R1 has helped many startups over the years. Originally founded to take over the MongoDB related projects we had started working on at Laulima, where I had been given the title of Chief Innovation Officer prior to its ultimate demise at the peril of Google Ads changing its algorithms.
On occasion, R1 has been hired on a more permanent basis to either help establish an efficient technology team or to temporarily act as one. From helping Perfectsen fine-tune their MongoDB based PFM solutions with Maybank to setting-up an open source team at Mindvalley, our company has always focused on helping organisations with data storage.
When accepted into the 500 Startups accelerator programme in Silicon Valley as part of the ninth batch – back in 2014, not only did it mark the start of our journey into blockchains, but so too did my understanding of businesses and the people that had founded them. It was not until returning to Malaysia to work with the Securities Commission of Malaysia on Project Castor that I was also given the opportunity to work with government agencies and financial regulators.
Having contributed towards the Malaysian digital blueprint, which was then used as the basis for regulating blockchain based financial services within the capital markets, R1 was in a unique position. It then spent a further two years helping to develop the first version of the CoKeeps proprietary custodial wallets as well as funding the company in those early days. It went on to become the first regulated digital asset custodian in Malaysia.
After getting CoKeeps off the ground, R1 was hired by CakeDeFi in Singapore. At the time, Cake had over 150 developers supporting their three main business verticals. We were brought in to start a new special projects division to cut through the bureaucracy and rapidly prototype new products unrelated to the work being done by everyone else. This led to the creation of a new product, which not only formed their fourth vertical, but eventually became a company of its own and the first and only company that was started from within the CakeDeFi group.
More recently, R1 has started working with Oviato, which was originally providing creator tools for Bitcoin meta protocols, but is now working on passkey-native wallet infrastructure, which allows developers to easily integrate self-custodial wallets directly into their applications without their users needing to download browser extensions.
“A common theme throughout these projects has been that it seems to take a fresh perspective from someone who is not already attached to the current ideas to truly capitalise upon the opportunities that are available to those organisations. They may have the talent in place already to achieve their goals, but rarely have that talent working on what they should be.”
Mark Smalley
Founder & CEO
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