Vicky Ludbrook

Music courtesy of BlackIrisFilms.com

INTRO

You’re listening to Unleashed with the Dacxi Chain, hosted by Andy Pickering. Hey, folks, it is Andy here. Welcome to episode three of Unleashed with the Dacxi Chain, the podcast that features experts from both within Dacxi and also from outside the ecosystem, from across the industry, people who are here to share their insights on developments shaping the wonderful world of blockchain, VC, and crowdfunding, all that good stuff. Today we have a very special guest. His name is Mark Van Rijmenam. I hope I’ve got your name right. Mark, welcome to the show. So, Mark, I’ll get you to introduce yourself, but essentially you are a very interesting character. You’re a futurist, you’re a strategist, you’re a speaker, you’re an author and an expert, I think, on disruptive technology and disruptive innovation. So I’m really interested to talk to you today about how myself, how Dacxi, the listeners, and people all around the world, how we can benefit and leverage the power of emerging technologies such as Big Data, Blockchain, Tokenization, AI, the Metaverse, all that good stuff. But before we get into it, please, Mark, could you please just give us a little bit of your story and your background?

GUEST INTRO

Sure, happy to do so, Andy. So I am a future tech strategist, as you mentioned, which means that I think about emerging technologies and how to change organizations and society. I’ve done that for over a decade now. As part of this work, I write books. I’ve written four books. One on big data, one on blockchain, and one on the combination of Big Data, Blockchain, and AI, which was basically a management book version of my Ph.D. And my fourth book, which was published recently, is called Step into the Metaverse, which is all about how we can create an open metaverse, which I’m a big proponent of. I’m also a speaker. I’ve been doing this for over a decade, helping Fortune 500 companies understand these emerging technologies and how they change their business and how they can apply these technologies in ways that are beneficial to them for the organization as well as for their customers and their employees. And I run a media platform called Dataflok, and I have recently started a new research institute called the Digital Futures Institute with the objective to ensure a fair digital future for everyone. Because with my very deep expertise in emerging technologies, I am kind of worried about the future, that we might not end up on the right side of history. And I want to do whatever I can in my ability to sort of move that needle so that 10, 20, 30 years from now will end up on the right side of history and not in a world where state or corporate surveillance, whether intentionally or unintentionally, is the way forward. So that’s something that I’m very passionate about. Now, how can we use technology? Because technology, in the end, is neutral, but how can we use these brilliant technologies in ways that are beneficial to everyone?

ANDY’S COMMENTS

Yeah. Absolutely fascinating. Mark. And for listeners who want to see some of what Mark is talking about there, he has a great website which is just simply the digitalspeaker.com and there’s links to all those different books, articles, podcasts, keynotes and we’ll probably circle back and discuss some of those avenues today. Certainly want to cover those books. To begin with, Mark, then you’ve talked about being a futurist and a strategist and working with companies around the world too, I suppose advise them on how to best leverage new and exciting technologies. But of course, also make sure they don’t fall into some of these pitfalls that can trip people up as well. Just talk to us a little bit about the kind of work you do and the value you can bring to organizations in that capacity.

MARK’S COMMENTS

Sure. So the work that I do is basically revolves around helping the top layers of large companies to understand these technologies. I do that both through keynotes, like 45/90 minutes keynotes, as well as boardroom workshops where either in half a day or a day I take a board of a large company and help them understand these technologies and how they are affecting their business. Because my vision very much is that if you want to digitally transform your organization and to do so in the correct way, you need to have a shared understanding of what these technologies mean for your organization. And the starting point with that, at least the top of an organization should have that perspective and should have a clear overview of an understanding of what is matter for us or what is AI and how blockchain affects our organization. But you need to have that shared understanding before you can do anything about that. So that’s what I do all around the world. I’ve travelled to, I think, 25, 30 countries, helped over 100,000 executives in different forms with these technologies, and to help them understand them and have a positive effect on the bottom line as well as on society.

ANDY’S COMMENTS

Yeah, fantastic. And we’ll dig into some of these areas a bit more shortly. Really want to talk a little bit about blockchain, tokenization, and well, probably the metaverse as well with you, Mark, but I’d love to just get your perspectives on these kinds of emerging technologies. They’re not even emerging really. I mean, you could say the metaverse is emerging, but we’ve had blockchain for ten years or so, same with AI, but everything is now beginning to look sufficiently advanced, I think. And when you factor in the power of exponential growth and some of these different technology trends starting to intersect and interact with each other and then you just get the effects start to compound once we go exponential. Are people aware of just how fast this kind of technological change is happening, do you think?

MARK’S COMMENTS

No, definitely not. And people always overestimate the short-term and underestimate the long-term. And I think that’s exactly what we see happening with these emerging technologies. Because of what’s happening at the moment, we see there’s a convergence of technologies. So AI and quantum computing, blockchain and VR, and just name a few technologies. But all these technologies are converging. And that ensures that we sort of, as I always say, live in exponential times because the developments are going so fast at the moment. And what I think is a great example is we only have to look at, for example, synthetic media, where we see how much that has changed over the past couple of months, where all of a sudden we had simple technology, where you could generate some images. And now we already have stable diffusion where we can generate, like, a complete small video just with a string of words. And that happened in such a short period of time that I can only imagine what will happen two to three or five years from now. And I think the fact that technology is evolving so fast at the moment, for many people, that’s just a big unknown. But if you as an organization want to prepare yourself for tomorrow, you have to understand what’s happening today and how fast this is all changing. That’s also why I call my newsletter the FX equalise to the Power X, which is the exponential function. It’s a bit nerdy, but I think it’s also quite funny because we need to think exponentially nowadays. But that’s very difficult for humans. We’ve never been taught to think exponentially. We never needed to think exponentially because when we were living on the savannah 100,000 years ago, there was no need to think long term, to think exponential. But now in this world, we have to think that way. So it requires a change in how we look at the world. And I think that is very, very challenging for many organizations. And obviously, I can’t blame anyone because everyone is focusing on running their organization, making sure that everything runs smoothly. But at the same time, we need to make that shift. We need to achieve this different perspective with that starts to shift where you either see the duck or the rabbit. You can’t see them both at once. You need to make a change. And I think that’s crucial in today’s world where the technologies are converging and we truly live in experiential times.

