Startup Interview with Gabriel Dymowski, DoxyChain Co-founder & CEO

HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background.

I’m Co-founder and CEO of DoxyChain and winner of the Forbes 25 under 25 award. I’m member of the Global Shapers Community, an initiative of the World Economic Forum.

Previously, I worked for the Warsaw Stock Exchange in the WSE Private Market project - a market for tokenization of assets using blockchain technology. Also took part in several deep tech projects in Poland and Singapore, among others. I’m also member of the former working group in the Polish Ministry of Digitalisation on DLT and blockchain.

What's your startup called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do?

DoxyChain. It is a next-generation blockchain document management software (DMS). Powered by its own blockchain, DoxyChain is an innovation that combines electronic signature, workflows optimization, and enhanced security, which means we are the very first user-oriented holistic digital solution. We democratize blockchain and set new standards for digital documents space.

What is the origin story?

DoxyChain idea emerged during the GlobalLegal Hackathon held in Warsaw Google Campus at the beginning of 2019, where the four future co-founders Gabriel Dymowski, Piotr Żelazko, Marcin Lorenc, and Daniel Bigs, received the award for their "Blockchain Power-of-Attorney" project. After that competition,, the team received multiple inquiries and questions about the solution's functionalities and availability. That became an indicator of the market trust for a blockchain-based solutions. Yet before the entity was set up in September 2019, the team ran various business, legal, tech checkups to explore the market pain points, opportunities, risks and shape the revolutionary platform.

Verified by the Covid-19 pandemic, the market needs happen to be way wider than just a PoA, which made the team start working on the app for all the documents (including various contracts), digitization, and management. After several MVP implementations and assumptions checks, DoxyChain launched their platform in Q2 2021 in Poland as B2B SaaS, also addressing the needs of enterprise clients with a dedicated offer for them.

#What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem?Some of the core founders know each other for more than 7 years. We share a passion for technology and disruptive solutions. We are not afraid to be different, and we are not afraid to be judged for our revolutionary ideas.

The experiences of every team member complement each other. We have a talented lawyer, 2 blockchain geniuses, and a business growth hacker. We communicate openly, know our strong and weak spots, listen to the more experienced advisors, and learn every day. We bring the next-gem solution to the market, and we are sure we are doing the right thing.

If you weren't building your startup, what would you be doing?

If we weren't building the DoxyChain startup, we would be building another tech-related project. All of us have a strong entrepreneurial spirit. Analytical and critical thinking help me spot the pain points and come up with ways to resolve those. All of us would be connected to the blockchain market one way or another. #At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics? Basically, we have just launched. The 3 main metrics crucial for us are the number of users, market awareness about DoxyChain, and partnerships/network.

What's most exciting about your traction to date?

It took us a while to test the platform before going public with SaaS. However, we already have 25+ paying SMEs. Besides, our resell partners are what we are most excited about: Wolters Kluwer Poland and Oracle for Startups among them.

What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why?

Mostly I am excited about blockchain since I have been in that market for a while now. Obviously, every technology has pros and cons. The question is what the balance is. I personally took part in a debate, "Does blockchain bring more harm than good?" and although the end result was "No," I listened to several good arguments about DLT cons. There are risks. The approach we take in DoxyChain is that we try to foresee those and make them part of our development strategy.

What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform?

The content quality and transparency are what I like about HackerNoon. Real market stakeholders write stories and their messages are super meaningful to other industry participants. The tech focus is also a reason why I like you, guys!

What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself?

Buy crypto :D I think the advice would be to make as many valuable connections as possible because network really matters and to continue humbly to pursue your goal no matter what.

What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing?

Hard work really pays off, be patient and trust the process.