Geek Meet Boost VC's Youngest Ever Bitcoin Entrepreneur

Boost VC , based in California, has fostered five batches of Bitcoin startups so far. Louison Dumont joined Boost VC at the age of 17 and became the youngest entrepreneur at Boost VC , but he is not lacking in experience.

Dumont has been around the industry since the days when most businesses were still in their infancy. Dumont has been mining bitcoin since he was 13 , and in his talk, he included various states of experience and alluded to his own struggles in trading (unfortunately, most of his early bitcoins only sold for between $ 20 and $ 30 ).

For example, Dumont recalled a time when people could still mine with GPUs and make money, and he laughed as he often got unwanted graphics cards from friends and relatives.

“I told my parents about Bitcoin because I needed money to buy coins on MT Gox , so for weeks I kept saying ‘please give me some money,’ ” he said. “It was really noisy at first, but I mined a lot of Bitcoin.”

Bitproof is one of 24 full-time Boost VC startups in San Mateo . Dumont is now the head of Bitproof . His latest project has attracted widespread interest in the community. This project is not aimed at hype, but hopes to have higher aspirations.

Dumont told reporters:

“Trading is a great way to make money, but it’s not very useful. I wanted to do something useful, so I came up with the idea of ​​using the blockchain to transfer ownership.”

Bitproof allows users to submit written documents to prove their existence and ownership in a very simple interface. The second part Dumont explained is that Bitproof improves on some previous ideas, such as the proof of existence mechanism.

“With this platform, if you share a file, you know it exists, but you don’t know who created it,” he explained. “That’s ownership, if you share it, you own it.”

      opportunity

Perhaps more surprising than Dumont ’s age is the story of how he got to Boost VC , which seems like it was propelled by coincidence, or perhaps a testament to the fact that, despite overall online advertising, bitcoin still has only a niche audience.

When Dumont was 16 , he applied for the Hill Scholarship and decided to go to the applicants' meeting alone.

“I met someone who worked at Boost , and then I went to Boost and met co-founder Brayton Williams and CEO Adam Draper . Naturally, I didn’t know anything about Boost at the time,” he said.

Despite not being dressed up or presenting himself, Dumont wrote some code. Without following Bitproof ’s progress, Williams and Draper soon told him to apply to join Boost , and he was soon on his way to San Francisco.

Difficulties faced

However, things are not going as planned, in the sense that Dumont and Bitproof have hit a roadblock. Demo Day is just six weeks away, and he has not yet decided how to present his new product on stage.

On the one hand, the technology has been tested; on the other hand, business expansion faces such an obstacle.

Users are already able to authenticate documents, protect intellectual property and transfer files by integrating the technology with Box , Dropbox and Google Drive .

But the most critical question for Dumont now is, what kind of people will use Bitproof ?

"I am trying to do this now. Generally speaking, it is difficult to change a person's habitual thinking. It is a considerable challenge to convince people to use a technology they do not trust," he said. Perhaps this is also the unspoken concern of other similar companies.

Find a use case

That’s not to say Dumont doesn’t believe people will use Bitproof . Designers and developers who want to protect their work by proving ownership are the biggest potential customers, Dumont said.

“It’s very useful for freelancers who want to be paid by a client. You can say you did it and gave it to your client, and then the client will pay. If the client refuses to pay, you can say you created it,” he explained.

Now, he is looking for strategic partners for his next move. Without a passport, which is tricky — Dumont explains that he doesn’t have a university degree — he may return to France to continue working on Bitcoin.

During the interview, he was still programming a blockchain search engine, Merkle io .

Dumont is optimistic, however, that he won’t be returning to his hometown of Blois (after all, he jokes, there are only about 15 people working on Bitcoin in France right now), and that Bitproof ’s fixed investment may be the most effective approach.

“If we succeed, it will be huge,” he said. “I’m trying to figure it out.”