By: Geeq on Sep 21, 2020
Geeqs Hans Sundby and Stephanie So visited their host Crypto Mount for an AMA with the Telegram community of theblockcircle. Savvy business types – this recap is for you.
After a few questions from @theblockcircle’s Twitter following, Crypto Mount and Stephanie ended up in a wide-ranging conversation that uncovered how Geeq’s product, market, and funding strategy have been informed by the dot.com bubble and the “as-a-Service” models that grew from it afterwards.
Questions and answers have been condensed and links added. Thanks very much to Crypto Mount for a highly enjoyable AMA that zeroed in on the behind the scenes thinking rather than the technical aspects of blockchain. Enjoy!
Host: Crypto Mount
Guests: Hans Sundby and Stephanie So
Crypto Mount:
So let’s start with the introduction.
Please introduce yourself and what’s your role in the company @hansdallass
Hans:
I’m Hans Sundby, Head of Crypto for Geeq, I am a crypto maximalist with 6 years of experience in the crypto market as a Key Investor, CEO, Consultant, Advisor and expert in investments & crypto business development. My main expertise is market strategies and exchanges. Joined in on Geeq about 1 year ago, and have been building up a marketing and business development team for Geeq.
@StephanieS? Please introduce yourself and tell us something about your background before starting Geeq. As we know, all investors want to know more about the Team background as a few people, including me, believes in the leader and way of execution rather than the idea.
Stephanie:
Hi everyone, I’m Stephanie So, and I’m a Founder and Technical co-creator of Geeq’s Proof of Honesty. My technical training before coming into blockchain is as an economist – I’ve worked with large data sets and have been interested in cutting edge technology and what it could do for policy – especially health and disability policy, for decades.
Tell us something about Geeq in brief, just as an introduction.
Stephanie:
Geeq is, in many ways, a reaction to the ways that commerce has developed over the past 20 years or so. In blockchain, we saw a real change in what people and consumers wanted, which was to push back against the massive concentration in power and loss of control that consumers and small businesses were having.
Our CEO, Ric Asselstine, and John and Lun and I – in fact, many of the members on the team, have been through the first internet bubble – we’ve seen what works and what survives, at least in the SaaS world. We think blockchain is the next SaaS movement.
We invite you to read more about Geeq’s Team here: http://www.geeq.io/people/
So basically you used your economist experience in implementing the idea.
Stephanie:
Right, exactly. The big difference between blockchain and central databases, of course, is that it has the potential to open up an economy.
Great, to be honest. It’s good to see such an experienced player joining crypto who has seen the internet bubble.
Stephanie:
There are some advantages to having an older than average team age. Not that we’re too old, I should add.
So I think Geeq’s value will not decrease in the next bubble as we have Stephanie’s counter plan for that from her experience.
Stephanie:
It’s not only me. We’re all of the same mind that this is a unique opportunity to build a foundation to last.
Crypto Mount:
So we should take Twitter Questions now or else we will keep on talking.
Questions from Twitter
Q1. What are the major utilities & token economics and vesting for GEEQ, how does it capture value and appreciate over the long run?
Hans:
Geeq’s tokenomics are designed to work in tandem with the growth of the project and complement the increased demand for the Geeq platform. All releases are intended to make the Geeq Ecosystem able to grow in all aspects, which gives confidence to our builders and investors that we believe in the platform and the value of the token in the long term. All in all, no data makes it logical to push out tons of tokens pre-market or pre- product, but it makes all the sense in the world to allow it to grow afterwards. See our tokenomics here.
Q2. What is your strategy for attracting new users to the Geeq, Security/Privacy feature should be the top priority for any organization?
Stephanie:
Geeq believes security is the top priority, or at least a necessary requirement, before any business or enterprise should consider adopting blockchain. Geeq’s Proof of Honesty is far more secure than other technologies which are intended to have the benefits of decentralization.
If a blockchain relies on identified, trusted agents (like private blockchains), then you really have to ask yourself if their incentives are aligned with yours to ensure a non-manipulated database AND if their incentives are aligned with yours in terms of cost.
If not, it’s not clear what a blockchain gives you that is an improvement over a centralized database with trusted agents.
Q3. I’m an investor and trader so I don’t want to lose my asset to some scam projects that disappear with my money. So many super hackers – so security, scalability, and data privacy are three aspects that are very important at the enterprise level, how will Geeq handle these issues?
Stephanie:
Well, first of all, I completely agree with you! I think the blockchain space has been incredibly innovative and some experiments have succeeded, some have failed, and Geeq’s attitude is we’re always trying to synthesize what happened and help others take it to the next level. There are no excuses for scams, ever, though, and I know I speak for everyone on the Team.
One reason that blockchain is attractive as an up and coming field is that transparency is encouraged. One of the major problems, in my opinion, is that not enough people have the technical or financial expertise – or, let’s face it the time, to check into the “transparency” of the code, and everything is at risk if the coders can change the code and do not live up to their word.
