Team Spotlight: Co-Founder and COO Natasha Bans
In an effort to improve transparency with the community, we’ve developed the Community Incentives Programs, the Conversations with our CTO Series (Part 1 and 2), along with the CEO Recap. We want the community to get to know our team better in what we call our “Team Spotlight” series where team members are asked questions and answer them directly in an interview format. The first of this series is our co-founder and COO.
Q: Tell us a little about your background and experiences.
A: I am the co-founder and COO of DM and Konstellation, where we are working to unite traditional financial services with cutting edge financial technology. After working for a Fortune 50 company in various strategic insight and marketing roles, I made the leap to build DarcMatter with Sang. I have a personal interest in fintech and blockchain, because of its potential to impact the archaic infrastructure of financial services, altering and improving almost everything that we interact with today.
In addition to leading the team to win various startup competitions and awards, I was recently recognized as the “Female Executive of the Year” and “Female Entrepreneur of the Year” at the 2018 Women in Business Awards, presented by the prestigious Stevie’s organization in New York City. I have been a keynote speaker at various financial services and fintech conferences internationally, sharing key insights on global financial services markets and \ blockchain technology’s potential application and impact across global financial services.
Q: What does a typical day look like for you?
A: There are no typical days in the startup world! For me, as co-founder and COO of DarcMatter and Konstellation, we run around the clock with our various global offices. With that being said, an important part of my role is to stay connected to all teams and ensure they are equipped with all the tools and resources needed to work as efficiently and effectively as possible. My day begins and ends with check-ins with team leads, reviewing our project management tools for critical items, and planning out or re-prioritizing the priority tasks as needed, and checking in with our community team to ensure we are staying responsive and communicative.
Q: What are you doing to increase awareness of the Konstellation project for business development?
A: From a business development perspective, we are constantly in discussions with potential partners on all fronts to assist with strengthening Konstellation’s awareness. We are in the midst of finalizing our PR partners in both the greater china region as well as in South Korea. Given those are two very important markets for Konstellation, we have approached these partnerships rather cautiously, as we want to be sure we continue to confirm partners who both understand traditional financial services and the various nuances of the crypto market, which we believe will give us the optimal impact moving forward with Konstellation. Additionally, we are being selective about the conferences and events we participate in, to ensure the leadership and development team are able to focus their efforts on the right initiatives to support the product roadmap. We are also creating a more concrete local “meet-up” calendar, so we can have in-person updates/networking opportunities with the Konstellation and DARC community. As you can tell, we have increased efforts on the marketing side of things to ensure we are supporting the roll-out of Konstellation from the announcement earlier this year.
Q: Tell us more about the New York office, what are the primary functions of the NY office?
A: The NY team works across various functions, but mainly supports Business Development, GP/LP Client Management, Due Diligence Support, and Customer Service. Additionally, some of our team also works as support for community management and social channels, sharing updates as provided by the leadership and development team.
Q: When you think about the past few months what have been the key milestones for the project?
A: There have been quite a few milestones for Konstellation. Thus far in 2019, we have been able to solidify a pipeline of participants for the Konstellation Network, pursued a liquidity platform strategy and expanded upon the overall vision. Konstellation was formed to address these key opportunities as the blockchain ecosystem continues to mature and financial services, as a function, becomes more integrated. Tokenization of assets, a more streamlined interface for digital assets through DARCWallet, and the work for the migration of the DarcMatter platform and its participants to the blockchain, are just some of the things we have been pursuing.
Though change is hard for most, we knew it was the right time and that we had a solid plan in place to support our desire to create a dedicated blockchain development division of the company. Our ability to launch Konstellation and bridge the gap between our platform business and blockchain development, is a great milestone for us.
I’d like to end this conversation with a quote:
The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking. ― Albert Einstein
To keep up with Konstellation updates and announcements, please follow us on:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KNSTL_TECH
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/konstellation-tech/
Telegram (Official): http://t.me/Konstellation
Telegram (Announcements): http://t.me/KonstellationNews
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/KONSTELLATION/
Medium: https://medium.com/@KONSTELLATION
Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/9wP5kkj
Kakao: https://open.kakao.com/o/g8kZuiib
Visit us on https://konstellation.tech
