Hi, thank you for having me. 

I’m Andrew, a tech enthusiast and lover of innovation. I am a co-founder and CEO of Libra Incentix. 

As current technologies converge, and Web 3 transforms our experience of life, I help businesses strategize, design, and adopt the next generation of commerce and engagement. I led software development teams during a career in IT consulting, and became fascinated by the psychology of business, and passionate about bringing talented people together to pursue a common goal. I am particularly interested in how emerging technologies can propel underdeveloped societies economically.

2. Which of your previous experience made the most significant part of your career? What  is your experience in real business like? 

My career has been equally split between working for some of the largest and most prestigious IT consultancies in the world, where I led business critical multi-million dollar project portfolios, and small businesses. I’ve been lucky enough to take part in early stage start-ups, where I learnt to overcome the operational challenges caused by exponential growth, and developed the obsessive persistence that is necessary to succeed in a start-up environment. 

My experience of business has always been centered around the design and delivery of innovative digital products and cutting-edge platforms that lead to transformational change. I have cultivated partnerships with industry leading companies and held C-level and executive board member positions before co-founding Libra Incentix. 

3. Please, tell us a bit about your past projects. What were the most interesting and  challenging among those?  

Prior to Libra Incentix, I consulted for a tech firm called WallPost Company. Our mission was to bring ERP software solutions to SMEs in emerging markets, at a price-point never seen before. Having transformed the delivery methodology, operational structure and global sales initiatives, I become their CEO and advisor to the board. Maintaining morale and navigating the uncertainty caused by the pandemic was a challenge that contributed enormously to my personal growth.

4. Now, let’s talk about Libra Incentix: could you break down the business model behind your project? 

Our business model combines blockchain technology with loyalty programs, enabling users to earn loyalty points and utility tokens for participating in tasks that drive brand engagement, via the LIX platform. Our business is designed to form engaging relationships between individuals and brands. People’s identities are massively influenced by the communities they associate with. We’re all driven towards communities that represent us and our values. So forming a community around a brand, and converting customers into members of that community is a sure-way of driving long-term loyalty. Loyal customers are more likely to recommend and actively engage with a brand that they feel part of. 

5. Moving on, how does the main idea of Libra Incentix help to stand out of the competition? And what makes the Libra Incentix project worth investors’ interest?

A major cause of resistance to any technology, especially blockchain projects, is their complexity and the user’s lack of understanding. Does the average person have the appetite to learn about most of the crypto projects, enough to appreciate their value? Typically not! But Loyalty programs have been around for 40 years, the average person is enrolled into 14 of them and is very familiar with their purpose. Utilizing the blockchain to provide faster, more secure and transparent loyalty programs requires very little education. 

Blockchain becomes especially helpful when managing complex coalition models, where companies use a common loyalty point that can be earned from one or many brands, and redeemed in multiple places. The airlines do this extremely well and generate billions of dollars from their loyalty programs. Inside coalition models, loyalty points are earned and redeemed at different values, depending on the rules negotiated with the loyalty provider. Other rules that differ include expiration dates and distribution logic. The more expansive and less restricting the loyalty programs become, the more effort and cost required to manage the reconciliation and settlement. 

With LIX, smart contracts are used to automate the reconciliation process and can manage the settlement in an indisputable way. 

6. The fact that you’ve chosen the loyalty rewards as a main business idea tells about the opportunity stored within this market segment. What are the prospects and the market size for decentralized projects within the loyalty rewards area?

The global loyalty program market is valued at $180 billion in 2022 (E). The market is forecasted to grow at a CAGR of 5–6 percent to $179–191 billion between 2022 and 2026.

LIX uses fiat-backed loyalty points for brands who are not ready to adopt a tokenized system, but tokens and NFTs will replace them soon enough. The concept of owning your loyalty points rather than borrowing them is interesting to people, especially if their value has the potential to increase. 

We’re early but we’re not alone on this. BMW recently announced their intention to use a blockchain based reward system. Twitter has confirmed that a virtual coin will be used to reward members on the platform and multiple brands are using NFTs to add virtual value to their products. 

At Libra we are particularly keen in helping communities grow a more engaged network. This is traditionally important in the retail and restaurant space where our early customers are from. But our concept is applicable to practically any industry and we see hospitality and the build-to-rent industry as a very interesting space for us.

7. On your website, I’ve noticed many well known brands listed as part of the Libra Incentix platform. How did you convince these big brands to start working with your project?  Also could you disclose some information about upcoming partnerships?

Our strategy has always been to leverage partnerships with other tech providers or influencers in order to attract mass customers. Our partnership with Tamias POS and the Commercial Avenue e-commerce solution in Qatar meant that our solution was utilized in hundreds of thousands of restaurants during the football tournament, practically overnight. That massive presence made it a lot easier to approach mainstream brands.

