While blockchain has understandably been intrinsically linked to cryptocurrency and digital asset trading, it has much broader implications and potentially impacts the wider financial industry.
Among both modern and traditional finance operators, blockchain has the potential to revolutionise existing systems by creating platforms that are more efficient, cost-effective, transparent, and secure.
However, even though contemporary blockchains are relatively young and by existing standards a more secure technology, there are already innovations within this space that will set the new standard for security in the blockchain, including the inclusion of AI technology into the blockchain.
Accelerating security concerns
To better understand why AI will be a critical component in the evolution of blockchain technology, we have to look at two significant drivers that are accelerating the need for greater security.
Firstly, we’re seeing the adoption of blockchain in more critical systems across the banking sector and a variety of industries. As these systems are vital to an organisation, they present themselves as prime targets for threat actors and cybercriminals, particularly as these threat actors continually look for vulnerabilities within a single organisation and weaknesses along an entire supply chain.
Secondly, given that blockchain is just starting to be widely adopted, organisations that adopt blockchain will likely look to scale or modify the use of their blockchain systems. While blockchain technology is, by its nature, scalable and flexible, these changes over time do present a security risk.
To illustrate this, we use the analogy of a fish tank.
Typically when you first get a fish tank, there is a specific use case in mind, i.e. a particular volume of water, a specific type of fish, salinity, temperature etc. However, over time, the use of the fish tank might change, the volume of water may vary, and it may go from warm salt water to cold freshwater.
All these changes add up and can create flaws in the tank, eventually leading to a structural failure. For blockchain technology, the more changes happen to the system, the more likely a critical security vulnerability will be introduced.
How AI-enhanced blockchains address security concerns
So how does AI come into play? Coming back to the fish tank analogy one last time, infusing AI into blockchain technology creates a self-healing tank that adapts as the usage of the blockchain changes and scales. It will allow the blockchain solution to continually scan for any security or operational flaws within a system and fix them automatically.
In addition, AI in blockchain also goes beyond just ensuring the security and integrity of its platform, the pattern recognition capabilities of AI also have the potential to spot anomalies and potential fraudulent or suspicious activities that happen on the blockchain.
This can lead to faster and more accurate detection of illegal activity and have implications, particularly for the finance sector, as we continue to see an evolution of KYC and compliance requirements.
Overcoming barriers to adoption
Despite a growing understanding of the benefits of blockchain, many still struggle with accelerating the adoption of the technology within their organisation. There are three key considerations that most companies should consider to address this.
Firstly, senior leadership buy-in is critical to set the company’s pace. As with most new technology, support from leaders requires providing them with education on the mechanics of the technology and the business benefits (along with the costs) in quantitative terms. In addition, it’s also essential to include less quantifiable benefits, including improved employee experience and greater security.
Secondly, there will also be some critical decisions from a technology perspective, including whether to use a private or public blockchain. Both systems have their benefits and, with AI technology, are secure. But generally speaking, companies that require a greater degree of compliance should consider private blockchains, given the greater degree of control they can have.
This also ties into integration with legacy systems, and like with more technological innovations, a rip-and-replace approach is unlikely to be an economically sound choice, particularly for larger enterprise companies.
For companies of this size, they can explore how blockchain can be integrated with existing systems, both from a legacy and cross-functional perspective. Having a more “gradual” strategy can also help reduce concerns around security and interoperability. Of course, for smaller or younger companies, there is the opportunity to leap-frog this transformation and be blockchain first.
Lastly, companies need to address the skills gap. Blockchain, as a whole, is still a relatively emerging technology. As a result, the people with the skills required for it are in short supply and the resources needed for talent acquisition can prevent some organisations from adopting blockchain.
To work around this skill gap, one possible way forward is to partner or collaborate with specialist technology partners that will be able to support them on their transformation journey.
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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic
In its research on Web3 Safety & Compliance, published ahead of its Web3 report, US-based blockchain data platform Chainalysis revealed that illicit DeFi transactions has risen steadily over the last three years in terms of both raw value and also as a share of all transaction value.
The value stolen from DeFi protocols has been trending up since the beginning of 2021, reaching its highest-ever levels in Q1 2022, driven by hacks of the Ronin Bridge and Wormhole Network, the report detailed.
It also highlighted that these increases happened particularly in two areas: theft of funds through hacking and abuse of DeFi protocols for money laundering.
“While cryptocurrency-based crime remains an important problem to solve, especially given that rising overall transaction volumes mean the raw value of illicit transactions is still growing, illicit activity has become a less prominent part of the overall cryptocurrency ecosystem over the last three years. However, DeFi specifically appears to be going through the same growing pains that cryptocurrency as a whole was previously, with illicit activity rising over the last two years,” the research stated.
It further explained that DeFi protocols have accounted for an ever-growing share of all funds stolen from cryptocurrency platforms since the beginning of 2020 and lost the vast majority of stolen funds in 2021. As of May 1, DeFi protocols account for 97 per cent of the US$1.68 billion worth of cryptocurrency stolen in 2022.
Who is behind all of these criminal activities? According to the research, a significant number of crypto stolen from DeFi protocols had gone to hacking groups associated with the North Korean government. This was the situation even in 2022 when the North Korean hackers had stolen over US$840 million –and the research did not shy away from the possibility that these groups were also responsible for hacks on other platforms.
DeFi and financial crimes
Another form of crime activities that had been reported to affect DeFi protocols are money laundering. Interestingly, the research once again dubbed the North Korean hackers as the culprit behind it.
An example of this crime activity happened in 2021 when Lazarus Group used several DeFi protocols to launder funds after stealing more than US$91 million worth of cryptocurrency from a centralised exchange.
