Shuonan Chen - Top Enterprise Opportunities

Thank you very much, Hugging Face and everyone. So I know you've all heard a lot about really fascinating applications and use for blockchain and enterprise, so I wanted to take a quick step back and talk about some overall trends. So as you can see here, these are some of the largest and most widely recognized companies in the world, and they're vastly different from one another. Especially having worked with a lot of them firsthand from my time at Goldman Sachs as well as now in my venture role, I know that it might seem like they don't have anything in common. But for all of those companies, as well as Fortune 500 companies actually, you'll be surprised most of them all have ongoing involvement in blockchain. In fact, out of the top 15 Fortune 500 companies, only 2 of them don't have any public ongoing involvements in blockchain. So let's take these established companies and indulge in a thought experiment very quickly. On the one hand, imagining these well-established companies, and on the other hand, imagining some of the most well-known startups within blockchain in different sectors, whether it be IoT, insurance, or payments. And take these 2 categories and just mix and match them to see what kind of creative partnerships you can imagine. You might be surprised, actually, with a little bit more research, just how many of the partnerships you just imagined are true across all of these different industries, whether it's in the form of investments, business deals, or other types of partnerships. And in fact, these relationships are critical because they reveal some of the top opportunities in enterprise. So a deeper look into these relationships will reveal just how truly global these blockchain initiatives have become. For instance, you see companies like Alibaba and PwC, as well as Walmart and JD.com coming together for the first time to collaborate on blockchain initiatives to improve food safety and traceability. And you can also see from the audience today just how truly global this industry has become. So now that we've talked about opportunities in enterprise and blockchain more generally, I wanna discuss tokenization. Specifically the new opportunities that tokenization brings for established companies and startups. So I'll be again talking about overall trends, but for those of you interested in specific case studies, I teach a seminar at UC Berkeley. So starting with established companies, it might seem a little bit less obvious how tokenization can bring them new opportunities. And in fact, if you looked at the same group of top 15 Fortune 500 companies, you'll find none of them have any direct involvement in tokenization, and only 2 of them have worked with startups that have tokenized. However, if you haven't heard of reverse ICOs, this has really become a very prominent trend for established companies. While this is mostly still conceptual within the US, obviously with a few exceptions, but this has already gained a lot of momentum in markets such as China. So what's really fascinating beyond established companies is what some of the most well-established startups are now working on. Obviously in 2017, we we saw 210 ICOs having raised $3.9 billion, and we saw 2018 just year to date blockchain startups having raised $2.9 billion already in token sales. So first and foremost, the most obvious opportunity that tokenization brings for startups is a new method of fundraising. But what's less obvious here is again how truly global tokenization has enabled startups to become from day one. In fact, most token sales that are now raised are raised after a global roadshow and from a very international base of investors. So now, outside of fundraising, the second most interesting opportunity tokenization brings is in terms of new business models that better align incentives among different stakeholders in the ecosystem. And this can include more flexibility in pricing. For example, imagine SaaS companies that have historically charged by seat. They can now, with tokenization, charge by precise usage. Now third, tokenization can help startups significantly lower costs, whether it's by doing away with previously centralized costs of storage and compute, or it's by better automating transactions with smart contracts. Now outside of costs, obviously tokenization can also help startups significantly improve business efficiency. And when it comes to business efficiency, this could be through its data structures that enable for easier and and faster sharing of data, whether this is intra-company or intercompany. And improving business efficiency can also mean through the decentralized mechanisms that we have for consensus building and for encryption that enable for more data security. Lastly, tokenization enables startups better attract talent through better incentives, essentially. Now we have seen plenty of well-designed projects prove that tokenized models can attract more talented individuals to contribute to projects, the core of projects, at a very early stage, rather than just seeing it as a get-rich-fast scheme. So at the end of the day, any great business, whether established company or startup, needs to do 3 things well, and that is to raise money, make money, and hire people to make money. And tokenization can help businesses do all 3 of these better with better methods of fundraising, better aligned business models, as well as better incentives for attracting talent. Obviously tokenization brings some really fascinating new opportunities, but I wanted to conclude on a quick note of caution. Tokenization can build a fundamentally better model, but one, it's not a fit for all, and two, it must be subject to certain core principles such as by that of supporting a fair, efficient, and transparent market. So ultimately, it is important for established companies as well as startups alike to really seriously and carefully consider the top opportunities as well as risks associated with blockchain and tokenization. Thank you very much. Thank you.