Boost VC and the plans for the bitcoin ecosystem

Transcript

welcome everybody a.m. today we're going to talk to Adam Draper a fourth-generation venture capitalist and founder of boost c.c one of the most active Bitcoin incubators co-hosted a are your part of black shell calm and yawns half of fast moving targets been to know and my name forces pop I think viewers can ask questions using Q&A tool and don't forget to like the video and subscribe to our channel we're going to talk with Adam about his investment philosophy and his plans for the Bitcoin ecosystem Adam awesome mattefy on the show today welcome yeah well it's great to be here I'm excited to talk to everyone who is watching um and the people who will view this after it's been posted to YouTube um I yeah so I you asked about my investment philosophy

so I mean I'll talk about sort of my general background and then I'll go through how I choose companies and also why I'm doing Bitcoin and the though I I found it the best way to start is I founded a company called expert financial about seven years ago yeah to help later stage companies raise capital online you were who the idea was to help like before Facebook and puff be a liquid market before it goes public and I ran that for about three or four years I made every mistake known to man I like fundraising mistakes hiring mistakes

product mistakes all types of mistakes and what I found was over that time I was able to i was able to use my experience to be able to help entrepreneurs not make those same mistakes I help when my friends come up with with their idea built their product and raise capital and that was very fulfilling for me and so I really wanted to move more in that direction and so I talked to my CEO who I'd been working with for a bunch of years and I said you know I really want to move in this direction of helping early-stage companies he said you know you've been here for about four years why don't you go try to do that so I actually ended up launching something called boost Thunder which was to help early stage companies raise capital online

um and we quickly realized we didn't like being the middleman between entrepreneurs and investors and so and I'm breezing through this there's a lot of things happening in between but basically I we realized that we really wanted to just ain't mentor and get companies to the point where investors would want to invest in them so doing that in bulk is called it an accelerator and so what we ended up starting was an accelerator called boost our first session had no focus we were just trying to make sure that the wheels would stay on the bus while it was moving at 90 miles per hour and then I between the first and the second sessions we were talking about different technologies

that we could really get behind and try to focus on and I um I had a background in invested in coinbase right before it started boost and i really like Brian arms from the CEO it was only him who's working on that project at the time and I learned a little bit about Bitcoin at that point I had never heard a big home before I talked to Brian I'm sorry so I sort of unique flavor into the Bitcoin world because I I learned from someone who is now running probably the largest Bitcoin company around how's your food refers mythical investment wasn't going this yes yeah and it was a I was I think it was the first those first or second

money and to the seed round in the UM and it was returned a lot about Bitcoin I got sort of excited because he was very impressive and then I and then so in between the first in the second section we were looking at different technology we realized I had a background in Bitcoin and then we had someone actually my partner Braden Williams brother coming to talk to us about Bitcoin so we learned more we ended up learning a lot more I actually didn't know I after going down the rabbit hole now and understanding everything about Bitcoin fairly well I i did not know anything then and so you can attribute my investment into

coinbase up to probably a fair amount of luck but the and just generally liking the founder but the I we ended up learning ended up focusing on Bitcoin because we got so excited about it he started going down that rabbit hole that are going goes down and finding out that there were so many different use cases for not only Bitcoin the payment network but also bit kind of watching and so we got very excited about that we ended up and if we were going to be accepting Bitcoin companies into our second tribe we called tribes um and the response was amazing we were welcomed into the Bitcoin community at 150 people reach out to me from investors to

entrepreneurs to to enthusiasts and I talked to all of them so that I got to know the industry well mr. the first ride had no Beth going and only from the second track the second class you guys started accepting Bitcoin companies yes and it was 7 out of 17 companies were big one so it was still not a majority of the companies um and then we just continued our Bitcoin my article in focus and without having it be a hundred percent of our companies and then we we sort of we started to see I like we went through a hype cycle you know like the the like Bitcoin went from thirty dollars to 250 and then it went from a hundred dollars to a thousand and then

it's been sort of coasting down words for the last 12 months and during that 12-month period i found that a lot of people were losing enthusiasm but we were only building enthusiasm because what I'm seeing is I you know we've now invested in 50 Bitcoin companies um and we have all these data points on growth of all these Bitcoin companies all I see are all of them grow I they're growing at ten to twenty percent month over month and that is that's really exciting that's real growth that's real use but nothing troupe of revenue growth in terms of users uh generally it's so it's more about so it depends with the businesses I so i would say on brokerages and exchanges and payment processors it's based off of volume I

