LinkedIn Executive Leaves to Join Blockchain Start-Up, Which Intends to Create Global Wi-Fi

Dylan Sharkey, LinkedIn’s former Head of Sales Solutions for the Middle East and North Africa, has joined the IUNGO Network Board of Directors as a Senior Advisor to the Executive team.

​On his rationale for choosing to join IUNGO, Dylan explained that after a successful career at LinkedIn and fruitful investments in a number of projects around Europe, he is now extremely selective with the startups he becomes involved with. “What attracted me was the strong management team that has executed successfully on multiple ventures, combined with the technical genius and vision of the CTO Andrius Mačys. On top of this, the tremendous business opportunity to disrupt the Global ISP market using blockchain powered technology proved frankly irresistible.”

​“Dylan joins with invaluable experience of contributing to the stellar growth of LinkedIn when it was still a fast growing startup before the successful IPO in 2011”, said IUNGO Network CEO Ričardas Bernotavičius. Dylan was based at LinkedIn’s EMEA HQ in Dublin Ireland, before being assigned to launch the Dubai office as employee number two and scaling it up to over 100 employees in the Middle East today.

Holding a business degree from the prestigious Trinity College Dublin, Dylan also brings deep governmental sector expertise, having worked at Enterprise Ireland in Dubai – the commercial division of the Irish Embassy in the UAE. Additionally, he has extensive entrepreneurial and investment experience dealing with the UK, Japan and Central Europe. ​

Dylan brings a wealth of experience in Sales Management, Enterprise and Government partnerships, hiring top talent and scaling revenue in hyper-growth startup environments. He will leverage this at IUNGO by advising management in these areas, thus helping to build a world class team while scaling the commercial side of the business so that they can hit the ground running post ICO and accelerate through their technology and revenue milestones. 
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The Global Internet Service Providers industry is one of the fastest-growing industries in the global economy. According to IBIS World’s research, the annual growth rate between 2012 and 2017 was 8.8%.

The majority of Internet service providers are multi billion dollar Telecommunications companies like AT&T, Verizon and China mobile.
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Most Telcos and ISP’s are regionally based with no convenient services for today’s new generation of freelance workers, digital nomads, travelers, vloggers etc. It is a significant problem for them to access reliable and sufficient internet services outside of their home country. Wi-Fi password hunting, filling forms in airports and public spaces, unknown security or payment options, poor download and upload speeds and data usage restrictions causing not just inconvenience but a measurable and material waste of time, energy and money. The solution could be a global ISP provider. This is how the IUNGO vision was born.

​IUNGO is a globally distributed wireless internet service provider built with the help of a worldwide community. They are Bootstrapping a community where everyone can assume responsibilities and benefit from the associated rewards for running parts of the service delivery infrastructure. Members can contribute by installing Public Wi-Fi access points on their premises and/or running parts of the service infrastructure.

IUNGO Network will rely on the existing physical Internet infrastructure to carry end-user traffic and will form an overlay network with unified end-user identification, authentication and billing systems. IUNGO will use the Ethereum network to build trusted, transparent accounting and payment infrastructure. Mobile applications will enable low granularity service usage accounting and compensation for services rendered. Additionally to the software solution, hardware will be offered as an option, with pre-setup routers available for those seeking a consumer friendly plug and play experience.
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IUNGO team will not limit itself to the technical research and development needed to deploy the network at global scale, but will also build worldwide recognition of the brand.