Startup Battle Finals | EBC11

Transcript

Hello. Hello. How are you? >> How are you feeling? Not so much energy. >> How was the day? >> Good. Woo. >> I always like to ask people what's a bit the recap. >> So, what what are the takeaways you take home? Someone wants to share something? Someone wants to share something. >> I can come with the mic. >> No. >> Yeah. >> No. Evo, what's your takeaways of the two days? Yeah. Come, come, come.

>> Yeah. To be honest, amazing networking, lots of uh great people out here and um as a startup, it's uh it has been a great opportunity. So, yeah, thank you for that. >> He was going to be on stage a bit in a bit pitching. So, um, you'll see me again. Any other takeaways, guys? Ladies, no. >> And NFTs are back. >> Yeah. Are NFTs back? helmet. >> Um I I think it's amazing that here um quite unknown projects and like the second biggest uh blockchain existing on

the world uh uh sitting on the same panel and discuss stuff and having not agree on things. Um it it really gives the possibility to the audience to judge themsel what's existing out there. There are more things that they even aware of. It's a great possibility to raise awareness. So even if if you're a small project, I can advise try to be present and uh get awareness. This is the right place to be.

>> Yeah, I think that's a good point, Helmouth. uh we've had several panels with some giant players in industry either for tra from trafire or cryptonative giants but also younger projects and combining you know you know the smaller and bigger fishes together I think it's it's amazing because at the end of the day we all pay no pay play an important role in this in this ecosystem I saw her finger over there yeah come Actually first of all thank you so much for organizing so great conference. Our team come >> welcome >> our team come from Dubai. We participated a lot on different

conferences in Dubai and actually the difference is huge. This conference is so emotional so open it. So you feeling this crypto community strength. So thank you so much for organizing so part of all crypto community here in Barcelona. From another angle I want to say that it looks like very promising that defy space and AML and crypto security is growing rapidly. So it's great to meet with professionals meet great to exchange with ideas and we all of all of us actually in our project in alpha IML we trying to make this crypto

environment a little bit more friendly more secured and thank you so much for helping with that. >> Thank thank you for coming amazing. >> Anyone else wants to say something? You feel warm? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Good. I can go. >> All right. Hi, Victoria. Actually, I was looking for you. >> Yeah. They told me you're like one of the organizers. >> Yes. >> Nice to meet you. >> Nice to meet you. >> I just missed you. Uh just wanted to say not bad. Uh three quick notes. Uh first of all, first time here, EBC. Wonderful.

I will be back next year and I will hopefully be on that startup battle finals. This year I did not have a chance. >> That's good. >> But if I had two minutes on the men's stage, they told me I must ask you if I can have it. But can be next year. But if you feel like somebody is missing and you want to give me two minutes on my pitch on a blockchain that will actually change things on the ground in the most troubled region of the world for human security, environmental security, and for the people of the Middle East. So, if you want to find out about that, >> what's the name of your company?

>> It's called Mevu, Middle East Virtual Union, but it's on stealth mode. >> Virtual Union. >> It's on stealth mode and it just came live two days ago. >> Uh, so if you want >> So, next year, next year, next year will be here next year. >> Thank you, Victoria. >> Thank you. >> Good, good, good. I I think I think we're a little bit more warmed up. Yeah. Evo, you ready? >> Okay. >> Okay. So, we'll tell you the plan, right? >> Yes. Yes. >> So we have the finals of the startup competition. We will have we will introduce first of all our esteemed jury members. Later we will have the five finalists pitching with questions from our members. After that there's going to be the voting and the announcement of the three winners. We will also

introduce briefly the companies who are providing the prices for the startup competition because without them we couldn't have done it. And after that we will have some drinks outside with some loud music >> with the Wenger boys. >> With the Wenger boys. >> Bigger applause. Bigger bigger bigger. Are you ready? One, two, THREE. OKAY. And and and um yeah, guess I did. Yeah. What's very important is you will uh not be able to vote you guys on the floor, but we have the jury members um that'll be able to vote.

>> So, please welcome on stage our jury members. >> We have Oliver Smith, CEO at Value X. >> Have a seat. >> We have Nikita. Let's try the surname Shinare right from Cointelegraph. >> And we have Andre Turilan CRO at1.io. Thank you very much.

>> Thank you. And a quick note, one.io is also the sponsor of the startup battle. So if you haven't checked them out, it's a simple website, one but spelled one. One.io. It's very simple. Oh, but not with a but not with the number. No, it's always spelled. >> Yeah. O.IO. >> Yeah. But it's very simple. So, uh, guys, if you can present yourself shortly now, we're going to get the papers where you're going to vote and then we will start with the first startup to come and pitch. Yeah, I guess you can stand here. Talk both to the jury members and to the audience. Yeah, we all have a mic. Good. Okay. So yeah,

please go ahead Oliver with a short introduction. >> Yeah. Okay. So, uh my name is Oliver. Um, Value X is a Likenstein based um, uh, company where we support as a venture studio um, startups, scaleups from the emerging tech area and um, yeah, we have uh, developed our own rating um, which we apply in order to find out which projects are promising. Happy to be here today and um, I'm curious about the finalists.

Yeah. >> Okay. >> Hi everyone. Uh I'm Nick and just to shorten a bit um I repres I represent content graph I guess you know um almost anyone knows them. So um we are kind of one of the largest crypto media in the world and we recently launched um an accelerator stream which basically supports startups early stage startups with everything that we can actually support with um and yeah I'm really happy to see a lot of um people there uh and here and actually really appreciate that you joined us and I wish good luck all the stuff up.

