Dear Polkadot community,
My name is Mario Altenburger and I am applying to represent Polkadot as a Head Ambassador, primarily as a business development accelerator and fundraiser for the ecosystem.
Having worked in the Polkadot ecosystem for nearly 3 years now, I have had the opportunity to meet many of you in person and I have to say the professionalism and commitment of the teams building on and/or for Polkadot is far beyond what I have seen in any other ecosystem.
Polkadot is the reason why I decided to move from traditional finance into crypto. While the technology and builders are far ahead of others, I believe we still lack widespread adoption.
It will take joint efforts from various angles to help convince projects to build on Polkadot and importantly also to migrate to our ecosystem. Below I will share more on my background and how I plan to drive to push for adoption.
In addition, I would represent Polkadot at traditional investment conferences to help raise new funds for the ecosystem, by finding direct investments for projects, large new DOT buyers as well as investors into fund dedicated to deploy in the Polkadot ecosystem.
Background
Born and raised in Austria, I worked most of my career in the finance sector in Hong Kong. After completing a MA in Economics in Innsbruck and a MA in Mathematics of Finance at Columbia University, I spent 14 years at Bank of China International in Hong Kong.
As Head of EMEA Origination and Debt Syndicate, I focused on fundraising for Chinese and international corporates, raising a total of USD500 billion of debt, equity-linked and structured financings in over 1,000 transactions. I spearheaded the bank's international expansion leading landmark transactions such as the first German Renminbi bond from Volkswagen, the first high yield bond from Korea by Korean Air, the first Chinese Euro bond by CNOOC, the first global sukuk offering from Saudi Aramco and the largest convertible bond from Hong Kong by Cathay Pacific.
I worked with hundreds of major multinational corporations (MNCs, mostly Fortune 500), governments as well as institutional investors and family offices, and have developed a close working relationship at senior level.
Harbour Industrial Capital
In 2021, Max Rebol and I co-founded Harbour Industrial Capital (HIC). We are registered in the Cayman Islands and headquartered in HK. As of Q1 2024 our fund has an AUM of over US$10 million. We have raised this capital from private investors such as Family Offices, and subsequently invested it in over 20 Polkadot-based projects. The primary method of deploying capital were parachain auctions, as part of which we locked up DOT in exchange for a fixed amount of parachain tokens. More recently we have also made direct investment in Polkadot-based projects. Fund 1 held its final closing on 31 December 2023, and we are planning to raise a second fund later this year.
I was speaker at various conferences, instructor of a course on Parachain Auction at the Polkadot Blockchain Academy, Panel Moderator at Polkadot Day in HK; Judge of the HK Web3Hack; Winner of the TADS Award for Ecosystem Excellence in DeFi.
Overall, in the past 3 years, we have been constantly on the road educating folks about Polkadot and convincing that Polkadot is the preferred destination for their capital, applications or projects.
Connecting the DOTs for Polkadot
My plan is to fully leverage on my network built throughout my career to (continue to) approach these MNCs and governments to convince them to utilize Polkadot technology for both existing processes and to upgrade their systems to the latest cutting-edge technology.
Imagine a major car manufacturer moving the supply and production lines onto Polkadot or one of its parachains. Airline ticketing, fuel consumption tracking and carbon credits offsetting all done in the same application.
We have been working actively already on bringing major projects to Polkadot and we may have some good news for the community in the coming weeks. These are projects with the potential to migrate millions of wallets and transactions to Polkadot.
In addition, Max and I are preparing our second fund, a Polkadot Ecosystem fund. We will be at numerous traditional investment conferences and family office summits promoting Polkadot. We plan to invite project teams to join us for conferences and/or the side events and investor dinners that we will organize.
To highlight again here also that for any treasury proposals that we submit to fund sponsorship for Polkadot at conferences we would NOT include any salary for ourselves.
As a Head Ambassador of Polkadot, it would certainly make my efforts easier with an official endorsement from the community.
I would look forward to working closely with the 20 other Head Ambassadors, many of whom I have worked with already. It is important to have a diverse set of Head Ambassadors covering various angles of the community, both inwards and outwards.
More importantly I am very much excited to engage even closer with the overall community, builders and projects so that we can together unleash Polkadot’s full potential. Thanks for your time and support!
For reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8ATl5WWcPs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xN-HeJoGI4
Threshold
I have not known Mario for as long as Max has, however everything I have seen of him and his work indicates that he'll be great for this. He has great experience, enthusiam for Polkadot and in my view his moral compass is appropriately aligned.
@crazy_horse Thanks for your comment.
I can confirm that I do not have a conflict with any other blockchain/crypto as at HIC we are 100% focused on the Polkadot ecosystem and have supported over 20 projects already.
Happy to send you my full CV or provide any further supporting material on request. My TG: elmarius852
Thanks @saxemberg for your comment. I have in the meantime verified my identity, thanks for highlighting this point.
As mentioned in the write up, my current position is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Harbour Industrial Capital, a private fund focused 100% on Polkadot.
Regarding your question on FTE and HIC:
So what I am proposing with my HA application, apart from the support for teams and fundraising for the ecosystem, is to push also the adoption side in my network of multinationals at senior/C-level that I've built throughout my career.
Thanks @saxemberg for your follow up comment. I've been based in HK for 14 years and had many corporate clients in Asia (mainly China, HK, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam). For HIC Fund I, half of our investors were from Asia (mainly HK, Japan, Singapore). So I have a strong geographical focus in Asia, yet also good relationships to multinationals and family office/HNWI in EMEA, so naturally will also to continue to leverage on those and work with local HAs and teams for intros, follow ups to maximise the penetration and conversion rates.
Max and I will be together at many of the planned conferences and events, but also attend countless meetings separately to maximise the outreach and focus on each of our strengths depending on the target investor or corporate. This strategy has worked well for us in the past. The key synergy of us both being HAs is that we can convince a summit audience or target jointly where it is most effective for best impact and results. Doing so as an official Polkadot Head Ambassador would help a lot in the process and allow us to convince multinationals and solochains to move to Polkadot as well as steering investments directly into Polkadot projects and the ecosystem.
Edited
This is not Polkadot Ambassador Program it's the Whale Ambassador Program
I vote NAY for all candidates who applied , here are the reasons and explanations:
@ChaosDAO In response to your comment I would like to say (at risk of sounding like a broken record), that our Family Offices Sponsorship proposal does NOT include any salary for myself or Mario.
Thanks @ChaosDAO for your feedback. I can just echo Max's comment above and emphasize that we do not draw any salary from the sponsorship. As for HIC, through prudent management we have achieved positive returns in the downward market of the last 2-3 years, but have not paid out any management fees or realized gains as we consider ourselves long term supporters of the Polkadot Ecosystem.
We are fully focused on raising funds for the ecosystem on one hand, while we also leverage our relationships and network to bring large users and corporates to Polkadot to push for adoption.
Edited
Thanks @Mork for your comment. We have been running HIC since 2021, supported over 20 parachains teams by helping to secure the slot, direct investment, lining up other VCs for investment, putting teams in front of investors and partners etc. Prior to HIC, both Max and I have been investing in the Polkadot space already, so we are definitely not newcomers.
While I agree with you that we are looking to support the Polkadot ecosystem in the long term and our incentives are aligned via HIC in the long run, we have in the past ~3 years engaged in countless activities to help promote the Polkadot ecosystem, that are not directly related to HIC, for which we have not charged any salary, to the contrary have spent out of pocket to keep pushing initiatives, meetups, meetings etc. All the while not paying out any management fees or carry to ourselves during this period to maximize the resources available to support the teams.
Instead of focusing on percentages, I believe we should focus on outcomes and who would be best equipped to deliver results. The value proposition of this HA application is to bring fundraising and BD which I believe complements well other initiatives.
Edited
Hi have known Mario for 10 years, and had the opportunity to work with him for over 3 years now. In my opinion, there are few people better suited to bridge the gap between TradFi and Web3. His experience of working in Origination and Debt Syndicate for over 14 years is an highly relevant background when talking to traditional investors about Web3. He holds a deep conviction on Polkadot, believes in the technology, and is able to convey it in a language that people new to the industry understand. When it comes to getting traditional corporates adopt Polkadot technology, and institutional investors invest in the ecosystem, I could think of few people who would make a better ambassador than Mario.