Faces of Silicon Beach: Scott Kriz

Scott Kriz is the co-founder of Bitium, an app and password management system. With an impressive background building successful customer-facing products spanning several technology verticals, Scott focuses his energies on fixing inefficiencies he sees around him. Erik Huberman, CEO of Hawke Media, talks to Scott about Bitium, being an entrepreneur and the changing tech scene in Santa Monica.
Erik Huberman: What made you want to be an entrepreneur?
Scott Kriz: Specifically, myself and the co-founder were running the product and engineering department at a gaming company and were using a lot of web based applications like Salesforce and Google Apps. We were frustrated because it was very difficult to manage who had access to what and how to give access to new employees. Interestingly enough, I started my first company when I was in college. It was started out of the same reason as every company I've started; out of frustration and realizing there was a problem that no one had solved yet and wanting to solve it. My first company was developing websites for colleges and universities in 1997. Our college website was horrible, and we couldn't find the information we wanted. We started to rebuild our college website, and that turned into hundreds of colleges. For me, I definitely see inefficiencies as a problem and want to do something to fix them.
E: Tell me a little bit about yourself and Bitium?
S: Bitium is a software service that helps companies gain access to all of their applications in one place. As companies start to use more and more web-accessible software, they can just come to one place and instead of having to remember multiple credential sets, get into applications without even knowing the underlying credentials for those applications.
E: Why did you choose to be in Santa Monica?
S: I live in Manhattan Beach and my co-founder lives in Brentwood, it's relatively between the two of us, but more importantly, it's just an awesome environment to work in. We've worked at companies before where the office building was in an office park and kind of in the middle of nowhere, and both for personal happiness reasons, and for recruiting talent, we decided it would be a better idea to be in a place where we're happy every time we have to work rather than dreading walking through the doors.
E: What do you think of the whole Silicon Beach scene that's come out of Santa Monica?
S: Specifically for us, I think it's exciting that there are more software companies being developed. We're going through a transition in West LA to more diverse companies doing serious tech and getting graduates out of USC and UCLA and keeping those people in Southern California. When they previously didn't have an option before and went to Northern California because that's where all the jobs were.
E: How is Bitium changing the world?
S: Our goal is to make people more efficient at their work. We're changing the world by allowing people to focus on their jobs and support them in changing the world. We help business run more efficiently and focus on what they do as a business rather than the distraction of things like how to use software and how to get access to different applications. Essentially allow them to not think about efficiencies – we want to remove that layer.
E: What is one piece of advice you want to pass along to entrepreneurs?
S: Try to remove any fear that you have, and just do it. It's never a good or bad time to start business so try to resolve the fears you have and just jump into it.
E: Is there anything you want to share with local people in Santa Monica?
S: We live in a great place, and everyone that works for Bitium feels lucky that we're located in Santa Monica. We're really enthusiastic that there are a number of companies that are likeminded in wanting to make Santa Monica not only a destination for people that are going to the beach and surfing, but also a place where we can balance work life. Santa Monica is a great place.