>> Okay Ander your time. Hey everyone. Uh, very nice to be here. Uh, I'm I'm AJ. I'm the chief revenue officer at 1.io. Um, we're a global fintech. We were founded back in 2017. We have two main propositions. We have 1. Fusion, which is our institutional digital asset trading proposition. We offer crypto custody, institutional trading platform, OTC, and a crypto payment processing solution. And then we also have 1.0 connect which is our global payments and banking network provisioning named accounts uh in multiple different currencies connected to various payment schemes with spotfx uh and global payments for principally underserved underbanked businesses worldwide. Uh very excited to be here. Um great to see

so many exciting startups and a lot of progress in in the ecosystem as a whole. uh getting accounts for businesses that are newly incorporated or newly licensed particularly when you're dealing with nent technologies like blockchain and web 3 can be very very difficult. So you know we've got firsthand experience in catering to that market and um yeah looking forward to see what the the panelists have to offer. >> Amazing. So thank you. Okay, so we're still waiting for your scorecard so you can vote. So I'm just going to ask you a few questions. So um what are you mostly excited about when it comes to these startups or or what also excited about but also like what is it that you're

looking for? Of course we talk about different startups in different segments but still what is it that you're looking for? >> I mean go first. >> Yeah. Yes. Go. >> Actually um I'm not looking for hype or passwords. We are >> so it's a no-go for you. It's AI. >> We're really looking for um what is called value investing. So use cases. >> That sounds a bit old school.

>> Yeah, it is. But it's still applicable. >> Okay. >> It's use cases, business model and team. And at the end of the day, that's what counts because uh what we see today uh is that uh much of um venture capital that has been spent over the last years is now locked up in projects that don't produce any return or any exits which is really a big problem we have today which would be really different if uh the the VCs and and investors would have acted differently. So, we are always looking for projects that have a sound foundation and um and and I think that's that's the right direction.

>> Makes sense. Thank you, Nick. >> Yeah, totally makes sense. Actually, >> I support you. Um well, honestly, if if if we speak personally, I'd say that tokenization, real world asset tokenization is kind of on the right now. And I understand why. And honestly, I believe that tokenization is kind of the next step that actually can be really kind of good use case for the crypto in general. Um, and yeah, so I'm enthusiastic about it personally. >> And and when you look at startups, what what do you need to see to to actually see that that there's a potential in the startup?

>> Yeah, I mean a lot of companies are currently tokenizing private credit uh equities and so on. So I see a huge opportunity there and yeah and honestly like with this world of AI thing tokenization is a bit kind of um at least fresh air for all the all of the crypto startups. So at least I mean it's kind of really working use case a value based use case I'd say. >> Fantastic Andrew. >> Yeah and I think just to add to that just a real world use case and a real USP that differentiates you market. I'm a believer that you can, you know, if you've got the USP and you've got something that really solves a painoint, >> you should tell the audience what's USP.

>> Yeah. If you've got a USP and you can that is >> what is it >> with with 1.0? >> Yeah. Yeah. No, you say USP, what is that? >> Unique selling point. So really what it is that you've got that the market doesn't have that is going to solve a real world problem for your customer. I think if you've got that and provided you've got that the commercialization of that is generally the easier part because if you've got something that people truly want people will pay for it. So I think that's certainly something that I'm interested in seeing and I think uh you know tokenization and crypto payments you hear all these sort of terms across the past couple of days and there are thousands of companies out there trying to break into this space.

So really not all of them are going to win. So what it is about your product specifically that stands out from the crowd. >> Perfect. So Oliver, before you mention you try to avoid hyped words. So I guess this is a question for the three of you. So I mean by nature we all influenced by hype. I mean you see two bakeries, one has a long queue, you're going to go to that one, right? You don't even know why, but you're like if there is like 10 people 10 people in the queue, I'm going to go to that one. So um how how do you control that? Because this is human nature to to just follow the crowd.

Yeah, it's uh thorough analysis, I would say. Sorry, that's very boring. I know that's very boring, but that's what it is. Um I if you apply your analysis and your assessment, then you probably find out that some of these projects that are just riding the hype wave have um no substance and and then you make your choice. Yeah. Um and and maybe one aspect Sequoia invested in FTX, right? They're they're great investors, >> but you have to ask them why they did it. Yeah.

>> Yeah. But I guess so sometimes it's difficult to >> um Yeah. We saw build AI this year to explode and um I think Microsoft invested four or 500 millions into uh this wonderful project that promised that you don't have to uh deploy you know um the coders anymore because u is doing it for you but there was no AI so I always ask when did they do the due diligence and the problem is that they probably did not do it at all and that's what you should avoid.

>> Andrew Nick, how to avoid hype? >> I mean for VCs, for investors in general, um this optimism is is is made by design, right? So they they need to be optimist. They need to kind of believe in in kind of disruption uh and really big things um because otherwise they wouldn't be doing their job, right? But honestly, I believe that any team, VC team or investor team should definitely have kind of balanced approach to that as Oliver referred to. >> Balance what? Sorry, >> that Oliver referred to. Um, so if you have some guys that actually kind of can do some ground research, u can kind of maintain critical thinking and be not as much optimistic as you. That should be

well balanced team and you actually will succeed in the market, I guess. Andrew. >> Yeah. And I think about the VC fund that's invested into our our business and I guess they they have a really strong degree of technical knowledge. So they they're not just guided by what we tell them. They're actually out there testing that in the market and in many instances the experts in the space which is good. Uh I guess diversification, right? They've invested in a range of similar business to ours which helps them sort of I guess see which ones are real and which ones are are not. So I think that's that's really important as well.

