Serial Entrepreneur | Aldo Carrascoso

 

About Aldo Carrascoso

Aldo Carrascosois the Founder and COO / CTO of Veem, a company that utilizes Blockchain to allow individuals to make cross border payments in local currencies. The company was conceptualized by Aldo when learned that individuals making cross border payments were having to pay up to 25% of the transfer amount in fees to various institutions.

Prior to Veem Aldo Carrascoso, Aldo founded or cofounded several other other companies including JukinVideo, jukin media aldo carrascoso, Coalescent Resourcing Inc, and Verego.com.

Aldo received a degree in Psycology from Ateneo De Manila University, and a MBA from Babson’s College.

 

Interview Transcript of: Serial Entrepreneur | Aldo Carrascoso

 

Alan
Welcome back. I’m here today with Aldo Carrascoso and he’s the founder and CEO of aligned commerce. Welcome to today’s show.

Aldo
Thanks for having me.

Alan
And actually it truly you’re a serial entrepreneur, that may be a more accurate depiction of what you do. But yeah, love it. Love having you on today. Thanks for coming on, you know, for the listeners, can you give us background and how you got to where you are today and some of the things that you’ve done along the way?

Aldo
Perfect. Yeah. So before we move further, so we were formally known as online commerce, we just rebranded maybe less than a week ago to Veem. So it’s the same business, it’s just a new name. So I just want to say.

Alan
Veem, okay,

Aldo
It’s just easier.Okay, so my journey actually, I was born in the Philippines, in a place called San Juan Metro Manila. I, you know, I was born in a family of Nagasaki entrepreneurs, we were very tech focused. So I was engaged in, in coding at third grade, I, you know, destroyed and created my first television set on in fourth grade. And like, the way you destroyed your first television set, and then I created my first radio, I remember, in fifth grade. So I, you know, my, my, my folks encouraged this whole, ask permission, seek seek forgiveness rather than permission. So I was able to innovate as a child. So I think the basics of coding was really ingrained, then, then I went into university, I was able to where I had conversations with people, you know, ask them, what would be the best thing that I could do or take, or to focus on when, you know, because I wanted to contribute back somehow to the world. I grew up in that kind of family. They basically told me, you know, the key to any business, it’s not really the numbers, well, CPAs might disagree with me or financial forecasters. And they said, it’s not really logistics or operations, it’s people. So the ability to grow, motivate, and to propel people forward, are the most important thing. So that’s what I spent my entire college life, basically understanding how to talk, motivate, and grow people, which I think are main core tenets of what I know, aside from the fact that I’m also a technical founder. So I code. Yeah, fast forward a number of years, you know, my journey to Silicon Valley started in a parking lot in, in just in the Philippines. I said that, you know, one day, I’m going to go and pitch some of the largest investors in the world. And I’m going to create really disruptive tech products. And the rest is history. So I moved here around 2004 2005. It was very hard to break in. I came from a completely Southeast Asian mindset, essentially, more laid back, you know, less asking questions, less about less about questioning authority more about following orders to reprogram myself. So I actually joined the Babson entrepreneurship program. I took an MBA, two things that did for me. One was it forged me and exposed me to mentors who were in theorists, they were people who actually exited ran giant companies like Greg Benson at Merriam. They were able to run companies and they were the ones teaching. The other one was I was able to launch my first startup. So that really, you know, that whole experience aside from aside from giving me US education allowed me to get my feet wet. So I started a company called the ego. So think of the ego as the Tinder for companies, right? Do you know how Tinder matches people based on preferences or likes and you know, long walks in the beach? I like, you know, Moonlight dates. I did the same thing, but for b2b. So verrico was a pioneer in trying to do b2b matchmaking. So for your company, and you’re looking for partners outside, let’s say, Southeast Asia, China, India, I wouldn’t just give you a listing, right? This is what directories would do. I would give you the best matches for you. So that became something called the OPI algorithm. So it became a matchmaking algorithm for businesses to use each other. So yeah, that that became successful. And now a consulting firm uses it to do buyer supplier matching. And to this day, I believe some of the companies that we still match are still partners. Right, so, personifying, you know, the big vision that was personifying companies, allows you to have longer strategic partnerships, just like relationships and marriage.

Alan
You know, although you’re you’re the epitome of that entrepreneur that they’re out not to make money but to solve problems, and in to find ways that the market isn’t addressing to put the technology and resources in place. And now you’ve done a number of companies in I’d want to get into this, but unfortunately, I’m running up against the break right now. So if, if we could, why don’t we take a quick commercial break and then we’ll continue on with some of the other companies that you’ve done and then bring you up to date. This is Alan Olsen’s American Dreams I’m visiting here with Aldo Kado school. So I he is one of the founders and CEO of Beeman, Veem we’ll be right back after these messages.

