Despite proclamations of funding doom for blockchain startups in 2019, Cathy Minter remains undaunted by the challenge to sell R3’s flagship product Corda Enterprise, a commercial version of company’s distributed ledger technology, to those in the market.
A recent report from CB Insights anticipates that venture capital investments in blockchain, if deals made continued at the rate they were going, would tally at $1.6 billion for year 2019 versus the record-breaking $4.1 billion from 2018. The predicted 60 percent drop is likely to strike fear into the hearts of the less courageous but Minter’s feelings are quite different.
“I’m seeing huge demand for that [blockchain] at R3 so I’m not concerned,” she said in a recent interview. “Maybe some of our competitors should be concerned.”
As the newly-minted chief revenue officer for R3, Minter will oversee the company’s global commercial strategy and revenue generation. She has worked within the enterprise software sector for close to thirty years and has seen more than her fair share of tech innovations move from proof-of-concept into the mainstream market. From her perspective, blockchain is the next big thing.
“Throughout my career, I’ve worked on some of the most impactful enterprise technologies, like cloud computing and the SaaS revolution. From talking with clients and contacts, it became a really clear to me that blockchain is gathering steam across a very diverse range of industries,” Minter said.
“The speed of engagement and enthusiasm for enterprise blockchain is something I’ve not seen before. When the opportunity to work with R3, the leader in enterprise blockchain technology, presented itself, it felt like a very natural fit for me,” she added.
Minter is a seasoned professional with experiences at some of the biggest firms who brought their own brand of disruption to the IT industry. After receiving a BA of Economics from Clemson University and an MBA in Marketing from Fordham Gabelli School of Business, Minter started out as a global account manager with AT&T in 1994. She went on to work in senior leadership sales positions at Oracle, SAP and OpenText (Cordy’s) before joining SpaceTime Insight’s team in 2011. She was also Head of Americas Sales at Docker – the enterprise container platform company that revolutionized virtualization – before starting with R3 in July.
David Rutter founded R3 in 2014 with the belief that blockchain technology could be used to solve real business problems in complex and highly-regulated industries. R3 built their own blockchain platform, called Corda, and two years later, launched an open-source ecosystem in partnership with hundreds of developers and organizations from around the world. With the introduction of Corda Enterprise, Rutter knew he needed an expert to help the company spread the good news of their new project.
“Our Corda platform is now being utilized for everything from supply chain transparency to managing property sales,” Rutter said. “With this robust growth of Corda adoption into a diverse range of different markets and industries, we needed someone with exception skills in enterprise technology sales and a deep contact book. Cathy fit the bill perfectly for this role.”
