Ken Olling — MELD CEO Research
The recent failures of Ardana and Orbis have rocked the Cardano Community. It has left many with huge losses and a sudden shock seeing a project they thought was one of the top in the ecosystem suddenly evaporate. In hindsight, trusting a young founder fresh out of college with no relevant experience with 10 Million dollars and zero oversight probably wasn’t a wise idea. We cannot change the past, but we can learn from it. In the spirit of this, we are taking a deep dive into some of the top project’s on Cardano and assessing their founders and core team. Our first is on Ken Olling, Founder and CEO of Meld.
Track Record as a Company Founder
Nobody knows the future. The best way we have to determine future success is by looking at the past. So we looked through Ken’s LinkedIn, where he is a self described serial entrepreneur, to see the previous companies he has founded to try to get an idea of his track record as a founder.
Katachi Media Inc.
This is the first company that Ken founded according to his LinkedIn. It lists it as founded in 2010 and he worked there for 7 years.
It appears that this company no longer exists. The website listed on Linkedin is no longer in operation. And when searching the address listed, this business does not appear to be located there anymore (1370 Willow Rd., Menlo Park, CA 94025, US)
It is possible that this company still exists and is thriving, but operates with a different website and address than listed on LinkedIn. It is also possible it was acquired and absorbed by another company, resulting in a large success. But based on everything we can see, it appears that it no longer exists.
Note: Ken said this about Katachi in the MELD Telegram “And one of my last companies Katachi was bought by a private Portugese company.”
V REZ
The next Company he founded is called V Rez and it says it was started in January 2016 and his involvement ended March 2017 (1 year 3 months).
There was no profile for this company on LinkedIn. When clicking on it, the site says it no longer exists. We also were not able to find any active websites for this company. It appears that it no longer exists.
SEKAI Digital Twins
The most recent company founded by Ken is SEKAI Digital Twins. He is currently listed as the Chairman & Co-Founder. He was previously the CEO but gave up his CEO position to Bruno Kocher, who is also listed as an advisor for MELD.
Unlike the other Companies that he founded, this one appears to still be in operation and has a working website and a Telegram channel that responded to all of my questions very promptly, politely, and professionally.
SEKAI’s business was a little difficult to understand what its products are or how it makes money. The use cases for its digital twins were listed on the website.
The main product they seem to be advertising is their industrial metaverse. The whitepaper did not list which blockchain they were building on along with some other key information, so we inquired in the Telegram. They said initially they were planning to build on Solana but now due to market conditions and recent events with Solana, they are not sure where they will build. This struck us as unusual, because they are currently selling tokens without knowing which blockchain to build on.
The other thing that struck us as odd is they have initially been planning to build on Solana and not Cardano. Anyone can build anywhere they want of course, but usually the builders in this space choose a chain for a specific reason and stick with it. Selecting Solana makes you question their motives for selecting Cardano in the first place or how much they truly believe in this ecosystem. The following information was listed on the website regarding thier choice to build on Solana (image below).
The tokenomics for SEKAI are not great. 50% of them being sold through private sale, 5% going to partners, and 20% going to the team means that 75% of it is allocated for the teams benefit. In our opinion compared to other projects we have reviewed, these are not very favorable to potential users. We were told if we wanted to invest then they would create a contract, we send the money now, and then they would send me the tokens when they have their Token Generation Event (TGE).
Looking at the roadmap for the metaverse, they plan to launch on Mainnet in 2024, which is quite a ways down the road. So we have a company that was founded in 2019, that appears to be launching its main product in 2024, and is currently fundraising in 2022.
The team listed on the website gives only an avatar and first name for all of the employees. There is a LinkedIn button but it does not lead anywhere. We reached out to them on Telegram to inform them the links did not work and they said it was a bug that would be fixed. They sent a message that it was fixed but upon checking, none of the links are working, so digging into the employees is difficult.
Looking at Senior Leadership of SEKAI, they are all involved with MELD as well.
Ken Olling CEO of MELD, Former CEO and Current Chairman SEKAI
Patrick Ramsauer, CFO of Meld, CFO of SEKAI
Bruno Kocher, Advisor to MELD, CEO of SEKAI
Lavinia Radu, Advisor to MELD, COO of SEKAI
UPDATE: We note that since the original publishing of this article, MELD has been removed from the SEKAI website (image below).
Other Work History
When reviewing Ken’s work history outside of the companies he has founded, we see he has a long history going back to 1996. There are 13 positions listed which we will not add here but you can review on your own https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenblaue/details/experience/. The majority of his experience is as a freelance designer, with several large well known companies listed as clients. It is unclear how much the design experience translates into his current role as CEO.
One thing that is worth noting from the work history is that Ken worked for a different company called Meld. It appears to be a design company unrelated to the current Meld. The website listed is the exact same as the current Meld website.
Education
This is what is listed for Ken’s LinkedIn for education.
It is unclear if he has graduated from high school from the description, but it appears there is no university education. Can someone be intelligent and capable without having any formal education? Of course they can. There are countless self taught programmers in this industry who are brilliant and do amazing work. But typically, in the role of CEO, you need to have expertise in Finance, Accounting, Economics, and several other areas that are difficult to master without formal education. He could have picked up all of the knowledge and skills through his long career and life experiences, but unless you know him personally it would be difficult to assess this.
Summary
Of the three companies that Ken has founded, it appears that 2 of them no longer exist. The 3rd is building a metaverse, in the process of selling tokens, has a target completion date of 2024, has 75% of the tokens going to insiders, shares top leadership with MELD, and was being built on Solana (which may change now that Solana is in trouble). In terms of formal education, there is nothing listed that appears it would prepare someone to be a successful CEO. Does this all mean that Meld will fail or not be successful? No, it could still be a success and this article is not meant to opine on that. The goal is to present information that was found so that you can begin your own research journey into this company or others and decide for yourself.
Update
Ken went onto a Twitter space on December 4th 2022 and commented on this article.
https://twitter.com/Lidlmedewerker1/status/1599689188412076032?s=20&t=INCMpNSsgHr7Appp5Kn3qQ
Here is a summary of his response.
If the idea of looking though LinkedIn is our idea of deep and robust analysis then we are not going to do very well as an auditor.
He has had lots of companies. He has had lots of successes and lots of failures. He has absolutely zero apologies for his failures because they have made him much better at what he does.
He thinks it’s disingenuous to try and draw an immediate correlation between him and the guys at Ardana because he is 52 and this is his 9th company. He has sold 3 companies.
We didn’t do much in the way of research or analysis because then we would have found the fact that he has a patent for data analysis. We also would have found on Wikipedia that he and 2 other guys invented responsive design for web. So He thinks it was a “thin” piece.
Here is the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design
Note: We were still unable to find the other 6 companies he is referring to.
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Disclaimer
- The information in this article is produced for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended to be used as a financial promotion. No information, data, or analysis presented are intended to form the basis of any investment decision. This is not investment advice, solicitation of any kind nor an endorsement. Nothing in this document should be construed as an offer or inducement to engage in any form of investing activity.
