为什么区块链值得 All In? 十个全球创业者用亲身经历证明
作者：AJ Agrawal，Verma创始人
翻译：八维资本研究院
新兴领域的创业者们总是面临着传统创业者们不常面对的挑战。在区块链行业，这些挑战包括市场教育，落地应用和全球监管这种外部因素。将一种全新的科技「推销」给客户就是一个巨大的挑战。
区块链技术正越来越成为主流：毕竟现在就连 Facebook 这种影响力巨大的企业都在近日发布了数字货币Libra。今天，全球的创业者正在寻求分布式账本科技如何助力于最优化他们的商业形态。这引发了区块链革命，根据 Marketwatch 的数据，到 2024 年这个行业的市场规模有望增长到 600 亿美金。
本文我们要介绍的创始人和CEO们每天都专注于打造助力区块链行业成长的公司和解决方案。而且，这都不是他们的第一次创业经历。如果你是一个正在考量如何利用好区块链技术的创业者，可以参考这些已经在这个行业有所建树的创业者们。
1 阮宇博，八维资本
阮宇博是八维资本的创始合伙人，八维资本是一家在硅谷和北京都非常活跃的领先的区块链投资机构。他已经在全球 5 个国家投资了超过 40 个公司，其中涌现出不少独角兽。宇博也是 Skylight Investment 的联合创始人，一个专注科技领域的早期投资基金，股东包含泰有基金和新东方集团。再之前，宇博创办了两家成功的企业，拥有 4 个全国技术专利，并且多次荣获科技创新奖项。
2 Robert Küfner, Advanced Blockchain AG
Robert Küfner 是德国知名的区块链引领者，他从 2010 年开始就活跃于这个领域。Robert 创办了德国首个公开上市的区块链公司，并在全球进行相关领域的研究、教育和技术发展。Advanced Blockchain AG 致力于为实体公司提供产业解决方案，而且近日被选到参加硅谷的德国加速器。于 DagChain 的 peaq.io 一起，Küfner 正在准备开启一个区块链领域的创新革命。
3 Jag Singh, Vid Camera
Vid Camera 是一个基于区块链的社交媒体 app，能为用户创造优质视频，使其拥有数据自主权并且利用内存数据获利。Vid 已经和拥有超过 2 亿 5 千万关注者的影响力大 V 建立合作，这些自媒体每天都在平台上创造原创内容。Singh，作为 Vid 这个已经拥有 3000 万＋美金净利润的公司的创办者和掌舵人，有望成为下一代社交媒体的巨头。
4 Ali Ayyash, Lumeos
Ali Ayyash 是曾在 Google 和 Amazon 工作过的顶尖软件工程师。他设计和构造了许多基于以太坊的去中心化系统，并发布了他最新的平台 Lumeos.io，一个基于 EOS 的数据分析平台。Lumeos 创造了一个开放环境，让用户可以在被保护隐私的情况下管理自己的线上身份／人格并从中获益。Lumeos 已经与 Cint，一家观众洞察交易所达成深度合作，Ayyash 希望能让数以百万计的用户从他们的时间和发布的内容中获益。
5 Aries Wang, Bibox Digital Asset Exchange
Aries Wang 是一个连续创业者，也是区块链领域的资深投资人。Aries 联合创办的 Bibox 数字资产交易所于 2017 年成立，现已成为拥有超过每天 2 亿美金交易额的顶尖交易平台。Bibox 为用户提供金融产品，包括数字资产交易，融资融券，永续合约和债券。Aries 也是韩国最大的数字资产基金 BlockWater 的合伙人。他在 2018 年出版的书籍《Crypto Economy》，被许多著名院校的图书馆和包括德意志银行在内的金融机构收录。
6 Kyle Lu, Dapp.com
Kyle Lu 是 Dapp.com 的创始人和 CEO，这是全球最大的分布式应用（dapp）的分发和分析平台。Dapp.com 专注于通过创造用户友好的入口和体验激发区块链的普及和应用。在 Dapp.com 之前，Lu 是 Achain 生态的合伙人和副总裁，在此期间他孵化了超过 10 个 Dapp，并且带领公司成为全球市值排名前 80 的亚洲区块链企业。作为 Dapp 的倡导者，Lu 还是 Hacknoon 的专栏作家，在区块链应用和市场分析领域经常发声。
7 Andrew Romans, 7 BC.VC
Andrew Romans 是著名的风险投资家，他已经成功的募集和管理过两个专注新兴科技的基金。他最近的一只基金，7 BC.VC，投资了很多数字资产这一新兴的高成长性资产类别。在做风投之前，Romans 是一个连续创业者，他在 28 岁的时候就为公司融资超过 4800 美金，他同时也是一个作家，最近出版了《Masters of Blockchain》一书。
8 Adam Jiwan, Spring Labs
刚完成 23oo 万美金募集的基金，Spring Labs 正在利用区块链技术重新定义信贷和数据身份。Spring Labs 的 CEO，Adam Jiwan 拥有 15 年的创办金融科技公司的经验，他曾经是 Avant 的种子投资人，也是 Future Finance 的联合创始人，融资超过 3.25 亿美金，还在包含 Goldman Sachs 和索罗斯基金等金融机构中担任过高管。Spring Labs，作为一只背景强大，行业经验丰富的团队，希望能够改变数据被分享和触达的方式。
9 Colin Pape, Presearch
连续创业者，Colin Pape 在 2011 年创办了 ShopCity，这个公司在一个反垄断的案件中和 Google 对簿公堂，这件事让 ShopCity 上了头条。这个经历让 Pape 明白，世界需要一个新的和改良的去中心化搜索引擎。这是 Presearch 诞生的原因。今天，公司有超过 100 万通过使用平台获取奖励的用户。Presearch 社群希望能让志趣相同的人被连接在一起，同时通过给予用户全权的数据自主权，杜绝任何垄断的倾向。
10 Gleb Nikitin, metaHash
对于创业者来说，记录下人们使用区块链技术的不同方式可能对他们自己的创新会有所启发，不管客户的公司规模多大。
