Part one: Always start with WHY

Hello Michael! Thank you for making a window in your schedule for this little interview of mine. So, first of all, I have introduced you as the VP of Seal network, but please tell us something more about yourself and more importantly tell us also how you became the VP of the project?

Where do I begin? I’ve been in the IT industry as a consultant and various other roles for the past 18 years. My last position was at Microsoft HQ as

an Escalation Engineer, where I worked closely with the Fortune 100 & 500 companies in solving their architectural IT issues. Ranging from simple issues to sitting in conference calls with the entire executive CxO team because

they had a breach. I can tell you it’s very interesting to work with the FBI

and Interpol at that level.

I started out as the Director of Operations for Seal in late June 2017,

where I quickly got the business operations in order and running smoothly

so that we could focus on the bigger picture at hand, onboarding customers. After a 6 month period of tirelessly working in that position the CEO wanted to promote me to Chief Operating Officer, unfortunately due to Dutch business law being the way that it is, I was not able to hold that position since all CxO executives need to reside in The Netherlands. Since I live in the United States we figured out that being the Vice President of Seal USA would be

a more suitable position so that I may start the operations in America

and then we may have a greater foothold here.

I did some Seal introduction above. How would you introduce the Seal project to the people? Can you also give us at least one example from your real life where the Seal could help?

Seal, is an authenticity platform and infrastructure that will empower

any person to authenticate if a product is real or not. Normally you would assume that items that are store bought are original, unfortunately,

this isn’t always the case. Buying (or Selling) items off of a secondary market place such as eBay or Craigslist always comes with risks involved.

A true story of a friend of mine, he sold his laptop via craigslist and didn’t notice until he got home, that the serial numbers on the $100 dollar bills were all the same. Dealing with the police, losing the laptop AND the money was

a complete disaster. We want to safeguard against this, by becoming

the Currency of Authenticity, where we provide buyers and sellers to buy/sell their products via Seal tokens, in this sense you can verify that the product AND the money is real. We’ve also created an additional revenue stream

for brands with Seal, normally once a product is sold the brand never makes any money off a product, especially collectibles that trade hands 10–100’s

of times of the course of its life. For every time an item is claimed

a transaction fee is paid, i.e. $1 for the transaction fee, this is typically set by the brand and could vary per product. 70% of the transaction fee goes to

the brand, thus creating a revenue stream they’ve never had, this is a major disruption to the industry, we have had immense positive feedback from

the brands we’ve spoken to about it.

So Michael, why you think that brands and customers need the Seal network project?

Brands are currently spending copious amounts of money in the millions to combat their counterfeiting issues, we offer the solution for them to combat this as well as give them analytics into their products that they otherwise would not have. The analytics and insights alone are invaluable to brands,

on top of the anti counterfeiting perspective that we offer, we think that

we have a true solution that will aide any brand and their future growth.

Tell me something about the very beginning of this project? How and when did this all start and who was the instigator of an idea to create a new project and solve some real-world issues? How was created an idea to develop another Counterfeit technology? Was it a passion to do something new, or you have a spot and a hole in the current projects and you have wanted to fill the gap with a better solution?

Seal is the brainchild of Bart Verschoor (CEO) the history of the project stems back all the way to 2008 where he and his brother Joris had a social mobile games company called BloomSix. Since they had all these computers with powerful graphics cards sitting idle in the office, they decide to put them

to use and mine this thing called ‘Bitcoin’ and ‘Litecoin’at the time.

They eventually stopped doing this since the room became too hot to work in, but they were extremely interested in the technology behind it. Their mother is an artists who unfortunately, had to deal with counterfeiting as well.

So the family knows first hand, the effects of what counterfeiting can do

to them. It was then that they had thought of this idea that combining blockchain and anti-counterfeiting would be a fantastic idea,

but that the market was not ready for this. Over the years the brothers would come together and work on this project that they had thought of and decide when would be a good time to launch. In 2016 they decided to do some prep work and seek out hardware partners and work on a mobile app in secret.

In June of 2017 the CEO thought that the right time is now and had gathered a network of people that he wanted to start the company with, I was lucky

to be one of them.

What about a vision for the Seal by the end of this year and a year after that? What can we expect from such a team as Seal definitively has?

Our focus will lie on business development, onboarding customers

and creating lasting partnerships. We’ve created a platform and infrastructure that enables partner channels to resell Seal for us, this will allow us to grow rapidly and exponentially in a very short time.

People say that Seal has a team full of young inexperienced members. But as I can see people in your team are very motivated indeed and if you can inspire already motivated people, miracles start to happen. What do you think about that, do you have any concerns?

Though we may have some younger team members, they have been selected based ontheir knowledge, eagerness and have the same values as

the company.We are seeing the worth in our employees and allow them autonomy, and freedom to come to us with new ideas.In the words of the late Steve Jobs:

“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do;

we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”

This sentence resonates with us as a company as a whole, we all work together, not in silos.

Also, I have noticed that you have already made some changes in your team and I hope it is for good purpose. Does it mean that you are very picky with whom you cooperate?

In a startup there isn’t a lot of room for mediocrity, especially in

the blockchain world. We need perseverance and excellence in order to succeed. Sometimes a culture fit is more important than hiring the right person that does not fit in the team at all.

The whole team stands on two brothers. We can read about them on your Team section, but can you tell us something about them from your perspective? What can you say about Bart and Joris as their colleague?

I have known the brothers personally for at least 20+ years now, we have had the pleasure to see each other grow up, spread out around the world and do our own things and support each other in our journeys.

The brothers are like family to me, and like a family some discussions get

a little heated, but in the end we always come together and figure out

a solution, it’s beautiful really.

Everybody knows that you want to protect brands and their customers, but how about another sensitive topic which is pharmaceutical stuff? Is it true that Seal will cover also this field of interest? Do you have some plan for possible cooperation in this area?

In the long run there is no product that we want to leave unturned, pharmaceuticals is another big niche where we will dive into in the future. There is a major need for proving authenticity on medicine. We’ve all seen

the spam email fly by of certain items, the ones that are really deplorable to me are the ‘anti-cancer’ medications where people believe

those are real. In an ideal world we would be able to stop this, or at least educate people that those items are fake.

So, let’s say you’ve made the world a slightly better place, let’s imagine this scenario: Someone’s walking down the street in what they think is an expensive Armani suit and somebody stops them all of sudden on Sunset Boulevard and scans my jacket and says:

“Sorry bro, you’re wearing a fake, yo”.

Have you ever think about a situation like this?

I’ve actually hear of this happening in South Korea, where someone got assaulted for walking around in a fake product. You never know

the circumstances under which that person has bought that item.

They could’ve been under the belief that the item was real. And if they weren’t aware of an authenticity mechanism built in such as Seal then they would never know. It’s up to us and the brands to educate the customer on this new technology.

Another point is if you will be successful in protecting these brands, you will also protect their profits. Do you think that brands will say one day: ok, we are losing half the money as we used to, so let us do some lower price collection which will be more for regular people but still it will be our brand, our logo, our quality, our status quo? Do you think you can achieve something like a Netflix has done a few years back when for money of two cinema tickets you can have a tv full of films and serials you love in HD quality at your service?

That’s a tough question to answer, that decision is typically up to the brands themselves and we wouldn’t want to interfere with that. If in the long run

we do save the brands a ton of money, then personally I’d like to see them donate a portion to charity.

A lot of people think about Vechain as your main competitor but my opinion is that you are using superior technology. What you think about being compared to such a successful project as a Vechain?

VeChain has been wildly successful and we think they’re doing a great job, although we do not consider ourselves competitors to each other.

The anti counterfeit space is a 2+ Trillion dollar industry, there is more

than enough room to grow for all parties. We wouldn’t exclude any future partnerships in the future either. We do have different technology

and we also have different applications embedded in our systems,

as in providing the brands additional revenue streams.

Is it possible that Seal can create some strong alliances with another successful project in the field of Cryptocurrency?

I think we definitely can, there are some projects out there that we’ve been following since the beginning and have had the pleasure of seeing them grow from just an idea to a full fledged alpha, Ethos being one of them.

I also think that in order for the entire blockchain space to succeed,

we must build on top of each other and build long lasting partnerships.

Everybody knows how BQX/Ethos are doing a great job of fulfilling their Vision with the recent re-brand and upcoming release of their flagship product, the universal wallet. In their team, they have a very strong, iconic influencer in Mr. Stephen Corliss. Do you also have somebody with strong connections and with good influence in the international anti-counterfeit industry?

We do! Max Blom is the founder of react.org, which is a non-profit organization with over 27 years of experience in fighting the trade

in counterfeits and has an excess of 260 members covering all sectors

of industry.

I heard some rumors about possible cooperation with companies like Ethos and Hewlett Packard. Can you verify this information for us, Michael?

I cannot confirm or deny these rumors, all I can say is stay tuned for our upcoming partnership announcements.

Ok. You have to be on the road these days to present the project for the world. Where have you already been and where can people meet you and see the demo?

We’ve been to events in London, Amsterdam, Zurich, and New York.

We’ll be going to the blockchain expo in London on the 18–19th of April where I will be speaking as well. For future engagements we plan on going to the major blockchain events that are lined up in New York, Last Vegas,

Los Angeles, Singapore, Seoul, Dubai. We’re also planning on going to anti-counterfeiting events hosted around the world.