How Blockchain Technology Redefines Entrepreneurship - Daniel Doll-Steinbert, Atari Token

Transcript

[Music] hello and welcome to the blockchain and us we're pioneers and thought leaders talked about their journey in blockchain technology crypto assets and the token economy and I'm your host manuel staggers this episode has support from no official sponsor but from my very own the blockchain and us newsletter get an email from me every two weeks with a very short summary of new podcast episodes so you can immediately pick those interviews you'd like to listen to to stay up-to-date just visit www.cannainsider.com/careers in London where he helps companies embrace

blockchain technology to achieve growth he is a former banker in London in New York and a founder and co-founder of several companies including the Atari token and he is also an active investor and mentor to technology companies and now to the interview hello Daniel and thanks a lot for making time for this interview thank you for asking me we met last year at a film screening of my blockchain film in London and have stayed in touch since and back then that whole blockchain discussion had just started to pick up in Europe what have you been doing over the last year well the space is incredibly fast moving

north I tended to change from working five to six days a week into working six to seven days a week I don't think I get a day off it's a very global space so you know I travel enormously around the world I've I've clocked up so many air miles I'm sort of platinum American and silver be a fly economy everywhere okay you noticed is the space is getting bigger and bigger and you're meeting more and more people so so whereas when we met last I think it was uh I mean it was a relatively small group of people that were that were enthusiastic about the space and the real sort of innovators in space doing things I think there there are

more and more people coming on and that's something that I've been welcoming you know you know when we first met one of the things I was doing was trying to encourage industrial players and successful serial entrepreneurs to move into the space to to work on the blockchain and to develop project because I felt that would move it outside the space that it was in and also move it very very quickly the other thing I've seen is the speed has just increased you know and the the blockchain has started to create sub innovations like the token sale which is now becoming a potentially global

fundraising mechanism for all types of companies and all types of assets and so so I've seen that I've also seen that a lot of the early companies into the space in terms of the support companies are now being replaced and enhanced by people with experience in those areas and and it's really welcoming to see that you know when I look at this space I'm reminded of the internet space you know 20 21 years ago but but this is on double or triple speed and and the other thing that you you tend to find there's

a lot of people in the space are very idealistic about what they want to achieve and that's really refreshing mm-hmm yeah I mean I'm I'm on the same boat here I mean it's I've been in the dot-com boom 1.0 right and and there everybody had a business plan and everybody was you know wanted to do something but now this time around you know a few years ago it's just so much more professional I feel even and and everybody's on board back then it was still I mean at the very beginning right 95 96 it was a you know it just picked up very slowly and here we went from zero to a hundred in in two or three months I feel well I think I think that's an element of where we are as societally in the

West particularly in the West you know when when the internet boom was was starting it was rare for someone to come straight out of college or university and found a firm you know they they were still going into you know the traditional enterprises and working for big companies and then moving out into the space it was rare for CEOs of large companies to jump ship and and starter or join a startup you know I remember it was massive press I think it was Webvan when the head of Arthur Andersen I think it was at the time of someone like that left to join web man it was like this is this is same page news you know not

because of the success of the Internet and and we and the social networking and people see the success you know one things I'm always fascinated by and I always used to talk at the when I when I was advising people at the European Commission etc always said you know the way you create more entrepreneurs show them success that they can relate to so so one things that you see is people children of parents who are successful entrepreneurs are incredibly likely to become entrepreneurial because they see that success and I think the Internet is shown now we know with the likes of Zuckerberg and you know the Google guys page and grim that people can come out of you college and create using

incredible companies that people do that so what you're seeing in this space now is a lot of very young people who have just left college with very very relevant skills and very very fresh skills are trying it and and failure is not considered an issue you know that no trying to game you know but the other thing you see because the internet has shown this is traditional people from traditional industry who've had careers in those industries are also making that made the leap into the internet so this time around with the blockchain you've already got in people's minds the new new technology and fast innovation and fast bro markets are a perfectly

acceptable way to build a career and and and clearly that's made and you can see that this time you know the number of people you meet from from both sides that are jumping into this space and being congratulated by people rather than looked at with with with with hora is interesting I mean just to go back to my childhood when I was 16 I was a British public school a very good British public school as it happened one and best and and I remember when I was 1516 and I I was with one of my sir masters who I liked a lot actually very you know a very good guy and I told he asked me because it was a career as they what did I want to do when I left school

and I said you know I'd eventually like to start a business like my father and he looked at me sort of incredulously he said you know you know people don't do that you know they go you can become a lawyer or a politician or a doctor or whatever you know and and so 30 years ago it was it was frowned upon when the internet time it was rare now it's very common if someone said to him his equivalent today I'm gonna go and start a blockchain company or I'm gonna do something on my own it'd be encouraged mm-hmm right would be like why haven't you done dead yet right yeah yeah exactly I think it's a good point and it's it's definitely something that's happening everywhere I feel for you you're based in London right yeah is

