Ep. 71: Branding, Booty Calls & Banking on the Blockchain with Ameen Soleimani of SpankChain

‘The closer you get to 50/50 polarizing, the more viral you’re likely to go.’ Ameen Soleimani is the master of branding, coining terms for his blockchain startup like SpankBank and Booty call. Working with the porn industry lends itself to polarizing branding, but why does Ameen think porn also happens to be the most practical application of crypto technology? Ameen is the co-founder and CEO of SpankChain, a startup set to revolutionize the adult film industry using blockchain technology. The team has launched its Camsite Beta program and is working to ship SpankBank and SpankPay in the very near future. Prior to SpankChain, Ameen served as Decentralization Lazer Gun for ConsenSys and co-founder of Filter, a Twitter news aggregator. Today, Ameen sits down with us to explain why the porn industry is a good application for crypto. He shares his surprise at being embraced by the greater Ethereum community and speaks to how he attracts top engineering talent. Ameen discusses the challenges of communicating with a distributed team and the current initiatives they are working on in SpankBank and SpankPay. Listen in for Ameen’s insight on viral branding and the power of polarization. Topics Covered What has surprised Ameen in working on SpankChain Embraced by greater Ethereum community Porn drives innovation as early adopter Why the porn industry is a good fit for crypto Censored by existing financial system Motivated to adopt new one Ameen’s introduction to cryptocurrency Topic in news aggregator Built arbitrage bot between exchanges How the SpankChain distributed team communicates Weekly team meeting, daily dev standup and Slack Over-document SpankChain’s current priorities Launched Camsite Beta program SpankBank, SpankPay initiatives How to attract talent to a project Solve hard problems Track record of shipping Ameen’s advice around branding 50/50 polarizing = likely to go viral ‘Stickiness of words matters’ Connect with Ameen SpankChain https://spankchain.com/ SpankChain on GitHub https://github.com/spankchain SpankChain on Medium https://medium.com/@spankchain SpankChain on Twitter https://twitter.com/SpankChain Ameen on Twitter https://twitter.com/ameensol Ameen on Medium https://medium.com/@ameensol Ameen on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/ameen-soleimani-97181942/ Resources Ameen’s Reddit Pitch Deck https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/6g9rzq/nsfw_spankchain_im_about_to_betamax_bitcoin/ ConsenSys https://new.consensys.net/ Connect with Boost VC Boost VC Website https://www.boost.vc/ Boost VC on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/boostvc/ Boost VC on Twitter https://twitter.com/BoostVC