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