Interview with Flipside Crypto’s New Chief Operating Officer, Matt Bridges
We’re excited to welcome Matt Bridges as the new Chief Operating Officer at Flipside Crypto! From building software with Ray Kurzweil to growing and exiting a business to Accenture, Matt has spent his career at the forefront of technological innovation. In this insightful interview, we sat down with Matt to learn about his unique journey into blockchain, what excites him about Flipside, and his take on the role of COO.
1. Everyone has a unique path into blockchain and yours is no exception. From building technology with Ray Kurzweil to scaling and exiting a company to Accenture, you’ve spent your career turning experimental technology into consumer products. Can you tell us a little about your background and how you got into blockchain?
Matt Bridges: When I was a sophomore in college, I took a class on AI where Ray Kurzweil’s book The Age of Spiritual Machines was part of the curriculum. After realizing Ray lived in the same town as me, I called up his office and asked if there was any work for a computer science major on winter break. An initial three-week stint led to twelve years of incubating pattern recognition and AI technology with Ray, from natural language processing to quantitative stock trading.
One of the technologies we took to market there was a hand-held reading machine for blind and visually impaired people. It was a device that could read printed materials aloud, and our prototype was literally a digital camera strapped to a PDA. As phones started to get better cameras and more powerful processors, we moved the product to mobile phones, and I was instantly hooked. I joined Intrepid, a mobile development company, to pursue that passion. We grew alongside the explosion in mobile from 10 people to 150 people, and were then acquired by Accenture.
My position at Accenture afforded me the opportunity to see how some of the largest companies in the world approach technology adoption. I was surprised to see how much of an impact blockchain was making not only in the finance industry but everywhere, from retail to insurance to logistics. As I was looking for opportunities to re-enter the startup world, I was fascinated by Flipside’s unique position to help raise the game of the entire blockchain playing field. Growing blockchains need crucial insights to help them make the right decisions as they mature into thriving businesses.
2. What would you say is unique about building and scaling product in blockchain vs more traditional industries?
MB: Blockchain projects have a set of ecosystem stakeholders that aren’t present in traditional products: The third party miners, stakers, and validators that make up the infrastructure of the chain. Whereas a traditional product might buy or deploy new technology to solve an infrastructure problem, blockchain platforms must also think about economic incentivization for those third parties. Product iteration in this environment is slower and harder to measure.
Further complicating matters is the fact that financial speculation on the underlying asset can bring unintended consequences — a project may hyperfocus on an asset’s price and lose sight of the value they meant to bring in the first place.
3. The COO role is often quite ambiguous and takes different shapes and forms. How do you view the COO’s role within a growing tech company?
MB: I see the COO as accountable for how well an organization executes against the vision of the company set by the CEO.
Being the COO means never having the luxury to say “not my problem.”
At tech companies, it’s important to have a solid cross-functional understanding of how all parts of business operate, including things like engineering, design, and product.
4. What would you say is holding blockchain back from large-scale adoption?
MB: Blockchain suffers from what I like to call the “referee” problem. When a referee is doing the best possible job, nobody should know their name. But when a referee blows a call in a big game, all of a sudden they are famous (looking at you, Joey Crawford). Blockchain is complex and technically challenging, and it should be a supporting technology that disappears to most end users.
When done right, blockchain should work silently behind the scenes while applications built on top enjoy the benefits of decentralization, immutability, and efficiency.
5. Do you have a professional life philosophy or set of principles that guide how you operate in the world?
MB: First, I think it’s important to set goals that are challenging and really stretch you, which means you’re going to fail sometimes. If you consistently meet the goals you set for yourself, your bar is probably too low, because you need to fail in order to know where the boundaries are.
I’m not sure where I first heard this, but I’ve always liked the saying “‘Fine is a four-letter word that starts with F.” We can always do better than “fine,” whether that’s a response to asking how your day is going or getting feedback on a product from a customer. Whenever someone tells me they’re fine, it’s a sign that there’s a problem worth solving there.
To learn more about how Flipside enables blockchain organizations to grow, visit https://flipsidecrypto.com/crypto-projects and access your free analytics dashboard today.
