Meet the Companies in the Oregon Enterprise Blockchain Venture Studio (And See How They’re Using Blockchain To Solve Business Challenges)
Today, we announced the six companies, Brave, Chronicled, Concord, Everest, qiibee and Patientory participating in the Oregon Enterprise Blockchain Venture Studio (OEBVS). The Studio is designed to build a blockchain-based ecosystem and position Oregon’s businesses, institutions and software ecosystem to lead in the growth of proven enterprise solutions to serve local, national and global markets.
The Oregon Enterprise Blockchain Venture Studio encompasses both strategic partners and emerging companies, creating an environment to pilot and deploy blockchain solutions, focusing on leveraging products, services, and tools to solve targeted business objectives for the Studio Partners and to amplify these successes across Oregon and globally.
Each participating company was selected to align with a strategic area of interest with a diverse set of Studio partners including community initiatives, health records, supply chain, ad and media technology, identity management, back-office processes, and internal employee tools.
Meet the companies:
Brave
Year Founded: 2015
Based In: San Francisco, California
Leadership: Brendan Eich, CEO and Brian Bondy, CTO
The modern web browsing experience is broken, fed by ads that are data-intensive, privacy-encroaching, and potentially even dangerous. Faced with this, more than 25% of US internet users are turning to ad blockers as the solution. Brave is seeking to change the business model of the internet, starting with the front door: the web browser.
Brave Software’s fast, privacy-oriented browser, combined with its blockchain-based digital advertising platform (Basic Attention Token), is resetting the web for users, publishers, and advertisers. Users get a better, less cluttered and speedier web experience, publishers increase their revenue share, and advertisers receive better conversion.
“We’re thrilled to be selected as one of the participants for OEBVS and looking forward to collaborating with R/GA and all of the partners in a meaningful way. We hope to extend what’s possible and create new applications and programs through OEBVS, raising the bar for future collaborations. Ultimately, lifting Brave and our partner's brand awareness and sales.”
Brave currently has three products:
- The Brave Browser that blocks ads natively, resulting in faster loading, less data usage, and more privacy,
- An Ad Platform matching ads to users locally in the browser and sends them as push-style notifications and
- A Basic Attention Token (BAT) Brave browser users are paid in BAT for opting to see ads. This token can be used to pay content creators.
Chronicled
Year Founded: 2017
Based In: San Francisco, California
Leadership: Susanne Somerville, CEO, Ryan Orr, CDO and Maurizio Greco, CTO
As the world becomes more connected and always-online, global supply chains are in need of problem-solving. There are a lot of Industries lacking shared systems to communicate, transact, and enforce cross-business interaction seamlessly.
Chronicled is pioneering enterprise solutions and networks powered by blockchain to improve the way supply chains operate.
“We’re excited to work with other companies and the resources R/GA is assembling to continue to advance our thinking to bring blockchain-powered solutions to enterprises.”
Chronicled has created a complete enterprise supply chain toolkit that makes it easy to launch private blockchains, leverage protocols custom-built for supply chain use cases, and implement end-to-end, industry-specific solution packages.
They have specifically focused on the pharmaceutical industry to help solve many of the regulatory and compliance issues with an open and decentralized network for the pharmaceutical supply chain to break apart. The outcome would be dividing pharmaceutical suppliers and customers, while also building bridges for secure record-keeping of each transaction that protects every party and ensuring fidelity across supply chains.
Concord
Year Founded: 2018
Based In: Portland, Oregon
Leadership: Dash Lavine, CEO — Paul Lawbaugh, CTO and Bridget Lavine, Head of Programs
Consumers are realizing the true value of their data, and are putting pressure on brands to be more transparent. Legislation like GDPR and CCPA has created hurdles for brands, who are burdened with complicated compliance obligations.
Concord provides privacy-first data solutions that protect and reward brands and the people they engage with.
“There is a massive data crisis today that is dramatically impacting both people and brands. As a company that provides progressive privacy-first solutions to that crisis, blockchain technology is a foundational component that helps enable real trust, transparency, and control. The Oregon Enterprise Blockchain Venture Studio is a unique public-private collaboration that brings together a number of important strategic firms in order to further the industry via a movement towards real-world applications. We are excited to be a part of the program and are looking forward to working closely with R/GA Ventures and the other Studio partners.”
Concord is building a platform to help brands and consumers navigate the complex landscape of data sharing consent. On their platform, brands can build rich consumer profiles with first-person data, and offer rewards to promote data sharing.
Everest
Year Founded: 2016
Based In: Portland, Oregon & San Diego, California
Leadership: Bob Reid, CEO and Bradley Witteman, CPO
There are 1.1B people without a recognized verification of identity, 2.6B people without a bank account, and 5B people without a smartphone. This has created barriers to profitably deliver financial services in emerging markets.
Everest’s platform solves for verifiable identity, secure value exchange, and transparent accounting. By giving ID to people who do not have one, Everest enables governments, NGOs, banks, and hospitals to deliver services in areas where they previously could not
The Everest Platform combines systems for identity (“EverID”), transfer of value (“EverChain”), and digital wallet (“EverWallet”) to create a solution that can be used and spun up entirely on its own.
“We’re looking forward to gaining the valuable insight of the mentors on how best to package our solution for the partner organizations.”
qiibee
Year Founded: 2012
Based In: Zug, Switzerland
Leadership: Gabriele Giancola, CEO and Gianluca Giancola, CDO
55% of brand loyalty points are not used today. Since they are also not tradable, they are often not top of mind for consumers. Qiibee aims to solve this problem by being the global standard for loyalty on the blockchain.
Through qiibee’s plug & play solutions, businesses worldwide are running and operating loyalty programs on the blockchain in a few hours while reducing costs and maximizing customer lifetime value. Qiibee’s platform that allows brands to spin up their own blockchain-based loyalty programs, as well as control and analyze them.
For consumers, Qiibee had created a wallet that allows them to store and trade their loyalty tokens.
“We are very much looking forward to learn from all the experts and partners at OEBVS. As well as understanding how our technology can be leveraged by a leading state such as Oregon and the huge ecosystem around OEBVS.”
Patientory
Year Founded: 2015
Based In: Atlanta, Georgia
Leadership: Chrissa McFarlane, CEO and Vincent McGee, CTO
Today, electronic medical records (EMRs) are siloed, preventing patients from accessing a 360-view of their health. There is no repository for patients, their caretakers, and their physicians to quickly and seamlessly exchange information.
Patientory empowers end users globally with a secure platform to manage and transfer their health data to achieve actionable insights for improved health outcomes and well being.
Patientory’s system aggregates data from electronic medical records and other health-related database systems, as well as data from wearable devices. The platform allows patients to share this information with their healthcare providers.
“This program will be used as supplementary content for potential marketing and social media. Resources needed to help scale our business and prove ROI with blockchain technology.”
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Our Venture Studio programs are platforms for corporates to access startup innovation. Each venture studio focuses on aligning viable emerging technology solutions from the startup ecosystem with the targeted business objectives of our corporate partners.
For the startups apart of our Studios, we provide financial capital, creative capital and client relationship capital and leverage our partner’s strategic business opportunities to identify viable startup engagement. Learn more about OEBVS at www.oebvs.com.
To learn more and stay in the know, visit ventures.rga.com/studios or follow @rgaventures on Twitter.
