"This is a time to invest in companies or technology that is going to help you make the leap to the next level."
Welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview with Chao Cheng-Shorland, co-founder and CEO of ShelterZoom.
Chao is a passionate innovator and technology trendsetter, leading the market in Web3 and blockchain solutions that address some of the biggest problems in cybersecurity, sustainability, and data ownership control.
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Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Chao Cheng-Shorland: I’m the co-founder and CEO of ShelterZoom, a market leader in Web3 and blockchain solutions addressing some of the business’s biggest problems in cybersecurity, sustainability, and data ownership control. I see myself as an innovator, inventor, and technology trendsetter. I am passionate about creating business value-driven solutions by leveraging the power of innovation.
If you were in an elevator with Warren Buffett, how would you describe your company, services, or products? What makes your company different from others? What is your company’s biggest strength?
Chao Cheng-Shorland: The simplest way to describe the value proposition of ShelterZoom is that we gave birth to a new species of document that ushers in a new era of ownership, cybersecurity, sustainability, and interoperability of documents, contracts, and any digital content. Recognized by Gartner in two categories in its Hype Cycle for Blockchain and Web3 2022, Gartner calls ShelterZoom one of the rare successful enterprise blockchain companies in the world.
Unlike most other blockchain companies, we do not engage with cryptocurrency. We only deliver Web3 solutions that have practical business use cases and solve major problems. One of the most groundbreaking use cases of our technology is for patients accessing, owning, and managing their own medical records. Our Web3 application for Healthcare is now firmly establishing the world’s first use-case for patients to fully own and control their medical records in a user-friendly way within the most secure environment drastically improving healthcare delivery.
Our anchor product Document GPS, built on ShelterZoom’s SINGLE SOURCE OF TRUTH® principle and technology, has become the first mover in three major areas:
– The FIRST native email extension for senders to securely share, control and track email attachments in real-time, with everything happening inside your email account, no need to go to another system. Many software vendors attempted to deliver a solution like this in the last 10 years without success.
– The FIRST mobile app that addressed one of the biggest gaps in the mobile app market when it comes to privacy, security, and data sovereignty – photos taken inside Document GPS mobile app will no longer leave a trace on a physical mobile device, nor get stored on a mobile provider’s Cloud. This gap directly impacted on operations in several key industries such as government, insurance, healthcare, legal, financial services, and real estate in capturing and sharing confidential information.
– The FIRST true original sender-controlled solution on the market requiring recipients to gain the sender’s approval for sharing or downloading disseminated digital content. Not being able to own and control content sharing has been a key problem for Web2
Mr. Warren Buffet, ShelterZoom is the best investment you can find in Web3 startups. Let’s chat!
Quiet quitting, The Great Resignation, are an ongoing trend causing many businesses to struggle keeping talent engaged and motivated. Most are leaving because of their boss or their company culture. 82% of people feel unheard, undervalued and misunderstood in the workplace. In your experience, what keeps employees happy? And how are adapting to the current shift we see?
Chao Cheng-Shorland: The developers on our team are some of the most accomplished in the world, with several of them having Olympiad-level achievements. One thing that keeps them engaged as employees is the opportunity to work on cutting-edge technology that no one else is doing. They are at the forefront of web3 and blockchain use cases outside of cryptocurrency so the chance to be a part of this is very compelling.
Also frequent communication and having multiple methods for communicating with each other are fundamental parts of keeping everyone on board. I hold a team achievement meeting every fortnight to celebrate their success by showing the development team practical examples of how their work created valuable business use cases and partnerships, and how customers are using what they built in their business operations.
Online business keeps on surging higher than ever, B2B, B2C, online shopping, virtual meetings, remote work, Zoom medical consultations, what are your expectations for the year to come and how are you capitalizing on the tidal wave?
Chao Cheng-Shorland: Digital security is going to become even more of a priority to all of us given how vulnerable most people’s information is on the Internet. So many of the conversations I have with current and onboarding customers are about how they have recently been hacked and need to find a way to protect their documents. Since security is one of ShelterZoom’s key value propositions, we’re going to continue to deliver products and tools to meet the needs of cybersecurity.
Also, our product Document GPS is the first and only original sender-controlled solution on the market requiring recipients to gain the sender’s approval for sharing or downloading disseminated digital content, it fills a major market gap for industries that require sharing confidential information such as healthcare, government, legal, financial services, and real estate.
Business is all about overcoming obstacles and creating opportunities for growth. What do you see as THE real challenge right now?
Chao Cheng-Shorland: Anyone working in Web3 is most likely going to work with people all over the world, whether that is having employees in different countries or customers on an international scale. This means having an infrastructure that is able to accommodate not just remote workers, but remote workers in different time zones, languages, and cultures who all need to collaborate on a project.
Then your software needs to meet the criteria of international jurisdictions. In our case, this means things like GDPR and certain privacy requirements. This is one of those challenges that come with plenty of opportunity built in. If you can manage an international team and deliver products globally then you have grown your target market exponentially.
2020, 2021, 2022 threw a lot of curve balls into businesses on a global scale. Based on the experience gleaned in the past years, how can businesses thrive in 2023? What lessons have you learned and what advice would you share?
Chao Cheng-Shorland: This may feel like a time of uncertainty but from my position at the helm of a Web3 company, I see so much opportunity before us. To summarize the advice Warren Buffet is famous for, you should buy when everyone else is selling. This is a time to invest in companies or technology that is going to help you make the leap to the next level.
We’re at an inflection point in the way companies do business and in how we carry out financial transactions on a worldwide level. The companies that take stock now and shift to a new way of doing things will be the ones that have greater successes in the years to come.
What does “success” in the year to come mean to you? It could be on a personal or business level, please share your vision.
Chao Cheng-Shorland: My vision is for ShelterZoom to become the first company that has ever achieved mainstream adoption for a blockchain-based business solution in 2023. After several years of hard work in R&D implementing a Tesla-like ecosystem, we have strategically set up many key “terminals” to capture a vast market, e.g., from pre-build email add-ins to mobile app to APIs, the goal is to provide Web3 benefits in cybersecurity, sustainability and data ownership control to a good percentage of organizations across the globe easily without disrupting any organizations’ existing workflow.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Chao Cheng-Shorland for taking the time to do this interview and share her knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Chao Cheng-Shorland or her company, you can do it through her – Linkedin Page
Disclaimer: The ValiantCEO Community welcomes voices from many spheres on our open platform. We publish pieces as written by outside contributors with a wide range of opinions, which don’t necessarily reflect our own. Community stories are not commissioned by our editorial team and must meet our guidelines prior to being published.
