Around the World in 20 days: Things I learned from the ABL Roadshow
Traveling is a behemoth of an undertaking. Even if you love the road as much as I do, the constant flux of hotels, conferences, cities, airplanes and time changes can leave even the most seasoned of veterans like.
In all seriousness though Seoul, Tokyo, Singapore, San Juan in 20 days is no small feat. The cities, the people, the ways of life, relationships forged and broken, and of course through all of this an abundance of blockchain projects, really gave me the perspective that, truly, this is a global movement. And while it may be a global movement, like all business, there is a considerable amount of politics being played in the background. I won’t get into that, but instead, I want to share with you some of ABL’s biggest takeaways from our odyssey that took us from thriving metropolis to the beaches of hurricane devastated communities.
Pitching is an Art
Seldom is it the hare that wins the race. The same can often be said of pitching. It’s not a sprint like many competitions would have you believe, but instead a constant grind of adjusting and refining, shifting and molding based on the audiences that you pitch to. The first time we officially pitched in San Francisco, I thought we had it down pat but you should never doubt the
intellect of the people in the blockchain space as almost immediately I was overwhelmed with questions that as community manager I didn’t yet have the answers to. So it was back to the drawing board, and by the time we hit Korea I was sure this time we’d have it dialed in, but no, formatting issues, and complicated slides left some feeling confused and us feeling frustrated. But we made do with what we had — and of course, we looked good while we did it.
Sometimes pitching called for a more intimate touch, as we found when conversing with investors during the Ark Advisors roadshow. By the time we hit Puerto Rico, you better believe, our pitch was immaculate and the reward for all this effort? Sweet Success, as we placed 2nd in the d10e Pitch Competition (don’t let anyone ever tell you consistency doesn’t breed results).
Incase you missed it or haven’t yet followed our other channels here’s Eriks award winning pitch at D10e Puerto Rico:
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The Old Guard is Terrified
Facebook and Google, recently banned ads for ICO’s and cryptocurrencies. In addition to this, we see the SEC’s continual flip-flopping on legislative tone throwing us for a perpetual loop. They’ll deny it saying “who, us? No, we’re not scared, we’d never be scared,” but there’s no doubt that the days of free ownership of user data is coming to an end. This prospect that industries might have to pay their dues to the people they currently derive all their information from is an uncomfortable one, and so you better believe they’re going to pull out all the stops to fight us.
It’s too bad for them that fighting the growing tidal wave is a futile task, and while the media may be quick to dismiss the space, with mainstream sources taking every opportunity to gloat or denounce (i’m looking at you John Oliver), there can be no doubt of the migration that is occurring. The only question is will we ever see the real return of the public sale here in the west? Or is it already too late for the average North American to be on the ground floor of these projects? The barriers now in place “for their own protection,” to block them from what is the largest wealth generation event of our time.
But if we’re swimming in murky legal waters, the individual that bares foresight is king. The real sharks in the oceans are these regulatory bodies and covering your bases early on and taking absolute diligence will save you many headaches from the impending crackdown.
The Rise of Silicon Beach
Brock Pierce isn’t wrong when he says that there’s a certain magic in San Juan. That, and the definite need to rebuild. Three blockchain events back to back acted like a beacon to anyone and everyone in the space to converge and reconstruct Puerto Rico’s ravaged infrastructure. The result was a colliding of worlds. Old money, new money, Burning man billionaires and Rockefeller regents all in the same space discussing how they were going to change the world and rebuild Puerto Rico into a beacon of the future.
The tax incentives don’t hurt either. With a 4% fixed income tax rate, more than a few organizations are looking to set up shop in the area. And who could blame them? The Cryptocurrency market is a speculative one as it stands and so in that spirit, I would speculate that as long the trajectory maintains its current course over the next five years you’ll see San Juan become a hub for technology, blockchain or otherwise. A sort of Silicon Beach, if you will.
The spirit is willing as they say. But for this vision of blockchain to reach its full potential, we still need to be educated and grow our numbers considerably. As it stands, there are 18.2 million software developers in the world, and that’s expected to increase to 26.4 by 2019. Out of that number, only 5.5 thousand are blockchain developers meaning there is a considerable scarcity of talent needed to execute on the visions of projects in the space.
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