it still it's it's still a good place to be like on the forefront of this trend and I mean are there many people coming through through London or working out of London in this field London is generally a very good place to locate the business it's got a lot of huge advantages one it's times timezone central it's it speaks English there are a lot of people from every country in the world so getting people to speak on the land which is very easy and other cultures to understand those is very easy it's it's democratic and taxes are high but not prohibited so people people do come and it's got a lot of industry you know

it's got a lot of service industries around it and a lot of management offices for other companies are based in London so yes however the the blockchain revolution is very global and you know when you go to when I used to go to internet type events you know you would see you know Western Europeans mainly and Americans they were now it's it's across the world you know people from Asia people from Russia people from Ukraine they're all in this space and you're getting the best of the best all around the world and I think you know one things that I've noticed is there is well there is some concern about the the blockchain

and what it's going to do from-from authorities there is also this this race by some territories to adopt blockchain and have them you know as a business that locates there so you're saying see in places like Gibraltar you're soon places like Singapore you see well places like Moscow which traditionally wouldn't be the place that people would choose first to start these businesses but they're being started in those locations and the other thing you see is the US historically had been the lead in innovation in the last one 3040 years that is whilst it's still very very

large there it's not completely dominant I mean Tel Aviv for instance I was in Tel Aviv a lot last week and you see very much in Tel Aviv blockchain as a major a major innovation and a lot of skill sets going into that and you'd expected actually from Israel you know all the security people and all the people with high tech skills a lot of Russians immigrants there too you know that would be somewhere that you would expect to come to come out of I think but I think the the thing you what a bear in mind here is also the cost of the cost of people you know because the skill set is so

global you know there is a there is much more consideration of where of where those where you should look at your office based on the cost night I think that's a great thing because rather than just automatically going to Baja expensive areas with with expensive people you're you're allowing very good people in different territories to to significant amounts of money nothing that - that's a real positive mm-hmm absolutely I think it's a positive also that those people who want to do something don't necessarily have to go to Silicon Valley right to get access to capital and to be in an entrepreneurial space I mean it used to be like that but but now it certainly has moved on I mean

have you I'm based in Switzerland and Switzerland has started to brand itself as this whole crypto valley place and wants to attract a lot of industry here have you looked at this place as well or are you often in Switzerland very often less so for blockchain and other things oddly enough I liked a lot when we first looked where we were going to locate what we were doing Switzerland was on the list and relatively high we decided against it for a number for a few reasons not not not the environment was not as good some places it just wasn't

the place I wanted to to set up this one which which reasons were does I think the expense was was one of them I think the staffing in Switzerland is harder than other places in the world and I think you know the Swiss are very regulated so a regulated place and we wanted someone that was slightly freer but booked but that was due last year I mean I think Switzerland has moved on a lot in that time and if I were doing if we were doing it again now maybe we would have chosen chosen what we were

doing and and interestingly the the cost the business of setting up these businesses has rocketed in the last year I've been multiplied by a factor of 10 I would say so what where the Swiss were looking expensive in those days I suspect they're not looking nearly as expensive nowadays in terms of in terms of creation of the companies what are those costs I'm wondering I mean is it legal compliance it's it's it's company its company corporation it's it's its staffing for those companies because if you create a company in a territory you you do want to eventually have a lot of

staff there and and a head office there I mean often that's very difficult at the beginning with the blockchain particularly because these companies talk start very small and then they grow big so it they come slightly later that was one of them I think the legal costs were very very large there and me and that and the time to create the companies were much were much longer than another in other territories in terms of the legal work and also the the because Switzerland was so popular in June last May June July August last year the the legal firms hadn't been able to build up skills quickly enough and so

their their lead time into the work was very very long which meant that you know this is the thing I think about you know what have I noticed about this space in the last year you asked me that in beginning I think you know the other thing I've realized too is whilst we're all in a hurry to do things actually you always have more time than you think and so looking back on the last year you know we could we those things that seemed too long for us to to make a decision for the based on that that was was possibly not a should not have been a criterion of the choice at the time so

so what I'm saying about Switzerland is I think what they're doing is very positive and I would you know the decisions I made about Switzerland last year and not necess thoroughly the same decisions I would have made this year I mean I'm not saying I meant we I'm not saying the decision we made we've actually located in Gibraltar I'm extremely happy with that decision but but the criteria with which I would have made that decision if I made it today would be different mm-hmm yeah I absolutely understand I mean I hear similar things from from from many people to be honest you know those those entrepreneurs who are already here who are Swiss of course they enjoy being here and they want to stay here but many others look further and they look into other jurisdictions

