Q&A — Hector Rodríguez-Luna, co-founder & COO of BRAVO.

Mr. Backwards
Sep 5, 2018 · 9 min read

Today I’m sharing a Q&A with Hector Rodríguez, the co-founder of BRAVO.

Cryptocurrencies are inevitably tied to, yes.. payments of course. But after some talks with the team of BRAVO it came clear they have a different approach of micropayments than I have personally seen before.

BRAVO is not here to replace Bitcoin, Ethereum, fiat, or any currency at all.
So what are they here for? And why do we need them?

BRAVO’s co-founders Dr. Hector Rodríguez-Luna (COO) & Maria Del Carmen Luna (CEO)

The blockchain industry is still a young one, so logically you have a different background. What did you do before and how did you came in contact with cryptocurrencies and blockchain?

I have worked with technology since early 2000 when doing medical research at Mayo Clinic. A different type of research on artificial neural networks.

Naturally, I always had a deep interest in promising technologies that truly have the potential for enhancing people’s lives.

Then it came: blockchain. A technology with the potential to empower (in many ways, financially, legally) and 100% protect the consumer.

In fact, our “aha moment” for BRAVO was not far away from these pillars.

“We didn’t have money to pay our tour guide and realized how common it is to not have cash at the time of a gratuity”

After this moment we thought about 3 other as important issues related to a payment:

  1. How do we pay a stranger while protecting our identity?
  2. How to make a peer-to-peer micropayment?
  3. How to make it fast and seamlessly?

The BRAVO blockchain and application layer solves these issues.

Ok, I get the idea. I experience it myself as well, on a lot of cashless transactions I am not able to give tips anymore. So what’s the solution BRAVO came up with?

To be clear, BRAVO is about micropayments and perhaps, when we grow, I believe it’s a solution for macro payments as well.

Gratuities are the quintessential scenario where you are paying a relatively small payment to an unknown so there is a need for privacy of the users. However, the solution is for all type of patents with the same principle of negligible fees and privacy. What is different is that we give control to our users on how much privacy they need. Basically, privacy on demand.

The BRAVO platform has a hybrid blockchain protocol with several blockchain technologies in one and it is built by us as we do not run on a third party protocol like a dApp. Then, the application (application layer) simplifies the user experience so the users can pay with a swipe of a thumb with cryptocurrency, a user experience not currently available in the crypto world. This is the results of years of R&D to incorporate a robust technology with the simplicity of use.

How does your previous professional experience help you taking BRAVO to the next level?

The team is a good combination of business, science, technology, and entrepreneurship. Our CEO is an MBA with years of experience in consumer products, market analysis, and product launch. My early days of research on artificial intelligence opened a door to a much larger science, and later software development.

As a physician, I always had an interest in solving problems that affect us, always had a goal of helping and fixing problems and I believe my medical background has disciplined and shaped how I approach challenges and solutions. You may think about why a physician should operate in technology, well, I have always been in technology since my research on ANN.

The leadership team of BRAVO.

Our CTO is well versed in technology and has years of experience in different technologies along with a solid history of working in well-known technology companies. Paul, our lead blockchain engineer and Tanmay are brilliant. However, at BRAVO we are like a family, everybody is as instrumental as the other.

There is lots of criticism in regards of utility tokens, lots of tokens aren’t used but solely bought for speculative reasons. As coming from an established business, why does BRAVO needs its own token, and how are you going to stimulate the usage of your token?

The criticism on utility tokens goes back to existing for a purpose and having a real use case. As you know, many tokens have been created without a clear purpose and therefore, end up in speculative investment pools by a small group as they never had a real use case, need or purpose. We believe tokens with a real use case and purpose have a role in the economy and ecosystem.

For once, you need to look at the company behind the token and the use case. Is there a market for the token and what is the history of the company behind the token? What are the company milestones?

For us, we launched our beta product in the United States to process fiat microtransactions to empower the hard working service industry professional, musicians and anybody receiving micro-payments. Our platform is based on anonymity protocols with encryption or tokenizations.

BRAVO already has a working product based on fiat payments.

Once we proved the concept, we planned to build our blockchain protocol and token to efficiently manage transaction cost, speed, and security. It is known that institutional payments carry several “interchange rate” fees that inflate the cost and makes the microtransaction prohibitive. This massive cost disappears with the BVO token.

Our blockchain is efficient and inexpensive. It can also process payments extremely fast and protects the payment as it is immutable.

“We looked at available blockchain options in the market but in order to provide our users a robust experience and enhanced features like anonymity and incognito payments on demand, we felt the best option was to build our own blockchain.”

We have worked over the last 3 years in building a community and this is important as BRAVO exists for a purpose, to financially empower people here in the United States and across the world. That’s another reason why a BVO token makes sense.

Access.
The token can be bought during our ICO but after the ICO, users can acquire the token at exchanges or even through the BRAVO application. There will be easy access in terms of user experience, ease of purchase and payment between users.