Sorry, we can’t disclose many of our upcoming partnerships, however I can tell you that some world famous sports clubs, global brands and renowned restaurants are on this list!

8. It would be great to hear more about your native asset – what are the details of the  Libra token sale? Following it, is there a plan to list the asset on any of the public  exchanges?

LIXX is our native utility token used to power the LIX ecosystem. You trade LIXX like any other cryptocurrency or use it as a loyalty reward through a range of use cases. 

The crypto markets rely heavily on confidence, when confidence drops as it did last year, the effects can be drastic. Tying crypto to brand loyalty programs can mitigate this risk because they’re adding a tangible, real-world value to a digital asset. 

9. Finally, how would you describe the future ahead for Libra Incentix? What are your expectations for the next year? 

Having worked with one of the largest sports events in the world last year, we’re naturally preparing to repeat this in 2023, and already in discussions across Europe and Latin America. Our partnership with Tamias POS has been renewed which now covers the global market – a great start to the year! Each POS or ecommerce platform we partner with will open doors to thousands of customers so it’s a massive part of our growth strategy, this year. 

We gathered a lot of user feedback since last summer which will shape how we move forward in 2023. Within this quarter we’ll launch Version 2 of the LIX application which will give our brand partners much more control and flexibility with the types of loyalty currencies they chose to distribute and accept. LIXX will be listed on several crypto exchanges and play a more central role in the ecosystem. Later this year our loyalty rewards will include NFTs and third party tokens on multiple chains. 

Our plan is very clear but we will continue to adapt and pivot, based on what the market is telling us.

Press releases are a powerful marketing tool that can help businesses reach new audiences and grow their brand. By communicating newsworthy events or information about your company, press releases can help establish your business as a thought leader, increase website traffic, generate leads, improve your search engine rankings, build credibility, and gain media coverage.

Press release distribution can be an effective strategy for promoting your business and growing brand awareness. They offer several key benefits such as:

• Elevating brand awareness and making your company more visible to potential customers and clients
• Positioning your company as a thought leader in your industry, thus building trust with your target audience
• Driving website traffic by including links back to your website
• Generating leads by including calls-to-action that encourage readers to learn more about your products or services
• Improving your search engine rankings by including relevant keywords and phrases in the content and meta tags
• Enhancing credibility and trust through third-party endorsement of your company
• Securing media coverage in newspapers, magazines, television, and online news outlets. It’s worth noting that these are general suggestions and the best way to determine what will work for your business is to experiment with different strategies and measure the results.

Press release distribution can be a highly effective method for promoting your business and achieving your marketing objectives. By utilizing press releases, businesses can significantly increase brand awareness, establish themselves as thought leaders in their industry, drive website traffic, generate leads, improve their search engine optimization (SEO), enhance credibility and trust, and secure media coverage. These benefits can enable businesses to reach new audiences, establish their brand, and grow their business. To determine the most effective approach for your business, it’s important to experiment with different strategies and measure the results.

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So, let’s take a closer look at the most promising crypto projects of 2022. 

Lucky Block (LBLOCK) 

Look no farther than Lucky Block if you’re unsure about which cryptocurrency to add to your portfolio. Lucky Block is a blockchain-based lottery platform that aims to improve the lottery experience while also providing investors with a mechanism of producing a passive income stream. Lucky Block, which is built on the Binance Smart Chain, delivers better transparency and fairness while increasing the odds of winning for each contestant.

Why is it promising? 

The platform just completed a successful presale phase, selling out over two weeks ahead of schedule and earning $5.7 million. This motivated the development team to launch the token on PancakeSwap early in order to fulfil demand, resulting in a 230% increase in the LBLOCK price in the first 24 hours. 

Pledge Utility Token (PUC) 

The Pledge Utility Coin (PUC) token is a BEP20 token that sees itself as a change agent. The goal of Pledge Utility Coin (PUC) is to create value by connecting local needs to global philanthropic endeavours. The worldwide nonprofit industry is estimated to be worth $2.9 trillion, and PUC’s goal is to bring this fragmented industry together on the blockchain while doing great good and earning money for PUC holders.

Why is it promising?

Pledge Utility Coin TM intends to fuel crowd-sourced philanthropic contributions in an efficient and timely manner. When it comes to choosing which vehicle to power, PUC will be the go-to answer. With currency becoming digital, the philanthropic sector needs innovation, and the Pledge coin will be at the forefront of this. To become a Pledger, get on the PUC whitelist, go to https://whitelist.trypledge.org

Bloktopia

Bloktopia is an innovative metaverse project based on the Polygon network that is set to make waves in 2022. As a nod to the entire quantity of 21 million Bitcoins, the Bloktopia metaverse centres on a tower with 21 floors. Bloktopia’s gamers, known as ‘Bloktopians,’ will be able to own real estate within this virtual tower and earn money through value appreciation, leasing, or even digital advertising. 

