History

The Dream

 PublicDropout launched in January 2022 as the result of a dream to start a business that began many years prior. Since a young age, PublicDropout Founder & CEO, Joe Restuccia, always wanted to launch a business. His earliest desire can be traced all the way back to his 8th grade yearbook where he listed his ambition as “CEO”. For years after he struggled with developing a business idea. It wasn’t until November 2017 that a hobby Joe started for fun would eventually become his true passion and business idea.

The Decision

In September 2016, tired of working endless hours as an external auditor for Big 4 Accounting Firm “Ernst & Young”, Joe decided to quit his job in search of a new one that would allow him more time to focus on his true passion of owning his own business. This decision effectively ended Joe’s accounting career, which he had spent the prior 8 years building by becoming both a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE) and by receiving Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Accountancy from Pepperdine University and Bentley University respectively. It was this act of “dropping out of Public Accounting” which serves as the basis for the Company’s name “PublicDropout”.

In April 2017 Joe began a new job, with normal working hours, which allowed him the ability to pursue business ideas in his free time. From starting an Amazon dropship company to reselling items bought from garage sales to writing a book on how to land a job with a Big 4 Accounting Firm, Joe considered every passive income idea under the sun. Then in September 2017, Joe was introduced to cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.

The Motivation

Shortly after being introduced to blockchain Joe fell in love with the technology. Researching all the different projects quickly became his favorite hobby, and the more he researched, the more he fell in love. While he saw the improvements blockchain could make to many existing systems and saw the benefits it could provide to those who used them; not everyone agreed. As Joe’s passion for blockchain increased, so did the criticism. Many friends and family members laughed when Joe told them his belief in the future of blockchain and many questioned his decisions, especially his investments. Some even questioned his mental state, with one friend believing he should be institutionalized. While the negativity hurt, Joe was unwavered in his belief. He used the negativity as motivation and continued researching, investing and building his blockchain portfolio.

The Idea

Flash forward 3.5 years to March 2021 and that is when Joe purchased his first node. Little did he know this would be the first of hundreds and serve as the inspiration for his business. Joe quickly learned that many new blockchain projects seek individuals/businesses to operate nodes to help make their project more secure and more decentralized. While nodes have initial and maintenance costs, many projects will pay out rewards as an incentive to operate their nodes. Usually, those rewards are the project’s own token or cryptocurrency. As these typically are new projects, the token’s value isn’t worth very much early on, however over time if the project does well, the token’s value may increase, thus outweighing the costs of operating the node. As Joe purchased more nodes he saw a business opportunity and realized this was what his business would be.

The Business

Now that Joe had his business idea, he had to put the moves in motion to make it an actual business. To do so, he first decided to expand the number of the nodes operated. He researched many projects and decided to only operate nodes for projects he truly believed in the mission and use case. Starting with his first node purchase in March 2021, he ended the year with over 100 nodes under management.

Next Joe decided to expand the areas in which the business would be involved. While operating nodes would be the primary focus and revenue generator of the business, Joe wanted to have additional avenues for income. As such, he added 3 business activities (now called “Divisions”). They are participating in DAOs, owning NFTs and investing in Pre-IPO companies.

Operating as a Sole Proprietorship in 2021, the business finally launched in January 2022 as a Limited Liability Company (LLC). Thus, PublicDroput was born.

To continue following PublicDropout’s journey, please regularly check out the News page for business updates.