New Strategic Advisor: Sarutobi + IQ Labs
IQ Labs is thrilled to announce that Sarutobi will be working with our team as a strategic advisor!
Being the Head of Partnerships at Yield Guild Games and the founder of BlackPool Academy, Sarutobi knows his way around the world of blockchain. And being a lifelong tech fanatic, his passion for gaming and blockchain only keeps growing.
Bringing with him 14 years of experience in sales and partnership strategies, will make for an excellent advisor to our team. Sarutobi will offer us valuable insights in a number of ways.
What kind of role will Sarutobi have?
Product feedback and user experience are top priority for IQ. Given Sarutobi’s experience with the challenges that games and guilds face, getting the product right and the user experience to be a seamless one is of the utmost importance.
Sarutobi will offer direction in our building relations with gaming guilds (a massively untapped market in the world of Web3 asset renting). He’ll offer guidance as to how IQ can appeal to Guilds and Scholars. In addition, he’ll advise not just on the functionality of our lending protocol, but also bring knowledge from games network perspective — something of vital importance to better understanding the needs and wants of our clients.
Sarutobi is a big supporter of our goals and vision! As he put it:
I believe that more and more games will be adopting blockchain technology and NFTs. Platforms like IQ Protocol will only become increasingly important.
This is because digital-asset lending solutions are one of the most meaningful components enabling the success of blockchain gaming and allowing for greater capital efficiency and more democratic access to the assets required for participation in emergent virtual economies.
Already, Sarutobi has provided a deeper level of guidance on the challenges of the Web3 gaming industry — and how best to address them! — as well as offering suggestions as to how our platform could begin to solve these challenges.
Sarutobi will work directly with the IQ teams (product and business development) at least on a bi-monthly basis. Tom Tirman (IQ Labs Co-Founder) will also work one-on-one with Sarutobi so that IQ can benefit from his guidance at a higher, strategic level.
How did this partnership come about?
Great question!
Earlier on in our platform’s development, IQ was able to connect with Yield Guild Games. The goal was to explore a potential collaboration, in which IQ Protocol would be made available for guilds. Our main point of contact was Sarutobi.
Not long after initial discussions, Tom Tirman was invited to the Human & Machine podcast to speak on the convergence of DeFi and gaming. Having recently met with Sarutobi, Tom thought it would be a great idea to invite him to the stream (with Tom representing IQ, and Sarutobi representing YGG).
Our relationship with Sarutobi continued to grow after that! Eventually, after getting to know a bit more about our big-picture vision for IQ, Sarutobi expressed interest to invest in IQ and also to assist our team in an advisory capacity.
We were very excited by the offer! As Tom Tirman put it,
I am extremely excited to have Sarutobi join the IQ team as an advisor!
In addition to his 10+ year experience in sales oriented roles, Sarutobi’s current role as YGG Head of Partnerships means that he brings unparalleled internal understanding of how guilds operate. He also has extensive knowledge of how Web3 games are structured, and of the biggest challenges these new industries are facing before they can onboard the next 100 million users.
There is no doubt he’ll be an important advisor in our growth ahead!
Ultimately, Sarutobi brings a level of experience that is rare to find in the industry. He’s got a unique and in-depth understanding of the GameFi sector, having worked with hundreds of games and game-founders, as well as dozens of guilds.
Sarutobi’s current role as YGG Head of Partnerships will also facilitate introductions between IQ and other games going forward. This will open the door for IQ to tap into a vast P2E ecosystem to implement the best possible renting/DeFi solution to solve issues in this quickly-growing and evolving industry!
We look forward to working closely with Sarutobi!
About IQ Protocol
IQ Protocol is a blockchain project providing a decentralized money market for digital asset renting and on-chain subscriptions. The next money lego that allows users to rent wrapped expirable versions of digital assets without collateral, while allowing holders to earn by providing liquidity without risk.
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