Startup incubator R/GA Ventures to encourage enterprise blockchain startups

Startup incubator R/GA Ventures is going to open an office in Portland, OR whose purpose will be to encourage enterprise blockchain projects, TechCrunch writes. The company is set on fostering interest in innovations; the new project has been created to connect startups with corporate clients from sectors like insurance, healthcare and sports. The first batch of startups will join R/GA Ventures by the end of July.

R/GA global chief technology officer Nick Coronges said the company is promoting real-world application of blockchain; it understands, however, that there are many ways in which the distributed ledger technology can be used.

“I think one of the assumptions that we make going into this is that blockchain, as we currently understand it, is probably going to go through a lot of iterations. And it may be bigger in the next few years…we may talk about it as a kind of ecosystem or a set of adjacent technologies that are related to blockchain, and this idea of decentralized data processing systems,” he said.

R/GA Ventures has teamed up with institutions, such as Moda, Umpqua Bank, Portland State University, Oregon Health & Science University, Business Oregon, ConsenSys as well as blockchain research firm Smith and Crown, on this project.