ANDY’S COMMENTS

Yeah, such great points there, Mark. And look, I’m sure you’ve read this book as well because you talking there, it just takes me straight back to it. And the book I’m talking about is one of my favorites. It is called The singularity is  coming by Ray Kurzweil. And in it, he talks about the law of accelerating returns and the path to which, you know, humanity can essentially invent smarter than human artificial intelligence, which he projects will happen in 2045. But one of the reasons that we get there is because of exponential growth. And I love the way you reminded me, Mark, about how the human brain is just not wired to understand exponential growth. And the example I always like to use is the chessboard problem, which I’m sure you’re very familiar with, and listeners just very similar. Simply, the idea is, if you took a chessboard and you put one grain of rice on the first square, and then two grains of rice on the second, and then four on the third, and so on, so you just simply doubled the number of grains of rice on every square. By the end of the chessboard, which is only 64 squares, the total number of grains of rice would be 18,446,744,073,709,551,615, which is a lot of rice, Mark.

MARK’S COMMENTS

Definitely. I think it’s actually more than there are atoms in the known universe. So it’s it sort of gives you an idea of what what exponentiality does. And that’s you know what? I’ve been saying for many years, that we now live in exponential times. But I can see now that we will be getting out of the hockey stick and the example that I gave you of synthetic media or Generative AI, which all of a sudden popped out of nowhere in the media. And everyone is talking about it at the moment. And there’s 100 million there, 100 million there in startups being funded. That’s what I call exponentiality. All of a sudden, it just booms and explodes. And now we need to learn what these technologies mean for us and how it affects media and how it affects democracy. Because if we can fake everything with AI, then how will it influence our lives? How will it influence the work of marketers? How will it influence the work of social media? How will it influence the work of podcasts? Because you can clone your voice nowadays, and with text audio, we don’t need to be here anymore. And you might have seen that I think it’s a podcast of AI, where you have Joe Rogan interviewing Steve Jobs. And for those who haven’t listened to it, go listen to that because it’s mind-blowing. It’s purely AI talking to AI. And you have two people having a natural conversation. Yeah, there are some quirks and some things that are odd, but in general, it sounds like Joe Rogan, it sounds like Steve Jobs having a natural conversation. And it could be real if it weren’t that Steve Jobs is already dead for over ten years. I think that’s a prime example of living in exponential times.

ANDY’S COMMENTS

I very much agree. Look, I want to talk about tokenization a little bit, Mark. So if we’ve established that all these different technology trends are simply speeding up and we’re going to simply have the world faces turbulent and wild times ahead, but at the same time, there are incredible advantages and improvements and efficiencies at scale all across the world that these technology trends enable. And one of those is the tokenization and democratization, I think, of global markets. Right? Which is something we’re very passionate about and very interested about in here at Dacxi with the Dacxi Chain. So I saw on your website, Mark, the digital speaker, you had a fantastic article about all of this stuff. I think it’s called Moving to a tokenized economy – Challenges and Opportunities.

MARK’S COMMENTS

Yeah. So I think from tokenization or decentralized technology or Blockchain technology in one general, I think that’s a fundamental technology that will rewrite how our society runs, our society operates. And when I started doing my Ph.D. at the University of Technology in Sydney in 2016, I first focused on big data and design thinking because that’s what my first book was about. But towards the middle of 2016, I sort of came across Blockchain. And that was at the time of the Dow Hack. And I dove into this technology and I quickly realized that this technology is such a fundamental technology that we need to understand better and that we need to use to improve our society. That’s why I wrote my second book, Blockchain, together with Dr. Philip O’Brien on how we can use blockchain technology for social good. At the time I was living in Australia. I moved back to the Netherlands. I’m Dutch and I was part of one of the founding board members of this Foundation in the Netherlands focused on how can we bring tokenization to the Netherlands, how can we tokenize an economy, how can we tokenize a country, how can we involve the regulators to use this fantastic technology for the betterment of society? And I think if you look at tokenization from that perspective, there are so many opportunities to improve our supply chains, to improve how we run our society that I think for me it’s just a natural thing that we need to move that towards that. But yes, it’s very, very early days. Blockchain has only been around for a little bit more over a decade and that’s nothing in terms of technology. I think there’s still a lot of work to be done. There’s a lot of hard work being done by the Web3 community. And I think in the next decade or so, all that work will come to fruition where we have decentralized finance or metaverse finance or all these different protocols that we’re coming into place that will allow us to really rewrite how we operate our society.

ANDY’S COMMENTS

Yeah, very much so. I very much agree with you, Mark, and the promise and potential of the Dacxi Chain, if we’re talking about the Dacxi Chain at a high level, the vision really is that global crowdfunding has stalled out a little bit and the Dacxi Chain is here to fix it. And I think the way that Dacxi sees this, the vision is to create the world’s leading global tokenized crowdfunding ecosystem. Connect both innovators and investors all over the world so the world’s best innovators are able to bring their ideas to life and investors have access to those kinds of opportunities. Can you see value in that vision, Mark? 

