Inrupt's VP Osmar Olivo: The Internet Needs Evolution, Not Revolution

A significant turning point came in Osmar Olivo‘s career when he met Inrupt founders Tim Berners Lee and John Bruce.

"I knew I would regret not taking the opportunity to come build something that would change the world," Olivo said in an interview.

Today, Olivo is a VP of product at Inrupt, an enterprise software company that delivers Web 3.0 technology solutions focused on privacy and customer trust.

Olivo started his career as a software engineer on the Goldman Sachs trading floor. As a product manager, he contributed to MongoDB — a source-available cross-platform document-oriented database program, — and a NYC-based hedge fund, Two Sigma Investments.

Building Better Personal Data Control: Inrupt is on a mission to restore balance to the web by reshaping how people interact with and control their data. With data generation skyrocketing, the need for protecting personal rights and privacy has never been greater. The company's approach to this challenge avoids completely overhauling an existing data management process. 

Instead, they leverage established foundational technologies to give users a personal cloud, referred to as a “pod,” which allows applications to access data only with the data owner’s consent. This ensures that data remains secure while causing minimal disruption to existing tools and platforms.

"I gave the apps access to the data in my pod, and the apps just started working. My profile picture, my name, my information was just automatically pulled from my pod. It blew my mind,” Olivo said. “That's the moment when I realized that apps should come to me and ask me for access to my data. And that data should live in a place managed by me, and I should have full control over who has access to it.”

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Transparency and Web 3.0: Olivo, an experienced product management leader, discussed Web 3.0 as a promise of a fairer and more secure internet.

"What most people want and need is visibility, transparency, and consent over their data,” he wrote.

“In particular, individuals need guarantees around confidentiality between themselves and trusted parties, partners, and institutions. For example, my medical records are between me and my doctor. My finances are between me, my financial institution, and my accountant. Whenever more than one party requires access to data, we need a robust and unambiguous access control system to manage confidentiality—not a public ledger of who owns which data point," he added.

Olivo, who has a demonstrated history focusing on core platforms in the enterprise and open-source space, argues that a strategic evolution of the web can achieve these goals, rather than a complete overhaul — pointing at the Solid project by Sir Tim Berners-Lee as a practical solution.

Olivo will join other Fintech experts in a "Digital Identity Revolution: The Future of Secure and Self-Sovereign Identity" discussion at Benzinga's Fintech Deal Day event in NYC on Nov. 13.

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