Bicameral Ventures Unveils Four Additions to its Board of Advisors
Michael Casey, Jean Desgagne, Todd Finch and Stefan Rust Join Bicameral Ventures' Board of Advisors to Enhance The Fund's Reach and Connectivity as Bicameral Ventures Seeks to Further its "Interconnected Investing" Philosophy
TORONTO, Aug. 12, 2019 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Bicameral Ventures, a pioneer in "Interconnected Investing," today announced four highly strategic additions to its advisory board with the aim of broadening the Fund's scope and continuing to grow its investing model. The appointments include Michael Casey, a renowned blockchain author, researcher, advisor and entrepreneur; Jean Desgagne, former CEO of TMX Global Solutions and 25 year Bay Street veteran; Todd Finch, former head of Netscape Canada and Founder and Managing Director of The Main Thing; and Stefan Rust, CEO of Bitcoin.com and former head of Sun Microsystem's Web 2.0 venture arm. These exemplary executives bring Bicameral's advisory board to six members, all working at different layers of the technology stack, to build superior experiences that leverage blockchain and blockchain-powered technologies such as AI and IoT.
The additions of Casey, Desgagne, Finch and Rust to Bicameral Ventures' board come at an important moment for the Fund as it continues to affirm market interest in Interconnected Investing strategies. Bicameral Ventures seeks to bolster outcomes and mitigate challenges when deploying capital by investing in an ecosystem that's greater than the sum of its parts. This ensures diversification across a range of world-class independent, yet connected companies and projects across a variety of industry verticals. The approach incentivizes mutual success among the interconnected companies, because everyone has some skin in the game. It also enables projects to share in the success of one another.
"As we push toward our goal of developing the premier building blocks and trusted experiences of the Web 3.0 world and interconnecting them within Bicameral, bringing these four world-recognized advisors into the fold drastically increases our scope and breadth of knowledge," said Alex McDougall, Chief Investment Officer of Bicameral Ventures. "We have a massive vision and this group is beyond reproach when it comes to their insight and experience in frontier technology markets."
"We're moving into a complex new era of AI, ubiquitous interconnectivity and mass-scale machine-to-machine transactions, and for that the Internet badly needs a trust upgrade. This poses both a challenge and a huge opportunity. That's why I'm excited to work with Bicameral, whose Interconnected Investment strategy will find and integrate solutions across different sectors of the emerging Internet of Trusted Experiences," said Casey, author of The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything and co-founder of Streambed Media.
"Bicameral understands the important role blockchain will play in the next wave of technological advancement and disruption and I am excited to be a part of this next chapter as it unfolds," echoed Finch, who played key roles with several industry players during the evolution of Web 1.0 in the late 90s and early 2000s and sees similarities to today's opportunity.
"Bicameral's interconnected "stack" simplifies development and go-to-market of blockchain, AI and IoT solutions, which is something we badly need, particularly from an enterprise perspective," said Desgagne. "Bicameral's longer term vision of enabling the trusted, open, self-sovereign world of tomorrow is particularly impressive and something I am proud to support."
"The timing for venture and token investments in blockchain and cryptocurrencies is right now. The team at Bicameral have a unique network providing a strong flow of quality investment opportunities in truly entrepreneurial companies" added Rust, "their focus and disciplined approach will drive above average upside in a sector with tremendous growth prospects. I enjoy working with Alex, Kesem and the Bicameral team."
"Blockchain and its related technologies remain extremely nascent, which is why Bicameral's advisors are as diverse as our investments across every level of the opportunity set," said Kesem Frank, CEO of Bicameral Ventures. "It will always be our goal to invest in the building blocks and experiences that will drive real adoption because that is how value enters the system. With Interconnected Investing, one project's upside becomes every project's upside and our advisors put us in position to maximize this."
More on the Advisors:
Michael Casey: Michael's nearly three-decade career spans five continents where he has tackled the social, economic and political impact of digital technology and globalization. Including eighteen years as a journalist at Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, his expanded resume incorporates roles as author, entrepreneur, researcher, teacher (MIT Sloan School of Management), mentor, communicator and advisor (MIT Media Lab's Digital Currency Initiative and multiple businesses and non-profits). Michael has a passion for projects that harness the power of blockchains and other technologies to improve access to the digital economy and for advancing public understanding of the potential for digital innovation to further public good.
Jean Desgagne: As the CEO of Stablecoin, Canada's first compliant, audited and transparent CAD Stablecoin backed by Canadian Dollars, Jean is a proven leader in fueling transformational change. With an emphasis on managing for tomorrow within large multinational financial institutions, exchanges and market infrastructures, Jean believes in leading change by building, fixing and growing future-focused businesses and organizations. He is a current and past executive and board member for regulated financial companies, industry associations, universities and not-for-profit organizations such as TMX, TD Bank and CAA. Jean is also an advisor to several startups.
Todd Finch: Todd brings more than 25 years of experience building innovative, high growth technology businesses that drive transformational market opportunities. As the Founder and Managing Director of The Main Thing, a Fund that has seen a 400% ROI since inception, Todd is well versed in advising companies and advocating, mentoring and coaching high performing founders, business leaders and CEOs in the fields of fintech, blockchain, enterprise, brand and customer experience, healthcare and gaming. Todd has worked with companies such as Pressly (acquired by Vision Critical); Bitstrips (acquired by SnapChat); Brand Project; BioConnect; Giftagram; Horizon BlockChain Games and Slice Labs. He has also led and cofounded three start-up companies and raised over $75M in venture capital. Todd served as the President & CEO of Vizible Corporation (acquired by OpenText in 2009), a company that was recognized by Deloitte's Fast 50 & tech 500, Profit 100 and Red Herring 50. At Netscape, Todd helped launch the browser and other Internet technologies to the Canadian market. Prior to that, he co-founded Visible Decisions, a real-time 3D Market visualization platform (acquired by Lucent). Todd is a Laurier graduate and advisor to the Dean of Science.
Stefan Rust: As a multilingual, global business leader, Stefan Rust turns the potential presented by cutting edge technologies into commercial opportunities. He has held executive positions and launched companies by building strategies, raising funds and creating business development partnerships as a foundation for successful ecosystems and associated business growth across mobile, IoT, big data and blockchain. Prior to becoming the CEO of Bitcoin.com, Stefan founded and led Exicon, a mobile marketing automation SaaS platform, aggregating mobile and social data to automate the engagement of mobile users. At Exicon he built a network of 3,000 independent software companies with over 30,000 software engineers, acquired and engaged across hundreds of custom software projects in the development of more than 500 apps and over 100 developer events globally. Stefan is also the Chairman Emeritus of the Mobile Ecosystem Forum and was elected a top 50 Global Mobile Entertainment Executive. Stefan previously worked with Siemens, Lucent and Sun Microsystems, as well as starting 8 of his own companies.
To learn more about Bicameral Ventures' "Interconnected Investing," please visit http://www.bicameralventures.com.
About Bicameral Ventures
Bicameral Ventures is a Venture Capital fund focused on "Interconnected Investing" and building a portfolio of highly complementary projects working toward bringing new technology paradigms into reality. Bicameral's themes include blockchain, interoperability, data and identity self-sovereignty, personalized AI and Web 3.0. Bicameral Ventures was co-founded by Kesem Frank, co-founder of the Aion Protocol and Alex McDougall, fintech and M&A investment banking veteran with Bank of Montreal Capital Markets. To learn more about Bicameral Ventures, please visit http://www.bicameralventures.com.
SOURCE Bicameral Ventures
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