Why is it promising?

One of Bloktopia’s primary differentiators is that the metaverse will be VR-based, requiring users to wear a VR headset. This delivers a more genuine experience than computer-based games and will open up new avenues for content production. Although details about the project are scant due to the fact that it is still under development, the Bloktopia team has indicated that avatars and other in-game items would be organised as NFTs and denominated in $BLOK – the Bloktopia’s transactional currency.

Binance Coin

Binance is a worldwide cryptocurrency exchange with over 100 million traders. Its native currency, the Binance Coin (BNB), is presently the third-largest in terms of market value, with a market valuation of more than $80 billion. 

Why is it promising? 

Binance Coin has grown by more than 10,000% since its inception. As a result, a $1,000 investment made in 2017 is now worth more than $100,000. BNB’s original use case was to allow Binance traders to minimise their fees.

Since then, a slew of additional use cases has emerged. On the Binance Smart Chain, for example, there are hundreds of tokens displayed. Furthermore, to purchase or sell any of these tokens, the user must pay transaction fees in BNB. It’s one of the greatest bitcoin alternatives.

Cosmos 

Cosmos is attempting to establish itself as the go-to provider of blockchain interoperability services, thus this digital asset may be the most attractive cryptocurrency to invest in right now. Interoperability, in its most basic form, allows two or more blockchains to collect and share data with one another.

Why is it promising?

Data from the Ethereum blockchain can be exchanged in real-time with the Dogecoin blockchain. 25+ blockchain networks are already utilising Cosmos’ interoperability features, with more to follow as we get further into 2022. Cosmos, of course, has its own digital token, ATOM, which you can purchase in only a few clicks. In terms of performance, CoinMarketCap reports that the initial token value in 2019 was 7.50 USD. In early 2022, the ATOM token was valued at over 40 USD.

XRP 

Ripple Labs’ XRP is a digital currency that intends to boost the global payments network. XRP has aided in reducing the role of third parties in financial transactions, paving the path for the development of decentralised finance, or DeFi, infrastructures. Ripple has been chastised by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which claimed in 2020 that Ripple’s XRP sales constituted an unregistered securities offering.

Why is it promising?

Trading on the site is currently unavailable, although XRP may be purchased on other cryptocurrency exchanges such as Binance, Kraken, and Huobi Global. As of April 22, the price of XRP was at 72 cents, with a market value of around $35 billion. Users of XRP are bullish on the price of this prominent cryptocurrency, especially if the SEC litigation is settled favourably, as it continues to add value to blockchain development.

Monsterra is a dual-chain game run on both BSC and Terra networks inspired by the Axie Infinity game’s pet world and the gameplay in Clash of Clan or Boom Beach of Supercell. 

The game sets foot in a fictional world and revolves around farming, property building, and battling with other lands with the magical creatures named Mongen. The revolutionized design of Monsterra is a combination of free-to-play and free-to-earn models which allows millions of gaming enthusiasts to enjoy fun and have a high-profit stream with no prior investment. More importantly, Monsterra team use MSTR (the native token) and MAG (the reward payout token) with the aim to achieve the sustainability & scalability of the ecosystem over time.

The team of Monsterra have worked hard together, and developed a well-structured gameplay and sustainable in-game economy with 3 main components including gameplay, DAO Treasury, NFT Marketplace.  Thus, the project has been chosen to be invested by top funds in blockchain space.

Hashed, the leading Ventures in the round with a well-known reputation in the crypto universe and serious standards for investment portfolios, greatly support Monsterra in business development and network expansion with a long-term commitment. 

Shima Capital, an industry-leading blockchain investor with traditional VC experience and a deep network from Silicon Valley to Asia, partners closely in cross-marketing collaboration to increase Monsterra awareness, expand a larger community of active users and also help connect with trusted partners worldwide.

Huobi Ventures, the global investment arm of Huobi Group, invest in and support Monsterra in co-marketing activities and network expansion with reputable partners, especially in DEX and GameFi Projects.

Icetea Labs — the premium gaming and Metaverse incubator and enabler in Asia, and its CEO & Founder also join our core team as an Executive Advisor. With the seasoned experience, intensive blockchain knowledge and strong network, Icetea Labs will give assistance to strategic consulting, expand partner network and promoting Monsterra via cross-marketing activities.