would I sort of structure my my growth metric off of volume if it's api-based companies it's calls to the to the to the API if it's wallets its users if it so the based off of the different company there are different things that we actually look at em and right now try drag 5 is completely based going them clever going gum the European exchange I do the marketing for us also part of a tribe five how many compare John ever be a part of boost and how many companies are part of tribe five so we have 25 companies in tribe 5 24 of them are pick one we actually have one that's for engineering task management but it's a

the 24 others are all pit point um and they are it's a wide range of different things eight of them including clever point2 international to the United States I'm not not to normal um and then the what else are we we have remittance companies brokerages exchanges blockchain companies people just trying to proof of proof of ownership proof of what logging things in the block chain we have its oh we have one we have some companies like we've a company that's making it a discount to buy gift cards with Bitcoin and they're able to like

manage that margin very well and make money off of it so it's a wide range of different things like but what would I've been calling the last year or pick one and I'm sorry you guys can ask questions whenever I I'm sorry if I'm just talking I don't know if that's how this is supposed to but the UM over the last year like over the last five years we really had this great technology and it's been this really really cool thing and then like we beat it up like we had people try things and you things and scale things and break things um and like what and we found that there are scaling problems usability problems like different things that different people that are opportunities for different companies and so I've been calling the last year of Bitcoin really repair mode

here because the the price hasn't necessarily been all that it's been boring it's a boring price like it's sort of you know it's not crazy volatile it's sort of like around 250 it goes up to 300 down to 200 like it's this weird thing um but what I'm seeing its usefulness of bitcoin is going really high and so that's what we're really excited about is that so I've been trying to back things that are becoming more useful and like what are the core use cases that um Bitcoin will what will be the first businesses that pic one will really be used for to the masses um and I believe it's you know it's remittances and a big piece of

remittance is his remittances and then I also think you know the exchanges are good businesses but it's more for the liquidity aspect because all these remittance companies are going to need liquidity on either end country with remittance your father he built Bitcoin from from the auction from the US Marshals and a day he works together with mirror a company it's part of radius boost class I also happen to have invested a little bit in mirror they are going to use the liquidity also to work in developing nations and markets can you tell us a little bit more about how are you guys are planning to do that and what's being done there so the goal with the you know my dad when he was thinking

about bidding on the US Marshal coin he was he was sort of saying like well I don't want to sit on it like if I buy it I'm not going to just hold it I wanted to be put to work and so he worked with mirror to be able to figure out a way in which he could put it to work in emerging markets and he could fill supply of those markets and so he is working with mirror to be sort of the the supply side on a lot of emerging market brokerages so I'm with remittance I I can imagine it for people living in living a Europe or order States and they didn't want to send money back home to let's say the Philippines or Mexico they can easily of course send bitcoins to someone's account but then of the person

living in a country like that needs to convert it back into local currency in order to to spend it so there needs to be a way to to kind of recycle the coins locally how how does work or what kind of solutions that do your companies have so generally the solutions that are being created are things like clever point actually where the there's at their providing an exchange or brokerage to be able to I cash out like a lot of the businesses and a lot of the Prophet being made in Bitcoin right now is not in the Bitcoin like payment network it's on the cash in cash out part and so that's that's where coinbase makes their money that's where ever that's where like any company that's what made money

is making money really is is basically in that cash on cash up here and you can do it cheaper with Bitcoin then you could with cash for small amounts of money so if i want to send 10 million dollars cross-border like the the charge they give me like four transferwise or for money for western union is not like it's not that bad it is probably point five percent or something but if i want to send a hundred bucks cross-border the price could be twenty dollars for me to send that and bitcoin makes it one percent in one percent essentially um so that like it is better it is a better technology is a better service for small

amounts of money and what I'm excited about by that is the remittance market right now today um is 500 billion dollars but if people could frictionless Lee send smaller amounts of money cross-border it makes the market size bigger of the number of people who will send money prosperous and bring um I think it brings the world closer together that's basically what my my whole philosophy on vical um it's an obvious thing to use obviously a Bitcoin for these kind of things but and personally I think from a technological point of view in a Bitcoin at point of view it is a little bit boring business it's a little bit like sometimes

