Nathan Williams, CEO & Founder of Minespider, shares the story of his journey and how he sees blockchain revolutionizing the manufacturing industry. Danny: Welcome to today's Executive Series interview on IndustrialSage. Today, I'm joined by the CEO and founder of Minespider, Nathan Williams. Nathan, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me on the show. It's really a pleasure to be here. Danny: So, you're coming in from Berlin. Is that correct? There's quite a happening startup scene here, and I moved because I heard about it back in 2013. Since then, there's been a huge growth in the cryptocurrency, blockchain, distributed ledger space. And so, it's really an interesting place to be for blockchain startups like myself. Danny: So, for those who aren't familiar with Minespider, who are you and what do you guys do? Nathan: Basically, we are a company that believes everyone has the right to know what they are buying. We do what's known as supply chain traceability. So, if you buy a smartphone or a car, you don't necessarily know where it comes from, if one is responsible, if one is. Well, companies have the same problem. They buy a battery. They buy materials, raw metals. They don't know if one was produced responsibly and the other dump toxins into the water base. And so, what we do is we create digital passports that go alongside that raw material of the supply chain as it gets sold, and it gets stamped along the way so that companies can get a better picture of where their materials come from and under what conditions they were produced. Danny: That sounds interesting, but before we get more into that, how'd you get into this space? Nathan: Make terrible life choices! (laughs) No, so I've started a number of different companies, mostly in the industrial space and mostly because of circumstance. I've always been a tech guy. I've been a programmer, and I've enjoyed that aspect of it, and just people in my network would have certain problems, and it sort of led me into the industrial space. The first startup that I ran ended up tracking fraud in financial documents. Danny: Oh, wow. Nathan: And so, I built an online system to scan through thousands of financial documents, looking because there was a client who had embezzled a lot of money. And so, we had to look through, statistically, where the anomalies were, and by doing that, you get a certain cohort of people around you with certain skills. And so, then I was talking to some contacts who had similar challenges of getting good data out of a mess of data, and it was in the regulatory space. So, I started a company that was analyzing chemical regulations and seeing, okay, well, what's going to be banned? What's banned? Can we analyze the news with an AI and identify when news is going to be about certain chemicals we use? So, that was interesting. I ended up selling that company, and then at the beginning of 2017, I was looking at what my next step was going to be, and it was right around that time when the current US administration was inaugurated, and there was a Washington Post article around that time that was interviewing a number of people in electronics and the automotive industry that were concerned that the administration would roll back conflict mineral regulations. And so, they had spent a lot of money and time trying to make sure that they were responsible, and they were concerned about this, that they wouldn't have the support. And so, I basically spoke to everyone who would speak to me. I said, "Well, look. There's this new technology coming up. Blockchain, it's very interesting, and it solves certain problems of why we couldn't fix this issue of gett...