Sharing about the Monsterra Game, Thi said: “I was impressed by the vision of the Monsterra Core Development Team, which aims to revolutionize the traditional gaming experience with the blockchain touch. Unlike most of the existing Play-to-Earn games focusing on the Earning aspect, Monsterra prioritizes the development of addictive gameplay to deepen players’ experience in the Game Universe. That means game enthusiasts will be able to enjoy a mixed ecosystem of an exciting play mode and high-profit stream in Monsterra.”

Other investors in the private sale are GameFi, Salad Ventures, Kyros Ventures, MetaGaming Guild, GT Capital, HG Ventures and more than 30 partners worldwide. The strong backers & partners network will definitely help Monsterra accelerate its growth & success even more in the coming time.

Within its 5-month journey from fundraising, Monsterra has achieved remarkable & impressive milestones. Marked with a very successful start by Mystery Box Sale on Binance NFT Marketplace on February 7, 20,000 boxes were sold out in 10s then followed by another hit of quick sellout for 600 boxes on GameFi and 300 boxes on Metaverse Starter within 1 hour. 

Continuously from February to March, the project kept working closely for a special NFT Trading Promotion Campaign then ranked  Top 3 of Trading Volume on Binance NFT in the 3rd week of March.Monsterra Beast Habitat Rare was listed as No.1 NFT gainers on Binance NFT with nearly 3,000% of increase rate.  

Monsterra is constantly deploying mass and comprehensive activities including public testnet, NFT marketplace & portal game. With a team size of 50 enthusiastic individuals at the moment and quickly scaling up to 100 members this year, Monsterra is now ready to explode and bring users the best gaming experience!

Said Mr.Leo, CEO of Monsterra – Powered by  Fizen.io: “The gaming market continues to flourish, especially with a boost from blockchain technology. Monsterra is a serious long-term project and expected to bring many breakthroughs in 2022.  Going further with NFT games is going to the future with revolutionary gaming experience.”

To learn more, follow Monsterra’s official channels below:

Website|  Twitter | Telegram| Telegram Announcement| Discord| Medium|  Youtube|  TikTok

Facebook Page| Facebook Group| 

NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are cryptographic properties on the blockchain with unique identification codes and types of data that differentiate them from one another. They can’t be traded or exchanged for equivalency, unlike cryptocurrencies. This is in contrast to fungible tokens, such as cryptocurrencies, which are closely similar to one another and hence can be used as a means of exchange. NFTs are one-of-a-kind cryptographic tokens that can’t be duplicated on a blockchain. Real-world goods such as artwork and real estate can be represented with NFTs. These tangible goods can be “tokenized” to make them more efficient to buy, sell, and trade while also lowering the risk of fraud. NFTs can be used to represent people’s identities, property rights, and other things.

NFT Kings Is Selling Their Last 4000 NFT Kings Passes 

NFT Kings (a collection of 5000 unique Kings Crown Passes created by DexTech) will be able to open a door of riches and fortune to a select few people (5000 investors or less) as a result of their actions. They approved the sale of the last 4000 Kings Crown Pass NFTs. The price of a pass on Mint ranges from 0.45 ETH to 1 ETH. The higher a Pass holder’s standing in the ecosystem, the more Passes he or she owns. This concept aimed to enable early access to new NFT projects through pre-sales and pre-mints. 

Owners of these NFTs will have entry to the NFT Kings Discord server on a first-come, first-serve basis. This is a forum for disseminating unparalleled, well-researched, and potentially lucrative knowledge. At the time of writing, the Kings (the platform’s highest-ranking members) have utilized a significant portion of the cash gained from the sale of Crown Passes to establish a King’s Chest and a decentralized autonomous organization [DAO]. NFT Kings will provide investors with a window of opportunity by selling these value-added Crown Pass NFTs. This will ensure massive profits whether you keep it or sell it for a profit.

Creation of the King’s Chest and its significance

The kings used a big percentage of Crown Pass purchases to create the king’s chest. The King’s Chest will be home to Meebits, Punks, BAYC Apes, Vee Friends, and a slew of additional characters, according to the development team. While the minimum proportion given for the establishment of the King’s Chest had been 50%, these high-ranking members, in collaboration with the NFT Kings team, have increased it to 80%. The King’s Chest will pay dividends to holders of the Kings Crown Pass NFTs. The percentage received, however, is solely dependent on the quantity of Crown Pass NFTs owned. King’s Men and Women are free to purchase as many NFTs as they choose, increasing their part of King’s Chest’s bunce. NFT Kings wants to increase the amount of money available to members of its private Discord server. 

