For this week’s Proxeus Perspectives, we spoke with Manuel Gall, Project Manager at BlockFactory, about his role in the commercial register prototype, and why he made the big jump to a young and dynamic start-up.

How long have you been working in crypto?

In spring 2017, when blockchain started to make some noise and suddenly became the hot topic in the financial industry, I became curious and started to dig a little deeper. The more I learnt about blockchain, the more fascinated I was. That’s why I decided to quit my job as Head of Banking at a consultancy and started at BlockFactory as the first employee on the Proxeus project after the successful ICO.

What’s your favorite thing about working in blockchain?

The opportunity to create something completely new, breaking down traditional industry barriers by building new business models from scratch and thereby adding real value to society.

What do you think of the Proxeus project?

One of the biggest challenges in the blockchain industry is adoption. Skilled blockchain developers are quite rare, and therefore expensive. Proxeus’ platform allows anyone to build a DApp (decentralized application) with as much ease as it takes today to build a webpage without any coding knowledge. So, Proxeus fills the gap that is needed for a larger adoption. Today, the industry needs better middlewares instead of thousands of new blockchains.

Any unique challenges to PMing a crypto project?

The alignment of all involved parties to a common, shared goal is one of the biggest challenges as a project manager (PM). Whether it’s the developers, the digitalization managers or the PR team, everyone has their own unique background and speaks a completely different “language”. However, we need everyone to be at their best in order to be able to create a meaningful blockchain product. In my opinion, making this possible is not only one of the most important responsibilities but also one of the biggest challenges of a PM.

What’s your favourite story from the project?

When we developed the commercial register prototype to legally found the first Swiss company based on blockchain technology, our partners were often quite impressed by how fast we could adjust our prototype when new business requirements emerged. The secret beneath it is our “Wordpress for Blockchain” approach, which allows us to make major changes really easily without the need of any coding.

Have you tested the beta?

Of course, I’m a big fan of our storage DApp. What I really like is that I only need one DApp to manage all my files, which can be stored off-chain at various storage providers while I’m able to sign any contracts with my crypto key or request a signature from my business partners. But try it out yourself. It’s free and really simple to use.