SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders 800: Crypto: He's Advisor Behind Worlds Top ICO's
Oct 2, 2017
29:45
Ransu Salovaara. He's the CEO of TokenMarket, the leading token sale advisory and information hub based on Gibraltar. He's also an advisor for numerous blockchain startups.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? – Digital Gold
- What CEO do you follow? – Travis Kalanick
- Favorite online tool? — Coinbase
- How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8
- If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Don't be so arrogant, don't think that you know it all. Listen more, talk less
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 01:28 – Nathan introduces Ransu to the show
- 02:00 – In February 2014, Ransu's friend called him and asked if he knew about bitcoin
- 02:14 – His friend told him to get into bitcoin
- 02:50 – Ransu is like the Bloomberg of crypto stuff
- 03:07 – Ransu gets money from the commission of their services to raise money for startups
- 03:15 – Ransu is involved in Firstblood
- 03:55 – Ransu shares what he knows about Joe Zhou of Firstblood
- 04:21 – Christoph of DAO was in Episode 781 of The Top
- 04:55 – TokenMarket didn't exist yet during the DAO
- 05:15 – Ransu is getting 7% of their deal with the startup
- 05:52 – Ransu shares how they advise startups who are looking into raising money
- 06:28 – Ransu believes that startups focus more on building their company
- 06:46 – TokenMarket markets ICOs by going into different community platforms
- 06:52 – BitcoinTalk, Twitter, Facebook and Telegram are some of the community platforms
- 07:33 – There are 5000 investors in the ICO field
- 08:40 – Ransu shares why startups won't just use ether
- 09:38 – Civic is one of the ICOs that TokenMarket just recently advised
- 09:57 – Civic has a KYC system
- 10:24 – Civic has raised $33M
- 11:07 – TokenMarket has advised Edgeless, which is their TokenMarket's first ICO
- 11:23 – Edgeless raised $3M
- 13:25 – For the first time, Ransu feels that the USA is falling behind in the crypto world
- 13:58 – Ransu's rule of thumb for startups
- 14:50 – Nathan shares why he thinks ICOs are a scam, and how they actually are not scams
- 17:00 – The hype of crypto explained
- 17:20 – Ransu believes that crypto is the beginning of the new digital assets era
- 18:48 – Every month, the market gets better
- 19:15 – Nathan shares what he thinks about Uber's surge pricing and its relativity with ICOs and the crypto world
- 20:08 – Modern day businesses and startups are the best concepts to go launch ICOs or token issuance
- 21:38 – There are ICOs with the same concept as Uber and Airbnb, but are still not at par with the two
- 22:40 – Ransu often receives different pitches and some have concepts that are difficult to execute
- 23:00 – An ICO fail because of the team, the market, the demand, their failure to deliver and lack of tokens
- 24:45 – Transitioning from a regular startup to an ICO is difficult
- 27:20 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
- Companies looking into their ICO should focus on building their business and strengthening its foundation and service first and foremost.
- Not all concepts work for an ICO.
- Cryptocurrency is the beginning of the new digital asset era.
Resources Mentioned:
- Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
- The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
- GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
- Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
- Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you're doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
- Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
- Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
- Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
- Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives