 Hi, how's everybody doing today? I'm your host, Rich. Here we have a RichTV Live with two very special guests, the Executive Chairman and Founder, Vince Seracci of Minehub and the CEO, Arnaud Star-Busman. How are you gentlemen doing today? Very good. Thanks for having us today, Rich. My pleasure. Thanks for having us. Hey, my pleasure, gentlemen. Thank you for joining us. So my first question is, Minehub is an enterprise platform that digitizes and streamlines manual and paper-based processes connecting the entire metals and mining supply chain. Can you tell us a little bit more about the company? Yeah, sure, Rich. So Minehub was founded in 2018 in Vancouver. It was formed around an idea of how emerging blockchain technology could help drive digitalization of the archaic processes in mining and metal supply chain. So the company didn't do this alone. So 2018 was really about forming a syndicate of companies around the minehub to help design, develop, validate products. That's some large companies like Weed and Precious, Gold Corp, ING Bank, and take it from an IDE to concepts. And also in 2018, we realized the initial funding for the project. 2019 was about developing the first release, which we did with IBM USA. And we started engagement with key future partners like BHB. 2020 was really around road testing the platform, testing the value proposition, refining it, learning, improving the UX, and then from there, taking to commercial release at the end of 2020. Some of the work that we've done there, that's part of it was in the press, the work that we've done with BHB, Vale and Bawu. 2021, so this year has really been around hardening the core platform, starting onboarding our initial customers and then building out commercial teams, especially in Asia. Minehub's already present globally, not just Vancouver, we've got, I'm based in Europe, but we have teams in London, in the Netherlands, and we have boots on the ground in key complex markets like China and Japan. Wow, you guys seem to be really busy. I didn't realize you guys were so global already. How does Minehub's technology benefit businesses across the trade ecosystem? In various ways, and there's quite a lot of players probably for people who don't do commodities, supply chain transactions on a daily basis, but it's a bit of an explanation of what problems we're solving. So if you look at these supply chains from mining supply chains, taking a piece of iron ore into a finished product in your house, for instance, these supply chains, they consist of a whole series of high value transactions between sellers and buyers, supported by a variety of servers and logistics providers. Think inspectors, banks, shipping agents, carriers, insurance companies, ports, et cetera. Transaction values range between one to $30 million US dollars. Now, there was some analysis done, and if you look at moving a container from Africa to the Netherlands, which should at first seem straightforward, it actually involves like 20 parties, 100 people, and 200 interactions between those people. And what they do, they usually send each other paper, emails, messages, et cetera, with information regarding the shipment, usually the same information in different formats, and they're chasing each other to get updates on status and location and things like that. It's very manual, labor-intensive, lots of reconciliations, lots of errors. It causes delays that affect customer service, but they also consume working capital, sometimes up to 30% of the time of the transaction is wasted for a container sitting idle waiting for paper. And this is just one step of the journey, one shipment. The supply chains are long, with lots of steps. It's been estimated that this way of working and this paper-based nature really loses around five to 10% of the value of the trade of goods, manual basis due to the friction of paper and document-based processes. We take a $1.8 trillion industry like mining and metal supply chains, that's a $150 billion pain point, just that, right? And that's one of the pain points we're solving. So we take the friction from supply chain activities by going digital and providing a shared collaborative space where information is updated and shared in real time. No more multiple versions of the truth that need to be reconciled, no more guesswork, where goods are and chasing people. Everybody's on the same page all the time. That helps us to streamline operations for our customers and users. It cuts out a lot of the stress. It takes away wasted effort on reconciliation. It reduces time lines for transactions and reduces errors. So everybody benefits really in these transactions. Very good. Sounds like you guys have been putting a lot of time and effort into coming up with some solutions to everyday problems. Why did Minehub decide to enter the public markets now? That decision was based on multiple fronts and it's an exciting time with tech stocks and the digitizing of everything right now. That the speed and the velocity of this movement was driven by COVID, obviously, as people were forced to work from home and processes that required personal interactions needed to be completed remotely. As Arnud just described, this industry in particular, very manual, paper-based, people-based processes. So capturing this new era of digitizing everything, which is exciting in the markets right now. And we're also in a phase of our growth cycle where we're poised to make significant strides. And we think public markets will find that exciting and shareholders will be rewarded in this public environment for this next phase of our growth cycle. And then, when you're public, it's greater access to capital. We just did a very large, significant financing to go public, so we are definitely cashed up. But now, for additional opportunities to expand our business and potentially, if we identify a creative M&A opportunities, it's good to be public. So those are the reasons that we chose to be public now. Very good. And we were very happy that you're public because our community loves identifying undervalued, under-appreciated, under-exposed companies that have an opportunity to explode. And that's why we love doing these interviews to get to know the people behind the deals. Now, Minehub is already working with the largest mining companies in the world, as well as massive financial institutions and tech companies. Can you tell us more about those collaborations? Yeah, and this is an important point because when the idea or the concept of starting Minehub came up and solving these problems in the industry or really just kind of moving, I come from the resource space and the mining and metals industry. And that industry's always been a big laggard with respect to adopting technology. Probably one of the worst ones in the world. And when this concept came up of introducing this technology, and it was back in the day when blockchain kind of started becoming a household word because of cryptos and other industries were starting to adopt it. We wanted to make sure we were building something that industry wanted, not something we were guessing at, what we think they need. And so Minehub was started with really putting together a consortium of industry players, like the corner points of industry. And that started with Gold Corp and Wheaton Precious Metals and ING Bank, the corner points of these supply chains. And really that acted as a focus group. They, along with IBM when we announced and signed a strategic development agreement with IBM and we all sat around a table and it was an intellectual kind of dump of how each of these corner points of industry saw a platform like this helping their business, making it more efficient as something that they would want to use. And that's how this concept started three years ago. And then that progressed and that morphed into additional groups like them. And our new invention, there's public announcements out there with the DHVs of the world and the ballets of the world. And they continued that process with us as we pivoted into different markets and started addressing additional opportunities for the company. They kind of, if you will, continued to collude with us and identify, I guess, not only niche opportunities within each of these organizations, pain points that we could solve for them, but stuff that would also relate to and be used by the greater industry itself. And those collaborations continued and we got to where we are today, where we've got a commercial version of the platform launched. But I think the more exciting part of that too is that those collaborations are just going to continue. And they're going to continue from a number of perspectives where you'll also see us doing joint venture type projects with a lot of leaders within industry around specific applications that will be put on the platform. So it'll continue to kind of enhance and increase the opportunities within the platform itself as we continue to work with industry. That sounds incredible. There's some big names you're mentioning there, like IBM and BHP. Can you tell us a little bit more about your ESG carbon tracking solution and how it will benefit the industry? Sure, I'll take the one. So I don't think it's surprising that ESG compliance and basically accounting and reporting on emissions, they're big themes for corporates now. And especially in supply chains, especially in mining and metals. And it's expensive for companies to comply with this. And let me give you two examples. So the first one is, for instance, in Europe, car companies that sell EVs, they need to prove the ESG footprint of the full upstream supply chain of the battery that's in the EV, in the electric vehicle. So they need to make sure there's no child labor or slavery involved in mining the cobalt, but also account for the emissions that we put in the atmosphere during the mining, the shipping and the production processes. How are they going to prove this? They need to have access to all the parties that have been involved in getting it from the mine into that battery in the car in the dealer showroom. That's a lot of information they need to gather from lots of parts that they don't even know. Another example is carbon emissions accounting. More and more companies, they really need to account and report on not just their own carbon emissions, but also those of their customers and suppliers as they're involved in processing or shipping the materials they buy and sell. So for instance, if a mining company sells iron ore to steel mill, that mining company needs to account and report on how many emissions their customer, the mill produced while processing the specific amount of iron ore that they bought from the mining company. And also how many emissions the vessel produced while carrying the iron ore from the load port to this port. These are so-called scope three emissions. Now, if you think about it, some of these companies have tens of thousands of customers and suppliers accounting for all that is a massive undertaking, pretty much impossible. And then keeping track of improvements or changes that suppliers or customers make, changing the intensity, et cetera. It's just a conundrum of data that needs to be captured every day and analyzed and reported on. So we're building a solution for both of those challenges. We are naming companies to help them prove, get independent certification, but also verify compliance with ESG requirements that those supply chains up and downstream. But we also help companies to automate the capture, the accounting, the auditing and the reporting of the scope-free emissions based as an early course of business. And that's, we do that transaction level. So it's a massive headache, a big per se is more really to address that. And this is not just solving complex problems for our users that are expensive. It's also directly contributes to our kids and grandkids future by promoting sustainable supply chains and carbon neutrality. What in other industries and sectors can Minehub's core technology be used in? And what space does the company plan to target next? So the problems and the pain points that we're solving, they are commodity-agnostic. So our platform is commodity and product-agnostic. We've got a very clear focus on mining and metal supply chains because it's an extremely important and critical, increasingly critical part of the global industry and our climate change ambitions that all the countries have. But we can use Minehub directly without any change for any other bulk-shipped commodities or container-ship products. In theory, we can enter any market, but like most companies, we've got limited resources and we need to focus and prioritize them, right? So a logical next step for us are those products that our users or customers are already involved in. So for mining companies, this means looking at their upstream supply chain, it's equipment that's being shipped to them, spare parts, tires, explosives, chemicals, fuel, et cetera. But also