I’m early 40s. Have worked in traditional industries most of my life. I’m not your typical blockchain nut. I don’t code. I don’t game. And I don’t build things, I sell them.
I had my chance to be part of the tech revolution. I can remember being at school when the first computers came out. And a little later when the internet in its infancy started to proliferate, I watched most of my friends move into tech in their early 20s. But I never really got it. To be honest, I still don’t to a degree. Staring at a screen all day isn’t really living in my view.
But Covid19 lockdowns changed a lot of things for me. Forced to sit in a room and contemplate life, I decided to make some big changes. I did a master’s in finance (almost finished), started trading stock markets (who didn’t) and wondered if I could create a new career from scratch that enabled me to dothings my current industries did not (work remote).
So, I moved headlong into SaaS sales. It’s been a steep learning curve, but I have enjoyed every bit of it. And by being in SaaS I got a high-level understanding of the business model and the value that it brings customers and firm founders/investors. In addition, my trading took me into Crypto which I had looked at in 2018. Suddenly most of my time was being spent on tech related activities. And in the background, I was studying traditional finance.
I see SaaS as being built not to solve problems but to generate revenue. Build it once. Sell it a million times. And my studies brought me a begginers understanding of how the financial model we all work under has been built to generate wealth for others with our money. This TradFi and SaaS confluence has made me see blockchain from an angle that excites me immeasurably.
So many problems I see in the world that this could help with. Frustrating transfers of wealth, inflation, expensive TradFi products, misuse of our personal data, supply chain transparency, and on and on and on. I started to think that maybe, just maybe we could build a technology system by the people, for the people.
And I started to feel young again. Excited. That positive global change could occur. I can remember being 21 and thinking that I could take on the world. But as I got older, I realised that beating the status quo was a fight very few people win. But why is this? We have a new generation of young thinkers coming through every decade, yet most of what I see today is exactly what I saw 20 years ago, and frighteningly very similar to the historical documentaries I watch.
As I pondered this question, I realised that the reason most positive change doesn’t occur is that we don’t have the tools, systems, processes, or technological ability to support the change. Blockchain can be that “thing” that can underpin people’s efforts to create radical change across our world.
For the first time we have transparent tech that we can be part of, that we can build together, that is purpose built for us. This is why it makes me feel 21 again.