Alan
Welcome back and visiting here today with Aldo Carrascoso school. So he is the CEO, Chief Operating Officer of beam. And before that, we were talking about your your first company that you found a vertical verrico where we go excuse me, and which was a b2b, for businesses, similar to Tinder. And then what did you go on? From there? Yeah.

Aldo
So after a few years, so I was able to exit from my company. I went to Los Angeles. So one of my main passions was movie, I love movies. I think movies are a way for me to vicariously live through like the hero in or even the villain. So people often ask me how I, how I train my imagination. I always tell them when I watch a movie, I always imagine myself in the situation, what would I do? Actually, some of my craziest ideas come from movies. So what I would have done in the situation of the plot. So anyway, I moved there, I met these two producers, they had this thing saying, you know, they were telling me about this whole viral video content. This was like 2009 2010, I wasn’t even know. Right? So. So if you were some normal kid, and you’ve got this compelling thing that you’d like to show on TV, you would actually need to show up in a station, give them a DVD. And then they would basically, you know, they would do a content meeting, they would find out if they want to put you on TV, because you caught something. If they did, you would have to give them the raw file. Right? There’s this infamous story, and I will not name names. But apparently there’s this gentleman from the Midwest that filmed something compelling. And he licensed it for anywhere between 100 to $1,000 to a network network went on and monetized it for a lot, a lot more money. So then, you know, when we started it, we found that there was this huge disconnect between people who needed the content and people creating the content. And these two producers knew the ones creating them, and they knew the ones who needed them. So they just needed the guy to create the platform that became Jukin. Media. So at that time, you can just now, if I’m not mistaken, one of the world’s largest payments, licensing platform for user generated content. So I always ask this to people. Do you have Facebook, you have Instagram? Do you? Probably made you laugh already. So we provide a tremendous amount of funny videos, via videos for all of these platforms actually think the platform itself has over 60 or 70 billion views. It’s in 221 markets. I don’t even know how many regional offices we’re right to have right now in every major network in the world, from CNN, to Al Jazeera to CCTV to GMA in the world uses that platform to get user generated content, like the brands that we’ve found in you know, some of them include FailArmy People Are Awesome Petco collective, and a number of other listings. And if you’re actually looking at what we’ve done, we’ve actually think contributed around 10 or $15 million back to these video creators. So it’s only this is a platform for them to upload stuff. And then once it’s there, the platform syndicates, it licenses and it distributes to all of these networks. So I was we really wanted to help these guys who were creating all of this content because they had no idea how to negotiate, right? I mean, you don’t want to go into some executives room and executives gonna show you 100 bucks, and then he’s going to allow 100 bucks for a kid in Midwest who’s in high school. It’s a lot of money. So we were able to democratize that process and at this same time every major network and abroad from Japan, Germany, to different countries could have access to these real time compelling video. So we own you know, if you thinking of a, a viral video right now, it’s probably from the dukan platform. So that became one of the interesting tidbits of my life.

Alan
Yeah, it’s interesting. So after Jukun, you didn’t stop there? What? What brought you to the new Veem?

Aldo
Yeah, so essentially, I’m technically called an overseas foreign worker. So always with a problem. Remember, I, you know, we never started anything, because we wanted to make money. You know, unfortunately, I thought, I listened to a lot of pitches. And when you hear a lot of these new entrepreneurs coming in, it’s about them making money. And my advice to them is, it’s always about adding value to people’s lives. So back to my story. So with theme, aligned commerce, then I’m an overseas foreign worker, that technically means I send money back home, I support people. And that’s what 30 or $40 billion worth of remittances go into the Philippines alone. And the Philippines is one of the smallest markets for remittances. Look at Mexico. Look at India, look at China. And people kept complaining, how come you’re sending me only this money? And I’m like, Absolutely not. I’m sending that money. I’m sending you much more. So fast forward, bucko the back of the envelope, no, Excel, found that that they were getting 80% of what I was sending them at.

Alan
Wow, who was getting 80% was missing.

Aldo
I was saving. I was sending them me a I was paying a sending fee. And then the receivers were paying you receiving fee and they were getting net them something Yeah, you would never then I found out it was because of one thing. It could either be the closed loop networks, large of large institutions, which I will they will be nameless, are there because of correspondent banking. So correspondent banking, essentially, banks internationally aren’t connected. They’re connected by Swift, essentially, which is a messaging platform. But in terms of how money transfer flows between them, they need to be connected by correspondent banks, they don’t have direct relationships. So by virtue of that, every time you need to send, let’s say, I’m a Philippine company, and I need to send to China, US dollars, the Philippine company will correspond with a bank in New York, that bank in New York will look for relationship somewhere in Asia, to find how to route the money into China. That’s how many hops maybe three or four hops, right. Just by human nature, and maybe by laws of economics, every time you hop on something, it costs something, it’s just like going through a whole course. And Dolan’s question that for the longest time, that’s always been this whole system, pre internet, maybe created by Western the whole world system was created by Western Union back and it hasn’t been redone.

Alan
So although I mean, we’re running up against a break, I need to take a quick break and Beijing with all their credit score. So and, and he’s the as the chief operating officer of a lot aligned commerce recently renamed to Veem, we’ll be right back after these messages.

Alan
Welcome back, I’m visiting here today with all kinds of scorso. And he is the Chief Operating Officer of theme and we’re talking about this new company that that was actually a feeling that the the one of the problems out there between sending money overseas, and it make it a more efficient process. So more money ends up getting in the hands of the end. Correct. And recipients so go ahead.

Aldo
So I think I think I we left off with the old wire system created by Western United, it hasn’t been changed. Fast forward. 2009 2011 2012 There’s this thing called Bitcoin, right? And if you googled it at that time, things you would hear about drug trade, FBI shutting down operations, well, my word murder and these things so when you know my co founder and I started it, imagine the horror when we would explain it to a regulator or to a bank. We actually it took us many many many months to get a simple bank account. Can you imagine that? Like now after you incorporate you go into Bank of America they give it back out? They took so much time to get that so the the the the just the whole mountain of things that we had to go after because it was too early. No one knew the idea and By the way, we weren’t pitching Bitcoin we were pitching something called the blockchain. We were the first. That’s why we’re the world’s largest payment processor on the blockchain right now. Excellent. We were the first. So five years ago, four years ago, no one heard about this new thing. And I said, this could be the best thing to connect banks. Right. So what we did was we created this thing called the multi rail router, right? So instead of going from, you know, just banks, they use Swift to tell each other I’m texting you, I’m sending you money. That’s all it does. That’s a shift. It’s a messaging system. And then it essentially there’s something called a rebalancing. So vostro accounts. So it’s banks have bank accounts in other banks, they just subtract and add, they rebalance, credit and debit these things. What the blockchain would allow banks to have real time exchange of, um, transfers, basically disintermediating, this need for Treasury, or balances, and other bats Imagine me telling this to someone, five, four years ago, fast forward now, every major bank in the world is investing billions of dollars, trying to form a consortium, trying to understand this new thing, the same guys who probably laughed at us. Who laughed at us, but then are the same guys calling us back. And I love those conversations. So I’ve spent maybe the last year talking to banks, educating them telling them about, you know, proof of concept of these things, because Veeam is not a proof of concept company, you hear blockchain being proof of concept. We’re not. So they want to find out how to bring something that’s you know, that’s, that’s operational, and that’s scalable. So you’ve got all of these guys calling us back. In fact, we’ve hit a nerve that they decided to start investing in us. So Silicon Valley Bank, National Australia Bank, are some of our lead investors, aside from Kleiner Perkins, and Google Ventures. So you’ve probably doing the right thing at this point. So yeah, and then the rest is history. Now we’ve expanded to 60 countries, we’ve got, we’ll be one of the first to actually allow you to remit money out of China. And you know, for us in the United States, that might not seem to be a big thing. By in China, there’s huge capital controls, it’s almost impossible to expatriate funds out. And again, you know, this is not supposed to be a political commentary. But it’s almost impossible. So we’re actually one of the first foreign companies to be able to do that. Imagine the excitement of the Chinese market. For us to do that all possible because of this new multi rail router that we did, basically, that we patented, and all the dependencies, it routes money, depending on the highway. So if I want to get to Sacramento, I can fly I can take the highway, I can take a train, I don’t know what to train. But my router, all it does is it chooses one you want the quickest, the safest or cheapest. We can get even, you know, the algorithm finds out which one is the most efficient.

Alan
It’s amazing the solution provided but how do you make money at this? Yeah, what’s what’s your model here?

Aldo
Cross currency, that’s all. Okay. That’s all it is. It’s actually free to send free to receive. We work with a lot of so we target only small and medium businesses, you know, SMEs, underserved, underfunded, nobody cares. Typical transaction size is anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000.

Alan
Okay, so the person wants to send money home, they can we power

Aldo
Those platforms, okay. So the only way you can use the Veem platform is you’re going to use it for good or service. Okay, we don’t use it to remit person. So, you know, we’re a regulated entity. So we were we have an MSP. So money service business, Canada registration, federally, we’re going after money transmission licenses. In state fact, we probably have a dozen right now. So they’re being granted asset growth. So we have to be very careful of something called KYC or know your customer. So we need to make sure that you know, and money laundering and all of those nice things. So this is my first regulated entity. It’s actually very interesting that it’s also frustrating at times, because, you know, for me to explain to a regulator with a blockchain is I spent a lot of time doing that.

Alan
So that’s a big area to money laundering in today’s world. Yeah.