“So far in 2022, DeFi protocols have become the biggest recipient of illicit funds, taking in 69 per cent of all funds sent from addresses associated with criminal activity, compared to 19 per cent in 2021. One reason for this is that DeFi protocols allow users to trade one type of cryptocurrency for another, which makes it more complicated to track the movement of funds — but unlike centralised services, many DeFi protocols provide this ability without taking KYC information from users, making them more attractive to criminals,” the research explains.
Another type of criminal activity that the research highlighted was wash trading. It is defined as a form of market manipulation in which a seller is on both sides of a trade or selling an asset to themselves in order to create a misleading perception of that asset’s value or liquidity.
Another form of wash trading were performed in order to collect reward tokens given out by NFT marketplace instead of inflating the value of any particular NFT.
“Wash trading is relatively easy to do with NFTs as some NFT trading platforms allow users to trade by simply connecting their wallets to the platform, with no need to identify themselves. One user could easily control multiple wallets and trade NFTs between them, and no one could know unless they took the time to analyse the wallets’ transaction histories,” it explains.
“This type of wash trading scheme isn’t victimless. For one, the NFT marketplace is being tricked into paying out rewards for phoney activity. NFT collectors throughout the market are also potentially being tricked into thinking that this NFT marketplace has more transaction activity than it really does, and the same goes for the NFT collection the wash traders are using for their transactions.”
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I have served on the Boards or as a senior executive in companies that have created billions of dollars of value for their investors, so I am often asked where the next big opportunity lies. Apart from proptech, I see a significant opportunity in human resources technology. By the time you finish this article, I hope you will understand this “peopletech” trend and how to benefit from it.
Few employees are 100 per cent happy
There is clearly room for improvement in how companies hire, manage, and develop their employees. Very few people in the workforce have not at some point felt abused, misused, or simply overlooked.
I’ll give you an example from my career.
Not long after I graduated from business school, I was excited to land a role with a large financial institution in Germany. I was hired to be Head of Strategy for a business unit.
But after signing and before starting, the organisation got confused, changed its mind, spent time debating my title, and in other ways wasted an entire month after I had officially begun before finally giving me a job to do.
I earned no salary during that month. Worse, the uncertainty and the callousness with which I was treated made that experience one of the worst I have gone through in my professional career.
A huge opportunity
Perhaps technology cannot fully make up for human incompetence or indifference. Still, good HR technology can have a powerful effect on organisations that want to get the most from their teams.
To understand the scope of the opportunity that human resources technology businesses are addressing, let’s compare it to proptech, which we already know is huge.
Let me give you three data points:
Consider that today an estimated 3.2 billion people are employed somewhere globally, and there are 2.3 billion properties. So, there are about 40-50 per cent more jobs than properties.
Properties on average turn over every 10 to 20 years, depending on the country. Meanwhile, research from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests that people change jobs every four years on average, a number that is consistent for many countries in the world. So jobs turn over 2.5 times to 5 times more frequently than properties.
The value of both jobs and properties vary significantly by country. So, let’s look at the U.S. again. There, the average property is worth US$435k and the average job (over four years) is worth a smaller US$285k.
In sum, the opportunity for HR technology entrepreneurs is enormous. These statistics make it clear why the global human resource technology market is projected to grow to a total of US$36 billion by 2028, according to a report from Fortune Business Insights. That’s more than triple its 2018 size.
The best team usually wins
Perhaps most importantly of all, human resources technology is vital because, after all, it is dedicated to helping actual human beings achieve their potential.
Individual human beings win Nobel prizes, sell products, brainstorm solutions, drive growth, care for their teammates, coach less experienced colleagues, and ensure your company‘s success.
In businesses, as in sports, the best team usually wins.
I certainly would have loved to have best of breed HR tech during the five corporate takeovers I have gone through. Hundreds of millions of dollars can be at play, but mergers and acquisitions are often stalled or even thwarted due to missing paperwork.
An always updated organisational chart is a key item on every checklist for due diligence data rooms. (Data rooms are the repositories of confidential information that potential takeover targets must prepare so their acquirers can do their pre-transaction research.)
Who works for whom and does what? That seems like an easy enough question. But I can tell you from experience that many companies cannot produce a live, detailed, and accurate org chart on demand.
I have seen first-hand how insufficient are the tools that traditionally have been available to most HR teams. And it is worse in smaller companies and startups. There, limited resources and fast growth can make human resources even more difficult.
All these realisations motivated my decision to invest in BrioHR.com. I believe this Malaysian based company has the potential to help companies and employees optimise their human resources across the amazing growth region of Southeast Asia and beyond. BrioHR’s solution also generates up-to-date org charts on demand.
In sum, there is a bright future ahead for players who provide end-to-end systems for empowering and managing people, systems, and platforms. There is a crying need for the facilitation of every stage of the employee-employer relationship, including recruiting, onboarding, employing, retaining, and developing team members. And companies like BrioHR are rising to the challenge.
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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic.
Recently, in their latest edition of the Global State of Crypto Report, crypto exchange Gemini dubbed 2021 as the “breakout year” for crypto in Singapore as the market saw a mass adoption of the digital currency in the same year. Despite scepticism here and there, it revealed that more than two in five crypto owners in Singapore first started investing in crypto last year.
The report revealed many exciting statistics. For example, · more than two in five crypto owners in the country (42 per cent) turn to crypto for its inflation hedging properties –even with its stable fiat currency.
Another finding that stresses the promising future for crypto in Singapore is that 82 per cent of crypto investors intend to hold to their investments for the long term with 26 per cent believing crypto is the future of money.
In Southeast Asia, Singapore was not the only country that has begun to jump into crypto recently. In an email interview with e27, Feroze Medora, interim Managing Director and Director of Trading at Gemini APAC, described a similar situation in Indonesia.
