{"id":9179,"date":"2022-03-11T15:59:25","date_gmt":"2022-03-11T15:59:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nftandcrypto-news.com\/crypto\/manzi-the-magnificent-from-millionaire-at-16-to-incredible-iot-inventor-cointelegraph-magazine\/"},"modified":"2022-03-11T15:59:36","modified_gmt":"2022-03-11T15:59:36","slug":"manzi-the-magnificent-from-millionaire-at-16-to-incredible-iot-inventor-cointelegraph-magazine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nftandcrypto-news.com\/crypto\/manzi-the-magnificent-from-millionaire-at-16-to-incredible-iot-inventor-cointelegraph-magazine\/","title":{"rendered":"Manzi the magnificent: From millionaire at 16 to incredible IoT inventor \u2013 Cointelegraph Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A self-made millionaire by 16, <\/b>Jonathan Manzi is no ordinary entrepreneur.<\/b> Now 31, the past 15 years have seen him start an energy drink business but shutter it once he realized that there wasn\u2018t enough of the required kava-plant ingredient in the world to feed his ambitions of competing against Gatorade. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Becoming the youngest bar owner in San Francisco at 22, Manzi went on to create a robotic FedEx-like printing office with his company INK and later launch Beyond Protocol, a blockchain that styles itself as the \u201cinternet\u201d for the Internet of Things (IoT).<\/p>\n

Whether it\u2019s a biometric suit that records the vital signs of Cage The Elephant\u2019s lead singer or an electric vehicle charging system spreading across Slovenia, Manzi the magnificent continues to create opportunities for machines and devices to talk and interact via blockchain as they emerge from the old internet.<\/span><\/p>\n

Teenage millionaire<\/h4>\n

Manzi grew up in a small town in Massachusetts \u201cnear Salem, where the witch trials happened many years ago.\u201d His first foray into business came about while in high school in 2007 when he started an internet marketing company called Vintage Network based on ad serving technology. He says the challenge and joy of problem-solving \u201cgot me working 20 hour days to continue to build it.\u201d Solving problems was not the only reward, as Manzi found himself a millionaire at a mere 16 years of age.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of such wealth at a young age, Manzi explains that he largely compartmentalized his success, buying only a used BMW in order to go snowboarding in New Hampshire.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Biometric suit records the vital signs of Cage The Elephant\u2019s lead singer. Source: Beyond Protocol via Twitter<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThere was a kind of a sense of \u2018I\u2018m doing something different versus others, but I hope you know I still feel very connected to the others,\u201d he explains of his experience of trying to live a normal teenage life as an internet millionaire. Eventually, he found \u2018his people\u2019 \u2014 entrepreneurs and hacker-types.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cWe had a $5 million in revenue by the time I finished high school\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As he finished secondary education with a multi-million dollar business, Manzi felt that he had pigeonholed himself in \u201cthis kind of niche internet marketing world.\u201d Wanting to move beyond its limits, he applied to Stanford believing that it was \u201cwhere all the innovation was happening.\u201d Predictably enough, he was accepted.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As Manzi started his management science and engineering and philosophy degree in 2009 in the depths of the Great Recession, he sold his stake in Vintage Network as it faced turbulence due to businesses cutting their marketing spend. He soon also decided to drop out of university because though he enjoyed the academic environment, he felt he \u201ccould probably read those books and do it on a different schedule\u201d while continuing on his entrepreneurial journey.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

The journey continues<\/h4>\n

One of the projects he dreamed up was an energy drink created with kava, a fruit indigenous to the South Pacific, which he says lowers the stress hormones in athletes, a claim supported by research Manzi participated in at Stanford\u2019s Human Performance Lab.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, Manzi discovered a roadblock after one of his schoolmates traveled to Tonga on a kava buying mission only to find out that the supply chain was limited in such a way that \u201cif we were to have the success of Gatorade, it would be impossible nearly impossible to consistently supply\u201d enough kava to keep stores stocked. To further complicate matters, the plant and its sale are heavily regulated in many countries.<\/span><\/p>\n

Next, Manzi looked to get involved with a printing kiosk business in Slovenia which aimed to replace print shops. He worked with the company\u2019s founder Denis Benic to bring the firm to Silicon Valley with Manzi taking a CEO role. Still, after spending three months in the capital Ljubljana trying to get the expansion deal through, the board rejected his plan.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite this, he\u2019d convinced Benic, who soon left Slovenia, to live in Manzi\u2019s apartment while building a new business called <\/span>Ink<\/span>, \u201can automated FedEx office,\u201d together. \u201cIn the meantime, I bought a bar in San Francisco and I was the youngest bar owner at 22,\u201d Manzi recalls of the few months before Benic arrived.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Jonathan
Manzi the magnificent is highly inventive.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Manzi knew about and \u201cphilosophically celebrated\u201d Bitcoin since 2012, having previously followed the \u201clibertarian\u201d <\/span>eGold<\/span> project while he was in high school. Despite this, he did not see it as an attractive investment and instead \u201cbacked into\u201d blockchain technology through the cybersecurity needs of HP printers related to his printing business, in which he worked to make enterprise printers less hackable through a system of validating nodes and hardware signatures. Soon, he began to believe that blockchain was the answer to \u201cthe number one issue in Internet of Things (IoT) and will be over the next decade,\u201d that is, the question of how exactly interconnected devices will be able to best talk to each other in a reliable way.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cGetting into blockchain was an exercise in finding a solution for HP\u2019s cybersecurity problems and getting immersed in things like provenance and supply chain management.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The problem, according to Manzi, is that \u201cTCP\/IP protocol \u2014 the internet \u2014 did a fantastic job connecting nodes and servers but it never anticipated a moment like this,\u201d he says, explaining that everything from satellites in the sky to smart pills that track vitals inside someone\u2018s body needs to be able to identify themselves. \u201cYou have the information superhighway, but you don\u2019t identify the cars on it,\u201d Manzi says of the current internet \u2014 but with blockchain integration, each unit can become connected.<\/span><\/p>\n