Luis Martinez and Martin Liebrich are the co-founders of Staxe, a platform enabling music and creative production economies on web3 so that anyone can become an owner of music and creative productions, support their favorite artists, and become a part of their success.”

This episode of MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by Philip Lee, one of Ireland’s fastest-growing corporate law firms and expert advisors at the heart of the Dublin and London start-up, fintech and crypto communities.

Staxe are the seventh of the founding teams forming the Launchpool Web3 Techstars Accelerator Class of 2022 that we’ve got on the show over the next month.

In this episode, Pete Townsend talks with Luis and Martin from Staxe about:

– Luis leaving DJ school to become a trader before going down the crypto rabbit hole – Martin’s earliest days of programming on the Commodore 64 – The lightbulb moment on the problem to solve with financing creative productions – How creative productions are like micro-startups – Blockchain as a social coordination tool – The big opportunity for Staxe with massive creative productions

HIGHLIGHTS:

Luis Martinez on leaving DJ school to become a trader:

“I had this dream of being able to play around with music and synthesizers and bending sound with things like oscillators. I eventually got into DJ school and started learning how to use and manipulate the sounds.

“But somewhere along the way, my family came into this, and being a bit traditional as I’m from Mexico, the baby boomer generation had the traditional baby boomer way of looking at what your career should be. You need to study finance, law or medicine, study hard, work hard and build.

“Being a DJ bending sounds is not part of that. So, I had to adapt my dreams and vision of what my career would be. I started studying finance, and very early in my career got into the trading rooms as a trader.”

Luis Martinez on going down the crypto rabbit hole:

“Sometime around 2017, I started venturing into the crypto space, and learning about programmable money was what really caught my eye – it was so interesting. I remember being in the trading desk and looking at the libertarian side of what you could do with programmable money. At the same time, I was looking at a trading desk where we had more compliance people watching over us than traders.

“So, it was like, okay, the libertarian thing is out there in crypto, but here in the trading room, we’re behind these four walls – I needed to do something about it. That’s what sent me down the rabbit hole.”

Luis Martinez on the lightbulb moment that led to the Staxe vision:

“One of my friends was a booking manager, and we had all of the pieces in place to put a gig together – we had a really good artist, we had the community and we had interest in the event that would sell out the venue we had in mind.

“But we had a chicken and egg problem: the venue would only give us a date if we paid them upfront, but we couldn’t print and sell the tickets to raise the funding until we had a date and a venue.

“That was the lightbulb moment when we said, okay, we need to find a way to coordinate capital so that these gigs happen, and it just didn’t make sense to us that the capital couldn’t be coordinated.

“So, we started off with a project called B-Live, and that has evolved since then into what we call Staxe.”

Martin Liebrich on meeting Luis Martinez at a pitch session in Crypto Valley (Zug, Switzerland):

“It was 2017 and everything was going crazy. Although I didn’t own any crypto, I found it interesting, and I was pretty sure back then crypto is here to stay. That’s when I met Luis, as I was listening to a few of the startup pitches at a conference, and one of the ones I found interesting was Staxe.

“In the beginning, the idea was just to invest in Staxe, but then over time we found that we would complement each other quite well. So, it became more than just an investment.”

Luis Martinez on how he and Martin Liebrich complement each other:

“We b...

New research from the Department of Sociology at Trinity College Dublin has found further evidence of a relationship between online engagement and mental wellbeing in teenagers.

The study, published recently in the journal ‘Computers in Human Behaviour’, contributes to mounting international evidence on the dangers of high levels of digital media use.

Additionally, the researchers found that in today’s connected world low engagement with digital media is also associated with poor mental health outcomes for adolescents who spend less time online than their peers. This finding supports the ‘goldilocks’ hypothesis – that digital media use at moderate levels is not intrinsically harmful and there is a point between low and high use that is ‘just right’ for young people.

This is the first time the ‘goldilocks’ theory has been examined in Irish teenagers/young adults. It is also the first study to attempt the integration of both time and online behaviours when examining associations between digital media and mental wellbeing.

Professor Richard Layte, a professor of Sociology and co-author of the paper, said:

“Evidence is mounting internationally that online engagement among adolescents may be damaging for mental well-being but the evidence is mixed. Our work provides fresh insights on the impact of digital engagement at the age of 17/18 and the results provide worrying evidence of real harms that require urgent action.”

“There is a simple narrative out there that more is worse. It is important to emphasise that online engagement is now a normal channel of social participation and non-use has consequences. Our findings also raise the possibility that moderate use is important in today’s digital world and that a low level of online engagement carries its own risks. Now the questions for researchers are how much is too much and how little is too little?”

Characterisation of online behaviour

The research, drawing on longitudinal data from the Growing Up in Ireland study, looked at the association between adolescent use of online engagement and mental wellbeing in over 6,000 young people between the age of 13 and again at the age of 17/18.

The researchers asked participants to report the time they spent online as well as the activities they engaged in: online messaging, sharing of videos and pictures, school or college work, watching movies and listening to music. Mental wellbeing was assessed by questions investigating emotional, behavioural and peer issues.

The study characterised young person’s online behaviour based on the length of time spent online as well as the types of online behaviours engaged in. Adjusting for prior psychiatric disorders and symptoms at the age of 9 and 13, the study found that high engagement in digital media strongly predicted worse mental health outcomes for both boys and girls. Furthermore, low use of digital media was associated with worse mental health for both boys and girls and was also predictive of peer problems for girls.

Dr Ross Brannigan, the lead author of the study and a former postdoctoral researcher at Trinity’s Department of Sociology, said:

“This study is novel in that it considers the importance of both time and online behaviours when examining associations between digital media and mental wellbeing. We found clear distinctions between groups spending similar time on the internet, but differing in their behaviours online. This indicates the importance of considering both time and behaviours online as well as the quality of these behaviours, for example, passive compared to active behaviours, or the types of behaviours such as social, educational, entertainment.”

“Digital media and online usage are controversial topics when it comes to effects on mental health, with no real consistency of results overall. While these results are not causal or deterministic, our findings are an important first step on the path to revealing why these relationships exist. It will now be important to build on...

Panduit a leading global provider of network infrastructure solutions, has released its latest Single Pair Ethernet(SPE) cables to support building automation and industrial automation technologies.

The cables, which are available globally, can support Fieldbus controls today and permit transition to Ethernet in the future, providing the intelligent infrastructure to reduce startup complexity and simplify application and device upgrades.

Panduit Single Pair Ethernet (SPE)

Ethernet provides the platform of structured cabling offering protocol independent physical layer that can be validated before network devices are installed. For the increasing numbers of applications required to drive industry 4.0, the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart buildings, single pair (SPE) copper cable provides the capability of data transmission speeds up to 10 Mbit/s, with power up to 52W over distances of 100m are common, and maximum cable runs of up to 1000m.

“Single Pair Ethernet infrastructure is gaining traction as a viable alternative for connecting systems within smart buildings and industrial automation,” said Mike Vermeer, Engineering Development Strategist of Panduit. “As building owners and manufacturers look to the future, the option to reuse infrastructure to evolve existing analog, serial, and legacy communications applications to a unified Ethernet network is exciting and shows promising results.

Digital transformation of industrial sites requires architectures that permit networking of all components to allow data to be available both locally and centrally for analysis to unlock the organizations’ potential. Ethernet is the technology that improves network security, increases flexibility and device visibility, and allows organisations to standardise their expertise and tools.

“It makes everything easier to manage, you can manage everything from a single point, like important things like security and the whole infrastructure of the communications systems,” said Vermeer.

In conjunction with the cable introduction, Panduit and Fluke Networks have released a new white paper, Evolving Building, and Industrial Fieldbus to a Unified Ethernet Infrastructure. This peer-reviewed paper examines common Fieldbus applications for building automation and industrial automation and shows how they can transition to Single Pair Ethernet in the future.

Ian MacRae talks to Dr. Harris Eyre about brain health, and what we should know about keeping our brains healthy at every stage of life.

Harris Eyre is an advocate for brain health and for Brain Capital. Brain Capital is a novel economic measure which integrates brain health and brain skills. Our brains are arguably our biggest assets as individuals and communities. Harris seeks to place Brain Capital at the centre of economics, policy and finance in the current brain economy.

In his career, Harris has operated as a physician, scientist, entrepreneur, executive services provider, author, new economic and finance thinker, and neuroscience diplomat. He is President of PRODEO, a brain health technology executive services group. This work has been written up in Neuron, neo.life, Forbes, the Financial Times, STAT, the Financial Post and People Management.

He is Senior Fellow for Brain Capital with the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute. Harris has authored 120+ papers. He co-edited the book ‘Convergence Mental Health’ (Oxford Press). He is from the Great Barrier Reef region of Australia and is now based in the USA.

How to keep our brains healthy at every stage of life, Dr. Harris Eyre

Ian MacRae is an award-winning author, psychologist and psychometrician, He has written six books about workplace psychology including High Potential: How to Spot, Manage andDevelop Talented People at Work, and his latest book is Dark Social: Understanding the darker side of work, personality and social media. His books have been translated into ten different languages.

@iansmacrae on Twitter.

See more podcasts here.

The main unemployment rate was 4.7% in May on a seasonally adjusted basis, down from 4.8% in April and down from a level of 6.9% twelve months ago. The seasonally adjusted number of people unemployed fell by 2,400 in May and fell by 46,700in the past 12 months.

Jack Kennedy, an economist at global job site Indeed, comments on the latest CSO data: “The rate of unemployment fell in May to 4.7%, with fears about the rising cost of living and the economic impact of the war in Ukraine failing to dent the positive employment trend”. The recently published Q1 Labour Force Survey from the CSO tells a story of sustained employment growth, with 275,200 more people employed in Ireland compared to a year ago.

Employment trends are still positive, but Indeed’s data shows that employers hiring demands have eased in recent weeks as downside risks to the economy have grown. Notably, the inflow of new job postings has slowed. But employers are still actively hiring, with the level of Irish job postings on Indeed up 57% on 27 May 2022, compared to 1 February 2020.

While recruitment pressure in some job categories has eased, the inflationary backdrop and skills shortage in some areas means employers in categories like tech, pharma, and engineering will still be facing challenges in finding suitable candidates. The high rate of price inflation has prompted fears of a ‘wage-price spiral’, but Indeed data to date shows wage growth continuing to lag well behind inflation. Analysis of advertised wages in job postings in April points to wage growth of 3.6% year on year, although a handful of occupations are seeing faster wage growth: food service (6.3%) and sales (5.8%).”

Tomorrow is World Environment Day and ahead of this Datapac, Ireland’s leading technology solutions and services provider, have announced the results of a survey. The findings of it found that more than half (54%) of SMEs in Ireland say the climate change agenda is more important than or equal to price when it comes to IT purchasing decisions.

Furthermore, only 15% of Irish SMEs said that impact on the environment is not a key deciding factor when making technology purchasing decisions.

The survey of 150 SME business owners in Ireland was carried out by Censuswide in association with Datapac and cybersecurity and backup specialist, Datto.

In relation to IT budgets for this year, over half (51%) of those surveyed said their IT budgets are increasing, with 35% of budgets remaining the same and 14% set to decrease.

With most workplaces open again, the survey found that 40% of SMB owners intend to continue to offer remote or hybrid working despite the immediate necessity of the pandemic having passed. Securing critical data can be a challenge for many within the context of these new ways of working, with a further 38% believing that remote and hybrid working has made it more difficult to secure critical data.

Karen O’Connor, General Manager, Datapac said: “The climate change agenda is something which ultimately affects all aspects of an organisation’s operations. To meaningfully reduce greenhouse gas emissions, organisations must holistically examine all fundamental processes, including IT, to best chart a course for a greener tomorrow.

“The past two years have seen widescale digital transformations as organisations adapted to better face new challenges. As organisations have witnessed first-hand the value added through enhanced flexibility and productivity, trends indicate that IT investment will remain high. When strategically examining one’s IT position, it is important to fully consider how IT investment can enhance organisational processes, rather than just focusing on point-solutions to solve individual challenges.

“As we emerge from the shadow of the Covid-19 pandemic, organisations need to seize the opportunity to fully re-assess and strengthen their IT and security infrastructures and strategically plan how their IT can best support a greener, more sustainable hybrid future.”

Nicholas O’ Donovan, Sales Manager, Datto Ireland, said: “We have seen rapid digital adoption in organisations across the board over the last two years. At the start of the pandemic, many organisations were forced to enact changes under very tight time constraints and may not have had the opportunity to fully consider the security ramifications of such a shift or to seek expert assistance to guide their transformation.

“Threat detection and response capabilities remain key, yet the fact remains that the best recourse in the likely event of data theft is having the capacity to quickly restore operational data from a recent and uncompromised backup.”

See more stories here.

Building and growing product teams and organisations, understanding of go-to-market strategy and SaaS business models, technical background, and irresistible entrepreneurial streak is very important in todays startups. If your product and design is not easy to use and understand, you will end up losing customers. Ronan talks to Cormac McLoughlin, Director of Product Management at Workvivo about this and more.

Cormac talks about his background, what Workvivo does, one of Workvivo’s core tenants, increased usage of their app during the pandemic, and the old legacy internet. Cormac also talks about how Workvivo helps communities foster, the importance of product and design, preparing for the latest technologies, working in a startup, being very customer focused, and advice for people doing product development in a startup.

