HATDeX: The last community raise before scaling
It has been 12 months since HATDeX’s last financing, 3 weeks since the latest HAT partner came on board, 27 minutes since the latest HAT sign-on, and the HAT Data Exchange Ltd is raising a new round. The time has come! HATDeX is now investments
Previous investors in this company put their money into a technology movement that had a concept, a prototype and a few trial customers. We had community put in some early money, an indiegogo campaign and then a raise of £300k to complete the platform, thanks in part to the development of open source assets created through HAT-related grants.
Today, the HAT is a fully-scalable personal microserver infrastructure, . HATDeX has a dozen corporate partners, over 1150 HATs in circulation, and some amazing news under embargo, releasing over the next few weeks. Also, since January this year, two European personal data regulations have been enacted (PSD2 and GDPR), a tech CEO was hauled in front of US Congress, and there have been a half-dozen major data security breaches.
I have felt for a long time that passionate, Internet-using ‘regular people’ – those most affected by the Cambridge Analytica scandal or bad netflix recommendations – deserve to be on HATDeX cap table, and I am pleased that during this round, HATDeX board has agreed that they will be.
This is going to be HATDeX’s “Seed” financing, and the team is proud to offer our HAT community a chance to purchase equity in HATDeX.
In HATDeX’s last round, the company was valued at less than £5m, had few customers, a fledgling product, and a couple hundred early users. Since then, it has grown to include new partners who are using HAT microservers to build the future of everything. HATDeX is in discussions with some of the world’s largest financial services, marketing technology, and education companies to integrate HATs into their competitive strategy, announcements that would also be coming out in the weeks to come, and their traction today shows off the technology and HATDeX’s readiness to scale, and the company is now raising this round to make that scalability real.
HATDeX also have two new additions to the board who will be helping to take HATs into Health, Education, and Consumer Finance (see announcement here). And in anticipation of HATs global roll out and scaling, the HAT Accelerator led by Tolga Uzuner and Xiao Ma will be launching on the 5 July, 2018. HATDeX is now worth £8,500,000 and the £500,000 they are raising this round will go towards hiring new engineers, signing new customers, and expanding.
You will be hearing much more about HATDeX work and progress on social media, community channels, and in the media over the next couple of weeks as the team commit themselves to showing the world the power of a more democratic, valuable, and decentralised version of the Internet. This is among the most exciting times we’ve had growing the Hub of All Things, and we’re just getting started. To stay in touch, please opt into HATDeX mailing list here.
There is a further announcement. After this round, I will be leading the HATDeX team as CEO. Some of you know my back story as an entrepreneur and have asked why, at the age of 55, will I go back to becoming one again. I have three reasons —
FIRST— I have led the company as Chairman as far as I can get to so that the economic, legal and technical design and architecture of the HAT microserver and the HAT ecosystem is at the level where it can scale. It’s time to make it happen.
SECOND — I really believe this technology will change the Internet and I don’t say this lightly advising so many companies, government and startups on digital economic/business models, so I think I do know a little of what I am talking about. So in my doddery fifties, I am stepping out into practice for a few years to help make it happen.
The team and I have a single aim — to take this company to IPO, and change the Internet.
And then I’ll return to a quiet life as an academic
Help us change the Internet. Get a HAT. Invest in HATDeX. And do share this post!
