6.7.23-Venture-NYC-Securrency

ARIADNA RODENSTEIN: So welcome, everyone, to the startup lightning talks. This is the a bit more past-phase part of the program. And I'm Ariadna Rodenstein, program manager with MIT Startup Exchange. And on behalf of my colleagues, we're excited to have you here in person and also via the livestream. So I will give a brief overview of Startup Exchange and then we will hear from the startups.

So our program was created over seven years ago so-- in the Office of MIT Corporate Relations, which as you heard is also home to the Industrial Liaison Program, or ILP. And the two programs are very closely aligned and work very closely together. And our mission is to foster collaborations between MIT-connected startups and ILP members.

The startups are based on MIT-licensed technology or founded by MIT faculty, staff, or alumni. They can also be vetted by some of our MIT partners, such as The Engine we presented today, MIT.nano, CSAIL, and others. We have over 1,000 startups in the program right now and they usually come to us at the pilot stage or beyond. And they represent many different sectors and many different technologies and geographies.

And you might have heard of STEX25 or may have seen this logo. That's a program within Startup Exchange, where we provide customized support to the startups. It's 25 startups for a period of 12 months and then we have rotations. And they get referred to us by our MIT partners and then we lead the selection process. And we actually have a few current and former STEX25 presenting to you today.

And so how can you engage with these startups being an ILP member? So one way is to attend events like today's. You actually have access to a global network since we have conferences all across Europe, Asia, Latin America, the US, and Latin America. And you also have curated introductions throughout the year, either specific meetings just for you, other events, et cetera. And the benefit of that for the ILP members is that we can tailor programs according to your needs. And the benefits for the startups is that we take them into these markets where they may be expanding into, or have a presence and are growing, et cetera.

And also I'd like to highlight opportunities. This is a challenge that you might post and then the startups apply. And you can select them for the best fit, and then they can work with you, and help you solve a problem that you may be facing in your industry. We have a very active opportunities page on our website on Startup Exchange, so definitely you should take advantage of that.

And so we always like to share some of the success stories that come out of these collaborations. These are some of the ones that have been made public. There's a few others as well. And these collaborations could take the form of-- a corporate can be-- can do a pilot with a startup, they can become a customer, there's R&D partnerships, all the way to an acquisition as you've heard a lot of the speakers today mention. And, as always, I like to say that I hope that then some of the conversations and introductions that happen today will lead to many more of these success stories.

And before I turn it over to the first startup, these are some of our upcoming events. We still have a very busy beginning of summer, so I hope you will join us for all of this. We have a brain tech webinar tomorrow. Next week we'll be in California for our first live demo day. We usually host this virtually every quarter, but we'll be there in person in San Jose.

On June 20 is the annual London symposium on future of work and related themes. And then will be heading-- Ron will be heading to Australia for energy and mining symposium. So definitely check out the ILP and Startup Exchange websites, see the agendas, register, join us, and also do the same for next fall. We're going to have a very exciting and robust schedule of events.

And so with that these are the excited-- the startups I'm very excited to have them out here in New York. And we'll start with Securrency. So-- and this is global liquidity and financial freedom with a very reliable partner. Thank you.

DAN DONEY: Thank you, Ariadna. I'm very excited to kick things off there's a great list of startups that are coming-- that you'll get a chance to see here today. I'm Dan Doney the CTO and founder of Securrency and '94 MIT grad. Look, this past year was a tough year for financial services.

Silicon Valley Bank-- the sudden collapse there-- really showed that the foundations of financial services are shaken. Before that, there was the catastrophic failure of FTX, which affected retail investors and folks in the crypto space. There are core problems in financial services.

The root causes of those failures also happen to be the main cost drivers in financial services. And those cost drivers are compliance costs. And here you can see $181 billion a year spent by financial services on compliance, an additional $20 billion on failures to comply and fines that follow that.

And, additionally, there's a major cost driver associated with reconciliation, that is the cost of settlement. Well, the good news is there is a technology that is marvelous for settlement. It's actually perfect for getting consensus agreement at global scale. It's called blockchain. The problem for all parties is blockchain is not inherently compliant and in many ways actually facilitates people to avoid compliance at its core structure.

Well enter Securrency, that's our value proposition. We've actually got a patented model which actually allows you to embed into blockchain networks compliance rules. This allows you to take global regulatory frameworks or enterprise policy, embed them into every state change that occurs on a blockchain network, where you can block illicit or irregular transactions from occurring.

With this technology-- this patented technology, you can actually encode those regulations and make smart tokens, which know that-- what they're allowed to do in the financial services space. Using generative AI, you can actually read-- machines can read regulatory policy or enterprise policy and encode these rule sets. Again, that can be dynamically adjusted as this matures.

A use case of the-- our-- the Securrency platform is WisdomTree. WisdomTree is an asset manager here in New York, the largest independent creator of ETFs, Exchange-Traded Funds. We, working together with WisdomTree, got SEC approval of the first regulated-- registered 1940 Act fund last September. This is massive news.

The SEC actually approves activities on blockchain rails, as long as you do the right things, and our technology is enabled those things which allows WisdomTree to go to market. That-- those tokens launched in November and subsequently we've had 16 more funds approved by the SEC. That's the basis for WisdomTree app called WisdomTree Prime. It's going into the market actually this month, which allows retail investors to trade in real time dollars, forex transactions. So fiat, commodities, securities, debt, and equities, securities-- public and private-- all in one platform and one experience.

The difference to investors it actually blends your banking experience and your investing experience. In an experience that runs 24 hours a day, so trading 24/7 over blockchain rails, where transactions settle in 3 to 5 seconds. So any asset, at any time via this particular application.

You can ask Coinbase or even Binance the importance of starting with compliance as a core value proposition in case you haven't heard the SEC has actually fined Coinbase yesterday and Binance earlier in the week you must start there and that's what we do. We work with our financial services customers and investors. So, for example, State Street and US Bank. In order to make their operations on blockchain rails compliant that's our Mo is art we sell our services our platform to financial services. And psoas major institutions in the space we look to use our customers and partners and I look forward to a demonstration of our technologies and our capabilities here after the session. Thank you.