Far more than the technological innovation behind cryptocurrencies, blockchain is enabling an entirely new generation of entrepreneurs. Of course I know a lot of us are just after the money — cryptocurrency — which is not quite our faults as that was the first ever use case the technology was associated with from the beginning. Hence, very few are in the know as to how the technology will benefit different segments of the society. Today, I choose to focus on how entrepreneurs can leverage blockchain to make impressive outing in the business world.

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Before I delve into how entrepreneurs can make use of blockchain to their advantage, it is important we understand what blockchain is all about; what is blockchain? I can bet with 99% certainly that majority of steemians cannot articulate true meaning of the term "Blockchain technology". For this obvious reason, let's hear what authorities have to say...

"Blockchain is essentially a technology that validates transactions" —— Penny Stoker during SAP Success connect event in Las Vegas.

"Blockchain is defined as "shared, immutable ledger for recording a history of transactions." — — IBM

Bill Carmody of Trepoint, writing on www.inc.com puts it more succinctly with accompanying explanation...

...it is a secure, peer-to-peer platform for verifying digital events. Effectively, industries can leverage technology core to blockchain to store and manage information, access, and trust across a wide network. And rather than having a single player control the "keys," blockchain is decentralized, meaning no one individual can manipulate or override the data. This is especially important to sectors like finance and government, which are prone to fraud and system abuse.

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I hope with this nobody is left behind as to the meaning of blockchain technology. No one should of course. Let now face the essence of this article which is how it would benefit entrepreneurs massively. Below are some ideas that will get you to appreciate the importance of this technology and how it will reshape entrepreneurial world in the next few years...

Elimination of background check

Blockchain technology can be used to verify trust during company's recruitment exercise. Like Twitter would employ a blue check mark to verify accounts, a company like LinkedIn can adopt blockchain technology to verify background history of applicants on their site. This will eliminate the need for companies to call previous employers of the candidates in order to authenticate their employment histories, and thus not only saving considerable amount of time but resources as well.

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Enabling access to capital

All over the world, entrepreneurs with sound ideas face a major hurdle of raising capital for their conceived businesses. Many countries do not have in place an easy route to accessing funds. Conditions that must be satisfied before idealistic entrepreneurs are granted loan are usually very difficult to meet. It is either they are required to have a certain minimum sum in their accounts or to service their accounts for a certain number of months. One begins to wonder how someone with sound business ideas but lacking money can afford to leave a certain amount of money to lie fallow in the bank or conduct routine (withdraw-and-deposit) kinda banking transactions for some months. This therefore constitute a huge hindrance to accessing the needed capital.

Blockchain technology solves this problem by allowing people to raise capital for businesses through a well articulated ICO window. ICO also makes the window of investment opportunity open to investors from all over the world. Again and more importantly, investors can transfer any amount of money via cryptocurrencies without having to face administrative bottlenecks and high cost of fund transfer which is usually the case when dealing with banks and central banks.

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Automated legal agreements

Blockchain eliminates the need for human intervention which usually slows down the process of finalizing and fine turning a legal framework for business agreements and terms.

How many times do businesses agree on terms only to have contracts sitting in someone's email inbox waiting for a signature--digital or "sign, scan, and email back?"

Blockchain technology will remove this unnecessary delay from businesses with clearly stated terms of agreement and in which the parties exhibit willingness to enter into a contract without usual delays of waiting for further approvals and signatures.

As Bill Carmody puts it in accordance with the views of the Chief Technologist at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Tom Golway who explained that...:

...blockchain is the proverbial missing link that would empower legal agreements to operate at a fully automated level. That is, because blockchain is essentially a "smart contract," businesses would be able to complete the entire process of orchestrating their legal agreements without today's human intervention that slows the process down.Source

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Enhancing accountability and transparency in shipping and logistics

Blockchain technology introduces a level of transparency and accountability that has never seen before in the shipping and logistics industry. It does this by eliminating "trust management" from the control of centralized agents via its distributed ledger networks.

ShipChain, a blockchain-based platform, leverages this distributed mindset to optimize the freight, logistics, and shipping industry. They use Ethereum smart contracts to eradicate the need for expensive freight brokers. Instead, their technology automatically tracks and verifies each stage of the complex shipping and logistics process, essentially acting as a digital broker for carriers around the globe.Source

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The numerous ways entrepreneurs can leverage the power of blockchain technology to establish highly profitable businesses cannot be exhausted in one blog article. Perhaps, I will consider running a series on this so that some of us who are business oriented can begin to make use of blockchain technologies in pursuit of their entrepreneurial dreams and objectives. Thanks for taking your time to read this piece.

Yours truly
@eurogee

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