“Amongst non-crypto owners in these countries, 42 per cent of Singapore respondents and 45 per cent of Indonesia respondents labelled themselves as crypto-curious. This means that these respondents are consumers who, while not currently owning crypto, are either interested in learning more or are likely to acquire cryptocurrency in the next year,” he explains.
“These encouraging results contribute to a very positive outlook for the asset class in the region,” Medora stresses.
To understand more about the state of crypto adoption in Singapore and Southeast Asia, check out the edited excerpt of the interview with him.
Feroze Medora, interim Managing Director and Director of Trading at Gemini APAC. Image Credit: Gemini APAC
What are the factors that encourage the rapid growth of crypto in these markets?
Crypto has evolved from being the wild wild west to an established asset class, resulting in a shift in general public perception. With the market cap for crypto hitting almost US$3 trillion last year, the majority of investors surveyed from Asia Pacific saw crypto as a long-term investment.
Additionally, according to the report findings, countries with a history of currency devaluation also saw crypto as a hedge against inflation.
Countries such as Singapore have seen local regulators express a willingness to deliberate over-regulation and provide greater clarity for the cryptocurrency sector. This relative openness to cryptocurrency has resulted in a higher rate of adoption for such markets as opposed to countries whose regulators are closed off to the industry.
What role does inflation play in encouraging people to embrace crypto?
Investors in countries that experience currency depreciation may look to crypto, particularly bitcoin, as an inflation hedge. Many believe that bitcoin is ‘digital gold’ given its finite supply of 21 million bitcoin. Fiat currencies are not viewed the same way given their ability to increase supply.
Should the value of bitcoin, or any other chosen crypto, increase with time, this will protect against the decreased purchasing power of a currency that results from the loss of its value. Through this method, crypto provides an alternative avenue to preserve savings.
More than half of non-crypto owning respondents in Singapore cited that the major barrier to crypto adoption was the fear of losing money. What are the other barriers for users to embrace this technology?
The biggest barriers, according to the report findings, are the lack of education non-crypto owners have on the asset class, the fear of crypto’s volatile market – which these potential investors believe would lead to them losing their funds- as well as security concerns.
The good news is that there is no lack of educational crypto materials available online, including sites such as Cryptopedia. It is also on industry players to provide an environment that welcomes new investors, and not cater solely to crypto market veterans. Crypto was created to be accessible to everyone, regardless of education level and even gender.
In terms of volatile price movements, it is vital for all potential crypto owners to do their own research before investing in a token, instead of developing FOMO and jumping on the crypto bandwagon. Additionally, research should include ensuring that they use a trustworthy exchange to conduct their trades.
How deep should government involvement be?
As key stakeholders, governments help to lay down important foundations by providing regulatory oversight in the crypto industry. Two-way engagements with the crypto community at large will be key in developing thoughtful and effective regulations.
Ultimately, when regulations are done right, they can pave the way to healthy and sustainable markets, and help unlock the potential of crypto to a wider audience.
What are the things that crypto companies need to keep in mind when promoting this technology?
As crypto companies look to accelerate the transition to cryptocurrency, the priority should be to implement proper KYC/AML measures for maximal investor protection and security.
To build trust, crypto companies would need to develop and implement solutions and a robust infrastructure that provides a safer and more secure experience for their customers.
Two in five crypto owners (40 per cent) in Singapore are women, a higher adoption rate than a number of western nations, including the US (32 per cent) and the UK (35 per cent). The report also stated that the gender gap in crypto is narrowing. Would you be able to explain why this is the case? What can we do to further promote this?
This report has challenged the belief that cryptocurrency is a ‘boys’ club’ – especially in Indonesia where more women than men own crypto.
In this day and age, more people are technologically savvy – especially with mobile phone usage. The prevalence of crypto mobile apps has made crypto even more accessible to everyone – regardless of gender.
By increasing the amount of reputable crypto educational materials, and ensuring their availability to the general public, will help to continue providing an even playing field for all.
What are the opportunities that crypto platforms in SEA should embrace?
As mentioned earlier, a big barrier to crypto adoption is the lack of education. While many already do, more crypto firms in the region need to step up as educators of the space.
Crypto platforms have the opportunity to contribute to the pool of educational resources to help the crypto curious make better-informed investment decisions. This, in turn, will encourage crypto adoption even further and help to elevate cryptocurrency as a legitimate asset class.
What is next for crypto in SEA?
The world is no stranger to the rise of NFTs in the past year or so. NFTs have introduced more of the general population to the potential of Web 3, and with that has come the hot topic of the Metaverse. We can expect even more conversations around the Metaverse this year and a continued rise in popularity of NFTs – particularly more use-cases of this new technology.
It would not be surprising to see crypto exchanges experience growth alongside the popularity of NFTs and the Metaverse this year as well. Crypto exchanges have long operated as the gateway into the digital economy, and as mainstream adoption continues to rise, more people will need the access that only crypto exchanges can grant.
We can expect to see more institutions entering the space as the industry continues to develop and grow even further.
Currently, regulators around the world are continuing to pay attention to crypto. It is our hope that within the next 12 months, we will start to see thoughtful regulations that benefit the industry as well as the investors.
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The tech industry boomed during the COVID-19 pandemic, extending a multi-decade bull run. Private companies received vast cash injections from investors. In 2021, tech startups raised US$628 billion, double the previous year. Giants like Apple and Tesla also enjoyed record-breaking market caps.
Yet, the tech industry has been off to a bumpy start in 2022. In the first three months of 2022, global funding has fallen 19 per cent to US$144 billion from last quarter. This is the largest quarter-over-quarter percentage decline in nearly a decade. Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta and Netflix have collectively lost US$1.3 trillion of market value this year.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve also witnessed many layoffs. Unicorns like Cameo and Hopin have laid off a significant percentage of their staff. We’ve also seen the same with public companies like Robinhood andPeloton. Some others like Meta, Uber and DoorDash have frozen or slowed hiring for the rest of the year.