to start something was that when you set up we when you said you set up in Gibraltar was that with with block chainsmokers right I want to get into that in a bit yeah product is a UK company but it's not a it doesn't require the sort of legals and regulations that what we're doing with Atari requires it it's a much more it's more of an advisory consultancy service so block chainsmokers why created in early 2017 having been learnt about the blockchain in mid mid 2016 I started learning about the blockchain and I was

fascinated by it and I really wanted to get involved so the the way I did that was to join forces with three other people impact it was four at the beginning and they became three who were from different backgrounds one was in one round and accelerator one was a real blockchain guru you know triple PhD and advised a lot of the big blockchain platforms and understood the maths behind it and a guy from IBM who or two guys from IBM 1x1 consisting who really understood I felt the practical implications of the blockchain industry and block chainsmokers was there to eulogize or not you know guys infuse people about

the block about the blockchain why you should get into the blockchain and try and bring industry players in and we were we started that process quite well there there are several companies that I can see now and nowadays I was with one recently there but we did encourage to get into the blockchain and they're doing incredibly well but but the what we were doing with that company sort of was has been put on hold because of what I'm doing another space isn't moment but I but I do have the intention of continuing that that journey may be as maybe as block chain smokers maybe as something else I mean I still when I

talk at events I I've never I've only talked probably three times under the breath the banner Atari or its project name I probably talked to twice under its project name we had a project name previously to that I'm almost always talking as blockchain smokers and the reason I do that is I feel that that's that's not at all partisan that's very you know I just talked about the blockchain as someone that's not trying to sell anything not trying not with a with the specific self-interest it's apart from the fact that I think people should be in the blockchain you know and and so I use that that that I still use that email address a lot because I use

it when I'm when I'm talking about blockchain in in general and what it can do it's it's such a good name I mean I'm sure there's also a reason to keep using that email address it was it's a funny name because we we only sort of kept we came up with in May funny enough we were working without a name for many months and we needed a name in May last year and no one can come up with name and I happened to be my daughter had just booked told me she'd bought tickets to see the chainsmokers and it just struck me that you know what chainsmokers was was just such a cool name mm cool let's um let's talk a little bit later or more

about the projects who did their but first I want to get into the Atari token how did you get involved I saw you were a co-founder of the project how did you get in volved with it well funnily enough I got involved via blockchain smokers so so my thesis for blockchain smokers from from late 2016 was to bring industry players into the blockchain you know I really wanted people that understood their industry had existing technology that they were using in the industry and understanding the people in the industry and how you integrate into that industry you know it's no good building best

product in the world and I've done that with a few companies I've been involved with they're not the best products in the world but phenomenal products for their industry but the industry just won't take it out you know it it's just you know you don't have the mechanism the understanding of that industry for them to pick it up and eat and use it so so that's that's a death knell to a product so so block chain smokers was all about taking people that understood their industries converting what they did to the blockchain and understanding what its use case was so it's use case probably wasn't what they were currently doing and then having industry players insert blockchain into the industry with the understanding so what I did in early 2017 is to understand the process I took

one of my very early companies one the first of the companies I found it that had some really groundbreaking technology in the entertainment space it was one of the very first companies that ever delivered activation keys around the world you know when you buy a Norton AntiVirus or Microsoft Office it says please enter your you enter your code that that 16 digit numeric alphanumerical code so in the old days that was printed on a disk you know or printed inside the box and you would type it in we were the first company that started delivering those codes electronically to people so you know

rather than box it was great it was a good it was great innovation at the time other people started doing it around the same time but we were one of the very first and we have a lot of you know but we changed an industry with that so but I took but that was a tender stood their industry it was a great technology there in a history of innovation and selling the innovations into into big company so I took four people out of the company and I asked them to build the that tech in blockchain you know just a proof of concept and they built one and in in May last year I started learning about token sales and that they fascinated me token

sales really fascinated my background is derivative trading technologies so I really like innovators in finance and the global innovations and finance and and so the token sale really struck me as a as a separate innovation to blockchain it needs the blockchain to do it I suspect but it it's a separate innovation and I loved it so I asked the team to start writing what you would need to do a token sale again I was trying to learn the space approximately at the same time I reconnected with a very old friend of mine if that is my oldest friend I've known since I was three and but I haven't seen him very much in the last fifteen years you know maybe we we thought we'd speak on birthdays or send each other texts but I

hadn't seen him and he went to Dallas in the early 90s and started building gangam computer gaming company so he was involved in the very early flight simulators then he went into first-person shooters you know and Medal of Honor came out of a team he created or work with or you know which became Call of Duty and then he he discovered that he was one of the first three companies that discovered the casual gaming industry and built an enormous company with casual gaming I think one of his games was downloaded a hundred million times in the first month you know wow you know he was you know he never made a big name for himself you

