Lee Hills, chief executive officer of Solutions Hub, a professional services firm advising gambling and cryptocurrency businesses, opened up an interesting debate recently when he posed the question: ‘Are we leaving behind some valuable parts of the workforce as we move forward in technology, regulation and skills?’
Lee, who is also a board member of Digital Isle of Man, recorded a video for the agency’s online newsletter. In it he said: ‘We’ve done incredibly well as an island to have economic growth year on year…and we need to continue to do that.
‘The term blockchain or crypto encompasses an incredibly broad sector but there are quite a few opportunities within that space that the Isle of Man is very well positioned to capitalise on, both in terms of the quality of our regulation and quality of an openness of our regulators, and also of the skill sets that we have in the island.
‘Unfortunately whether it be technology, whether it be regulation, whether it be certain skills, a lot of quality parts of the workforce might be left behind.’
I went to see Lee, to ask him about this.
‘That was picked up quite heavily, perhaps because I was the only one who spoke about it,’ he says.
The point he was making is that moving to a career in a sector as new, and continually evolving, as blockchain is a daunting prospect. It takes, not just training, but confidence, even a leap of faith.
It’s something Lee knows a bit about. He turned his back on a career in corporate services to set up Solutions Hub.
He says with a wry smile: ‘I spent more than a decade advising people how to set up businesses and operate them so I just felt it was time I had to do it for myself to prove that I can do it as well.’
Solutions Hub was incorporated on June 23, 2016, the day of the Brexit vote. Lee had done some work in gaming and for crypto exchanges for his previous employer and decided that this was an area in which he could find a profitable niche.
He recalls:…
