Today I interviewed Ben Myers, the Design/Development Coordinator of Latium, to let my readers learn more about him and the project Latium.
If you want to participate in the ICO you can use this link: www.Latium.org
According to your website, Latium was founded by Matt Carden and David Johnson. How did they get the idea of Latium?
We had the idea for a tasking platform a couple years ago after utilizing other platforms in the space and saw the constant scams, fake user profiles, fake reviews, money being locked up for no apparent reason and with no response from the support staff. It was such a nightmare to deal with so we began thinking of ways to create our own. With the growth of blockchain tech and the ability to implement that in order to facilitate tasks between employers and employees seemed to be the perfect fit.
The name "Latium' is unfamiliar for many people. What is the background for choosing that name?
Latium is the region of Italy in which Rome was founded. We felt the name and its connection to Rome and the growth of modern civilization was really great. It also coincides with the new growth in the crypto sphere as well.
What is your position at Latium and what are your tasks?
My Title is the Design/Development Coordinator. I work closely with Matt, the designers, and the development team in order to keep everyone on schedule and make sure things are being accomplished like we want them to. When I am not doing that, I am active in the telegram, answering support inquiries, and handling a lot of customer service aspects.
How did you get hired by Latium?
I have worked with David and Matt for a couple years on some other projects. I had just moved back to Mississippi at the time and was looking for a new challenge. I found David and Matt and have been working with them ever since.
Tell me more about yourself. What other positions have you had before you got this job? And what interests do you have?
I studied at the University of Mississippi, graduated in 2011 and moved to Utah for a little while. I worked in restuarants throughout college and did so out there as well. I also helped run a large delivery service for most of the ski resorts in Park City, UT. I have always been intrigued with web development and design. That is something I have done on my own for a while and was able to do some of that with David and Matt too. Now I focus mostly on the organization of the team and day to day handling of our great community.
Latium has a very detailed roadmap. Where do you see Latium in 1 and 2 years from now?
We are looking to make Latium very successful. The initial goal is 1 million users on the platform. Once that barrier is hit, there seems to be a waterfall effect with growth and we are very excited about those prospects. The ability to have a full on employment suite, where everyone is competing based on the merit of their work history, and not false reviews or bogus accounts, is what we are striving to create.
The Alpha version has been released by Latium just a short time ago. How many users have been using it and how did it work?
It's been very good so far and very well received. We are looking forward to seeing more users joining up and post tasks once they are able to withdraw their tokens from their Latium.org account. It's an Alpha of course so there will be major improvements in the coming months. We are just thrilled to actually have it out there and have people using it at this point. Not many projects release their Alpha, much less any other form of a product, while the sale is ongoing and we're very happy with our move to do that.
John MacAfee are mentioned on your website as one of your advisors, and everyone knows he has a lot of experience and successes from his earlier companies. How will his knowledge and experience help this project succeed?
John in a great resource for our team. He provides a ton of insight and advice to David, who talks with him constantly. His knowledge is invaluable and has already helped this project become a success. We can't thank him enough for being a part.
The competition in this market is very big all around the world. How will you separate yourself from the rest?
Competition is something that every market makes. We welcome the competition and know that competition will only strive to force everyone to make a great viable product or they will not survive. We beleive that our ability to incorporate the one-to-many task relationship structure as well as the user reputation score provide us with two areas right there that no one else is using.
What do you think are Latium's biggest advantages and what are Latium’s main challenges right now?
Currently I feel our biggest advantage is that we have a live Alpha version out and are still on schedule to hit all of our release dates. This provides users with a tangible product to use, rather than just some pie in the sky idea that people will not see or be able to utilize for years. Our biggest challenge, in my opinion, is adoption. With the flood of products for smartphones it is difficult to separate yourself from the millions and millions of other platforms, but we have a strong vision on how to accomplish the adoption numbers we want, and feel that mass adoption will bring even greater success and growth for Latium in the future.
The hard cap of the ICO changed recently. Can you tell more about the background for the decision?
With the extreme growth in the price of ETH we decided to pin the token price to USD and move it back down to something more reasonable, while also distributing more tokens to each partipant who took part in the earlier stages of the sale. This was done mostly to ensure a larger supply of tokens in the public which is necessary for the long-term viability of the platform itself.
Our initial max cap was 70,000 ETH. We made that max cap when ETH was around $200 so that was not a really crazy number. Now that it is around $1000 it would be insane to ask to raise that much. No one needs that. So in tandem with the repricing and allocation of tokens we lowered our max cap to $15 million USD. That is a much more reasonable number and we feel that providing the public with more and taking less ourselves is a much better option.
Thanks to Ben Myers for this excellent interview.
You can read more about the Latium ICO and the project on the link below. The ICO is still live if you are thinking about investing.
Register on Latium’s website below:
www.Latium.org