Group CEO of Advanced Medtech, Abel Ang, describes this situation to be “the current capital market winter for startups”.
I’ve built a career in the software-as-a-service industry over the past seven years. Other aspects of my life are affected by the startups I work with, my investments in publicly listed tech companies and the livelihood and careers of the people I care about.
If you are as invested as I am in your personal and professional lives, it pays to understand what is happening to prepare for this winter.
Why is all this happening?
Rising inflation, a stalled IPO market and instability sparked by Russia’s war in Ukraine have caused investors in public and private markets to be more cautious.
“Investor sentiment in Silicon Valley is the most negative since the dot-com crash,” explains David Sacks, Founder of Craft Ventures.
The implications? It is harder and takes longer for companies to raise funds.
Deal sizes are getting smaller. Pitchbook has found that average VC pre-valuations in the late-stage dropped by 20 per cent from US$731.6 million in 2021 to US$572 million in the first quarter of 2022.
VCs are also taking much longer to make decisions about new investments. The average closure time for a late-stage deal has moved to about six months.
“While really good companies will still get money, it will be five times tougher to raise at a certain price. This is also why investors are telling their startups that unless you are okay with a down round, start conserving cash,” explains Ashwin Damera, cofounder and chief executive of edutech firm Eruditus, which raised US$650 million in August last year at US$3.2 billion valuations.
To cope with these new realities, startups are cutting down on spending, conserving cash and being pressured by investors to show a clear path to profitability.
How can we respond to all these trends?
Companies need to find ways to make their existing cash piles last longer
This is especially so for companies who are overvalued, burning through investor cash and struggling to raise the next round.
“It’s important to extend your runway if you have less than a year of it. You might wanna take this opportunity to impose a bit of financial discipline and see where you can cut waste,” said Co-Founder and President at Every, Nathan Baschez.
There are many levers startups have to extend their cash runway.
One of the ways companies can do this is by optimising and reducing their cloud infrastructure costs which can often be both unpredictable and spin out of control.
This is what DoorDash is trying to improve margins. Currently, DoorDash calculates it pays Amazon Web Services 6.5 per cent to process each order. The company is hoping to get that down to under six per cent by the end of the first half of this year.
In doing so, companies can potentially benefit from building a better business.
“It’s counterintuitive but raising less money will often lead to building a better business. It forces you to have constraints, which leads to more focus and higher quality decisions, which results in better products and more sustainable business models,” explains the CEO of Box, Aaron Levie.
Tech workers should do their due diligence on the companies they work for or want to move into
Companies that have a multi-year runway of capital will likely keep hiring according to their original plans. They will keep growing much more than others, both in stock price, as well as in headcount. Their employees could experience no threats from layoffs, faster growth, and better financial outcomes.
In contrast, companies making a loss, and dependant on new funding to operate are the ones most at risk of having to execute layoffs.
“Companies that have frozen, or are slowing hiring, are especially ones to look out for,” warns the author of The Pragmatic Engineer, Gergely Orosz.
“I predict we will see layoffs at late-stage startups struggling to raise more funding without presenting a plan to investors that include laying off parts of their workforce. So we’ll see more reporting where a company raises funding, but cuts a large part of its team shortly after: just like how beauty startup Glossier raised $80M in July 2021 but laid off a third of its workforce in January 2022,” he explains.
Others at risk include companies that have overhired or overestimated post-pandemic demand. This was the case with Robinhood. As their CEO, Vlad Tenev explains, “Like any company, with growth like that comes more job openings to manage that growth, which then ended up with some roles and job functions that were duplicated.”
As an employee, it is sometimes difficult to tell the state of your company. First of all, your company’s management may try to make things sound good. Hence, relying solely on what your C suite says may not be a reliable indicator.
A good example of this will be the case of the former CEO of Peloton, John Foley. He still sounded positive at each of the quarterly earnings before the layoffs. Yet, the business metrics told a different story.
Looking at perks given or recent funding raised is not a good indicator. B2B financial-services startup MainStreet flew the entire company out for a week-long working vacation in Maui just a few months ago and stayed at the luxurious Grand Wailea Hotel.
Yet, the funding that materialised was smaller than originally planned, and the company had to cut 30 per cent of its workforce. Hence, it is important for tech workers to also take a deeper look and do their due diligence.
For those working in publicly listed companies, you can find this data in the quarterly earnings reports. It might be worth asking some of these questions during town halls for those in private companies.
How much cash do they have on their balance sheet? How many months can the business keep operating before it’s out of money? What is the burn rate? How much money is the company spending every month?
Tech workers should double down on building their skills
The most important thing you can do during inflation to protect yourself is to sharpen your skills, according to Warren Buffett. Speaking at the 2022 Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting, he shared that skills, unlike the currency, are inflation-proof.
If you have a skill that is in demand, it will remain in demand no matter what the dollar is worth.
“Whatever abilities you have can’t be taken away from you. They can’t be inflated away from you. By far, the best investment is anything that develops yourself, and it’s not taxed at all,” he said. This is similar to his advice in the 2008 financial crisis, where he shared that “the best thing to do is invest in yourself.”
Final thoughts
2022 is already looking to be very different in both tech market dynamics. Tech workers need to be aware that things might look different this year than in other years over the past decade.
Hence, it is critical to stay on top of these trends that impact us to plan our next steps and not be caught off-guard. Ultimately, we cannot control many things in this world, but we can control how we respond.