MARK’S COMMENTS

100%. I think the beauty of tokenized economy is that we have this peer-to-peer system where someone’s looking for something and somebody bring together supply and demand without a centralized authority that can control that or can change that in ways that are neither good for the supplier nor for the demand side. And I think by doing that cryptographically, by using tokenized systems to bring together that supply and demand, I think that will make our society a lot more effective, a lot more efficient, a lot faster and more importantly, also a lot more decentralized where we don’t have a centralized entity that controls which direction to go or not. And I think that is very, very powerful. So I definitely see opportunities of bringing this crowdfunding in a peer to peer decentralized fashion together. I think it will end up good for all parties because those people giving money will have better quality products and those people receiving the money will receive more of the money. So I think it’s a win-win situation generally.

ANDY’S COMMENTS

Fantastic. Thank you for that. Mark, you’ve written two books I can see on your website. One was on the blockchain. It’s called Blockchain – Transforming your business and our world. So this was from a few years ago, and then you’ve got a brand new book, Step into the Metaverse. So we’ll do the Metaverse in a minute because it is the new one. But from what I can see here, you were one of the first authors, first Blockchain authors back in 2018. I think this was published. What was it like writing a book on Blockchain back then?

MARK’S COMMENTS

Well, there was a lot of hype going on. There were a lot of scams going on, a lot of ICO. You might remember the end of 2017, and early 2018, Bitcoin went from $3000 to $20,000. You know, there was a lot of noise going on in the market. And I think that’s really problematic. I think that still is a problem for Blockchain. You know, Blockchain still has a branding issue, still has a PR problem, which is very annoying because it is such a fundamental technology. And writing it that back then was pioneering. We talked to many companies who were exploring this option, but many people didn’t had a clue what it actually meant. But you could already see the first developments happening within the space of truly innovative solutions. And of course, fast forward five years and we see that many of the things that we described in the book are now coming to fruition. It takes so much more time because it’s just very difficult technology to build. And I find it interesting to see that back then we were looking at how can this technology change how we operate our society. And we saw this vision that blockchain can be used for social goods, to improve democracy, to improve fair trade, to reduce fake news and those kinds of things. A lot of the things that we now brilliant companies are now working towards. And I think that’s fantastic to see. But it also shows me that development and technological developments are often slower than what we wish for. And of course, I think it was Jack Dorsey who said, I think it was 2010 or so in 2015, when he said “we wish we were having flying cars, and all we have is 140 characters”. I can’t remember who said it, but that’s exactly the point. Because this technology is hard and we want it to move faster, but it just takes time to develop. And now we are seeing the first direction where this technology is coming to fruition and can be used to really structurally improve our society.

ANDY’S COMMENTS

​​Yeah. And I enjoyed that quote from Jack Dorsey, of course, famously the founder of Twitter and an OG bitcoin guy himself. And listeners of a certain age will remember, of course, the famous flying cars from the Jetsons. We still don’t have those. But it also reminds me of a famous quote, Mark, by Bill Gates, and I think you’ll relate to this, and I think it really does apply to blockchain. So Bill Gates famously said that we tend to overestimate what we can accomplish in two years and underestimate what we can accomplish in ten. And this kind of speaks to the power of exponential growth and technology and what an S curve looks like. Mark, you talked about being just at the bottom of that hockey stick. So sometimes not a lot can happen in those first kind of two years or on a wider scale, the first ten years of blockchain. But then when the hockey stick starts to go vertical, things can happen much more quickly than you might think in ten years. You can accomplish a lot, right? 

MARK’S COMMENTS

100%. Yeah, I think that that’s exactly what we’re experiencing at the moment. And that’s why I think I’m really excited about the next decade and how all things will change in the coming decade, and where all these technologies are converging, I think we are really living in fascinating times at the moment.

ANDY’S COMMENTS

And so fascinating that, of course, one of the big trends of the last two years, of course, has been this idea of the metaverse. And you’ve written a book, so you’re doing well. Mark, obviously you’re a futurist, so this is kind of your job to be ahead of these trends. But I love that you’ve been ahead of the trends and being able to not only write but publish a book on blockchain, sort of towards the beginning of 2018, I think. So, you know, you timed that 2017 boom very well, and now you’ve written and published a book on the metaverse. What’s your take on the metaverse? Tell us about stepping into the metaverse and how an immersive Internet will unlock a trillion dollar social economy. 

