Skype founder joins startup Shipitwise

​It could mean that Shipitwise is exploring blockchain for its commercial shipment operations."

The Estonian startup, Shipitwise has added Jaan Tallinn to the Shipitwise Advisory Board. Jaan Tallinn is one of the co-founders of instant messaging service Skype, and file-sharing application Kazaa and is already an investor in Shipitwise.

Shipitwise is an Estonian-based startup providing customers with a hassle-free travelling service by taking care of their excess baggage. Its focus is on a particular cohort of travellers who need specialised services for 'hard-to-move' non-packaged personal goods - convenient cross-border, door-to-door courier delivery for golf bags, skis, bicycles, or specialised services for business trips like trade fair materials and samples. Shipitwise emphasise convenience with a user-friendly interface and transparent pricing features.

Shipitwise has also been a keen fundraiser through the crowdfunding platform Funderbeam. It undertook two successful equity crowdfunding campaigns in 2016.

Shipitwise also graduated from the Estonian B2B accelerator Startup Wise Guys earlier in 2017. Startup Wise Guys is a mentorship-driven accelerator program for early stage B2B startups, providing seed capital (€20K), office space and business mentors.

"A" round financing for Shipitwise is expected in 2017. "A" round financing typically occurs during a company's round of venture capital financing following the issue of common stock to founders, employees and angel investors. Shipitwise appears poised for "A" round financing given the timing of Jaan Tallinn's public profile addition to the Shipitwise Advisory Board.  

As for Jaan Tallinn's vision for Shipitwise, we can look to some of his comments on Blockchain technology in 2016, where he suggests using blockchain's principles of coordination mechanism to solve humanity's biggest problems. 

“Shaming people into being virtuous doesn’t change behaviour,” “...incentive schemes, whereby people who have done the most good for humanity are rewarded 20 years into the future would create the expectation that doing long-term good is valuable.”

It could mean that Shipitwise is exploring blockchain for its commercial shipment operations in a possible new commercial dimension for Shipitwise. As I outlined here, blockchain allows verification of a particular series of transactions and can eliminate settlement risk. The use of the distributed ledger technology that is blockchain could give the nascent Shipitwise all it needs as it continues to innovate.

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Disclosure: the author is an investor in Shipitwise.