Meet the Boss – Exclusive Interview with RepuX CEO Marcin Welner

Data is becoming a commodity. A very valuable one. In fact, some analysts already refer to data as the next “oil.”
However, the vast bulk of this information at present is collected only by large businesses. This information includes customer behavior at websites but is not limited to it.
By tokenizing this data and verifying it, such information suddenly becomes not only more complete but also becomes something that can be sold, shared and used for innovation in places like AI.

RepuX has created a new kind of protocol – a hybrid combination blockchain – to enable both the capture of this information and the ability to capitalize on it.
Here is how it works. Companies can sell their anonymized data for tokens. RepuX assigns ratings and a reputation to the data that is collected. Developers can then buy this information to train their own machine learning algorithms and develop DApps. They can then sell these AI-enhanced applications back to the enterprises. This will lead to better decision-making. It will also begin to democratize who has access to this kind of information. RepuX, in fact, hopes to close the “digital divide” between those who have access now and the majority of small to medium businesses, globally, who do not.

We recently sat down with RepuX’s CEO, Marcin Welner, to have a chat with him about the project as well as finding out his thoughts and insights.

Hi, Marcin. Thank you for joining us today. Can you tell us more about yourself and RepuX?

Hi. I’m Marcin. I’m from Poland, father of two, ex-developer, managing teams for almost 10 years now.

This concept sounds awfully techie. But if you had to explain your elevator pitch to a non-tech geek, how would you describe yourself and the unique value you are creating?

Data is becoming a massive commodity now. There are data marketplaces out there but they lack several things – trust between parties, transparency, self-governance, easy payments. That’s where blockchain fits in perfectly. Companies that accumulate a lot of data are aware that there is a great potential is it but are afraid to give it to some random data analyst, at the same time they cannot hire on because they charge a lot, their job is needed just from time to time. On the other side best data analysts prefer to freelance because they don’t fit in into corporate structures.
On the other side if you just want to buy data – for instance, the average salary for a given position you’d usually end up with a report, that was already processed, lacking the methodology used, test group etc.
So in our project, we would like to focus on raw data coming directly from a business owner. In this case, he would just hook up a plugin prepared for this HR software that would grab the data, anonymize it and put it on sale. So the employer would get extra profit without disclosing anything sensitive and you’d get raw data matching your criteria.

How did you come up with the idea and what was the thought process behind it?

Well, it came from the experience of the founders – all three of us were working in corporations and we saw how much data was going to waste.
I was personally working in a logistics company – we were running a set of automated parcel machines (with 70+ compartments each). There is a huge peak season around Christmas each year. It was always very hard to determine how many extra couriers we’d need, how often they should visit the machines to put the new parcels in, how to calculate their routes, how to incentivize the customers to collect their parcels quicker.
It took us a couple of years of gathering experience and making calculations to get to satisfactory results. I’m positive that applying an ML learning algorithms to it at the beginning will get us there quicker.

What is the biggest problem with the industry or do you think there is a gap in the market for RepuX to fill?

Trust between SME’s, Data Sources, Developers. This is what want to solve using blockchain based reputation system and transparent smart contracts. Also, security of the data is a factor that many companies point out – we’ll be using a multisignature decentralized storage for it.

What do you think is the biggest problem RepuX will solve and why is the problem important to solve?

— answered that already

You are already functioning, right? Can you talk about your first partners and their reach as well as early results and insights?

We have a working prototype. We launched it in December and many people registered since. Of course it’s functionality is limited to some basic use cases but still, we gathered a lot of insights from it and we know what direction we should be going to.
Right now we’re working on the 1-click amazon integration to showcase how simple it may be for a data source to prepare data for selling. So basically you’d authorize us to collect sales data in your favor and we’ll do the rest.

In the whitepaper, you discuss the idea of a “digital divide” that currently exists between those who have access to this kind of information already and those who do not. Can you explain this a bit more? Finally, the compensation for sharing that data must be considerable – enough to get three large partners on board already. What was the selling point that closed the deal?

As for the digital divide, there are big companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon. They gather tremendous amounts of data – your data and they make a great profit of them. We’d like to break that, allowing you – the real owner of the data to have a chance to have a decent income out of it.

As for the partnerships – at the beginning, we’d be aiming at the data from SaaS software users from China so we’ll be incentivizing business owners themselves. Given the average salary in China guys that are lacking this data – for instance, US importers looking for a new vendor can pay what for them seem marginal but makes a great extra revenue for the Chinese business owner.
Addressing SME’s from other parts of the world can be a challenge – we’d be using a significant part of the ICO funds to get them onboard

Editors Pick: RepuX ICO

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