MARK’S COMMENTS

Yes, definitely. So I think the metaverse is really the next iteration of the Internet. We’ve had from the first web. A lot of people refer to that as web onto the mobile web or the social web, which a lot of people refer to as Web2. I think the next iteration will be the immersive web, and a lot of people say that Web3 equals the metaverses, which I disagree with, because the metaverse can be perfectly built without Web3 technology. Mr. Zuckerberg is hard at work to try to achieve that, but I don’t think that is a world that I want to live in. But I think the metaverse is really where the digital and the physical are converging, whether the physical move into the digital and the digital move into the physical, and we move to an incident that is as pervasive as the air that we breathe. And we move to the Internet, where we move from 2D to 3D. And I think that in itself changes everything. Because humans are made for 3D, we’re not made for 2D. So when we now have the internet we can interact with in novel ways, not only on 2D screens, whether it’s a smartphone or a computer, but we can interact with the internet everywhere and anywhere at any given moment. I think that’s revolutionary. And we’ll see what will happen in the next ten years, the amount of data that we create for this immersive internet will be 101,000 times more data than we have created today, which is already an enormous amount of data that we create. And that’s where with this book step into the metaverse, my objective was to write a blueprint for an open metaverse, for a metaverse where we control our own data, where we control our own digital assets, and when we control our own digital and physical identity. And I think that’s crucial because if we don’t do that, I think we’ll end up in a Dystopian future. A bit like Ready Player One or Snow Crash and I don’t want to live in a future like that. So that’s why I wrote the book step in the metaverse from that perspective. And that’s why I’ve now started my research institute, as I mentioned at the start of our conversation, to ensure this fair digital future. Because we are at the moment, we are at the cusp of moving from a 2D incident to a 3D incident. And that gives us a very short period of time to rewrite the rules, to redo it again and to fix the mistakes that we’ve made for the first part of the first 20 years. And because in the first 20 years, it sort of overcame us. We sleepwalked into this world where we have all these amazing technologies which are super easy to use, and are often free. And we all know that if it’s free, you are the product. And now we move to the next iteration and we have this very brief opportunity, a couple of years maybe, if we are lucky, to change that. And we said that to get back that control of our own data before it ends up in the hands of big tech, which will then be exponentially bigger because of the amount of data that we create. And once we reach that stage, it’s too late and we can’t change it anymore. That was the objective of the book. What do we need to do to ensure that this metaverse do not end up in the Zuckerberg’s world, but ends up in the hands of you and me.

ANDY’S COMMENTS

Inspirational stuff, listening to you talk there. Mark. I love it. And I’m fired up and I love some of the references you brought in there. Like, I’m a fan of Sci-Fi science fiction. And the thing about Sci-Fi is so much of futurist, Sci-Fi, for some reason, ends up being Dystopian. I think it’s just more entertaining to have those kinds of dystopian futures. So you talked about Ready Player One. You referenced, of course, Snow Crash, which is the novel by Neil Stevenson, who, of course, coined the term metaverse to describe the kind of shared, always online world that was, as you’ve kind of described, controlled in this Dystopian future by centralized big parties, the same way that our online environment is today. So, yeah, I mean, fascinating. Mark, what can we do then? Because you’re right to try and make the case for why it is so important that users be able to control and own their own digital assets, their digital identities, and be able to trade freely, peer to peer with each other around the world. This is what blockchain protocols are supposed to enable. At the same time, there’s a big battle with the likes of the entrenched players Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple. You may have seen this week, Apple said that they were going to allow NFTs into different iOS apps, but that the NFT’s couldn’t be used to unlock any new content or anything like that. So it kind of defeats the purpose of being able to own your own NFTs within the walled garden that is the Apple ecosystem. Do you know what I mean?

MARK’S COMMENTS

100%. And I think the challenge here is that many people just don’t know. And I can’t blame anyone because everyone is busy living their lives and doing whatever they want to do. But it’s sort of as if you are living in a country and you don’t speak the language, how are you going to move around? How are you going to get what you want? How are you going to be able to control whatever you have if you don’t understand, if you don’t speak the language of the country that you’re in? That’s exactly the same situation that we’re in at the moment. A lot of people might understand the digital world. They might be able to use computers in very decent fashion, but are they truly digitally literate? Do they have an understanding of how to behave in the digital world? Also look at, for example, the next generation, generation Z which was born after 95, generation Alpha, those born after 2010. These are the digital natives. They are more than anyone else, they understand the technology. But are they able to truly use this technology to empower themselves? Are they able to use the technology? Do they understand how to behave in a digital world? And I doubt it. I’ve seen plenty of examples of kids on roadblocks. There are plenty of examples of things going pear-shaped. And my idea is that if we want to take back that control. We first need to learn to speak the language because if we don’t speak the language, we can’t interact and we can’t have a conversation with that big tech. So we need to understand what is going on. And that’s the focus point of the DigitalFutures Institute is ensuring that educational aspect for enterprise and government, because enterprises apply the technology and the government needs to make the regulation but also for the stakeholders. And they’re building our digital future, the startup, and scale up because otherwise, we end up in the same situation as 20 years ago when new startups had a great idea and they made this amazing technology in such a way and then sort of ended up in a world where they have world domination without really thinking about the consequences. And this happens all the time today, where people just want to focus on building the technology without focusing on the consequences of whatever they are building. And I think you should focus on what are you building or what are the consequences and how can it be used in nefarious ways because it will be used in nefarious ways. And then there’s of course the general public because they are the ones who are consuming the technology. If you don’t understand what the impact of technology is, we are in dire straits. Look at, for example, the latest QuestPro that was released a couple of weeks ago. Undoubtedly a brilliant VR headset, or actually an XR headset. Great technology, but the amount of data that will be collected with that device is unbelievable. It’s the eye tracking where they know how long you’re you look at something, how diluted your eyes are, how wet your eyes are, and  how long you are hovering over a subject. But with the cameras in the front of the system of the tool, it can scan your room, it can scan what’s in your room, it can scan the people in your room, it knows who’s in your room, it can detect what your hands are, or whether you have a tremor in your hands, which could indicate a disease. And all this information will be used for advertising. I can just write it out because Zuckerberg spent $15 billion on this technology. He wanted to recoup something of this. And that sort of worries me because at the moment there’s a shiny new technology, people flock to it like lemmings without really thinking about what the consequences are of these technologies. And in this case, this meta Questpro could very well be a Trojan horse, which we all get addicted to it only for more of our data to end up in the hands of Zuckerberg. And we sort of know the history of Zuckerberg, so we should really stay away from that, I think. But since we are unknown of this, we don’t think about it and we think it’s harmless, but we need to become aware of this. We need to move from an unknown phase to a known phase. And then once we understand and once we understand the language, then we can interact with it and then we are better able to make our decisions whether we want that or we don’t want that. 

