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:

1. 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.
2. In recent hacking events with ICO, security issues are being called into question.
3. 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