Max Krohn

Co-Founder, Keybase · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderengineerexecutivescientist@maxtaco ↗maxk.org ↗

Max Krohn holds a PhD in computer science from MIT and co-founded SparkNotes, OkCupid, and the cryptographic identity platform Keybase. Following Keybase's acquisition by Zoom in 2020, he served as Head of Security Engineering before returning to independent open-source cryptography projects.

9statements → 2claims → 1claims resolved → 4.11/5average certainty → 2.22/5average debate potential →

1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not checkable as stated how the 2 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 1 assertion · 1 opinion · 6 insights · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertion are the 2 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Max argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported

Krohn: Keybase servers store no user decryption keys

“If anyone ever breaks into the server, all they really get is a bunch of encryption, and Unlike with other systems, the key you need to decrypt the data is just not on the server. The only person who has a key is like, is the phone in your pocket or the deskto…”

Max Krohn Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 11:02 a16z Podcast | Establishing Online Identity is Hard -- It Shouldn't Be

How they sound: speaking style how? →

316 words/min while actually speaking · 9.6 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Max Krohn: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 3,428 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

What they said9 Episodes1

Everything Max Krohn said on the a16z Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion

Krohn: Perimeter security for major cloud providers is an impossible task

“It's just that they've chosen to do a job that's basically impossible, that, that no one can really do. Relative to all the threats that are lined up against them.”

Max Krohn Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 10:02 a16z Podcast | Establishing Online Identity is Hard -- It Shouldn't Be

Insight

Krohn: Security software cannot be trusted unless the code is open source

“Because we're building software that we think people need to trust, there's no possible way that people can trust us unless they get to see what the code actually is and how the software we're writing is using crypto and is using The various things that we tal…”

Max Krohn Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 15:25 a16z Podcast | Establishing Online Identity is Hard -- It Shouldn't Be

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Krohn: People will increasingly need digital identity mapping

“We started Keybase a little bit over a year ago just because we were convinced that in the future people would really see a need for mapping what they considered notions of identity that computers could understand.”

Max Krohn Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 1:03 a16z Podcast | Establishing Online Identity is Hard -- It Shouldn't Be

Insight

Krohn: Consumer crypto onboarding shares challenges with early online dating platforms

“So in that respect, we think that our experience at OkCupid is very helpful for moving into something like getting crypto to be popular for more people. There's a lot of common elements of user recruitment and user onboarding and making people like the product…”

Max Krohn Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 2:42 a16z Podcast | Establishing Online Identity is Hard -- It Shouldn't Be

Insight

Krohn: Systems should prevent servers from viewing plain-text user data

“The way we should be building systems is that If the server doesn't need to see the data or access the data that you're putting onto it, then it just shouldn't. There's no reason why it has to see it, then the data should be not available to the server in plai…”

Max Krohn Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 8:36 a16z Podcast | Establishing Online Identity is Hard -- It Shouldn't Be

Assertion Supported

Krohn: Keybase servers store no user decryption keys

Max Krohn Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 11:02 a16z Podcast | Establishing Online Identity is Hard -- It Shouldn't Be

Insight

Krohn: Cryptographic public key signing is far superior to password authentication

“What you ought to be doing is signing a statement saying, I'm Max, and I want to log into this service, and the service would just have your public key. You know, Max is identified with this public credential, and as long as he's able to sign a statement with …”

Max Krohn Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 14:26 a16z Podcast | Establishing Online Identity is Hard -- It Shouldn't Be

Insight

Krohn: Building crypto apps today is like forcing developers to implement TCP/IP

“I think the status quo is now, I mean, a good analogy would be like, you know, hey, you want to write Photoshop, but with photo sharing, you know, you first have to implement TCP IP before you can get that done. I mean, that's kind of the world we live in righ…”

Max Krohn Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 17:08 a16z Podcast | Establishing Online Identity is Hard -- It Shouldn't Be

Insight

Krohn: Communication apps fail without low recipient onboarding friction

“We have to really allow the operation to go through as far as possible, as far as the sender is concerned, and then get the receiver onboarded also with minimum friction. And I think unless an application does that, it's doomed to fail.”

Max Krohn Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 19:10 a16z Podcast | Establishing Online Identity is Hard -- It Shouldn't Be

Appearances (1)

Episode	Date	Speaking time
a16z Podcast \| Establishing Online Identity is Hard -- It Shouldn't Be	Jan 2, 2019	14m

Max Krohn

The record, in short

Their most notable supported claim

How they sound: speaking style how? →

Appearances (1)

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