Tell us a bit about yourself and your background.

I have been in the software engineering business since I was 21. I spent my 20s and 30s inventing and building software for myself and software start-ups. Things like image recognition, voice recognition, video compression and encryption software. I was always at the leading edge of new tech. I eventually worked out that the real money was in delivering a combination of leading tech and business functional applications. This led to me becoming CTO and Innovation Director at Microsoft UK. With Evident Proof, we have combined the new (blockchain tech) with some proprietary IP enabling us to take to market a really solid and groundbreaking data service.

Tell us about your experience in blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

I first heard about blockchain in 2010 in Goa, India. I met a guy from MIT who wouldn’t stop talking about it. Turns out his vision was spot on.

How did you get involved in Evident Proof?

I realised there was an opportunity to use blockchain to solve a key problem that many of the businesses I was working with were struggling with — how to manage the vast increase in the volume of data, how to keep it secure, and how to effectively extract the information they needed for business reporting, audits, compliance and risk management. Existing data verification services were expensive and not fully secure. I thought blockchain technology could really help with these challenges. As I talked about it with more people, I realised there were applications for this kind of technology everywhere, and that’s why we started Evident Proof.

What are you responsible for at Evident Proof?

I am the CEO of Evident Proof, and one of the founders. I’m responsible for the strategic direction of the company, am overseeing how the business scales and develops, and I’m very focused on creating partnerships for the Evident Proof platform.

What’s the most exciting thing on the horizon for Evident Proof?

We’re really pleased with the response to Evident Proof so far — people seem genuinely interested in the product and can see how it can be used within their businesses or in their personal lives. We’ve been hearing a lot of really positive feedback and are seeing word of mouth recommendations from a number of different types of businesses. The potential applications people are seeing for the service seem to be expanding rapidly so this is a really great opportunity for us to combine our experience in building global, scalable and robust cloud architecture with blockchain technology to solve a real need.

What’s the most interesting thing happening in the wider market?

We’ve been really excited to see the innovation and energy of other blockchain-based businesses — there’s a lot of really exciting ideas coming out that will really change the way the world works.