Founder
Alex Casassovici (He/Him)
Engineer, leader, international speaker.
I speak tech, product, business, and marketing; I love building and solving hard problems. https://ksso.net crypto OG
Engineer, leader, international speaker.
I speak tech, product, business, and marketing; I love building and solving hard problems. https://ksso.net crypto OG
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Experience
heymate
Advisor
Founder
Steek
Employee
Head of Mobile at SDC (post-acquisition)
Steek was the leading provider of online storage solutions to Telco operators, ISPs, and integrators with over 2.5 Millions of active users.
I joined Steek at Series A... more to build the "mobile" product and business as an independent business unit.
F-Secure acquired Steek in 2009 in what became the largest tech exit in Europe this year.
Recruited a core team of 3 that quickly scaled to 50 post-acquisition, with the team distributed between Paris, Bordeaux, Helsinki and Oulu.
The team worked in a fully distributed way following the scrum methodology, and I was working at C-level and with customers to prioritize and ship.
Key Achievement:
- Synchronized a fully distributed team of 50 by building a strong culture of ownership
- Shipped carrier-grade projects with global customers (Optus, Singtel, America Moviles, AT&T, Orange...)
- Regular attendance at the ExCom
I joined Steek at Series A... more to build the "mobile" product and business as an independent business unit.
F-Secure acquired Steek in 2009 in what became the largest tech exit in Europe this year.
Recruited a core team of 3 that quickly scaled to 50 post-acquisition, with the team distributed between Paris, Bordeaux, Helsinki and Oulu.
The team worked in a fully distributed way following the scrum methodology, and I was working at C-level and with customers to prioritize and ship.
Key Achievement:
- Synchronized a fully distributed team of 50 by building a strong culture of ownership
- Shipped carrier-grade projects with global customers (Optus, Singtel, America Moviles, AT&T, Orange...)
- Regular attendance at the ExCom
Exit
Kamayo
Founder
WaveStorm
Founder
Air Liquide
Employee
Founder, CEO, Acting CTO
Streams are not TV.
Azarus reveals the true nature of video streams as massively interactive mediums. Our technology overlays games on any player, getting all the viewers... more to battle it out over or in-between traditional streamed video content.
Your screen is already compatible.
Our games received 200M clicks and 18M unique players on Twitch in 2022.
The platform lets you:
**Build** with a game engine
**Distribute** through our on-stream Wallet and Vpaid/Vast support
**Monetize** with our AzaCoin (ERC20)
while players enjoy a vast set of utility for their coins through our item store (35k+ items), bridges, NFT memberships, and staking games.
At Azarus, I built and led the product and engineering team through our "0 to 1" and growth phases, scaling from 1 to 25 engineers and adjusting our methods as we scaled in order to maximize the team's ability to contribute.
The Azarus team is mission-driven, and all tech and product decisions are data and business-driven.
A few achievements worth noting:
- Raised $6.5M from Animoca Brands, Galaxy Digital, Kleiner Perkins and more
- Spoke on the intersection of blockchain, streaming, and Esports at 20+ conferences (MIT, Consensus, Dubai blockchain week...)
- Horizontally scalable platform (AWS) able to go from 0 to 500k players connecting in seconds
- Patent US20220072419A1
- ISO 27001 certification & GDPR compliance
- Custom data pipeline + ETL
- Real-time Computer Vision video stream analysis and tagging (Twitch)
- Migrated our L2 blockchain from EOSIO to Polygon Edge
- Issued an ERC20 utility token with an opinion piece from Withers
- Released a custodial wallet embedded in video streams distributed through VPAID/VAST
- 0 turnover on teammates that passed the trial period. Strong culture of ownership, transparency, collaboration, honesty, and humility
Azarus reveals the true nature of video streams as massively interactive mediums. Our technology overlays games on any player, getting all the viewers... more to battle it out over or in-between traditional streamed video content.
Your screen is already compatible.
Our games received 200M clicks and 18M unique players on Twitch in 2022.
The platform lets you:
**Build** with a game engine
**Distribute** through our on-stream Wallet and Vpaid/Vast support
**Monetize** with our AzaCoin (ERC20)
while players enjoy a vast set of utility for their coins through our item store (35k+ items), bridges, NFT memberships, and staking games.
At Azarus, I built and led the product and engineering team through our "0 to 1" and growth phases, scaling from 1 to 25 engineers and adjusting our methods as we scaled in order to maximize the team's ability to contribute.
