Alan Curtis Hopes to Onboard the World to the Token Economy

ALAN CURTIS

Before Alan Curtis charted his course as an entrepreneur, he spent his days supporting them, working at the Innosphere in Fort Collins, helping newcomers validate their ideas, raise capital, get to market and build their teams.

“I did that on repeat enough times,” says Curtis, 25. “But I felt like a backseat driver. I wanted to grab the steering wheel.”

In July 2017, Curtis and co-founders Mike Roth, chief technology officer; Caleb Tebbe, chief strategy officer; and Brandon Roth, chief creative officer – who met in or through Colorado State University’s cryptocurrency club – found their way to the blockchain, which they deemed the next big thing.

“There was a litany of problems that needed to be solved,” Curtis says.  A month later, the team launched a business – Radar Relay – a cryptocurrency exchange technology that leverages the blockchain to trade Ethereum-based tokens directly from Hardware wallets. The company facilitates “wallet-to-wallet” trading using an open order book. It collects no personal information from users, and the company has no accounts or deposits.

In layman’s terms: A relayer is a bulletin board. Like Craigslist, users post their inventory (in this case, tokens) and when users trade they meet on the blockchain (instead of a random parking lot) and settlement happens peer to peer, or in this case, wallet to wallet.

In October, Curtis and company went live with their beta product, and raised a $3 million seed round by November.

In less than a year, Radar Relay has “become one of the biggest names in cryptocurrency,” says Jamie Finney, the western regional director of Startup Colorado.

Curtis says Radar Relay hopes to “onboard the world to the token economy,” and serve as one of the primary players in “rearranging the world economy.”

Curtis says he is constantly tinkering with the company’s organization chart – growing from seven to 23 people in less than six months. “There’s a big difference between management and leadership,” Curtis says. “Management is doing things right, and leadership is doing the right things.”

With persistent chatter of scandal and regulation looming over the cryptocurrency landscape, Curtis remains largely unfazed. “There will be some stringent laws that come into place, and bad actors that need more than just a slap on the wrist. Regulation will prune people from the market who don’t have the grit and tenacity to stick it out.”

Radar Relay will open a Denver satellite office in mid-May and approach a series A round of financing between the second and third quarters of 2018.