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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic
In this episode, we are excited to welcome Heini Zachariassen, Founder and Former CEO of Vivino, the world’s largest wine app. Prior, Zachariassen was the CEO of BullGuard and a board member of NORRIQ and Faroese Telecom. He is also the founder and host of Raw Startup.
In our conversation, Zachariassen talks about a number of topics including the importance of hiring a strong team and how the roles and expertise of the team need to change as an organisation grows in new markets, building a decentralised organization, the tradeoffs of localisation in markets and when to make changes to your business model and when not to, the future of global business, as well as the benefits of coming from a small country.
APAC CIO Outlook, one of the most influential magazines in the region recently named oVice one of the top 10 remote work solutions. Created by Sae Hyung Jung, the virtual office company helps connect remote teams in a customisable digital space.
The key idea behind oVice is to remove the frustration and fatigue that both managers and employees face using other collaboration and video conferencing platforms.
There is no need to schedule calls and video conferences anymore. With oVice, it is enough to move your 2D avatar close to a teammate and start talking. Also, oVice allows teammates to quickly switch between meetings, share screens simultaneously, and work in groups.
Last but not least, the company adds gamification to remote work by turning offices into creative and playful digital spaces — an island, a garden, even outer space.
To understand how the idea of oVice was born, what challenges the development team had to consider, and what the future of the platform is like, one has to dive into the mind of its founder and the man on the cover of the latest issue of APAC CIO Outlook — Sae Hyung Jung.
Key to success: readiness to act
Sae Hyung Jung, the founder of oVice, represents what you call a “serial entrepreneur”. He was in business since he turned 18.
Sae Hyung Jung started a variety of different companies from a trade brokerage firm to deep learning and AI startups, but all of them were united by a common vision: the ability to pinpoint and solve problems faster and better than others.
The CEO of oVice sees technology as a way to drive progress and connect people who otherwise would struggle to keep in touch. His fascination with robotics and AI has led him down the engineering path and he committed to building products that make life more productive and fun.
oVice: a creative solution to a new problem
With oVice, Sae Hyung Jung was also solving a problem — this time, the one he himself was facing. Before the COVID-19 outbreak, the founder of what would become one of the leading virtual office startups in the APAC region took a business trip to Tunisia.
Little did he know he would struggle to come back to Japan, as border closures and travel restrictions took over the world.
All of a sudden, Sae Hyung Jung was cut off from the rest of the team, unable to meet his colleagues and work in person. Since the entire world was going remote, oVice founder decided to try traditional collaboration and video conferencing tools.
After a while, he and the team found themselves missing the spontaneity and fluidity of office-based interactions.
“Originally, I like working offline. Before the pandemic, I worked in an open office, and conversations would naturally reach my ears. I was able to hear how teams are working on projects and quickly spot signs of trouble. However, I was forced to do telework and felt uncomfortable that I couldn’t communicate as usual using existing online tools”.
Sae Hyung Jung realised that, while online communication tools allow teams to stay in touch, there’s no “space” where people can interact, connect, and brainstorm the way they did before.
That’s how the idea of oVice, a tool that encourages spontaneous interactions and makes “management by wondering” possible, was born.
Building a groundbreaking product in a month
Creating a virtual office tool that would be lightweight and resource-efficient but immersive and fully functional at the same time was a new challenge.
There were a few examples of products that successfully incorporated physical laws and created a seamless socialisation environment without requiring VR sets and powerful computers. Sae Hyung Jung and the team had to do a lot of research and test their theories through trial and error.
Driven by passion and vision, the CEO of oVice didn’t take much time to bring the product to life. He built the prototype in just a month and released the product with expanded functionality in 2020, after using it with the team.
Explosive response and adoption
In just a few weeks after its release, oVice was discovered by over 100 companies, among which are major market players. Managers and team leaders were excited about the product that made transitioning to remote work less painful and felt like “an office in the digital world”.
Team leaders were using oVice in different ways: while some relied on the platform to run meetings, host team building events, and industry conferences, others didn’t even talk. Instead, they used the platform to “feel charged by each other’s presence”.
At the moment, the company is less than 2 years old but it boasts an impressive list of clients. oVice has grown into a global company represented in Japan, South Korea, the US, Vietnam, and other countries.
The company supports over 20,000 businesses with virtual spaces and has raised over $18 million in investment. It has over 150 employees who work remotely in the company’s virtual space.
Vision for oVice: hybrid work
At the time of writing, most countries are conceptualising the return to normal and closing the curtain on the COVID-19 pandemic. Recently, South Korea has announced it would be lifting quarantine restrictions and the same is true in other APAC countries.
At the same time, studies show that employees like working remotely and aren’t ready to work at offices 9 to 5, five days a week. That’s why hybrid work — a model that allows teammates to choose where they work — is becoming widespread worldwide.
From the tech point of view, there are few tools that help offices and remote teams connect seamlessly.
Traditional collaboration platforms create a divide between in-house and work-from-home employees. Teammates who work remotely are often not included in meetings and tend to struggle when it comes to connecting with office-only teammates and being part of the corporate culture.
In this landscape, oVice is the platform that will help hybrid teams stay connected and equally involved in decision-making.
The company has already joined forces with RICOH, a leading imaging and electronics company in Japan, in creating a virtual office that supports real-time 360-degree video, taking immersion and connectivity in hybrid workplaces to a new level.
Sae Hyung Jung and his team don’t see oVice as a way to replace in-person communication — rather, they view it as a link that seamlessly connects remote and in-office work. The platform allows teams to connect, brainstorm, build, and have fun no matter where they are.
Get to know oVice
Together with other tools mentioned in the latest issue of APAC CIO Outlook, oVice is focused on revolutionising, streamlining, and optimising remote work.
The platform supports a wide range of use cases from office spaces to events and classrooms. It welcomes teams with a 14-day free trial, allowing them to explore the features of a virtual space, as well as round-the-clock assistance from customer support.
Find out how oVice helps remote teams collaborate and stay connected and introduce your team to an innovative approach to remote work.
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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by oVice
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Going into 2022, Victor Lim and the team realised they needed to do something different to stay ahead of the curve in the cloud kitchen industry. The Philippines economy was re-opening, and dine-in was hitting pre-pandemic numbers, so the timing was perfect for experimenting with new features.
“We were originally working on an interactive VR experience in a virtual food hall concept. However, we couldn’t achieve that ‘wow’ experience we looked for. So we shifted gears, and in the end, we found a much better way by launching the Kra-Verse Food Hall (KFH),” Lim, Co-Founder and CEO Kraver’s Group (operator of the cloud kitchen startup Kraver’s Canteen), tells e27.
Kra-Verse Food Hall is a concept developed by Kraver’s Group to provide an interactive metaverse experience for F&B brands. Customers can walk into the ‘buildings’ of its brand partners, explore the virtual food hall, and run to other customers walking around in the space with live video capabilities. The KFH staff walk around as ‘waiters’, taking live orders and answering customers’ questions.
“The objective here is to recreate the experience of an offline food brand, wherein customers can walk in, browse menus, and order their favourite dishes. Being online-only brands, cloud kitchen startups don’t get the same branding and offline recognition benefits as other brands, which is a disadvantage. By utilising these new technologies, we just found a way to turn our digital nativity into an advantage,” Lim explains.
Kra-Verse Food Hall is a collection of six in-house online brands, including CharSilog, Jok Time Lugaw, I Love U, Stew, Everything Gravy’d, and krave. The firm has also partnered with US-based D. Wade Burger, a brand owned by NBA legend Dwyane Wade. Kraver’s Canteen will operate the brand exclusively in the Philippines and set up meet-n-greets and various activities for Wade to connect deeper with the archipelago.
As part of the KFH project, Kraver’s Canteen has also introduced a new self-heating technology. It utilises activated carbon and measured distilled water to create a ‘self-heating’ chemical reaction, which keeps the food hot for up to 15 minutes.
The team also explores new use cases for this technology, from boiling stews to sizzling platters, melted nacho cheese to dessert fondues.
The Philippines is a fast-growing market for Web3 and metaverse. There are different versions of and applications for metaverse technology, and many of them are doing well in the Philippines. The Philippines is a key market for the popular play-to-earn game Axie Infinity, which is a rage among the youth. It shows the incredible cycle of growth in technology and innovation in the country in general, particularly these last few years. Kraver’s aims to leverage this growth to introduce new products.
“Kra-Verse Food Hall is just one of the most immediate and fun things we were able to set up for the customers that apply this technology, but we are also investing in other applications,” Lim notes. “We will pilot its first dine-in location in Makati in partnership with Kaya Founders to enable diners to enjoy a plated meal from Kraver’s while browsing and purchasing NFTs from local artists and creators. This space is intended for founders and funders to get together with an augmented meta-experience.”
Lim says he is excited about the metaverse space and its future potential for artists, creators, and brands. “It’s super interesting because there are so many different forms of metaverses and applications that may be relevant for various brands. We found a fun way to use this technology for the F&B space. Still, the space would be equally as exciting for instant commerce brands or any other plays that leverage the digital economy, online-first,” he concludes.
Launched in 2020 by Lim, Eric Dee, and Victor Mapua, Kraver’s is backed by Quest Ventures and Foxmont Capital. The startup recently raised a US$3 million Series A round led by Quest Ventures Asia Fund II. This came almost a year after securing a US$1.5 million seed round led by Foxmont Capital.
The cloud kitchen’s list of investors also includes Brian Cu, Christopher Po, George Pua, Lance Gokongwei, Paulo Campos III, the Foodee Group, Oak Drive Ventures, Martin Cu, Francis Wee, Anthony Oundjian and Rohit Gulati.
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A few months back, I needed help hiring a few great freelancers. So I naturally posted on LinkedIn asking for recommendations.
Within 24 hours, my inbox got flooded with messages from all sorts of agencies. I had such a hard time going through all messages that I needed to pull in one of my colleagues to help.
At first glance, that sounds like a great success. I needed help and got plenty of options. But when I started looking deeper, 95 per cent of all messages came from mediocre agencies. Their websites were terrible. I could not find any social proof, and the people reaching out to me were way too pushy. Rather than trying to understand my needs, they tried to force their way in.
So I copied the same message and shared it in a few paid communities where I am a member. Organisations such as OnDeck, Reforge, and DemandCurve. A few days later, I met a great copywriter who is currently working with us. The volume of requests was lower, but the quality was substantially higher.
That was not the first time when I tried to source great talent or insights via platforms such as LinkedIn, Quora, and Facebook –and got disappointed. Please note that I am pretty active on LinkedIn with about 5,500 followers, many of them highly curated connections.
Despite that, over time, I have decreased my outreaches via LinkedIn and doubled down on paid communities. Communities where the members are fewer but better curated. That has helped me spend less time on unqualified prospects and more time-solving hard problems.
The more I reflect on that experience, the more I start seeing value in two upcoming verticals:
Paid communities
NFTs
Paid communities and a brief history of the internet
Web1
In Web1, we discovered the internet through dial-up modems, which helped us access static web pages. By today’s standards, web1 was a laughable experience. I still remember how an average movie took three days to download during my childhood. The internet was slow, expensive, and had a terrible user experience.
Yet, the fact that we could share information so easily with the entire world had an incredible impact on our progress. Before the internet, we relied on printed books. We could spread information only at the speed of physical distribution. Access to information was slow, gated, and not even possible in some parts of the world.