More about Cormac:

Cormac is an experienced product leader with experience of building and growing product teams and organisations, understanding of go-to-market strategy and SaaS business models, technical background, and irresistible entrepreneurial streak.

Prior to joining Workvivo, he worked in a number of senior product management roles, most notably at HubSpot and Paddy Power. Since joining Workvivo, he has spearheaded the development and company mop growth which has seen year-on-year growth of 150%.

See more podcasts here.

As a society, we have been accustomed to energy and resources being available and uninterrupted 365 days a year. However, the war in Ukraine, the looming climate emergency, and conflicts in the last century, such as the oil crisis of the 1970s and the Gulf War in 1980, remind us how fragile the energy supply can be. The ongoing disruptions will have long-lasting global implications on geopolitics and the energy sector at large.

Energy And Resources Sector

Most companies in the energy and resources sector will need to go through a period of unprecedented change if they are to be fit for purpose in an increasingly decarbonized, decentralized, and digitalized world. This transition has a disruptive impact, be it carbon regulation, new technologies, emergence of new market players, or convergence of industry verticals.

Such “convergence” is now one of the biggest drivers of marketplace change, creating not just new revenue streams, but also potential threats to established players. These changes are leading to the evolution of an ever-expanding ecosystem of players, something that is not just accelerating the speed of innovation, but also leading to development of increasingly integrated offerings that better meet the growing customer demand for more sustainable products and services.

Decarbonization, Digitalization and Decentralization

Three key trends are currently shaping the energy market.

The first, decarbonization — net zero — is the most important overarching trend for all sectors and the world in general. It increasingly underpins the economic policies of many countries. Inevitably, decarbonization is having a fundamental impact on the strategic thinking and future investment decisions of companies in all sectors.

The second is the need to digitize operations to meet the needs of marketplaces that are driven ever more by transparency, seamlessness, and speed of delivery. Digitalization is central to improving efficiency and enhancing the customer experience across every sector. It also has a major role to play in stimulating innovative ideas and ensuring they are turned as quickly as possible into real-life solutions for customers.

The third trend is decentralization — movement to a far more localized solution to deliver a service rather than relying on much wider national or regional infrastructure. This is evidenced, for instance, by siting wind farms close to urban areas or using microgeneration, such as photovoltaic (PV) rooftop panels on new housing developments and encouraging users to take greater responsibility for how they consume energy.

All these elements are feeding into new business models that are focused on much greater sustainability, a thread that is running through every component of society. In the energy sector, the introduction of carbon capture and other cleantech is now central to both day-to-day operations and strategic decision-making, given the growing significance of environmental, social, and governance standards on corporate thinking.

It is with these measures in mind that companies must assess their day-to-day operations and longer-term strategic decisions. While the unique situation of each player means there is no one-size strategy that fits all, the direction of travel is now relatively well established for everyone.

By Michael Kruse, Global Leader, Energy & Utilities Practice, Arthur D. Little.

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The implementation of single-use technology in the pharma industry is on the rise, and so is the discussion about sustainability. Critics and single-use supporters alike throw their arguments around the internet. Despite every objection, some specialists claim that single-use technologies are not only non-threatening to the environment but are even more sustainable than other technologies.

The discussions about single-use technology have become regular, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic. This unforeseen event has made biopharma companies all over the world struggle with the high demand for single-use consumables, not meeting delivery times or volumes. While the majority is happy to have modern solutions like single-use consumables, others are quite sceptical.

In order to understand how popular single-use consumables really are and why this topic is so important, one has to look at some facts and figures.

Single-use Technology – Facts and Figures

Already 90% of pharmaceutical companies are using single-use tubing for disposable applications, 89% disposable filter cartridges, and 85% have single-use bags in use. Impressively, the market analysis resulted in a global compound annual growth rate (GAGR) for single-use technology in the biopharmaceutical segment of over 10% from 2019 to 2024.

The numbers speak for themselves and, as mentioned before, the trend of single-use technology neither has stopped yet nor is it expected to all too soon. And why would it, since single-use technology has a lot of important advantages over other, older systems, especially in cell and gene therapy, but also in CAR T-cell therapy, as Katy Spinks explains:

“The use of single-use systems is particularly important for cell and gene products because maintaining sterility and the aseptic nature of processing is so critical.” Katy Spinks, Cell and Gene expert and member of Single Use Support’s Board of Directors

In contrast to other technologies and systems, such as durable stainless-steel manufacturing installations, single-use technology has major advantages. Bioprocess containers and fluid pathways are preassembled and guarantee sterile handling of biologics. Also, the production line is faster, and the output is increased. While factors like agility, scalability and independent supplier choice are obvious benefits, there are two particular advantages that some may not expect: cost reduction and sustainability.