ANDY’S COMMENTS

Wonderfully said again, Mark, and I think you’re right. There’s a growing awareness, certainly around the world, certainly this idea of if a product is free, then you are the product. People are aware of that. It’s just a trade-off with these platforms. Maybe as we start to finish off then, Mark, just any closing thoughts generally on how people can just stay prepared? I mean, people are obviously very busy just with their day-to-day lives and people have sometimes limited bandwidth outside of that. But it’s very important for people just to consider the changing world around them. What can people do just to kind of prepare themselves for this exponential technology change that is going to impact them? And I suppose we’re really talking about especially those younger generations that you mentioned, Mark, what can people do to just prepare any way they can?

MARK’S COMMENTS

It’s a very good question. I think as I said, one of them is education. And education goes through reading, through watching videos, and listening to podcasts. That’s the first step. Once you’ve done that, try to practice a little bit. Try to experiment, try to investigate. What is this blockchain? What is crypto? How do I buy Crypto? How do synthetic media work? What is VR? How can I use VR? What happens to my data? Just try to explore it. Try to do it, because the moment you start doing it, you start to better understand what’s happening. And above all, remain critical. Just don’t accept any just terms and conditions because you’re too lazy to read. And mind you, I’m making those same mistakes. I’m not a saint here, but we should really move in that direction where we, on the one hand, require companies to talk in plain language. I think, actually, New Zealand recently announced law where you have to have plain language. I think terms of conditions, if I’m correct, that’s a fantastic move forward. And all countries should have that where if you want to join a platform or a technology in one single paper, the company should be able to explain to you in clear terms so that anyone can understand what happens to your data, to the product that you use. And then you are able to make an informed decision whether you want it or not. Nowadays, all the temporary conditions sometimes are there longer than the US Constitution, which is ridiculous. And I think that is a clear objective for regulators around the world to enforce that, to make that a law. So it’s fantastic to see that happening in New Zealand. So I think it’s a combination of as I write in my book, it’s a combination of verification, education, and regulation. And I think if once we incorporate these three components, I think we have a chance to create an open metaverse to regain control of our own data and not become dependent and enslaved by big tech.

ANDY’S COMMENTS

I love it. Very well said. Again, Mark, thank you for that. I think it’s time to close out the show.It has been absolutely fantastic talking to you today, Mark. I really enjoyed hearing your perspectives on our changing world and the exponential change. This is happening across all technology vectors, and, of course, the promise and potential of a tokenized global economy and what the Dacxi Chain can bring to this global crowdfunding scene. Lots to talk about, as always. Close it out. Mark, please tell the people again where they can go to learn more about your books, your strategy work, your keynote speaking, and all that good stuff. Where should people go?

MARK’S COMMENTS

People should go to digitalspeaker.com where you can find almost 1000 articles that I’ve written in the past decade. You can find my keynote videos, my books, links to my social media profiles on Twitter and LinkedIn, Instagram, etc, and happy to connect. Please reach out if you have any questions and thank you for having me. 

ANDY’S FINAL COMMENTS

All right, well, there you go, team. That was Mark Van Rijmenam. Very interesting guy with some incredible perspectives on where technology is going and where humanity is going with it. Very interesting indeed. Really enjoyed roughing on science fiction, exponential growth, and all that good stuff with Mark. So, look, listeners, I hope you enjoyed that. I hope you learned something. I hope you got some value from it. We talked a little bit about the tokenized economy and the Dacxi Chain, but Mark being Mark, I just also wanted to really draw on Mark’s expertise across all the different sectors of technology, and I think we accomplished that today. I certainly enjoyed it, and I hope you did too. So, hey, thank you for listening. That was another episode of Unleashed with the Dacxi Chain. Please make sure that you’re subscribed to the podcast in whatever podcast app you are using so you know when each new episode drops. Also would love it if you gave us a five-star rating, and even leave us a nice review. All that stuff really helps and we would appreciate it. All right, thank you again, team. I will see you real soon. See you next time. Bye for now.

Music courtesy of BlackIrisFilms.com

INTRO

Hey, folks, Andy here. Welcome to episode two of Unleashed with the Dacxi Chain, the podcast that features experts both from within Dacxi and from across the industry. Experts are here to share their insights on the developments that are shaping the global crowdfunding economy, tech startups, and all that good stuff. Today we have a very special guest. His name is Colin Klein. Colin is the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Scalerr, which I think is an Aussie company it helps high-growth technology startups and scale-ups. And I think Colin’s role at Scalerr is to really help tech startups scale their businesses in new international markets. Very excited to have you here, Colin. Welcome to the show.

