. Been in this same industry ever since, so to speak.

There’s a beautiful story behind that. I don’t know that we’ve got enough time now, but to simply answer your questions, I’d definitely say yes, my childhood framed where we’re at today.

Jay:  You are obviously in sort of the tech industry. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about your early days there. Different industries have different ways that people approach it. You can be an entrepreneur. You could go work for a large corporate and this sort of thing. Did you ever work for a big corporation first? Or did you immediately know that you wanted to be an entrepreneur and build a company?

Michael:  To be honest with you, I said a simple prayer. “What is it that I’m supposed to do?” And through a couple of different clarity points, it was technology was what I was supposed to work with. And I called my foster dad, and I said, “I know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t know what it is. What’s technology? I’m supposed to work with technology. What is it?” And this was in 1992, and I really hadn’t been exposed to it. I didn’t understand it. And he really didn’t have a good answer for me.

But a couple of days later, he called and said, “I ran into this guy who’s been in the technology industry, and he’s breaking off Xerox and starting his own business. And he’s looking for an apprentice.”

And so I think a lot of it had to do with understanding what I was supposed to do with time. And then once that’s done, which is like half the battle, having the right opportunity. And so I was able to literally be the right-hand man of an individual who taught me so much and just grow.

So I moved around. I moved over to where he was, learned lots. To make a long story short, I wanted to be back in Utah with the gal that I was dating then, now my wife of 23 years and mother of six children. It’s been a beautiful journey. That was ’92. I can’t even do the math. So 23, 25 years ago.

So it’s really only been three companies and all of them are still cranking and running in different forms. But one of them was named Calculated Research and Technology, which we grew from less than 100,000 to over 10 million with less than 12 people, and it’s still cranking.

I left there in late 1999 to start a new company named DirectPointe in 2000, the first day of the year. And they basically combine hardware and software services for a predictable monthly fee, and that kind of just took off. And that blossomed into now what’s employed well over a thousand people and broken into three different divisions — one that’s got 650 people. It basically provides home-based IT. So for a monthly fee, you can get your PC supported and backed up 24/7.

But along the road in 2005, we bumped into some of this open-source technology and said this has to be the future, because if you’re to standardize how the technology can be developed and link different systems together with open standards, there’s nothing that can stop it. And this was way back in the days when it was really unheard of or negative. I even remember people telling me, “You’re crazy.” Ballmer, back in those days was calling open source “cancer.” Nowadays, the tides have totally shifted. So that’s how we got our start in 2005, was understanding what the potentials of this open-source movement could bring.

And then in 2009, bumped into some of the blockchain or original Satoshi vision, if you will, and white paper. I had some team members that said, “Hey, you need to look at this.” And it really was just a different way to distribute a database, but it just so happened we were in the business of managing distributed systems. So we had a really unique, competitive advantage point. And some folks went into it on the speculation and crypto side of it, put 30 or $50,000 in in 2009, which now both of those are probably well into the billions and billions.

To make a long story short, we’ve really been blessed to get into an ecosystem at the right time. And that’s why I say we’re all the same. We’re all living in this same dispensation in time, and it’s amazing to be able to watch this thing, what we call the internet or Internet of Things or artificial intelligence or whatever you want to call the latest craze. Maybe it’s Bitcoin, maybe it’s blockchain. But it’s all really how us humans interact with virtual environments versus the physical worlds we live in. And it’s an amazing time to be able to build and create.

So I hope I’m answering your questions, but those are kind of honest answers as they are.

Jay:  No, I appreciate it. And it seems like this ability that you had to sort of be more forward-looking and see the big picture, it seems like the stars are all kind of aligning now with your current project, because I feel like with open source, you were an early adopter with blockchain. When the Satoshi white paper came out, most people would be thinking short term and “How do I turn a quick profit” or be led by greed. But this is something, just another star that is aligning that will help with the entire grand vision of what you’re working on at ClearCenter and ClearFoundation. So maybe we can use this as a segue.

Your current and what sounds to be like your magnum opus or your grand project here is ClearCenter and ClearFoundation. So maybe you can introduce that to our audience and tell us… If there’s an easy way to do it, please explain exactly what your vision there is.

Michael:  ClearFoundation, based out of New Zealand, started in 2009. It primarily focuses on open standards and open source, and it also issues what is known as the Clear token. ClearCenter, based out of Delaware with multiple offices around the world, primarily focuses on products that are associated with those open source and open standards. So to really think about it as Red Hat and CentOS, you’ve got one that’s open and one that’s productized. One that drives awareness, and then one that’s paid for, kind of like how freemium models work. So that’s really the relationship between the two.

