Around the Block With Jefferson Nunn – Interview With Daniel Sloan of Future Tech
On the newest edition of “Around the Block,” Jefferson interviews Daniel Sloan of Future Tech. Future Tech & Accubits are recognised as one of the top companies in Blockchain, AI & RPA.
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Hey guys, buckle up for a new edition of “Around the Block” podcast, the one and only podcast meant to educate young entrepreneurs like you how to make your way in the cryptocurrency world. Today we’re talking with guest, Daniel Sloan. Daniel Sloan is a recognized leader in the blockchain crypto space, who started in the information technology industry in 1995, and has built multiple businesses during his 25-year career. Daniel is co-founder leading blockchain and AI Practice Manager at Future Tech/RebuildTheChain, Pandemic Management Platform.
Jefferson Nunn 0:47
Welcome to another edition of Around the Block with Jefferson Nunn. And I’m here today with a very special guest, Daniel Sloan. How’re you doing today, man?
Daniel Sloan 0:56
I’m doing awesome, Jefferson. Thanks for having me.
Jefferson Nunn 0:58
Great. Great. So yeah, we were just talking a little bit. Sounds like you’re gonna be having some very exciting, you know, things that you’re working with DeLorean Tell me more?
Daniel Sloan 1:09
Yeah, absolutely. So, our partner NFT IQ is who we’re working with on a DeLorean project. Essentially, what we’re looking to do is help them with an NFT launch for them. I’m sure you’ve probably seen a lot of other kind of high-profile cars like the Tesla’s and Porsches or whatnot, that, you know, before they release the new vehicle, you can actually go to the dealership and put a put a deposit down. And then that gets you a spot in line. But then what happens is the dealership then can take those reservations. And if I come along, Jefferson, and you put down your $2,500. And I say, well, hey, I really want Jefferson’s spot. How about I give you $15,000? The dealership says, Sure, I’ll take your money here, you can have his spot. And around and around that goes, right? So, what DeLorean didn’t want to do is have that same type of issue happened with them. They want to kind of be a very democratic, you know, just the way they’re coming out after, what, 35 years from the last car that they manufactured. And, you know, obviously, everyone’s probably more familiar with the DeLorean from the Back to the Future movie, right? Where it’s a time machine. Yeah, right. So, they’re new cars and electric supercar, it is really cool. We’re actually going to be out to LA Expoverse. We’re platinum sponsors for that for DeLorean. And so, the Yoast, the CEO is going to be out there. So, we’re going to kind of announce the project officially out there. But to finish what I was saying on the NFT project, so instead of the dealer’s dealing with all these reservations and spots in line, what we wanted to be able to do is is make it very democratic, and the only way to do that is to allow anyone that wants to get on that list, an opportunity to do that. And there’s so many people that are vying for this will be decided to do was to hold a raffle kind of like a lottery. So, there’s only going to be 9251 cars produced over five years. So, the ability to get one of those spots is going to be limited. So, you decide you want to try to get one of those cars, you buy a lottery ticket, raffle ticket, if you will, if you’re the winner of that raffle ticket, you then get invited to buy the NFT, which would be $2,500. And then you’ll randomly get what’s called a build slot. So that could be in 2023, 2024, 2025, whatever the luck of the draw is for you. So, the idea is in the secondary market, let’s say I gotta build slot at 2025. And you got to build slot at 2023. So, I see that your NFT is on the marketplace and you want your you’re willing to sell that. So, I come to you and say, hey, I’ll swap you my build slot for yours. And I’ll give you let’s say $20,000 or 10,000 hours, whatever it is, that transaction would happen between you and me on the marketplace. And you would profit from that. So, unlike the old model, where the dealers are all profiting from all that trading, you the end user, so we’re hoping that the excitement of the car and the ability for those who are lucky enough to win a build slot will just create a lot of fun and excitement around it. And you know, the idea, hopefully is that the DeLorean will be like the official kind of crypto car. You know, you’ve got Lamborghinis, right, but Lambos has a long history. There’s no kind of like car for our industry. So again, that’s a little bit of my sub goal of all this thing. But you know, when you think of, did you watch that movie? Ready Player One?
Jefferson Nunn 4:46
Yes, of course.
Daniel Sloan 4:47
Amazing. Right? So, Parsifal is cruising around in in the Time Machine right in the DeLorean. So, it’s at the core of that story. So that kind of in my daughter is 15, where’d that come out when she was like 13 years ago, we probably watched it 30 times since then, right? It’s one of our favorite movies. So, you know, I’m thinking, yeah, between the movie and all the nostalgia, everything like that this could potentially be, you know, this electric supercar, this could be the crypto car. So, that’s my goal, at least.
Jefferson Nunn 5:19
Yeah, that’s so fascinating. And I really think that you know, democratizing, if you will, to pre orders and whatnot, you know, even going beyond what Tesla has done with their pre orders, right? Where Tesla, you know, first in line, that’s it, and then they don’t care after that. And maybe they never released a car. You know, like the cybertruck, I still have my pre order for the cybertruck, right. And so, I’m really, really going to be watching this very closely to see how the DeLorean launch is gonna go. To that in, you know, just at the complete aside, do you think we will ever see another Back to the Future movie?
Daniel Sloan 6:01
I don’t know. That would be interesting, right? I mean, obviously, they just released the theme park their universal, right where you can get a ride. And there’s been all kinds of, you know, cool things around it. But who knows, I mean, they’ve rebooted and redone so many things. I wouldn’t be surprised. You know that that movie is pretty iconic. There’s a lot of lore around it. Obviously, we just talked about ready player one.
Jefferson Nunn 6:26
And Ready Player One, I think it’s gonna also gotta go down at another just movie we’ll be talking about for the next 100 years along with maybe Ready, ready player two, and whatever comes next.
Daniel Sloan 6:39
Whatever comes next.
Jefferson Nunn 6:40
And it’s so funny, right? It Ready Player One actually came out of Reddit, of all places.
Daniel Sloan 6:46
I know. Crazy, right?
Jefferson Nunn 6:47
What else? Do you think coming out of the social world? Do you think we will see that’d be influencing enterprise? Or, you know, products or anything like that? What do you think is gonna be coming next?
Daniel Sloan 7:01
Well, it’s interesting, right? And, you know, we got to give a little bit of a credit to Facebook who created just a huge tsunami of a splash when they changed their name to Metaverse, right? And it was crazy, because, you know, we would see on our radar planning of Metaverse, projects, like people like sending us white papers, and like, hey, I’m raising money. And I need a technical partner, because you have a very strong team of, you know, Unreal Engine, Unity developers, you know, game developers. You know, between myself and my partners, I have 1500 engineers at my disposal, so we can do some pretty big projects, right? And I have to say, over the last year, maybe five or 6x, the number of projects that we’re seeing the year or two previous. So, if you’re asking me what I think the future is going to hold for NFT’s and what’s next, I think, bringing non fungible token assets like so the actual NFT for DeLorean is going to be Metaverse in game ready. So, they’re talking to Microsoft and all the other game developers about taking that DeLorean into the video games and then some of the bigger meta versus those, that car will be in there. So, taking and having an asset that you own, that you can bring into the metaverse and then if, again, someone decides, hey, I really love this car, and I want to have this for myself, the ability to sell it, transfer that and change that ownership, unlike most video games, like I’ve been on, you know, World of Warcraft players, since vanilla haven’t played in the last few years. But I play for many years, you can build up an account and spend lots of time and energy and even money on that. And to nothing, I mean, you could sell your account, but those things sell for like $100 Given all the time and energy that you do in there versus some of the epic weapons and legendary weapons, things like that, the ability to NFT those and have an open marketplace to be able to sell those and even across serve multiple servers, right? Because, you know, there’s multiple servers. So, if you have one asset, that’s an NFT that you take to a global marketplace that you can buy. Next thing you know, you’re not the only one with this, this legendary sword in your server, you might be one of five because people went out and bought it.