So, basically, my view is that there is a lot of promise, but at least three things are needed. First, no one can change the terms and thus defraud you. Geeq handles that by validating according to code is law. We are not going to release code with back doors, nor are we going to push code updates : what you sign up for is what you will get. That is part of the security package. If a scammer promises you the moon, then they will have to abide by their terms!
This gives a real incentive for projects to be better thought out and will produce a signal to you, the investor, that there is quality to back those projects up.
Second, we are focused on adoption, which means making the technical blockchain useful to the end user, whether they are technical or not. What I envision is that we will do everything possible to attract honest developers who want to make their applications available, transparent, and trustworthy to their customers and investors. Geeq is built for unlimited scalability through its multichain system. And finally, data privacy can be customized.
Q4. Staking is one of the important factors that all projects need to focus on to become more attractive to investors. So, what is BitMax’s plan for the Geeq community? It’s time for “Head of Crypto”.
Hans:
Yes. We will absolutely need validators once the Geeq mainnet is public and live. Geeq is currently working on a model which makes it much easier for everyone to participate in the validation process and staking, in terms of one-click solutions and low GEEQ amount required to become a validator.
More in-depth information on final numbers, etc. is yet to be announced. Meanwhile we have tons of validator information in the Technical papers.
Moving forward, we will announce Pre-Staking pretty soon. Probably before you know it. This is a great way for people to already enjoy some of the benefits GEEQ hodlers will have.
Q5. As a community Member, How can I help in the project’s growth? What role can community play in the Geeq ecosystem?
Stephanie:
The community plays an important part of the Geeq ecosystem – this is one of the reasons why we have been doing a AMA once a week over the last few months.
A strong community is important to any token and we encourage our followers to retweet the tweets from @GeeqOfficial, spread the word on various forums and social media platforms, or even bring Geeq to the attention of your favorite YouTuber.
We’ve had some really great articles that have been written about us and I think word of mouth is one of the strongest forms of promotion that can happen for a pre-launch project.
In addition, of course, we’re writing a lot and linking any articles we release. There’s a lot more material on geeq.io. We will be doing more AMAs, so stay tuned for announcement’s about these.
As Geeq’s CDO, I visit our Telegram channel often to hear the kinds of ideas and concerns and needs that the community is expressing. It is not too soon to be thinking about the kinds of applications to build on Geeq, since Geeq is a DApp agnostic, completely scalable platform.
Cool. Let’s take the last question from Twitter 😊
Q6. Can you describe in detail current development efforts, market expansion plans, expected applications and when they will be available in the market?
Stephanie:
What I can say is, we know the community really wants to see more updates and development efforts, and we’re preparing to make the end of October a time to invite the community in. Proof of Honesty is a patent pending protocol and we’ve been pretty careful about showing the technology. Our Lead Developer is very experienced in the blockchain field, and we’ve been writing from the ground up, so both sides of Geeq – the theory side and the dev side have been working out issues that both really want to get right before we bring anything to market. For example, my co-Founder John wrote this blog piece, which I think is a very thought-provoking piece. One second, please let me find the link.
Also, I’ll put up the roadmap.
Crypto Mount:
Cool. So we have completed the Twitter Questions part. But I have some questions from my side. So help me by answering them.
Stephanie:
Of course!
Crypto Mount:
I will be asking questions on the basis of priority so ignore the sequence please 🙂
Questions from Crypto Mount
Geeq’s website says : discover the freedom and flexibility within the Geeq ecosystem. Please explain this phrase.
Stephanie:
I love this question. It touches on all three of these subjects:
1. The multi-chain freedom and low entry costs to participate and build on Geeq,
2. Our commitment to making blockchain useful and supporting decentralization, and
3. A general philosophy of not imposing on people so they aren’t trapped in an ecosystem but can move about as they please.
The validation layer is very strict, as I mentioned above. However, every application is independent. Developers have to really think about what they’re going to put on the platform, but they can be very simple applications.
One of the things we’ve ensured in the security model is that users and validators – supporters and participants of the Geeq ecosystem – will never lose their tokens. There’s a lot of freedom that comes from that, and my dream (which I’m certain will become a reality) is that a digital decentralized platform (or network of networks) will become a voluntary system with the accountability that comes from blockchains that function properly.
Crypto Mount:
Thanks for the answer. 🙂 Let’s move to the next question.
What’s your plan to generate revenue and from when will Geeq start generating revenue ?
Stephanie:
That’s another great question because, while we’re fully behind this technology, we are also real pragmatists. It is one of the parts of having a team of economists and entrepreneurs and such.
It’s really really important to know, as most of the crypto projects are just an idea and looking to raise 20m$ on that. We expect great things from Geeq, unlike others. Also an economist being head of the project we expect to do some magic in revenue sense. 😎
Stephanie:
I love that. The answer is, we plan to generate revenue as soon as there is usage of the platform because Geeq’s business model is planned in two phases that can overlap. Our core business model is to be able to provide secure validation of huge volumes and take a small slice.