>> Thank you. And um two questions in one. So what are you thinking is going to be some main challenges in the next 12 months for the industry but also great opportunities both the not so positive and the positive side for the next 12 months. >> Should we speak about AI once again? >> AI. Yeah. If that's a opportunity tell me. >> Well for sure. I mean we will see and no one knows I guess. So I mean at least it will be a huge success or it's or a huge fail I don't know but honestly I think >> what's the use case when when when do we when can we see AI and

>> well I mean >> well it's it's kind of really discussion I guess but still um as as we we started from kind of following USB kind of approach right USB searching approach so basically if someone will find this use case that can be actually used in real life that will be kind of the first evidence that actually >> what use case did you mention? >> Uh any USB? So I I I mean use case might be I personally believe believe that for B2C AI is rather less applicable compared to B2B. So for B2B like data processing something like that. Um AI can change some things. Um but for B2C as we've started from kind of chargi um so I mean there might be some

disappointment at least at this at this sphere but you never know right? So for B2B there might be huge opportunities for startups for businesses in general and we'll see how it goes. >> Hello. >> I think um what we will see within the next 12 months nobody really knows exactly but uh for sure I I'm convinced that um uh we will see um the development of further development of the token economy as a whole.

>> Uh >> what does that mean? A token economy, >> token economy um in terms of um you know there's this idea that everything will be tokenized. It will not be everything but many many parts how you know traditional finance is changing completely. That's that's what we are seeing today. We will see that the next 12 months. um exchanges uh that go into traditional banking, banks that go into um digital assets. I think that's for sure. Um >> and neo banks, >> of course.

>> Um >> I think that's the the big change that um is happening now. Yeah. So we're in the initial phase of mass adoption. It's happening now and it will happen for the next years. >> Yeah. Yeah. And I think just to add to that, I think you know in terms of mass adoption, I think crypto payments is really at the precipice of moving into that space. So I think for the longest time, crypto payments have been something which uh in in a B2B context, business had to do out of necessity, not necessarily because they've wanted to. But with the emergence of technology for the past couple of years and I guess broader understanding and broader tolerance of of of cryptocurrency, you're now seeing a world where crypto payments are starting to become almost as easy as a traditional fiat payment.

And I think with that is going to be the inflection point where mass adoption happens and people realize that actually this is a in many instances perhaps an easier or cheaper way to actually move money than the traditional fiat system. And I think on the the challenges side of things I think regulatory challenges are always going to be uh a big part of this. uh obviously with Mika with the Genius Act and just with the the the local regulatory regimes in many many jurisdictions have become much tighter and much more stringent on on vast and firms in in the crypto space than they have been historically. So sort of the the the days of being able to sort of op operate in a pre-regulated environment or being able to sort of do things without having the I guess adequate licensing is is well and truly behind us

and that's obviously going to add significant cost to operators within the space and challenges in terms of if they want to scale their business and take their business across borders whilst historically they might have been able to do that from a single license in a offshore jurisdiction in the new world you're going to need to have licenses in many many different jurisdictions and with that's going to become um regulatory challenges in terms of being compliant in every jurisdiction but obviously costs and lead times to actually get those licenses and maintain those licenses. >> Thank you. Do do we have the score cuts? >> Okay, you're working on it. We're almost there. So, okay, just >> maybe maybe just one thing that we will not see probably within the next 12 months will be quantum computing. I'm

missing a little bit the discussion about this because it will happen within the next five years. That's the predictions until 2030 and that will be a gamecher. So um because then every encryption that we know today is just um not working anymore. Uh I think we should address um this topic a little bit more because it's it's really a game changer. >> There is a a big quantum computer here in Barcelona actually um but that's another story. Okay. So now you also mentioned a little bit adoption. Um so if we look at most European countries, I mean most countries actually globally

the the retail side in terms of holding crypto it's it's quite big. I mean we see everything from 5% to 30 40% of population maybe even higher in some countries. So that's quite interesting. But um if we look at traditional investment funds asset managers, it's still almost non-existent. So it is you talk to local asset managers all over Europe and almost none of them have are doing. I mean a few innovative funds are doing something but almost them are not doing anything yet yet. So uh when can we expect this to be something normal for asset managers?

let's just say in Europe around Europe as a whole we're going from I know Sweden, Denmark, Norway whole way to south south of Europe and and how is also that going to like influence the whole industry when those players are going to get get into the space. >> Well, I have no figures about that honestly. So maybe there are some exposure for um I mean there is some exposure for uh crypto in family offices. I guess they pretty own a lot of crypto >> but they they are more flexible you know they do >> yeah true I mean it depends on the on the ecosystem as a whole right so if they if they will have any tools and kind of means that they can actually invest in crypto they will do that so again they are kind of economic agents

that acting as rational at least rational agents so that's why uh it doesn't make sense for them to to miss the opportunity right so if they have any any opportunity to invest in that uh and if they have if they would like to diversify their portfolios they will do that and that's it's actually happening uh it's happening right now I guess yeah and I think just to add to that there there are multiple ways to get exposure maybe not direct exposure but indirect exposure to you know the price of digital assets by partnering with with firms like ours for example so uh there are a lot more innovative uh ways to sort of I guess give uh fund managers or give asset managers exposure to crypto without direct investment if it is the case that their mandates are

still such that they can't have exposure there even though that's where the demand from from the underlying investors is. So I think >> how would that work? >> Uh there there are series of financial instruments and agreements that you can put in place which mean that you're essentially stand to benefit from the price up or down on the underlying asset without you actually holding on your balance sheet. I think um the next year five years will be really changing a lot because um as mentioned um the you know institutions traditional institutions are um adopting and I think that's that's the driver.

No, no. I mean, we've seen Black Rockck. We've seen a lot of the big ones, but still then you go to smaller asset managers all around the world and they're still like, "Nah." >> Yeah. But that change is currently really taking place. >> Great. So, in in what how many years can we expect that to say 20% of all asset managers hold crypto? >> Yeah, I would say five. >> Five years. >> Y >> um I will agree with that. So I I think it's really short-term kind of perspective.

>> I mean we we invited uh the largest Spanish asset manager to come to EBC sorry independent asset manager meaning not part of the big commercial banks here in Spain and they're far away from I mean just as an example far away but they came that's a big step that's a that's the first step they came to EBC. Okay so are we are we getting closer to the scorecard? Yeah. Well, on paper. Yeah. I mean, can we do it on paper or Okay. No, we need to wait. Okay. Okay.

Do we have any questions from the audience? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Any questions from the audience? You have a question and a pen, but we need we need three. Yeah. Yeah. Well, live life live. Well, any questions for our speakers and jury members? Anything? Any question for the future?

>> I guess everyone is waiting for startup battle. So, >> yeah, I know. I know. I know. I know. Are we Do we have the sports? Oh, amazing. Let's Let's Let's make it a reality. Okay. Okay. Good. So we are going to be a bit more um so it's not printed but it's written by wonderful >> good okay just wait let me just see Andrew so you understand this can I have a look okay just so everybody knows they're going to look at the product and solution of the startup yeah and you

Give a score of one to five. Just to agree, five is the highest score. Five is the highest score. Yeah. No, no, no. Sometimes it's a bit confusing. So, five is the highest score. We have market size and potential. Business model, competition and positioning, traction and validation, and presentation performance. Are they too nervous? You have to be nice to them. Okay. So, um, then one to five and, uh, if you can help do the math at the end, that would be nice.

So, you're going to get this one. Is that okay for you? You'll have to. Yeah. Okay. You get a pen now. You're right. We're going to turn the chairs. Yeah. And let's let's do this. We're just gonna No, it's fine. And I think that's it, right? Do we need to do more? Okay. Wait a bit. Oliver, we're going to move you a bit. Uh, I think that's it. Are we good to go?

Yeah. Okay. So, first startup. Who is the first up? to come up. Yeah. No, the presentation the startup will like mingle a bit this way and you're going to go in here. Okay. So, the first participant we need on stage is Jimmy Nei by invoice made. Jimmy, are you here? Are you here? Yeah. Okay. BIG APPLAUSE.

WOO! ARE YOU NERVOUS? >> Are you nervous? No. Go. Hi, I'm Jimmy Wyn and I'm here on behalf of Defa by Invoice Mate as its company's chairman as well as an investor in the company myself. We're proud to have our company already recognized as a future 100 company by the UAE government and a rising star by Deoit's um tech fast 50

program in the Middle East. And that really excites me because I've been in the industry a long time since early years about 2016 first as a chief executive and president of an entire blockchain. And before then I was a digital tech lawyer in the US for 21 years. So I love good tech when it's useful for businesses and real users. And unfortunately, if you follow the crypto industry, you have to acknowledge that we have two isolated worlds now. Crypto, all of us here in this room, and then conventional businesses who do not really do much economic activity with crypto assets. Conventional businesses do need financial services, especially credit and lending to grow and operate, but they're typically concerned about using cryptoreated products to do that.

and crypto holders and investors like people here in this room, you're probably sitting on idle digital assets that you want to gain some benefit from financially without selling or trading them, but want security and confidence before you'll pledge or stake them to some financial product. So why don't we bring these two things together? How do we change the fact that these are isolated? Well, how do we actually create real value for businesses from crypto assets? We're doing that with DeFi by Invoice Mate, which is a yield originator, a stable and secure yield originator, a platform where businesses can on board to get access to cash faster. And if you're a crypto holder or investor, you can get uh leverage on

your digital assets in a safe and secure manner for a reasonable profit. How do we do this? Well, it really just comes down to this piece of paper, boring as it is, an invoice. It is actually powerful. It is the most commercially used document in the world and it has real world asset value and that real world asset value is enabled through um global financing marketplaces, invoice financing and invoice factory where businesses essentially get a loan or an advance against their unpaid invoices. That is a really powerful marketplace that's worth $3.6 trillion today projected to be 6 trillion by 2032. So what do we do? Well, that uh marketplace needs to be modernized and we are doing

that by making invoices more tradable. What do we do? We've created DeFa, a decentralized factoring protocol by Invoice M to create uh invoices as their own trusted and tradable asset. How do we do this? We actually use the invoices as the bridge between the web 2 conventional businesses and web 3 crypto liquidity providers. And um then it you are able to take your crypto assets um and uh put put them into our liquidity pools and then we connect the thememes to the crypto liquidity pools and you get a yield on your uh digital assets that are pledged for some period of time. So how does this happen? One, we onboard unpaid invoices bymemes. Two, we tokenize the invoices on blockchain

after doing due diligence on them. And three, we connect the thememes to the crypto liquidity pools so that you can actually get cash formemes and for the crypto holders, you get a reasonable yield in a safe and transparent manner. So that is uh really a win-win and what solves my frustration of the crypto world. This is done by KYI, know your invoice. Think about it as like KYC but for invoices where we use our data to analyze whether a invoice is real, uh relatable, uh and ready for financing. We have a AI agent named KA who helps to provide data to the investors to evaluate the risk pools that they want formemes and the loans and that is helpful for allowing crypto investors to

decide what level of risk they want in our different pools. And this is all wrapped by insurance so that you don't have to worry about the risk of a default bymemes and what we have an insurance company that backs this. >> The four minutes are over. >> Thank you. >> Okay, big applause. Woo. Okay. So, say say two two minutes for questions. Two minutes for questions. >> Go in. >> We had six ear six minutes earlier today and so now we're down to four. So, >> yeah. Now it's shorter. Okay. Just go over there. It's fine. Sorry. >> Yeah. You get the questions. Okay. Do you remember?