GUEST INTRO

Andy. Honestly, thank you so much for having me on the show. Massive fan of what Dacxi does. I know that I’ve spoken to the team at length about this and am just thrilled to be able to do this, thrilled to be able to add some value. And I’ll elaborate on how all of this ties in. So my background, I actually used to be an accountant once upon a time and then I ended up transitioning into tech recruitment. So I have owned the business now for nine years and for a good seven to eight of those years, we just had a recruitment business and we solely focused on working with tech startups. Now, in 2020, I asked myself a question that very much changed the entire trajectory of the business and, quite frankly, the trajectory of my entire career. And that is, why do international tech startups from Israel, America, the United Kingdom, and wherever it is, why do they approach me for help to find them a managing director of Asia Pacific, head of sales for Australia and New Zealand, salesperson or country manager in South Korea? And it was upon digging into it and asking that question, I guess it really opened up my entire perspective into the world of valuations, investments and what are some of the underlying needs. Effectively the reason why global businesses were asking for my help to help them expand into Asia Pacific and why Australian companies are asking for my help to help them expand into the UK and the US is whenever a tech company can go to another country, can pick up a couple of customers in that country. It now shows that this is a globally scalable business model. So they have clients in, let’s say, Israel, and now they have clients in Australia. It shows that there’s a much larger market size. It shows the complete division of the founders. It shows that this is a globally replicable business. And effectively that grows the valuation of the company in the eyes of investors. So for the past nine years, I’ve effectively been helping companies to tech startups to grow their valuation. I just happen to be delivering it through the model of recruitment. Upon this realization, and having worked with a large number of Nasdaq-listed companies, and a large number of pre-IPO companies, I realized that a lot of the work which I am doing directly influences the success and valuation, and growth of a business. Like, as example, Wix is a client of mine. I’ve helped Wix, which is Nasdaqlisted, to land and expand in Australia, Mexico, Brazil, India, France, and Japan. And these are new global markets, all of them appearing on their balance sheet. It’s effectively one of the reasons why Wix has actually held up relatively well in the current downturn within tech because they’re a globally scaling business. So we diversify our business model. We ourselves started looking at early-stage investments. I’ve now invested in three companies, and these are businesses where I can come on board as a smart investor. And I know how they can enter global markets, how they should run their channel and alliances strategy, how they need to do a go-to-market strategy, how they need to evaluate, I suppose, what grants and incentives are available to launch in a new market. So, effectively, we’ve created the business scaler because our focus really is on working with that early to mid-stage tech companies and scaling the business and scaling the valuation of the company. So that is my full three-minute sales pitch.

ANDY’S COMMENTS

I love it. Fantastic. You’re just the right man for me to talk to today then, Colin. And I suppose the goal, if you like, of the Dacxi Chain is to create the world’s leading global crowdfunding ecosystem. That’s what it’s all about. That is where we’re heading. So I’d love to pick your brain, if that’s okay, Colin, and just kind of get a vibe, some insights from yourself. Maybe we can start off with in terms of Australia because that’s where you’re based. So how would you describe the state of the early-stage funding market in Australia at the moment?

COLIN’S COMMENTS

Yeah, I’ll generalize it, and then I’ll make it a little bit more specific. Sure. The state of the funding market in Australia is quite underdeveloped per capita, or I guess per capita in the top 30 countries by GDP. We are actually one of the lowest in terms of people, just regular people like yourself and myself investing in early-stage tech startups. So Israel and Sweden are the top two. Singapore is actually quite high up there as well. But Australia is quite far off the mark because a lot of people just simply don’t know how to do this and it’s kind of been exclusive to VC firms and family offices or people that have connections. Now there are a couple of areas that buck that trend. In Australia, prop tech. We actually have one of the highest concentrations of prop techs, med techs, and of fintech and Payments Tech in the world. And because of the network effect of let’s just say domain or a realestate.com dot au or a Sikhin the world say HR Tech or an Afterpay and Zip, it’s created quite a few people that have come up with us through those systems which know how to evaluate what a good startup looks like. So in some of those sectors, the state of early-stage funding is actually okay. But in general, within tech, we are somewhat lagging behind because it’s prohibitive. People need to know people. It’s quite illiquid. So I know that it’s growing and it’s changing but there still is quite a long way to go in Australia in my opinion.

ANDY’S COMMENTS

And what would you say? Do you have some advice that you would give to early-stage businesses that are just reaching that stage where they want to seek to find some capital, they want to get some new funding? What advice would you give them at the moment? 

COLIN’S COMMENTS

The advice that I would give them is if you want to grow and scale your business, success leaves clues. Many of the world’s most successful tech companies have gone out to seek venture capital funding. Now, I think it’s very, very valuable because you will now get given the resources that can push your business into the next stage. Let’s just say with a $5 million rejection you can now go ahead to hire a head of sales and performance marketing team, and a channel, and alliances partnerships manager so you can take that 5 million and you can see tangible growth within your monthly recurring revenue. So I think it’s really vital that businesses do it. The advice that I would give is that a lot of businesses are really desperate to get capital without realizing that not every single venture capitalist is the right answer for their business. A lot of the times they will partner with VCs which don’t really add value and my biggest recommendation is a partner with VCs that can help to grow and scale your business so that they can offer something different. So, for example, a VC that has also worked with similar types of companies can appoint somebody to the board of directors within your business who can coach and mentor and lead them. Or a VC that happens to know recruitment. So then they know who are the people that you need to be putting in place, exactly how much that’s going to cost, and where to be able to get that from. Or, say, a VC, which is exceptional in PR and marketing. So if they’ve invested in you, they know how to get you published in the Financial Review or various publications like Tech Crunch Tech in Asia. And of course, the other one is VCs that don’t take dilutive equity. Instead, they can do something like debt financing but provide you with the money that will really help to kick you into that next stage, like get you that key highlight ahead of sales or an enterprise account executive that can really take your business to the next level. That is the advice that I would give to businesses that are seeking capital. It needs to be a good fit and you need to partner with someone that’s going to add value to you genuinely.

