SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders 811: Crypto: After $2m ICO, He's Building the Bloomberg Terminal for Crypto
Oct 13, 2017
24:57
Maksim Balashevich. He's a former IBM software engineer and co-founder of a successful, hosting business in Belarus. He now manages the overall product and leads the Santiment team. He's a veteran leader, having spent more than a decade trading successfully using Santiment and Elliot Wave as analysis. He's also a guru in yoga and meditation.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? – N/A
- What CEO do you follow? – Nick Szabo
- Favorite online tool? — Blockchain and Reddit
- How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6
- If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Move faster to the same goal
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 01:53 – Nathan introduces Maksim to the show
- 02:30 – Santiment builds information for the emerging cryptocurrency token economy
- 03:30 – When Santiment had their ICO, they've established a token for their platform
- 03:36 – To get access to Santiment, you can buy the monthly subscription by paying in dollars or by depositing your tokens into the platform
- 04:12 – There's no revenue on the SaaS side yet
- 04:33 – Santiment has raised $500K in July 2017
- 05:03 – Santiment has sold 45K tokens
- 05:17 – Santiment's token name is San
- 05:44 – Santiment got 720 participants on their token sale
- 06:14 – Santiment has 8 full-time people and a few contractors
- 06:29 – Santiment hasn't liquidated their funds yet
- 06:43 – Santiment got 12K ethereum from their presell, which they used to fund the development of the business
- 07:44 – Maksim is hoping to start charging in 3 months, but it seems like it will take 6 months
- 08:10 – From the community's response, Maksim can't charge for Santiment yet and people are asking for specific kinds of data
- 09:34 – It's not that they will not charge, but they can't charge just yet
- 10:00 – Maksim shares how Santiment works in the crypto economy
- 11:15 – Prior to ICO, Santiment didn't take additional capital and just used the presell
- 11:46 – Maksim shares how they came up with the number of tokens to issue
- 11:49 – For crowdsale participants, it is 54% of their outstanding
- 12:04 – For presell participants, for every 12K ether contributed, Santiment will issue them 50M tokens
- 12:21 – The rest will be part of the team's tokens, which is currently locked
- 13:55 – Maksim hasn't seen any active competitors yet
- 14:34 – Iconomi is one of Santiment's partners and is also in the same space
- 16:16 – Maksim's prediction for the next blockchain that will do well
- 16:48 – Maksim personally likes Polkadot which connects blockchains
- 17:10 – There are also projects that introduce the token economy
- 17:24 – There's a growing number of blockchain companies providing decentralized storage solutions
- 18:17 – Maksim shares the latest issue on hacking in cryptocurrency where $7M was stolen
- 21:00 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
- When to charge for your service isn't an easy to decision to make—you have to consider the community and the value that they want to get from the company.
- In recent hacking events with ICO, security issues are being called into question.
- If possible, start working towards your goals as EARLY as possible.
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