craig massey in CoinGeek Backstage

CoinGeek Backstage with Craig Massey on going beyond handing the cheque with Satoshi Block Dojo

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Blockchain incubators aren’t new; they’ve been around for a while. However, for the longest time, they have just issued grants and given tokens to the developers and wished them well. Craig Massey is doing it differently with Satoshi Block Dojo, going beyond just handing the founders a cheque.

Massey is the founder and chairman of the London-based Dojo. After his presentation in Dubai during the BSV Global Blockchain Convention, he spoke to CoinGeek Backstage host Becky Liggero about how he’s laying the groundwork for the future of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

The Dojo is currently working with its second cohort of startups. These include Pickle, a platform connecting tradespeople to clients; CoinSurvey, a startup targeting the $80 billion online survey market; hiring tech startup Mintelium and more.

Massey goes beyond the cheque, unlike the traditional Silicon Valley investors who pay lip service. 

“It’s very intensive. At the end of the 12 weeks, our cohorts are absolutely exhausted. We put them through the mill,” he revealed.

While the Dojo is relatively new, it has received 496 ‘serious applications’ from hopeful founders, speaking as much to the effectiveness of its program as it does about the growth of the Bitcoin SV ecosystem. What amazes Massey is just how diverse all these companies are. Even while the overall blockchain industry is dominated by NFT talk, there isn’t a single NFT startup in the current second cohort.

Massey focuses exclusively on BSV startups. However, as he revealed, not all startups start out in Bitcoin. Some come with great ideas but are built on networks that can’t scale like Ethereum, and it’s Massey’s job to show them just how much more efficient they can be on Bitcoin.

For the future, Massey’s focus is on opening a block venture studio, the first of which should be up and running by the fourth quarter of this year. After that, he targets expanding to 14 cities by 2030. 

For an organization so young, the Dojo is outperforming expectations. “We only started officially on January 4th and in 20 weeks, we’ve done amazing things, we’ve started 18 companies. We’re on a roll and we’ve only just started,” Massey noted.

Watch:The BSV Global Blockchain Convention presentation, The Next Big Thing: Incubating Start-Ups on the BSV Blockchain

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