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On the podcast this week, NYIAX founder and President Carolina Abenante talks about her career as a deal-maker and her current project: making blockchain work for the marketer.
As a practicing attorney, she sees in blockchain technology the potential to bring process improvements that will revolutionize ad transactions.
“Blockchain is all about law,” Abenante says. “Blockchain is about the immutable contract. When you’re making a ledger, you’re … trying to keep things fixed for people.
“We’ve been using ledgers in law, in every country, forever. Real estate is kept on ledger records. This is going to bring a whole new side for the supply chain. For the back-end office, this is going to be a very good cost benefit for them.”
Abenante got her start in business by facilitating telco consolidation in Europe. Later she was instrumental in helping early behavioral ad startup Phorm secure data collection deals with internet service providers, before that company was brought low by legal and privacy challenges.
Along the way she has been a frequent angel investor and adviser to startups. These days she is focused on startup NYIAX that uses technology from Nasdaq to enable buyers and sellers to trade media futures.
In this episode, Abenante describes NYIAX’s progress in bringing supply and demand partners onboard, among other topics.
She also talks about female advancement in the tech, finance and legal professions. Among those fields, she says tech has the worst track record in cultivating women’s careers.
“Tech has to do a lot better at nurturing female talent,” she says. “I see a lot of really great women in the ad tech space, but there’s not that many women that are creating their own companies and there should be more of that. Going up the food chain is great, but building your own company… is better.”