The Azarus team is mission-driven, and all tech and product decisions are data and business-driven.
A few achievements worth noting:
- Raised $6.5M from Animoca Brands, Galaxy Digital, Kleiner Perkins and more
- Spoke on the intersection of blockchain, streaming, and Esports at 20+ conferences (MIT, Consensus, Dubai blockchain week...)
- Horizontally scalable platform (AWS) able to go from 0 to 500k players connecting in seconds
- Patent US20220072419A1
- ISO 27001 certification & GDPR compliance
- Custom data pipeline + ETL
- Real-time Computer Vision video stream analysis and tagging (Twitch)
- Migrated our L2 blockchain from EOSIO to Polygon Edge
- Issued an ERC20 utility token with an opinion piece from Withers
- Released a custodial wallet embedded in video streams distributed through VPAID/VAST
- 0 turnover on teammates that passed the trial period. Strong culture of ownership, transparency, collaboration, honesty, and humility
Project Leader
In a couple of years, Diveboard has grown to become the #1 worldwide platform to track your scuba diving experiences, find new destinations, pinpoint the perfect local dive... more shop for you and book your dives online.
Diveboard found its mission in helping provide historical and real-time monitoring of the marine biotope, collecting data such as species, and temperature at depth.
Diveboard was initially developed by Pascal and myself on a Ruby-on-Rails / Mysql / jQuery stack.
The platform is being entirely rewritten and ported to a React (PWA) / Firebase stack and is fully opensource (and a 501c3 non-profit - donate!): github.com/Diveboard
Diveboard found its mission in helping provide historical and real-time monitoring of the marine biotope, collecting data such as species, and temperature at depth.
Diveboard was initially developed by Pascal and myself on a Ruby-on-Rails / Mysql / jQuery stack.
The platform is being entirely rewritten and ported to a React (PWA) / Firebase stack and is fully opensource (and a 501c3 non-profit - donate!): github.com/Diveboard
TED
Public Speaker / Twitter (20k) / Angel Investor
My entrepreneurial journey started by giving a public conference on WiFi technology during my senior year in College at the request of the college patrons from the ministry.... more
Since then, I've been fortunate to share my thoughts, show cool tech I contributed to, and engage with communities on some of the largest stages such as:
GDC (Game Developer Conference), Pocket Gamer / Blockchain Gamer (Hong Kong, Seattle, San Francisco...), MIT Media Lab(Boston), Consensys (Austin), Tedx, Blockchain game summit, Bad Crypto Podcast, LeWeb (Paris), Techcrunch Disrupt...
I used to blog a lot; now I tweet at @zatmonkey.
I invest a couple of deals a year directly or through syndicates. I like to go in very early when the technology gets me excited or late (Pre-IPO).
Latest investments:
Uplandme (Web3 Gaming), Napster (Web3 music), LVL (web3/banking)
kush (Canabis), begin.com (Serverless stack), Enklu (AR), Undergroundcellar (e-commerce), Palantir (Big data - exited - IPO), Headspace (Health) ,Odys Aviation (VTOL), Talyn Air (VTOL), Ergatta (Sports), Kernal Biologics (mRNA), Raydiant (digital marketing), Yotta Savings (banking), BlueX Trade (cargo ship)
Since then, I've been fortunate to share my thoughts, show cool tech I contributed to, and engage with communities on some of the largest stages such as:
GDC (Game Developer Conference), Pocket Gamer / Blockchain Gamer (Hong Kong, Seattle, San Francisco...), MIT Media Lab(Boston), Consensys (Austin), Tedx, Blockchain game summit, Bad Crypto Podcast, LeWeb (Paris), Techcrunch Disrupt...
I used to blog a lot; now I tweet at @zatmonkey.
I invest a couple of deals a year directly or through syndicates. I like to go in very early when the technology gets me excited or late (Pre-IPO).
Latest investments:
Uplandme (Web3 Gaming), Napster (Web3 music), LVL (web3/banking)
kush (Canabis), begin.com (Serverless stack), Enklu (AR), Undergroundcellar (e-commerce), Palantir (Big data - exited - IPO), Headspace (Health) ,Odys Aviation (VTOL), Talyn Air (VTOL), Ergatta (Sports), Kernal Biologics (mRNA), Raydiant (digital marketing), Yotta Savings (banking), BlueX Trade (cargo ship)
Propulsive
Founding Partner - Blockchain architect
Propulsive is a boutique consulting group focusing on helping businesses understand and build on blockchain technologies, providing both technology and marketing services.
