An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
People are emotional beings and tend to tune out exposition. I love to get into the nitty-gritty of the tech and the implications of how that tech can solve real problems. However, if I don’t shape the story to the person I’m speaking with, they have no chance of being brought along for the ride.
As a part of our series about business leaders who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Max Curnin.
Max Curnin is Co-Founder and CEO of Remaster, a blockchain-based legal tech startup. An avid NFT collector, angel investor, tech advisor and art enthusiast, Max has dedicated the last eight years to finding opportunities at the nexus of technology and creativity. Max has a B.S. in Applied Physics from the University of Miami.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
In the midst of the pandemic, my close friends and I discussed some of the issues that museums were facing due to a lack of admissions. We thought we could use the power of NFTs to help these institutions monetize their collections without having to de-access their works. We quickly realized that copyright ownership and artwork ownership were completely decoupled from one another. Fast forward to the NFT craze, we realized this issue was a small subset of a much larger problem facing the blockchain industry.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
The Web3 and blockchain space is an interesting area. By and large, the whole concept of the blockchain is to disrupt centralized power structures. The industry is so new that people focus on disruption before solving real-world problems. Remaster is disrupting commerce for high-touch asset classes where transactions are dependent on many different intermediaries such as lawyers and banks. We are not removing these institutions from the process but fundamentally upgrading their ability to function in this new environment.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
The funniest mistake I made involved our first pitch. As a legal and Web3 company, we spoke with a ‘lawyer’ that specializes in NFTs. We were pitching our concept of decentralizing the Terms & Conditions associated with an NFT digital asset.
I was so caught up talking about the technical implications of our product that the investor asked me, “Who cares?” I got so flustered that I didn’t really know how to respond. Suffice to say, they did not invest, but I learned a valuable lesson. Don’t forget to answer the simplest questions. We often gloss over them, but they are the most important.
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
I don’t have a mentor per se, but I am certainly in the market for one. However, there have been a number of books that I have found profound and have helped me on my path. These include:
- Complexity by M. Mitchell Waldrop
- Something Deeply Hidden by Sean Carroll
- 7 Powers by Hamilton Helmer
- Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
This is actually a great question and something I think about quite a lot. Disruption has many connotations but in tech, we’ve associated disruption with throwing away the old to make way for the new. In general, this is a very typical human conceit that associates new with better. I believe that it is crucial for us as a society to not remain sedentary and continually question the status quo. But this idea is fundamentally different than challenging for the sake of challenging.
I think disruption is a good thing when the existing power structures have become complacent and have ceased to continue to justify their very existence. Technology evolves exponentially faster than the businesses that utilize it. Capitalism is about the survival of the fittest. It’s in our DNA to challenge existing power structures. If we don’t also learn from them, then we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes.
Can you share five of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
- Communication is everything
When communication is 92% behavioral, we need to recognize that information can get lost in the cloud. Recognizing behavioral cues in yourself and the person you are speaking with is the best way to see if the message is coming across.
- Tell stories
People are emotional beings and tend to tune out exposition. I love to get into the nitty-gritty of the tech and the implications of how that tech can solve real problems. However, if I don’t shape the story to the person I’m speaking with, they have no chance of being brought along for the ride.
- Tune out the noise
Knowing when to learn what competitors are up to can get very distracting when you’re trying to focus on your own solutions. This is a delicate balance that I have to actively work at every day.
- Ambition doesn’t equate to resilience
As entrepreneurs with early-stage companies, we love to talk about how we are going to change the world. This level of exuberance is necessary but at the end of the day, we need to solve real problems for our clients. The best advice I got was to break this down into four key areas.
- Make a client money
- Save a client money
- Keep them from getting sued
- Enable competitive advantage
- Take a breath
For so much of the day, we are in the thick of things and it seems like the weight of the company and everyone at it is on our shoulders. Taking a step back to gain some much-needed perspective can often be the key to getting past what can seem to be an insurmountable obstacle.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
Remaster has built a blockchain legal protocol and various enforceability and management tools for assets in this new Web3 environment. We are currently working on some new commercialization features that can only be accomplished through this legal architecture. We are initially focusing on the ability to list and monetize IP on the blockchain.
Do you have a book, podcast, or talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us? Can you explain why it was so resonant with you?
There’s a Bankless podcast with Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon where they discuss the parallels of the dotcom boom and bust cycle to this new internet, Web3 and the corresponding boom and bust cycle. They break down some core concepts in relation to capitalism, property and property rights.
What resonated with me is that when we are in the thick of new technologies, we sometimes forget to draw crucial parallels between the old and the new. So much of the technological revolution is grounded in the core concepts that humans have experienced for millennia. We still care about the same inalienable rights that we’ve always cared about. It’s important to showcase new technologies within this context.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
A quote that resonates with me is from philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, “People only see what they are prepared to see.” This is something that I personally have to contend with every day. Sometimes I get so attached to a problem and a solution, that when I try to express my solution to others, it is lost. If I have not adequately communicated the steps necessary for others to see the problem, then they will not be able to see the impact of the solution.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I encourage people to remember the third law of thermodynamics, energy of a system will eventually reach equilibrium. Too much energy on one side of a system is not sustainable. This is as true for politics, decentralization and the universe. You can’t fight with physics. The scientific method is everything. That and nuclear fusion. Let’s please devote as many resources to fusion technologies.
I would also like to encourage brands, creators and communities to embrace the next era of the internet. Web3 and the entire world of NFTs is still largely misunderstood but there is immense potential to accelerate commerce through legal infrastructure and unlock new potential.
How can our readers follow you online?
Twitter: @maxcurnin or our company page @remaster_io
Website: www.remaster.io
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Meet The Disruptors: Max Curnin Of Remaster On The Five Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