The flagship product that they both share is called ClearOS, and it’s adopted in over 150 countries. And literally… Actually, I think we clicked over 500,000 deployments worldwide since 2009. And it has, on average, about 29 users per land segment behind it, but it basically manages the server, network, and gateway all combined. It has a web interface on top of it and an intelligent marketplace. And that’s kind of the main flagship product that ClearCenter ships.

There’s a lot of things that are around it, such as apps and hardware. But ultimately, that product itself is very key to where the future is going on how you can manage distributed — and deploy — distributed environments.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise pre-installs it on all of those servers, and it’s certified on all ProLiant Gen9 and Gen10 servers. Worldwide, it’s translated into over 86 languages. And we believe it’s a good example of what can be done with open source. It’s built on top of Red Hat, but it has a web-based interface and a marketplace that’s unique to it and really provides a level of value and simplicity, similar to what you see at the mobile layer, kind of like with what Android does, but we’re at the server, network, and gateway layer.

So for us, ClearFoundation, it’s all about being open and being kind of like a long-term endowment would look where it comes into the technology play. So it’s really built so it’s going to expand multiple lifetimes and generations, not just the team members that are currently working on it. But succession planning is already well in place. What happens when any of us passes away or boards or structures… We’ve seen things come and go, whether it’s houses or senates or unions or countries or all of them together. They come, and they all have their own time frame, but this is really something that we hope can have a much longer value and impact for mankind, primarily because we think that open source, the model in general, is a form of living what we call the law of consecration, where no one owns it and no one controls it but everybody benefits and shares from it.

And from there, we see a platform where ultimate privacy can be able to be realized and then ultimate choice along with consent. So it’s an important part of it. We look at it, just kind of the technology side, which is the communication glue, but there’s other elements to the vision, particularly three other elements to the vision.

The first wave that we believe we’ll see is around identity. The second wave is around health. And then the third wave is around energy. And when you combine all of that, we see elements around how man will survive with different parts and pieces of agriculture or minerals or nutrients or water or bunches of other things that kind of ties to health. But there’s a lot to it, big-picture-wise. So I hope I haven’t touched on things that maybe are sparking questions or…

Jay:  No, no. That’s the point. I think this is great. It’s like when I was doing the research, it was like a jump down this rabbit hole, and then all of sudden, it’s like seeing the matrix or something for the first time clearly. This is very, very well thought out, obviously. It sounds like you started with the ClearOS and, in building that, you kind of realized along the way that this is a lot bigger than maybe you initially had started working on. And at some point, you realized that there was a need to have the governance of a foundation or some sort of guiding body, so to speak.

I know that you and your family spent some time in New Zealand. You mentioned the ClearFoundation was set up and based in New Zealand. Can you explain the significance of New Zealand and why you decided to set up the ClearFoundation there?

Michael:  Yeah. Your history and perspective is true and correct. We saw the importance of open source, and then we went and did research around what parts of the world can you domicile out of that’s actually friendly to open source. And there were three. Hutt River was one of them. New Zealand was one of them. There’s actually some interesting stuff that Europe has been doing, but I think they got derailed with… I won’t go through the specifics.

To make a long story short, New Zealand was one. It was like, you know what? That feels right. So we actually went down, understood the landscape, and then literally, I personally moved the family of eight — so six kids and my wife and I — for two full years down there between 2011 and 2013 and helped establish the ClearFoundation, specifically working with Parliament and the laws around the trade.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the trade agreement. It went through within the last five years. But when we were down there, it was being drafted, and they were actually trying to add in two words, “as is.” And those two simple words could have changed the whole reality for what we now know as open source. And Microsoft was actually the organization that was around pushing those two words in there. And they actually got put in, and we were able to reach back out to Parliament.

That’s one of the things that I love about New Zealand. The levels of corruption are very, very low. They’re very transparent. They’re very honest. They’re very available. You could literally get on the phone with someone from Parliament or go and visit them. I literally went down to the capital, went into Parliament, onto the floor, the whole nine yards, and they will listen to you.

I remember observing a law that people didn’t like, and within two weeks, in the education world, they shifted it. The whole country shifted a law that they passed that the people didn’t like. They shifted it all the way back.

