Born out of Crypto Valley in Switzerland, Gremis are communications specialists who are principally focused on converting traffic into leverageable communities for the fintech industry. Paying homage to its name, the Catalonian word for ‘guild’, Gremis is an association of digital nomads and freelancers brought together by the same dedication to preserve humanity in an increasingly digital age.

We sat down with Managing Director Samuel Dionne, to discuss how Gremis helps companies capitalise on their communications.
The premise of Gremis
“I cannot even predict what I’ll eat for lunch, let alone where fintech will take us in the next few years.” Samuel reveals the premise of Gremis is to provide a communications service that doesn’t compete with new technology, but adopts it to complement what is irreplaceable: the human touch.
Gremis’ toolbox yields an umbrella of services from content writing to social media management, and consulting to customer support; however, everything flows back to one word…communities. “We are all about communities,” explains Samuel, who adds “With new technology comes innovative ways to communicate, and especially in the fintech world, that is via communities. Two-way communications, live and instant chats, are great examples of this direct way to discuss with the user base of a company.”
Commanding communities
Where many see digitisation as a competing force to the human touch, Samuel sees it as a means to preserving human interaction rather than its end. “With new technology comes innovative new ways to communicate,” offers Samuel, who views online communities as opportunities to create value by creating conduits for companies to fulfil their consumers’ need to feel empowered and valued. As competition in the financial services becomes fierce, Gremis navigates and services communities to enable companies “to mean more than just money and be worth something to the public”. Therein lies Gremis’ value added proposition: specialists that understand the varied and powerful use of communities to magnify a company’s human touch to build their worth. Samuel describes the process as “Converting traffic into retained users into an engaged and active community.”
Besides building and servicing communities, Samuel and Gremis educate companies in various fields including integration into the blockchain era and leveraging the ubiquitous benefits of communities. One such story details how Gremis worked with with SEBA, a Swiss banking services solutions provider, to help them leverage their community and raise CHF 100 million in private funding.
Guild of the gifted
Gremis is built around what Samuel coins “the model of the future” and is where he sees a real advantage over competitors. “We are a community of like-minded but diversely skilled individuals,” who accept contracts where they can add value. Members of this carefully curated “digital family” are encouraged to travel the world, attend events, pick their hours and choose their projects, all the while enhancing Gremis’ multi-faceted understanding of how to command communities and communicate in the digital era.
This unique model enables Gremis to operate with “almost no overheads”, and their costs are further reduced by individually contracting members for suitable projects. Given this structure, Gremis is also able to operate with unbridled flexibility and provides everything from once-off consultancy to ongoing support and management. This was no mistake as Gremis aims to foster an environment that is “super open to all brainstorming,” and allows clients’ diverse needs to be met with communications management expertise that is directed “by the members that comprise the company”.
Samuel believes Gremis’ greatest strength is its community of passionate, young members who “embraced the digital mentality that comes with the technology that evolved around them”. To capitalise on this knowledge-based edge, Gremis focuses on working with fintech and blockchain based companies as “those are the communities we understand best and know how to best utilise.”
Removing common denominators
Although unwilling or unable to forecast the future of communications, Samuel has seen common denominators pervade the latest technological revolution and is bullish certain ideals will continue to flourish.
Noting the recent trend towards decentralisation and the emergence of AI, he is certain that “What won’t evolve is people’s need for empowerment and human interaction.” He notes the success of bitcoin and the empowerment that it provided a very interactive online community, and is building Gremis towards embodying those very values.
While navigating and servicing communities is Gremis’ current modus operandi, Samuel is waiting for the next opportunity technology brings, and is actively looking to expand their services. One such project is leveraging AI to complement the distribution of the human touch (particularly in customer service and social media management) but the key will lie in technology complementing human interaction rather than replacing it.
Currently Gremis is fully self-sustainable and servicing clients predominantly out of Switzerland and North America, but with a keen eye on European expansion.