Behind the Scenes with Anchor Founder & CEO Daniel Popa

Meet the man behind the Anchor stablecoin, Founder and CEO Daniel Popa.

The serial entrepreneur found his success in innovative technologies early on starting with VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol), then conquered the Telecomms, Computer Software, and Virtual Reality spaces before venturing into the world of Crypto and Blockchain. Daniel founded 12 companies including NECC, Telecom, Pulse Telecom, ECS Soft, CCI, Timewalk, among others, which have generated over US$1 billion in revenue over the last 20 years. Daniel’s most notable success is NECC Telecom, which had more than 600 employees and several thousand contractors around the world, with revenues in excess of $54 million annually. From the US to Canada, Australia, Romania, Ukraine, and Switzerland, Daniel has operated across the world dealing with many different business cultures and legal jurisdictions.

Since March 2018, Daniel has personally invested more than half a million dollars into his visionary stablecoin project. He created a team of PhD economists and blockchain developers who have worked on projects such as Celsius Network, which resulted in the development of an algorithm that is positioned to become a global financial standard. The Monetary Measurement Unit (MMU) algorithm is the world’s first non-flationary financial index based on the global GDP to which Anchor is pegged. Any crypto or fiat currency can use this index as a stable anchor in order to preserve and appreciate its value amidst political turmoil, market volatility, and inflation. As an immediate course of action, Anchor will offer crypto traders and stablecoin enthusiasts a much desired alternative to Tether that is scalable and transparent.

We invite you to read the below Q&A to learn more about Daniel, what led to his commitment to reducing the negative impacts of economic instability, and how he conceived a solution of preserving value with an intrinsically stable, algorithm indexed to the global GDP.

Q: Where were you born and where have you lived / traveled in the world?

Daniel Popa: I was born in the beautiful mountains of Transylvania, Romania and moved to the United States with my family as a teenager in 1990. My most recent address was Miami, Florida. Since officially dedicating myself to the development of the Anchor project, I have been living in hotels all over the world, a modern nomad as they call it. I am very active with my team, and meeting with existing and potential partners all the time who are dispersed across the globe from Los Angeles to Singapore and everywhere in between. Currently, Anchor is in the middle of its global investor roadshow. Most recently we have been to Istanbul, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Los Angeles, London, and New York are next.

Q: Out of all the countries you’ve visited, what has been your favorite and why?

Daniel Popa: I have visited around twenty countries so far and I can say that each and every one of them has its own unique beauty and wonders to experience. My favorite place in the world, are the mountains in Transylvania, the place of my birth. It is a place that brings me fond memories of my childhood with fields of flowers, mountains, caves and valleys.

Q: Do you remember the day when you created the Anchor concept?

Daniel Popa: I was visiting a dear friend of mine in North Carolina where he graciously hosted my wife and I in a beautiful villa on the top of a hill next to a massive lake. I am a big fan of nature.

One day, he approached me and insisted I invest $100,000 into something called Bitcoin. I was extremely skeptical and did not invest. I believe it was July 2014 and Bitcoin was around $590.

Even though I, unfortunately, did not invest back then that was the beginning of my trip down the crypto rabbit hole. The very same day I learned about Bitcoin, I had an idea for a coin that would be intrinsically stable and not susceptible to volatility and pump and dumps, that would be based on real value and not just mining. I started working on Anchor’s tokenomics model and business plan and in one month had typed up over 380 pages.

I ended up putting that labor of love on the shelf due to my duties and responsibilities stemming from running my other companies. It wasn’t until March 2018 when I dusted it off and fully dedicated myself to the Anchor stablecoin project. One year later, Anchor has more than 35 global team members, a fully developed MMU algorithm, public test net, we are launching our MVP, and are planning to open up our private token presale mid-May.

Anchor has evolved from its original concept into something even stronger, yet remains true to its core as a stable currency and reliable measure of value.

Q: Out of the 12 companies you have built, which are your favorite and why?

Daniel Popa: Anchor is my number one favorite company. I am invigorated every day by the brilliant minds and collaboration that exists in the blockchain industry. We are all working hard to develop use cases and solve everyday problems that people and businesses face.

TimeWalk.tw is another favorite company I’ve founded as it was one of the very first Virtual Reality projects. And of course, I can’t forget about NECC, the company that made me my first million and my first one hundred million.

Q: What do you think is the key quality of a good leader?

Daniel Popa: I believe a good leader needs to have more than one key quality. One is to respect his employees and to treat them as his own family. Another one is to be able to make good decisions under pressure. A leader must always be on top of his industry and consistently distill that knowledge to his team to ensure they are always growing.

Q: If you could give one piece of advice to aspiring entrepreneurs, what would it be?

Daniel Popa: If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you.

Q: After exiting 5 companies, what are your key ingredients for a successful exit?

Daniel Popa: Key ingredients for success are customer service and maximizing ROI.

Q: What was your biggest success in life?

Daniel Popa: My kids and my staff — some of who have been with me for the last 18 years and are kind of like my kids.

Q: What was your biggest failure and lesson learned?

Daniel Popa: My biggest failures are as many as my biggest successes. I once invested $24 million in a billing software that I had to scrap. I once lost a Wireless company, that scaled so quickly, I could no longer sustain it and lost $32 million. And, there are many other failures, all which have made me stronger and more aware of the regional markets and the global economy we operate in.

Q: What are some trends you think we will see in the stablecoin market over the next 3–5 years?

Daniel Popa: I believe that banks around the world will start experimenting with stablecoins; that sovereign debt will start being enter cryptocurrencies and stablecoins; and that governments will start to accept the crypto industry finally allowing for ease of mainstream adoption.

Written by Olya Moskalenko and originally published at theanchor.io on April 5, 2019.