Qui Identity: Digital Identity in a Decentralized World — Who Controls What? When? Where? Why? And How?

Wittington Ventures (WV) is proud to share the news today about the launch of Qui Identity (pronounced “key”), a new company building the next generation of digital identity. Fueled by their recent $6.5M funding round — which WV participated in, alongside other great investors like Round 13 Digital Asset Fund and OMERS Ventures — Qui is on a mission to redefine how people manage their identities across our digital and physical worlds.

What makes up your identity?

It’s easy to lose track of just how many data points, products, services and credentials can make up who you are in the world — both digital and physical. The diagram below provides a non-exhaustive overview of some of the more obvious characteristics that make up one’s identity:

So there are many characteristics that comprise your identity… but when do you actually have to provide this information? And to whom? And where? And for how long do they need it?

As industries have continued to adopt more digital solutions, the need for people to prove their identity has only become more prevalent, and with that, there is naturally a higher concern around privacy and security risks. People have to make claims about their identity all the time; many of these claims are repetitive — some of which must be made on a yearly basis, whereas others can be required on a daily basis.

To complicate things even more, the exact same claims must often be made to different organizations and institutions (e.g. accounts at multiple banks), even if the data they require is identical and has already been verified by another, trustworthy party. Until today, identity and access management has been handled — broadly — via the following approaches:

WV x Qui Identity

With the above having been said, WV is excited to share our investment in Qui Identity! Qui is our first seed-stage investment, and our first investment in a Canadian company. Our investment thesis in Qui was built based on the following:

• Exceptional Founding Team — Qui is being built by a knowledgeable and experienced founding team, consisting of leaders within the technology, finance and crypto ecosystems. Qui’s founders come from Wave Financial (previously Wave Accounting), including Kirk Simpson (Wave’s founder / CEO) and Peter Carrescia (an original Wave investor and later SVP Strategy). This team brings the ability to not only recruit for and build a successful technology company, but also the experience to navigate complicated and security-heavy regulatory environments with multiple stakeholders.
• Large and Growing Market — Qui operates in the Identity and Access Management (IAM) Industry, valued today at USD $13.4B, and expected to grow at a 13.7% CAGR, reaching $25.6B by 2027. Not only is this market attractive, but WV sees the potential for much higher growth when factoring in adoption of new metaverse platforms, web3 services, as well as device identity with the rise in IOT and industry 4.0.
• Qui is Better for People — There are clear catalysts to drive user-value. Third-party cookies are no more; GDPR compliance is more predominant; people are generally becoming aware of the value of their data, and want to control and access that value; people want more privacy of their data.
• Qui is Better for Businesses — This technology will unlock new cost savings for businesses. There will be faster onboarding of customers using pre-verified identity, security improvements related to the storage of personally identifiable information and more convenient auditability for privacy records.

All of this is to say that our team here at WV thinks the next generation of digital identity will be decentralized, and we couldn’t be more excited to partner with Kirk, Peter and the entire Qui Identity team on the direction they are heading!

If you’re curious to learn more about Wittington Ventures, our interests in the decentralized world, or you’re building something amazing in this space, please don’t hesitate to reach out to Darian Zigante dzigante@wittingtonventures.com or Jim Orlando jorlando@wittingtonventures.com to chat.