Launchpool Labs Founder Spotlight
Interview with Unicred Co-Founder & CEO, Rakesh Lavi
Welcome to the Founder Spotlight series, where we interview Founders from the projects we incubate at Launchpool Labs. What to expect: fun stories, founder journey, the team, vision, mission, goals, and what’s in the works. None of the information shared is financial advice, and should not be treated as such.
Unicred is a multi-blockchain decentralized finance credit scoring protocol for better risk prediction, which enables unsecured DeFi lending. As a DeFi platform where lending and borrowing decisions are powered by data science, its state-of-the-art credit scoring algorithm looks at all possible risk indicators available on the blockchain. Its credit scoring protocol enables Unicred to address gaps in the current ecosystem, namely, varying LTVs and interest rates.
It is the 4th incubee in Launchpool Labs’ inaugural incubator class of five startups to go live and take part in the 3-month program — and we announced them the other day (August 25th, 2021). Currently, Unicred is raising pre-seed ($100k), available exclusively to investors part of the Launchpool Labs Bronze Club.
Enjoy this interview with Rakesh Lavi, Co-Founder and CEO at Unicred.
Roxana: Hi, Rakesh. We are very excited to have you and your team at Unicred be our 4th incubator star this cohort. Please tell us a little about yourself, how you met your team, and how Unicred came to be.
Rakesh: Me and Akshay played football together. We knew what each other were doing. It was in mid-late 2020, during the DeFi boom, we started discussing crypto in more detail and what we could do. Yield farming intrigued us and started exploring what data is available on the blockchain and if they could be used as a predictors of risk
Roxana: How does your experience working at Goldman Sachs play out in your credit scoring proposition, for defi?
Rakesh: What Goldman Sachs will teach you is rigour and hardwork. It moulds an elite mentality in you to find solutions to problems. It also teaches you to be curious and how your decision making has to be objective and data driven.
Roxana: What makes you really proud about your team? Can you share some funny habits / stories / hobbies that your team members have?
Rakesh: What I take pride in the most with the team is that we are always together. We play football, games together, and also party together. We understand the strengths and weaknesses of each other and also how that can be overcome. This level of togetherness brings a unique & involved approach towards problem solving.
Roxana: Name 3 things you absolutely love about your industry, and 3 things you absolutely dislike (I assume this is what made you launch Unicred).
Rakesh: I love crypto because of the freedom it brings to people’s financial lives. Crypto being trustless, distributed and immutable, it is a platform of the future. I guess there is not much to dislike in crypto/defi, it has its problems like every other industry. We, being data guys, are always looking for answers on what data can do to a problem statement and it is this curiosity that drives us towards the solutions we are building.
Roxana: What has been done so far? I know it’s early on to mention partnerships, so please focus on the product journey so far. Lessons learned, exciting things that happened, which are worth mentioning.
Rakesh: The product started off as just a score that could support the defi lending and borrowing industry. But over time we realised that we could do a POC of the score on our own platform and hence decided to incorporate both. The most satisfying part of the journey was when we had the epiphany of the data we needed being present already on the blockchain. That was a great moment.
Roxana: What protocols are you most excited about, and why?
Rakesh: It goes without saying that it’s ETH that drives it all, but most recently polygon has broken a glass ceiling for users who were deterred by high gas cost but wanted the security of the ETH blockchain.
Roxana: Where do you need most help from our Launchpool & Labs community? Don’t be shy about sharing.
Rakesh: We are relying on Launchpool Labs for community building, getting appropriate advisors and partnerships. We are also looking at raising funds to take this solution into mainnet.
Roxana: Are you planning to launch any community perks prior to going live with your product? If yes, tell us more about it, and how the community can get involved.
Rakesh: We have not planned any community perks at the moment, but I encourage the community to follow us on social media for updates
Roxana: Let’s talk about funding. What happens once the pre-seed and seed raises are complete? What is next in the books for Unicred: private raise, pre-IDO etc? Walk us through how the funds will be used, and how the company was funded prior to joining Launchpool Labs.
Rakesh: We started building the models even before we decided to raise funds, but the fundraise will help us go to market sooner. We need to hire developers on both the blockchain side and the data science side. Most importantly, after the poly network hack, it is critical for us to ensure the solution we are building is safe.
Roxana: What made you want to work with us? We believe that startups choose their incubation partners just as much as incubators choose their cohort stars.
Rakesh: My conversations with Lauchpool have always been thought provoking and productive. I wholeheartedly appreciate the knowledge and experience they bring to the table. It was also exciting for us to partner with Launchpool since they share the same enthusiasm for defi as us.
Roxana: Where from here? Tell us a bit about your future product roadmap, highlights, if there is anything available at this point.
Rakesh: We are forking a compound for the platform. We will have a unicred score to support the interest rate and LTV calculations on this platform. To begin with, we are using logistic regression and will move on to more sophisticated algorithms. The score has a presence of its own and can be used by any platform.
Roxana: Where can we find you, on the web? Please also share any bragging rights.
Rakesh: We can be found on unicred.org.
Roxana: Thank you for your time, Rakesh, looking forward to working with you and the Launchpool Labs community for the next 3 months.
Rakesh: Thank you, appreciate the questions.
About Unicred
Unicred is a multi-blockchain decentralized finance credit scoring protocol for better risk prediction, which enables unsecured DeFi lending. As a DeFi platform where lending and borrowing decisions are powered by data science, its state-of-the-art credit scoring algorithm looks at all possible risk indicators available on the blockchain. Its credit scoring protocol enables Unicred to address gaps in the current ecosystem, namely, varying LTVs and interest rates.
Website — Twitter — Telegram — Labs Unicred Page — Labs Unicred AME
About Launchpool Labs
#beyourownVC with Launchpool Labs! Join the Launchpool Labs Investor Club, and get access to off-the-market exclusive allocations in the projects we incubate every quarter. Access offers with your NFT membership card (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Diamond), stake $LPOOL, and mine an allocation. High risk — high reward.
Launchpool Labs is a chain agnostic incubator for teams, builders, universities, & developer hubs, where teams can build MVP (minimum viable product) and MVC (minimum viable community).
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