ICO projects will start selling equity in the next 2-3 years, predicts this blockchain VC

Beyond the Hype is a series by Jacob Chee, Tech in Asia’s head of blockchain initiatives. He interviews influential personalities who are changing the landscape of their respective fields, with a focus on companies that have the qualities to last through the hype.

This week, we speak with John Ng Pangilinan, partner at Signum Capital, a Singapore-based firm that exclusively consults with blockchain-enabled companies. He holds advisor roles in Kyber.Network, Republic Protocol, and Sentinel Protocol, among other projects, and is a founding member of the Aelf Innovation Alliance.

John’s first foray into business was at the age of 11, when he sold used textbooks and comics outside of school bus stops. He started his education in mechatronics before switching to a business degree.

After leaving Standard Chartered Bank, John started various companies at the age of 23. One of his most recent ventures is the Makan Bus, Singapore’s first hop-on-and-off food tour.

Hi John! Great to have you here as the first ever guest of Beyond the Hype. Why did you decide to start Signum Capital?

I was investing privately in several businesses, both brick-and-mortar and tech startups. I have started up several businesses over the past 18 years and served a short stint with a VC firm before starting Signum Capital.

Initially, my partners and I were planning to start a growth fund, looking at series A, B, and C rounds. While we were doing so, a mutual friend of ours asked us if we were interested in “crypto.” At that point, we thought, bitcoin? As we dived in, we decided to switch to Signum Capital, investing in blockchain-enabled firms.

One of the major pull factors was the technology behind blockchain and how it can help a number of companies. We felt this was the next big thing and decided to be a part of this space.

What is your investment philosophy? What projects do you look at and why?

I still look at business use cases and adoption, as well as marketing strategies. When we started, we looked at infrastructure. We felt that the first couple of projects we should focus on are good infrastructure projects that would then pave the way for decentralized applications to build upon.

Multi-chain structures such as Aelf would be the best solution to accommodate a wide variety of industries, such as banking and gaming, powered by scalable cluster nodes. The market needs scalability and flexibility.

At this juncture, we are looking at Dapps and existing firms who want to tokenize. We are also setting up Signum SynerG, an incubator and accelerator with a focus on finance dapps and a small portion on games. Asia is still a finance play, and gaming makes a lot of sense for firms wanting to utilize blockchain technology.

What is your current and long-term view of the blockchain ecosystem?

The blockchain ecosystem is still at its infancy, as the channels are very fragmented. A project hoping to showcase itself globally will have to try very hard, and a project that has an incredible team will also face expansion hurdles.

If a project were to have completed an ICO, they would need additional avenues of growth and expansion, and I think these aren’t really in place yet. Most “retail investors” want them to list in exchanges ASAP for obvious reasons, but there is more to it than just ICO-and-list.

Funds (both crypto and non-crypto) will form alliances and partnerships; exchanges are partnering with funds. We see more partnerships growing in this space. I think this is good in the long run, as it helps projects to connect easily with the right players and funds to have access to more projects globally.

What needs to be done to ensure mainstream adoption of blockchain projects?

What is your view of the various crypto hubs? Which are the rising ones?

What are the trends and challenges you see happening in the next 2-3 years?

What does a typical day as John Ng look like?

What are some values you want to impart to the founders you advise?

Lastly: