Meet Clearpool’s CCO and Co-Founder, Jakob Kronbichler
After seven years of work experience in managerial roles at several well-funded startups, Jakob Kronbichler decided to shift his career and set up his own project aligned with his entrepreneurial mindset and passion for the crypto space. He joined Robert Alcorn as co-founder of Clearpool in June 2021, where he currently acts as CCO.
Today we sit with him to discuss his background, roles, and responsibilities at Clearpool and the vision behind this new project.
1. Describe yourself in a few sentences:
I am the startup guy on the founding team.
After a short stint in the finance sector, I joined German internet incubator Rocket Internet and helped them scale two of their marketplace ventures; Foodpanda and Jumia saw rapid growth and went from inception to IPO in a few years.
I then followed my passion for fintech and joined Aspire, a business neobank and alternative lending player in Southeast Asia.
Being involved in crypto for a few years personally, the rise of DeFi with platforms like Compound led to my click moment when I realized this massive opportunity of building an alternative financial system. I realized I wanted to get into crypto and DeFi full-time.
2. How did you meet Robert, and at which point did you decide to co-found the project?
I met my co-founder Robert via Alessio Quaglini, CEO of Hex Trust, a partner of Clearpool. We occasionally met over beers and discussed crypto, and one day, Alessio mentioned the idea he was working on together with Robert.
Alessio made the introduction, and Robert and I immediately got along very well and realized we had a complementary background and skill set.
Robert has a strong background in traditional finance and capital markets. He is, therefore, the visionary and architect of the platform. I bring a fast-growth startup mentality and a track record of strong execution in business development and customer acquisition.
It did not take long for me to realize that this was the opportunity I was looking for, and I left my job working full time on Clearpool.
3. What are your roles and responsibilities at Clearpool?
We currently have a small but super talented team, and as with all early-stage startups, we are all wearing multiple heads. I am mainly focusing on all commercial aspects of the business, including building a strong ecosystem of borrowers and lenders and other ecosystem partners such as exchanges, other DeFi protocols, and service providers. I am also very involved in fundraising.
4. What aspects of DeFi excite you the most?
I think DeFi has the potential to disrupt our whole financial system as we know it.
The idea that we can replace basically all major functions of traditional finance with decentralized protocols governed by an active community spread worldwide is compelling.
I am also amazed by the people in the space. I met some of the smartest people I know in this industry. But I am even more amazed by how collaborative everyone is. Everyone in the industry is very approachable, and even platforms competing over the same customers are helping each other out.
There is a great feeling that we are building something significant here in DeFi.
5. Do you see a big difference in how startups and DeFi projects operate?
Speed. Regular startups are moving fast, but DeFi and Crypto projects, in general, seem to move twice as fast.
There is also this market dynamic playing a big role, timing is important, and the success of a project also greatly depends on the performance of the native token on the market.
Community is the other big difference. When working on a DeFi project, you need to be very transparent and responsive to keep your community satisfied and engaged. An active community that constantly discusses and questions strategic decisions provides you with a constant real-market feedback loop.
6. What would you like to achieve for Clearpool within the next 12 months?
Our vision is to build a decentralized capital markets ecosystem, so the actual borrowing and lending piece that we go to market with is just the beginning and foundation of what we are looking to build.
We want to provide our lenders all the tools available in traditional markets, which will include a marketplace where Clearpool’s LP Tokens can be traded as well as different credit derivatives, such as CDS.
Within the first 12 months, we want to be the leading DeFi project for unsecured loans and have attracted some new lending and borrowing profiles from outside of the current crypto landscape.
Stay in touch with Jakob Kronbichler, follow his Twitter @JKronbichler.
About Clearpool
Clearpool is a decentralized capital markets ecosystem where institutions can borrow uncollateralized liquidity, and LPs get attractive rewards and risk management solutions. Clearpool introduces several new concepts to DeFi, with the idea of single borrower liquidity pools and tokenized credit giving rise to sophisticated risk management and hedging solutions. Clearpool is revolutionizing debt capital markets; a paradigm shift in how institutions borrow uncollateralized liquidity is upon us.
To learn more, visit www.clearpool.finance and follow us on Twitter and Telegram.