bitcoins compared with with the internet Indian states and this is a bit like well infrastructure company Dallas it'sit's access ya too I do you see all the things happening that are building on top of this infrastructure that are maybe a little bit more exciting for a person like me yes oh my my philosophy on right now like so for the ecosystem in general is at first it was really profitable to be in my like mining company built mining mining roads then it was really really profitable to be a an investor so like if you just buy Bitcoin even that today it's probably more profitable to be an investor than mine um then eventually in the future

that which we're setting ourselves up for is like it will be more profitable to be an investor in the companies that are built on Bitcoin because at some point the growth of Bitcoin will not be able to outperform the growth of a high-growth company and so we're started we're moving in in that and inside of that bracket what we're seeing is I think that the next generation like there's the infrastructure companies which were sort of first generation the miners the payment processors the brokerages which are the boring business as you put it which is relatively true but you know foreign business makes good business um the the next level are the the companies that are supporting the

Bitcoin companies to be started it's like the AWS web services but for Bitcoin comes it's the things that make those things easier whether it be able block trail is on here but the block cipher is one of ours chain there there are a lot of these these companies there's I think those are the next big companies that are in the space the ones that make the infrastructure level basically basically make it a you know 16 year old or 12 year old kid be able to build a Bitcoin cup but anything that like makes it easier to build a big phone company is going to be the next big in Bitcoin and then you're going to see the cool crazy weird applications you're going to see like um I don't know

what people are gonna start playing with the blockchain in different ways you're going to see you know American Airlines put points on the blockchain you're going to see like anything that would proof-of-work proof of ownership is going to start being put on the blockchain um and then transactions that are just going to be frictionless I think Bitcoin works when you no you're using Vic home and I think if we're seeing it more and more common for that to pop up amongst Bitcoin companies so funny do you say like you mentioned kids earlier and and all yellow and said it could be a bit boring but if you I sold tweets from Russia fair dr david he opened up wallets for it for some African kids and they instantly received across the world they receive bitcoins

on their wallets on their phones as somewhere in Africa and for example last week I was in Colombia a midi in a poor poor neighborhood there were three girls living on the street they had no home but they did have cell phones so for these four four people in those countries it's everything but boring Bitcoin and receiving Bitcoin direct did from across the world and being able hopefully also to spend them locally without having to exchanged him in national currency is to me to my may my opinion everything but boring and very liberating for for people living in those countries completely well but I so what we've tried to think about is what bitcoin does better than cash and what bitcoin does better than cash is and

money cross borders store a value and and those are really i mean those are the two things that it does much much better on a general network um and in the united states we often get caught up in the fact that the u.s. actually has a pretty stable banking system like we are 93% ninety-three percent of our wealth is actually digitally in a bank which is like a huge percentage which means basically bitcoin only makes us you know seven percent better if everyone adopts it um and that's not that that that's not like and that doesn't it's not a leap frogging technology for us but it countries you have to think

internationally when thinking about Bitcoin so argentina where they experience hyperinflation they have twenty five percent inflation every year it is like necessary for them to figure out a better system than just their money not being worth what it is tomorrow today they actually have a black market for u.s. dollars in argentina and us and bitcoin is actually a seamless way in which they can attain US dollar value i'm there a lot in a more in the sexy part of dick one who are trying to solve the problem of pegging the Bitcoin to the US dollar to limit volatility and that's a very interesting thing whether they're using

color coins counterparty like whatever they're using so technically that is a sexy and what about altcoins I because I saw him tweet and I think it was a yesterday by bryan armstrong of coinbase he said rebel stellar and altcoins are all distraction bitcoin is way too far ahead will she be focused on Bitcoin and side chains and you got a lot of negative feedback on the tweet but you actually replied him saying and Brian sometimes you say things that make me so attracted to you bitcoin is the one so there was kind of a actual tweet from your site as well so because I'm a big fan of altcoins and metal coins and 17-point going to whatever I just want experimental or you only knows when you

are you also looking to other coins as well so I'm 100-percent Bitcoin but I would like to know why you like other all coins because there is no usefulness of other elements and well there's there's all sorts of features that are being tested by other coins that might work when it comes to anonymity when it comes to a distribution of the coins when it comes to speed all sorts of things are being experimented using old coins and I think it's a good like copies of Bitcoin and then they tweet something and so I I don't see anything that's like vastly better I am listening for something that's 5x what bitcoins like if if if it's different and better for a specific circumstance I think that there might be a coin that will actually be able to do that however it be Bitcoin