Platforms such as Craiglist got a lot of traction because they served as digital yellow pages. Yes, indeed, the experience of browsing such venues was not extraordinary. But users could easily access organised directories of relevant information like never before in human history.
Web2
Throughout the past 10 to 20 years, we have seen the rise of the second wave of the internet, the so-called Web2. Three core innovations enabled Web2:
Mobile
Social
Cloud
All those innovations unleashed many attempts to unbundle well-established, horizontal marketplaces. The classic example here is the unbundling of Craiglist:
It is important to note that the image above points out only the success cases. Many startups attempted similar approaches but failed. Some disruptors lacked the necessary frequency of usage. Other, adequate business models to build sustainable businesses.
Yet, the startups that survived have often turned out to be more powerful than the entire horizontal platform as a whole. In other words, niche products can have a substantially better user experience. That allows them to capture a massive market share from both digital and analogue players.
“The moral of the story is this: In all but a few circumstances, the broad horizontal verticals eventually break. They become a victim of their own success. As the platforms grow, their submarkets grow too; their product gets pulled in a million different directions. Users get annoyed with an experience and business that caters to the lowest common denominator.
“And suddenly, what was previously too small a market to care about is a very interesting place for a standalone newco. Like clockwork, a new wave of innovation begins to swell, picking off the compelling verticals the new horizontal players cannot satisfy,” says Jeff Jordan and D’Arcy Coolican.
Let’s go back to LinkedIn and how its value has been slowly depleting. As the platform grows and attempts to monetise more verticals, the experience for the average user degrades.
“The unbundling of Linkedin will create 20+ companies worth US$5 billion+. Heavily segmented, heavily verticalised, with highly specific functionality for each vertical. Let the unbundling of Linkedin begin,” says Harry Stebbings on Twitter.
LinkedIn is an excellent platform for some use cases. For example, think of recruiters and salespeople. But for more specialised verticals like blue-collar workers, engineers, or healthcare professionals, the platform fails to create the minimum necessary value.
To prove this point, consider the growing number of highly specialised startups: engineering (Hired), blue-collar (Wonolo), healthcare professionals (Docquity), hospitality (Pared), oil and gas (Workrise), bookkeeping (Paro), etc.
Each of those platforms builds digital experiences that are considerably better. Specialisation results in more personalisation and contextualisation for both candidates and employers than the generic LinkedIn model.
The future of consumer social
I do not mean to pick on LinkedIn alone, though. I think the same statement is true for Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and other similar platforms. The market is big enough for everyone. I expect those platforms to continue to exist and deliver value to shareholders. After all, the winners of the Web2 era helped us to:
Discover and connect with people and companies around the world
Build digital profiles and a sense of credibility on the web
Databases of opportunities around the globe
Valuable content and permissionless ability to create
But it does feel like those winners have started to stagnate. At such a scale, it’s simply too difficult to cater to everyone’s needs. Therefore, there are opportunities to unbundle further and thus create niche communities. Platforms that would be smaller by design but will have 10x better experiences.
The intersection of communities and education: OnDeck
Now let’s take the opposite stance and study niche communities. In particular, I would like to review OnDeck.
Everyone who knows me well has heard of OnDeck. I am pretty impressed with what the company has achieved in such a short period. In turn, I have been actively promoting the company to my entire network.
At its core, you can think of OnDeck as an educational platform.
“On Deck is building a modern, digitally native education platform at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional higher and continuing education.” – What’s On Deck for On Deck? by Packy McCormick
The image below illustrates some of the current educational programmes and thus communities that OnDeck runs. When I first heard of OnDeck, there were only two to three fellowships. Today, I counted 28 programmes ranging from no-code to chief of staff and all the way to longevity biotech.
One of the challenges with building communities is that they are tough to scale. If you are not careful, the community will become a generic network like LinkedIn. A platform that attempts to cater to everyone will inevitably degrade the average user experience.
In business, that’s called “evaporative cooling”. Evaporative cooling occurs when high-value community members leave a community because they are not getting sufficient value. In turn, that leads to a decrease in the quality of the overall community.
OnDeck is one of the few platforms that has managed to scale its efforts while retaining a fantastic community gradually.
Initially, the company started with a Founders Fellowship. A typical approach for them would have been to continue growing that programme. Instead, they decided to build a variety of small, intimate communities that are complementary to one another. Each new programme is small enough to retain great talent but complimentary enough to reinforce other fellowships. The resulting flywheel is illustrated by the tweet below.
Today, OnDeck has built a platform where like-minded people go to learn, connect, find jobs, and create. In the process, they have re-imagined a variety of LinkedIn features:
At first glance, NFTs look de-attached from the narrative that I am driving. But if you study success cases of NFT-driven community forming, you will quickly realise how that’s not the case.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are unique. You can think of them as web3 media assets. The most popular use case of NFTs today are pieces of art, but it can be a lot more. Music, code, tweets, gifs, access passes, digital identities, domains, game character skins, and even this very essay that I am writing can be converted into an NFT through a platform like Mirror.
Organisations like CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club (now the same company) have shown us how communities can be formed around characters. Hate it or love it, most people think of NFTs as a trading asset.
But let’s leave the revenue generation opportunities aside. Instead, let’s focus on better cultural representation and streamlined collaboration. People who own a crypto punk or a bored ape feel a sense of belonging. They are part of the same community of somehow similar people. Most probably, each person who owns such an NFT shares similar characteristics:
Middle upper class or higher as otherwise, you won’t be able to purchase such an expensive NFT.
Interest in the forefront of technology, i.e., web3.
Similar taste in aesthetics, you won’t purchase a particular NFT if you find the design unattractive.
Tech-savviness. Otherwise, you won’t be able to deal with the complexity of purchasing and storing an NFT securely.