在 metaHash 之前，Gleb Nitiin 创建了一个基于机器学习的广告购买工具，可以即时的运行海量数据。2016 年，他的团队开始研究区块链，但没有一个可以满足他们用户的商业需求，而且很慢很贵。这就是 metaHash 出现的初心，让区块链从边缘走向主流。利用在数据同步方面的专业能力，metaHash 现今已经拥有可以在 3 秒内运行超过 500 万 TPS 的交易的网络，这个速率超过了 Visa 或 Mastercard。
对于创业者来说，记录下人们使用区块链技术的不同方式可能对他们自己的创新会有所启发，不管客户的公司规模多大。三年之前，我告诉过企业主们，应该思考如何把区块链技术和自己的商业嫁接起来，他们当时认为我疯了，而今天，这个建议已经被全球的创业者严肃的考虑并且积极的采纳。
来源链接：www.entrepreneur.com
10 Entrepreneurs Who Are Showing Why Blockchain Is Here to Stay
Author：AJ Agrawal，Founder of Verma
Entrepreneurs in nascent industries often face challenges that seasoned entrepreneurs might not have. In the blockchain industry, these challenges have included education, adoption and external forces like global regulation. Just "selling" a new technology to clients can be a challenge.
But in the case of blockchain and crytocurrency, these challenges are less and less of a problem, as the technology has already become a mainstream phenomenon: Consider just the fact that a company as influential as Facebook has launched the digital currency Libra. Related: Facebook's Cryptocurrency: Everything We Know So Far
Today, in fact, entrepreneurs around the world are asking how distributed ledger technology can help optimize their businesses. This has led to a blockchain revolution, with experts predicting the industry will grow to $60 billion by 2024.
The following founders and CEO are entrepreneurs working day by day to build out companies and solutions that will help the blockchain industry grow. For most, this is not their first entrepreneurial endeavor, either. So, if you're an entrepreneur wondering what blockchain can do for you, consider what these entrepreneurs have already done in the blockchain sphere:
1. Yubo Ruan, 8 Decimal
Yubo Ruan is the founder of 8 Decimal Capital, one of the leading blockchain investment firms in Silicon Valley and Beijing. He invested in more than 40 companies across five countries with many unicorns. Yubo was the co-founder at Skylight Investment, an early-stage tech-investment firm, backed by Taiyou Fund and New Oriental. Previously, Yubo started two highly successful companies, held four national patents and won multiple tech innovation awards.
2. Robert Küfner, Advanced Blockchain AG
Robert Küfner is Germany’s best-known blockchain pioneer; he's been active in the space since 2010. He founded the country’s first publicly listed blockchain company and helps with research, education and development of the technology, globally. Advanced Blockchain AG builds real-world solutions for corporations and was recently selected to participate in the Silicon Valley chapter of the German Accelerator. With peaq.io’s DagChain, Küfner is preparing to usher in a new revolution of innovation in the blockchain space.