but otherwise like everything else is distracting I mean if you look up if you if you look at volume if you will get a dollar amounts if you look at like market size all that stuff bitcoin is ninety-five percent of the market but following an argument bit going is a distraction to the dollar because the door is much bigger to Bitcoin say we should just focus on the door then well we're talking about the evolution of a new technology not the old way so I'm saying in the new way you're just everyone's distracting themselves with thinking that there's a new new way it's to screaming for something to innovate on the innovative like that that's that's what I'm saying and the Bitcoin bit essentially is the

winner right now and if we're five percent distracted like it's no Bitcoin makes up 95% the other five percent is just a distraction people trading and speculating it's not it's not useful like nodes using a first the all coins are not being used for a useful thing and yope is a big fan of NXT so yeah what is your review in this one because I know you're a fan of innings NXT so yeah and iced tea is it to point out cryptocurrency so yeah also unlike also please it's not like an else going yeah but no it's not like a message yeah but a semantics it is it has his own currency so that's yeah but if he's funny a bit more on NXT then you see they use that in a totally different way

and it's not actually they don't actually see this occurrence he himself it's a token for Dan network with you having something on the NXT network so have you got I en NXT and they don't actually of course they have the dollar value now because some people tried it for dollars but that's not purpose of that token of that block chain in my opinion i i i will copy out my message it will saying that there are useful things to quantify if you will like like if you if you like I believe that shares that companies will eventually be coined uh it will be represented as a token or as a to be able to invest in companies but will be investing on the Bitcoin blockchain I don't think we're going to be investing in a different block jack I

don't think we're going to be using a different launching tcp/ip was one there's one tcp/ip and then there's like Internet GCPD idea wasn't the best technological of all the protocols but it was mass adopted and that is if we're looking at the similarities between the internet and Bitcoin that's the one that I think will be true is that Bitcoin might not be the best hitter a neon is sort of a waste of time in my opinion just because I we might as well make what's working work well um and I that's until someone brings out an all going to me that like literally has a use case that is like phenomenal I I can't say that I think any all coins are really

going to last a long time okay and tell us a bit more about to boost who were the fun we funded boost and how much have you been investing into in tow towing in all these Bitcoin companies well this is so so we're an accelerator so we invest so we've backed 97 companies at this point over the course of five tribes five sessions with you two sessions a year um and we we invest ten to twenty thousand dollars but on average our Bitcoin companies have raised out of the program they raised a hundred-thousand-dollar see grounds um that's that's on average and the fervor

for the Bitcoin companies specifically um and he says access movement for you you stay in the company or that usually also an exit moment for boost sorry what'd you say is it also an exit area moment for boost usually when whenever it airs the next round after boost we always say we're long-term investors so once we're investors were invested until like boom or bust and the but we're always willing to and we helped along with we're not out at the next book right but could you put you tell us a little bit more about your exit strategy have you done any exit sisters and oestrogen also there's obviously a lot of similar companies in the world are doing the same a lot of exchanges and

everything do you see some sort of a consolidation coming in certain areas that you really see happening so for us you know BIC if there was a big Bitcoin tag that you guys would have probably heard about Cooper S tonight so we've had one exit it hasn't been a it wasn't we made money but it wasn't crazy huge exit it still hasn't been announced so I can't talk about it very much and then there's one that should be happening in the next couple weeks to months that will also be a fun exit and the but on the your second question which is about consolidation um there are so what my goal for for for Bitcoin was really like start a bunch of

these liquidity providers in her country so the brokerage is the exchanges so that they can hook up and because it you know if you look at other brokerages take being able to build two exchanges on two sides of different different borders it's very difficult because you are not localized as a business you you don't know I don't know whatsapp I don't know the rules and regulations of Brazil but someone in Brazil does know the rules and regulations in Brazil and they can probably figure out a way to work with them um and so we would be just very difficult from one company to like go to every country and start these things whereas if everyone starts on at once you can sort of have a remittance network already set up um technically right now you could send money to almost any country in the world that has a