NFT Kings adopts the Trinity Growth Technique. By joining this organization, each member has to agree that they will acquire NFTs in sets of three for any project approved by the Crown. (A member is allowed to purchase as many sets as they want). To repay the expenditures of the three NFTs, each member of their group of three will sell one of them. Each member will choose whether to sell their second NFT in profit and keep or sell their third NFT. All NFT Kings will continue to accumulate wealth and riches by employing this simple but incredibly powerful Regal approach. As for tithing, the King’s Chest will store 10% of all cash generated from the sale of the NFT Kings Crown Pass. The Crown Chest will gain greater wealth and riches as a result of the Royal Tithing.

The new year 2022 has just begun, but the crypto world is already delighting us with its new products. In February 2022, the world will see a new generation crypto exchange – Venice Swap. And today in this article we will discuss with you what kind of crypto exchange it is, how it works, and whether it is worth testing. It should also be noted that this platform is decentralized, which makes it even more secure and stable. But why is decentralized finance so important? Well, let’s get started.

What is Venice Swap?

Venice Swap shapes a new concept of crypto exchange where an ecosystem of different applications will create a powerful shared one-stop crypto experience for end-users and traders.

Venice Swap intercepts the needs of crypto users who don’t want to jump between a thousand different sites: we provide them with more and more new tools over time to satisfy their trading desires.

Venice Swap will launch its Crypto Exchange and DeFi Swap in Q1-2022 and you can start now to apply for your account opening from veniceswap.com.

Venice Swap owes its name to the extraordinary history of the Most Serene Republic of Venice as a naval and mercantile empire, which between Rialto and Piazza San Marco invented the very concept of a modern stock exchange. Just as the Serenissima did in the past, today Venice Swap intends to shape a new concept of crypto exchange where an ecosystem of different applications will create a powerful shared one-stop crypto experience for end-users and traders.

A Crypto Ecosystem

Beyond being a one-stop experience crypto trading solution, Venice Swap shapes an entire blockchain-based financial ecosystem.

Since its launch, Venice Swap will introduce two main applications in the market: a centralized crypto exchange to trade crypto-crypto and crypto-fiat and a decentralized swap app for crypto-crypto trade in the Ethereum blockchain.

Such a cryptosystem allows assets to be distributed most efficiently between liquidity pools. Already today you can become a member of this crypto ecosystem and get your place in the crypto world. After all, very soon, in February 2022, a crypto exchange will be opened with the best prices for coins, low deposits and even smaller fees.

Advantages

• Easy to use

An intuitive experience from the start. From day one, we designed and built a streamlined crypto exchange for newcomers and experts alike.

• Payment options

The platform aims to provide you with low fees and various digital and fiat financing options to support your cryptocurrency investments.

• High Exchange Limit

A market with high volumes and the top cryptocurrency can you trade in a few seconds.

• Trade anywhere. And anytime

Compatible with every device and operating system, trade safely and conveniently. We accompany you step by step in your cryptocurrency buying and selling operations.

• Awesome support

Got A Problem? Just Get Intouch. Our Support Team Is Available 24/7.

All these amazing advantages make this exchange absolutely competitive in such a large crypto market. This platform provides extensive opportunities for both a novice user and a real expert in the crypto industry. Already now it is worth thinking about becoming part of the community of this platform because very soon in February of this year the exchange will be open. At the opening stage, users will be able to receive additional bonuses and gifts.

VENICE Coin

VENICE is the utility token of the Venice Swap Platform used in all transactions related to distributed credits. VENICE is the cryptocurrency that powers the Venice Swap ecosystem. It follows ERC20 token standard on the Ethereum blockchain. Already today you can purchase this coin for functioning with the internal ecosystem of the site or for sale and purchase.

Safety

Security is one of the main parameters of all crypto exchanges and other crypto platforms and protocols. Each of us wants to feel safe and trust the server with which he works. However, nowadays it is quite difficult to find a platform that truly cares about its users, but  Venice Swap has destroyed all prejudices and always puts the safety of its users first. Here is the comment was given by the platform’s team about its security:

“Earning the trust of our clients has always been our highest priority. We earn that trust through the best security in the business — most of our crypto is held safely in cold wallets so bad actors can’t reach it. Our platform provides world-class financial stability by maintaining full reserves, healthy banking relationships, and the highest standards of legal compliance.”.

Why DeFi?

With the advent of cryptocurrencies, the concept of “money” has acquired a completely new meaning, and the ability to make payments has appeared for everyone without exception, regardless of location and access to the banking system.

A logical continuation of the development and spread of cryptocurrencies was the emergence of an independent financial system, which is an open and transparent alternative to outdated centralized financial services that people around the world use today.

Blockchain and smart contracts have created a completely new paradigm of financial relationships between parties who do not trust each other, but at the same time have the opportunity to interact without intermediaries in the form of financial organizations. Thus, the concept of “transaction” when it comes to smart contracts and decentralized applications based on them involves a more complex interaction than just sending and receiving cryptocurrencies.

