The Future Is Now: Jasper Li Of Adonit On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up The Tech Scene
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Mistakes are not always bad. It is very important to learn from mistakes and apply what you’ve learned when the next challenge comes.
As a part of our series about cutting edge technological breakthroughs, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jasper Li, CTO, and co-founder of Adonit.
Jasper Li is one of the founding team members of the award-winning mobile accessories company, Adonit. As part of the executive team, Jasper leads a community of creative thinkers to help create technology that serves the creative process in the simplest way possible. Li’s products can be found in more than 150 countries around the world as he continues to help develop tools that empower everyone to create, make, and do more in the modern workspace.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
When the iPad was introduced, there were fewer options for users in terms of accessories compared to the present day. We believe screens are not for typing, which is why we started the business. By creating and providing more innovative input devices for our users all over the world, we look forward to evolving how people use their tablets and making creativity more accessible in everyday life.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
When Adonit was just founded and our stylus started to be known by more and more people, I overheard some friends of mine talking about how Adonit’s product solved the problems they faced with other tech accessories. They recommended our products to their friends and family, and that was the first time I realized how close we are to our customers, and providing a solution that gives them a better experience with their phone or tablet. It was a very heartwarming moment in my career and I felt much more confident about how our dream of making life easier for everyone was being fulfilled, step by step.
Can you tell us about the cutting-edge technological breakthroughs that you are working on? How do you think that will help people?
The newest development we have been working on is Adonit Authenticate, our first hardware/software solution for B2B applications to create real-time, multi-factor user authentication for the most secure digital information exchange possible. While we’ve developed a stylus with a built-in fingerprint sensor for biometric identification, we also partnered with Birosign, a signature authentication company, to ensure that this technology is as secure and safe for its users as possible. Imagine taking a standardized test, signing an important banking or healthcare document, or even notarizing a document, and not worrying about identity theft or other related issues we face every day in this ever-increasing digital world.
How do you think this might change the world?
The FTC has reported that 2.2 million fraud reports were filed in 2020 with someone becoming a victim of identity fraud every 14 seconds. Because of this, we wanted to develop a platform for businesses and organizations that combines two forms of nearly unreplaceable identification factors, including real-time fingerprint and signature recognition to ensure digital tasks are only completed by the intended individual. We believe this is a very necessary technology that will change the world as we know it, ensuring everyone’s personal identity is secure to stop the growing number of identity theft reports that continue to climb each year.
Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?
The question when it comes to this or any technology is how secure the product, service, or platform is and how much trust should I instill in it? In this digital age, our lives revolve around technology whether it is storing every bit of information we own, completing monetary transactions, recording telephone conversations, and much more. Technology runs our lives and society is fully dependent on trusting these services in order to have zero disruptions in our day-to-day lives. That is where we come in to ensure we have the proper encryptions and protocols in place to ensure we are only making people’s lives better, not creating more headaches. We’re confident that Adonit Authenticate is truly a unique and innovative security platform that will only benefit those that use it, and will only become safer and more secure as technology advances.
Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this breakthrough? Can you tell us that story?
The idea of Adonit Authenticate actually came from the difficulties we were facing during this pandemic. More and more companies started to work remotely, and it became crucial for businesses to have higher security when it comes to signing digital documents; specifically how to ensure proper identification. I pondered how we may be able to solve these problems. Remote work and learning became a trend during this pandemic, and the application of personal identifiers was valued more and more by most organizations. This is what led my team to come up with the idea of Adonit Authenticate. Meanwhile, Birosign reached out to us and shared our belief that this can be the best opportunity to bring these issues to light and provide solutions to help solve them.
What do you need to lead this technology to widespread adoption?
The key to success for the world to adopt technology like Adonit Authenticate would be for us to create an underlying trust both in our product and in the businesses or organizations that use it that people’s data is safe and secure. We think once people use this technology and see just how easy it is, then understand the immense level of security that goes behind it, we will have an opportunity to make Adonit Authenticate synonymous with safe digital identification for digital documentation and transitions. We encourage businesses and organizations who are interested in working with us to visit https://www.adonit.net/concepts/security-solution/ to contact us to get a better understanding of how we can work together and show the world how Adonit Authenticate can make a difference in digital security.
What have you been doing to publicize this idea? Have you been using any innovative marketing strategies?
We’ve been to several exhibitions with Birosign, while also reaching out to visit several banks and schools to discover the actual pain points and possible solutions. We actually have a lot of future plans in progress. For example, we’ll have some experiential campaigns for people to try out Adonit Authenticate. Also, we’re thinking of launching a competition, where anyone who can imitate a set signature and have Adonit Authenticate accept it will win a prize. Finally, we plan to partner with influencers and have their autographs sold as NTFs. Our marketing team is working on making all this happen.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
There are actually too many people to thank for bringing this project to life. I need to give my creative team members so much credit for working perfectly together and developing some amazing products. Also, our initial manufacturers strongly supported our idea and provided a lot of extra help to make our vision into reality. There was not a specific manufacturer for making stylus at that time, so we really appreciate that they supported those rare requirements we ask for.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
The goal behind this technology is to bring peace of mind to those who have faced, or are worrisome, about keeping their identity and information safe. If we can mitigate these issues even by a fraction we feel we are on the right path to making even bigger strides for security in the future.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why.
- Remember to balance your life. Working hard is important for a startup company but we need to find a way to balance health and family as well.
- Opportunities will present themselves in different ways. Don’t ignore these opportunities. A small opportunity for you now might become very important later on.
- Mistakes are not always bad. It is very important to learn from mistakes and apply what you’ve learned when the next challenge comes.
- The core of any company is the people behind it. Make sure you have a passionate and talented team that will help you solve problems in a multitude of ways.
- Not every day is a good day, and that’s ok! Different challenges will be presented every day and it’s how you learn to adapt and solve them that is truly valuable.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Be passionate and very involved in what is important to you or your company. If we can solve a key problem people have in an efficient way, we will see things change for the better. Don’t be frustrated if things go wrong, simply learn from it and be ready when the next challenge comes.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
I often tell my team “We don’t wait for someone to tell us what we can do, but to figure out how we can do it.” Along the journey of developing and making stylus, plenty of manufacturers told us the impossibilities. However, what our research and development team is doing is finding a way to achieve what we expect our product to do for people. How we are able to solve the problem or make better products become our key value.
Some very well-known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
We are a company that makes smart input devices. We believe input shouldn’t be stopped at the present position, and touchscreens are not made for typing. Our goal is to make input more creative, innovative, and effective. If we have more resources, we’re able to create even more innovative input solutions in the future.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
You are welcome to follow Adonit’s Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter!
Official Website
Adonit Twitter
https://twitter.com/adonitnews
Adonit Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/AdonitInc/
Adonit Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/adonitusa/
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
The Future Is Now: Jasper Li Of Adonit On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up The Tech… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
