Podcast episode #12 – From physics to entrepreneurship in digital product, with Jesse Szepieniec, the founder of PingCoin and PocketRevolutions

Jesse founded his first company doing webdesign during the early years of his studies in physics. He soon realized, he didn’t enjoy the client facing part of the work and stopped working with clients.
His next steps in entrepreneurship came as an answer to a simple physics question, which lead Jesse to establish PingCoin. Few years down the road, Jesse founded Pocket Revolutions out of his passion for digital products.

Formulating a problem the right way matters

“Given the sound of an unknown coin, can you determine what coin is it? If yes, can you tell if it is fake one?” Those were the questions Jesse tried to solve fresh out of college. There seemed to be no clean solution. Many coin sounds appear to be indistinguishable from one another, no matter how much machine learning you bring to bear. This led Jesse to give up on the idea behind PingCoin – but only for a while.

Some years later Jesse realized, he could approach the problem differently. Rather than trying to recognize a coin by its sound – the intractable problem that had stumped him before, Jesse’s PingCoin App asks the user to identify the coin *first*. For the chosen coin, the app will provide you with feedback if its sound frequency is that of an authentic coin. This is how you go from physics to a digital product. Thanks to the simplicity, Jesse recently celebrated his first 1 thousand active users on Android.

Further down the entrepreneurial path

Lessons from PingCoin made Jesse realize his passion for product development. After a successful assignment for FIFA, Jesse decided to co-found Pocket Revolutions in Basel, Switzerland. With Pocket Revolutions, Jesse helps clients go from an idea to a digital product. His analytical character and his 8+ years of experience with design and development of digital products enables Jesse to deliver value to his clients.

Next steps

Jesse has an international background, yet starting from scratch in Switzerland has its own challenges. You can hear all about it in our podcast episode.

You can also check out Jesse’s
agency: pocketrevolutions.com
and his app at: pingcoin.com.

If you prefer a direct contact with Jesse, you can reach out to Jesse via his Twitter account: @jessems

…And if you are curious as what is Help’n’Trade, read our blog post, where we introduced Help’n’Trade.

If you want to stay in touch or appear on the podcast, contact us via our social media channels or drop us an e-mail on: contact@helpandtrade.com.
Also, don’t forget to check our application: https://helpntrade.com

00:00 – Introduction
00:50 – Jesse’s path from physics to entrepreneurship
02:15 – What is Pingcoin
04:20 – Recognizing a coin with its sound is possible, but to create a product, you need the right definition of the problem
06:15 – 2nd attempt for PingCoin
08:00 – How does PingCoin work?
10:15 – Use case to counterfeit fake coins
11:30 – Experience from working for FIFA
13:35 – Transition towards product design and how was the transition
15:15 – Starting a company in Switzerland and its challenges
17:00 – Difference between creating a product in Switzerland and Netherland
18:15 – Plans for 2020 with Pocket Revolutions and personal goals
19:30 – Start with a scoping exercise before you start creating a product for your client
22:40 – Scaling up PingCoin
25:40 – More on counterfeiting fake coins
26:45 – Name 1 person you’d like to talk to and what would you ask
28:00 – Where to connect with Jesse