As... more blockchain architect, I helped customers define their project's tokenomics and token circulation (sinks, faucets, utility), as well as define and ship MVPs of their products.
Key achievement:
- Helped Uplandme define their architecture, assemble and ran their engineering team for a while. I guided them to pick eosio as a chain which lead them to raise $6M as seed from ecosystem funds.
- Productized a full ICO wallet to generate ERC20 smart contracts and manage token sales (pivate-, pre- and crowdsale including KYC).
As... more blockchain architect, I helped customers define their project's tokenomics and token circulation (sinks, faucets, utility), as well as define and ship MVPs of their products.
Key achievement:
- Helped Uplandme define their architecture, assemble and ran their engineering team for a while. I guided them to pick eosio as a chain which lead them to raise $6M as seed from ecosystem funds.
- Productized a full ICO wallet to generate ERC20 smart contracts and manage token sales (pivate-, pre- and crowdsale including KYC).
Exit
Co-founder, CEO
Showdown uses AI to capture key gameplay moments and stitches them together into an exciting replay.
Cloud gaming company Blacknut acquired Showdown.
Key Achievements:
-... more Built a team of video editors who created a training set to teach an AI to cut and stitch videos to generate emotions
- Worked with Dr Lisa Barrett on the definition of emotions and their inclusion in the product
- Released a Unity SDK integration
- Blue chip customers (EA, Ubisoft..)
Cloud gaming company Blacknut acquired Showdown.
Key Achievements:
-... more Built a team of video editors who created a training set to teach an AI to cut and stitch videos to generate emotions
- Worked with Dr Lisa Barrett on the definition of emotions and their inclusion in the product
- Released a Unity SDK integration
- Blue chip customers (EA, Ubisoft..)
WaveStorm
CEO, Founder
Jun 2003 – Jun 2009 (6 yrs 1 mo)
WaveStorm was born at the dawn of the IoT revolution. Both a hardware and software startup, we designed and built communication modules... more that can be easily added to any device.
Key achievements:
- Scaled WaveStorm to 15 people
- Partnership with Marvel (semiconductor) and Pegatron (Asus)
- Released projects with blue chips such as Meccano, Orange, Starbucks, Renault
- Pioneered metaverse integrations between connected devices and Second life.
- 2 patents
WaveStorm was born at the dawn of the IoT revolution. Both a hardware and software startup, we designed and built communication modules... more that can be easily added to any device.
Key achievements:
- Scaled WaveStorm to 15 people
- Partnership with Marvel (semiconductor) and Pegatron (Asus)
- Released projects with blue chips such as Meccano, Orange, Starbucks, Renault
- Pioneered metaverse integrations between connected devices and Second life.
- 2 patents
Exit
Kamayo
Co-founder, CTO
Kamayo was the first company able to deliver rich iPhone-like experience on pre-iPhone devices.
The company strived and ended up being acquired by Amdocs
Key Achievements:
-... more built a team of 20 engineers and designers
- Shipped 50+ projects to blue-chip customers (brands & telcos)
The company strived and ended up being acquired by Amdocs
Key Achievements:
-... more built a team of 20 engineers and designers
- Shipped 50+ projects to blue-chip customers (brands & telcos)
Founder
Employee
Advisor
Education
Projects
Proof of Concept on Ubisoft's R6S with Twitch
Technology expert · Analysed companies Innovacom (tier one EU VC Fund) was looking to invest into
In-game community entertainment SDK
Boost engagement with the first in-game replay community. Our plugin allows you to embed a social world within your game. Enable your users to natively… · More create gameplay highlight videos and connect with other users.
About
Achievements
With 15+ years of experience as a tech entrepreneur, I design solutions to big problems and assemble teams who buy into the mission.
Projects I steered have reached hundreds of millions of users. This level of impact is the biggest motivator for both myself and my teams.
My secret power is to translate marketing and business needs into technology directions. I build teams and empower them to execute efficiently, maximizing efficiency, quality, and impact. I value humility, honesty, transparency, and ownership.
I enjoy sharing my passion on any stage, internally and externally, and have been fortunate to travel the world doing so and build a vast network of phenomenal people along the way.
Describe the most impressive thing you've done.
Skills
Locations