ETC Labs invests in startups building on Ethereum Classic

0:00I'm Ashlyn Addison from event chain for investmentpitch media and FinTech news network and today on blockchain interviews we have Elizabeth cuca the executive director of etc' labs Liz welcome to the show it's a pleasure to have you here today thanks action I'm excited to be here you're very welcome I'm excited as well and let's dive right into it if you could start by giving a

0:23little bit of background on what is aetherium classic labs and how are you impacting the startup space that would be a great place to start yeah areum classic labs were an accelerator that's dedicated to the advancement of blockchain technology with a focus on aetherium classics so pretty straightforward yeah definitely and you know I've been following a theory on

0:43classics since the day it was created and it's a great space to be in and I know you guys are continuing to grow and with the help of the investment there's a lot of startups that are popping up utilizing if they're in classic right now and you also work as the principal in digital finance group and make investments into ADC labs startups so could you talk about so far in 2020 what

1:06has happened with etc' labs have you made are you actively still making investments and has your strategy change so far yeah so we've changed a little bit in 2019 we hosted two start-up cohorts and we were doing safe agreements at that time and then since then we've actually switched to a grants model which is far more founder friendly such especially in such a nascent space

1:31where teams are really looking to build and grow their community and figure out what works and what doesn't work without the pressure of immediate returns so we've switched to grants for the most part through a digital finance group we have made a few investments as well including swarm chain safe and and one other it's sloping my mind right now but

1:55and then on the grand side we've made around three so we're doing pretty good we're still pretty active that's great and can you talk a little bit about what you look for when you're looking to invest into startups that are looking to move into e.t.c labs yeah it's probably not that much different than say a proceeded investor or an angel investor it's probably

2:19pretty similar so we look for teams that have strong tech and a strong technical background we look for teams that have a pretty large community or supporters who we know are either going to support their technology and adopt it or they're going to participate in a token sale and be champions of the company and then we also ideally work with teams that

2:41already have a few paying customers so it's pretty traditional to precede investment even on the grant side definitely and of course paying customers in traction to product market fit obviously would be huge if they've already ticked those boxes as well and I guess I'm a little curious about and one of the trending topics with a lot of startups has been social impact and

3:01economic impact and how they're making a change in the communities around them do you consider those as potential markers for investment that you know would be good with etc' labs yeah it definitely is so there's three categories that we focus on one is Financial Inclusion a second is dove for Doug's at least that's how I call it kind of like tooling and infrastructure and then the

3:28third is in impact in emerging markets so Financial Inclusion and impact in emerging markets definitely falls into that category and we've also worked with UNICEF he made a pretty large donation their Senate large nation their way and also have made a commitment to invest or provide funding to startups that they work with through their blockchain innovation program and and then not only

3:49that but I'd say you know just to make sure that this isn't coming across as like oh we're just doing this because we're supposed to be doing this but James Wow our founder and chairman you know he comes from a philanthropic background and he was making in-kind donations to et Cie before et Secord join labs and Terry comes from you know working with United Nations and working

4:11in emerging markets on innovation and I was formerly working in like the public school space nonprofits environmental science background so I just say all of this just to make it clear that it worser doing it justice lip-service yeah oh that's really interesting to hear and you know I've spoken with James and Terry as well I didn't know he was making in-kind donations to et Cie so

4:33that's really interesting and I did we have no more labs beforehand yeah well that's great and I did read the news on etc' labs partnering up with UNICEF to drive blockchain solutions that sounds really interesting and it's great to see you know mainstream charity being able to implement blockchain can you talk a little bit more about you know what initiatives are you working

4:54with them and how does the blockchain fit into those solutions yeah so UNICEF has around 12 different areas of focus and they cover everything from clean water to reliable energy I'm getting access to credit and loans and and so on and so forth and so for etc' labs it's really about you know diversifying our portfolio and diversifying the teams that we're working with and so for us a

5:18few examples of teens that we've worked with include OS city and OS city is a gov tech smart city solution and with them we focus specifically on their artisan project so what that means is their artisan project is based in outside of Mexico City working with street artists or like women mostly and that's probably not street artists as you and I know in California or