>> Yes. >> Andrew, Nick, Oliver. >> Sure. So um >> what what do you think the I guess the USP is for investors in choosing to invest in this product as opposed to staking on other protocols? >> Yeah, I think we um because of the KYI the know your invoice we create safety. So we have already done um generated uh supported 2500 startups excuse mememes in financing $80 million worth of invoices already and generated for our lenders on the platform $1.8 $8 million worth of return and revenue. And what how we view it is it's a safe uh investment for a crypto investor like a treasury bill but with much higher yields. Our yields are about uh 10 to

14% generally could be up to 206 6% if you choose a higher risk pool. And so those yields are pretty good and pretty stable uh given the safety of our KYI platform. And most importantly, the insurance that that's really the thing. If there's a default by anme, it is insured by a company called Breach Insurance. >> One one more question for me in terms of the SMMES that you're offering the service to. What what sort of markets are you looking for and what sort of profiles of of businesses? >> So the the company's based in Abu Dhabi, the Abu Dhabi general market and it is launched by two Pakistani founders who are my longtime friends and our first markets are Pakistan and the UAE. who were focused on the Middle East because invoice financing has not happened there because banks have viewed it too risky

and so when we go to banks to get financing which we started with we explain to them that the blockchain and AI elements reduce the risk significantly and we convince them to try invoice financing so we're focused on the Middle East first our next market will be Saudi Arabia which is a very big market um we can of course bring this to Western countries but our initial markets are in these markets which traditionally have not had invoice financing formemes And so uh and we have 20 partners now that are providing the liquidity from conventional finance to stable coin lenders. So it's enough liquidity for us to grow in the years to come.

>> Um I would be interested in um learning a bit more about your traction. So how many paying clients do you already have? And the second one connected to this would be are you also planning to tap into markets where factoring is already introduced widely known and used for many many years. >> Yeah. So um as I mentioned we have supported 2500memes so far with $80 million worth of invoices financed. We've tokenized $500 million worth of invoices on blockchain. So um we are our challenge now is to get more liquidity right so that we can issue the loans. I just talked with our CEO who's in Bali at an accelerator program and they just landed a deal with Mars Capital, a

significant financing firm to provide a decent amount of liquidity for us. So, um uh to to answer your second question, would we go to markets where there's already invoice financing? Yes, we would. It's more competitive there. Um the I guess the we can probably provide some better rates with the the centralized liquidity pools. Um but you know that's why we're focusing on markets where they just do not have a tradition of invoice financing and it's hard uh in those countries to get a loan for anything. >> Okay, that's it. Thank you Jimmy. Thank you. Thank you.

>> Okay, so next we have we have the ploy CEO Oscars. Yes, please give it to So Oscar is actually a friend of the house. He joined some years back. >> We need another pen. Do we have another pen? We have another pen. Fella. Yeah. Now, I was just saying quick quick thing about Oscars. So, he joined us a few years back when we were running the European tech school. Very good student and now a very good businessman, startup founder. So, good luck. We just need a

pen. Did we get a second pen for the jury? Do we have another pen? Pen. Pen. Pen. Pen. Yeah. Okay. Good. So, now everybody has a pen. Fantastic. Okay. So, you have four minutes only. Oscars. Yeah. Four minutes. Okay. Ready? >> Yes. Uh, hello. My name is Oscar Epsis. I'm the CEO co-founder for deploy and we work with tokenized uh issuance of pri credit and uh our mission at a company is to become the global credit uh private credit utility platform for all the lenders and bankings always be on 24/7 globally. So how we work is that once a

loan has been issued by the lending company, we instantly tokenize it and fund it because we are solving the one number one problem in the business is the cash flow problems because once the lending company issues the loan, they need to replace that uh capital with something new. So they don't need to wait for the borrow repayments, but now they can actually uh grow their business with us. And we work our intentions to work globally. So we can fund uh European lenders in United States markets and United States lenders in the Middle East or Asia. So that's the so-called flow. In the next decade, we want to achieve one trillion volume with the funding and tokenized value. And there's a reason for why such big

markets needs uh tokenization. And it makes sense because investor side they want to deploy next few years over 1.3 trillion extra in prior credit. But there's uh three main problems that we're facing. One is the ill liquidity or basically we don't have no secondary markets for prior credit. Another part is about uh the transparency which I think is the most crucial part um of the tokenized uh actually of the private credit because uh we do our proprietary data analysis for investors to manage your risk uh always with insights of the loan per performance of the lending companies where you invest in. And third one is the middle guys between because

on our side we do cut quite a lot of costs and uh our solution is uh first of all transparent uh it is accessible always and glo global and uh what we do we uh connect with the lending company's data um of their portfolio and also all the performance there. We also do the underwriting policy reviews, financial analysis and at the end what we have is a security asset where investors can invest and also they have the most uh uh best on the market the risk management uh tool that we provide for them and what we do use on the technology part is already known few standards is

1155 standard and also 3475. So we use different standards together to basically create a unique product because underlying we have different uh pools. All the lending companies who are working in the mortgages will be in mortgage pool. If they are in the business loans they will be in big business pool loans. And we also reducing costs by basically um adjusting the rates how much they're um offering for the capital costs. And uh when we also work on the distribution we don't act as a marketplace we act as a distributor to exchanges to investment platforms and then of course we also work on the settlement side between the investors and also how to distriute the

investment itself the capital and the value ad of course is 70% much more faster for the lending company because they get capital much more faster. We also onboarding time is uh instead of six to nine months it's only three days with us and uh our traction is quite huge when it comes to um lending institutions we already have secured 10 there's six we have haven't updated since then uh our AR expected is uh close to 4 million we have also quite great partners including Coinbase uh our competitor side is um more of a tokenization services providers uh our revenue model is coming from tokenization volume and when it comes to

uh distribution so basically we work in European markets now we will also be working >> are done with the time >> okay fantastic okay so big applause to deploy and Oscars okay so jury members a few questions from your Right. >> Thank you for the pitch. Um, how do you actually control the quality of the loans? You've mentioned that, but I didn't get the point. So, could you please once again elaborate more on that?

>> Yeah, before we actually start collaboration, we do the financial checkup. We also do the loan portfolio assessment of the quality. So, basically, there's two indicators we always check is non-performing loans and also about the issuance, how they doing it. So those are the most um like indicators we're looking at and then once that is done we also connect to their loan portfolio performance and also reflect that to the investor side so they can always have uh real-time updates always about their uh portfolio performance.

>> Um can you tell us thank you for the presentation uh can you tell us a little bit about the the team how large is the team? what's your burning rate and your when are you break even? >> So um myself I've been in a pre credit before uh working uh for a brokerage firm uh as an onboarding team lead with over 140 credit institutions uh in 37 news sections. So that's my background. So I know quite well the alternative uh funding especially when it comes to lending companies and what type of things they need and what type of data they have. Um and um I've been also working for S Bank and I've been working for uh different other fields of DeFi.

So have also the blockchain experience. Then I have my co-founder Alexander there sitting. He's a blockchain engineer for over a decade. uh he's also one of the guys who have built the Bitcoin mining center largest one in Europe in 2016 17 using uh the recent like at that time the most recent chips from uh uh Apple and uh for the burn rate we're bootstrapped we're going live with pre-listing with with in two weeks >> any more questions >> one one if I've got five five seconds um Are we out of time or can I ask >> quick quick? Yeah.

>> Uh, you mentioned you got I think was it six clients you've got currently in the on boarding process. >> Yeah. Um, talk us through the biggest challenges with getting them live and how you're overcoming that. >> Yes. I think the biggest challenge is just do the um collaboration agreements, corporation agreement settlements and then we need to get all the data to set it up uh because we are going to be automating how we going to be uh analyzing the lending companies uh with AI tools. who going to be automatizing the financial and portfolio quality analysis. So that's the most part that is taking the time and then when it comes to integrations we just use their APIs. So basically uh and then of course also we sometimes help them to build them inside internally because uh we have the knowledge about what type of

data we need according to the loan standards. >> Amazing. So thank you. Thank you very much. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you. Okay. So now to the third finalist finalist we have David from Frank Frick >> brick. There you go. Welcome to the stage. You have four minutes. >> Hello everyone.

This is U U is a simple guy. He just finished building this first solar energy project with some money he inherited from his grandmother. He has a few friends who have a construction company who specialize in installing these ground mount solar panels. And he thought it was a good idea to enter that market. Now it turns out that was a great idea. The project is live. It's up and running and it's generating monthly cash flows for him while providing clean electricity for his community. Now that he understands the market a bit more, Uve has dreams. He has a vision.

He wants to build out more of these projects, develop a battery storage system, and is even exploring wind turbines. The problem is it's extremely difficult for Uve to secure the financing that he needs to start the construction of these projects. even though he has this this initial project that's generating cash flows that he could use as collateral. Why? Because his project is simply too small to absorb the fees imposed by the traditional financing system. And he doesn't speak the language of the investors he needs to speak to. He doesn't know what documents to provide.

He doesn't know how to build a cash flow model. He doesn't even know what a debt service coverage ratio is. All of us here, however, know that we desperately need more projects like this to be built. And this is exactly why we built FRIG. Frig is the operating system for renewable energy finance. It's a marketplace where these projects and the capital markets meet. It's a place where people create and close deals around renewable energy projects. And it's a place where investors and project developers alike obtain financial assessments and financial engineering around the projects. When we started out with Frig, we weren't sure how big the opportunity was. Turns out it's pretty massive because of three main reasons.

The first is climate change. People, governments, investors increasingly realize that we really need to scale renewable energy infrastructure if we want to mitigate the worst outcomes of climate change, especially now with the advent of AI, blockchain, and widespread electrification. Second, we believe that the market is now ripe for financial innovation. people finally understand what terms like fractionalization, bundling, tokenization, and project finance means. And that allows us to flexibly create deals that effectively open up a new asset class to investors by bringing it on chain.

And finally, we now have the digital infrastructure that we need to actually do this, notably the blockchain that allows us to securely securitize the underlying renewable energy projects into transparent, traceable, composable, and tradable securities. We work with project developers, asset managers, and investors all across the globe that share the same vision of frictionless financing for renewable energy. Beyond the marketplace and deal making capabilities that we have, we increase the level of transparency in the market with institutional grade instantaneous financial analysis around the project.

We leverage proprietary project data, benchmarks, mrological data, and financial market data to do all of this jazz here in the middle of the slide that I won't go into, but that ultimately allows investors and project developers to better assess and evaluate the project. So my message to you is this. If you know investors who are interested in real cash flow generating tangible assets or if you know people like Uve who are developing this infrastructure, send us a message. We now have around 200 projects on the platform and we're just getting started. I'm David with FIRG. Thank you for your attention.

>> Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, questions from our dear cheer members. um um renewable energy is of course a regulatory um um issue or in every country it's different. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you are planning to organize your go to market? Where do you see the largest uh opportunities and also where do you see some hurdles that I guess also exist?

>> Yeah, absolutely. It's a good question. And I'll start with the problems. Uh so we have a market which is um well it's it's split into two. There's project developers on one side who are developing these projects. These people are you know on the field with boots and they're um a specific crowd and on the other side we have institutional investors who will speak the language of finance. And so reconciling these two worlds together is sort of the challenge. In terms of the go to market, um we see it as a quite scalable model in the sense that once we find a few investors which we're actually on boarding right now um that are interested in the asset class which is now new so this small to mediumsiz segment for renewable energy um it's

relatively scalable because the pockets are quite big and the projects are typically less than 5 million euros capex give or take. Um, and so we're hoping for this or we're engineering this network effect across the platform and in terms of project developers, there's a lot of word of mouth and that's how we how we how we get it out. In addition to that, we have the SAS component which allows us to lock in both sides of the equation including also asset managers that don't necessarily have a need for financing but simply need to manage their their portfolios.

C can I ask is is there anyone else that you're aware of that's doing this right now and and how are you sort of standing out please be them? >> Yeah, great question. So there are a few companies that do something similar in the space. Uh there's there's pure marketplaces that focus exclusively on the matchmaking sometimes um preliminary documentation and then there's uh you know your your your ESG funds, private equity firms that can also do this more in a sort of um accompanied process. Our USB is really the the vertical integration of everything on one platform. So from project sourcing, documentation, analysis to then facilitating the transactions and following up with post investment monitoring.

