October 2020: Bindle Monthly Update
Dear Friends of Bindle Systems:
It’s been another productive month for the company.
Requests for help and updates are listed below, and the latest overview deck is here.
Hope everyone had a safe Halloween – thanks as always for your support!
Gus
Updates
B2B Go-To-Market: Media Production and Live Events
We’ve found product-market fit: media production and live events. These organizations a) need a solution to reopen, b) require the flexible screening policies we offer for different personas (employees, freelancers, vendors, talent, media, etc), and c) can justify spending money on the expensive PCR tests that are currently the most widely available on the market.
Focusing on these types of gatherings also allows us to build a feature set which can be easily morphed into “consumer” events as testing costs come down (weddings, graduations, funerals, family reunions, meetups, weekend sports leagues, etc).
First Paid Contract with a “Verifier”
Bindle Systems is within days of becoming a revenue-generating business, and we’re excited to be hitting this important milestone just 4 months after incorporating. The contract – with a production studio based in NYC and LA – will be signed this week.
First Nationwide Integration with an “Issuer”
On the “Issuer” side of the network, we have integrated with our first large testing partner, a national PCR platform with at-home saliva collection and a result turnaround time of 24-36 hours. This is an important development as it gives us a national footprint that we can bring to all of the verifiers in the pipeline.
Vaccine Certificates Now Supported
The platform can now support both test results and vaccine certificates, making Bindle the only platform in the country (and possibly the world) with this dual capability. This is important because we believe that BOTH proof of vaccination AND proof of testing will be necessary to safely get together again, even after widespread vaccination of the population.
Serial Testing and Bayesian Probability Theory
Working closely with our Advisory Board, we are investigating how to incorporate two types of statistical models into the platform. The first looks at how the predictive value of a given test can be improved with serial testing, where the same individual takes the same test every 24-48 hours, up to the day when they want to enter a shared space. This could be especially powerful for lower cost, lower sensitivity antigen tests.. The second applies Bayesian probability theory to reduce the pre-test probability of infection by taking into account factors such as local prevalence of the virus, individual symptom and behavioral surveys, and whether an individual has been vaccinated.
Transition to IBM’s Hyperledger
We’ve successfully ported the platform from Ethereum to Hyperledger, which is important for two reasons. First, it eliminates the volatility we were seeing for computational resources on Ethereum and, second, it dramatically lowers our transaction costs as we scale, allowing us to be very aggressive with pricing while still maintaining high margins.
Security Audit
We passed the audit and are in the process of making a few recommended changes.
Issuer APIs and “Claim My Wallet”
We have published all of our Issuer APIs so that labs, testing companies, and administrators of vaccines (clinics, physicians, hospitals, pharmacies) can easily issue certificates onto the Bindle platform. As part of this work, it is now also possible for Issuers to do daily or weekly bulk transfers of test results and vaccine certificates. This in turn allows an end consumer without the Bindle app to be notified that they have health data on Bindle and to come claim it by downloading the app.
Industry Coalition
We intend to join a nascent coalition of companies, foundations, and individuals that shares 3 common goals:
1) Federal legislation to ensure low cost (<$5) COVID tests will be available OTC by the end of Q1 2021.
2) Federal legislation to mandate 100% of testing costs will be covered by insurance companies or the government.
3) Federal legislation to enforce an open network standard for the private communication and verification of test result certificates and vaccination certificates.
Team Additions
Dan Winters, Operations
Dan joins Bindle Systems as Senior Manager on our Customer Success team. He is responsible for the implementation of our pilot programs and the creation of our customer onboarding process. Prior to joining Bindle Systems, Dan spent the previous year working as an Implementation Project Manager at Convene where he crafted the delivery process for their Virtual Meetings product. Before joining Convene, Dan spent 5+ years working in a variety of operations roles at Samsung NEXT (where he worked with both Gus and Upendra). He spent the first part of his career working in the music industry in Portland, OR where he helped run the city’s largest indie rock music festival, MusicfestNW. He’s still a huge lover of live music and is very excited at the prospect of using the Bindle System to help get people back to concerts as soon as we can.
Charles Freeman, Advisory Board – US Chamber of Commerce
Charles Freeman is the senior vice president for Asia at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, DC, where he helps companies navigate complex challenges in the world’s most dynamic markets. Prior to his role at the Chamber he held senior international capacities in government, business, law and academia. In government, he served under President George W. Bush as the principal U.S. trade negotiator with China as Assistant U.S. Trade Representative, and earlier as legislative counsel in the U.S. Senate, where he concentrated on Asian economic and trade issues. He has since consulted on Indo-Pacific policy issues to numerous agencies in the executive branch and the U.S. Congress. Charles has also assisted dozens of the world’s leading businesses during market entry, expansion, and crisis phases in China, the Middle East, Africa, India, and other parts of Asia. He holds a J.D. from Boston University School of Law and a B.A. in Asian Studies and Economics from Tufts University.