Ecosystem.
So far, blockchain payment systems (for lack of better words) are still massively geared towards:

  1. highly technically savvy people;
  2. investors and miners.

So what about the “real” consumers, the real end users?

Mass adoption requires an ecosystem with: a strong basis for an economy of simple, daily usage of crypto payments. An exchanger is an integral part of the ecosystem, but it is not the ecosystem.

So what is missing? A simple user experience. This is perhaps the biggest barrier to adoption.

I am sure most of us will agree that buying a token is not like sending a text message or a payment with BRAVO. Basically, a swipe and you pay — there is no reason why it shouldn’t be that easy.

From a peer-to-peer perspective, working in payments, at BRAVO we have learned that the ideal platform should allow the user to:

  • have a quick & seamless onboarding in seconds;
  • execute a transaction without entering long private/public keys;
  • never ever lose access, control and ownership to your tokens.

We at BRAVO believe that the ideal system has to be robust on the backend, yet seamless to use for the end user, a system where each member has a vested interest to keep the network from being compromised.

Overall, finance is about an experience, not a product.

We believe in a human-centric platform with a simple user experience, utility in our daily lives and trust (in the team behind it and well as in the technology and the ability to keep our data private and secure).

And that is precisely what we created at BRAVO: A next generation, mainstream, anonymous crypto payments solution for day to day use for a generation that values simplicity, security, and anonymity in payments.

So who is the average BRAVO user?

BRAVO was created as a simple tool for seamless anonymous tipping or payments and has been adopted in the United States by service industry professionals and their customers such as valet attendants, bellhops, massage therapists, hairdressers, bartenders baristas, tour guides, nail technicians, entertainers, musicians, and creators, amongst others.

We have created business relationships with companies such as Integrity Valet, American Valet, Desert Valet, Epic Valet, Bullseye events, Alice Cooper’s Solid Rock, the legendary Whiskey A GoGo bar in Los Angeles, Unplugged LA, Austin Pedicab Company, Quick Silver Transportation, School of Rock AZ, Wishita Theater company, a pilot program with Marriott Courtyard in Scottsdale, Sip Coffee, Poetic Soul Open Mic, 247 Productions and event services, 3D Transportation, ABM Janitorial Services, AB Staffig, ACE Parking Management, Allstate Transmission Auto repair, FlyNYON, Hidden Kitchen, Fayuca Beer, Pedal Haus, HauteHaus Burlesque, Hideaway Massage, Sharkey’s Cuts for Kids, and many others.

BRAVO has a strong presence in the current music industry around the United States and continues to expand its presence across the United States and now other countries. BRAVO has recognized the opportunity to become a payment leader in facilitating transactions for buskers tipping, video streaming tipping, small event tickets, private concert merchandise sales, and other payment transactions related to the entertainment industry; all on your mobile device.

The idea’s simplicity led to other rapidly-growing verticals and is now positioned to be the platform that powers day-to-day cryptocurrency micro- and macro-payments for merchants and for peer to peer payments like when you want to settle a debt with another person or simply send a gift.

Most ICO’s like BRAVO give discounts to early investors during private rounds or so called “angel investors”.

ICO token discount + allocation.

How are you going to keep these investors committed to BRAVO and make sure they’re not trading away their tokens that harm public ICO investors?

While we value support from angel groups, we feel it is paramount to protect our community and foundation, the use case and platform. To accomplish this, BRAVO founders, developers, early employees, and ambassadors, as well as investors, will have token lock-up periods that will be defined and set up at smart contract level.

There’s been a trend where the public demands that companies who did an ICO clearly communicate about the allocation of their funds with their community.

Allocation of funds raised through BRAVO’s ICO.

How will BRAVO approach this matter?

BRAVO ‘s foundation (or base to prevent confusion with “the bravo foundation”) is goodwill and transparency. The allocation is already public and immutable with clear expectation and deliverables. The allocation is contractual and set up in smart contracts which will be public and accessible by all. In addition, we will continue an open dialog with our community with updates.

Token allocation.

One characteristic of BRAVO is the superb customer service with consistent customer support. This is also refreshing on the industry where customer support is lacking. Users can reach out any time.

Thank you for elaborating on these matters. In regards to your roadmap, what would be the most significant milestone?

We have a well-defined roadmap with already delivered milestones and future deliverables. However, to us, the most significant milestone is a broad vision of BRAVO, it is when we are empowering the hard working man and woman everywhere in the world.

Last but not least, how can someone participate in the ICO?

You can signup for the whitelist at bvo.trybravo.com.

The community can also participate by joining our private sale as long as the person qualifies based on restrictions by contacting investors@trybravo.com or during our sale.

___________________________________________________________________

I am not a financial advisor who tells people to buy certain assets.

Nevertheless I do am very enthusiastic about companies that make the transition to blockchain solutions with a user experience enhancing mindset like BRAVO.

Although you must understand, my time is limited. That’s why I got compensated for my time to write this article.

Thanks for reading,

Mr. Backwards

Mr. Backwards

Written by

Born in 2046, going backwards since.

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