know in the industry so people in the industry all know him but outside the industry is not like John Carmack or whatever but he's friends with all those guys some of my understand gaming more than almost anybody else in the world and I was talking to him about blockchain about the same time I was doing see I was telling him what I was doing he hadn't heard of the blockade and it sort of was it was what blocked a smoker's was supposed to do so I told him about the tech that we were converting to the blockchain and he went away and thought about it for a while it came back to me and said what you are creating here is something that I've been working on for the lock he has been working on for the last six years which was a new way of creating economies

within games so a new monetization engine pro-gay for gaming you know the next generation of app stores and the blockchain allowed you to do it so what we did is we we merged his company and my company Atari we then built a board of directors we have a very eminent game group of gaming guys and one of them is the CEO of Atari and when he joined what when he when he joined as a director and understood the enormous potential that this product has he he asked if we would become the Atari platform and the Atari token and now we're there are four co-founders of the business as my Ron

and his gaming side there's myself and my my global platform side and content management side there's Atari and there's now a guy called Antony Diorio he's the fourth honorary co-found that he's one of the founders of aetherium here he joined us yeah very recently so so we now have this this phenomenal it's what block came smoker's was there to do funnily enough it was there to get people that understood the industry people that understood the blockchain and we have one of the block chain smokers guy Hanish Mohammed who's who's this mathematician understands the deep workings of the blockchain he's also involved so we have this strong Antony

and anak blockchain skills and and the guys that were building the proof of concept for us and blockchain they're involved we have the incredible understanding and gate the games industry what it needs to deliver we have incredible understanding and global platforms security managing asset and we have Atari as the brand and that's really what blockchain smoker's was there to create yeah cool I think there's a lot of interest from you know you said you said a brand right established brands or established companies to use this technology for for their internal processes first but also to create new products I mean I just had interviews with insurance companies and I mean

almost all of them have some kind of contracts that are trying right to solve with smart contracts and I think it's it's really promising I you know when you speaking of the brand right I mean of course you've seen this whole Kodak coin right and I read this article in Forbes about the Atari token where a guy wrote it seems and I quote here this seems like a way to attach a well-known name to a popular trend in order to generate interest and perhaps boost the fortunes of a fading company and and he was talking about Atari so I'm sure that's something you hear quite a lot but what do you respond to when somebody

comes to you with with this in February we don't hear it much anymore the reason that that happened I think it's more interesting to talk about why that happened is Kodak had just was in all the news at the moment they were the first company to jump in I don't really want to talk about what Kodak are doing because it doesn't fit with what my vision is for this space but they have their own plans and it's not what I would let suffice to say what what they've done is not what I would do but but I think what we're doing is is very different and the reason this article

these articles came around is because we were we were running under a code name since June last year it was called Project virtue so we had a code name we weren't announcing that we were retiring we weren't intending to announce that we were Atari till much further down the road probably bit after we are today so we wanted to build a proper product a proper team a proper you know package we wanted to be quite weld finance before we did that and we wanted to tell our story and our story is a very powerful story what unfortunately happened I mean it's

fortune unfortunate press is never bad so let me say I'm pleased that we had 300 pieces of press or thereabout including Telegraph you mentioned Forbes there was 14 of Bloomberg even Rolling Stones cut Rolling Stone magazine covered it back magazine was very was very was very positive actually but the reason it happened is Atari are a shareholder in in this company it's a brand-new company Atari shareholder and the CEO of Atari is a director at the company but because Atari owned a a in equity holding and Atari are a publicly listed company in France and therefore have to obey the rules of the stock exchange they felt

obliged and I say feel obliged because I didn't look into the regulations myself but they felt obliged from the French regulations through announced the completion of the deal so so the deal was signed but it took a long time to execute because we were trying to we were trying to build all the pieces before we deal was was finally execute as I said you know we've we've been planning this for unlike most I SEOs including the ones you've been talking about which are which are sort of created and then do token sell six weeks later we go did we haven't done that

we'd to take ten months but because Atari issued a regulatory filing in February in French to the stock exchange it got picked up I think it was a bloomberg that picked it up first and they wrote about it because it just said Atari had been acquired a piece of this company and the company is going to do the Atari token and that was pretty much all they said there was no information so the the closest to anybody to could get to what we were doing in February was what Kodak were doing so we were we were we were labeled with the with the Kirk with the Kodak analogy but I I think that's not the correct analogy the correct analogy is more like what

blocked chainsmokers was trying to do which is it's taking industry experts and let's face it akari and the CEO of otário industry experts it's take and we're on me and Anthony are experts in our fields and run creator you see the point about blockchain and when you talk about you know big companies looking at the block train the fear the fear I always have with big companies and and disruptive innovation is they don't actually embrace it you know they they tend they pretend to in they pretend to will they try to or the CEO has some vision you know that they should be doing this and

