The Team Behind Telcoin

Telcoin is a blockchain startup that is bringing cryptocurrency to the masses, disrupting industries such as remittance and disaster relief funding in the process. 

The organization boasts a very robust team, equipped with years of expertise and insider industry know-how to take this ingenious mobile-driven cryptocurrency global. We take a look at the individuals who comprise this star line-up as well as their superb advisory team.

The Founders

Telcoin was founded in 2017 by CEO Claude Eguienta and chairman Paul Neuner.

Eguienta graduated with a master’s degree in computer science. He has a background working in startups and tech companies focused on distributed systems and crypto. He has previously founded Kabotip and has served as lead systems architect at CyberAgent. He acts in an advisory capacity to startup TenX.

It is normal, at the end of the day, that people want to use something that they can spend, right? It’s very important; it makes a lot of sense. Now, what you have to realise is to take a step back and realise: what do people have access to, where those populations live? What we’ve seen, what we’ve witnessed while building Telcoin is that they mostly have access to mobile money. And mobile money is great. Mobile money, you see mostly in Africa, is something that you can use in most places; it’s accepted even more than cold hard cash. [sic]

Watch an interview with Equienta.

Neuner’s telecom tech career spans a period of over 20 years. In 2007, he founded mobile telecom fraud management company Mobius, where he still acts as CEO.

The Team

Eric Chung is Telcoin’s executive director. He has extensive experience in business and corporate development, as well as a design, strategy and adtech background. Well-versed in both Eastern and Western markets, he holds a number of representative directorships in Japan. He’s a former pro gamer.

Lead developer Simo Kinnunen is a full-stack programmer with experience in a number of tech startups. He has previously served as a system engineer at CyberAgent alongside Equienta. He’s a Rust expert and speaks 5 languages.

Mobile lead Adam Kull is a Masters of Computer Science graduate at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden’s oldest and largest technical university. He was formerly the iOS dev lead at Tantan and has served as developer at a number of tech companies in Europe, the US, and Asia.

Naïm Boughazi is Telcoin’s product director. He has an MS in Computer Science and is an expert UI/UX designer. He was formerly the product director at Tantan. Like Kinnunen, he also speaks 5 languages.

Marketing director Yacine Farouk has experience leading campaigns for Parrot, Sony, Nike, and Jordan. He was co-founder and chief marketing officer at Kabotip with Eguienta and is yet another team member to boast mastery of 5 languages.

The team’s telecom business development lead is Nobusuke Matsuoka. He boasts over 20 years worth of telco consulting for organizations such as Nokia and Softbank. He has three patents in his name.

Alix Zerd takes care of crypto business development. He’s a former LINE game business developer, game producer, and VR business manager.

Community manager Christopher Riza is a smart contracts and blockchain researcher focused on VC disruption. He has a background in business development, investment analysis, and has led a startup himself.

So what got me really interested in Telcoin is actually threefold. First of all is their team. They’re very, very smart. They have Computer Science majors. They have people that speak multiple languages. They have previous success when it comes to starting a company and exiting successfully, and they are very, very ambitious in what they do. And they’re just really good people. Second is their value proposition. You know, their mission of financial inclusion, that is solving a real-world problem.

Watch an interview with Riza on his involvement with Telcoin.

The Advisors

Michimasa Naka has been in banking for 28 years and is the CEO of Boardwalk Capital. He founded Stormharbour Japan, was co-CEO of Citibank Japan, and has led financing for Vodafone Japan. He sits on the Board of Directors for a number of companies.

We believe that Telcoin can bring all the phone companies globally to the next step.

Watch an interview with Naka on his involvement with Telcoin.

Serial startup founder Toby Hoenisch is educated in computer science and specializes in artificial intelligence. He is the co-founder and CEO of Android cryptocurrency wallet TenX, which raised US$80 million in one of the world’s largest ICOs to date.

Jeff Quigley is partner at Red Door Ventures. He has previously served as regional manager for Southeast Asia at Fenox Venture Capital, as well as Tech in Asia’s chief editor in Japan.

Rajesh Sabari is Head of Partnerships at MasterCard Advisors for Asia Pacific. He was formerly the Head of APAC Sales for Amdocs, the world’s largest telecom billing system. He has served in an advisory role for a number of tech startups.

 Chris Suh works in finance and capital management at the Royal Bank of Canada. He was the executive director of liquidity and treasury at Goldman Sachs.

Batara Eto co-founded Mixi, Japan’s first social media network. He is the founder and managing partner of East Ventures, an early stage VC firm.

I think cryptocurrency is pretty similar to what the internet has done to the information system. Before the internet, for example, the only source that you can get information from — is from the media. But the internet changed all of it. I see the same thing [in] the financial system. Right now, in order to send money from one person to another person, you always need a third party, which is a bank. So I think cryptocurrency will really change that.

Watch an interview with Eto on his involvement with Telcoin.

Matthew McGuire is the former COO of Bank of America Merrill Lynch and COO of the Royal Bank of Scotland, both in Japan.

Mark Bivens is a venture partner at Truffle Capital. He has founded financial inclusion nonprofits in Africa. He serves on the board of numerous startups.

David Morrow is the former Corporate Security Executive at Vodafone and designed Mpesa’s security. He has an international background in fraud management, strategy, investigation, and analysis.

Telcoin is providing a unique service to the telcos in that it’s delivering interoperability between mobile wallets and allowing telco customers to send money from their own wallets to other wallets on other networks. There isn’t another capability which exists to do this.

Watch an interview with Morrow on his involvement with Telcoin.

To learn more about Telcoin, read their technical article. You can also join them on Telegram, or follow them on Twitter. More details on their ICO, currently live, can be found here.