Background

Looking back at how you started your career, you’ve been interested in computer technology and coding ever since the first time you connected with the internet. This was in a time that computers — let alone an internet connection — wasn’t something everybody had access to yet. Your own personal interest in coding — creating websites at first — eventually lead to your first job as a professional coder at the age of 15.

You first got sucked into the blockchain scene during the early stages of the 2017 bull run. During that time, you even sold your car so you could buy Bitcoin. With how fast development on driverless cars and other ways for transport is, part of your reasoning for this was to get ahead of the curve.

After a while you started to see the potential of blockchain technology, and you found another opportunity to get ahead of the curve. This time, by using your experience and knowledge in B2B payments and starting development on a crypto invoicing product. That product is called Gilded.

You’ve always felt a need to help people work, which has been the core principle behind your previous start-ups. With Gilded, it’s the same: you want to make it easier for people all over the world to transfer value — with a blockchain solution that gained lots of promising feedback when you first started working on it.

Love these designs ❤

Considering your 20 years of experience in coding, working with tech companies and startups, can you tell us something about what, to you, are the most important characteristics of a start-up in this field?

The primary activity of any early-stage startup should be validated learning. There’s typically a huge disconnect between the initial need you think you see, the actual need that people have, and the product that needs to be built to solve it.

Often people fall victim to “eating their own dog food” and “building a product they want” but actually they need to “build a product that other people want” as the famous YCombinator slogan proclaims. And that is exceptionally hard.

In blockchain, the previous boom in 2017 was all about pie in the sky ideas. In the current boom of 2019, it’s all about practical applications of this new technology. You will only succeed if you build a product that other people want.

Can you tell us something about the process you went through in setting up Gilded?

In early 2018, Eledi (one of my co-founders) and I released a free crypto invoicing tool. It was nothing fancy, just a simple way to invoice your clients with pricing in fiat currencies but payment in cryptocurrencies. We used CryptoCompare to determine the current exchange rate, and display the invoice sender’s BTC or ETH address when it was time for payment.

We released this early MVP and freelancers began using it right away. We saw there was some level of demand, but that it couldn’t be a business all in itself. We went out and talked to hundreds of businesses in the blockchain space and found that tracking and accounting of crypto assets was a much greater need at that time. At that point I assembled a bigger team and we began chipping away at solving both problems.

Current development

On 1 May 2019 you finished you incubator period with the TechStars Accelerator Program. What can you tell us about that experience

TechStars is a 3 month startup accelerator. We were part of the first Techstars Blockchain cohort, to which over 500 startups applied. We were chosen along with 9 other teams, making the total acceptance rate only 2%.

In the first month of the program we met with nearly 100 high level mentors from related fields such as finance, banking, accounting, legal, blockchain, and marketing. With each person we had 20 minutes to explain what we do, while getting every piece of advice and connection we could. It was a tremendous effort but allowed us to iterate very quickly based on the feedback from each mentor.

Month two was all about traction. We filled our calendar with customer discovery meetings and ran experiments to validate our assumptions about the market. We learned so much in this phase, from the types of businesses that would make ideal customers, to the specific product features we needed to build first in order to succeed.

The final month we prepared for Demo Day, where we had 5 minutes to pitch on stage to a room of over 100 VCs. While a five-minute pitch is not going to make or break a company, it proved to be a powerful focal point for the team to rally around. During this period we closed partnerships, signed up beta participants, and refined our story. Demo Day itself was a lot of fun, and we made good connections which we are still mining to this day.

Post-Techstars, our focus has been on continuing to build our paid product while getting the flywheel moving on our marketing strategy.

What can you share on the interest for big accounting companies to use blockchain technology right now?

The Big 4 accounting firms have entire divisions focused on blockchain, including both accountants and developers. Typically they are attempting to innovate in-house as opposed to using outside solutions, however there is an overall sense of collaboration and willingness to explore opportunities.

Outside of the Big 4, there are many medium-sized firms that are beginning to develop blockchain divisions. These firms are at the very forefront of the crypto accounting industry and are servicing the more successful/legitimate blockchain startups. The immediate focus is on practical issues like how to properly manage the books and audit companies that hold tokens. That said, I see a tremendous opportunity to sneak Request in the backdoor by addressing accounting firms’ immediate needs while also providing a powerful payment solution with better auditing capabilities.

One area in which I am not as qualified to speak, but I know is a big focus of the Request team, is e-invoicing. This is a government-mandated requirement being adopted in many countries that invoicing data must be electronic and auditable. This is a natural fit for Request and it is smart of the team to begin taking a leadership role in this space.

With Gilded, are you aiming for large organizations or is there more focus on the small to medium businesses?

Our initial focus is on small and medium-sized businesses because there is greater demand today. While virtually every large business is investing resources in blockchain, very few are ready to move beyond the pilot phase. There are two primary things holding back large enterprises — uncertainty about government regulations and ability to adapt or replace legacy systems. We predict that there will be a big shift to enterprise adoption in 2020 as viable commercial solutions become widespread and the regulatory climate matures. We monitor this regularly and are always seeking enterprise pilot opportunities.

Blockchain week NYC

You were in New York city for Blockchain week / Consensus from May 11th to 17th. It must have been a busy week as you and Raina [CXO @ Gilded] were actively looking to talk about how Gilded will integrate crypto into Xero and Quickbooks.

Can you tell us a bit about your experience at NYC Blockchain Week?

The energy during NYC Blockchain Week was incredible. With many Fortune 500s attending, it was easy to see that this industry is moving beyond the hype phase into real-world adoption. I’m no trader, but all you have to do is look at the Bitcoin price chart to see that this week in May 2019 brought significant confidence to the market.

At Blockchain Week we solidified many of the connections to potential customers, partners, and investors that were made during Techstars. We also met Neal Roche, who ended up joining the Gilded team to lead our Go-to-Market strategy.

Can you explain the level of interest in the crypto-accounting solutions Gilded is offering?

Our research indicates that nearly 2 million corporations worldwide have crypto on their books. Gilded will serve a smaller but still significant subset of that market where businesses are using crypto assets for operational (non-trading) purposes. We predict that the size of this market will grow exponentially over the next 10 years, just as the internet did from 1995–2005. To date over 500 CFOs, controllers, and accountants have joined Gilded’s beta.

What have you learned from your conversations with people in the accounting industry?

We learned that everyone is currently using spreadsheets to track and account for crypto assets. We learned that this is a tedious, time-consuming process that actually discourages businesses and their accountants from using crypto. We learned that this problem must be solved first before “crypto as a currency” can become mainstream.

Finally, we learned that user experience is extremely important and that any solutions involving blockchain must not adversely affect the user experience. This last point makes me very excited for Request Protocol V2, which addresses many of the user experience issues preventing widespread adoption of dApps. We see a future in which Request is adopted in a completely transparent way without end-users needing to do anything special in order to reap the benefits.

Can you tell us something about the current development on both the Xero and Quickbooks integration?

Gilded is focusing first on solving the issue of representing crypto transactions in traditional accounting systems like QuickBooks and Xero. This is needed so businesses can feel more confident using crypto without an accounting headache. Once this is solved, we can turn our focus to providing Request-compatible invoicing in these systems. We are working with the Request team to apply our knowledge and experience to the Request team’s efforts to integrate with Xero and QuickBooks. We meet regularly to share insights and review progress.

Future development

What are your goals for Gilded in 2019 and 2020?

Gilded’s primary goal is to ship our paid product in 2019 and acquire a significant base of small-to-medium sized business customers. In support of that goal, we are soon launching a rebrand of our website and are beginning to execute a multi-faceted marketing campaign.

Is there any particular development you are very excited about in the coming months?

The launch of Gilded’s paid product. The release of Request Protocol V2 to mainnet, especially encryption and ETH/ERC20 support. Regulatory clarity from the IRS on crypto taxation. Increased adoption of stablecoins. Further developments of the Libra token by Facebook.

Gilded & Request

When did you first hear about Request and what was your first impression?

I first heard about Request in late 2017 while researching alt-coins. It was one of the few I identified at that time as having a real-world business use case. The team’s participation in Y-Combinator also helped Request stand out as a legitimate project among the myriad ICO projects raising money at that time.

What made you decide to build with Request?

The Request Fund announcement caught my attention. Invoicing is a process I know well as a long-time entrepreneur with freelancing/consulting experience. I reviewed the documentation and saw it was very clear and easy to build with. I was looking to gain experience with dApps, and by March or April of 2018 my partner Eledi and I began developing a crypto invoicing app powered by Request. We found the team to be easily reachable via the Request Hub slack group, and we received support along the way during development.

We applied to the Request Fund early in the process. After speaking to the team it was clear that they were seeking to fund projects with a clear business objective and validated market. We then continued to build the product while learning more about the market and refining the model. Ultimately, this led to a Request Fund investment after we had built a relationship with the team for many months.

Have you already looked into V2 of the Request Protocol? If so, what is your impression about its functionality?

Yes, I have reviewed Protocol V2 with the Gilded dev team and we are providing feedback to Request on an ongoing basis.

V2 addresses many of the challenges with adoption of V1, mainly those related to dApps in general, such as requiring the use of MetaMask. It’s quite amazing that Request actually shipped such a well-functioning V1, considering the significant challenges of blockchain development and tooling in 2018.

We are excited about introducing V2 to our user base because it will allow them to receive the benefits of Request (cheaper payment processing, enhanced auditability, etc) while delivering a superior user experience.

Can you explain how you plan to integrate Request into Gilded? With V2 currently on testnet, do you need Request now or is it more something you plan to fully integrate in the future?

We currently support Request V1 in production, and it is in use today by Gilded’s invoicing users.

We are testing V2 functionality in a sandbox and will need to await the launch of V2 on mainnet before we can complete the development of our own V2 integration. In particular, we are excited about V2 roadmap features such as encryption and ETH/ERC20 support.

Request V2 will be integrated into our app’s invoicing process, as well as the invoicing tools of traditional accounting software systems like QuickBooks and Xero.

What is your view on the rate of adoption for the crypto-accounting solutions Gilded and Request are offering?

Adoption is dependent on two things:

-First, the regulatory situation must continue to be clarified. This appears to be happening globally at an increasing rate. Join our blockchain newsletter for accountants if you would like to keep up to speed on the latest accounting-focused regulatory updates.

Second, the user experience and product offering must be superior to what is available today. I say that not in comparison to competing blockchain solutions, but in comparison to how business is conducted today. Accountants are focused on the completeness and accuracy of data, and to the extent that Gilded and Request can do that with a superior user experience and at a cheaper price point, the prospects are quite good for adoption. Ultimately, we believe that Gilded can become a $100 million business as the blockchain market, technology, and adoption grow.

Bonus question

What are your favourite blockchain projects and why?

I’m a big fan of Lolli. Women make up half the world’s population, and the tech-centric focus of most blockchain products is often not as appealing to women. Lolli is warm, inviting, and most importantly delivers perhaps the most frictionless and easy to use application of blockchain technology I’ve ever encountered. Bonus points for encouraging frugal behavior and HODLing of Bitcoin.