5:43Vancouver but street artists who are like knitting and crocheting and making bags and sweaters and scarves and they're doing proof of origin or proof that those those handicrafts that you or I might buy as a tourist aren't coming from a factory so that's one project that we worked on with OS city a second is w3 also known as tell'em s who are working with refugee camps and helping

6:07provide mesh networking solutions so that you can I sell and trade data when you're in a place where all you need to know is that your family knows that you're safe and that you can get access to health care if there's an emergency alerts that you can have that data provided even if you don't have access to a pain network so w3 chello mesh is another one a third team that we're

6:28working with that are pretty excited about this actually this one's not for UNICEF is ping me and ping me is a microloan and throughout the continent of Africa and so with them they're helping with credit scores or helping find small businesses that are looking for loans and helping with the entire loan credit process from beginning to end and kind of like an in Pisa but I'm a bit a bit

6:51different at the same time very interesting and a little bit of a different in a wide spectrum of solutions which are really cool and with that os City have any street artists you know proving the origin of their supplies that sort of reminds me of you know supply chain management and I've heard that blockchain is sort of the ultimate solution for supply chain

7:12and it's really going to be integrated through you know hopefully all of the world commerce as it continues to grow do you see e.t.c labs focusing on supply chain or origin you know moving forward it's a possibility it's not one of our focus areas we've worked with a couple of teams through supply chain and and the reason why supply chain isn't an area of focus is

7:37because it tends to be an enterprise solution and where it were a public blockchain fully open source and not to say that we can't do a hybrid model where it's a partially private or partially off chain and partially on chain but for the most part were really focused on peer-to-peer solutions for the most part and so supply chain is is a little bit more tricky usually when

7:58you have consortium and multiple vendors interacting it tends to need to have like a fully private solution so it's not an area that we've that we've looked to as much yeah okay that's great and I guess that leads me to the next part about you know the democratization of Finance and you know with the theorems protocol there's been this major movement with decentralized finance and

8:20defy where you can use smart contracts to you know lessen the intermediaries and be able to take out loans and I'm guessing this is a major initiative in emerging markets and places where there's a lot of unbanked and people so is a theory and classic labs also looking at potential dphi projects and maybe moving some of those aetherium projects into a theorem classic we're

8:44certainly looking and any anyone in who's less wants to apply a feel free to contact us at ET cela org to let us know and but we're certainly looking and we've made some headway so for example we've recently worked with chain Save who built chain bridge and which is a solution for et Cie to connect with defy with maker Dallas specifically and so we're currently working on solutions

9:08that instead of reinventing the wheel we just plug right in and but additionally we are looking for stable clean projects to work with very cool and how else are you expanding ADC labs for the rest of 2020 are you looking for more team members or strategic partners or more startups to invest into yeah always looking to expand and grow we've been working with a few different

9:32universities lately and that's in a number of ways Lehigh University is one the river on the East Coast and with them we're working with both undergrad and graduate students to build up solutions on aetherium classics so that's that's pretty neat and we're looking to do the same with University of North Texas we've done some talks at Stanford with their extended learning

9:54both on blockchain and with their angel investor courses and we've worked with blockchain at Berkeley with their accelerate program so universities we've definitely made a bit of an inroad and then additionally we work with other funds i'm ventures is one of them so in other words growing our network in terms of investors startups researchers universities and corporates as well and

10:18working with great people and people who want to work with us as well so kind of having a business friendly relationships as much as possible that's great and yeah it's great to get into the universities and I think that that's a big push towards you know all of those university students getting out into a career early and getting into this innovative technology so please continue

10:39with that and if there are more universities scholars partners just community members that are looking to find out more about etc' labs what's the best way for them to learn more and to reach out yeah they can find us at ATC labs org they can either go to the accelerate section or grants and you can find me on twitter at to underscore this or at telegram Atlas

11:03TK and otherwise they could be new action probably and you can send them over definitely will do and I will leave those links in the description box below for the viewers thank you so much for your time Liz it's been a pleasure hearing about ECC labs all the best for the rest of 2020 and let's follow up in the near future yeah great talking with you Ashton have

11:22a good evening