Aldo
Especially with digital currencies. It’s actually so simple. Yeah. I mean, that’s what scares them. They don’t understand how simple it is. But then guys, you know, folks like us over at Veeam, essentially, we’ve put in compliance as one of our cores. So at least we protect the consumers, we get the regulator’s happy, and then we protect your funds. That’s probably one of the most important things. So it’s really a very mature approach into how you do all I think one of the big problems with early blockchain companies is what they wanted to do with, you know, stick it to the man. Right, which was probably not the best thing to do at this point. So for us, we did the reverse. We said, We need to work. We need to work with institutions, because we need legitimacy. And I believe in you know, being revolutionary. about some things, but then you have to be prudent, pragmatic. And, you know, you’ve know how you need to execute. So we worked on these kinds of things.

Alan
Although I understand you’re, you’re also looking into doing more things with artificial intelligence. However, I’m running up against the break right now. And I have one of the second announcers, I’d like to hold you over it, that’s okay. No worries, okay. busier with all their clutter school. So and we’ve been visiting about a new company that he co founded Veeam. He’s currently the Chief Operating Officer, but he’s moving to the next big idea, artificial intelligence. Stay tuned, we’ll be right back after these messages. Welcome back and busy here, do a although credit score, so and, and we were the previous segment talking about Veeam, and how that’s disrupting and providing solutions to cross border transactions and currencies. But you’re now moving into artificial intelligence you want to share with with us your your, the direction you’re going and how you think that can help us.

Aldo
Yeah, so I think one of the most important things that’s always guided me forward was never money. It was always about purpose, why you do something was more important, because when you have a very compelling reason why you do something, people follow that not, you know, not just employees, investors, media, stakeholders follow. So purpose has always been part. So for Jukin, it was to empower the small guy, for a line it was empower the small guy again, it was always about these things. So you find people to believe in you. So this whole artificial intelligence conversation started because of cancer. So my mother actually succumbed to cancer. As a child she was, she had breast cancer. Just recently, over a year and a half ago, my sister who I loved dearly, was diagnosed with breast cancer. So I’m sorry, if I’m letting people know, but people need to know this reality. But last time, I got pissed off, I started a company called beam. I got so pissed off that why is there no cure for cancer? I realized it’s, you know, it’s a confluence of things. First of all, all of these scientists generate tremendous amounts of data from the human body. And I found out that 70 to 90% of it is thrown away. Why would you throw away that much data? Because you want to know why? Because they don’t understand what to do with it. Right? Second, preparation for all of these have samples when you find out cancer tumors is so manual, right? So it’s prone to human error. So you need to instrument it needs to go through instruments rather than human hands, less intervention, better, better accuracy, and precision. And the third one was, you know, you’ve got they were based on RNA and DNA. What’s the thing about RNA and DNA? Scientists have found that it may be too noisy. So there’s groundbreaking research right now that’s actually not protein based, but actually carbohydrate based? What the heck does artificial intelligence have to do with that? So the human body, as I said, generates petabytes of data. The only reason why we haven’t had a cure for cancer or for breast cancer was because we couldn’t find specific markers that would allow them to tie in, you know, the similarity, just all human beings. But you know, what a machine would do, you could train a machine enough to find these markers, one that cannot be seen by the human eye, because machines are unbiased. So I’m working right now, on a, it’s a cancer target discovery factory, it’s going to run on machine learning, and artificial intelligence. So we generate all of this human data, petabytes of it, instead of going through a normal statistical method, it’s going to go through a machine learning model that’s going to find out new signals, new structures, and these new signals and structures were never discovered before. Right. And they will be glycogen or carbohydrate based. This, you know, I’ve been circulating this around a long time with scientific community, the medical community in the investment community. The response is the most tremendous I’ve ever had with anything I’ve ever done. And I remember the blockchain when I was pitching it four or five years ago, when no one believes me. I’m pitching artificial intelligence for healthcare. And I’m telling them it’s the same thing replaying again, and I’m seeing that it’s going to impact AI is going to impact healthcare, significantly improving people’s lives, more than any financial services more than it is talking to Alexa. Martin is talking to Siri. I think this will be I you know, I’m I’ve had 20 years experience as an entrepreneur. And the one thing I don’t want In other words, boil the ocean or big, you know, make gigantic claims. But I think this is the key to really providing a scalable solution to battling breast cancer.

Alan
Absolutely amazing. And although I we’re out of time today, but I appreciate you being on today’s show and been busy here day with Aldo Curtis gusto and thanks for joining us here in America dream to join us next week right here on this station.

 

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This transcript was generated by software and may not accurately reflect exactly what was said.

Alan Olsen, is the Host of the American Dreams Show and the Managing Partner of GROCO.com.  GROCO is a premier family office and tax advisory firm located in the San Francisco Bay area serving clients all over the world.

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