In this episode of LAB Radio, Chris Groshong and Aaron Mangal discuss the NEO Global Capital fund, investing in Asia, emerging markets and the Blockchain. 

Roger Lim, Partner at NEO Global Capital

Roger is an experienced angel and blockchain investor, entrepreneur and technologist. He previously founded Webvisions, a managed cloud hosting company which he sold to a private equity firm.

He is an advisor for Bluzelle, Qlink, CoinFi, Selfkey, TheKey, Tomocoin, 0Chain, nOS, Open Platform. Roger is now a founding partner of NEO Global Capital. 

Tony Gu, Partner at NEO Global Capital

Tony is an experienced Mergers and Acquisition (M&A) professional and blockchain investor. Tony is a founding partner at NEO Global Capital (NGC) and is a partner of Rhodium Capital and Longstand Capital.

He has done deals in Financial Services, Consumer, Health Care and TMT sectors, with total transaction value exceeding $1 Billion.

We discuss investing in Asia, emerging markets, preserving wealth and the NEO Global Capital fund.

After listening to this episode you will learn:

• How Roger and Tony met each other and began investing together
• The structure and focus of the two NEO Global Capital funds they manage
• Key initiatives and project categories that investment occurs in
• Emerging markets that they see activity and investment in
• The things that are most exciting to Roger and Tony
• Why Networking, building trust and opening doors for others is so important
• How NGC focuses on not just investing in firms but adding value
• The challenges around finding and retaining talent
• Strategies and tactics to consider when looking at markets

For show notes and more please visit: LAB Radio

In this episode of LAB Radio, Aaron Mangal discusses the Bitshares ecosystem, the Graphene engine that underlies it and algorithms like Delegated Proof of Stake (DPOS) with Kevin Messerly. Graphene was originally designed by Daniel Larimer who also founded Steemit and EOS.

Kevin Messerly, Proxy and DEXBot Team Manager

"I have six years experience as a cryptocurrency investor and advocate. Additionally, I have four years experience as a sales executive/account manager with a track record of high performance and strong work ethics. On top of that I have over fourteen years experience as an intelligence analyst for the United States Army and Department of Defense. I have successfully operated in high stress environments, requiring 13 hour shifts, six or seven days a week, throughout four deployments in Southwest Asia, South-Central Asia, and Africa for a total of 49 months."

Graphene is the underlying technology that underlies BitShares and several other Cryptocurrency projects like Steemit and EOS. Graphene is an open source C++ blockchain implementation, which acts as a consensus mechanism.

BitShares also has the ability to issued market pegged assets which are tied with real-time real world prices.

The BitShares market pegged BitAssets system

Ultimately, BitShares operates more as an equity rather than a purist “currency” since BTS tokens are used as collateral for a variety of decentralized financial services like decentralized exchanges, banking, derivative creation (of market pegged “bitAssets”) and currency rails.

Thanks for checking out LAB Radio.

After listening to this episode you will learn:

• Kevin's origin story and how he first discovered Cryptocurrency in 2011
• Why BitShares, in particular, caught Kevin's eye
• How BitShares leverages a suite of services including a DEX, bank and even user issued assets (UIA)
• About BitShares and how it had the first stable coin and market pegged assets (MPA) system
• The construct of Witnesses who process transactions and maintain price feeds
• The concept of decentralized banking and how you can borrow against your BitShares as collateral
• How Black swan events and collateral are handled by the system
• The risk and challenges of growing an ecosystem like BitShares
• The benefits of Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs)

For show notes and more please visit: LAB Radio

In this episode of LAB Radio, Aaron Mangal discusses Interactive and Tokenized Television with Gavin Douglas, CEO and co-founder of iPowow.

"Our early vision was conceived on a surf beach in Australia, ‘… to give millions of television viewers the power to interact with their favorite TV show and to affect the story, second by second’.

Since then we’ve been expanding around the world, transforming tens of thousands of hours of live TV, taped TV and live stream shows into exciting participation experiences. We’re a team of TV thinkers, creators and doers with a passion for Participation TV and we firmly believe that telling great stories leads to great ratings.

By moving iPowow onto the blockchain and making use of the best technology available, we can tokenize and monetize viewer engagement to provide better rewards for viewers and valuable data insights to networks, shows, and brands. So basically, instead of earning points, which have limited value, viewers earn HIT tokens just for watching content and more HITs for actively participating in contests, polls, and campaigns. After accumulating a certain amount of HITs, a viewer can visit our digital shopping plaza and exchange them for either digital or real-world products offered by our TV Network and Brand partners."