ANDY’S COMMENTS

Yes, I think that’s really good advice, Colin. And it is interesting that you talk about, I suppose almost like, the pros and cons of VC investing, right? Because yeah, I mean it’s great if you can get some venture capital, but they really can come with what can be a double, double-edged sword. So VC funding, it’s not always in the best interest of early-stage companies, right?

COLIN’S COMMENTS

Correct, I agree with that 100%. A company has to remember when you go for VC funding, there have been cases where a company gives away so much of its equity that the founders of the business are no longer in control of the business and can effectively get pushed out of the business. Now, sometimes that may end up doing well because sometimes the founder is actually holding it up and they are better off stepping into a different type of position. It’s just one of those things to be mindful of, that the more that you are giving away, you need to understand that you are very much going to be beholden to the VC and if the VC is not adding something extra to you, it ends up being quite a stressful situation.And I think the founders need to consider this.

ANDY’S COMMENTS

Yeah, very much. But of course, the flip side is this funding gap. So here at Dacxi, we’re very much aware that there’s a funding gap, particularly with these kinds of early-stage businesses. Interested in your thoughts, Colin, in terms of any problems that you typically see that businesses can struggle with if they have insufficient funding at that early stage. And any thoughts on roughly what percentage of those businesses that are looking for that funding at that early stage? How many do you think are able to successfully access that funding, that capital versus those that unfortunately cannot?

COLIN’S COMMENTS

Sure. So I beread about that question in a couple of different ways. So let’s just say it’s a completely early staged business that has obtained no funding. And I know quite a few businesses like this where they could only bootstrap it for so long, but at some stage, they’re going to need to invest in a key hire. And that can be an operations manager that already has the startup experience within your sector, or a sales leader, or managing director, whatever it is, but someone who genuinely already comes with the experience in growing a startup within your sector because they can take you to the next level. The other one that I’ve seen is companies that have raised the capital, but it’s actually not enough to see it through to fruition to be able to take the company from A to B. And I’ve seen businesses where excellent they’ve gone on, they’ve raised $2 million, but what they actually needed is to raise something like $4 million. And it leaves them in a state of limbo where they have raised the capital. And typically when you raise it, you invest in things like marketing, hiring, etc, etc. So they now have been able to develop their product, but they’ve made a mistake where they’ve overspent on talent and hired people from Amazon and Microsoft as opposed to looking at people who have got the startup experience, and now they’re out of cash and now they’ve got a product, but they don’t have anybody to sell it. And it’s one of those mistakes that can be quite easily avoided if a business actually seeks advice on, right, what is the amount of money that we’re looking for? And specifically, what is it that we’re going to invest it into? And genuinely getting good advice in terms of how much is all of that going to cost? Because it’s when companies make the mistake of either overspending on hires or underestimating how much particular talent or expansion will cost, that when they fall short, that’s when they need to give away even more equity, or that’s honestly where a lot of companies can just crash and burn and go under because they haven’t thought of that. It’s something that businesses really need to consider. And I strongly suggest actually getting professional advice to avoid that situation.

ANDY’S COMMENTS

Yes, indeed, that is great advice, as always.Get professional advice, listeners. Another problem, Colin, is just the limited number of investors. How many investors are there in the available pool, if you like? And one of the reasons for that is, of course, the infamous accredited investor rule. This is obviously very different depending on what country you might live in around the world. But generally speaking, do you think the accredited investor rules stifle innovation because they restrict the number of potential investors?

COLIN’S COMMENTS

I think so. The reason why, as I was saying at the start of this, the ecosystem of investment in Australia is growing. The ecosystem of tech in Australia is growing. I think 15 years ago we didn’t have a unicorn and then, it’s kind of like the exponential growth curve. Then came the Atlassian, then the Canvas, then the Afterpay. So it really, really starts to grow and to accelerate. But the fact is, these businesses, Mr. YAMMERS, another one, have had to go overseas to get their massive capital raises. The reason they’ve had to go overseas to get the massive cap raises is we don’t necessarily have the experience in Australia of let’s give a business 100 million or 200 million to really ramp up its growth. We don’t do sizes like that, but because we don’t do that. We don’t have the experience of VCs that knows how to just rapidly scale and make a business super, super successful. You find those types of VCs in places like Israel and America, as well as Singapore, and London, you have quite a few. But then we have our laws, which restrict the world’s smartest VCs that have a proven track record and rapidly scaling businesses. It restricts them from getting access to them because of some of the laws that you were speaking about. So I do think that they actually stifle innovation. I understand the reason that they’re there, but I think that if we are to be serious about being a tech powerhouse and really growing in this particular space, I think that there are changes that can be brought to encourage more investment and to get expertise from abroad to create something like World and Israel has.

ANDY’S COMMENTS

Yes, indeed, Colin. And look, if we zoom out for a second and kind of speak about this more generally, let’s say hypothetically if we had a world where there were like exponentially more successful early-stage businesses, what would your thoughts be on what would that world look like? What would be the benefits in that world? How would it help the economy? Would it be a better world to live in?

COLIN’S COMMENTS

Yeah. So the thing is, innovation solves problems. Innovation solves problems across a number of different industries. I look at Israel as an example just because it’s a sector that I’ve done quite a lot of work in because they need to very much innovate because of the circumstances that the country is in. It creates some incredible solutions that really change much of the world that we operate in. They’ve had some of the most amazing breakthroughs in medical science and biomedical technology. Just crazy advancements, like 3D printing of, let’s just say a tooth, for example. Incredible advancements in terms of agriculture and agritech. So they have a device that you can take out into the ocean water. It filters the water and now it’s drinkable. They were able to make, effectively, plants grow within the middle of the desert through a deep vein technology, AG tech, as well as they also created a combination between a solar panel and a wind turbine so that it’s constantly getting energy. Now, innovation solves problems. And incredible businesses, as an example, in America, there was a lady which was actually close to creating a treatment that attacks coronaviruses of any kind. So not just COVID-19 or something special, but of any kind. But she wasn’t actually able to get it through and get the funding and get stifled. The more entrepreneurship that is encouraged, the more that people can identify a particular problem in the world and be able to create a solution for it. But then if they actually knew how to commercialize and grow and scale and obtain the funding for their solution, it would be incredible for the economy, and Australia would turn into a powerhouse. We could do something like what Israel or San Francisco has, but we have so many successful tech startups that are growing, that are going abroad, solving genuine problems within the world. So we could diversify our economy, let’s just sayin’ Melbourne, away from heavily focusing on education or professional services, or to be able to diversify it away from the reliance upon mining oil and gas. And the thing is, we know this as a matter of fact because there are other countries in the world that are doing this. Like, if you look at a place like India, they’ve done this historically, Chennai was pretty much famous solely for medicine. And then they started creating this entire innovation hub just that’s, creating unicorns. Indonesia has had exactly the same benefit. They’ve created five of the biggest e-commerce unicorns in the world. And what that means is that there’s now an entirely new ecosystem spawning other entrepreneurs that are rapidly dragging up the economy. But you also look on the flip side, where there’s no entrepreneurship happening and there are no tech stops getting created. In a place like Japan, where culturally there is so much honor associated with staying with one of the big companies like a Mitsubishi or a Panasonic for 22 to 30 years, people aren’t going down to starting startups, and their economy and their GDP, their stock market has effectively been flat for 30 years. So entrepreneurship solves issues, entrepreneurship creates jobs, and entrepreneurship is creating the jobs of the future, the technologies of the future, and it’s enhancing the entire human experience. That is why it’s so crucial to do, in my opinion.

ANDY’S COMMENTS

Yes indeed. I love it. Very exciting stuff. Colin, thank you so much for that. Yeah, I mean, and that really is what the Dacxi Chain is all about. Unleashing that global innovation for the bitterness of everyone, the bitterness of the planet. Let’s start to finish off. Colin, it’s been fantastic talking to you today. You’re based in Melbourne, so you’ve been hanging out with some of the local Aussie Dacxi crew as I understand it.

COLIN’S COMMENTS

Yeah, I have. So I’m based in Melbourne, and I’ve lived in Singapore. I’m heading back up to Singapore in a couple of months’ time as well, but I’ve kind of lived right across Australia, so yeah, absolutely hanging out with the local Dacxi crew. And I just wanted to say I am a huge fan of what Dacxi is trying to do. I think it’s amazing for a number of reasons. Number one, the solution that you guys have thought of as a way to solve some challenges, like liquidity problems or having to rely upon people who you have to know somebody to be able to get into this sector, it also opens up investments that can potentially be life-changing. It’s been quite well known that some of the greatest investments or the greatest multipliers are unlisted investments. If people think of Facebook as this incredible business that’s made so many people so much money, what they don’t realize is that the companies like Facebook and Twitter, something like 90 plus percent of the wealth that was generated, but that was created from the investment in that company was actually done when they were pre IPO. It was the early-stage investors in the business. Only 10% of the wealth that was generated is after the company was publicly listed. But it’s nearly impossible to be able to get into the early stage unless you know people because of the liquidity issues. And I just think that Dacxi is not only allowing people to invest in incredible businesses from right across the world, but it’s also bringing an entirely new audience that’s got a genuine interest that can genuinely add value and be able to access incredible investments. I am a huge believer in what you guys are doing and I’m really looking forward to seeing the growth and scale of the company. I think that it’s absolutely needed the innovation that you guys have come up with.

ANDY’S FINAL COMMENTS

Brilliantly said. Colin, again, thank you so much. Really enjoyed hearing your perspectives both on Dacxi and on early-stage investing around the world and of course, in Australia. Hey, as I said, Colin, fantastic to talk to you. All right, well, there you go, team. How good was that? That was Colin Klein, of course, the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Scalerr, which is an Aussie company as we learned. Yeah, helping high-growth tech startups to scale up, is simple as that. Fascinating to hear Colin talk and of course, great to learn that Colin is very much up to date with what is happening with Dacxi and is obviously spending time on the ground in Australia with some of the Dacxi team.So fantastic to hear Colin’s belief in the Dacxi project and what the Dacxi Chain is trying to achieve. And really that’s what this podcast is all about. We’re just slowly building the narrative around the Dacxi Chain, what it is to create the world’s leading global crowdfunding ecosystem, solving problems both for early-stage businesses and of course, for investors, and connecting innovators and investors all around the world, empowering everyone to bring their best creative ideas to life. And it all comes back to encouraging innovation, which is one of the key takeaways I took from Colin today.

Anyway, I do hope you enjoyed that. That was episode two of the Dacxi Chain podcast: Unleashed with the Dacxi Chain. Hey, if you enjoyed the show, please do us a favor. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast. The easiest way to do that is probably just to listen in either Spotify or Apple podcasts. Those are the two main platforms, but there are others where the podcast is. Wherever you’re listening today, just press the subscribe button. And also, I would really appreciate it if you could give us a rating. Five stars would be great. That’ll help. All right, team, that is today’s episode. We’ll be back real soon with episode three.