Bitcoin like brokerage to cash and cash out and actually do remittance for really cheap one percent in words one to two percent in one to two percent like I always say one percent of one percent out because that's the common methodology but a lot of places have two percent okay um Sam oh my god but answer your question sorry to cut you off change your question asian these companies will be created like you would there will be you know coinbase is probably going to try to spread internationally date all other countries um but that that still leaves 200 other

countries that can try to start be a big tycoon of a company um and they it will be difficult for coinbase to spread to the more localized emerging markets um I think it will be tough for them to just jump with their model and jump into like Argentina or India or those models are like the culturally they are all so much different and so I think it's better to have those already set up by the locals right is why you're betting on several brokerages and exchange in different countries um because it's just too specific to drill through and local to run a good exchange or broker in a certain country yeah and and what about going base going base is

growing very big it's here i'll let me la through this question hold on your good that you see this question on the side i'm able to answer that listen it's just for the audience so we got a question from richard meier he's asking why do you believe people from greece ukraine and argentine are not converting their weak money and unmask into bitcoins my answer is they should be the so originally when greece shut down the banking system into fully percent of everyone last year they are two years ago i guess now a year and a half ago something that was like march or april of 2012 um they when they just shut down all the banks and took everyone's money

like they were trying to figure out a different place to store value and a lot of them were desperate and threw money into bitcoin i would actually say that some people have done that and are holding still because it's better to control then like be controlled by a bank in that in that country because they literally just experienced forty percent of the money just going out the door not 20 2013 in sec resume yeah oh was it twenty thirteen hmm my bed um and yeah that's right again we had announced that we were accepting Bitcoin companies like a month before it sounds good time good signing just before the ricin yeah it was like but we can bet that that would happen we were like we were like

big ones cool like let's try this and then it's it's completely consumed my life i I mean it's like the I my wife this probably feels like I'm dating Bitcoin but but it's just a lot of feeling yet but it's it's amazing that beg denon had led to a huge search in attention and prize and everything Bitcoin wise or maybe we thought that was the case but now with Greece even though the cries even worse and a lot of money fled the country and people are very much worried that the urine will break up a grexit is everyday to people talk about a grexit but it still doesn't it doesn't translate into growth of Greek users

that March or growth off the prize or anything like that so it's exact I think it's just so the reason that I think people are not throwing money into bitcoin is to answer the question specifically is that it's still a trust in this network and making sure like they want to ensure that their money will be there and I think that there's still scared to skepticism about that about whether or not bitcoin is here to say I I think the fact that if no one has been able to kill it like in five years of it being in existence and basically volume growing consistently over the last five years I'm like I'm more enthusiastic about pickling today than I was two years ago just because

like I all I see are like value adds going and hitting the market and there's so many smart all the smartest entrepreneurs I've met uh in the last like two years most of them have been Bitcoin companies like it it's like the smartest entrepreneurs are starting Bitcoin companies and their best brain power is going somewhere but how it for something if we I'm just just trying to be a bit skeptic we're but some of the figures I recently heard two sports ongoing base and that's going by so I mean bitpay apparently i wrote a red summer and reddit they had to lay off some people and I guess they're burning a lot of money and but they don't have

that much income yet also we saw in you get its exchange netaji o decided to close this to work because of lack of money growth do you expect more victims would you expect number of victims to rise are becoming a coming time work so that I mean the the issue that everyone's running into is that it's hard to start a company even if it's not a big one company so it's hard to start a big loan company double and so you have to be running a company on top of a market that is still a little unstable unstable um and so I mean you know bitpay all the all these companies that might be struggling by the way downsizing it's not always a bit before things sometimes it does mean that

they're running capital high but they might be trying to cut costs to be profitable or tech hasta stay around a long time I don't know I'm not that I don't know anything about that really um I have been seeing like I feel that did I don't know but the marketing around Bitcoin has slowly become more positive again I don't know if you guys have noticed it really yourselves but I feel that like the press was bashing it for like a year like last year literally has just been like a bash fest um and then just in the last couple months like since coinbase raised it feels like it's becoming more legitimate like and I feel that also adventure investors have a

huge fo mo a fear of missing out and I feel that they're starting to really believe that bitcoin is going to be an industry it might not be an industry next year but in ten years and they feel that they need to make of that soon so I'm getting roots tattoo by a lot more venture investors just to meet up and talk and it's a little bit of Europe not some market seems how do you explain the difference between the attitude of a few guys in Silicon Valley and most of the it's almost like a year if you need to have profit and a well-established product and in this in the state it's almost like a PowerPoint and it promises enough uh so that's a cultural thing that's been built over like the last 60 years in Silicon Valley that's just how we've been built and the reason was that