Jefferson Nunn 9:18
Right. Yeah, I really wonder how the whole Metaverse thing will come together in real life, if you will. It always boils down to you know, is something useful, right. I mean, I can think back to the last even 25 years of actually there’s a guy now that he makes his whole living on useless products. So, I may be wrong about that in some ways, but I really think that you know, when it comes down to usability, that’s where it’s going to be great. And I think you know, we have a way to go to where we can give something like an NFT, and then have that as a cross platform object that we can use in every single video game that we’re in if they allow external in a NFT stuff. So, I hope that that’s what Meta is working on. They certainly have enough people to do it.
Daniel Sloan 10:20
You know, Accenture hired 150,000 people to focus on metaverse.
Jefferson Nunn 10:27
Yeah.
Daniel Sloan 10:27
And that’s no small number. I mean, that’s insane to me. I mean, yes, they’re offshore people. And, you know, they aren’t US kind of salary. But still, that’s a ton. I mean, you know, when you start seeing major consulting firms, companies, like, you know, Facebook now, Meta, I mean, it’s the writings on the wall, right, because, you know, attention goes where energy and money flows. So, lots of energy is flowing through this lots of money is flowing to this. And what I’m excited about is kind of makes me think back of when I got into technology back in 95. In 1996, SAP kind of hit a point of like mass adoption, like all the big fortune 500 companies all were sold on the value of it, or signing, you know, 100 $200 million contracts, really is much as SAP was disruptive. It was so new. It was such a big clunky machine, kind of like, take a piece of marble and you got a sculptor. And yeah, you kind of got it sculpted down and it looks like a statue, but it’s man still rough around the edges. It was all of the young entrepreneurial companies that were coming in creating bolt ones, were creating things like, hey, there’s a huge hole in SAP, and I fixed it. I think that’s where it Metaverse is going to be as you’re gonna have some of these big players laying down some major foundation. But I think a lot of the cool innovation and the fun things will happen from the you know, the startups and in the other companies that see where the problems are, go solve those problems and make interoperability, portability, all these things that we have issues of solve those issues.
Jefferson Nunn 12:08
Yeah, that’s, and that’s where it’s going back to usability. And I think there’s actually a lot of things that we could do within the metaverse to actually fix and reshape our world. You know, so that we can better see it like this. I always tell people, you know, how many people do you know, really, that enjoys reading all day, every day? Right? And there’s hardly like reading a book. There are hardly a few hands that go up, right? How many people like watching a movie everybody raises their hand? Yeah. Right. And I’m like, Well, that’s the difference between web2.0 and web3.0. Right there. Yeah. Right there.
Daniel Sloan 12:48
Yeah. I mean, if you think of all the time that, you know, I’ve got a My daughter just turned 17 yesterday. My youngest 15.
Jefferson Nunn 12:55
Congratulations on that.
Daniel Sloan 12:55
Thank you. One more year, she’s an adult, yay. But when I think of where they spend a lot of their times, my kids don’t really watch TV. They’re on their device. They’re on Instagram, they’re on Tik Tok. They’re in the social channels. And so right now, it’s a very non immersive experience. They’re staring at a small screen. They’re interacting with people, they’re, you know, I always hear them like video chatting with friends and this and that. So, when you transport that, and you make that to where, from a bandwidth standpoint with 5g and with just internet getting to plus gig speed, being able to have these very strong immersive game engines that can pull all that in to where they are actually experiencing that in a in a Metaverse versus just experiencing it. Very non immersive on their phone, right. I mean, it’s like anything. You probably remember the first time you went to an IMAX, right? And you’re like, oh, and like those speakers reverberated so hard, like, you know, you’re like, it shook your chair. It was so hard to go back to the normal movies after that on it. Oh, my God. But they didn’t have a lot of movies. I think once people start experiencing that kind of experience in the metaverse when they come out of it, it’s almost like I’ve been flying first class and then you get back from coach, you’re like, oh my God, I need to get back to first class. I think when Metaverse gets to that point, that’s when the adoption will happen when the old experience feels so wrong, and so lacking and then everyone will kind of migrate there.
Jefferson Nunn 14:36
Agreed. Hey, so tell me a little bit more about you how you got into this and you know, what was Bitcoin your birth or Ethereum or what?
Daniel Sloan 14:46
You know, I don’t have any of those. I bought a bunch of Bitcoin lost the wallet and I’d be a multi [inaudible] stories, multiple people like that. I did buy some bitcoin back in 2013, 2014, I was buying something from China and you they only took Bitcoin. So, I bought it, I think I bought a little extra. So, I think some got wasted in a wallet somewhere. But no, you know, I bought 500 Bitcoin and you know, I can be rich one day kind of story, but I’ve been, I’ve been in technology for since 95. So, you know, started as an IT recruiter, started my first company and 96, early 97 as an SAP consulting firm, and you know, built and sold multiple staffing consulting in a software company. And then I got into blockchain around 2016 was very fortunate that one of my clients, Exxon was really looking to do it and get into it and asked me to kind of, you know, do some exploration and help them figure out ways and they had a censure and they had IBM and another, you know, company coming at them saying, hey, you need to do this. And as a trusted vendor and partner, they’re like, hey, can you help us decide if this is something we need to do, because, you know, my boss thinks this is Bitcoin. And so, you know, after geeking out on it, and helping them get a consultant to help them, you know, figure out some of their roadmap, I was all in, and I converted my business and started a new one, about six months later that focused in on blockchain software development. And since 2017, that’s what I’ve been doing full time, we wrote the ICO wave got involved with many companies, you know, mostly as a technical partner, right, helping them build, but also investing. And then when I merged my other company blockchain saw with future tech and partner with activists and a few other partners, I wanted to have that model. But I also wanted to have some partners. So, we have a number of funding partners we work with that actually co invest with us. So, you know, we’ll build software for anybody that comes to us. But you know, there’s two, three deals a month that we’ll get involved with, invest in, and that’s where I get involved and usually come on as an advisor, and, you know, and help them and really help grow. And so, you know, we’re looking for that next Amazon and meta of blockchain. I mean, we want to have the bragging rights here of saying, hey, we built that tech, we help launch them and they’re a unicorn now.
Jefferson Nunn 17:21
Yeah, amazing. And I share your pain with losing Bitcoin back in 2010. I was one of the miners and I don’t even know how much what’s in there. Like, I don’t know, 1000 Bitcoins, who knows. But it was one of the miners and my wife actually one day complained, why is your room so hot? So, and then, you know, Bitcoin if the infamous Bitcoin crash video, right? It went all the way up to $1. And then Bitcoin crashed to 50 cents, and I’m like, it’s a scam or whatever. It’s a pump and dump, and, you know, just whatever with this. And so, I, you know, eventually reformatted the computer, sold it, whatever else, it’s long gone, right? And then, of course, what you mentioned 2013, yes. 2013 comes around, you know, bitcoins up again, I’m like, wait, what? So that’s when I got back in. I, yeah. But you know, and then, of course, same as everybody else, on some loss, some has some stolen everything else. So, but yeah, it’s a fascinating, fascinating industry. And I think, the more that we learn, the more that we can actually, I think the biggest difference is, with Fiat, you know, we have to work for Fiat to earn Fiat, that’s the hope that’s the only way the system works. And if you’re not earning, Fiat, you’re being left behind. That’s it, you work or die. And that’s everybody. That’s how you get millionaires trying to be, you know, billionaires, because it’s never enough. On the other hand, with crypto, you know, we then money works for us, we simply direct the activities. We don’t have to necessarily earn the activity. It’s a big, big difference, you know, directing versus, you know, just being stuck on a treadmill. So, did that in, what do you think is next, for crypto and everything else? I mean, future tech is right there in your name. But do you see on the horizon?
Daniel Sloan 19:29
Yeah absolutely, where we are always super excited to see projects that are either disrupting norms, you know, doing web2.0 to web3.0 transformations, that’s a lot of what we’re doing or, you know, get fortunate enough to work with companies like DeLorean and other big ones that you know, are looking to get into the space that need people that not only understand the tech but understand the business side, like how to how to solve their business level objectives. So, really my big aspiration and hope is that we start seeing that kind of larger adopt should maybe not a mass adoption by enterprise companies but a much larger adoption the next year to two years and hopefully within three years, we’re at a mass adoption stage where everyone’s like, NFT’s is just part of the marketing strategy, right. All companies are having a Metaverse strategy and like, okay, what Metaverse is, are we building our stores, and this just becomes part of the overall business. Because if you think about it, the internet and ecommerce didn’t really become internet, e commerce until what, like 10 years after the internet. Seven years, I started having security and we started making it to where people could actually get on their phones and actually do this. And in nowadays, you think about as like, when’s the last time I actually went to the store and bought something and didn’t just buy it on Amazon, right?