>> Quick one. Um do you have um so basically what are the key markets that you target? So what are the key markets that what are the most sizable markets that you actually can can go on go to? >> Yeah, this is continuously evolving. Um right now we focus on small scale to medium scale medium scale renewable energy projects that's roughly 1 to 50 megawatt installed capacity. It's solar project uh wind we do a bit of run of river hydro waste to energy and what's very hot at the moment especially in Europe is um best so battery storage installations um we see a lot of movements from project developers towards hybrid models where they combine uh electricity producing component with

a battery storage component and that allows them to arbitrage from market prices. >> Thank you. Thank you, David. >> Thank you. Okay, so now please welcome to Evo from Real Real Finance. Big applause. >> Hi everyone, thank you for being here. My name is I Grior and um I'm co-founder of Real Finance. Just a quick background story uh about the team. We all come from traditional financial world. Uh my personal expertise is great risk

assessment and methodology and uh the rest of guys economics etc. So yeah quite a lot of experience there. Uh what is real? It's an EVM compatible L1 purposely built for large scale on boarding on financial assets and namely financial instruments such as uh bonds, depths and equities as well. The problem with tokenization and overall with RWA which we have identified is the trust issues and the single point of failure uh by the issuer. So that's where we came up with Rio where actually we have introduced a dual validation system. So including business entities into our

validator models and into our consensus layer. We have uh basically three main pillars which u guarantee security decentralization and trustlessness. What this means is that we have tokenization companies which are doing the due diligence and the legal uh due diligence for the actual asset. Then we have um security u basically trade scoring companies and other evaluation companies to evaluate the assets both onchain and offchain. And then we have an insurance company which actually insured the assets against default especially in case of cash flow generating assets.

Uh again current system is you know there is limited transparency, lack of innovation and slow adoption and uh excessive um centralization. With us we have uh identified that these assets can be very transparent both for retail and institutions alike. um anyone can become a validator as long as they have proof of stake and they get slashed according to their performance whether it's poor or they get incentivized uh if they're performing well and I mean that also on the business entities side as well so far um yeah so far we are partnering with three

banks uh one of them is Viner Private Bank we're backed by them uh they're a publicly traded bank in Austria. We have another bank in Latam and also uh a bank in Mina region as well. Overall the market opportunity is more than 30 trillion in terms of financial assets which can be brought onchain and u there's a lot of benefits to this. Uh overall we are aiming to have uh 500 million in the next 12 months onchain. Uh currently we are building our MVP and uh we have 20 million in assets on chain at the MVP stage through binary pad bank.

So uh I'll be happy to take any questions a few more minutes. >> So did you say you're currently building the MVP? Yes, it's um eight weeks away. >> Eight weeks away. Okay. And when do you think you'll have sort of first first customer on boarded and you know first revenue >> finer pre bank is going to basically we're going to tokenize and put on chain 20 million from their assets at MVP level.

Um can you little uh elaborate a little bit more on uh which target segments do you see as strategically critical and uh that you are planning to go into um and where do you see that um um there are you know some barriers maybe? Well uh for us it's very important to have interoperability for such kind of assets and actually use them as leverage and be able to borrow against them. So uh critical sectors it would be interbank lending at some interbank lending at some point repo deals at some point zero settlements uh directly on chain. So um

not zero settlements I mean T0 for settlement and uh yeah that would be um very barriers to entry it would be most likely the technological aspect the integration and actually bringing the onboard of uh of the assets themselves that's why we're partnering with different tokenization companies we're already partnered with bricken for tokenizing such kind of assets and we're increasing our ecosystem as we speak. >> Can you maybe uh a few words on the planned road map and um when you're planning to be break even?

>> Well uh road map as I said MVP in 8 weeks um about uh same time we're planning to launch our uh native token and in the next 10 months we're having mainet as well. Break even. >> Break even uh break even is uh 18 months from now. 18 months from now. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> Fantastic. Thank you. >> Thank you for listening. >> Thank you very much. I Okay, so now Yeah. Fantastic. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Fine. Okay guys, so uh I need to collect in a bit your points but I want to say congratulations to all the startups because well first of all we had hundreds of applications 50 finalist don't go too far away because we're going to have the winners in a bit. Yeah. Yeah. So 50 finalists and of those the few winners we had here on stage well winners selected and now in a bit we're going to have the three winners. So congratulations no matter what because it's quite impressive um how far you've went so far. So as I said the jury members are now putting the last uh

points. Are you ready? No. We're going to Yeah, it's that's it. That's it. So, what I need you to do now is help us maybe also just calculate. It's all done. Yeah. Fantastic. Very good. Very good. Don't look. Okay. Yeah. Here. Okay. Yeah. Okay. We have a last one. A last a last one here. Andrew is doing a proper analysis. Due diligence.

Good, good, good, good, good. So, we're almost there. Almost there. And we'll soon continue with a few drinks and maybe a little bit of dance. Is that what you like, Andrew? You're almost there right? Done. Okay. Yeah. Yours is a bit tricky. Names. Oh okay. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So Andrew had to do it manually. So just this is important. So we have um first point, first startup, second, third, fourth, and this is the the score. Yeah. Okay. Good. So maybe just a

a question for the due members. Do you have a clear winner? Do you think you're going to agree? >> No. No. No. >> I think everyone did really well. So >> yeah, >> my my scores were certainly very close and probably for the same as you. So it's got to be a coin toss. >> The the the four startups were very close to each other. Okay. Okay, guys. You were very close to each other. What about your case? Were they close to each other? >> Yes. Yes, close to each other. And yeah, thank you very much guys for for presenting. It's a good good job. So keep keep going.

