Introducing: Blaise Thomson, CEO and Co-Founder

Hello Blaise, please introduce yourself!

Hi! I’m one of the founders of Bitfount and our CEO.

What does your role at Bitfount involve?

I sometimes feel like it involves little bits of everything. We have an amazing team, and so a lot of the time I’m just reviewing what others have done, but I also try to make sure we have a shared vision of what we are building, and make sure that everyone can be as effective as possible.

How did you get into this field?

I used to work at Apple as the Chief Architect for Siri Understanding. One of the things I saw in action there was the federated learning system that Matt (our Head of Engineering) and his team were building for doing distributed data science on iPhones. I got very excited at the potential for similar ideas to be used across organisations and decided to start Bitfount.

What challenges are you working on right now?

We’re at the seed stage of the company, so the big topic for me is to build as much validation as possible for our product. In practice, that means a lot of sales, and trying to make sure that we have the features that our customers need.

What are the most important benefits that you believe data collaboration can bring, from a business and sustainability perspective?

Unlocking valuable data is the most important for me. When I was an academic I always wished that I could access more data and this type of technology can really benefit that so much. From a sustainability perspective, I love how data collaboration brings some protection against monopolies because it means more organisations get to benefit from big data.

How would you describe the culture and working environment?

We have a great culture of getting everyone to give opinions and to allow for strongly opposing ideas. There’s also something about the team always trying to find the right solution to a problem, rather than the easiest one.

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