Community News

Reflective Ventures Deal Day

Patrick Maguire

Overview

Reflective Ventures hosted a Deal Day event on July 27th where six companies pitched innovative solutions to real world problems.  
There were six judges: Greg Meredith, Gwen Sheridan, Alex Ortiz, Deanna Duke, Tom Lindeman, and Kevin Valentine. They represented RChain, lifeID, Reflective Ventures, Consensys, and a local venture capital fund. The judges were looking for innovative solutions, applicability to RChain, blockchain usage, clarity of product, and GTM strategy.
In addition to the businesses presenting, the event acknowledged Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, and the University of Washington for their initiative to help create a blockchain curriculum.  

Concreit

Concreit is a commercial fractional real estate marketplace powered by blockchain technology.

Problems

Everyday investors

  • Too expensive
  • Non-accredited investors excluded
  • Higher returns usually come with more risk and lack liquidity
  • Tax benefits are complex and hard to benefit from

Investment managers

  • Financing – Certainty through financing
  • Cost pressure – Investors want to see more value and lower fees
  • Liquidity for investors – Private real estate placements  are not liquid

Solution

Everyday investors
App to make fractional commercial real estate investing accessible to all

  • Simple to use
  • No fees
  • Variety of investment strategies, including automated ones
  • Deferred taxes

Investment managers
Platform to make real estate investment management more efficient

  • Reliable and gap financing
  • Automate administrative tasks
  • Make existing assets liquid through regulatory-compliant tokens

Feedback

The judges said the presentation was well thought out. They had concerns about the target market being millennials, when the trend is for millennials to not want to own anything, and wanted to see more details fleshed out.

Longman Suntech Energy

Longman Suntech Energy sells green energy to businesses and enterprises.

Problems

  • Generation – huge carbon footprint and massive land use
  • Transmission – expensive and about 30% power loss
  • Distribution – complex regulations and high costs to consumers
  • Financing – centralized finance has high costs and lack of access

Solution

  • Rooftop power plants with community-based solar micro grids
  • Reduce carbon footprint
  • No extra land use
  • Transmission is more efficient
  • Community-determined pricing

Feedback

The judges thought the problem was well articulated and the demand is huge, but wanted more details about the implementation.

Paramation

Paramation provides a decentralized operating system (Ingress) and stable information currency (AO).

Problems

  • Blockchain VMs need blockchain operating systems to enable their full potential
  • Mixing centralized architecture with decentralized applications is insecure

Solution

  • Blockchain operating system
  • Solve a lot of security problems with no need for oracles
  • Enable autonomous applications
  • Can be used as an utility for devs

Abstract Order (AO) is an information-currency that is secured by the uniqueness of the information underneath it.

Feedback

The judges appreciated the passion for decentralization. They found it unclear how all of the modules fit in together.  

RumbleMonkey

Rumble Monkey is a platform that allows gamers to wager against each other.

Problem

  • Most sites rely on both parties agreeing on the end result
  • Bad actors cause repudiation and lengthy audits

Solution

  • Automated platform that runs alongside the game, monitoring it and rewarding participation and honesty
  • Quickly detect cheating
  • Reliable reputation system
  • Secure transactions

Feedback

The judges were pleased by their technical and legal approach, and clarity of their product offering. One of the concerns was the scalability of the “watcher” who is analysing the game to make sure the game is played fairly.

Yumatch

Yumatch is an organization centered around building a collaborative AI for a democratic healthcare system.

Current system/ problem

  • Currently Google, Apple, and Amazon possess everyone’s data and you don’t really have ownership of that data any more.

Solution

  • Bring back ownership to the individual and provide tools to control and share user data.
  • Allow people to contribute data to a “blob”
  • People called “taggers” to curate data and registries
  • Users share different data to different parties

Feedback

The judges were interested in the vertical but felt the business model and GTM strategy wasn’t articulated that strongly. They’d want to know more about the economic incentives.

SmartTix

SmartTix is a blockchain based ticketing protocol that allows people to buy tickets to concerts, sporting events, etc, in a decentralized manner.

Problems

  • Ticket fraud
  • High processing fees
  • Ticketing issuer doesn’t benefit from secondary market revenue

Solution

  • Create a digital ticketing protocol that is automated through smart contracts eliminating:
  • Lower fees
  • Reduce fraud
  • Eliminate middlemen

Feedback

The judges like how they created a solution to a bad experience. They appreciated how the team wants to protect the customer, but the judges wanted to see revenue sharing with the artists.  

Winner

At the end of the event, Kevin Valentine led the judges in giving feedback to all of the presenters. After all of the feedback, Greg Meredith announced the winner to be RumbleMonkey!
This is exciting for RChain because RumbleMonkey opens the doors to the gaming market by allowing gamers to play against each other with secure currency transactions.
Thank you to Reflective Ventures for hosting this event. Reflective Ventures is a blockchain venture capital investment fund that is committed to helping platforms and dApps get off the ground and established on the RChain platform.

Link to the participant companies’ sites: