Numio: Blockchain Innovation During the Pandemic

Joel Kite of Numio tells us how a global team of blockchain and product development specialists came together to simplify and fast-track mainstream blockchain adoption.

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID-19 times? 

Joel Kite: It’s been quite the juggling act at home with two working parents and two children off school, but we are all healthy, getting vaccinated, and looking forward to the easing of UK lockdown restrictions. 

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded Numio.

Joel Kite: The founding team came together about three years ago through an online blockchain and cryptocurrency community. We soon realised that we had the same ethos and the same goals, and so we started designing and building applications. It was pretty amazing, really. The things we were building were really cutting edge and had the power to help push blockchain and cryptocurrency, particularly Ethereum, into the mainstream. So, in early 2020 we decided to make it all official and set up our own company, Numio. 

How does Numio innovate? 

Joel Kite: Blockchain and decentralised finance (DeFi) is an amazing opportunity for everyone. It lets people be in control of their own finances in a way that hasn’t been seen before. The problem is that it can be quite complicated, and that is off-putting for the average person. If we are to see mainstream adoption, then we need applications that are simple to use. So that is what we do. We take the complicated parts of blockchain and cryptocurrency, work our magic, and present it in simple, jargon-free products. I should clarify that while our apps are simple to use, they are really quite complicated on the inside. We incorporate only the best and most groundbreaking technologies into our products to ensure that our apps are fast, low fee and retain the highest levels of security available, It’s not that we cut corners or charge customers a premium, quite the opposite, in fact, It’s all achieved by research, development, a lot of hard work and by working together with industry leaders, and other like-minded projects. 

How does the coronavirus pandemic affect your business finances?

Joel Kite: The pandemic has actually been quite positive for the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry. People are moving towards a more cashless society, and so we have had a lot of interest in the products we are building. Direct costs wise, we were quite lucky the team is global, so remote working is second nature to us. We have never had office space and all the other overheads associated with traditional businesses, which would have sat empty during the pandemic.  

Did you have to make difficult choices regarding human resources, and what are the lessons learned?

Joel Kite: This is where our team got lucky as we were already accustomed to the remote environment, using software such as Slack and Google Hangouts for our day-to-day communications. Our business continued as usual without any noticeable difference. 

How did your customer relationship management evolve? Do you use any specific tools to be efficient?

Joel Kite: As a small team, we have been using tools such as Hubspot, Zoho, and Jira, which improved our productivity and transparency in both our team and with customers. For prospecting, there are a few tools that we have been using to help improve our outreach and communication with different firms. The main one that we use is Apollo, but when we are looking to target individual prospects, we have used Hunter. 

Your final thoughts?

Joel Kite: t’s been a tough year for everyone, but hopefully, we will see some positives come out of it. One of the positives is the rise of remote working. The ability to communicate and work together, wherever you are, opens up new job opportunities for people around the world and brings about more innovation. It also helps towards reducing negative impacts on the environment brought about by travel. Business-wise we are really looking forward to the future at Numio. We have some fantastic new features, innovations, and products already in development, and can’t wait to get them out there.

Your website?

http://numio.one