Who’s behind this? #14: Unspent – Etienne
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This section aims to give the opportunity to introduce some of the best ?? founders. Most people loves their products but don’t know who are the founders behind them. Hello World.
Hi Philippe, you recently launched Unspent, a crypto-asset portfolio management app that presents itself as “simple enough for newcomers, and powerful enough for serious investors”. Can you share a bit about your background?
I’m an entrepreneur at heart and I’ve been a software engineer for several years. I love building stuff that helps others in some way and I’ve both created as well as worked for a couple web companies where I was able to do just that. Just before launching Unspent, I worked at Buffer for three years, building social media tools for thousands of businesses and individuals. About a year ago, I set out to build a service that makes it easier to participate in the cryptocurrency industry that many have become fond of, including myself. That’s where Unspent comes in!
How did you get into the Bitcoin and blockchain industry?.
I first heard about Bitcoin early enough, in 2011. Like many others at that time, I saw it as intellectually interesting and highly speculative. I didn’t dare buy any and I learned about it from afar over tim, until Bitcoin as well as other cryptocurrencies caught my attention (and many others’) during the 2017 bull run. I realized then, that against all odds, Bitcoin had actually gotten to a state where it was known worldwide and used by a significant amount of people. Not only that, but the space was ripe with ideas and innovation, with many projects and ideologies being put to the test. It was exciting to witness! I developed a strong desire to contribute to that industry and it didn’t take long until I started working full time on Unspent in mid 2018.
Tell us a bit more about the team behind Unspent. Are you hiring?
I’m a single founder bootstrapping Unspent and focusing on providing a product that’s simple and valuable to its customers.
For a service like Unspent, I believe slowly working towards profitability is a sustainable approach that ultimately allows for more liberty in how product decisions are made and a better user experience overall.
I’m a single founder bootstrapping Unspent and focusing on providing a product that’s simple and valuable to its customers.
What is the long-term vision of Unspent?
Unspent’s goal is to make this whole industry more accessible to everyone. A portfolio tracker that helps understanding, monitoring and optimizing one’s portfolio is the first step in that direction.
To minimize risks and maximize profits, it’s important to understand both the fundamentals of projects we’re investing into and how markets behave. Unspent offers tools to that end and more will be added soon. Education is important too, so Unspent will contribute a lot more to that in the future too.
Can you talk more about how Unspent streamlines the crypto-asset investment process for those new to the environment while attracting and retaining advanced users?
That’s a great question! There are so many different types of people into crypto right now and that’ll only increase as the space grows.
Some friends are just getting into Bitcoin; they haven’t invested much at all, but they need a way to keep track of the value of that investment, see their average buy price and how much profit they’ve made. That’s it.
Others buy a small portion of Bitcoin every month and they appreciate the fact that their Unspent portfolio is automatically synchronized with the exchange (or wallet) they’re using, so they can just look at Unspent to know where they stand, anytime.
And some other friends have been trading Bitcoin and alts for several years now on multiple exchanges and have participated in ICOs. They need a way to keep synchronize everything in a single place with no effort, make sense of their profits, be alerted of price changes, know how much of their portfolio is on exchanges versus wallets, how much of it is invested into large caps versus small caps, analyzing the performance of some assets versus others, how their portfolio performs versus Bitcoin and price correlations between baskets of assets (e.g. small caps vs large caps). They need a good understanding of their portfolio and how the overall markets behave. Unspent has it all!
I firmly believe that good products are easy to start using, with simple features that everybody needs being easily accessible and more powerful ones slowly revealing themselves as customers need them.
What’s your business model?
Unspent is subscription-only. A small yearly subscription gives you access to all of Unspent’s features, unlimited price alerts, unlimited exchanges and wallets synchronized. The goal is for Unspent to be a sustainable business, while making every feature accessible to as many people as possible, since they’re all helpful in optimizing one’s crypto investments over time.
The goal is for Unspent to be a sustainable business, while making every feature accessible to as many people as possible, since they’re all helpful in optimizing one’s crypto investments over time.
Can you share a bit more information on your clients and partnerships?
Unspent has a couple of hundred customers, which I’m really happy about. Besides a few articles, I haven’t worked on getting Unspent any visibility, so this is all organic growth from happy customers, which is both rewarding and encouraging! As for partnerships, I do have some interesting ones in mind for later, but any person or outlet who’d like to support an easy to use and powerful portfolio tracker is more than welcome to reach out :).
What are your thoughts on the crypto European ecosystem?
I believe Europe faces strong competition from Asia and the US right now and it’ll be interesting to see how Europe can be attractive without leading to regulations that are too lax. It’s not only a matter of accommodating emerging technologies inside our current economies and societies, making sure there are thoughtful regulations in place to protect everyone involved; it’s also a matter of fostering innovation, helping companies prosper, which goes well beyond cryptocurrencies and applies to every industry.
Where the US can be seen as the land where capital flows easily for companies and Asia as areas where regulation can be more permissive, Europe has historically been this place, at least for startups, where neither access to capital nor regulations make it categorically easier to compete in the global economy.
For a new industry to be competitive on the world stage, Europe needs to be a place where capital is easy to access. This is both a cultural and economic challenge.
On the regulation front, it’s encouraging to see that regulatory bodies have already understood that not all types of crypto projects should be regulated the same way and that for some projects, while the underlying technology is new, use-cases are similar to other existing companies and current regulations can be applied to them as a good starting point.
It’s important to note that when I mention “crypto projects”, I’m thinking about decentralized finance, storage, computing and prediction markets — everything but crypto-currencies per se. These are something new and the best versions of them aren’t companies; they’re built in the open and meant to be used by everyone. Their relationship with regulation should, and will be, quite unique.
Is there any recent industry news that would would like to highlight?
None that hasn’t already been extensively talked about :).
Anything to add?
If you haven’t tried Unspent to track and help optimize your crypto portfolio yet, give it a try! I’m sure you’ll like it! And feel free to follow me (@_pioul) or Unspent (@unspentio) on Twitter!
Published at Sun, 04 Aug 2019 15:51:25 +0000
Bitcoin Pic Of The Moment
✅ Marco Verch is a Professional Photographer and Speaker from Cologne. ? This image can be used under Creative Commons 2.0. Please link to the original photo and the license.
By wuestenigel on 2018-07-28 13:33:38