puts a team on board you know it's a 50,000 person company they put a team with 50 on it or 30 that team gets lost when the CEO loses interest or they find that to deliver the product damages their existing business and you know there is a there is a this period in which case they've got to suffer enormous losses and industry upheaval to get to where they want to be that they find it very difficult to do that I think in the case that we've got where we were able to to merge all these teams from these companies without damaging the existing companies and do something brand new means that we're very free and it's fun it's entrepreneurs you know

therefore the co-founders are for entrepreneurs who have successful careers in on Perino in being entrepreneurs you know Hanten e has created a lot of companies he was founded etherium rom has founded seven or eight least game companies many of which are incredibly successful I've founded five or six companies and Fred Atari is as as financed and run several companies so and is now the now to Atari and Rhonda is a very entrepreneurial organization tree for the first time in many many years free of a major company I mean the tower has always been in the since the

eighties this had been embedded in large game companies you know from Hasbro to Warner's to in program they've all owned it as a subsidiary to use its name this is the first time since it was founded you've got someone that's running it that's running is an independent entity and trying to do really good things with it you know he's you know he's not trying to just the label on on on various digital items he's actually trying to create new things he's got the Atari console coming out and and this really is you know the way I look at it and I you know you know a look at the fact that in 1908 re is created in 72 in

1977 it created the VCS and that brought gaming into the real world I mean it was a it was a phenomenon and it and it created it was the it was the first console everybody played and in 2017 when we created the Atari token forty years later where we booting Atari and I like the expression rebooting Atari busy reboot hardware and and we're bringing the real world back into gaming so I think I think we're very different right different than Kodak and other offering different from different from a lot of from a lot of ICS either either most most token sales are either people understand the blockchain very very very

well and are trying to create either platforms which they'll probably be good app or industrial solutions which the jury's still out on or it's people that don't really understand the blockchain but I think it's a good idea you know in just to put the name on it to see what they can do yeah I see what can you already talk about what the token will do let's take a quick break for a message from our sponsors this episode has support from no official sponsor but from my very own the blockchain and us newsletter get an email from me every two weeks with a very short summary of new podcast episodes so you can eat it you pick those interviews you'd like to

listen to to stay up-to-date just visit www.hsn.com and sign up today can you already talk about what the token will do about the atari token we have we have we have a very regulated process we're trying to make sure that we're as as regulated as possible in terms of following existing laws so we have a very defined process and and and forty that requires a nondisclosure agreement at the moment before we do it and and we do that for a number of reasons yeah absolutely no we don't but but in the sort of the sort of headline

of what we're doing is we're creating the next generation platform for the next generation of gaming and the next generation of gaming is what I double alternate realities multi penny multiplayer game where people interact with with with with each other that we're building the the new platform for that you already mentioned you know the the legal framework and the NDA and all those things you have to observe in general how do you how do you approach this because the the the regulation seems to be somewhat uncertain how to deal with ICO still all around the world and I wonder how people who are very

active in this space kind of hedge against that legal risk well it's that's a really good good question to ask but it's also a difficult question to answer you know I've been I've been I've been talking about ICS on panels and presentations since since May last year and I still consider myself to be a novice in this space I don't think there are any experts you know there is only opinion you know the way that we've done it is I have been pretty much as I said at the beginning on a plane since May

last year unfortunately in London for the day today I came back late last night and I leave again tomorrow my wife is smiling if she smiled early and said why didn't even bother coming home I said I was on two sides of the world under was in the middle but you know I've just been learning my co-founder and I and my gaming co-founder and the team that I've got we've got a team of 16 people excluding board members and founders that all they're doing is learning about this space and it's it's a really interesting space you know there is so much knowledge in this space and there's so much learning you know every every day I learn something new and every week I

learned something that makes me question what I'm the way I'm doing things that's really good you know and you know walk out you know having a five-minute chat with someone or a meeting you know it can be probable it can be important going or what they're doing is really great what they've thought of all the question they've asked me all the concern they've asked me that's a really valid point any questions and I think that questioning is very good so I think there are a number of ways of doing this firstly you have to choose a jurisdiction that is very favorable about blocked reign but is also a jurisdiction that has democracy proper rule of law proper business practices proper regulation of normal companies

and there aren't that many of those actually that you can that you can point to then you've got to create a structure around the company that has a very well represented and proven financial management side of it you know how are you going to you know you people can be raising a lot of money in space how have you had any experience in raising that sort of money before you know managing that sort of money before if you have successfully that's important because that shows to the the people that look at it be they you know

people are buying your tokens be at the regulators be it your directors that you can do it I think you need to create a very strong board but people with serious reputations you know not people that are just being paid for doing a job you know people with serious reputations that are put in their name the director in a in in a in a respected jurisdiction has legal responsibilities and if he and if you flowers those legal responsibilities it can be a criminal act you know it's certainly it's you know that is important because once you've created that your crew your showing to the to the outside world that we're doing that the company itself is properly regulated company I think