Jefferson Nunn 19:29
Yes.
Daniel Sloan 19:30
So, our lives have been upended in ways that we never thought, like I said to somebody that is like, when’s the last time you sent a fax? Right? When’s the last time you put a cassette player in your car, as a technology enables those things and marches on and whether you want to or not, if you don’t stay with it, it just keeps going. And so, it’s exciting to see everything kind of moved digital. And to your point, I don’t think the world if you think about the empowerment you get with crypto working for you, really where we are, as a society is that used to only be for the banks and the rich and the elite, right? Because they had the ability to make their money work for themselves. It wasn’t like, hey, I’m Jefferson, and I’m going to go buy some Bitcoin or I’m going to go buy this new token and stake it. So, the fact that we can all be empowered to leverage our money in a way that gets us 10x 20x 100x returns versus I’m working for an hourly wage, I’m working for the man. That to me is explosive, because that that’s a lot of capital. That’s a lot of wealth generation, and it’s in multiple people’s hands versus a small percentage of people’s hands. So, who knows what the world is going to be like, when you start having that amount of wealth creation, globally. It’s pretty exciting.
Jefferson Nunn 22:08
Yes. And I’m excited about it. I’ve been following this industry for a while. And I think everything from health care, you know, like, what self-care is trying to do to like what you mentioned with automotive, you know, DeLorean, I think that is just the start of a revolution of ideas and wealth creation, and more, and I think you’re right in the middle of it, right?
Daniel Sloan 22:34
We are I mean, it’s, it’s fun, again, we get to solve the technical problems. And, and really, it’s, it’s interesting to see the winners and losers, right? You know, because you can have, we, we’ve had projects where we built what we felt like is the best tech on the planet, but then they didn’t do a good job of marketing, and they didn’t do a good job of bringing in clients. So, there was nobody there to use it. And then I’ve seen had companies come to us to where they’ve had the absolute worst tech on the planet, but they had two 300,000 people in their community and, you know, getting beat up because things kept breaking and kept getting hacked. And then us turning around and fixing all that and, and repairing that. So, you know, at the end of the day is it’s the entrepreneurs, and it’s the business leaders that that take this technology of blockchain artificial intelligence, and in all the other tech that supports it, and really uses it in a way that people can actually get value out of it. It’s the tech itself is super exciting. But it’s, it’s the use of the tech that I’m most excited about. Because again, it’s foundational, but if you don’t know how to build a house, it’s not going to get built well.
Jefferson Nunn 23:40
Right. Well, Daniel, it’s been a very fascinating podcast, and I thank you for your time, if people want to get in touch with you, how can they do so?
Daniel Sloan 23:51
Absolutely. Well, I have my executive assistant on LinkedIn all day long. So, my LinkedIn, you know, have the little LinkedIn slash. And it’s my last name, first name, Sloan Daniel (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sloandaniel/). So, they go to LinkedIn or just do a search for me, Daniel Sloan on LinkedIn, Future Tech, I pop right up, just send me a connect request. And yeah, there’s a project that they have, or they’re looking to get involved in any of the projects we’re working with, just drop us a note. You know, we’re very, very approachable. And we have a team of people that kind of field all these requests. And, you know, I’m always excited when they get to the good ones and give them to me.
Jefferson Nunn 24:28
Daniel, thank you so much.
Daniel Sloan 24:30
Thank you, Jefferson.
If you are hearing this message, you’ve listened to our new episode all the way to the end. And for that, I, thank you from the bottom of my heart. And I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please review the episode on podcast.co or tell a friend about it and feel free to suggest future episode topics. This is Jefferson Nunn signing off until the next episode of Around the Block.