I invest that in my my great-grandfather started venture capital grab right out of college and so you don't have be able to like you you don't have a product or anything you just have like your word and so that started working because there's such a great network in Silicon Valley have hard workers great people on and the people you know people with a lot of money because you know all these great companies that started around here um and so that like it's a huge cultural thing I don't think I don't think anyone

should try to duplicate what Silicon Valley has because you can't it's not is you you can you can make a startup ecosystem in different countries it just won't represent what Silicon Valley has it won't be the same I'm like no one should you shouldn't what I'm saying is you shouldn't compare it to Silicon Valley because we're just vastly different countries um and the i'd say like when you're starting a company in good I mean sometimes I actually like like to see a little profit on the just so you know like investors in Silicon Valley like that also eventually cause if we don't not like don't reject it there's a kid to profit or something okay yeah but but I feel like if you

wanted to create something that was analogous to what Silicon Valley is in California like you should just play To Your Strengths whatever Norway's strengths or whatever any country strengths are I've been Europe in Asia wherever they are like you really want to form it around those things like we even see you know in in New York they'd have a much better epicenter for finance than them about um because that's where the financial that's like the financial hub of the United States is in New York has they come with a successful into the confetti in rain and all the tribe companies will flourished and the first and if you've entered shift is sitting video right that's what we do Wall

Street yeah so it'll so booths will change that but in the in the in the meantime a it still feels that the infrastructure for fin tech companies is better in New York as well as fashion as well as ad tech like there are specific things with what Silicon Valley does well is crazy weird it's ten years ago what the then we'll figure out of me okay she's breaking up a bit I think mature if it's yours to get it too but I sorry and maybe we should also we already a spend half an hourish let's

just maybe ask a final question from Europe and Yoan GOP ever sort of final question for Adam yeah it will after this last points I just want to ask it's been lost key online what if you try it's out in the fifth maybe Debbie that'd be a great uh that'd be a great speaker to have I aalim I'll try to email him I I have no connection to Ben Lasky but it would be very realistic actually one of our biggest problems is still the bank problem like getting a bank account for a Bitcoin companies still super different keeping in Sicily ok kid getting it and keeping it that's a very difficult game but you think it's even more difficult in the States than in

Europe because a year we have feet are bunk and some other entities that are willing to cooperate but in certain states even more difficult yeah I mean now it is like a lot of the bank's sort of like pay back to one or they like s vbe technically they packed for i think but all of those companies had raised 20 million dollars or more so it's sort of like mitigated a lot of the risk and they and then they've backed a bunch of other other companies alike i think it's great that he has done that because that's more innovative than almost any other bank like most other banks ask you if you they say you're not dealing with bitcoin are you like that's one of the questions when you're opening up a text bank account I'd like Wells Fargo um and the original questions no no drugs no

bits going yeah questions and they're like are you a weed business are you a your Bitcoin business and are you a porn business like throw all those together maybe she said maybe she started Draper bank quite honestly I did look into it it's not worth we're starting like you think boosting sounds better even yeah well you look what you would yeah it's a whole other conversation but like it's it was either i would have to start but i would leave boost and start a bank that would Bank Bitcoin companies or i would keep doing this and I enjoy my job I don't think I would enjoy anything that was basically my thought process um like I I'm still actually talk thinking

and like it's that big of a problem that it's still in the back of my mind like maybe if we get it started right now like in a year it's not going to be an issue and we'll just have this Bank but yeah it's just one of your back right okay well I'll sameeyo on and maybe I find a question for Adam well I just was wondering and by selecting the companies are a particular kind of calm canoeing now we're either companies if you would like to invite to join boost and in particular areas sure sorry you're breaking up a little bit oh are you looking for particular companies for

books to join access certain areas within the Bitcoin ecosystem that you're really looking to and actually inviting come close to do so I yeah like under your consolidation question it almost is like we've launched eight or nine brokerages and exchanges now we're probably not going to be launching many more brokerages like we sort of feel that that has like they the ones that are out there are out there and those are going to be the next of the big brokerages in the next 5-10 years um so what we're trying to look for next are like the things that make bitcoin more usable things that incentivize people to use Bitcoin over dollars that's something that I feel is a very big

thing um opening up specific remittance corridors that's a big thing b2b cross-border transactions that's another big thing on the blog we're seeing a lot more block chain tech apply to boost now so like there's a lot more using the public ledger there's a lot more and I don't even know what that's going to you're like I don't know what use cases the block chain is really good for you I don't think anyone really knows yet I'm and so that's going to take a lot of trial and error and so we're working at a lot of companies that are we've one called bit proof in this session that originally was just trying to replace notaries um and now it looks like he's

just going to be he's going to experiment on what people want to log into walking and see what people what sticks and the and so I'd like I were really interested in then I wrote a blog post about what we're looking for and it it's on my blog I'm Adam trigger calm and they need to click the median but it's there someone um but the but also we're looking for anything that we haven't thought of like those are the companies that we really want to see or like the things that they're solving big problems and we just are like how is the block chain used for this how is that possibility um you know making hoverboards with the block chain is I'm like I don't know what that means but it

sounds very interesting and I would be happy to see what what how that work um so I I don't know where were you know we're on our track like we promised 100 Bitcoin companies about 2017 it's 2015 beginning issue of 2015 and we've done 50 we're probably going to be keeping the Bitcoin focus for another two sessions completely Bitcoin I mean and in order to get to that a hundred number and then we'll probably open it up into like I feel a bit coin eventually we'll just be FinTech so I like it'll be a part of that sector because no one pitches me I'm starting an Internet company anymore like it would be redundant to say that you're starting

internet companies if you're a tech company I assume you're using the internet so i think if bitcoin is the same like right now everyone's pitching Bitcoin companies but eventually it's just going to be i'm changing this thing in finance and i assume that you're using Bitcoin otherwise it doesn't make any sense alright awesome now you'll just said here's what one final question before we wrap up so i'll go with you and maybe not a final question but maybe some advice for a few is because you saw a lot of and heard a lot of obviously about Bitcoin companies in the last couple of years already and what's the most common was mistake you see of what's the the one advice you want to give everybody who wants to do a Bitcoin company the biggest mistake I see

with Bitcoin companies or people shoving Bitcoin into their pitch when it doesn't belong like people will be like I'm a cookie shop but we accept the coin like that that isn't you're not you're not a Bitcoin company nice of your business I I'd like you you that I would say that's the most common thing is like forcing it in I I don't believe Bitcoin should be forced in like one of our companies is sort of in the short term probably gonna have to move away from Bitcoin in order to make Bitcoin work in a long term like I'm not fortunate vikorn in any of these companies I want it to be a useful tool for the companies to be able to make their business work um on top of that i

would say advice four pitches i find it very difficult okay so two things 1i be passionate about the problem you're solving so that would be one of my things it's just like the why of why you were building the company is the most important thing we look at especially at seed stage because sometimes traction isn't really there so we have to take sort of we have to believe in the person and the reason why they are building the company is always the most compelling the second thing is I find it very difficult to say no to someone who's super enthusiastic so like if they were enthusiastic and there they understand their problem and the reason they're doing is really good um I I find it very

difficult to say no to that type of person and I think most people are the same way where if they are so driven and so like passionate and enthusiastic about them it's like yeah I'm getting swept up in this so you here take some um up money like the you get caught up in the whole thing so shut up and take my money yeah yeah didn't have to put captivating effective like they're they're so passionate so those are my life believe little pinpoints I would say well Your Enthusiasm is very contagious for sure Adam so I think a lot of people can can learn from your enthusiasm I felt bad about was bashing altcoins like I think the district but I don't think they're useful so those are

my like I I I tries not to be negative like I just believe in Bitcoin so heavily that I'd I'm say I'm just not even looking that's basically what my my but my just waiting for to get her off going and then you will be a more and more positive towards yeah I'm more than happy to what's that that the first I'll call you it was a good bit point killer app for our world it's like a worker let me give anything to exercise and to know I the wall I mean I'll do a little like a if you're starting a dick home company apply to boost a pc and we would love to review your applications I yeah what's

yet because they drive six applications that can now be submitted right until I yeah so we'll open it up in I think we start opening them in May so we'll open up applications but really enthusiastic enterpreneurs can already of course start sending you spending is spending you with emails yeah yeah info @ boo stop bc we look at all the emails so if you won't want to apply it info at boost IVC we apply there would we be happy to review them early right i would recommend anyone to and to just to start working with Adam because so far I've enjoyed working with Adam very much and thanks for your time on the show today and hopefully have people have learned a lot and maybe we can do it again in the future when you have a track 6 this was

very very fun so and it was great to meet you guys and we'll talk later have a good one ok have a good one see us right