Cryptocurrency banking pitch wins 2022 Bobcat Ventures competitors – Information – Bates Information

Greenback for greenback, one of the best pitch at this yr’s Bobcat Ventures competitors was a startup that seeks to take cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin mainstream.

Described as a “next-gen payroll supplier” by Justin Soh ’22 of Singapore and accomplice Shaun Wong, their startup, Secure, goals to unravel a serious impediment stopping the widespread adoption of decentralized cryptocurrencies: tips on how to convert them to a centralized forex, just like the U.S. greenback, for sensible functions, comparable to a enterprise needing to pay its staff.

Justin Soh ’22 (proper) and accomplice Sean Wong, creators of successful Bobcat Ventures startup, Secure, pose in Singapore. (Picture courtesy of Justin Soh)

Soh and Wong’s profitable pitch took dwelling the $10,000 first prize.

Greater than strictly a pitch competitors, the student-run Bobcat Ventures program works in partnership with the school’s Heart for Purposeful Work to supply year-round, wall-to-wall support for student entrepreneurs. A loyal group of alumni function mentors and competitors judges. This yr’s panel comprised Ben Schippers ’04, Chris Barbin ’93, and Emma Sprague ’10. 

Soh and Wong “had an extremely clear worth proposition,” stated Schippers.

The competitors, which featured six pitches, was a step up from 2021, when all the factor was held on-line. This yr, the competitors was a hybrid effort, with the judges and a few of the college students on Zoom and the remainder in Pettengill. Even with this hybrid mannequin, the groups successfully related with the judges, stated Emma Sprague ’10. “Throughout the board, we had been simply so impressed, excited and energized” by the coed pitches.

Soh and Wong “had an extremely clear worth proposition,” stated Schippers. “As we glance into this yr and subsequent yr, it’s actually dialed-in, and on account of that, we really feel that the success of the product goes to have plenty of momentum.”

Ladies examine forex on the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing in 1907. A problem for cryptocurrency is tips on how to convert it to a centralized forex, just like the U.S. greenback. (Underwood & Underwood/Library of Congress)

Soh and Wong met in center college, and have been buddies ever since. A shared curiosity in digital forex and non-fungible tokens — NFTs — grew to become Secure, an concept to unravel the banking drawback in cryptocurrency. The duo say that Secure would require no switch or processing charges, making the platform appropriate with networks operating off the blockchain. It’s going to assist over 300 decentralized digital currencies.

Whereas Bitcoin and different digital currencies are practically family names, their “mass adoption stays far in sight,” says Soh. However like several startup, the duo wish to anticipate and keep forward of the curve. “We as Gen Z will — and may — partake to engender a financially inclusive borderless world that accepts all types of cost.”

The runner-up prize of $5,000 went to a pitch by Ben Aguilar ’22 of Belmont, Mass., and his accomplice, Bob Ranalli, a Tufts scholar, for an internet platform aiming to do what an in-person campus tour or in a single day go to does for a potential school scholar: join them with present school college students. The location guarantees to do what a subreddit can’t: present professional curation of professional insights.

The concept comes as many U.S. schools, together with Bates, work to combine comparatively new on-line choices compelled by the pandemic, comparable to on-line excursions and “ask me something” Zoom periods, with extra conventional in-person approaches to recruitment, comparable to highschool visits and school festivals.

“The school utility course of is fairly nervousness inducing — it’s simply thought of regular to be utterly misplaced,” says Aguilar. “This has resulted in lots of people making this main life determination on fairly superficial elements. I’ve even seen somebody legitimately select a college for his or her colours.”

Their web site, Nescacguide.com — which is unaffiliated with the athletic convention — encompasses a community of scholars who attend NESCAC colleges and have volunteered to reply questions from curious potential candidates, in addition to an advisory board that has helped information the enterprise. 

“I feel what we had been most impressed with was the power to inform an awesome, compelling story and lay out not solely an issue, but in addition an answer,” says Chris Barbin ’93. “And having it already energetic, and fixing a real-word drawback.”

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