The list goes on and on. Theoretically, you can create characters representing distinct cultures and ethnic or religious minorities. The more depth an NFT collection has, the higher the probability of bringing together a group of similar people.
Today, all NFT-formed communities take place on a Discord server, but that won’t be the case tomorrow. So while everyone is racing to create the metaverse, we see the first attempts to bring NFT-centred community members together to the offline world.
Contrary to what most people believe, good web3 communities have a strong sense of cooperation, support, and recognition. It’s not entirely focused on trading and get-rich-quick schemes.
For example, as a birthday present, I received an NFT which gave me access to a well-managed discord community, Zen Academy. Members are helpful to each other, and my NFT serves as an accreditation of credibility. Unless you have that NFT, you cannot access the community.
But once you do, members seem to be quite like-minded and supportive of each other. The founding members put a lot of effort into ensuring everyone shares similar values.
Let the great unbundling begin
Those thoughts have been going through my mind for quite a while. On the one hand, established tech platforms are more powerful than ever. But on the other, the user experience and perceived value have been eroding. Trying to satisfy users from all walks of life is challenging.
As a result, the product gets pulled in a million different directions. In turn, that dynamic attracts new startups like vultures. Entrepreneurs are especially good at sensing opportunities.
Over time we start seeing a lot of disruption. So founders pick niche verticals and build gated communities, vertical marketplaces, and NFT collections. Driving 10x better experience for a niche community of similar people in the process.
Having said that, I think that the network effects of big tech companies like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube make the products highly defensible, thus, difficult to disrupt.
So it will be challenging to reach a similar scale. But you do not have to. The market is large enough to accommodate smaller yet highly successful communities.
As the infamous saying goes: “There are only two ways to make money in business: One is to bundle; the other is to unbundle.”
You either aggregate or specialise.
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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic
Website hacking is becoming increasingly common, no matter the size, scope or kind of organisation. In 2020, more than one million WordPress sites were hacked. On average, 30,000 websites are hacked each day, most owned by legitimate small businesses.
Despite these worrying facts about hacking websites, many companies still believe that hackers have no reason to attack websites because they are not hacked. Attackers are constantly crawling and snooping on websites to identify vulnerabilities to break into them and bid.
Cybercriminals target startups to reach 50 per cent, because security measures may not be fully implemented. In SMEs, customer trust is critical in a time of widespread cybercrime and data privacy attacks. Startup owners now face the challenge of building consumer trust as they build their businesses.
Financial motivations trigger many websites hacks about hackers using sophisticated tools to break into cybersecurity, data files, and corporate servers. Negligent employees, contractors, and third parties cause the majority of data breaches. And startup owners should beware of this.
Through this article, we want to help you understand all startup cyber safety best practices.
What happens if startups get attacked?
The consequences of hacking are complex, time-consuming, and expensive, and can eventually shut down businesses. Hackers can steal a business’ confidential information, from its financial report, business plans, intellectual property, employees’ and customers’ information, and many more.
In other words, hackers can take anything they want that may destroy your business’ reputation.
Team training is not just about improving their cybersecurity knowledge. But to build a culture of safety protocols in your team. In terms of security practices, everyone should be on one page to avoid all vulnerabilities.
Some data breaches recorded over the years started with an employee accidentally opening a phishing email, or someone on the team accidentally leaking sensitive information. These should all be avoided.
Make a written security policy
Startups need a written security policy that is easily accessible to all employees and covers all possible hacking scenarios and how to respond to them. So that in the event of a hack, employees can use the security policy as a checklist to ensure compliance with standards.
Update your software
Threat actors are constantly looking for ways to exploit software vulnerabilities. Threats use ransomware and software to start installing hacking systems.
But you don’t have to worry, because software companies usually provide regular updates to deal with these types of problems when they are found and to make other fixes. So as a startup owner, you have to pay attention if your cybersecurity software makes the latest updates.
Restrict data access with a strong password
Startups, whose core team has no cybersecurity experience, will be vulnerable to data clutter.
To avoid this, it’s a good idea for each team member to protect their data with a unique, complex, and hard-to-decrypt password.
Also, ensure that your employees do not have access to download or install their own software programs. Restricting network access further increases the security of your network.
Do the same for customers, if they subscribe to or log into your site, ask them to use a complex password and two-step verification for their own protection.
Backup and encrypt your data
Always backup and encrypt all your data and keep it in a safe place. This technique helps stop the ransomware before it causes significant damage. If hackers save data for ransom, you have the option to wipe the device and start over with a new device. You can recover data from there.
Encrypting data can also prevent hackers from decrypting stolen data.
Stay up to date with hacker news
Today, there are many variants of ransomware and malware. And this variant will probably continue to grow even more dangerous than the previous one. You can wait until your startup is hacked, to learn about the risks involved. But you have to be able to prevent it.
Try to follow blogs or news about cybersecurity for all new and existing threats.
Prepare for failure
When it comes to cybercrime and malware, there is absolutely no certainty. Even the safest companies can be hacked, but they can get out of hacking without damaging their reputation or customers because they have a plan of action.
Startups need to be prepared for all eventualities, look for good security systems, keep up with hacking trends, and constantly test and investigate security policies and best practices to keep them as secure as possible.
Engage with cybersecurity experts
The success of a tech startup depends heavily on speed and agility and investing time and resources in cybersecurity. Startup owners should work with a good security service provider, so they can focus on growing their business.
There are many SOC service providers to assist business owners in overseeing cybersecurity in their companies. But with today’s technological developments, ArmourZero is here to help startup owners provide subscription-based cybersecurity.
Startup owners don’t have to buy software licences and pay people to supervise, because ArmourZero does it all.
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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic
