Ed Maguire, Insights Partner at Momenta Partners and advisor at Augmate, speaks to us about why he joined Augmate’s advisory board and what makes the company special.

 

1) Would you be able to tell us about your background and your endeavours outside of Augmate?

I’ve spent seventeen years on Wall Street, including about fifteen years as an equity analyst covering technology and software. For the last year, I’ve been working with Momenta Partners which is a connected industry strategy advisor, VC and executive search firm. I also do a bit of crypto advisory on my own with Bluemont Partners, so I’ve been very much up to my eyeballs with crypto over the last year or so!

 

2) What was it that personally interested you about Augmate as a company prior to joining the advisory board?

There’s a combination of things. One was the enterprise focus. I am predisposed to favour companies that target enterprise businesses because the end markets tend to be highly stable and sustainable, so that would be the first thing.

Second was the quality of the team. I have to say, Dana Farbo, Pete Wassell, Peter Orban, they’re all very high quality people, and I was really impressed with their professionalism, experience and they’re perspective on the market.

Lastly, I like the idea that they’re really focusing on augmented reality as an enterprise problem – they have a much broader scope about their long term vision. The need to be able to manage endpoints, which augmented reality are, within an enterprise context and then layering on the blockchain component, it was extremely attractive for me. I feel that the future is going to be very much defined by commoditorial innovations where we’re applying multiple threads of innovation, and to me, Augmate are just the epitome of that trend.

 

3) Would you be able to tell us about the benefits of the Augmate Connect platform?

I think the major benefits are security, manageability, and ease of use for large organizations dealing with the challenges of provisioning management of connected devices. I think that you have to be able to have a sense of security when you have employees that may be working in rather sensitive situations, or working with equipment that is very expensive where there is some proprietary business knowledge involved. I would say that  the security is the big value proposition as you don’t want to equip employees with augmented reality goggles and not have control about what they can access, for their protection, and also for the protection of the enterprise. As well, the focus on the ease of use. Reducing the complexity that IT departments have to deal with, when you’re dealing with a massive array of devices from different manufacturers, in different situations, with very large inventories, the value proposition of being able to simplify that. All of these processes, is hugely valuable.

 

4) What are your thoughts on Augmate’s token sale and what benefits do you feel will come from it?

First of all, I am very optimistic that they’re taking this course to raise funds from investors that I think will help to fund their next stage of evolution. This isn’t just a start up with some guides and a white paper, this is a company that has legitimate customers and they have had top tier investors since they were founded. This is not a fly by night operation just looking to raise money for a project that you have to actually build. For one, the deliverables and the quality of technology that they are able to deliver is very high, and I also think that the token approach really asserts their embrace of cutting edge innovations. This is not just on the technology side, but also on the financing side, because there is an enormous amount of interest and willingness from investors to participate in token sales and in projects where they normally would not get a chance to participate in the funding and the evolution of an important, new company.

 

5) What is it that inspires you about being on the advisory board?

Part of it is that their focus really hits all the sweet spots of the areas of my own personal passions: disrupted technologies, Internet of Things, the embrace of a new funding mechanism. And secondly, the quality of the team. I mentioned Pete, Peter, and Dana, but they’ve also engaged people like Brian Rogers, Greg Rocco, who I already know from the New York community. It feels like they’ve already got an enormous amount of credibility and deep roots in the New York community. It’s a project that’s really committed to demonstrating that innovation is alive and well here in New York City. We have an opportunity in our community to have a company that’s going to lead the field in innovation in enterprise uses of blockchain.