8 questions for Alex Mashinsky, the co-inventor of VOIP about his new company : Celsius, and how he faced COVID-19 crisis

1. First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID19 times? 

Alex Mashinsky : Lockdown is over but I am sticking to the same routine, and need a new plan to get rid of the 5 pounds i put on since this started…

2. Tell us about you, your career, how you founded Celsius

Alex Mashinsky : I started 7 VC backed companies before Celsius, raised over $1B and had several large exits including 2 unicorns. I launched Celsius in 2017 as a solution to the growing problem of inequality and the inability of the many to earn interest income or preserve their wealth.

3. How does Celsius innovate? 

Alex Mashinsky : Celsius has invented many firsts, like the ability to earn interest income or yield from Bitcoin and 25 other assets. First time in history that you can earn 3% yield on gold and First time a financial product pays out 80% of its income to its depositor community, we plan to launch a few more firsts soon.

4. How the coronavirus pandemic affects Celsius’ business and how are you coping?

Alex Mashinsky : Celsius was decentralized before covid19 but it forced us to think even deeper about redundancy and coverage Alex Mashinsky : as the option of meeting in the office whenever we needed became unavailable. Our business doubled since March so I guess many more people decided that financial diversification is an important part of their portfolio.

5. Did you have to make difficult choices and what are the lessons learned?

Alex Mashinsky : Not everyone is suited to work from home and some of our team members have struggled with schedule and prioritization.

6. How do you deal with stress and anxiety, how do you project yourself and your company in the future  ?

Alex Mashinsky : Having been a founder 8 times over, i do not feel the stress but I am sure it is there. I joke that I live in the future all the time and just wait for everyone else to join me there…

7. Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?

Alex Mashinsky : Our competitors include many Crypto companies like CoinBase and Binance that realized they are not doing enough for their customers and decided to copy our product to slow down the migration of their customers to Celsius. Our long term competition is The Banks because every day each person has to decide if they deposit their hard earned dollars with Banks or convert them to Gold/Bitcoin to preserve the value and deposit with Celsius to earn yield.

8. Your final thoughts

Alex Mashinsky : This pandemic is accelerating the migration towards digital services, this is true for how we communicate (Zoom), how we shop (amazon) and how we create and use value (Celsius)