This startup will soon let the public rate ICOs

This article is from an episode on The Jay Kim Show. This is heavily revised from the original show transcript. For the full interview, go here.

For this episode, I sat down with James Giancotti, CEO of insights platform Oddup. He is a lawyer by training, a former investment banker at Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase & Co., and a successful investor. He’s now basically rolled up his sleeves to work on a startup.

Giancotti and I talked about Oddup’s new business lines and his thoughts on the future of crypto.

Why did you decide to build a startup?

I worked at JPMorgan during the 2008 financial crisis, then I moved to the research department of Goldman Sachs. But I had always been active in the startup space – investing in companies, making a good return out of them, and really being passionate about building a business.

One of the things that always frustrated me as an investor was always having to tell entrepreneurs, “You could do this better.” I thought, “Why can’t I come and help?”

I was also writing research papers about “maybe this is a good company to invest in” and “this is where I see long-term growth.” Then our limited partners said, “Actually, this is a good report. Why don’t we do something with it?” And Oddup was born.

Could you tell us what Oddup is and what your team is working on?

In banking, if we want to look at an asset, we’ll turn to credit rater Moody’s or a stock analyst. But we found that people had no choice when it comes to finding startup information. The available data was very centralized to the US and not really to Asia.

See: This startup rates other startups. Here’s how it works

So what Oddup does is rate not only startups but also sectors and ecosystems. We’ve gone from being a rating company to being a data insights provider. We also ventured into initial coin offerings and crypto ratings late last year. Right now, we’re in the throes of finalizing our series B funding round, which is always a long and hard process.

How did you come up with your new products, Unicorn Hunt and Alluva?

I always use the Coca-Cola analogy. If you just sell Coca-Cola, you will not sell much because you’ll get to a point of saturation. You should put up other products like Diet Coke, Coke Light, or Sprite to build an ecosystem. That’s how we see Oddup.

Unicorn Hunt, which is live in beta, is a media product aimed at providing headlines for people who can’t afford our main product. It’s also for people who want to keep themselves informed as they look to become an investor or a startup founder in six to 10 months.

We have started it off as a blog, but we’re also looking at other media channels such as magazines, TV shows, and YouTube.