INTERVIEW WITH ALES ZIZMUND, MBA

1. Where are you coming from? What is your business background?
   I come from Slovenia. My business background is very interesting. I grew from the bottom to the top. From sales manager to executive director and now owner and CEO. I started in banking and after 3 years I switched to IT. This was very interesting since IT environment is completely different from banking. However, I met great people and learned a great deal. I worked with system integrators, code developers and also in the top multinational company - Oracle - where I was developing a regional partner network. Time really flew and we finished some great projects. Most of the projects were addressing business processes and the challenges of how to simplify them and make them cost-effective. Some projects were just fun… For example, one time we were developing artificial sight- how to recognize different objects. This was really cool.

1. What were some of the "big names" you worked with?
   Well… I worked with big names like Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Siebel but this was only on a partnership level. The biggest experience with big names was with Oracle. I was helping Oracle’s partners to develop skills, know-how and market strategies in South East Europe. This was a really complex job. You need to align different partners, people, levels of commitment and knowledge to one stream. Of course, everyone with its own priorities :).

1. Why 4th Pillar? How did this company catch your attention?
   Many reason. At first it was just gossip. You know… I have a good network and when you meet people, they tell you what they are doing. So, they told me about a cool project called 4th Pillar. Then I saw one of the owners Tali Rezun on national TV explaining what a great project this is. Naturally, I became interested. I researched the company and then connected to the owners. We saw a common interest. Any way. I love the project because of three facts:

• It is addressing real issues, real processes and makes them easier to handle and cheaper to perform.
• The idea is coming from people that really worked in the industry for a long time. The owners and the rest of the team have experience and knowledge about problems in the industry. They are not just making up some imaginary situations.
• Project is not only executable but we have early adopters waiting to implement the solution. This is not always the case in ICO.

1. What do you feel 4th Pillar can do for the HR and business world?
   As I said before. It could drastically lower the cost of handling documentation and it can bring a total transparency to the hiring process. For example, we calculated that only with the pay slips that a company is handling we can lower cost at least three times per employee. Can you imagine how much paper can you save? Another example: can you imagine how much time and effort companies or headhunters spends when they try to check all references for new employees? All the time and cost they spent would just disappear. One stop shop for all verified documentation. How cool is that?

1. You have experience in a wide field of expertise - How will you utilize them and lead the development of this company?
   We will join some traditional methods with new approaches. We cannot forget our responsibility to our investors. We need to be transparent, honest, responsive and ethical. On the other hand, we need to meet professional standards regarding quality of the product and alignment with regulation and legislation (example: eDelivery EU standards). Of course, our employees and partners are our biggest asset so I plan to work with both in the utmost fair and sensitive manner. The most important thing is that we deliver what is expected of us.

2. Where do you see 4th Pillar in the future?
   We are developing a product that has vast opportunities. We can market the product through companies but our customers can also be the government. Since we are working on an open platform we can address the governmental issues with a click of a button and adopt our solution. There is also one more opportunity that puts us among one of the top 10 IT companies in the world. It is too soon to predict but believe me that this is a really complementary solution for them. I am not afraid for the future of 4th Pillar It looks bright to me.

Jan Jordan Franges