By: Geeq  on Sep 19, 2019

Welcome to our first “Meet the Geeq™ Team” article. This is the short series that will dive into the story of the team who are looking to provide the next generation of secure, efficient and honest blockchain services.

Meet Ric Asselstine

The CEO and co-founder of Geeq™, Ric Asselstine is an inspirational leader with proven success in bringing disruptive innovations to market. Armed with an acute sense of timing for early-stage game-changers, Ric is a proud Canadian and a huge Toronto Maple Leafs fan; still holding out hope of one day being drafted!

Ric’s ethos

Applying thought-leading methodologies from the world’s most successful scale-ups, Ric is a tireless advocate of applying the “Exponential Organization” (Ismail et al) principles to every business he builds. By so doing, Ric can be assured that he creates a company ethos suited to learning, experimentation, and agility paving the way for rapid growth. These elements, coupled with an acute people sensitivity and knack for abstract reasoning combine to build the team environment to chart paths to success.

It may not come as a surprise that Ric’s relationship with innovation is evident in his academic pursuits, having studied Entrepreneurship & Organizational Behavior at the PhD level at York University in Toronto — including writing about inducing serendipity and having completed a BBA at Wilfrid Laurier University and an MBA at the University of Windsor.

OpenText

Having earned his stripes contributing to successful business launches, Ric was personally invited by a University of Waterloo Computer Science professor in the early 90’s to assist with the formation of the Open Text Corporation (OpenText). OpenText specialized in developing and selling enterprise information management software, the core idea was literally sketched on the back of a napkin to convey its transformative potential. Ric continued with this assignment from start-up to scale-up gaining first-hand knowledge of “the formula” for success and beyond. Open Text is now among Canada’s largest software companies, having successfully IPO’d many years ago and now enjoying revenues in excess of $5 Billion.

Terepac Corporation

Following this success, Ric went on to cofound Terepac Corporation, a professional services company with holdings ranging from advanced manufacturing to IoT and beyond. A successful early entrant into the Internet of Things (IoT) industry, Terepac is built with a mission of “giving voice to the world®”; examples including spin-outs now scaling smart fire hydrants and smart factories.

Being deep in the IoT space, Ric was made aware of the application blockchain technology in 2014; a logical extension of “full-stack” solutions Terepac developed. This was especially poignant considering the rising interest in new, but attackable IoT applications including smart cities, personal medical devices, or household electronics. Considering the importance of security in these applications, existing methods of storing data wasn’t sufficient. Something stronger, more elevated was needed. This supposedly arrived in the shape of blockchain, however, current blockchain technology had limitations. Enter John.

The Beginnings of Geeq™

Not settling for blockchain as it stood, Ric, on August 13, 2017, at 11:00 a.m. — at the Starbucks on the corner of King and University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, read John’s article, The Economics of Crypto-tokens and Initial Coin Offerings (2017). It was a game-changer. Ric connected with John. They clicked. Serendipity induced! They became friends and colleagues. Geeq™ emerged. Proof of Honesty was born.

Time will tell, but the rest, they say, might be history!