3 Important Facts That All Entrepreneurs Should Know About Blockchain Technology
by Andrew McGuinness Tem 16, 2019
Entrepreneurship has been on the rise for the last decade, to the point where claiming to be an entrepreneur has become as common as someone introducing themselves as a lawyer. The state of the global economy has made it possible for anyone to start their own businesses and succeed if done properly – and with the rise of blockchain technology, a new breed of technopreneurs is about to hit the global market. Don your trading 101 hats because a new wave of successes and failures in entrepreneurship is coming.
Blockchain technology represents the success of cryptocurrency and is indicative of the ways entrepreneurs can digitally transform many other industries. There are now opportunities for creatives, designers, engineers and others to become entrepreneurs by applying blockchain technology to their fields and change the way its infrastructure works. Blockchain trading 101 is critical to understand for anyone looking to get into the space.
Here are 3 key factors your need to understand about blockchain technology in order to apply it to entrepreneurship.
1) Venture Capital.
The most obvious impact of blockchain is on the venture capital market. Gaining access to capital investment in order to build their business is one of the most difficult parts of being an entrepreneur in the first place. This is even more true if you’re an entrepreneur hailing from somewhere outside the major investment hubs of the world – which blockchain addresses. By building a cryptocurrency linked to one’s startup, raising capital becomes a different ballgame.
ICOs, initial coin offerings, have become the new generation of IPOs. If executed properly, an ICO can quickly, cheaply and efficiently raise money for a company to build with. The beauty of ICOs is that they’re available to anyone, meaning that smaller investors and private individuals now have access to investment opportunities they would not have been able to get through regular means. Over $3.5 billion worth of ICOs have been organized in the last few months, proving there’s a large supply and demand and that the concept definitely has merit.
2) Connecting supply and demand.
Many industries of the world run on intermediaries. Middle-men for a lack of a better term, ranging from banks to governments to schools. Blockchain for instance allows for the use of smart contracts via a platform like Ethereum. Smart contracts are going to be one of the key players in circumventing many middle-men type of organizations in the near future, which should do wonders for privacy and data safety. Smart contracts use blockchain technology to validate, execute and record contracts and agreements.
There are many applications of this to several industries, especially ones that are prone to having human error be the root cause of many issues, which are opportunities for entrepreneurs to get into the field.
3) The importance of community.
One of the big drivers of blockchain and crypto are the communities they are built upon. The existence of a blockchain is dependent on the people that use it. Since blockchain is a decentralized system, there is no single controlling entity – which is exactly what bank networks and governments are. This prevents common problems in centralized systems such as corruption and other forms of negative manipulation as the community holds all the power.
Some blockchain-based companies use their communities to great benefit – from gathering feedback to ideating new products to setting the direction of the company of the coming year – the more involved the community is, the stronger the blockchain becomes.
Building a strong user base and community should be a priority for every entrepreneur in this space as they can be the difference between success and failure.