Episode 13 – Addo (Source)

In this episode we sit down with Addo, one of the co-founders of Source - a new venture based at StartWell who are using Blockchain technologies for their interoperable data platform that lets developers create innovative ways to distribute access to information. One of the example use cases for their platform we discuss here briefly - being able to sync data between disparate MS Word files using what Source calls 'Cards' that act like a central repository of information which can exist as a living chunk of data in multiple documents. We recommend staying in touch with these guys by subscribing to their newsletter via https://sourceapp.io/ for interesting updates regularly plus news on upcoming platform and app releases. [expand title="Podcast Transcript"] Qasim Virjee 0:07 All right back once again for another installment of the several podcast. This struggles founder and CEO Qasim Virjee coming at you live and direct. Probably you're probably listening to this on demand. So sorry, live to do live in the moment. And yeah, this is the first time maybe you're hearing this. So in a way, it's live. I'm alive. This is not artificial intelligence at work. But yeah, basically coming to you from start well on King Street West in Toronto, Canada, a hub, global hub city have all sorts of cool innovation. Yeah. Got some gesticulation going on in the studio. I'm joined today by Otto, who is the founder, I guess, CEO of a company called Source, co founder, co founder. So who's missing from the room today? who's not here? Addo Smajic 0:57 There's four of us. So me, Alex, Dave, and John. Qasim Virjee 1:02 So this is really interesting. I like this, because very rarely do we come across these teams as a sort of assumed hierarchy corporate hierarchy out of their, like 80s IBM days, or something that people assume startups should subscribe to, which is founder or co founder. And then everyone else, you know, might get a C suite title until you actually have employees, but they don't have a vested interest in the success of the company, because there's some hierarchy. So are you all equal partners in the company? Addo Smajic 1:28 I mean, equity splits, you know, differently right now. Like, I mean, that's private to us, for sure, like the way we had to split. But essentially, for us, it was important from the get go to kind of, as you said, the way we viewed things just to have kind of like the heads of different key departments, or, you know, verticals, for the for the company, for the startup and have everyone have a vested interest and feel like they're, you know, owning that part of the company in that part of the business. So they can ensure the growth in the future and kind of be vested in. Qasim Virjee 2:03 And so I guess, it's must be a very interesting story about how we're like, let's first talk about what source is doing. Like, at the moment, what is source? Yep. And then let's dig back into the a little bit of the backstory around how you guys came together and what the journey so far has been. Is that cool? Addo Smajic 2:21 Yeah, sure. Ah, so, I mean, we kind of we started with one idea, which was, as freelancers and people, you know, we worked with, we had dev shops, we have freelancers, we worked with different people across different verticals, different industries, different sizes of companies, but from, you know, other freelancers to large enterprises. And the thing that always you know, there was always friction points around different productivity applications that everyone would use. And so we thought, what if we could make it that different people could work in different applications, and we could collaborate without having to, you know, if one person isn't, you know, Word, you know, save it as Word file, and then I'm using Google Docs, I have to open it as Google Docs, right? What if there w