3. Jag Singh, Vid Camera
Vid.Camera is a blockchain-based social media app that empowers users to create beautiful videos, control their data and monetize their memories. Vid has already partnered with influencers with more than 250 million-plus followers; those individuals will be creating daily content on the platform. Having already founded and been at the helm of a company that grew to $30 million-plus in revenue before his successful exit, Singh, as CEO of Vid, is well positioned to take on the social media giants.
Related: The Most important Blockchain Organizations You Should Know about
4. Ali Ayyash, Lumeos
Ali Ayyash is a leading software engineer who's worked at Google and Amazon. He has designed and built multiple decentralized systems on Ethereum and aunched his latest platform, Lumeos.io, a data analytics platform, on the EOS blockchain. Lumeos fosters an open forum environment that enables users to manage and monetize their online persona while ensuring their privacy. Having partnered with Cint, an Audience Insights Exchange, Ayyash aims to allow millions of users to generate income for their valued time and posts online.
5. Aries Wang, Bibox Digital Asset Exchange
Aries Wang is a serial entrepreneur and seasoned investor in the blockchain space. Founded in 2017, Wang's Bibox Digital Asset Exchange grew to be a top exchange averaging over $200 million dollars per day. Today, it provides users with financial products that include crypto trading, margin trading, perpetual contracts and bonds. Wang is also a partner at the largest digital asset fund of South Korea, BlockWater Capital. His 2018 book Crypto Economy, has been acquired by numerous college libraries and companies such as Deutsche Bank.
6. Kyle Lu, Dapp.com
Kyle Lu is the founder and CEO of Dapp.com, the world’s largest distribution and analytics platform for decentralized apps (dapps). The company focuses on facilitating blockchain use cases and adoption by creating easy access and entry to use dapps. Prior to Dapp.com, Lu incubated over 10 dapps for the Achain ecosystem as a partner and vice president and brought the Asian-based blockchain company to a global top 80 market cap. An evangelist for dapps, Lu is a writer at Hacknoon and a regular speaker on blockchain adoption and market analysis.
7. Andrew Romans, 7BC.VC
Andrew Romans is a well-known venture capitalist who has successfully raised and managed two funds focused on emerging technologies. His latest fund, 7BC.VC, includes a blockchain element and looks to invest heavily into the emerging asset class. Prior to venture capital, Romans was a serial entrepreneur who raised more than $48 million for his startups before the age of 28. He is also an author, with the recently released Masters of Blockchain.
8. Adam Jiwan, Spring Labs
Fresh off of a $23 million fund-raising effort, Spring Labs is using blockchain technology to reinvent credit and data identity. CEO Adam Jiwan brings 15 years' experience starting and building fintech companies. His track record includes working as a seed investor in Avant; as the co-founder of Future Finance, which raised more than $325 million; and as someone who's served in various high-finance positions at Goldman Sachs and Soros Fund Management. With this experience and a team with a similar caliber, Spring Labs looks to change how data is shared and accessed.
9. Colin Pape, Presearch
A serial entrepreneur, Colin Pape founded ShopCity in 2011, which made headlines when the company battled Google in an antitrust lawsuit. This experience led to Pape's realization that the world needs a new and reformed decentralized search engine. That's how Presearch was born. Today, the company has over a million users and rewards users for their search engine activity. The Presearch community helps align interests and avoid any monopolistic tendencies by giving users full control over how their data is used.
10. Gleb Nikitin, metaHash
Before #metaHash, Gleb Nitikin developed ad buying tools, based on machine learning, which could instantly process enormous amounts of data. In 2016, to address the clients’ requests, his team began researching various blockchains but none of them could match those clients' business needs, and were slow and expensive. That’s how #metaHash came to be -- as a way to turn the blockchain's status from niche to one of mass adoption. With know-how in data synchronization, #metaHash today has a running network which processes more than 50k TPS with less than three seconds for transactions -- a rate that exceeds what Visa or Mastercard need. In addition, it claims its fees are 100 times lower than that of any other blockchain.
For entrepreneurs, taking note of the unique ways these people are utiliziing blockchain technology may help inspire them to find new ways to innovate, no matter what the size of a client company.
Related: How Fintech Is Changing The World (And How Blockchain Is A Part Of This)
Three years ago, had I told a small business owner to think about how to incorporate blockchain into his or her business, that owner would have thought I was crazy. Today, the same statement is being taken seriously and being actively considered by entrepreneurs all over the world.
