 Great. Good morning Tokyo. Good morning to all slash attendees Thanks for being here. Thanks for listening to my talk. I hope you had an amazing conference until now a big Thanks for me to the conference organizers for organizing such an amazing event today I talked about list and My key learnings I had by leading this decentralized movement So my name is Max Kodak. I'm co-founder president and CEO of the list foundation and Before we start with the presentation. I'd like to just tell you all if you have no knowledge about blockchain technology Or cryptocurrencies in general we at list we have established the list academy Which gives you a great entry point into this topic and if you feel like you're missing some knowledge Feel free to go to this list academy which explains you everything about blockchain technology But cryptocurrencies about ICOs and so much more with explanation texts with Infographics with videos and it's an amazing piece of work. So make sure to check it out The presentation today is not really about lists about what we are building It's more about the story behind it, but to give you a little bit more context of what this is I want to give you a very quick overview. So this is Running on its own blockchain. It's a cryptocurrency and its token or ticker name is LSK It's currently in the top 21 cryptocurrencies of every cryptocurrency in the world with the market cap of approximately one billion dollar and We at list we are developing a platform to which JavaScript developers can go to to build their own blockchain applications For that we're working on different Kind of tools user interfaces libraries to make blockchain development easy fast and fun And here you see some of the applications. We are working on it's a big palette of tools and it's getting bigger and bigger every day and Yeah, just make sure to check it out Feel free to play around with them to install them and give us always feedback to make it the best cryptocurrency in the space So let's start with what you all came here for The founding story of list so list was founded by my partner Oliver Bettos and myself in early 2016 Oliver and I we worked in another blockchain startup together before and We thought that blockchain technology is a very promising but extremely hard to grasp Topic okay, and it's extremely complex and it is a technology where many complex fields are coming together Like cryptography distributed networking algorithms game theory and so on So that's why in an effort to make it simpler in an effort to make it faster and more fun to develop for it We established the list foundation The list foundation is based in Switzerland zoo and we created it in the beginning of in 2016 as well, and it's a non-profit entity that means there's no Interest behind it to generate as much money as possible. It's a non-profit entity with a goal to Distribute and widen the influence of blockchain technology in today's world To finance our goals We did a crowd sale or how we call it nowadays often an ICO an initial coin offering in which we collected 14,000 Bitcoin back then that were around 6.7 million Swiss francs in the end that's around 750 million and at that time it was the second second biggest crowd sale in history in the blockchain world and these funds are being used entirely on Lisk that means for marketing development operations legal topics and so on and so forth But today Thanks to several Investments the diversification strategies and of course the increased Bitcoin price from the initial 6.7 million Swiss francs The value increased and we have approximately 200 million Swiss francs available to build this project And these numbers are a little bit outdated because the presentation was being worked on a few days ago And right now everything is going down like a rock, but you get the drift We have a lot of funding in order to execute our vision That's how it all started, but let's talk about what happened in the last two years This is my favorite part of the presentation because it just shows that a lot of hard work can actually achieve something So achievement number one today, we are working with a wide net of many collaborators from all around the world Here you see a selection of those for example expand online from the Netherlands They're working with us and supporting us in sea seo analytics Marketing and so on tycoon out and from Germany. They're supporting us in user experience user interfaces They did our just recently launched rebranding and they're doing all things design Vexman from the United States and from Ireland They're helping us in our public relations strategy and how we communicate to the outside world So you see that it's not only the list foundation it's many many companies around the world coming together to work on this movement and the main contractor of all those is light curve which Is based in Berlin Germany and we're also was also founded by Oliver and myself Because we want to develop this software and we want to market it in the first years Ourselves in order to give it like the real push in order to make it a wide spread success Currently light curve consists of approximately 40 employees and we have the goal to double the size this year These employees are working exclusively on list that means everyone is full-time contributing We are still looking for many many more people Especially for cryptographers and designers and qa engineers So if this profile fits any one of you and you want to move to Berlin feel free to apply to careers at light curve.io That's achievement number two establishing an amazing startup in one location with a team culture and the spirits to push this movement forward Achievement number three is development activity. So Dappel is like an independent. I think Chinese based rating agency who is researching the development activity of various blockchain projects around the globe and They just did one new Rating round and in this one list has the most active development and the most frequent development of any Cryptocurrency in the world. I'm super proud of my team that they're putting so much effort into that In order to really develop what needs to be developed in order to build our platform We promised our initial coin offering investors to build Achievement number four is our rising influence in the space by going to conferences by being active on social media by spreading ideas others might have not thought about yet and According to rice global which is like a ranking site for influence in the blockchain space amongst others We are one of the top 20 most influential blockchain companies in the space I'm not talking about cryptocurrencies only here, but it's in general blockchain companies So that means also PR exchanges and other companies in the space Massive success for us. It shows that through the time we climbed up the ladder Which is mainly thanks due to the community and the team behind Blisk and the last last achievement is Real world get-togethers its conferences and events we attend but also we Let's say create ourselves you coordinate ourselves Here you see our relaunch event from just a few weeks ago in which we presented our new identity our new branding and our new design and In this hall you see here There were 500 people present and over the course of the evening 45,000 people watched online and became a part of this evening and for us It was just a huge success for our first real-life event which we planned and That's why we want to repeat that because it's not only software for us It's something where people collaborate where people coming together and where we talk face-to-face with interesting individuals or with individuals who are curious about this new technology So this is achievement number five amongst many many more we had Which just shows for me that blockchain startups can arrive in the real world and that they can make an impact and are here to stay If we are talking about the vision we have at least then for me It's very quickly told so we at least we envision a future in which blockchain Technology supports existing infrastructures by making them more global more transparent and more reliable Ultimately we want to make this world more decentralized and let the crowd take back control again We don't want that companies soak up all the control we want that people have it again and Our hope is that we are building or that the software and the platform We are building and the tools for developers. We are building is helping humanity or individuals at one point in their lives I think that's the goal for every startup But because we are decentralized for me It feels like even closer to the heart of the people because everyone can come together and can support us in this movement But we cannot change this world alone It's not on our shoulders alone like I said it's on all of us and therefore we have created the list ecosystem which we are striving to make the defector standard for blockchain development in JavaScript and This will be our way to Invite people into the list ecosystem to collaborate to work together to create a better future together but This future I'm talking about it's it's not coming easily, you know There are many many challenges on the road ahead it the past two years We have encountered some of these challenges, which I want to talk about five today so Being a startup in the blockchain space is Something different because as soon as you did your ICO you have a community you have investors You have people who rely on you. You have to keep communication high. You have to work on PR You have to get into news journals and Articles you have to develop your software every single day while doing all of that on the side and Development especially in the blockchain space is also something so much more complex so much more time intensive that As soon as you finish your ICO you have like a thousand tasks, which Act like a wall. So in my opinion, that's one of the key problems ICO startups and counter that as soon as the ICO stops they see oh damn There are so many things now to do. Let's clean it up Let's take care of that, but then it's often taking a few months until they're really up and running and One big distraction all these startups face on this journey is the market the prices and It was a challenge for us as well for our team for our community who were often getting distracted by the markets and the price But we learned quite quickly. It doesn't matter Focus only on technology and marketing to get real world adoption It's not where the price is today. It's where the technology will be soon in the future and This is an advice. I can give to entrepreneurs every single day Seriously, don't get influenced by the price stick to your product and make it a success That's so much more important than a higher price, which might just be a quick pump and dump challenge number two, which we met is to be everywhere Or should I rather say to build a team which is everywhere? I come not really from the startup space before this guy was just a student but I always believe in people coming together in one location and That's why I said it as one of our priorities to build a local team in one In one city and we chose Berlin for that and this turned out to be a challenge People think that just because the technology is decentralized the team can be too but For me it never worked so well because at the end we are building a company We are building a real product which needs to be pushed really really hard in order to let it progress and let it Gain real-world adoption so we cannot have Individuals sitting in the United States in Mexico and China and Japan and all over Europe We need them in one room to discuss these great ideas together and come up with solutions it takes longer to build it but it's worth it in my opinion and If you're building a culture around it a spirit then these people are also so much more incentivized to make it happen and What you will get at the end is a highly efficient and very motivated team and in my opinion that's worth more than anything else then Something I hear very often is but blockchain is different and this is a third challenge I present to you today. It's ignoring regular startup practices just because you believe blockchain is different and To be 100% honest it might move faster this industry than any other industry in the world And it might have or has its special attributes But at the end of the day, it's not that different at all And that's why in my opinion is very important to stick to the best practices previous entrepreneurs have taught us in many many years of Their own experience which they collected by building their own million or multi-billion dollar companies We should not forget that at the end. Yes, it's a new technology, but the company behind it is still a regular company The fourth challenge is to focus on key markets I told in the beginning that as soon as you do your ICO and finish it Suddenly you have like hundreds of fields you have to take care of and for me it's Another challenge now to be everywhere in the world in every industry in every country on every website and so on and This is a battle you can only lose in my opinion So what we came up with is that you really need to stick to key markets Let's say a key industry or two or three and a few countries in the world to go really really hard at We had list for example shows Japan as one of our key markets to focus on because we as a team just love the country itself But it also has an amazing promise for cryptocurrencies overall So advice stick to key markets and conquer them before you just decide to be all like all over the place But not really at any place The last challenge It's one I mentioned briefly already and which is often being overseen is that maintaining an always on Immutable network is something people not really did before in history. So What is it like to maintain and always on immutable network? You cannot just take off for five minutes fix something and that's it. It's hard. It's nerve-wracking. It's exhausting it takes a lot of time and dedication and That's why many projects in my opinion fail because they're getting hate and heat from every side And still have to deliver on top of that and of course investors always want everything yesterday. So what I can just Recommend you to do is stick to the best practices Have a very slow development approach don't do too much at once and just believe in yourself and your vision at the end You are the entrepreneur who is building this Software platform who are leading or who is leading this movement. So it's all up to you That's it. I hope you enjoyed my talk. Thanks so much for listening to it I soon have a Q&A session here as well in the slush cafe. I hope to see you there. Thank you very much