By Dipo Olowookere
Former innovation director and principal technical strategy advisor at Microsoft, Mr Adrian Clarke, has joined Modex.
Mr Clarke is the latest tech star to join forces with the UK based blockchain firm developing a global first smart contract marketplace.
In the wave of tech executives leveraging experience and know-how as advisors to promising start-ups in the blockchain revolution, Mr Clarke’s pioneering work in the development of the Microsoft app store, lends proven muscle to Modex.
“A world-class marketplace for smart contracts is exciting and I believe Modex has the perfect solution to deploy smart contracts in key industries” Mr Clarke says. “Not only is it a great proposition, the Modex team has a huge amount of passion and a cooperative, cohesive style that will enable them to overcome obstacles. That’s what has sold me,” he adds.
The Modex team is building the platform to enable companies to deploy a range of smart contracts in the real world. Although the company has generated enthusiasm from the financial services and e-commerce sector via its social payment product Moneymailme (payroll, P2P, inter-bank, etc.), Clarke believes the marketplace’s ability to deploy smart contracts will resonate with the open source software development community, in-house enterprise developers, development teams in local government, software vendors, software integrators, and the extensive Microsoft Development Network. “These communities will be among the first to benefit from the Modex smart contract marketplace,” he states.
Modex CEO Mihai Ivascu, 29, lauds the appointment of Clarke due to his “wealth of knowledge in the technical and management space at Microsoft. His track record in fund-raising for technology companies of our size and above is unparalleled and we are delighted to have him on board.”
Mr Clarke agrees that the key to success for blockchain applications is “the creative ways the marketplace empowers people to work, live, and connect with a new layer of collaboration and cross-border inclusiveness. Collaboration is a big part of the Modex platform offering,” says Clarke. Modex goes beyond smart contracts.
According to Mr Clarke “it is a toolset that will enable people to set up collaborative trustless structures between existing business models. Collaboration without giving away core proprietary information is a huge innovation.”
Mr Clarke’s capacity to identify key adopters of the marketplace is instrumental. Companies and organisations which are in a “fast-moving, transactional competitive environment” he says will move first, citing transportation, logistics, and deliveries.
To that he adds “organisations that need to analyse continually-changing data sets in order to extract business intelligence from them.” Prime examples are internet search companies who find it difficult to share their information selectively, and “smart city” initiatives, where municipal governments are organizing logistics, transportation, and the distribution of energy for greater efficiency.
“The Modex marketplace,” Mr Clarke says “is perfectly adapted for this kind of selective sharing.”
Mr Clarke’s appointment comes ahead of Modex’s Initial Coin Offering (ICO) pre-sale, and follows Google’s Onur Bildik, who joined the team earlier this week.
The Modex Smart Contract Marketplace will be launched through an Initial Coin Offering (ICO), allowing contributors to buy utility tokens, which will give them access to the marketplace. The date of the pre-sale for the ICO is November 28, 2017.
Modupe Gbadeyanka 
Aduragbemi Omiyale