that's that's that's very important to do that the second thing is you then look at what the regulator's say in each country you have the of examples like Gibraltar and Switzerland maybe Singapore I'm not so familiar with that but I hear that they're they they vary they've laid out various in very specific detail what you can and can't do you know and if you and if you locate yourself in one of those territories and you follow their regulations and their rules regulations may be a bit strong still but certainly their rules then you you have some surety and what you're doing and the second and the final thing is you you if you enter those spaces

where you know the regulator's are concerned about this space and haven't told you what to do then you either avoid that territory if you can no that's got its problems that I'll explain or or you read up on every single regulation that's around that space and you know for traditional investment and you make sure you follow that and that I think is a safe that you can do and that's that that's the process that we've been followed in terms of the terms of I just I brush on that point about missing out territories the problem with missing out territories

is if you're going to be building your global product and your product is token is based on the tokenized model and you've excluded enormous territories for instance China the US for sake of argument which are the most two most valuable markets in the world I think if you add up their GDP and speaking and all the others added together you know how do you enter that market if it took ever because you might not be able to which means you've immediately excluded your two biggest markets from your from your eventual product so so is it is a very difficult space which is why I you know you can't answer it and then the other thing I've done is I've talked to

a lot of and I'm very I get close to a lot of the big token sales that I think did it well in my view and I and I'm even though their chief investment officer or I know their CEO and we talk regularly and and and one things that they do and we will probably do is talk to the is talking detail to the regulator's we will not we will not do a crowd sale I and I see the ICO a lot more people to know generally implies nice here which is the crowd sale until we're confident that we meet the rules the the regulators set down always told us yeah yeah I think it's a very good point you mentioned before that you

often meet with the teams in the successful ICS that that you know and and just kind of you know exchange opinions and and things you've seen and and observed how in your experience what separates such a company that is running a good IC o---- let's say from from one that has maybe you know a little chance of doing things right we assess that at three ways actually one we either meet them in in an event or we're introduced to them and we to them Brooke for a while and assess that what they're doing is is proper you know and we will find information that

they don't make public as we're not buyers you know they will talk about their Pope you know most buyers aren't interested in the process they've follow we're interesting the protest at one that's the first way the second is where we use legal firms or we know legal firms very well and they they're clients of theirs so we're you know we're attracted you know the law firms that we use only take clients on that they consider to be following the proper rules they're not they're not they they push the boundaries slightly as you have to in space but they're very conservative so so that's that's the third in the third way I've done it is by you know I found some I SEOs which I

really like the look up I think they've done it really well they're quite big and I happen to know someone as that's part of the team like there's more on I won't mention the name of them because inappropriate to say who I think is good new I think is bad there's one who I happened to be a family friend of mine was their chief investment officer so you know when I found that out I could go and talk to him and we could have a a chat about what they were doing him and that was a third way right it's a small world still right just as the the jurisdictions that you mentioned I mean Gibraltar Switzerland Malta those are all small jurisdictions that means you can go and almost have lunch with the regulator and it's I think it's very similar with with all the big players in

this field some of those jurisdictions i mean ii brought up for instance we've already done it you know you meet the ministers that are in charge of this area you know and before we chose gibraltar I mean I met with him and I talked to him and I wanted to understand what they were doing and you know they give you confidence we're seeing we're seeing the next week in New York dinner you know because we is we're very heavily invested in in Gibraltar I don't mean that we put money in but we're invested you know sir our future is invested in integral to you know we meet them when we discuss and you you wanted you want to know those things and

I agree that it makes it you know if you want to try meet the minister in the UK or the Euro or us you know government official it would be it'd be very very very difficult but in these spaces it's it's much easier yes yeah what are when you look at the entrepreneurs who run you know the successful crypto or blockchain companies what are characteristics that you observe with with them what are the CEOs of the CEOs of the founders I think they're very similar to most entrepreneurs you know they they now previously if it should ask me that question in May in June July August last

year I would say they're they're very young they came they came out in the university they understand maths they understand the blockchain they networked in a lot of them had worked in blockchain company you know companies that were looking at the blockchain they've done it a universe college or university I think what you see now is it's much more stat entrepreneurs with who who they were just see generally serial entrepreneurs because if you're an odd pair with one company behind you tend not to jump and do another one so these are serial entrepreneurs I think a lot more quite idealistic day I they they they're they're very keen for the world

to be better for to those people that find the current world tough people that find it difficult to to get on the property ladder people that are you know people that are unbanked people that live in regimes where the which is which are under democratic you know I think those and that's a lot of people I mean those two the unbanked and the people who non-democratic you know I think they they really want to do something good I think it's moved from this you know four or five years ago this sort of slightly destructive nature of the business you know where it was we want

to replace the old I think you know what you're seeing now is you you don't want to replace the old you just want to make it better for the rest and that's a really great thing and I like that so so those are the type of people you see in the third the final set you see and this is what blocked chainsmokers did you know when we were doing that and the companies those those that I met through that there are people that whose product is improved enormous ly by the blockchain it's a content management systems some construction management software luxury good so product you know that managed have locked records those those products are so obviously improved

