Edwin Mata of Brickken.
Tell us about yourself?
CEO & CoFounder at Brickken. Partner of the law firm Attolon. Director of the Master in Blockchain and Crypto of Nuclio Digital School backed by Binance. Lecturer in univerisities and business schools.
Advisor and mentor of Web3 projects. Keynote speaker.
What do you think is the single biggest misconception people have when it comes to startups?
That ideas make money when it is a lot more complex how to monetize. We as people can generate thousands of ideas per day but does not mean that someone else would go for it, as such ideas are generating from our day-to-day conception about life.
When you create a startup, such should be not from your standing point, but from third parties, as you are trying to solve a pain to them. This is the monetization point, not the ideation part.
If you could go back in time to any moment from your journey, and give yourself one tip, what would it be?
Listen to everyone, but do not blindly follow everyone. It seems like a complex tip, but the reality is very simple. Everyone can provide you advice as we have all taken a journey that has allow us to taste success and defeat.
The difference in many cases is the scenario, so an advice can be misleading. Thus, do listen, learn from everyone, from every story you hear, but do always know that you story is different and unique so not everything applies.
Take the decision you think is best, and if an error occurs well now you have a new lesson and a new experience that can help you continue your journey towards success.
What makes you stand out as an entrepreneur?
My resilience. I find it very interesting complex matters, and failures, because I do know that when the calm arrives, everything is just better.
In this sense, when something happens in my life, I no longer take it as a negative factor, but all part of a learning process that can help me build my persona to go an achieve my goals.
What are some of the best working habits you’ve gained over the past couple of years?
Agile methodology. I live my life by sprints, and it has allowed me to be more efficient and coordinated. In the end putting procedures on anything is what allows chaos to be governed.
Give us a bit of an insight into the influences behind the company?
I used to work for a SaaS company, which allowed me to understand many processs.
After studying and talking to various CEOs of the sector, I decided to run the company as a SaaS even thou our monetization and structure is different as we are a Fintech Blockchain company.
Where do you see your business in five years?
As a company of 100 plus employees, that has achieved the unicorn status, and its token among the top 100 in Coinmarketcap.
What do you think the biggest challenge will be for you in getting there?
Maintain the talent inside the company and acquiring more. Companies are built by people which is its biggest asst.
Talk to us about your biggest success story so far?
Our company was created in 2020 and in May 2021 we were very closed on liquidating Brickken as we only had around 7k in the bank account. 365 days later we raised 2.5m and are amongst the top growing companies in the sector.
How do clients and customers find you? Are you much of a salesperson for yourself?
Every CEO needs to be an excellent salesperson.
We find customers through our inbound channel as we have done an excellent job in positioning ourselves, and now we have created our outbound channel, a partnership program and looking forward on hiring a SDR to help us grow.
What one tip would you give to fellow startup founders?
Take every no as an opportunity to get a yes in the future. Failure is giving up, not the moment itself; success is what you make out of such moment.
And finally, what do you hope the future brings both you personally, and your business?
The opportunity to disrupt how we see assets, equity, debt, and transform everything into tokens so we can all go fully into a Web3 economy.
