This week, I had the pleasure of speaking with Lory Kehoe. Lory’s had a fascinating career- starting out as a lecturer before moving into consulting. After a decade of climbing the corporate ladder in both Accenture and Deloitte, Lory was turned onto the potential of Blockchain by a friend over dinner in Hong Kong. Lory’s interest was piqued and he consumed everything on the technology he could get his hands on. He reflects, “one question was answered, but led to another five. And then really, it just took off from there.” In the following years, Lory founded Deloitte’s EMEA Blockchain Lab before moving on to Consensys where he held roles as Managing Director and Global Co-Head of Partnerships. His career, proof of Joseph Lubin’s assertion that,“For those who understand the profound implications of blockchain technology, there is no turning back.”
In our wide-ranging conversation, Lory gives a first-principles explanation of what Blockchain actually is, describes the regret minimisation framework he used when deciding to leave the warm stable of consulting, and reflects on the importance of learning in his life.
Here are a few of my highlights:
Q: “You mentioned Amazon’s flywheel, does Lory Kehoe have a flywheel?”
A: “A Squeaking flywheel, perhaps… there's probably things that I'm always doing and that I think are helping to keep the flywheel moving, certainly at some pace. And I think a big cornerstone for me on that is to be constantly learning. So constant education- I try and do at least one course of some sort every year… that helps me understand what else is going on in different markets and helps me keep up with trends.”
The Topic of Lory’s PHD- Why Do The Mighty Fall? 📉
“I’m starting a PHD in a couple of weeks… looking at why, in the face of disruption and change, do some companies succeed? They take the bull by the horns and they create, they pivot, they create new business models and they flourish. Versus why do some companies, when they know change is either happening, has occurred, or is about to occur? Why do they struggle and fail to change and adapt?
I am very interested in why companies that were once so incredibly powerful and successful fail. It's not as if the executive teams suddenly woke up one morning and forgot how to do their job, or, you know, became stupid. That's not the case. So what happened that really led to the company sliding and disappearing versus other companies that, no matter what happens, seem to succeed?”
The Basics of Blockchain ⛓
“Blockchain has four key characteristics and I'll quickly run through those…”
“The first thing that I'd say is that what's done on a blockchain, it's there forever... I won't say it's impossible, but it's extremely difficult… as far as we can see it so far… it can't be edited, amended or altered”
“Point two are these things called smart contracts and smart contracts are self- executing contracts when certain criteria are met. If this event happens, trigger this payment and the applications of that are infinite…”
“A third thing is around decentralization. Decentralization means that, if a bunch of companies are working together, no one single company has the data stores the data or owns the data. And in fact, really what it means is that if there are, let's say five companies, each company has a direct copy or instance of that dataset. And if company one experiences a hack… it can refer, when it goes back online, to any one of the four others for a copy of their information.”
“The last thing is cryptography… cryptography is what makes it all work.”
Why’s it Called Blockchain?
“ What it all boils down to is that there is a block, a Genesis block. The first block with the stores and transactions are agreed effectively, captured and agreed into that first block. And they have to be approved by one entity, five entities, as the case may be, or by computer programs, figuring out puzzles, but all those transactions are stored in the first block. And then, when that block becomes full or it reaches its capacity, the second block is created and is linked to the first block and so on…”
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with the wildly impressive Lory Kehoe as much as I did.
Have a great week!
Best,
Will
Podcast 🎙: Lory Kehoe on Blockchain, Career Decisions and Cultivating Curiosity