Daniele / Cris Interview with ElReferente

"The number one reason for the failure of startups is the problems between the founders."

Daniel and Cristian Izzo are, respectively, the CEO and CTO of Amon.Tech, a wallet that allows users to store, exchange, invest and spend traditional and digital coins assisted by their Artificial Intelligence system. The startup creates a bridge between traditional and digital coins. "What sets us apart from our competitors is that not only do we offer the ability to spend any crypto currency, but we also mitigate the risk of volatility, which helps users manage their portfolios and save money through our AI system.

"We are two brothers, who a few years ago entered the "crypto" world with a small investment, a few months later we were involved in a situation in which we wanted to spend our crypto coins and soon realized how difficult it was to do so in daily life, "say the Izzo.

Crypto industry users face two main problems, according to the company:

    Using their crypto coins for daily purchases when real-time conversion is so complex.
    The volatility of the crypto market prevents its massive use for routine purchases.

What Amon does is that it allows real-time conversion for daily spending, starting with ETH, BTC and LTC. The Amon artificial intelligence system is a tool to help users make decisions against market volatility. The tool can calculate the performance of crypto currencies within the user's portfolio and suggests the most suitable crypto currency to convert.

What is most important when forming a team?

The three fundamental pillars for us are commitment, responsibility and collaboration with the rest of the team. One of the best things about the blockchain is its impressive community, the belief in the product revolution is what makes people excited and want to give their best. In startups, execution is also very important. A lot of people think that having an idea is enough to make it work. Planning is important in the long term, but new businesses live in the short term and need much more execution than planning.

What about managing it?

The number one reason for the failure of startups are the problems between the founders, and the second, the lack of commitment of the team. Being two brothers, we are not having problems on this side, but motivating the team is always a challenge. We try to give as much freedom as possible as long as the objectives and deadlines are met. It is also important to have in the team people who believe in the project and who are willing to devote more time without looking at the clock. Before hiring someone, whether independent or full-time, we observe their attitude and spirit towards the world of startups. You should like our project, not just see it as a way to monetize.

What differences do you find in this sense between a startup and a corporation?

Managing people is not easy either in the startup or in the corporation. In companies, everyone wants to get out as soon as possible, startups fight for something bigger than a normal 9-17 job. This is the spirit we try to instill in our team. The main problem in startups is the balance between workload and compensation, budgets are usually limited until you start generating income. Another part of the motivation also comes in the achievement of the company. For example, in recent months we have been accepted by different accelerators: MKB Fintechlab (the one we are currently finishing), NatWest Accelerator in the UK (unfortunately we had to reject it due to the overlap with our current accelerator), Decelera in Menorca and some others. This also motivated the team and showed them that their work is positively evaluated by institutional investors and large banks.

Why did you decide to combine traditional and virtual currencies?

Crypto coins now form an important part of anyone's virtual wallet and there is an unsatisfied need to be able to spend them easily in everyday life. Therefore, we decided to create a virtual multi wallet where users can combine both their crypto coins and their traditional coins.

Many people think that the world of crypto coins should be separated from the world of traditional coins. We believe this could change in the future. This is why we are introducing virtual IBANs for all our users. This way, they can have crypts and euros and have more freedom to spend and use any digital or traditional currency.

What technology is needed for this?

For cryptos we use blockchain and our escrow account is Bitgo, a leading company in the market that works with many blockchain companies like Ripple, Celsius.Network etc.

For IBAN we have an EMI licensed provider that provides us with virtual IBANs for our users.

For the Artificial Intelligence system we have created our own technology and algorithms.

What is the biggest difficulty in introducing crypto coins and their concept into people's daily lives?

The main problem is the volatility of crypto coins. Most people see crypts as an investment because in one day they can go up or down by 20% or more. Of course, this has a big impact on daily spending because at any time of the day they can go down and users do not want to suffer the consequences. Also, legal requirements and the verification of their compliance are one of the main obstacles in the industry, there are many grey areas and it is difficult to be credible before any regulated entity, and to do so requires more time than imagined. It took us several months to be accepted by regulated financial institutions and regulated companies with EMI or FCA licenses.

What are the benefits for users?

Amon users will have access to a full wallet where they can keep their traditional and digital coins, send them to other users quickly and easily, exchange between different crypts and euros within the wallet, also have access to unique IBANs for each user, an investment product where customers can make up to 7% profit every week and not only that, AMN Tokens holders will have discounts on transaction fees, profit commission on Amon's investment products, access to 24/7 customer service and much more.

How do you guarantee their safety? Is this really one of the biggest problems? Why?

The crypto currencies are guarded by BitGo. This company is insured up to $100 million and works with the best companies in blockchian space. We also provide a high level of security through other providers like Cloudflare that protect our accounts from cyber attacks.

We know this is one of the biggest problems in the world crypto. The world's largest exchanges like Binance and others have already been attacked, Amon has many internal protections from other providers so that this does not happen to us.

Who are precisely the customers of your debit card and your investment product?

We target all people who use crypto coins. Whether you use crypto coins as a form of investment or for daily expenses, at Amon you will find the best product for your needs.

When the market is low, users tend to HOLD their crypto currencies, for this we offer the product "Amon Earn" and the product "Credit". In the bull market, users tend to spend cryptos and for this we are launching the Amon debit card.

What sets you apart from other companies that offer similar services?

We differentiate ourselves from our competition because our wallet is an all-in-one solution where users can find different products, while our competition only focuses on having one card to spend crypto coins. Amon offers a complete solution with traditional coins, investment and loan products, AI system to optimize spending and exchange of coins within the application.

Why the fintech boom? How do you experience it from a more personal point of view?

Young people are starting to switch from regular banks to Fintechs or Crypto Fintechs that provide banking services. Now people don't want to go to physical branches, prefer to solve their problems digitally, want to use crypto as part of their daily life or simply invest in crypto currencies.

Also the users of crypto coins are increasing every month. According to data from the University of Cambridge in 2016 there were five million users in crypto. In 2018 they have grown to 46Millions. The Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of crypto users is 206% and if it continues to grow so we will see in 2022 800 Million users in crypto.

It is an exponential growth and all these users will move from traditional bank to Fintechs like Amon.

What relationship do you have with other agents in the sector? What do you expect from them?

We have relationships with E-money license providers and some of the biggest companies in blockchain like Celsius.Network.

There are still many companies that do not want to work with crypto companies but we are already seeing a change in this. Every day there are more companies that recognize the potential of this market and are open to new integrations and changes.

From the regulation that affects you, what would you like to change?

One of the factors that most affects us is the fact that regulation is scarce or almost non-existent in this sector. This makes product integrations slower because you don't know what you can or can't do. We are only at the beginning of the blockchain era, the more adoption there is, the more regulation will emerge.

How do you face your reality with public institutions?

We don't have extensive relations with public institutions at the moment. It is still too early for them to enter this industry, first we need the acceptance of the big players in this sector and when this happens the public institutions will follow them.

How was your investment process and what should be taken into account in it being a fintech?

In December 2017, we raised 150.000€ for the ICO. In April 2018, we raised about 2,500 ETH, 60 BTC and other altcoins, for a total of 1 million dollars at our ICO. Launching the ICO was one of the most complex moments, you have to have a large team prepared for any atypical situation and be able to react in time with the greatest efficiency.

We also joined the "MKB Fintechlab" an acceleration program for startups, where we got €25,000 and probably will make another investment round of €150,000 during this year. We are still looking for other investors and companies that can contribute not only funds, but also knowledge and connections.

What support have you had?

As we mentioned before, one of the biggest supporters has been the bank MKB. Several months ago we were selected to participate in the "MKB FintechLab Accelerator", a program based in Budapest that helps startups in the growth and visibility of the company, backed by the bank MKB, one of the largest banks in Hungary.

How do you see Spain at a technical and technological level in your sector?

We have quite a few users and a good community in the Spanish market. It is one of the markets that seems to be most active along with the UK, Italy, Germany and Holland. There is not much regulation around blockchain companies in Spain, but it is still a growing market.

What kind of better ones would you like to introduce this year?

We started this project with the idea of helping cryptomime users to control volatility by creating a smart debit card and now we have expanded our vision to have a more complete wallet where users can use both digital and traditional currencies with different products, optimized by the Artificial Intelligence system.

Based on what criteria do you make these changes?

There are many companies in the market that offer different virtual wallets with different products but there is no wallet that offers all the products in one and all of them optimized by an artificial intelligence system to help the user save time and money in his daily life.

In addition, the investment product in which users can get a percentage of interest just by depositing crypto currencies is something totally new in the market. We are one of the few companies to offer this product.