Introducing Pledgecamp’s Advisors

Tania Grebennik
Pledgecamp
Published in
4 min readJul 27, 2018

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When looking at a token project, it’s important to look at the quality of the founding team, advisors, and engineers. Advisors bring credibility and industry expertise to new token projects.

Having an experienced advisor who has built on the same protocol, or recently completed their own initial coin offering (ICO), provides two strategic benefits. First, the founding team can ask questions and lean on the advisors for help as they navigate their own launch. There are very few people who have gone through this exercise — and their advice can be very helpful. And second, crypto enthusiasts can use advisors and early investors as signals.

Crucially, advisors in mainstream tech and media can be the difference between a blockchain project becoming the “next big thing” vs. a niche project known mostly to crypto enthusiasts.

We are extremely proud of the quality of our advisors and the breadth of their experience. They comprise some of the world’s most influential people in technology, business, and blockchain. Take a look:

Our Advisors

Randi Zuckerberg — CEO of Zuckerberg Media, editor-in-chief (EIC) of Dot Complicated, and former Director of Market Development at Facebook

Matt Curcio — VP of Data at Ripple (XRP), a top-3 blockchain company.

Keith Teare — Founding Shareholder of TechCrunch, Executive Chairman of Accelerated Development Ventures, and serial tech entrepreneur

Ryan Scott — Founder of ICO Impact Group, CEO of AKoin, and Chairman of Causecast.

Hwang Sung Jae , PhD — Founder of FoundationX (blockchain accelerator) and former serial entrepreneur (Fluently Inc. and Pium Lab Inc.)

Jim Augustine COO, Zuckerberg Media. Managing Director of First Act Ventures, and Resident Artist in the Freshman Arts Program at Harvard University.

Ed Kim — General Partner at CryptoLux Capital, the premiere hedge fund of funds focused exclusively on cryptocurrencies and digital assets. Ed was also on the founding team of the FLP crypto-token, one of the first companies to ICO (~30M) as VP of Business Development.

Christian SullivanLP, Polychain Capital. He is a super angel investor and entrepreneur with multiple billion-dollar exits.

Ryu Jung HeeCEO, FuturePlay, a top startup accelerator in Seoul, Korea.

Alireza Masrour Managing Partner at Plug & Play Ventures, where he led more than 100 investments. Previously, he was Founder and CEO at NekaTel and Founder of VidaTel.

Liam Casey — Founder and CEO of PCH, which designs custom manufacturing solutions for Fortune 500 and startup companies. Since founding PCH in 1996, Casey has grown the company to over $900M in revenues in 2013. The company has been a huge advocate and supporter of startup hardware companies, such as LittleBits, Cue, Ringly, Drop, Navdy and Blaze, among many others.

Prince Abdullah — Saudi Royal Family. His Royal Highness Prince Abdullah Bin Bandar Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud is a member of the Saudi Royal Family with extensive knowledge and background in blockchain and entrepreneurship.

Jorge Rodriguez — Developer, Ethereum. He is a hands-on technical advisor and ethical hacker assisting with security audits and contract design.

Alan Chang — Operations Lead, Airbnb. He led Hong Kong and Northeast Asia expansion for AirBnb since 2012 and currently manages an operations team at their headquarters in San Francisco.

Jinen Kamdar — VP of Product, BuzzFeed. Previously served as the Global Director of Product at Twitter since 2010. Expert in product, marketing, and branding.

Reshma Sohoni — Founding Partner, Seedcamp. Founding partner of Seedcamp, a London-based VC firm and investor of Transferwise, Codacy, Erply, Fishbrain, Codility, Winnow, Try.com, and more.

Patrick Z. Yang — General Partner, Amnity Ventures. He is the Director of Ambassador Program for Advancing Women in Product, and a former VP at Highland Capital.

Yuri Rabinovich — CEO, VentureNetwork. Yuri has been a leader, innovator, investor, connector, and business coach for almost two decades. He possesses extensive experience launching and scaling tech startups.

Carlos Gotlib — CEO, Dreambits. Also a son of Adela Micha (Mexican journalist with various TV shows and news) with an extensive network in Mexico.

Ryon Nixon — Partner, Horizons Law. He served as counsel for various Boost VC portfolio blockchain companies.

Joe Wyatt — Partner, WilmerHale. His practice focuses on advising start-up companies and entrepreneurs in seed/venture capital financings, M&A/joint venture transactions, IPOs and general corporate matters.

Conclusion

Blockchain projects are popping up around every corner. According to Coinmarketcap, there are more than 1600 unique crypto tokens and coins on the market. With that much choice, it is important to be able to cut through the noise. We believe that the strength of the founding team, paired with a diverse group of advisors, are both positive indicators for a token project.

Interested in continuing the conversation? Join our Telegram channel and let us know what your thoughts!

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