for some of the traders that we work with that are active in other quantities like coffee or petroleum products. We basically will go, we'll keep our focus on mining and metals, but we will go now where our customers or users want us to go or when we come across a really incredible opportunity that we jump straight in. Fantastic. What are some of your major milestones for the company this year? And what has been one of your most significant accomplishments for the company since it was founded in 2018? So for us this year, really, I mean, we've executed documentation with several large industry participants for a startup company to basically engage with some of the biggest parties in one of the most conservative industries on the planet. I think it's a major achievement and we're very proud of that, right? So it means that we've got something that is of value, that it means that it's something that can skill into a future digital infrastructure. We, cybersecurity is for most attention for us. So we invested instantly in achieving industry leading cybersecurity compliance evidence by sort of two type, type one assessment that we had we'll follow that with the type two assessment later in the year. We've run some live transactions including in trade finance and of course the listing on the TSX is a key milestone. But if I look back over those years but for what were really defining moments it's being able to work with those large companies and small companies to build this commercial platform. And the really defining moment was when we did the first blockchain-based iron ore trade between BHP and China Baowu in 2020 respectively the largest mining company and the largest steel producer on the planet in the midst of COVID, in the midst of the pandemic and that was a really defining moment for us for the team and for the company. Congratulations on all your success thus far. The Minehub team brings an array of experience to the company. Can you tell us a little bit more about your leadership team and why these key members were chosen? Absolutely. I mean, I'm very proud of the team that we've assembled around us. So the mission we're on is really not simple otherwise it would have been done before barrier to entry is high. It's not just financial we spent a significant amount of money getting here but it requires a combination of special skills and experience in technology, industry, finance, law, product management, execution, digital transformation and then we need extensive industry networks, contacts to be able to access these large companies and players at the right level having bring a certain credibility and trust to their engagement being able to operate and collaborate in many different cultures whether it's corporate cultures, large ones, small ones but of course countries like China and Japan absolutely critical markets that work very differently from what we're used to and our team combines all that skills and experience and we need it to execute. So if I look at the management team aside from myself and Vince, you're on today our CEO, CEO Mathias he's got extensive experience in digital transformation, execution, Hugh Harford Thompson he's a born entrepreneur having co-founded the first publicly traded enterprise blockchain company in Canada, BTL group, Mariana she has extensive experience in UX and product management Echo has been most of her career in various metals in mainland China, based in Shanghai she brings her domestic network and a market experience to the table and so forth and if I look at a board, I'll just call out a few we have got David Garofalo CEO for Goldcore for a long time which merged with Newmont last year and our two years ago we have Haike, coming from Anglo-American she was in the leadership team of the company there looking after digital transformation as well as India and China so we've got a lot of maturity and experience in our team management team but we also got fantastic team members to execute on that with us. Sounds like you have a great team that you put together what should investors look out for from Minehub in the coming months? We are working, we're firing it all soon especially since the financing and we've got a lot of work on so I expect some of that to come out in the press work we're doing with large customers and they're still on the reps. Similarly, we are launching applications over the next three months and we'll announce it when they are launched and when they get taken into use with feedback from the initial use we have a quite a strong list of partnerships key partnerships that we have developed over the years and that we will sign with and we'll give some visibility on that. And finally, there's it's conferences and now there's continuous events in the industry digital transformation, digitalization of mining and mass supply chains is a very hot topic and we will be attending and speaking in a variety of these. Wow. Finally, we've got investors all over the world that are looking for companies like yours that are undervalued, underappreciated, underexposed and are relatively new. How can those investors get in touch with you or the company if they have any questions or they're interested in potentially investing? Yeah, so I think our website is pretty accessible everywhere at mineup.com we have a investors page that gives good information and a movie we made about what we're doing got good reviews also from industry we've got an investor deck there we've got a book a demo button to get a demo or get more information we've got a LinkedIn channel but you can also email us well, of course. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for your time today gentlemen. I must remind everyone that is watching that Rich TV Live is strictly for information and education purposes. Please do your due diligence, do your research before you invest in anything we talk about or discuss here in Rich TV Live. In saying that, I do believe this is a company that is undervalued, underappreciated, underexposed put it on your watch list, put it on your radar and thank you for watching everybody today. And I must also thank the executive chairman and founder Vince Srirachi for joining us today and the CEO, Arnold Starr-Bussman. Thank you for joining us today gentlemen. Thanks for having us Rich. Thank you Rich. Always a pleasure. Told you guys if you're not winning, you're not watching, we bring you the winners and we bring them to you first. Thank you for watching everybody and have a nice day.