But the real specific reasons why we’re there are two reasons. One, they do not offer software patents. So in other words, the software patents that are plaguing and slowing down many other countries, they just don’t honor, period. There is not software patents in the whole of the country.

On the other side of it, copyright is very solid and strong, and that creates a fertile ground for open-source projects to literally thrive. And in this day and age, if you can domicile out of a jurisdiction where it’s legal to do certain things like what we’re talking about, you can literally get from physical to virtual. And once it’s virtual, you can span the world.

Jay:  That’s very interesting. I wasn’t aware of the landscape down there and that it was so conducive to these sorts of projects.

Michael:  Yeah, it really is, because they actually have open source organizations and foundations. And last year, ClearFoundation was actually nominated as one of the… We got some type of award. I don’t even know what it was, but they really do foster it.

And there’s a couple of key individuals — Michael Williams and then there’s a couple others — that really understand the importance of it. New Zealand is one of those environments where they’re really able to make the right laws for the right reasons. And I also believe that the underpinnings of what now people call the Maori culture — I call them Nephites — but literally, they’re the natives that were there. And I believe that they have a strong drive and spirit and underpinning that the crown, if you will, the colonialism that’s kind of settled it recently is actually accountable to and listens to them and respects them and honors them. And a lot of it’s done because of the right spirit, if you will.

And so I believe that kind of like what’s happening in Christchurch with the terrorist attack that was there a couple weeks ago… By the way, I was in the same city, in Christchurch, just six days prior, seven days prior to this terrible attack. But what you’re seeing in the leadership, in the country, in the people, in the spirit is the type of leadership that the world needs to see when difficult things happen.

And I’m not saying that the future is dark and just difficulties ahead, but I really think it’s important for us as mankind to be prepared because, Jay, our generation doesn’t understand war. We don’t understand the realities that prior generations lived. And I believe that the ignorance puts us in a very weak and vulnerable state. So I think it’s important for us to be responsible as we deploy things such as technologies or even these digital financial systems that you’re seeing shifting right in front of our eyes in our generation. So I’ll stop with that. But hopefully that answers your question around ClearFoundation and context there.

Jay:  No, absolutely. Thank you for giving us that background. I think it’s relevant, and it’s very pertinent to what you’re building. And it aligns with your grand vision, so to speak.

You brought up a lot of good points there and specifically regarding the way the New Zealand government is now very conducive in working very closely and for the people. And it kind of made me think about all these issues now that we’re having with privacy and big data and these large companies accessing and controlling our data and the forces that are behind this blockchain revolution or crypto movement of trying to get that data back, get the control back, somehow have it decentralized the not owned by a single entity.

The last time we spoke, you recommended a book to me, Life after Google, and I immediately purchased it and dug in. And it was exactly all the things that you had told me about and many of the things that you guys are working on there at Clear to help solve. Maybe we can use this and shift the conversation to talking a little bit about this issue of data privacy and how it’s especially relevant, I feel, and timely right now with what happened with Facebook recently and the data breach and this sort of thing.

Maybe you could give us a little bit of a landscape of how things are right now and exactly how you see we can leverage blockchain technology which, like you said, is just kind of a fancy way of saying a distributed database, and I think a lot of people are confused or maybe they’re just not knowledgeable. I know it took me a long time to realize and research and really understand what blockchain technology is. And maybe you can tell us a little bit about how Clear is trying to leverage that technology to essentially give the power back to the people, if you will.

Michael:  I know we talked about DirectPointe and what we did there where we managed hardware, software, and services for other folks for a quantifiable monthly fee. I don’t think I turned on the lights, that we did it all on premise at the customer’s environment, one. Two, we were recognized as number one in the world at doing that. So what I’m saying is we have a core competency to manage environments from a remote perspective. And by doing that, we were actually given an opportunity to see something that the rest of the world maybe didn’t see.

For instance, everyone is going to centralized systems and running to the cloud. While they were doing that, we were doing just the opposite. We were perfecting distributed deployments of IT. So how do you manage environments where they’re all independent and not together?

For instance, today all of us basically log on to systems. Maybe they’re banking systems. Maybe they’re health care systems. Maybe they’re credit card processing systems. Maybe it’s a flight-based scheduling system. Maybe it’s a social media platform. Maybe it’s a search engine. Maybe it’s a mail system tied to a search engine. All these different organizations that run these systems are all centralized. Every one of them that I just mentioned have all been compromised, every one of them, from the biggest identity management platforms that do certain types of profiling for credit-worthiness to health care to credit cards to reservation systems and hotels — you name it. They’ve all centralized, and we’ve all put our data into them.

