HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background.
Greg is the Chairman, CEO, and Founder of the global UCROWDME business. He is a passionate entrepreneur who has worked with many startups, created a few, and is now laser-focused on his current mission to help change the world.
As the Founder of UCROWDME, Greg strives to build communities, networks, and to help global companies with their innovation endeavors. Further to this, his focus is on the digital and transformation needs of his clients and figuring out how it can be applied within their businesses.
What's your startup called? In a sentence or two please describe what it does?
UCROWDME (https://ucrowdme.com) was born from an idea back in 2014, where founder Greg Griffiths saw a huge opportunity for a global ideas marketplace that was driven using cryptocurrency and A.I.
The company developed its own cryptocurrency token called UCM. People can sell their ideas via a fixed-price or auction, much like eBay, either for cash or they can choose UCROWDME tokens.
What is the origin story?
There are currently 2.8 billion people on the internet who are lacking access to a centralised ideas platform and 270 million SME companies with no formal ideas platform of their own yet, who are wanting to innovate. To put it simply: UCROWDME bridges that gap.
“There is an abundance of people with ideas and a huge number of companies lacking the ideas to take them forward, so this is the platform where the two meet. Ideas can come from everywhere, so that’s why we have pioneered the concept of ideas as a service.
Our goal for UCROWDME is very simple, the idea is to make innovation and consumer insights affordable for most SME companies on the planet so that they can compete more effectively with their larger competitors. In turn, this will generate greater net-new outcomes attributable to Global GDP,” once said UCROWDME CEO & Founder Greg Griffiths.
Most global companies (95% plus) cannot afford to implement, run and manage an ideation or insights platform, let alone administer customer insights, rewards, gamification, or an online marketplace.
The barrier of entry for these companies is too high. This means that innovation and customer insights are significantly thwarted for this audience and hence why global growth across innovation and insights is stalling.
Currently, there is no other innovation/ideas or insights platform available in the market that offers the technology UCROWDME offers at scale.
We are creating a decentralised social innovation ecosystem that will identify, validate and reward consumer ideas and insights through our blockchain and AI-powered platform.
An ideas marketplace platform where global citizens including inventors can post their ideas, thoughts, and feedback directly to their favourite brand, product, company, or relevant industry category for monetiSation.
We gamify the user experience like never before where global citizens earn rewards for each interaction in the platform which can then be monetized or redeemed within our global ecosystem.
Users can earn and redeem UCM tokens. These are generated based on the number of points a user creates on the platform and/or by each validated idea.
What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem?
I am very fortunate to have such an experienced, dynamic, and trusted advisory team. Each team member brings so much to the table and from across all corners of the world.
As a team, we all share the same vision of disrupting the current innovation status quo because it is clearly not working very effectively.
Our team brings a never-say-die attitude, always thinking outside the box and challenging conventional wisdom. We have the experience, reach and passion to turn UCROWDME into something truly special for all involved.
If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing?
I would most likely be managing someone else’s company in a similar field but without all of the joy and satisfaction :)
At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics?
We are currently measuring success against several core areas that collectively have a huge impact on our business.
These are growing our investor base for the UCM token, signing up more paid Pilots, growing our digital and social reach including PR, and finally generating revenue before our Beta release is in-market.
What’s most exciting about your traction to date?
- We have secured two significant Pilots giving us access to 7 million users.
- Establishing our global EMEA headquarters in Crypto Valley (Zug, Switzerland).
- Delivering MVP#2: Idea submission to Blockchain.
- Tokenomics#2.0: Pegging real data to the UCM token verified by third parties.
- Consistently growing investor-base.
What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why?
Where do you start? There are so many new technologies in play that are driving new highs in the market. For UCROWDME it will be how Ethereum 2.0 can provide our business with many new opportunities.
What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform?
HackerNoon is a very transparent and trusted platform and very much aligned to our own values.
What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself?
Grow a thick skin, jump in the deep end, always back yourself, and never give up!