Quorum Media spotlights three founders to watch in fintech, Web3 and tech

Quorum Media has published the first installment of a research series on entrepreneurs it says could shape investor attention over the next two to three years. The report highlights Alexander Guseff of Tectum, Hicham Chahine of NIP Group and Ermo Eero of IronWallet, with future installments planned.

Why it matters: - Quorum Media is framing the report as a forward-looking signal for where investor attention may shift across fintech, Web3 and emerging technology. - The publication highlights founders whose products, operating decisions and regulatory positions may influence how their businesses grow over the next two to three years. - The report is not a ranking and is not presented as an endorsement or investment recommendation.

What happened: - Quorum Media published the first installment of its "Top Entrepreneurs to Watch" research series on August 15, 2026. - The report covers three founders: Alexander Guseff of Tectum, Hicham Chahine of NIP Group and Ermo Eero of IronWallet. - Quorum’s research desk says it selected the founders using public filings, product release histories, independent media coverage and direct statements made in interviews and public appearances. - The company said the order of the profiles reflects publication sequence, not relative standing.

The details: - The methodology gives extra weight to longevity, decision record and independent verifiability. - Quorum says it favors products still in active use years after launch over products that only drew launch-day attention. - The research desk also weighs choices that favored harder paths over easier, higher-visibility ones. - Claims in the report are cross-checked against public sources where possible. - Claims that originate mainly from a company or founder are identified as such rather than treated as independently confirmed. - Quorum says Alexander Guseff is founder and CEO of Tectum, which sits under CrispMind, Ltd., an intellectual property holding company he also founded. - Tectum’s flagship product, SoftNote, has been in active use for more than three years. - SoftNote is described as a fee-less payment system built for everyday spending. - SoftNote uses passcode-based ownership transfer on top of existing Bitcoin wallets, so value can move between two people without a fresh on-chain entry each time. - SoftNote also handles other digital assets, including fiat. - SoftNote ePoS turns a smartphone into a contactless payment terminal through a dedicated software application, without extra hardware. - TectumKeys is a hardware-based private key generation engine available through tectumkeys.com, and Quorum says Tectum is the only Web3 team to have produced its own encryption hardware device. - TectumKeys is designed to resist quantum brute-force attacks and uses genuine random number generation rather than pseudo-random methods. - Tectum Labs lets outside founders tokenize a business without building settlement systems from scratch. - Tectum Explorer maintains a public ledger of network activity, including SoftNote bills, Labs tokens and the Tectum 4.2 blockchain system. - TET is the core network token and TCT is the governance token. - Quorum says Tectum’s team includes backgrounds in secure messaging, user authentication and distributed data storage. - Guseff moved the roadmap toward usability after the company was already leading a widely tracked speed benchmark. - The company states throughput at 3.5 million transactions per second. - Guseff writes for Cointelegraph on blockchain scalability and payment adoption. - He was named Best Innovator of the Year at the 2024 Entrepreneur Agility Awards for SoftNote’s role in making crypto payments usable day to day. - Yahoo Finance has separately recognized Tectum as one of the fastest blockchains in operation. - Hicham Chahine entered finance at 18 and later managed hedge fund investments at Formue, the Nordic region’s largest wealth management firm. - In 2016, Chahine acquired Ninjas in Pyjamas when the esports organization was effectively bankrupt. - Chahine stayed through the turnaround and helped build the brand into a business Forbes reported at roughly $100 million in revenue. - Ninjas in Pyjamas later became NIP Group through a 2023 merger and went public on NASDAQ under the ticker NIPG, with Chahine as co-CEO alongside Mario Ho. - NIP Group’s public listing brings SEC reporting obligations and audited financials. - In mid-2025, NIP Group moved into Bitcoin mining and described the shift as becoming a "next-gen digital infrastructure company." - NIP Group’s hash rate rose from 3.11 EH/s at launch in July 2025 to 11.3 EH/s by November. - Quorum says that made NIP Group roughly the 12th-largest publicly traded Bitcoin miner globally and the largest in the MENA region, based on public hash-rate data. - NIP also launched a $DOJO fan token with Chiliz for its esports community. - Chahine operates from Abu Dhabi, where NIP Group works under a partnership framework with the Abu Dhabi Investment Office. - Quorum says Ermo Eero is CEO of IronWallet, operated by INWAY AG in Liechtenstein since 2017. - IronWallet was shaped by a crypto loss suffered by a founding team member in an exchange hack. - IronWallet is non-custodial, so seed phrases stay on the user’s device and are never transmitted to company servers. - IronWallet says it cannot freeze, access or recover user funds. - IronWallet requires no registration and no KYC verification. - Eero recently argued that the US CLARITY Act is important for domestic capital but not yet a global standard for crypto regulation. - In January 2026, IronWallet became a confirmed partner in the WalletConnect Pay rollout. - WalletConnect Pay is live across more than 120 countries through the Ingenico payment terminal network.

Between the lines: - Quorum’s selection criteria favor operational durability and decision quality over pure size or fundraising totals. - That approach elevates founders who made unusual strategic bets and kept products alive beyond the first wave of attention. - Chahine’s move from esports into Bitcoin mining stands out because it combines a public-company structure with a fast pivot into industrial-scale infrastructure. - Eero’s profile stands out because IronWallet’s privacy-first design is paired with a more coordination-minded view of regulation than many no-KYC wallet operators express. - Guseff’s profile suggests Quorum is rewarding infrastructure decisions that improved usability, not just technical speed.

What's next: - Quorum Media said additional installments will follow as the research desk identifies more founders meeting the report’s criteria. - Media inquiries about the underlying research can be sent to hello@quorum-media.com. - Quorum said readers should conduct their own due diligence before acting on any information in the report.

The bottom line: - Quorum’s first watchlist spotlights founders it sees as useful signals for where crypto, fintech and digital infrastructure may be heading next.