CTO End of Year Message 2021
I would like to start off by thanking our backers for trusting us with their hard-earned capital. In 2021 we secured an additional 8.5 million USD in seed funding which allowed us to mature as a company at an astonishing pace. First, we made several key hires on the business side. Or first hire for the year was Caroline Kerswell taking on the role of Head of Regulation & Legal. She has been our guiding light through the regulation process. We then proceeded to bring on David Verbeeten as our Chief Commercial Officer, Adam Adamson as Head of Insurance and Danielle Wall as our Chief Operations Officer who is very quickly becoming the glue coordinating our business efforts with our technology.
Our technical team has expanded as well, adding Aurelian Mesaros, Aleksandar Marinkovic and Marko Dumic as full-stack developers. Dalton Alexander is our new UX lead, bringing us fresh perspective on the usability of our platform, and Alex Melkonian now leads our product efforts and our cyber security.
Overall, I couldn’t be happier with how our family has grown and with how well everyone has been fitting in. As a result, we are very close to releasing the second major iteration of our platform with expanded features and contract capabilities and will be submitting our first application for an IIGB/DABA License with the Bermuda Monitoring Authority (BMA) very soon.
Remaining challenges include work on our regulatory strategy, hiring plan and remote work culture. Our regulatory journey has been full of innovation, meaning there has been expansion in both complexity as well as scope. Because of this our proposition to our users has increased significantly and we aim to continue using new technology to handle such complexity. The challenge has been how existing legal and regulatory processes can not only relate to new technology, but can enhance it, providing an appropriate bridge to a large, institutional capital base.
One of the kinks that we ironed out this year was the process of expanding our team. We have made considerable leeway by standardising our hiring process and including a “traits” interview to ensure a good cultural fit. We have also strengthened the relationship with our search firm to improve sourcing of relevant talent. More ideas need to be explored to make this process more efficient but overall 2021 has allowed us to prepare for team scaling. As a fully remote team we are always looking for creative team-building activities such as VR meetings and team trips to strengthen work culture beyond transactional zoom call execution.
Our moniker for 2022 is “The Year of Execution”. We have overcome all obstacles and there is nothing holding us back from fast deliveries on all fronts. The Defi Insuretech space and associated protocols have been blooming in 2021 and we are expecting the momentum to continue into the new year and beyond as traditional players are showing interest and aggressively looking for ways to enter this market. This is the year when all parallel efforts will artfully converge and bring forth a result that is greater than the sum of its parts. Our regulatory application will be ready for submission very soon, the second release of our platform is ready for an early 2022 release, our contracts are ready for our 2nd and 3rd audits and our SOCII cyber security audit is about to commence. I have nothing but gratitude for our newly expanded team. Without everyone’s efforts and dedication none of this would be possible.
Finally, I’d like to wish everyone a happy and relaxing holiday season, and a prosperous new year with a return to normal life.
Sincerely,
Theodore Georgas
CTO, Nayms