>> Very nice. >> I'm curious. But were but in terms of the scores, were they close to each other or was there a bit of a >> three were really close? Yeah. >> So, you're going to be the one who's actually going to >> I don't know. Maybe >> because if they're very close to each other and you have one that's not so close to the three others, then we have the three winners. Maybe. Okay, guys. So, it's a little bit It's like New Year's Eve. We're almost there. Um, do we have any predictions in terms of like getting this the the winner? prediction. I would start about two minutes.

>> Yeah. Okay. Okay. Good. Good. Good. >> They're doing the math. >> They're doing the math. They're doing the math. Fantastic. Okay, guys. So, what else? Do you have any any recommendations for startups in general? Anything? Don't have Oh, yeah. Have a mic there. >> I I would say only one thing. So, I mean, you have only five minutes, right, for the pitch. I mean, you need to plan accordingly, right? So if you have to if you have like 20 slides, it doesn't make sense to to tell about every slide, right? So you need to skip some of them maybe and then focus on the most crucial points that you would like to communicate and that's it because I've seen that couple of companies didn't finish their pitch, right? So they didn't have time >> they didn't have time to finish the

pitch, right? So they they have some slides left. So >> because we were mean we were mean to them before. You had more time, right? >> You had six minutes before and now you had four. So we were a bit >> they lost two minutes. Okay. >> Poor them. But that's a bit more like pressure, you know. >> Well, anything. >> Yeah. I mean, it was a tough assignment. Four minutes is not a long time, but I guess it ultimately comes down to what do you do, where do you play, and how you're going to win? >> Yeah. I guess also what's very tricky is to have a mixed audience, right? Because if they knew, okay, I'm only going to have investors here or I'm only going to have potential clients, right? But if you have a very mixed audience, Oliver >> as as a um yeah, I think one important

point is always to um draw the vision. Um tell the story of what you're bringing to the world and then translate this into you know a revenue projection so that uh you get the the basis and the Yeah. and the the monetary outcome. I think that would be important that that has been missing a little bit sometimes. But yeah, >> you you missed a little bit of what vision you said or >> this connection from the vision to the actually monitoriization and and and the business plan. Yeah.

>> Yeah. I guess sometimes that's Yeah, that's a little tricky. That's a little tricky. I just need to see with my team how is it going. It's It's like a blockchain, you know. We're almost there. It's a slow blockchain. Sorry. >> Are they negotiating? >> Yeah. I don't know. I don't know who to who to do next block. Okay. Okay, guys. So, what else? Do you have any anything you want to add? Final words before we we have the Oh, I have something to say.

I have something to say. I forgot something. Very important. Yes. So, we have prices from our amazing sponsors and partners. We have one.io. Andrew, we have GK by Galaxy. So, I'm outside in the booth. Coin Telegraph, Nick. Asensei, you are down there. Yes. If you need help in Spain or in the EU in general, teach your lawyer. Asensei FP block, are you here?

engineering support. Okay, they are here somewhere. And Sakuro, are we here? Another of the partners. So the winner will get services from all these companies. You will be contacted later on. You're ready. Okay. Oh, wait, wait, wait. So, here's the the prices. 10K grand from Cointelegraph to the third place and also as I said before the third place of the hundreds of startups that applied to EPC startup battle 2025.

Do we have a and second place 20K brand from combined? Is it combined or what is that? I guess it combined from the different players. Do you know or was it 20K from you and then we don't know it's at least 20K worth of services. Okay. And the first place oo 40k brand and other services I think actually it comes from you but okay and then there is something on on top. Okay.

So do we have the winners? Yeah. How do I get them? Do I get a Do you get a WhatsApp? Do I You send me a letter? No, we don't know. Okay, I'm nervous now. I'm nervous. What about you guys? Evo, Oscars, David, and Jimmy, are you nervous? Are you okay? Okay. Good. Good. Good. Good.

Yeah. Good. Fantastic. I think I need to figure out I I don't understand. Are we Am I going to get the answers up here or are you writing it? Nice, nice, nice, nice. Okay. So, in a bit we'll have the winner. I'll ask uh some of our partners essentially to come up because when we hand out the prizes we'll do together. So, you stay your members. We have the winners on stage and also our partners. Yes. Good. Are you ready, Andres? Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. I think I got it. Okay. So, you start normally with the third place, right? Okay. So, number like the third place goes to Defi. Defa. Yay. It's Jimmy. >> Congratulations. Are you excited? >> I I think I'm talked out today. >> Well, I congratulations. Okay. But but yeah, stay here. Stay here. I'll I'll continue. So, second second place goes to Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We have this in a bit. Yeah. goes to Brick. Brick. Was that that pronounced

correct? >> Brick. Okay. Big applause. >> Thank you so much to the organizers. Thank you to the juries and thank you to the audience. >> So the first place goes to Are you ready? It goes to deploy Oscars. Well, I'm super surprised, but at the same time um I want to thank you so much for the given opportunity. It's my third time here in the conference and the

first time on stage and uh I'm super glad to be here as well and um yeah, I truly love what I do. That's my passion as well. I love to do things in finance and improve them. That's the most important part that I love about and I think every single founder that I met here, they are super ambitious and I'll also going to be collaborating helping them as well alongside. So, thank you. Congratulations. Okay. So now it's a picture time I

think. Yeah. If you hold that remembers. Yeah. Also, yeah, maybe you can go a bit more. Yeah. Ah, no. Not cash. Not cash price. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. The sender sender and also um Yeah. Yeah. You go to the sides. Okay. Well, let's do let's do them first. YEAH. >> OKAY. WOO! Congratulations winners of EBC Start of Battle. WOOHOO! HEY!

YIPPEE! AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING. >> You got the pictures. I'll I'll now Yeah. face partners and jury members, let's uh take a family picture all together. Yes. Let's go. Yeah. All good. You're exhausted. It's okay. Now we're going to have a drink. >> Oh, yeah. >> Okay. 3 2 1 go.