I almost never post anything personal on Twitter, but today is the 10th anniversary of my being self-employed, and for anyone who needs to hear this, I feel compelled to tell the story of how this leap has led me to more career success than I ever could have imagined 🧚🏻
— Laura Shin (@laurashin) April 12, 2023
😎 Inspired by Laura Shin’s account of her journey into crypto ten years ago, I’ve put together my short version, of my journey ‘down the rabbit hole’ 🐰🐇.
🧧 My journey starts at fintech startup Welendus (now Fund Ourselves) I was busy working with CEO Nadeem Siam on a £300k Seedrs raise in early 2017 with invaluable PR help from CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal to guide our efforts..
📺After connecting with Arjun on Twitter about an ICO for AR device Lampix in early August 2017 I was hired by CEO George Popescu (also founder of the Lending Times news site) to support the public ICO.
“In Q2 [of 2017], ICO issuance was greater than venture capital, with $210m [invested in ICOs] vs $180m [invested into #startups by VCs].” pic.twitter.com/8ijKdT7Mmt
— Stuart G. Hall (stuartgh.eth) (@stuartgh) August 8, 2017
The private and public Lampix ICO in July and August 2017 together raised over $14m.
🚩China banned ICOs shortly after the private sale in September. The China-based Lampix investors did not get their funds returned. BigONE CEO Tian Yobin, reminded me of this in July 2021. Clearly Lampix is not without controversy.
🗻🌛At the height of the ICO hype I wrote an in-depth guide to ICO marketing including a ‘HT’ to Lampix adviser Jeremy Epstein, who later became CMO at Radix;
Jeremy Epstein – @jer979 – who grew @Sprinklr $20m to $1.8bn valuation in 4 yrs, sees #BigData value of @lampix_co https://t.co/sU4LgR7RWz
— Stuart G. Hall (stuartgh.eth) (@stuartgh) August 11, 2017
🤝In September 2017 after creating a pitch deck on my services, I returned to Canary Wharf to assist PR and content for BABB, a ‘banking for the unbanked’ crypto startup “facilitating borderless P2P transactions”.
💲Their ICO raised around $20m in early 2018, and are still going strong led by founder and CEO Rushd Averroes.
🖥️My ICO marketing post also led to a CMO marketing role with blockchain-enabled data transport startup OpenCryptoTrust (OpenCT).
Not the easiest topic to communicate to an ICO audience in Kazakstan, but I perserved..
Cool news. pic.twitter.com/QfzsqFRoNs
— Stuart G. Hall (stuartgh.eth) (@stuartgh) July 29, 2021
♦️♥️ Back in the US the team won an industry award in 2018 in Atlantic City at the Blockchain World Conference, as well holding a little poker tournament of their own. Headline speaker John McAfee failed to appear in person!
😇 I aso squeezed in some work with Novum Insights in mid-2018, and later in 2022 I invited CEO Toby Lewis to speak at an expert panel on NFTs at BigONE Exchange which included crypto journo Tom Farren, head of Global Blockchain Initiative Ben Baldieri and Corrales Cachola, founder of Brand New Voices.
😎 While OpenCT went into fundraising mode I kept my crypto work going through crypto winter, from a webinar for JACS (to a spot of marketing for Radix (it recently raised $10m on a $400m valuation).
🏂❄️The end of crypto winter for me was the opportunity to join AI startup HUMAN Protocol in early 2021, raising over $50m in the process and working with crypto VC Bering Waters..
@human_protocol Coinlist sale starts in 30 min: 17:00 UTC!
Human Protocol, Bering Waters Ventures portfolio company, is a new way for machines and humans to collaborate.
Our investment thesis will be available soon. Stay tuned! https://t.co/QL5KNALB1c@JamesRoyPoulter @stuartgh pic.twitter.com/rtAgqmVhrk— Bering Waters Group (@Bering_Waters) June 17, 2021
⛳The rest of my crypto rabbit hole journey you can find here, in my sister post on my ‘Fun in crypto’ with BigONE Exchange and DappRadar.
