Alan Tonetti Pitches TaoDust at Malta A.I. & Blockchain Summit
Here is what the Founder and CEO of TaoDust had to say about the platform during the Blockchain Battle!
Presenter: The last few, TaoDust is next. Hello Alan.
Alan: Hi, huge crowd. Okay hello everyone! To explain what TaoDust is let me tell you a short story.
I want to go back to 2015. I had a friend, his name is Marco, he wanted to launch a Smart-Watch company. So for doing that he needed to raise some sort of money and get funded.
So he decided to go on to an equity crowdfunding platform, selling 200,000…selling 20% of equities in exchange for 200,000 Euro and another guy from Italy, Alessandro found his project and he invested 1000 in it.
But meanwhile there was also Sascha who really loved the project and he wanted to invest ten thousand Euro but he hasn’t been able to do it because of the regulatory limitation all over the world that tells you that you can invest just in startups from your own country.
Anyway, four years pass and from that day and now the Smart-Watch company is doing pretty good. So the 1000 investment is now worth 5000, but how can our first investor exit his investment? He has three ways:
The first one is going back to the startups asking them to buy back the shares, obviously, they could say no. Second one is finding someone else to replace him in the investment obviously with a new value, but it’s not easy. The third one is waiting for an exit that could never come.
This is where TaoDust comes to help.
TaoDust is the first and only equity crowdfunding platform for startups in the world that use the blockchain to solve these kinds of problems. So basically by tokenizing assets from startups, we are able to remove all geographical limits…
…and, in that case, Sasha from Russia… could invest in an Italian startup… and bring liquidity to an illiquid market… and also use the blockchain for a real use case.
So bringing liquidity lets the investor enter an investment they missed or exit an investment they made, whenever they want!
Not only we are able to cut the cost from 10 to 15 percent that of the average market, down to 4.8.
How we do that? These are some pictures from our MVP… …and how do we do that we cut the fees up to three percent from the investor on the investment amount.
So he invests one hundred Euro and we take three and also at the end of the funding round we asked the startups to give TaoDust two percent in form of equities.
What do we do next? We are creating a TaoToken which is a financial instrument connected to platform revenue so everything that the platform will earn will be shared among token holders…and I’m done!
Presenter: Very good. Thank You. Question time!
Judge 1: So obviously you’re taking equity so you have to perform some stringent due diligence on each project?
Alan: Yeah, on the project what we will do is upon receiving a project, create a shortlist and send the shortest to some sort of auditor, I don’t know… could be KPMG… Deloitte, or whatever like them… and when they come back with the feedback we will list just the best of them. So the investor can have some sort of more trust in it.
That part of it, we will also add the Tao team value… and also we will enable investors to tell how much they like. So at the end, someone that comes from the platform will see… okay, the auditor company tells you this is what they worth. We believe this is how much it is worth, and the average investor believes this is how much it is worth…
Judge 2: You’re saying you’re gonna have the big four. KPMG, Deloitte, audit the startups that come to you?
Alan: No, we are discussing with some of them…
Judge 2: …because some of them charge 50,000 for…
Alan: No, we have a good network and well maybe KPMG, no but you know some other company to make it that the simpler in the easiest way.
Judge 3: So is this an idea right now? What is the stage?
Alan: Now it is at a stage… we have an MVP ready in two weeks and we also we are also closing deals in partnership with the hubs and the co-working space that could send us startups.
You know maybe when you start something you go there to share an office with some someone else… and those can gain us a lot, they will “send” the startups and we will evaluate.
Judge 4: What about the investors? How are you getting the investors?
Alan: well that’s just marketing. I’ve been covering for 2015 at EXPO, as head of communication and marketing reaching 1.5 billion persons with the communication plan. In 2016 I’ve been at Rio Olympics with Samsung covering the communication plan and marketing plan…
…and also from 2015 until the last year I have covered a special project with Banca Mediolanum, which is the second most important bank in Italy. So we are able to cover the average guy and also the smart-investor.
Judge 5: So you think that the industry of equity crowdfunding will move towards this direction?
Alan: Well the industry of equity crowdfunding is growing four thousand five hundred percent per year in the world… and though it is very big but with those… big problems.
Because you as an investor if you are not able to exit from your investment… Judge 5: That’s a problem…
Alan: …and that’s how we solve it.
Judge 6: Okay and do you take equity from the startups you invest in and do you have a minimum amount you are investing?
Alan: There is a maximum amount and the maximum amount the startups can raise is one million… and the 2% that we cut is a “we” but “we” share among token owners.
Presenter: Thank you so much, Alan!
Indistinguishable: Awesome!
More Information
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