Reducing costs With Single-Use Technology

One of the main advantages is the financial aspect. As one can see in the provided infographic, the initial investment costs can be lowered by 40%. Additionally, single-use technology has proven to be extremely cost-effective due to several saving opportunities:

Time savings

Energy savings

Water savings

Less instrumentation/utility demand required

Lower investment costs

Tightly connected to the financial aspect is the extremely important topic of sustainability. The main reasons for expense reduction are clearly related to sustainability issues concerning energy consumption. While older systems need more energy and require higher investment costs, single-use technologies provide modern options, more efficiency and cost-reduction.

Sustainability and Single-Use Technologies

Now more than ever, sustainability is becoming increasingly significant. While many critics seem to think that single-use technologies are not “green” enough, it is proven that quite the opposite is the case.

Only 0.01% of annually generated plastic residues are single-use technologies from biopharma. Besides, single-use technologies and their manufacturers have very strict guidelines, which need to be followed.

“Single-use solution providers have to provide single-use systems that can be separated into their base materials by the manufacturer. Products then are easily recyclable.” Thomas Wurm, CEO and founder of Single Use Support.

There are several reasons why single-use technologies are more sustainable than outdated s...

The Labour Force Survey (LFS) data published by the Central Statistics Office show record levels of employment rate and continued recovery from the pandemic in Ireland’s labour market, with 275,200 jobs created in the year to Q1 2022. Employment now stands at 2,505,800, an increase of just over 12 per cent over Q1 2021.

The increase in employment in Q1 2022 maintains the strong momentum in job creation that began in early 2021, with the successful rollout of the vaccination programme and the reopening of economic and social activity as the danger to public health subsided.

Tánaiste, Minister Donohoe & Minister Humphreys welcome latest figures of employment rate

The Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Leo Varadkar TD, said:

“We now have more people employed in the country than at any other point in the history of the state. That is remarkable.

“Throughout the pandemic, we did our best to help businesses survive and hold onto their staff, so that when things opened up they could reopen and thrive. We set a goal to have 2.5m people at work by 2024 and thanks to the incredible fortitude of Irish businesses, their staff, families and communities, we have now exceeded that goal, with 2,505,800 people at work today.

“There has been jobs growth across all regions with the highest increases in the South West and South East, while female labour market participation is at a record high and the youth unemployment rate is at a record low.

“Our aim is to create good quality, secure jobs and to make sure work pays. I’m working on five new workers rights this year, including introducing mandatory sick pay, in addition to moving to a living wage starting next year, and auto enrolment so everyone who’s working has an occupational pension in addition to the state pension, starting in 2023.

“I know these numbers do not reflect the lived reality of some, and that many are still struggling and worried about the future. We continue to work hard to provide people with opportunities for good, sustainable jobs in every part of the country for anyone that wants one.

“We’re making available 50,000 reskilling and upskilling courses through our Recovery Plan, to help move to a more digital and climate resilient economy. We recognise that many of our small businesses are still trying to get back on their feet after a really tough few years and will continue to help them and we are working hard to continue to attract the very best multinational investment to all parts of Ireland.”

Minister for Finance, Paschal Donohoe TD, said:

“I welcome today’s figures which show employment was at a record level, standing at 2.5 million in the first quarter, up more than 160,000 on the first quarter in 2020. These figures are a result of the successful economic policies introduced by the Government during the pandemic to minimize economic scarring and support a robust recovery. It is likely that employment will continue to grow through this year, albeit at a more moderate pace.

“The direction of travel in the labour market towards full employment may add to capacity pressures at a time when the economy is faced with the twin supply-side inflationary shocks from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. While energy prices are outside our control, non-energy inflation is also running at a record high of 4.7 per cent. Our policies will not add to this inflationary pressure”.

The Minister for Social Protection Heather Humphreys, TD said:

“These figures published today represent a new milestone.

“It is particularly welcome to see a significant reduction in youth unemployment, which is now down to 5.6%. This is well below pre-pandemic levels and demonstrates the huge progress being made under ‘Pathways to Work’.

“As we move forward, we will continue to focus our efforts on supporting those who remain un-employed. My Department is here to help and under ‘Pathways to Work’, there are a range of options from training and re-skilling to quality work placements...