Founder Interview with Justin Tabb from Substratum

The Foundation of the Decentralized Web

Hello Justin. Thank you for connecting with us, and for taking the time to educate our community on Substratum. Firstly, can you give us a brief introduction to yourself, your story, and how you got involved in cryptocurrencies and blockchain?

My entire adult life I’ve been involved in technology and quickly fell in love with programming even before the age of 20. In 2005 I founded OverridePro and over the course of the last 13 years, we have built some amazing things for some amazing companies including Apple, Disney, and many more.

Always being on the lookout for cutting-edge ideas I was an early adopter of cryptocurrency and as I learned more about the blockchain I knew there were some opportunities to really change the way the world interacts digitally.

What led you to start your project, and why exactly this kind of project?

Internet Censorship is something I have always been passionate about and over the last few years it has spiraled out of control to the degree that if we keep on the course we are headed now we won’t recognize the internet 10 years from now without intervention. Blockchain and decentralization offered the base concepts I knew we needed to solve internet censorship from a technologically based solution, not a politically based solution. Upon vetting the concept within my OverridePro network of employees and consultants we knew we had the right approach to solve this problem so we set out from there and in just over a year we have proved that the approach actually works through a series of demos where we showed censored content is available over the Substratum Network in China, Russia, and Iran. So it is really happening, the concept really works, and soon it will be a reality.

Here’s a video introduction to Substratum

“One day, Americans might wake up and realize they don’t like big brother watching over their shoulder and having corporations track everything they do. And when that happens, Substratum will be there.” — Justin Tabb, Co-Founder

Who’re the co-founders, and what’s your relationship to those?

The main co-founder is Kelly Tabb, my wife; we set out to bring the concept to life, took the risk and put it out there. Abram Cookson, our CIO is a long-time friend of mine who also worked with us at OverridePro so he joined on officially first followed by BJ Allmon — COO, Steve Swing — CTO, and Christian Pope — CMO.

We now employ 27 full-time employees and a few contractors most of who are out of our Delaware office just outside of Columbus, Ohio. November 15th we will be opening our second location in Knoxville, TN to work with the guys in Delaware on our third project the Amplify Exchange and look forward to staffing that up with high-quality guys just like we have in Ohio.

What’s the vision for the project?

My vision for Substratum is an eco-system of products that allow people everywhere to be able to connect to the same internet regardless of digital borders. With the framework of the Substratum Network laid as the foundation, we will bring people our next two products to ensure they have the same ability as the rest of the world to manage all aspects of their digital lives.

Cryptopay is an online payment gateway that will allow people anywhere to safely transact for goods and services using cryptocurrency while allowing the vendor to be paid in the crypto or fiat of their choosing.

Finally, Amplify Exchange will ensure that all people everywhere have access to a cryptocurrency exchange to easily manage their assets. Amplify will use the Substratum Network to ensure it can be reached from anywhere regardless of digital borders and with its simple and easy user interface will remove the barriers of adoption currently in place for non-technical people wanting to purchase cryptocurrency.