This past week I have accepted a position as a partner at a firm called Penrose Partners. Penrose is an emerging technology advisory group. Penrose does a lot of things so there is a reason that when I say “emerging technology advisory group” that you are not clear about what we do. Penrose is working with two very distinct sides of the market. We provide consultation services for emerging enterprises about how to adopt and enable blockchain technology. This could be anything from working with the government providing consultation on how blockchain might be able to solve certain issues, to working with big banks on exploring ways to monitor and regulate cheque life cycles. It’s pretty wide ranging because blockchain technology is capable of many things.
The other component of what Penrose does is working with the brilliant technical founders by providing them sales, communication and enterprise connections. At the end of the day we are connectors with a diverse background.
Over the last month as I’ve been getting integrated to their ecosystem, I have been blown away by the capabilities of this technology. I do not have a technical background in this which has allowed me to bring a fresh perspective to certain applications and use cases. I am a firm believer in blockchain technology as a solution to many wide ranging issues outside of digital currencies. Before all of this, I was sceptical of the tech and felt like it was just the backbone of digital money that held no inherent value. I was having a hard time understanding the way that this could be useful in other industries, so I wrote it off.
Over the last month I have been actively involved in multiple projects that i believe can have an incredibly positive impact in advancing privacy, traceability in supply chain, adoption of renewable energy, reduction in fraud and many more important issues that we face as a society. I’m sure you might be wondering what this means for Renga, the truth is that not much is changing. Renga is still my primary focus and I’m as committed as ever to building brands that matter. We truly believe that our role at Renga is to help businesses refine their brand, messaging and accompanying visuals to be tackling real problems and to do them in a sustainable way. This commitment and vision aligns with many of the skill sets that I am able to bring to Penrose.
In this past month the one thing that has been adundantly clear is that the blockchain community has done a really poor job of communicating the benefits and capabilities of their technology. Many of the conversations seem to go “The tech will speak for it self, then in a couple years, we’ll bring down Amazon / Big Banks / government / etc.” This is not true nor a great way to start the conversation when you’re needing to look for enterprise adoption to push forward the viability of the product.
All of the other partners at Penrose have been working in blockchain for the last 6-10 years and although I constantly feel like the dumbest guy in the room, I’m excited about the differing perspective that I bring to the table.
If you’re interested in learning more about blockchain and it’s potential use cases, I’m always happy to chat over email.