7 Questions with George Zlatkov, Chief Strategy Officer and one of the co-founders of 15toGO
George is an innovative and creative digital entrepreneur and business executive. A co-founder of Tripsy.club and Symbol Media Group, leading the product development and business strategy. George ensures that 15toGO’s strategy aligns with its core vision and gives the project a long-term competitive advantage.
Check his LinkedIn profile
- What is your background and why did you join 15toGO?
My background in the last 10 years has been in the fields of management and strategy. I’ve actually had the great chance to study and practice at the same time, working as an account executive and later on a team manager in an international telco company while studying Business Administration in the University of National and World Economy at the same time. It’s been tough for sure but the experience gave me, very early on my work path, the opportunity to see the actual context of business planning, team management, etc. from both academic and “working business” perspective.
A bit later on, my path crossed with this of Peter and having worked together for a while we saw the opportunity to start a communications agency. Having the entrepreneur spirit and interest to dig deeper in marketing I jumped onboard and with several other people we started Symbol Media, providing strategy, design and digital advertising to small and mid-sized clients. Going forward the team grew 5-fold, and so did the services the company provides, the number and size of the clients, as well as the know-how and responsibilities of us as partners. At certain point as a managing partner I was in charge of overseeing the team’s performance and was developing business and marketing strategies for both big clients and our own business as well. But over the years what really excited me was working with tech startups or companies. I can say I’ve always been fascinated by the way technology can make all the difference for solving business cases and help people live a better life.
So, when the idea to utilize our experience from having a successful group tours agency, Tripsy, and build a tech startup, aiming to disrupt the group travel industry, leveraging on emerging technology like blockchain, it was no-brainer for me to focus my efforts in this direction.
2. What is your role in the 15toGO team?
Most of my time I spend working on token economy and product strategy. But having the marketing agency experience I’m always happy to participate in the product design & development sessions and marketing efforts. And of course, being a co-founder, I spend a lot of my time meeting people, exchanging ideas about blockchain and token economy with them, occasionally pitching the project to potential partners or recruits.
And also, a big part of my day is saying “nah, that’s not gonna work”. Or at least it used to be… I mean the team’s been coming up with so many great ideas for solving issues lately that I cannot say my thing anymore (Laughing). But yeah, part of my role is to be the devil’s advocate, I believe in every great team there should always be someone to doubt the proposed solutions, it helps with the validation of the proposal.
3. What gets you most excited about the project?
I’m excited about solving a problem that’s been there for long time and will only deepen, if a paradigm change is not applied. I believe with 15toGO we help people spend more quality time, and in doing so we facilitate small local providers in all parts of the world to reap the fruits of their own labor.
And even more exciting for me is the way we do all this — utilizing emerging technologies like blockchain and AI and applying new economic models that were virtually non-existent in this form until now. The project from my perspective is in the focal point of technology and game-theory which are applied in a such way that the value created by the community stays within this community.
I believe today because of technology and globalization, we’re on the forefront of a change that’s happening, a process of liberalizing industries and decentralizing utilities and value creation. It’s quite refreshing and exciting to be part of all that.
4. Where do you see the project in the next few years?
Everywhere! (Laughing) No, seriously, travelling, exploring new places and cultures has always been on top of the list of people’s desires. And it’s even more so with Millennials who value experiences much higher than possessions. The group travelling segment is growing unprecedently, largely thanks to China’s economic growth, but still there’s been little innovation in the segment. So, I believe a platform like 15toGO has a market fit and will be used and adopted on a large scale by travelers all over the world.
What we’ll see in the next years is the full decentralization of the platform and the release of a public API. I’m excited to see all the usage scenarios that the community would be able to address building apps on top of the core and services layer of the ecosystem.
5. Which do you think are the main challenges that the project and the team will face?
First of all, when it comes to the project itself — the scalability of blockchain is a challenge that we all are facing now. With all the blockchain community working on this for quite some time now we’re seeing solutions in development that will certainly make it possible.
As for the product the main challenge of a Dapp is the need to reach an integration of the distributed ledger technology in a way that there are no user barriers. We need to have a user experience at least on par with what the user is used to today. We don’t want to solve a problem just to create another one for the user. That’s what some great blockchain projects suffer from today. And this reflects the project’s timeline, and specifically the project’s decentralization. It’s a challenge to implement a governance model that would allow the ecosystem to reach full decentralization, while maintaining high service quality and great user experience.
And of course as with every tech project, growing the team is challenging. We’re now roughly a 20-people team, all rockstars in their fields, but as the project grows we need to look for fresh recruits. And the demand for blockchain-related expertise now is much bigger than the supply of good talent. I’m happy to see blockchain education initiatives and companies and more devs digging into solidity lately, so we can expect a good influx of talent in the market. And also our development team is based in Bulgaria, a country esteemed for its IT talent, so we believe we’re already a step ahead on this challenge.
6. How would you describe the atmosphere around 15toGO?
If I have to use one word, I’d say ‘enthusiastic’. Everyone’s got the same vision that we’re doing something big, something with the potential to disrupt an industry. And everyone brings their A-game, so the progress is really visible and we see how our contribution brings us all one step further, and that’s a very rewarding feeling. And there’s also this thing that when you know your stuff you just somehow project confidence, so we have this atmosphere of confidence that we know where we’re going and know how to get there.
7. Tell us one interesting thing about yourself?
There’s something funny from the other day. You know this functionality of Facebook that’s telling you “On this day some years ago… ”, right. So just the other day Facebook reminded me a post from 4 years ago in which I was mocking Dogecoin and explaining to an enthusiastic friend it’s just a joke. Who would have known back then what the joke will turn into… Now we could both be Dogecoin Millionaires (Laughing).
