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As one of the youngest people in the tech world’s history to earn $1 million dollars at 16 years old, Jonathan Manzi is a successful CEO and innovator. From the advertising agency he founded as a high school student to his latest company Beyond Protocol, Manzi has proven his entrepreneurial prowess.
Manzi’s Journey to Success
Jonathan Manzi was born in 1991 in a small town in Massachusetts. He started his first company as a 15-year-old high school student. The company he established was an advertising agency called Vintage Network. Vintage Network’s job was to find new customers for big-name companies like Netflix, Blockbuster, and Visa. They did that by simplifying marketing techniques to draw in new customers such as giving away freebies like laptops and iPods. In 2008, just one year after its conception, Vintage Network grossed about $3.2 million in revenue.
The massive success of Vintage Network took a toll on Manzi. Staying up most of the night to communicate with his team in Romania and managing two offices in Boston was not easy for someone so young. With all the stress that came with running a company and attending school, Manzi mentioned in an interview with Stanford magazine that he loved it. In that interview, he says,” When I’m actually not in a chaotic situation, it feels abnormal. But I love the chaos.” Thriving on chaos is what led Manzi to be the innovator he is today.
After high school, Jonathan Manzi enrolled in Stanford University as a Management Science and Engineering major. In his freshman year, he decided to defer his studies to manage Vintage Network. Three years later, Vintage Network was dissolved. That was not the end of Jonathan Manzi’s entrepreneurship. Soon after, he founded a company called Ink, which he called an automated FedEx office with Slovenian entrepreneur Denis Benic. Manzi made Ink with college students and millennials in mind. With Ink, you can go to a SmartStation and print, share, and send files with a touch of a button. You only need a mobile device! This ingenious start-up makes printing hassle-free for everyone.
With years of experience and a growing company under his belt, Jonathan Manzi didn’t stop there. Manzi went on to seek a different venture in blockchain.
Beyond Platform and Internet of Things
Manzi founded Beyond Protocol in 2018, which is a developing distributed ledger technology (DLT). The aim of Beyond Protocol is to create a decentralized security layer that is more resistant to cyberattacks. Less risk would help in getting blockchain into the mainstream audience. As a person who thrives from chaos, blockchain is the perfect new venture for Manzi, with all of cryptocurrencies’ highs and lows.
Manzi plans on getting blockchain more secure by the use of Internet of Things (IoT). Internet of things is a system of interrelated computing devices such as mechanical and digital machines that have a UID, which is a unique identifier that allows these devices to transfer data without the use of human to human or human to computer communication.
IoT has a broad definition on what a thing is. A thing is any man-made or natural object that can have an IP address (Internet Protocol), that has the ability to transfer data over a network.This can be a vehicle with a sensor or even a pet with a biochip.
IoT works by creating an ecosystem of web-enabled smart devices that uses embedded systems like sensors to collect, send and act on data. This data is shared by connecting to an IoT gateway where data is sent to the cloud or shared with other related devices so they can act on the information they receive. Most of this work is done without human intervention, making life easier for users.
IoT can be used to automate homes or companies can use it to reduce labor costs by automating processes. IoT can even help farmers by using sensors that can collect data on rainfall, temperature and soil content that would help automate farming techniques.
IoT is used to make wearable devices with sensors that collect and analyze user data. This data can be sent to other technologies to make the user’s life easier. Beyond Protocol recently partnered with Vanderbilt University to create a biometric suit with sensors that detect vital health signs and send the information to researchers. This data can be used to learn about the user’s mental health and thus makes healthcare more accurate.
IoT is an important technology that can benefit every industry and ordinary people. Under Manzi’s guidance, Beyond Protocol and IoT can achieve great success.
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