by this technology that those those entrepreneurs that that learn about and that's what broke chainsmokers did we used to teach to these entrepreneurs about the tech and try and convince them that the blockchain was good they would then come back to us and say oh I understand what you're saying you know if I build if I do this I can do all these things I think that those are the final set of entrepreneurs I see yeah cool speaking off of that you know when you said you wanted to bring more traditional entrepreneurs or businesses onto the blockchain into the block chain space and and work with it and explore it what should maybe more traditional companies and also investors in the crypto and blockchain space understand better they need to think they need to

think of two things one is maybe one is that the blockchain is very early tech it's it's the the products they can build today are going to be are very different from the products they can build in ten years you know and they've got to be able to to manage that process so so the first company I build I make you smile now you probably haven't even used one it was for content management distribution and the reason we came up with delivering light activation keys rather than anything else right in the world and some of our clients were still 14-point 4k modems you know which would dial up you know and they could receive much data so so the technology we needed

to build in those days was completely different from what that company does now where you've got gigabit ethernet you know round the world you know in fiber you know so so you've got to be able to to plan you a product based on on what exists today and not say and not not believe what the blockchains vision is in the future you know as the only reason you're involved in this space and so that's really important but the second thing you've got I you know I don't think the real excitement is going to come from people saying I've got this business that is a logistics business and I'm just going to stick it on the

blockchain and it's gonna do pretty much the same thing it's doing today you know I am the where the for me the excitement's our project like my Atari one and Tory one would be one because otherwise I wouldn't be involved in it so it's not like well I'm selling my own product it's just that's where I'm excited it's where they take existing technology and existing expertise they say this is what the blockchain can do what does that create you know and it doesn't actually create necessarily anything like the existing technologies it's just a technique using technologies in the base so they do something

completely different so before you know the internet when the internet was created you know people just downloaded you know pictures and you know they sent emails around and then you bother the first generation of companies were searching because you expanded getting a lot of information then you've got some ecommerce platforms it was only later that you got it web 2.0 and social networking and things like that social networking was was much more exciting to me even with all its issues was an exciting innovation than when putting a shop online because you know that was something that could never have been done before you know there was mail-order before there was Amazon it's just Amazon was incredibly efficient at it and it you know it was it's an

amazing names has become much more than that but but it's when you did it's these these ideas that come around in the second generation where people are saying wow you know because we've got this we can do something that people have never done before and that's what I that's what I try to look at and yes that's quite a leap though sometimes right I mean it's I'm sure that many companies who got on board with the internet very early on couldn't imagine I mean certainly you know I and everybody I know couldn't imagine that there would be social media at some point and so it's maybe more a cultural thing with the companies to drive more some you know emergent technology emergent strategies and see that they can adapt to to new things as

they happen it's you know innovation is never disruptive innovation is never is rarely what a single-step it's it's it's very often multiple steps I think what you're seeing now is because we working so fast in this space I think that there are some of those companies already coming up you know I think you know I think two years of blockchain is like 10 years of internet you know in terms of because there is so much so much brain power in this space and so much enthusiasm for it and and the financing mechanisms are so interesting exciting you know the fact that people are able to raise these sort of monies is very

very interesting does that mean there's going to be a greater success rate of companies compared to the internet revolution no doesn't mean that at all I just think the speed at which those companies are being created as possible cool for you as an as an entrepreneur yourself who are your role models just in general maybe starting with when when you launched your first company and then moved into this new space I guess you know I guess it would be my probably my role models if I was going to be very

insular about it I mean you know anyway obviously I have great respect for the likes of Bill Gates who got basura when I was young they were the one prefers of my time I'm an hour I guess it would be people like Ellen must loser he's a great honor and visionaries no I think it's much much closer to hope my father was a phenomenal auditor my and so is my father or and they have very different backgrounds in fact they have eight similar backgrounds but very different education and their early lives in terms of academics and what I want to do incredibly great things and and I think that's that's a you know that's all that's been one of the things that I

mentioned earlier that's been one of the things that I've told you know authorities about European Commission's British governments you know to encourage people to entrepreneurs you need to encourage them to think they can be like you've got to find people that they think they can be like now I as much as I think highly of myself and I have to think myself I'd never do this I don't see myself as an alone mask or a Bill Gates you know they're just let's just on a different completely different level you know I I can't even recognize that sort of third person in me you know you know but I can recognize my job and my father that people that I can I can I can see and and and I could talk to you

know so so I guess it was those yeah it's maybe much more important to have real people that you can emulate than just idols right that are hard to reach I think they're very it's much more real you know it's much more real so I think it's a little like just to just talk on that analogy a little more you know I always used to equated to football you know soccer football you know and sports you know most people can see that there's a footballer you know most people that have from from from backgrounds where they don't have entrepreneurs can see there's a football they came out of their town came out of