Key advantages of a decentralized financial system:

• Accessibility for any user, regardless of their geographical location, credit history, and other restrictions existing in a centralized financial system.
• Transparency of all operations in the blockchain. Also, all smart contracts have open source code, which can be easily audited and possible vulnerabilities identified.
• The flexibility of the software interface – the user can use any convenient interface offered by third-party developers or created independently.
• Openness (Permissionless) allows users to interact directly with applications through browser extensions (or software wallets) and also provides the ability to create their own applications.
• Interoperability provides amazing opportunities to combine new DeFi applications with existing services (like Lego), which interact with each other through universal protocols and can be combined to create completely new products.

Stakeholders of Venice Swap DeFi app

Venice Swap app includes three types of users:

– Liquidity Providers (LPs): Individuals or entities who contribute ERC-20 tokens to common liquidity pools.

– Traders: individuals or entities who swap one token for another.

– Developers: individuals or entities who integrate with Venice Swap app smart contracts to power new and exciting experiences.

In total, interactions between these classes create a positive feedback loop, fueling digital economies by defining a common language through which tokens can be pooled, traded, and used.

Results

This is an amazing new generation crypto exchange that expands the boundaries of crypto users. This crypto exchange managed to combine everything necessary for successful trading on the crypto market. It is also worth noting that decentralized finance is a very popular direction in the crypto world, which is constantly growing and becoming more popular and perfect in it. The crypto exchange that we discussed with you today has taken decentralized finance as its basis, which already makes it better among some competitors. Decentralized exchanges are more secure and practical than others, so you should definitely pay attention to this crypto exchange and test it. Very soon we will be able to see this platform in operation, but in the meantime, you can join the community. For example, in their telegram group. And of course, go to the site and collect coins at the best prices.

Many of these work relationships will impact aspects of your life outside of the job. Because of this, you must develop and maintain business relationships effectively.

Here are some ways that you can do just that.

Offer to Help

One of the best ways to build business relationships is to offer to help coworkers and associates before you ask someone else for help. If you want to establish good relationships in business, you shouldn’t just reach out to people when you need something.

This goes for coworkers and for current and former clients and business associates. If you only reach out any time you want to sell them something or have something new to offer, then you’re not likely to establish a truly solid two-way relationship.

Simply offering your assistance will go a long way in doing the opposite.

Be in Front of Others

Out of sight, out of mind. That’s a saying that has a lot of merit.

When you constantly stay in contact with people on a routine basis, you will stay in the front of their minds. This is especially important for your most critical contacts, vendors, partners and clients.

When you remain in contact with people, you’re more likely to be the first person who comes to their mind when they need something from you. This can help boost your performance at work and your sales in the long run.

Seek Feedback

People trust other people who take a genuine interest in their thoughts, feelings and opinions. When you invite people to give you feedback on how you’re doing — or what’s being asked of them — you’re opening the lines of communication as much as you can.

Doing this will help you promote two-way communication, which is essential in any genuine relationship — personal or professional. While you may be forced to provide feedback at work — or ask others to do so — inviting feedback on an informal basis when it’s not expected is something that many people value.

Be Honest and Respectful

People are very busy. They don’t want to feel as if their time is wasted, as every minute is precious.

You must be honest in all your business relationships. You have to feel comfortable enough that you can share your concerns, and the person on the other end of the relationship has to feel that way, too.

When both parties in a relationship are honest and feel comfortable sharing, then more meaningful things can be accomplished through the relationship.

Similarly, you should be very respectful of other people’s time. This means not taking up more time than you need and also communicating at the times that are preferable to them. If you know that someone is busy during the mornings, don’t bother them during that time, for instance.

Work Together

All sides are looking to get something personal out of a relationship. Whether it’s getting help from a coworker to finish one of your tasks or making a sale with a potential client, everyone has something personal to gain from a business relationship.

At the same time, Fahim Imam-Sadeque says that it’s important to approach your business relationships with the thought that you’re on the same team. Everyone in a relationship should feel as if they benefit from that relationship. If it’s too one-sided, it’s not likely to develop into a long-lasting, fruitful relationship.

About Fahim Imam-Sadeque

Fahim Imam-Sadeque is a business development professional with proven experience in the asset management industry. He has a Bachelor of Science in Actuarial Science from the City University of London and is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries. Fahim’s top skills include asset management, hedge funds, investment management, sales, and consultant & client relationship management. 

They shared with us how their innovative blockchain platform is helping to enable solutions for Covid-19 through groundbreaking partnerships and global collaborations.

Can you tell us about BurstIQ and the Covid-19 data challenge you launched along with the American Heart Association and Hitachi Vantara. 

