By @SimonCocking interview with Dana Farbo, Augmate, speaking at the Blockchain Innovation & Investment Summit Dubai March 19th,

1 min pitch for what you are doing now?

Augmate was founded in 2014 in New York City as a B2B enterprise company specializing in wearable devices, and was an original Google Glass @ Work partner and recognized as a Gartner Cool Vendor in 2017.

We are launching the Augmate Connect platform for all IoT in mid 2018 for enterprise customers and expect our consumer platform to be ready by early 2019. We have always been enterprise-facing so we will strategically build the business vision out starting from that point, refine and polish the product during its pilot and initial cases, and then deploy for consumers.

The ultimate goal is to create a single system of interconnected IoT devices using blockchain, distributed ledger (DLT) and traditional security and interoperable technology. It won’t be all blockchain and it won’t be all of what is being done today. It will be a hybrid that works together. Augmate Connect will be part of our “Atmosphere” because within the Atmosphere, all the components work together to make life possible.

How was the last year, what worked well, what didn’t move as quickly as you would have liked?

In 2017, Augmate accelerated the movement to blockchain and DLT. We believe that these technologies offer significant benefits in the security layer of data flow and as building blocks for more consumer control over their data. We made the choice to use a tokenized funding model rather than go for a Series A round. The tokenized model allows us to bring in more individual investors who can also be advocates as customers while also serving the need to raise funding. It is a natural fit as we develop our consumer platform.

Timing became an issue as we put a lot of effort into ensuring we were preparing for a positive raise but also to stay compliant in a changing regulatory environment. We missed the heady days of mid-2017 raises where money was flowing like water and the ICO market was thinner. But we believe in the long-term value of educating our market and ensuring that our investors as well as our business are served in the best possible way.

What are your plans for the future?

First, our core existing business is experiencing a very good upswing. The value of wearable devices in enterprise is being recognized and companies are moving pilots to production. Our Augmate Connect platform will be ready for pilots by August and we are lining up clients for those projects. Our consumer push will be faster than earlier expected and we have made strategic partnerships with key app providers, venture firms and even educational institutions to focus on advancing this push with core audiences.

At the same time, our interoperability platform, Atmosphere, is being framed out and we will start to integrate several protocols into this framework starting in 2019. We are using IOTA as the first data transmission layer protocol and will also use an R&D function internally to look at numerous others including EOS, Hyperledger, Hashgraph and more. We believe that to be truly beneficial to our customers, we need to have a bridging mechanism for interoperability. Though there are other players doing this, we bring real business integration and testing with real use cases. Theory alone does not create. We will build using theory and reality.

What will you be talking about at this event?

We have three primary discussions for this event

1. Our business and why aggregated device management is critical for IoT. Whether it is the enterprise need to ensure an IT Manager can provision, secure, permission, update, perform AI, use real-time data visualization or more, the need to manage billions and trillion of devices in enterprise is clear. The same for consumers. There are no real device management platforms for consumers and with the advent of global data privacy laws and the movement toward personal control of our data, our solution will come in with the right technology at the right time for this huge consumer need.

2. Token sale. We are early in our token sale and we have raised a significant part of our goal. But, we are educating and bringing new investors into our future.

3. Our alliance with Salam Technologies. We recently formalized an agreement with the leading global provider of mobile technology and guidance for Hajj and Umrah pilgrims to improve the end to end process of Hajj and Umrah. Together, we will expand the services they provide while integrating IoT sensors and devices with partner companies, NGO’s and governments to continually improve the experience and safety of the users of the Salam app.

What inspired you to attend it?

Overall, the quality of the speakers, the strategic value of the region with our partners and the need to share what we are doing contributed to our decision to attend. We chose to be a Diamond sponsor because the BII Summit hits on all counts for us.

Which influencers and websites do you follow to keep up to date with the latest developments?

Our initial seed investor was Tim Draper and we watch very closely what Tim does. Also, our PR agency is Michael Terpin’s Transform PR and with them, we keep a finger on the pulse of the token world as well as being associated with some of the world’s leading crypto experts. Joe Lubin is an inspiration even though we may not have an immediate business relationship. We are working in Mexico with a partner to build an ecosystem throughout Latin America that patterns to some degree what Joe is doing. For websites, I am addicted to CoinMarketCap but CoinDesk is a big source of news for me.

How can people find out more about what you are working on?

For news about Augmate, the first place to go is our site at www.augmate.io. Also, we are very active in the conference space including IoT conferences. We always welcome partnership inquiries, investor questions and customer interactions.

Anything else you’d like to add / we should have asked?

The world of ICO’s, token sales, blockchain and distributed ledgers is changing rapidly. There are scams but investors are getting keener to the value of a quality offering. For the promises to materialize into usable technology that impacts everyone’s lives, we need to diligently police ourselves but not get caught up in the naysayer’s predictions. The technology is here to stay. The bold yet smart teams will lead into a new generation of digital existence for all of us.

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at [email protected] or on Twitter: @SimonCocking