When I research blockchain stocks, the first thing I ask for is a finished product—because that’s rare.
Having a finished product is actually The Gold Standard at this early stage of the Blockchain industry, which is just getting adopted into many verticals.
If your company or start up has a real product, you move up my food chain dramatically. So I was happy to see one of my best investments to date, Venzee (VENZ-TSXv), announce they’re integrating their finished Blockchain software, called MESH, with BTL Group (BTL-TSXv) Interbit.
So two blockchain companies now have real software products and real customers and hopefully announce real product revenue in their next quarterlies
MESH is actually just a blockchain version of the core Venzee software that uses Artificial Intelligence to read excel spreadsheets and automatically import data into a company’s supply chain.
With regard to MESH it’s not a question of “does the market need this” but more “how soon can we have it?” Everybody’s data is in a “legacy” database (or spreadsheet), none of it is “blockchain” ready.
MESH will be a significant front-end for Interbit, the blockchain development platform of BTL Group.
“If you have MESH sit between Interbit and the client’s existing conventional database, we can merge and transform the database and write that data into Interbit. So what that means for BTL’s clients, they can get up to speed much, much faster,” says Kate Hiscox, founder and president of Venzee.
The BTL Group is a foundational player on the West Coast blockchain scene.
BTL has been making a living as consultants/gurus of blockchain for the last few years but now with the launch of Interbit, a functional blockchain development platform, they now shift to becoming a product-focussed company.
In a press release from January 22nd, BTL gives an operational update on Interbit and its successful pilot program with multiple customers:
“…four oil and gas supermajor and five leading energy traders including Eni Trading & Shipping, Total, Gazprom Marketing & Trading Limited, Mercuria, Vattenfall, Petroineos and Freepoint, propose to participate in using BTL’s Interbit blockchain platform to deliver gas trading reconciliation through to settlement and delivery of trades. This enterprise solution is being called OneOffice and is a revenue generating project for BTL.”
“We are very excited about our partnership with Venzee, especially as we believe it will result in a number of client projects originating from Mesh and BTL. The projects we see often include multiple data sources from the same or different companies. This is where Mesh helps connect the dots by merging and transforming data before it’s written directly to Interbit or any applications on the platform,” stated Dominic McCann, CEO of BTL.
So the “story” is no longer about software or even blockchain. You don’t have to count developers or try to grapple with what the software actually does. Once the product starts shipping, you can close that book.
“We are presenting solutions to client’s needs,” says Hiscox, “I am confident we will see sales success
The story of blockchain companies has been one of presenting ideas, visions, and nice powerpoint presentations of potential markets and future product strategy. That story may linger on for a little bit longer but now we can see the end of vapourware.
The MESH/Interbit partnership is now a marketing and sales channel story. Now it’s a matter of legal drawing up the sales contract, of management negotiating the service contracts, closing deals and booking revenue.
Both BTL and Venzee are talking with Fortune 500 clients and signing NDAs with major financial institutions and talking and negotiating and hopefully signing agreements.
Research analysts (and investment newsletter writers) will soon be able to look at hard numbers rather than relying on their imagination.
Yesterday BTL Group closed up nearly 25% to $10.00 on Wednesday on news of the joint partnership.
Venzee closed up 10% yesterday to finish at $1.41, in a bear market for crypto/blockchain companies in general.
Ross
Disclaimer: I own shares in Venzee