The challenge is designed to provide researchers with access to the resources and tools for collaboration and shared learning, so that we can accelerate the pace of discovery, create more effective treatments, build critically needed technologies faster.

As of June 22, over 9.3 million people around the world have tested positive for COVID-19 with over 479,000 deaths.  

The most prominent and concerning trend is the disproportionate impact that COVID-19 has on people with underlying health conditions and people of color. “People living in under-resourced communities, particularly African Americans and U.S. Hispanics, appear to be dying of COVID-19 at disproportionately high rates,” said Jennifer Hall, Ph.D., chief of data science for the American Heart Association. “They’re more likely to have underlying health conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, and obesity.”

Two recent reports by the CDC have borne this out, indicating that African-Americans and Hispanics, as well as people with underlying medical conditions, are significantly more likely to be hospitalized and more likely to die from COVID-19

Given that chronic health conditions are more prevalent in people of color, largely due to disparities in socioeconomic status, people of color carry a compounded risk with regard to COVID-19. This is layered with a deeper and more systemic trend regarding racial disparities in the healthcare system, as outlined in the landmark 2003 Institute of Medicine paper, Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care. 

The challenge before the medical community today is to understand whether the current statistics regarding underlying health conditions and people of color are a direct extension of broader risks and disparities, or whether there is something else going on. And most importantly, regardless of the cause, our challenge is to fix it.

Can you tell us more about this and how it came about?

Several weeks ago, in response to the COVID-19 Crisis, we launched Research Foundry with the support of an international coalition of researchers, public health officials, organizations, and inventive minds.  All of whom believe that large-scale problems can only be solved collaboratively.  That we need to work together to have a profound and sustainable impact on our world.  As a starting point, we offered Research Foundry as a free service supporting this global community and we initially populated Research Foundry with a significant number of health data collections, including specific COVID-19 data sets to accelerate research activities.  

As we prepared for the launch, we began discussing collaboration opportunities with Hitachi Vantara.  The Hitachi team made the connection with the American Heart Association based on their work assisting AHA with the development of the AHA Precision Medicine Platform.  Additionally, AHA had recently published a grant initiative focused on COVID-19 research. We all felt this was a natural and very complementary initiative; one that required the respective strengths of the three organizations along with attracting the broader innovation community to participate.

What is the impact you’d like to have with this data challenge?

The goal behind the COVID-19 data challenge is two-fold. In the near term, the challenge seeks to accelerate and incentivize research around COVID-19 and produce solutions that reduce the disproportionate impact that COVID-19 has on people of color and people with underlying health conditions. 

In the longer term, the goal of this challenge is to support the medical community’s shift into a new paradigm of research. The healthcare industry is acutely aware of how interconnected our broader world is and the strong impact that non-medical factors have on medical outcomes. We are also acutely aware of the need to bridge medical data together with non-medical data to begin to understand their relationships. The COVID-19 data challenge seeks to create a framework for achieving that, and for enabling diverse research communities to connect with each other, collaborate, and create.

Why is it so critical that this data challenge become a global collaboration between researchers?

The knowledge gained from the COVID-19 data challenge will have impacts that extend far beyond COVID-19. Both Precision Medicine Platform and Research Foundry are helping to reshape how the medical community approaches research. Together, we are ushering in an era of secure, transparent, and global collaboration that will accelerate our understanding of health and positively impact the lives of millions of people worldwide.

What role does Blockchain play in this collaboration?

BurstIQ provides secure data management solutions that use blockchain-based technology to build multi-dimensional profiles and connections between many different kinds of data. We provide researchers and innovators with the tools to access data, share data, and collaborate with each other easier and more efficiently. We are also making global COVID-19 datasets available through our open data network, Research Foundry, to aid researchers and data analysts in learning why the virus disproportionately impacts certain communities more than others.

Why will collaborations such as this one become increasingly important as we usher in a new era of health care?

This collaboration represents the type of collaboration we need both now and, in the future, to help solve some of the world’s toughest problems.  This challenge requires that we bring together many different types of data and areas of expertise. Underlying health conditions and health disparities for people of color have both been linked to many different factors: socioeconomic status, lack of access to services, implicit bias, and much more. This suggests that gaining a deep understanding of why COVID-19 disproportionately impacts people with underlying health conditions and people of color, and more importantly, how to solve it, requires not just an examination of clinical and personalized medicine data, but also operational data, social determinants of health (SDH) data, environmental data, and even human behavior data. It requires us to view these data sources not in isolation, but as an interconnected web of factors that influence and are influenced by each other.

This type of interdisciplinary analysis requires collaboration between experts in each of these areas, so that we can learn from each other and build a more complete understanding.

What are some of the other collaborations that have emerged from Research Foundry?

