Many local and international talents, as well as influential and new blockchain and fintech players, convened in the recent Philippine Blockchain Week (PBW2022) at the Newport World Resorts Manila in November 2022. And one of the personalities who made this happen was Rico Pang, co-organizer of PBW2022 and also the founder of SANCTUM, DreamsMaker, and UNITY.
Pang joined CoinGeek Backstage reporter Claire Celdran on the sidelines of the PBW2022, where they discussed the venture capital (VC) matchmaking that happened during the event and how he views startups and local Filipino talents.
A total of 28 companies have participated in the VC and startup matchmaking as they look for the next unicorn in the space, Pang said. The criteria for finding the winners include how they could utilize blockchain, NFTs, digital currency, metaverse, and web3, and most importantly, how these startup projects could scale and get real adoption in the future.
Pang clarified that the winners would be “funded for the range of VCs that we have in our network…we have around 20 VCs that participated, but we’ll be sending the deal flows to most of the other VCs around the whole world.”
The Philippine Blockchain Week saw many Filipino blockchain enthusiasts looking to pitch their ideas that could embody some of the future projects in the space. Speaking about the startups and local Filipino talents, Pang said:
“We’re so excited about [the] Philippine market because there’s so much talent here, and they’re not aware of the potential in this industry. So we want to educate and create more ambassadors in this industry, both to the government sector and also the private sectors and, of course, to the general public about this technology that can actually learn and use them in upgrading those skills and using them into real-life use cases and solving real problems.”
In closing, the event co-organizer pointed out that the Philippines has a bunch of promising young Filipino individuals, especially in the creators’ economy.
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