Casper Labs’ recently-announced partnership with SkyBridge Capital has already generated a lot of excitement among the Casper community and beyond. Along with our other newest partner, the Abu Dhabi-based Al Maskari Holding, SkyBridge will play a key role in helping expand Casper’s footprint in key markets around the world, along with bolstering the company’s business development, investor relations and marketing operations.
We recently spoke with Anthony Scaramucci, founder and managing partner at SkyBridge, to learn a bit more about his perspective on the partnership, and why he believes Casper is poised to usher in a significant new era for businesses.
The following is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation.
What excites you most about Casper?
A lot of things excite me about Casper. I’ll start with the technology: it’s a platform built to usher in the next generation of enterprise software, which will be highly reliant on authentication, verification and decentralization. Nobody is tackling these areas with the level of specificity and technological prowess that I’ve seen from the Casper Labs team – this really jumped out to my research team as we were looking deeper into Casper ahead of formalizing this partnership. Casper Labs gets how enterprises work, and they’ve built an impressive product that caters directly to that reality. It’s why I believe they’re poised to be the industry standard as enterprises continue to adopt blockchain on a grander scale.
Nobody is tackling these areas with the level of specificity and technological prowess that I’ve seen from the Casper Labs team
I also think Casper has an opportunity to help change the broader narrative around blockchain, which is understandably tepid in this bear market. People are spooked about cryptocurrencies, and yet there’s still this great underlying efficiency that businesses can realize from deploying blockchain technology. Casper is helping businesses to prove this utility – something I believe will be a big part of the narrative that comes out of this current cycle.
For members of the Casper community who may not be as familiar with SkyBridge, what should they know about the unique elements that you'll bring to this partnership / how you'll help the project grow?
I started SkyBridge 18 years ago. It initially began as a seeding platform, but has evolved into a fund of funds with more than $3.5 billion in assets today. In 2020, we pivoted one-third of our capital into the virtual asset space, recognizing the immense potential it holds for how we’ll do business in the near future.
We’ve also got a conference business called SALT. It’s a global thought leadership and network forum that brings together some of the brightest minds from both the private and public sectors to discuss the major trends impacting finance, technology, public policy and more. Currently, we host annual events in New York, Abu Dhabi and Singapore. It’s a fantastic opportunity to connect with executives from some of the world’s largest companies, along with government leaders. I’m especially excited to be able to open this network up to Casper as part of our partnership.
Why are enterprises finally adopting blockchain technology, after years of wait-and-see mode?
Even though some of us have been talking about blockchain for more than a decade now, it’s important to remember that it’s still an incredibly new technology in the grand scheme of things. People are used to doing things a certain way, something that’s especially true at larger, enterprise-level organizations. Change doesn’t always come naturally – and yet, there are early adopters that keep the flame burning. This was true with the rise of personal computing, the internet and cloud computing, and it’s certainly true of blockchain today.
Enterprise leaders get paid not to fail. With newer and emerging technologies, the risk of failure is high – which is why you won’t ever see their segment leading technology adoption curves. However, these leaders are equally charged with pursuing cost and time savings, reducing paperwork and driving new efficiencies, all of which drive a healthier bottom line. The most effective way to do that is by deploying new technologies. This pattern has played out time and again with major technological innovations – those same innovations I mentioned earlier, which the early adopters keep advancing in their most nascent stages, ahead of mainstream adoption.
Blockchain is through the early adoption period. For all of the doom and gloom headlines, we’re actually seeing the most meaningful uptick in real adoption to date this year. [Editor’s note: according to a recent Casper Labs study, 87% of c-suite leaders plan to invest in blockchain technology in 2023. For more context, see the State of Enterprise Blockchain, 2023 report]
Click here to download the State of Enterprise Blockchain, 2023 report
The herd is beginning to move in this direction, which presents tremendous opportunity for a company like Casper Labs – along with the broader Casper project – which exists to meet this exact need in a way we frankly haven’t seen from any other organization. It’s a better product that offers more efficiency, and it’s driving real adoption. This is what leads to truly exponential, S-curve adoption.
What upcoming Casper Labs milestones are you most looking forward to?
I’m excited to see Casper further penetrate the Fortune 2000 – a process in which I know I can be a significant ally. If Casper can secure relationships with even 50 of these firms, it will become the industry standard.
Better products get adopted, plain and simple. 100 years ago, people saw horseless carriages as a passing fad. Slowly, then quickly, they recognized that cars were more efficient, and adoption exploded exponentially.
Anything else you want to add?
I believe that everything in life is ultimately related to people and culture. When I joined Wall Street 35 years ago, there was nothing that inherently made Goldman Sachs, where I worked at the time, better than other firms. We had the same phones, the same desks, and so on. And yet, we consistently outperformed our peers. Why? Because we aggressively embraced a culture of collaboration.
I’ve applied this same philosophy to SkyBridge, and it’s a key trait I look for in any prospective partner. I see this same value across Casper Labs’ entire business; it’s a principle-based, team-oriented culture. It’s the type of organization with which I’m thrilled to partner.
