#150 - Sebastiaan van der Lans, CEO of WordProof - On how declaring war to a problem helps to save the world

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to empowers internet users and content creators with the tools to build a safer and more trustworthy internet. My guest is Sebastiaan van der Lans, Founder and CEO of WordProof and Chairman of Trusted Web Foundation

Sebastiaan van der Lans has a big heart for open source. In 2006, he co-founded Amsterdam’s first WordPress agency, 'Van Ons', which is a leading digital agency now, serving over 100M page views a year.

Sebastiaan has a strong passion for improving the playing fields of publishing, SEO, and e-commerce.

In 2019, Sebastiaan founded WordProof with which he’s on a mission to restoring trust on the internet.

This inspired me, and hence I invited Sebastiaan to my podcast. We explore what’s underpinning the fact the internet is broken when it comes to trust and how this is undermining our progress. We also address how to get a movement going in a situation that’s characterized by multiple ‘chicken & egg’ dilemmas. Finally, we discuss the mindset and approach required to achieve results that have remarkable impact for everyone around the globe.

Here are some of his quotes:

Even though the Internet has brought us so many great things, it has a deep-rooted issue. And that's what it's trustworthiness.

And therefore, all sorts of obnoxious human behaviour, like theft and manipulation and fraud thrive. Normally in society, we have systems in place to make sure that those obnoxious behaviors don't thrive. But on the internet, trust simply isn't part of the internet's DNA. And that goes back to society.

So what we say is: “To save the world, we need to fix the internet, we need to make trust part of the internet's DNA.”

That's what we aim for. And Wordproof is a Time Stamping tool to achieve the mission of the trusted web.

In a few years from now, if you don't timestamp your information, you’ll be considered a fraud. What are you hiding from?

During this interview, you will learn four things:

1. That just because technology isn’t scalable or mature enough is no reason to not embrace it.
2. How to solve a business model challenge where the audience that benefits most are not the one that will pay for it.
3. Why it requires to declare war on a specific problem to create solutions that are remarkable
4. Why spending 1000 hours on a 1-minute pitch pays off

For more information about the guest from this week:

• Sebastiaan van der Lans
• Website WordProof
• Website The Trusted Web