CertifiedTrue continues to add deep expertise to their Advisor bench. Doug Stebbins, a 20-year veteran of the investment banking industry has joined CertifiedTrue as an Advisor on Capital Markets and Venture Capital.
CertifiedTrue is a startup with a mission to provide blockchain services to the legal, insurance and real estate industries through its Certnet platform and industry consortium network. For more than a year, the CertifiedTrue team has focused its energy on validating its market and developing an early prototype of its core platform geared to meeting the unique real world needs of the legal and insurance industries. This effort has resulted in an early focus on refining use cases to meet the specialized requirements of wholesale insurance and e-discovery providers.
With an eye to improving the firm’s visibility in the market for early stage capital, Mr. Stebbins is jumping on board at a critical juncture. Virtually every startup’s principal hurdle is raising enough capital to execute on their vision. Having Mr. Stebbins brings an experienced hand to offer advice and critical expertise in the venture capital and private equity markets. Moreover, Doug’s addition enables CertifiedTrue to plan for a full startup life cycle of capital requirements with planning and relationships not only for early rounds but eventual B and C rounds.
Doug Stebbins is a Chartered Financial Analyst and is a Managing Director at a boutique investment bank in charge of alternative asset fund raising and private placements. Previously, Doug has served as Director of Private Equity at Mizuho Securities, Vice President of Equity Sales at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and Head of Futures for Bear Stearns in Tokyo. Over his more than 20+ years in investment banking he has led and structured countless deals and completed billions of dollars in transactions over the course of his career.
“I am excited to bring my experience in corporate finance and relationships in the venture capital industry to the table. CertifiedTrue is unique in that it has done a tremendous amount on a shoestring, including an innovative approach to a hybrid enterprise blockchain. Perhaps more importantly, they have put a lot of time into narrowing down and validating its use cases and target customers. The blockchain opportunity for investors is a big ocean but CertifiedTrue has done the hard work of really boiling it down into something useful and I think that puts them in a place to grow and profit.”
~ Doug Stebbins
Blockchain done right presents an opportunity to secure and maintain an immutable record and reliable audit trail that can be easily shared and verified by others without risk of being compromised. Insurers will be able to migrate aspects of recording functions onto the Blockchain to improve reliability, eliminate redundancies and human error and fraud and improve integrity. Big-Law using E-Discovery solutions will be able to save millions on unnecessary motion practice and get paid in a more timely fashion so that litigants will be better able to mind the store.
“I have had the good fortune of attending many of Doug’s FinTech events featuring key Venture Capitalists. His feedback was instrumental in our developing our pitch, our allocation and our capital plans. We are going to need capital across multiple stages to successfully execute on our vision and grow to capture a dominant share in our target markets in the exploding enterprise blockchain space. Having Doug actually on board in house is tremendous! We are off to the races.”
~ CertifiedTrue’s CEO, Stephen Graves