We pay everyone to participate – because incentives matter. So every validator will be paid their costs of honest work x 2, and we’ll charge customers for validation something like the costs of honest work x 3. One neat thing is that PoH pays all honest validators automatically as part of the protocol, and it’s a level playing field where it is cheap to enter compared to other blockchains. So there’s no advantage from being able to expend a lot of work to win or to be able to put up a lot of stake. It’s business and our aim is for people to be a validator by running a background process on their ordinary computers.
The only way this model succeeds is if we can deliver on the huge volume, but we have a plan for that. Since we’ve seen how the internet works – for example, from the original email system between universities to all the email today.
Crypto Mount:
Totally understand it.
Stephanie:
Our Team has telecomm experts and our CEO is from an IoT background. He saw that IoT should be paired up with blockchain for accountability, which is one reason why security and scale were so important to build in. Geeq is the only platform we know that can support smart cities and micropayments out of the gate.
That’s only the first phase of the business plan – but the gist of it is there will be actual value created in the next economy that will be contractually obligated to share – and it’s only by running a system where no one can go back on their promises that that becomes possible.
This (credible pre-commitment) runs through our thoughts on monetary policy as well, I encourage people who are really interested in the tokenomics to read about Geeq’s stabilized token.
I’ll keep my thoughts about monetary policy in the real world to myself. The digital economy can be different. That’s really exciting from an economist’s point of view because we study expectation formation and uncertainty, and how that affects markets.
I would like to know from you what value Chainlink integration brings to Geeq, because as a co-founder you must be having some big plans behind this partnership. Basically how are you going to leverage this partnership?
I see a lot of potential here and this is the general thought about how Geeq approaches partnerships. What we know we can do is bring a platform with functionality in purely public blockchain to life. As an econ student, one of the first things you learn is the advantages of comparative advantage and specialization. So, we’re not trying to do everything. We want to do one thing really well and then do everything we can to help other people thrive.
Chainlink has specialized and really worked on issues around security. One of the best things about integrating Chainlink is that developers who have thought hard about finance and other applications that depend on oracles will be familiar with these tools and be able to have those available from the start.
This is also a reason why we’ve partnered with Morpheus Labs – they are providing tools that shorten the time and cost to adoption. They had very big news this morning, by the way, they’ve partnered with PwC.
So really, it’s about making partnerships with others who believe in the value of combining forces.
Crypto Mount:
Yes Morpheus Labs nailed with the PWC partnership.
Stephanie:
They tend to do that. 🙂
So what keeps you ahead of your competitors and why should we hold Geeq instead of trusting your competitor?
Stephanie:
Well, first of all, do your own research. Look at our research, our team, our business plan, the quality of how Geeq is differentiated from all other projects. Geeq’s technology is developed for a different purpose than the projects you see out there. We knew most of the business targets we wanted to go for, and the solution that we’ve developed is extraordinary in its ability to provide blockchain function, with security, at low cost, and scale, and function as an ecosystem.
In terms of keeping ahead of our competitors, we’re determined to continue to improve. So, from my perspective, we’re never going to fall behind.
We’re also willing to work for it. That’s part of the ethic. When you mentioned that there are some projects that raised – well over $20M and haven’t delivered … we’re doing it the other way around, in a way.
Crypto Mount:
Yes, with our research we found the same thing. By the way, I have really lots of questions to ask and we’re having a really great conversation but we, both of us are short of time. So I will ask one more question.
What do you have in the pipeline for the short- and mid-term?
Stephanie:
I think you’ll see that all of the work that we’ve had to do to prepare for an honest-to-goodness, data service business for the next age of decentralized computing, will start to show.
Hans, who is not one to say great things about himself, so I will – Hans understands the implications of combining a token economy with a business that can solve these new problems. Ric and our more serial entrepreneur types understand how to take the best parts of the exponential growth businesses that they have seen, ground them in reality first, which is what we’ve been doing, and then build out.
We continue to work in all areas. We are compliant and combining equity/token fundraising in a successful and novel way. We are working on dev and community building, and finding out what people need. We’re working on more Intellectual Property (IP), I hope to be able to talk about that soon.
For 4th quarter, the benchmarks for me are primarily dev and IP, but that’s from my perspective at Geeq – you’ll find others who are just as committed to the project working on other goals. The lovely thing about being a fan of comparative advantage is that there’s an inherent trust that people will shine when you give them a chance. The team we have at Geeq is outstanding and we all are complementary and responsible.
Crypto Mount:
So basically you can sleep well holding Geeq. 🙂
Stephanie:
Well, I can!
Crypto Mount:
Me as well. It was great talking to you and unfortunately we need to wrap up the AMA. Thanks for spending a lot of time with our community. 🙂
Stephanie:
It was great talking to you, too, and I really welcome everyone to Geeq.
Hans:
Stephanie loves to write! Makes it much more easier for me. 🙂 Feel free to join: https://t.me/GeeqOfficial
Crypto Mount:
Make sure you follow all the links mentioned!
To learn more about Geeq, follow us and join the conversation.
@GeeqOfficial