On Aug.29th, we had great honor of interviewing Mr.Aly Madhavji,the Managing Partner of Blockchain Founders Fund,and he provided us with a wonderful insight on the development of emerging technologies including Blockchain.
Innoverview:
How would you describe yourself in three words? What’s your motto?
Aly:
Dedicated. Change. Difference
We believe in a more transparent and trustworthy world.
Innoverview:
With the experience as the author publishing three books, the investors investing various promising projects and consultant for leading companies & government organizations, which role fulfills you most and why?
Aly:
What really drives me is making a difference and helping to transform the status quo for the better. We have investments and work on a lot of big problems across many different industries and work with the United Nations on how emerging technology can help alleviate poverty. These sorts of challenges allow me to love what I do and drive me to always work towards a better future for the world.
Innoverview:
Why do you choose Blockchain as your current focus? What’s the main difference between Blockchain and industries you engaged in? What opportunities and challenges do you think there are for worldwide massive adoption of Blockchain technology?
Aly:
Blockchain is one of our major focuses as well as other emerging technologies. We believe and know that Blockchain is a transformational technology already making a positive impact on business and society. Blockchain isn’t an industry, it’s a technology and has potential use cases across all industries, it’s about finding the areas where there is substantial value creation and explore the application of blockchain to unlock that value. There are many major opportunities and challenges on the public and private side of blockchain but it all comes down to identifying the value opportunity, what are the barriers, and how to overcome them. With public blockchain’s we’re seeing challenges with scalability but many promising solutions. We can anticipate major progress on these areas in the years to come.
Innoverview:
As a visionary investor in Blockchain, what type of project do you like and in what stage you want to participate in? What are the key factors drive you to make investment decisions? What’s the advantage of Blockchain Founders Fund?
Aly:
We typically focus on pre-seed to series A and want to see a strong product/market fit or some sort of market validation. We are looking for very accomplished teams that have thought through the roadmap in detail, understand the various assumptions they are dealing with and how they validated those assumptions. We are looking for solving real problems that create real value. We have a number of other criteria where look at the data and quantitative assumptions. Once we back a company, we support many of them with building comprehensive sales pipelines, strategic partnerships, branding, and awareness.
Innoverview:
Could you share some successful and failure cases impressed you most in Blockchain industry investment including but not limited to your own experience? What are the internal and external reasons? How would these cases impact on your subsequent investment decisions?
Aly:
There are many examples of success and failure cases. We have been particularly impressed with a number of companies focused on product development and real user acquisition rather than hype marketing. Companies such as Brave (the browser), Rapidz (digital wallet), and FTX (derivatives exchange) have done a good job of focusing on product development and user growth. There’s hundreds of examples of companies which raised money during the ICO time or from private investors which haven’t delivered their product and don’t have the right priorities.
Innoverview:
As a consultant focused on emerging technologies for intergovernmental organizations including UN, how do you bridge the gap among market needs, technology status and the organization’s strategy?
Aly:
Of course, this is a major challenge of identifying the problem, finding solutions which could work including how and why. Then you need to get alignment and explore roll-out of the solution to make it a success. This is challenging in the context of intergovernmental organizations given the sheer size of these global problems. However, even several successful examples could positively impact tens of millions of people. We are working with the United Nations on how emerging technologies can help alleviate poverty and achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. There’s still a long way to go but we’re excited about the progress so far!
Innoverview:
We’ve noticed that you are one of the famous speakers in global Blockchain conferences, what’s your benchmark to select the top-tier conferences? Events industry is booming especially in the cow market these years, do you think it’s necessary for industrial elites and why?
Aly:
We get dozens of invitations every week for different events and conferences all around the world. We are very selective on ensuring they are high-calibre conferences focused on real thought leadership which will help to drive the industry forward. This will also help to attract world-class start-ups, regulators, governments, academics, and investors. An example of this would be EventApple and BlockOn group, they organize sometimes smaller but more curated events with a couple hundred participants, but coming up in Malaysia they have the Prime Minister of Malaysia and many of the ministers attending at myIndustries 4.0. This is very high quality to have these key decision makers involved in emerging technologies and blockchain adoption to drive forward the future of the country.
Innoverview:
As a mentor with Chinaccelerator, one of the global elite accelerator programs operated by the venture fund SOSV with $500M+ AUM and the Mobile Only Accelerator (MOX), what kind of start-up entrepreneur do you expect? Could you give some advice for start-ups?
Aly:
There’s no single thing to expect from a start-up entrepreneur but if I had to choose something it would be resilience and unrelentless determination. Start-ups are all about prioritizing what’s important, what the roadmap is, and how to get there. Make sure you stay true to your priorities and don’t lose sight of your vision. Continue to revisit to ensure you are working towards your vision in the most efficient way and always ask for help and support, that’s what great leaders do!
Profile of Mr. Aly Madhavji:
Aly Madhavji 穆亚霖 is the Managing Partner at Blockchain Founders Fund which invests in and venture builds top-tier Start-ups and consults companies and governmental organizations on emerging technologies.He is an internationally acclaimed author, publishing three books, including the award-winning book titled, “Your Guide to Succeed in University”.Aly was recognized as a “Blockchain 100” Global Leader by Lattice80. He is a mentor with Chinaccelerator, one of the global elite accelerator programs operated by the venture fund SOSV with $500M+ AUM and the Mobile Only Accelerator (MOX) which helps the best mobile startups from around the world acquire millions of users in Southeast Asia, India, Eastern Europe and South America with 167 million users on its smartphone platform. Aly holds a Master of Global Affairs as a Schwarzman Scholar from Tsinghua University (清华大学), a Master of Business Administration from INSEAD (Singapore and France), and a Bachelor of Commerce with Distinction from the University of Toronto.
Chinese
Japanese
Korean
