Verji Tech AS Campaign Statement:

I though I should complement my/our platform statement with some more background information.

As stated in the platform statement Verji Tech AS is a norwegian startup, just over a year old. But Verji Tech has a much longer history going back many years. Back in the days, Rosberg AS created a propritary messaging/chat application which has some moderate success locally in Norway. To grow the business the proprietary application needed major work, so we decided to abandon the proprietary stack and base our development on a more established platform. We evaluated many (XMPP, Rocket Chat, MatterMost etc), but in the end we decided to build on the Matrix platform.

We signed a contract with Element for Professional Services, and were able to launch the Verji application after about 6 months of intensive work. In that time we had adapted Element Web to match better the requirements of our target customers (Accountants, auditors and law-firms), and stand up a kubernetes cluster with staging and production environments. We were (and still are) very positive and happy about the decision to go with Matrix, but it turned out that the way our customers use Verji highlighted some painpoints. Verji ONLY use encrypted rooms, nothing else. The vast majority of our users log in every morning, and out every evening. Many users don't use mobile apps, and only use a (one) browser. And our users collaborate by inviting users into rooms in different phases of projects/work. All of this highlighted a few painpoints.

• Onboarding users involved keys/passphrases and crypto related stuff
• Logging in involved keys/passphrases and crypto related stuff
• Unable to search room history.
• Messages sendt while a user was logged out was lost
• Previous history in room was unavailable.

So part of the collaboration with Element involved handling those (and other) painpoints, and over time we have contributed both insights and funds to work on:

• Dehydrated devices
• Customization of key-setup when logging in (SecurityCustomisations)
• Key history sharing
• Encrypted application services
• Mobile app pipeline (hardened Element)

Some of the work is generally useful outside of Verji, and some is arguably niche and Verji specific.

Over time, Rosberg AS changed name and became Verji AS. As many will know, building a business and revenue always take more time than expected, and in the end Verji AS ran out runway.

Enter Verji Tech AS.

A bit over a year ago, we founded Verji Tech AS and purchased the estate from the Verji AS bancruptcy estate. In the past year we have carried over most of Verji AS' customers, and onboarded many new. We have also "grown up", and are now able to run, develop and host the technology stack without the benefit of an agreement with Element.

As any start-up, Verji Tech AS is thinking very hard about every dime we spend. In the past Verji has contributed to and indirectly funded Matrix development through the agreement with Element. Nowadays we are trying to contribute more directly by contributing PRs, and by membership in the Matrix Foundation. We also plan to be more involved in the spec. and the community in general. And we are running in the election, so we certainly hope to contribute to the work in the Governing Board.

Some of the things on our radar are:

• The community must continue the journey toward a strong and healthy Matrix Foundation
• Improve transparency, and the separation of concerns and interests of the major players in ecosystem.
• To be sustainable Matrix must be attractive also to commercial for-profit companies
• How can extensibilty of the platform (spec and tech) be improved to lower the risk and maintenance burden of customisations?
• Introduce/ensure pragmatism on the platform, in the technology, and in the spec in general
  • Not all community players require the same security guarantees for their service or product
  • Not all community players require the same set of set of features

Hopefully the above will give a clear impression about where Verji Tech is coming from, what our goals are, and how we may be able to contribute to the Matrix Community and the Governing Board.

To be sustainable Matrix must be attractive also to commercial for-profit companies
👍️

To be sustainable Matrix must be attractive also to commercial for-profit companies
👍️