We are very excited about our collaboration with HeroX, the crowdsourcing and collaboration platform developed by the founders of XPRIZE.  Through our collaboration, HeroX’s crowdsourcing tools will be available to users on Research Foundry.  Innovators participating in challenges on HeroX’s platform, including COVID-19 Central, will be able to leverage data and application development resources through Research Foundry to expedite discovery and development. An expanded set of services will be rolled out to all users in the next phase.

“HeroX believes in the power of human ingenuity, and by working together, there is literally no problem we cannot overcome,” said Christian Cotichini, CEO of HeroX. “Integrating with BurstIQ brings safe and secure access to key health data to the near-limitless problem-solving power of the global crowd.”

“The COVID-19 Central resource hub, an ever-growing ecosystem of more than 50 organizations, is just one example of an initiative that will benefit from this partnership,” said Cotichini. “This powerful combination will speed up the global response to the pandemic.”

We believe this partnership will foster collaboration between the HeroX and BurstIQ global communities, providing the tools and cross-promotional activities to foster connections, knowledge sharing, and discovery.

How has the innovation community responded to Research Foundry?

We have experienced a tremendous response from the innovation community.  We have seen a significant increase in the rate of adoption of the platform to create new solutions.  For example, one problem the community is tackling is contact tracing and tracking capabilities that balance both the public health need to manage this ongoing crisis but still respect and protect the privacy of the individual.   

An unexpected benefit that has arisen is how the innovation community and the research community have come together for a common purpose.  We have and continue to receive a number of requests from researchers willing to volunteer their time and expertise to mentor innovators and help accelerate their product development.  Their regulatory and scientific experiences is invaluable to many of these startups. 

This post is tagged with: BurstIQ, Frank Ricotta, Brian Jackson

Guest post by Nikhil Acharekar.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Startup Fortune or its members.

The current economic scenario has also translated into more companies being pushed below the investment-grade category. The outlook was not so bad at the beginning of the year but the pandemic has led to many corporates with BBB rating fall to the high-yield category.

Alex Richter, finance and asset management expert consulted our redaction that “While it is a cause for concern, investors could see the brighter side of it. Before 2020, the credit spread for this segment had tightened. Even after receiving significant inflows, the yield offered by this asset class continues to be high at a time when the interest rate is low.” he added that “Investors continue to be skeptical of the economic recovery and additional yield is required to compensate them. Many of the companies that were downgraded can possibly retain the BBB status once their business is up and running.”

Even the valuations in the equity market seem stretched. ETFs focussing on the high-yield corporate bond market can be a worthwhile investment given the lack of options. ETFs offer diversification benefits that investors would not achieve if they invested in a high yield bond of a specific user. There are numerous ETFs and monitoring the holdings of these funds can be challenging for a retail investor.

Features of These ETFs

We analyzed some of the ETFs that focus on USD denominated high-yield corporate bonds.

We see that the top 10 holdings in each of these funds account for less than 10%. These funds tend to be highly diversified in terms of issuers as well as industry. The number of holdings also tends to be large, unlike a traditional equity ETF where the count rarely crosses 100. From the perspective of an individual investor, it can be overwhelming to keep track of a large number of fixed income instruments.

One would have also observed the high dividend yield of these funds. This is on account of the high coupon rates that the underlying positions provide. It needs to be highlighted that these ETFs have been able to sustain their historical level of dividends even during the pandemic without missing out on the monthly disbursals. It does make sense why these funds are invested in such a large number of holdings. Default on any one of these instruments has almost no bearing in the overall performance of the fund. 

The 4-year average yield is almost the same across these funds and offers a good return to investors. There is a possibility that the yields may reduce once the economy is up and running and therefore, it is advisable to take advantage of this opportunity as early as possible. It is often seen that the credit spreads are minimal when the economy is performing well.

The average maturity of the ETFs is within the medium term range and the duration of these funds should be lesser by approximately 1 year. This should provide some comfort to those investors who are not comfortable investing in long tenor bonds on account of interest rate risk. Investors should also be comfortable on this front since the yields are high and the impact of small changes in interest rate would not impact the portfolio significantly.

The Flip Side

While we have highlighted the benefits of diversification, the impact of a slowdown can be widespread thereby affecting almost every company issuing such bonds. The possibility of a hike in rate cannot be ignored in the future since the current interest rate is at a historically low level. Dividend payout may be impacted If companies default on account of a recessionary environment.

Investing in high-yield instruments requires a  considerable amount of risk appetite that investors should be aware of. It is highly recommended to seek advice from experts because tracking so many funds can be intimidating. The high-yield market may be under some pressure as long as the pandemic looms but the potential that this sector presents should not be ignored.

Guest post by Andrey Sergeenkov

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Startup Fortune or its members.