Some of the biggest systems in the world that is profiling most folks in the world, primarily because it comes out of the United States with three letter acronyms, these systems have all been built by, literally, team members that work with the ClearFoundation or ClearCenter. So not only do we see the problem, but some of the team members that are here actually helped build the problem over the last 30 to 50 years. And I can tell you that them understanding what they’ve helped to build in an irresponsible fashion literally drives them to make sure that before they pass from this generation and life that they do it right, which is giving the privacy back to the individual, giving the ability to have consent and control over their information back to the individual. And we will see this in our lifetime, Jay. You and I, we will both see this in our lifetime, where it goes from the individual basically using convenience over privacy to conduct a search and, in so doing, allowing folks to then profile them.

Let’s say you want to buy a used car or maybe a new car. Based upon what you’re searching, I guarantee, ads — whether it’s from AdSense or AdWords or other systems that tie behind the scenes to Instagram and Twitter and Facebook — based upon what you search also work the opposite way.

And we’re starting to understand the importance of and vulnerability… I mean, just last week, the gentleman — I won’t even be specific — but some individuals that helped to create what we all call in internet today, they sent out a warning, a very, very important warning inviting — not even inviting — urging folks to get their own privacy back. I don’t know if you understand what I’m talking about.

Jay:  I know exactly. Yes.

Michael:  It’s very important for many reasons. But the net net is you’ve got to ask yourself, if companies are doing this, why are they doing it? And the simple answer is, when you do that car search, Lexus and Toyota and BMW and whoever else pays Google or whatever search engine — Yahoo! or Bing or whatever — to be able to advertise to you. Why do you think they’re doing that? Because it works.

But on the other hand, because there’s money in it. And most things in life, you can follow the money, and you can understand how and why and what and maybe even find better ways that have been scuttled over the years. But the net net is, what if you were to take out that convenient search and apply the data or information to a profile that was actually valid?

For instance, MySpace was one of the early social platforms in the world. Right? Why is it that Facebook was able to eat their lunch and take their links and their people and build a system that actually grew exponentially faster? There’s a couple of things they did to be able to profile and pull in those relationships and people. But ultimately, they provided a little bit more transparency on who those individuals were, and they didn’t just let them be some hacker 123ABC username like MySapce did. They let them be a person online.

But is that person online verifiable and truly an individual. I personally, we have a pet. His name was Jack. He had a Facebook profile for four years. That’s a perfect example of is there viability in social media and connections. Facebook is a perfect example of yes. We as humans have an innate desire to connect, whether it’s physically or virtually, and to share life, and we’ll do it in whatever form technology allows us to do it or life allows us to do it.

But I would argue that there is a better way. There’s a better way for people to be able to be in control of who they are without relinquishing what they are. And if they’ve relinquished something, kind of like the law GDPR is saying that they mandate, we believe that there’s a simple way to be able to comply with GDPR, not just on the vendor or the centralized-data-provider side but also on the consumer side.

And so we really believe that there’s a new infrastructure that will be realized over the next decade and that there will be systems that will enable this infrastructure from a decentralized approach.

Imagine your home, imagine your apartment, imagine your business all being a part of this decentralized environment. When I say “decentralized,” all I’m talking about is the servers are not in some data center that is owned by Google or Facebook or some conglomerate that their basically using some distributed network associated to.

So hopefully I’ve touched on the questions that you’re asking. But it’s a big reality and a big problem around identity. And we’ve been working a lot — literally, it’s over ten years now — specifically on building the infrastructure so that identity could actually be decentralized responsibly and at scale.

Jay:  I think it’s… Yes, you have touched on a lot, and thank you. I think it’s a very interesting point how you said what we’ve given up for convenience or perhaps for our craving for social interaction, we’ve traded privacy for, and we see a lot of people such as many of your colleagues now that have the same motivation having been part of that older world and had a role in building the monster, so to speak, now have this extreme desire to come up with a better solution.

I think a perfect example that comes to my mind is I think one of the Whatsapp founders is a very strong advocate of privacy, and he’s come out publicly a number of times advocating privacy and this whole movement. So it’s interesting if you read about the history, because I think that this whole… What got us here is still unknown to many people. For those in the masses, social media networks are, like you said, just a way to socialize and connect with people. And a Google search is free, and it’s the fastest out there. And so people don’t realize what they’re giving up when they use these services. And I feel like you’re absolutely right. In our lifetime, there will be a shift, and hopefully ClearOS is at the center or leading the charge with this.

Maybe you can talk us through a little bit about how the ClearOS system and marketplace was designed to work towards this vision of having open source and decentralized data. Maybe you could give us an easy example for people like myself that aren’t that tech savvy and understand the jargon on the enterprise level of tech solutions.

Michael:  Today, technology, particularly open-source technology hasn’t always been simple. It usually works off a command line, which is a black screen. But just like what Netscape turned into or from Mozilla or what DOS turned into with Microsoft where it had an interface on it, we’re doing the same thing with open source. And many others will do it. But all that really is is making open source usable.

Google, when they acquired Android — I don’t know if folks really understand where Android came from. But you can take closed code that’s not really built on open platforms, if you will, and open source it and then convert it for adoption in business models, but the net net is we believe that native open source platforms using open standards that are very simple to use is imperative for the future. And ClearOS does just that.

So it takes what’s normally in a command line and has a web interface to it that then has apps that can be pulled down, just like what you would see in a marketplace like Android and others.

But a good example would be… Let’s say you wanted to actually protect your home. You wanted to whole of the internet to be blocked and then to subscribe to services or subscriptions or even your own group of feeds where you would basically allow only the good or things that are known in. For us to deploy the internet and then willy-nilly just say every port and every county and every URL, everybody can see, I believe is irresponsible. I believe that there’s a better way, and there’s a couple of apps inside of ClearOS. You pull them down, and you can basically do just that.

Think about content filter 3.0. It’s like instead of just filtering the web, it actually blocks the whole of the web and then uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to allow only what you want in your environment, which is literally creating a whole other unique form of the web in and of itself.

So that’s one example of a use case. Another is your data. Let’s say that you’re able to… Almost everyone listening to this has their own cell phone. I would even go as far as to say everyone listening to this has a cell phone. What region they’re in, what network they’re on, what speed they’re using — those are all different variables. But we all have these cell phones.

These cell phones can be a combination of who we are as it interacts with us. And the combination of that then turns into data. Why? Because with these cell phones, we do certain things. We take videos. We take photos. We take recordings. We take wallets and other things that you do with a phone, you can literally tie that to who you are and what you have.

So it’s a combination of not only security but a combination of storage. And when you take that security and that storage and you combine it for the individual, you literally can combine how we operate.

And so let’s say that you as an individual, you wanted your own private mail. You wanted your own private storage. You wanted your own private network and your own experience online. And you wanted to do it for next to nothing, and you want to do it easily. ClearOS enables you to do that.

So out of the over 500,000 deployments that we have, coming up on 60,000 of those deployments are in homes, and they’re in homes where individuals — mothers, fathers, kids — they’ve figured out how to download this ClearOS software and literally install it on some form of an x86-based system and do just that.

So what we believe in the future is literally productizing all of these complex experiences that these folks have had and making it even simpler. So in other words, instead of having to download something and install it on something and figure all the different jargon out, we want it to literally be turnkey. You pull down an app on your phone or you buy a phone, and that literally gives you the ability to have your own identity. That same phone can then be synchronized with the device that goes at your home or at your business. And that actually provides your own private storage and infrastructure for your identity.

As you’re maturing this identity, this identity will literally have a score which will then be able to tie to the future of the individuals that want to profile and pay for your information.

Some of the things we see online, a really good example, is that automobile search. But think about things around big pharma or data around health care. They’re paying, on average, $2500 per individual or per deployment to try and find different studies that certain archetypes or individuals can fit within. So think about how individuals can actually make money on their own identity instead of allowing search engine, for convenience, to make money on their own identity and taking away their privacy. Does that make sense?

Jay:  That makes 100% sense. When you talk about the way that you’ve structured it, I think about… I have three kids. I know you have six, and I don’t know how you manage to do that and build this amazing company.

Michael:  I have an amazing wife.

Jay:  But it’s funny. After I had my kids, I started thinking about things like the future for them and this sort of thing which is exactly what the ClearCenter vision is. And I think about even something as simple as the internet, exactly what you said. Like how do I…not necessarily block, but how do I filter and make sure that their privacy is protected and maybe some of the content out there on the internet is not accessible to them because it wouldn’t be enriching to them growing up.

And so I think about that, and I think about how much sense it makes that the way you’ve set up the ClearOS system and marketplace. It’s definitely something that needs to be a turnkey solution because even for someone, just a regular guy like me, my data is everywhere. I have Dropbox. I have a Box account, this, that, and the other. And every time I connect even on my mobile phone or I login on my work computer, there’s always a part of me that’s like… Hmm, this whole cloud thing, you hear about these hacks all the time and breaches. It’s like, are my photos just out there? You never know, right? To be able to have a system where you have the confidence of knowing that you control your data and you know exactly who has it or who you can allocate that data to, it’s very powerful, I think. And I think this is going to be a world-changing solution.

Michael:  We’re hopeful that it responsibly deploys technology. We’re not doing it for us or for names. We’re doing it for exactly what you’ve got running around in your house, these three kids. How old are they, by the way, Jay?

Jay:  Five, three, and two. Basically, we did the fast track.

Michael:  This reality is only going to get, as they double in age, more important to you. You talk about being concerned on how they grow up with this internet, so to speak. And the reality from my perspective is the internet is very good. Very, very good. There’s a ton of good reasons for it to be around. But I can honestly tell you that I personally believe that the morals and degradation of the family and communities and societies and even countries has taken a step back because of what we’ve done technologically.

I could go in depth on the realities of why I believe that, but the basis for countries such as Indonesia to use ClearOS not only for military reasons or for governmental reasons or to teach in their universities or to deploy in their homes or in their businesses or even deploy at the cellular layer for different IPs that are coming into the country, they’re identifying what’s happening to their culture, particularly Indonesia. It’s one of the highest sex-trafficking countries in the world, and they are starting to figure out why is this and what’s happening. And a lot of it is just tied to this internet.

And I’m not saying that people can’t have choice. They absolutely should have choice. As a matter of fact, this is not about taking choice, it’s about responsibly enabling choice.

And so you, as a father, to protect these children but then allow them to be online, because what you and I experienced as we were growing up where maybe it was a television — that’s all we had access to… I mean, I remember going to high school. I learned how to type on a typewriter. There were no computers. But they’re learning how to input devices by communicating with them. “Hey, Google, what’s this math question from here to here?” You want to enable them to gain the knowledge because it’s the best education that they can snag, by far. But on the flip side, you don’t want to expose them to what you talked about, the enriching part of life and growing up. Because ultimately, Jay, it can actually change your kids and not for the positive. They’re innocent and beautiful as they are right now. And it’s your job to respect them and to love them and to teach them and provide an environment that’s safe for them.

The rest of the world, they can do what they want to, but in your home, you need to have the choice as a father to be able to enable them to have the technology that you want them to be exposed to, that your wife wants them to be exposed to. And we’re just working super hard to make that simple for folks just like you.

So literally, you can deploy a device in your home, and it’s plug and play, and it just works, period.

Jay:  I love that because that is probably the quickest way to proliferating and having the mass adoption at scale that will basically just grow the vision.

You mentioned that your solution is hardware, software, and services all packaged into one turnkey solution. And I know that in 2017 you announced a partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprises who, I guess, you have a relationship from your prior company. Maybe you can talk to us a little bit about that and how that partnership is formed.

Michael:  The team that we’re working with at Hewlett Packard Enterprises is actually independent from the team from the prior because they actually split. So Hewlett Packard really is where the print services are, which is in a prior relationship, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, I worked Mitt Romney, and Mitt Romney connected me with Meg Whitman, and Meg Whitman connected me with Peter Schrady, and Peter Schrady connected me with…I won’t even go through the names because they’re real specific individuals that are there.

But the individuals that we’re working with came from relationships and, really, the merits of the technology. ClearOS is built on top of Red Hat, which is the largest software transaction in the world — $32 billion in cash purchased by IBM in November or October. And so, literally, where people thought we were crazy in 2005, literally, you see the largest transaction in the world right in front of us. So that’s kind of the basis there.

As far as Hewlett Packard Enterprise, we looked at them as really number one in the server world, and we’re just grateful and honored to be able to be at the table with them and work with them.

ClearOS does work on all x86-based servers worldwide. So it doesn’t have to have a brand behind it, but what we look for is literally responsible companies that deploy technological solutions. And when we look at HPE, or Hewlett Packard Enterprise, we really see that in a partner, in a relationship. Does that answer your question?

Jay:  Yeah. That’s incredible. And you can go and purchase this product at ClearOS fully loaded and get it started right away. Right?

Michael:  Yeah. You can download ClearOS today from ClearOS.com. Or you can go and grab from Hewlett Packard Enterprise. I’d recommend the micro server. Literally, it’s a solid server. It will hold up to 50 terabytes of storage. The ClearFoundation issued what we talked about as the Clear tokens, and you can literally start getting paid for hosting storage to be able to then tie to this whole identity world. Because remember, if it’s going to be hosted or delivered or run by the people, it’s got to be hosted and functional by the people. So just as important as providing the identity to individuals, we need the storage that can be managing those identity environments. So it’s not a centralized infrastructure.

You can buy a server with ClearOS installed and literally just kind of run from there.

Jay:  Is Filecoin a similar concept of where you can—

Michael:  That’s a really good question. Filecoin, IPFS, Storage, Storage A, Sia, they’re all a similar shared storage ecosystem, and all of those will actually be available indirectly or directly through the ClearShare environment. So they’re all different technologies with different use cases and origination. But Filecoin specifically, I really like what they’ve done with IPFS, which is Interplanetary File System and how that works. But the underpinning between how you take a file and shard it and share it and then you get compensated for it is exactly what we’re talking about with the storage side of things.

Jay:  And then you mentioned the Clear token that you can actually earn and have that as currency in the ecosystem. Maybe you can tell the audience a little bit about the CLEAR token. And I know you’re running a bonanza that help increase awareness around the world and how would an audience member or listener that’s interested participate?

Michael:  Currently, actually Feb 6, 2017 is when it was announced out of Singapore, and that’s actually Independence Day for New Zealand as well, and there’s a unique day for Singapore too. But to make a long story short, 11.37% has actually been distributed so far. And that included a pretty strong… We’re not your typical go out and push an ICO message and pull folks in. That’s not what this is about. It’s really about getting total number of users that actually are holders of CLEAR. And since that launch in February of last year, we’ve got about 65,000 users that actually have some type of holding within CLEAR. And we believe it is a digital value exchange, as you talked about, a digital currency that can actually provide purchasing abilities for the Clear-based ecosystems — hardware, software, services — and then also allows folks to be able to stake on their identity, stake on their storage, and then be able to receive value.

There will be a future for it that’s pretty independent and unique, especially when you hear some of the second and third waves that we’re talking about. So the first wave being identity, the second wave going into the health side of things, and then the third wave is the energy side of things.

The combination of all of these coming together, we believe, will provide a very unique and disruptive ecosystem when it comes to value exchange and what people can trust and hold in the value exchange ecosystem. Remember, we’re taking the long approach to this where time is really taken out of the equation. We’re looking at what’s the right way to deploy this and not just from what an individual man or people would think about but from a collectively what’s right for mankind. How is it that somebody born in Zimbabwe may have different opportunities than somebody born in London. And we really believe, like I told you in the beginning, we’re all the same. We really just want to build a system that enables us to all communicate and interact and provide value and relationships with one another around the world. And CLEAR is just one of those processes to be able to share or switch some of that value exchange, if that makes sense.

Jay:  It’s very exciting, Michael. I’m so excited to see what you guys have built and spent so many years working on and how that develops and proliferates in the future. I think it’s one of the best, largest, and most ambitious projects that I’ve heard of. But the more I learn about it, the more I speak with you, the more confident I am in that you will be successful.

Looking forward to the near term — 2019, 2020 — are there any milestones are goals that you guys are working on in the immediate future to help build the Clear vision, if you will?

Michael:  Just consistent with what we’ve already talked about. We run these things called WIGs, wildly important goals, where we basically lock and load yearly goals — one maybe two — and then we measure every week how each team is doing. So we’ve got 91 individuals — 93, 94 individuals now — across the world in nine different offices. And so this is a way for us to all stay organized. And the goals that we’re focused on are primarily around identity and storage and how they relate. And then also the products that are associated to those.

So in 2019, those are the things that you will see. One of the things that I would also say is very different about us, even though we’ve in blockchain since 2009, you won’t see us beating our chest or our drum, even though we’re on this radio show with you. We don’t go out and spend money or time trying to inappropriately beat our chests, if you will. But we do what we say we’re going to do. And so that’s probably two very unique differentiators with what’s involved in any of the ecosystem that is revolving around blockchain, which I personally, as I’ve been exposed over the years, I think literally 85 to 90% of it is just absolute waste of breath. In some ways, it’s just straight up fraudulent. They don’t even understand the technology and the deliver behind it.

Jay:  It’s incredible. It’s sad, because at the end, the person that will probably get the short end of the stick, like we saw last year when there was that ICO type, are the retail punters or investors or speculators, if you will, that didn’t really know anything about it, but they saw their neighbor making some money, and so they decided to jump in. And they probably all end up getting burned on these phantom projects that don’t even have any sort of product or solution shipped.

And you mentioned that you do have a team that’s based around the world. You have offices around the world as well. What is your… I know that the foundation is obviously based in New Zealand. Asia, specifically because I’m sitting here in Hong Kong, do you guys have any presence here or plans to proliferate in the region? I know that Asia is a big future geography for a lot of companies, and specifically in what you’re working on, I think it’s very relevant.

Michael:  Me personally, I don’t have a lot of deep roots in that part of the world, but I do look forward to spending much more time there. Our treasurer of the ClearFoundation, Gregory Jones, amazing man — I’ve known him for a long time and respect him like a father — he actually lived in Hong Kong for 20 years, speaks five or six languages, and he’s there often. As a matter of fact, I think he was there over the weekend. But he has very solid connections.

I know that China and Asia in general will have a large role in all of this, and we will work hard to ensure that. A lot of the infrastructure, the world is basically running and leveraging infrastructure and communication devices that all come out of Asia. They’re all manufactured there. The last 20 years has literally been a game where Asia has won that game, period. And so they’ll always be connected to it. The communication devices that it all works on, the central systems that they’re all built on, we’ve worked with some of the strongest Chinese companies over the last decade and plus and have some pretty interesting relationships, and we just plan to continue to grow them.

Today we don’t have offices, per se, in those regions that are material offices with lots of people, so to speak. More than a dozen is what I would say is material. We do look forward to that changing.

I did personally just work on my 10 year visa in Asia just a couple of weeks ago. It’s my first one ever. I’ve been all around the world, every other part of the world, but not Asia.

Jay:  Well, looking forward to seeing you over here soon, Michael. Michael, thank you so much for your time. It’s been such a pleasure catching up with you. I feel like we could talk for hours on what you’re working on and your vision, but I really appreciate the time you’ve taken to share with our audience. Like you said, you’re not one to be out there doing aimless marketing or chest-puffing and that sort of thing, so I do appreciate you taking the time to explain what you’re working on with us.

What is the best place that my audience can find you or follow you, maybe read about some of the exciting things you’re working on? I know that I spent some time reading your white paper which was incredible. And even just delving into some of the future upcoming problems that you are trying to find solutions for, such as health or energy, it was just exciting reading about that stuff.

So where can I direct my audience members to?

Michael:  The best place to go is to Clear.co.com. And you can read up on everything that we’ve talked about during this call here and see a white paper or presentation or even movie on anything that we talked about, business wise.

Down at the bottom, there’s always blogs where you can keep up to date there on the latest news. We are announcing some pretty interesting and exciting acquisitions, because a lot of this stuff we can’t do on our own, and people have already done it. And so when we show them, hey, if you plug it in this way, they start figuring out one and one equals seven or eight instead of two. So they’re more than happy to join forces and lock arms and make this happen.

So we’ve already closed over the years four or five different acquisitions, and we’ll announce two or three more this year. So in 2005, we worked with a company named WitsBits and acquired them. They’re on a virtualization platform now known as ClearVM. Minebox in 2017, and in 2018, it was KAILO. We announced one last week, and we’ll announce another one, actually, tomorrow, which is probably the most exciting one of the year so far.

But again, Clear.co.com is the right place to do any kind of due diligence or research if you’re interested.

Jay:  Very exciting. Once again, Michael, thank you so much for the time. I’m personally very, very excited to see and track your progress. I know we’ll be rooting for you and watching your continued success. Like I said, I feel like once I fully understood what you were working on and just the depth and the amount of time and focus that you guys have been working on this project, I’m very confident that you will be successful. So thank you again, and we’re looking forward to hearing more great things about the ClearCenter and the ClearFoundation in the future.

Michael:  Jay, thanks for… I don’t know how you found us, but thanks for doing your due diligence and your research the for digging into the details. Not many people have the staying power and ability to just grasp what you’ve already grasped in such a short period. I think the first time I talked to you was like less than ten days ago. Thank you for investing your time and driving awareness to things that are actually important and matter. And I look forward to hopefully meeting you one day and shaking your hand and looking you in the eyes, watching your kids grow as they age.

Jay:  Absolutely. Alright. Take care, Michael. Thank you.

Michael:  Bye.