Gavin Douglas, CEO and Co-Founder of iPowow

Gavin is a multi-award winning media producer and TV format developer with over 20 years of experience. As the CEO of iPowow, Gavin has driven the business deals and the production of over 100 broadcast television + streaming video projects that link linear storytelling with real-time interactive technology, offering a unique perspective important to bridging blockchain technology and the media ecosystem.

Gavin has overseen iPowow’s growth across both linear television and streaming video by negotiating and signing production deals with clients including ESPN, NBC, ABC, Fox Sports, CNBC, CNN, Red Bull, Discovery and Disney. Prior to iPowow, Gavin had written, produced, directed or edited more than 30 television series around the world, including “BBC Top Gear,” “MasterChef,” “So You Think You Can Dance,” “Big Brother” and “MythBusters.”

iPowow which led to the creation of the HIT protocol allows viewership to be tokenized, meaning viewers can be paid to watch content. This also brings with it a whole new level of data as this viewership can be correlated with buying habits.

After listening to this episode you will learn:

• About Gavin's background in Television and analog approaches to audience interaction
• The genesis of iPowow and pitching their interactive tech to NBC, ABC, CNN, ESPN and FOX Sports
• How they have always focused on the viewing experience and aim to keep viewers excited about the show
• The key technological catalysts for the evolution of TV from "stuck the wall" 20 years ago to today's on-demand world
• Why the fact that everyone can consume content on any device anytime is a huge business opportunity for everyone
• How viewers are incentivized to watch shows through HIT tokens
• The vast treasure trove of data available behind these tokens and the associated viewing and purchasing habits
• Why we should always be on the lookout for the next technology and how to put those pieces together

For show notes and more visit: LAB Radio

Thanks for listening to LAB Radio.

In this episode of LAB Radio, Aaron Mangal discusses Spl.yt, a decentralized marketplace protocol, with CEO and founder Cyrus Taghehchian.

Cyrus Taghehchian, CEO and Founder at Spl.yt

Cyrus Taghehchian is the co-founder and CEO of Spl.yt, a decentralized marketplace protocol. Cyrus, a Deloitte Consulting alum, is a world-class consultant, co-active coach and Lean-Agile thought leader who has helped C-level and executives improve their organizations’ product management processes, development practices, and team culture at companies such as Intel, Bank of America, Paypal, and more.

A serial entrepreneur at heart, Cyrus specializes in technology strategy and implementations in the e-commerce and digital marketing space, including leading his previous companies through product and market fit phases.

Cyrus entered the blockchain space in 2015, having taken several notable active involvements, collaboration and advisory roles within the blockchain community where he applies his unique business development perspective, to promote blockchain and distributed ledger technology.

Spl.yt, a Decentralized E-commerce Protocol for a Global Inventory and Affiliate Network

According to the Spl.yt litepaper: “Spl.yt provides the market reach of Alibaba and CJ Affiliate, with the assurance of
Amazon, at the no-cost prices of Craigslist”

This is based on their global inventory and logistics system which allows retailers to connect with several marketplaces, not just one, which greatly reduces the labor and management behind multiple postings.

It goes on to further explain how retailers can connect with their platform: Spl.yt’s core function begins when an online retailer connects our easy-to-use SDK to load its inventory onto the blockchain. Once on the blockchain, Spl.yt’s smart contract grants access to all other participating marketplaces...Spl.yt uses token economics to promote fair and reliable participant
behaviors. Spl.yt’s global reputation system provides peace of mind that reviews and ratings (necessary for buyers to trust retailers) are performed fairly without censorship or manipulation, and reflect behavior across the internet (rather than one website).

How Splyt Connects Buyers and Sellers

Splyt also have a dispute resolution to take care of any kind of problem that arises from transactions through intermediaries called Validators. These are real people that help figure out any issues whether on the buyer or seller side.

Finally, through an affiliate system sellers can leverage an automated way to manage and pay out commissions to affiliate for helping to sell products.

After listening to this episode you will learn:

• About the origin story of how Cyrus went from Consulting into the Blockchain world
• How consultants think, work and create value for clients
• Why great consultants replace themselves in the long-term
• Why people are a super important often overlooked part of building a successful company
• What Splyt is and how it works as a protocol
• The way that Splyt increases the reach of a posting across several major marketplaces
• A unique affiliate system that incentivizes anyone helping sell any product in the marketplace
• How Sellers can download the Splyt SDK and access a global database of inventory
• About Decentralized Autonomous Initial Coin Offerings (DAICOs) and one called HAIKU that Splyt is building 
• The Affiliate system behind Splyt and how it evolves the current Affiliate model
• How Splyt handles dispute resolutions

For show notes and more please visit: LAB Radio Episode 37