their village and went on to great superstardom and therefore people can see themselves as that sort of person most people can't see themselves as the Bill Gates's or the the Elon Musk's of the world and that's I think that's one of the disinhibitor some people think wanting to become an entrepreneur and me and why so many people want to become sportsmen because they can see people like themselves have achieved those sort of heights I mean the chance of it happening are just as low they just couldn't associate with that those figures mm-hmm yeah I think it's a very good point what's what's next for you in the coming months we we continue to work on Atari that's really the big focus for us we're starting to

build product now we have a very aggressive development cycle coming up we've completed our C our very very first round we called it a found around gained an unusual not a standard token sale type of ground but there none of our rounds are similar to to what generally happened in this space but yeah it's it's very much it's it's it's it's working on the you know it's working on that foundation improving it raising our what is generically called a pre-sale but we you know we here we have a we have two more rounds coming up that are very private private and institutional rounds and and building

our product and and and learning you know there are as I said therefore co-founders of the business - that is very executive - the one that's medium and one that's not executive at all but but we have two executive founders myself and Ron my my my old friend and he's responsible for building the product for four he will be the CEO and he'll really run the project project and the and the tick the group of the team that is now growing very fast but my role will be much more - to continue to find companies in the space that a simpler tab product that we can

from or we can work with we can help grow to help us create a very large platform so so I'll continue to do what I'm doing at the moment which is meeting going to events meeting people going to just meeting everyone that we can to try and understand what is going on in this space and how we can best use what's going on in space to to improve our success and also these successes the space itself you know there are a lot of challenges that we have in the blockchain and they're the biggest challenges that we have in the blockchain that we cannot solve by ourselves you know those are technical challenges for instance the use of the

use of and the speed and the and the scalability of the blockchain itself that's that's clearly one of them and then the second are the the I use the word very loosely but the regulatory side you know how do we you know as these tokenized models become pervasive how do you operate a tokenize model you know what are they one of the requirements for using it how whatever what are the taxation models on it what are the anti-fraud models on it what are the anti-gambling regulations what are the banking regulations these are these are going to be challenges that this

space that everybody in this space is going to find themselves having to deal with as the space becomes bigger especially if you can if tokens can be exchanged for other tokens or which is a necessity in these models or to exchange for cash or cash is put into the tokenized economy you know those are the type of things that really that isn't that where I will spend my time to make sure that those that we're working with similar sized companies and similar and people with the similar outlook to us to try and ensure that those matters are resolved to allow that the industry to grow fantastic do you think were more maybe on the side of underestimate

what this technology can do or you know is it is it maybe more a matter of becoming more realistic in coming years what has been possible I think we are another fantastic question I think the other the question that is both so I think there are many people in this space that uh that uh expect expecting very quick results and world-changing results in the very very short term and I think that's not likely to happen on the on the scale of likeliness that's on the very very unlikely it could happen but I I personally I would fall on the unlikely side if you're looking outside the space and let's face it 95% of the

people in the world haven't heard of the blockchain if you take the six billion or seven billion of us you know and even in when you're talking about the developed world you're probably talking about you know less than thirty percent really know know about it and have those you know maybe five percent have some reasonable understanding of it and only half a percent under staff deep understanding of it I mean it's it's so fractional I think that is the that is the massive change and it's and it's and it's the and it's the argument about you

know where the Bitcoin is going to be valuable or not valuable is is it so few people use those sort of cut crypto currencies and have access to it if many of the world does of course it's going to be valuable but also that we all we look at things always through our own echo chamber and then the fear I wanted to solve in the block came by with blocked a smoker's was to break outside that echo chamber of the same people for the last two years talking about the same things the more people you bring in the more echo chamber and that's the same thing with the cryptocurrency we I look at cryptocurrency in one way all my friends and colleagues look in a completely different way which it's got

no value to them they say well why would you bother having an asset we can buy gold we houses but the two billion people that are unbanked in the world you know if you look through their eyes cryptocurrency is life-changing you know there are several billion people living in dictatorships or in family or in in societies where they're discriminated against either because they're a woman or because they're because of something religious or something racial though in those societies owning currency like cryptocurrency is phenomenally important to those people and and we can't see it and that's that's so to try and answer your second question I think the final

manifestation and development and products that come out of the blockchain are greater than we can ever think but what happens in the short term is probably less than that's great thanks so much thanks a lot Daniel and really appreciate your taking time today speak you soon thanks so much for joining us today more info on our guests and our sponsors isn't the show notes of this episode and on the podcast website the blockchain and us comm to help people find this podcast it's important that you download subscribe and give it a top rating and review on iTunes or on the podcast platform of your choice I'm Manuel stackers and I thank you very

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