Interview with Featured Pledgecamp Advisor: Matt Curcio, VP of Data at Ripple
Pledgecamp has a number of notable advisors who have helped scale organizations across the media, software, and blockchain markets. Here is our introduction and testimonial video of Pledgecamp advisor, Matt Curcio — VP of Data at Ripple.
My name is Matt Curcio, I am VP of data at Ripple. My official capacity with Pledgecamp is as a technical advisor, primarily helping with hiring, getting the platform off the ground, but also applying my expertise, and my experience in the valley of starting companies. Really helping them get this thing off the ground. I meet a lot of founders in the blockchain space and Jae, Eddie, and Sam really stood out to me. Those guys really are founders that want to make a difference and they’ve really picked a problem that I find really interesting. They stood out from all the blockchain noise and really impressed me quite a bit, so that’s why I’m here.
Crowdfunding is an important, really interesting part of technology and part of the technology world and I feel like it’s failing. Crowdfunding 2.0 is gonna be a thing that’s gonna take off and really be a massive part of the technology space. ‘Decentralize crowdfunding’, alright it makes, it’s easy to say, it’s not that complicated. What it actually means, I think, takes you a minute to realize. What are the problems in crowdfunding and what are the benefits of a decentralized system, a blockchain system, in the crowdfunding space? I think if you think about it a little bit it’s pretty obvious, right. There’s a lot of problems in crowdfunding, there’s a lot of solutions in blockchain that apply really well to each other and that’s what I like about Pledgecamp.
Crowdfunding in 1.0 I guess has a lot of problems. Crowdfunding 2.0 solves a lot of those problems. I think the primary problem really, again, it’s just trust. As an investor, as a backer, how do I know that when I’m putting my money in is actually gonna happen. A lot of people got burned in Kickstarter or got burned doing these kinds of things and you know this is why I guess the next version of these platforms makes a ton of sense. This is a trust-based blockchain backed system, whereas an investor I can guarantee that my money’s gonna go against a project that is going to be on track and I can release cash as they hit milestones. So, I think that’s fantastic. The flip side is, I think, as a creator, it forces you to think about your project, right. What are the milestones that I want to hit, how am I gonna go about this in my business, how am I going, to be honest with my investors, and backers about milestones on my project. I think I’ve seen a lot of that in the Kickstarter world where people don’t realize they’re starting a business. It’s actually a ton of work to build the product and for them to sit down and have to go through this process, I think it’s fantastic for the world.
I would describe the Pledgecamp team as being very tenacious. Really passionate about the problems that they have. Passionate about blockchain. Passionate about crowdfunding, but also with the experience of starting companies. They’ve been successful in the past, they really know what it takes to get a project off the ground, and I think this is going to be a slam dunk for them. To be a founder in this space is really not saying much, there’s a lot of founders in this space, but the really good ones are really rare. So, I think the team has done a really good job of being noticed and also sort of finding the right types of advisors and the right types of people to help them get off the ground. The founders at Pledgecamp are really impressive, so that’s what you look for as sort of an advisor or sort of the outside person. Who’s starting this company and why and not only are they fantastic in the sense that they’re technically interesting and technically proficient, they’re really really passionate. And that’s really the thing that drives you over the line I think as an advisor. Who do you want to support, where do you want to spend your time? There are people that care, it’s people that are tenacious, and it’s people that are really passionate about their project. It’s a fantastic group of people, it’s a really interesting problem, and they’re tackling it the right way. That’s a winning recipe right there.
Learn more about Pledgecamp’s other advisors by watching our YouTube video interviews and/or reading this blog post introducing them.
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