You may be thinking that I have missed a 0 in the title, but I’m not gonna talk about the recent investment that we got, along with excellent partners. I’m gonna talk about the first investment that Zignaly got back in December 2019, so you can see what we have done so far.
Smart Money
When you are an entrepreneur, you struggle most of the time; you usually have no resources other than the co-founders. So it’s funny when somebody comes to you and tells you not to accept an investment that doesn’t add more value to your project than the investment itself. You will hold on to a burning nail if that gives you a little more time.
But smart money can make a difference. If you are aligned with your investors in the vision and they get involved in it: experience, resources, insights, contacts, etc., you will save a lot of time, which I think is your most important resource at that point.
Disrupt.com
We got this from our first investor, Disrupt.com, and I think this isn’t easy to get. Most of the investors will tell you about their vast network, their infinite resources, and so. Also, many of them will respond to any question you may have and help you with some of your requests, but not so many will proactively help you.
Before onboarding Disrupt.com, I had lunch with one partner of one the Disrupt.com’s company. The talk with him gave me a lot of information about what to expect from them. He told me that if they get involved in the project, it will make a difference, and he couldn’t be more right. One of them, Rafay, became our co-founder, covering our weakness with his finance knowledge. We also have regular sessions with other group members about support, metrics, marketing, security, introductions, and much more. They usually detect where we could be doing it better, and they help us to improve it. Also, very important, always asking and making clear that you decide to take their advice/help.
What we did with the investment.
Jobs
In the beginning, we were only two co-founders and a frontend developer; with the new investment, we provided jobs to twelve people (and we became thirteen during the way). This growth happened during the COVID-19 pandemic. We have always been working remotely, so we added people worldwide: Vietnam, Pakistan, France, Spain, Andorra, and Canada.
I mentioned that we became thirteen during the way, and that’s because one member of the team had a baby. We offered her eight months maternity (paid) leave (she returned in less than two months). Personally, this has been an important milestone for me because somehow, you start to realize that now you are responsible for that baby too.
Actions
Business Model
We launched Zignaly during the summer of 2018, first, free to use, but then we started charging to validate if we had a business. We raised the price three times, and the growth was attractive. Still, we realized that if we wanted to offer value to our users, we had to remove the upfront payments and look for alternative ways to monetize our platform (Note: there is nothing wrong with upfront payments, and many people could discard your product if you don’t charge because they feel that it doesn’t have value, but given our niche and business, there were other more exciting ways to monetize that we wanted to explore).
We implemented success-fee with a profit-sharing model, where the users and the platform earn together — a win-win solution.
UX/UI
We still have work to do, but we invest a good portion from the investment in redoing our frontend, hiring a UX/UI agency.
New functionalities
Following a lean approach, we improve the service, going from a signal service where the user needs specific knowledge to use it to a fully unattended service. The user, with a few clicks, can start getting the platform’s value.
Results
- The platform grew from 1,347 users to 66,103.
- We almost reached $2 billion in volume trade.
- More than 4.5 million operations were done.
- Only with profit-sharing, and only in 4 months, more than $900k in profits, were shared.
- We grew our social communities to more than 6k users.
Step back
It is not that after getting the investment, nothing went wrong. During the summer of 2020, we started to look for a new round. We got the attention of many parties, but nothing specific and aligned with our vision. Some of the parties with whom we talked (a big player in our market) suggested that they may acquire us, but luckily they didn’t formalize anything. I say luckily because we didn’t show our potential yet, so it would have been cheapest to acquire us.
At that point, we were running out of cash, so we had a meeting with the entire team, explaining the situation. One of our principles on Zignaly is transparency: for users, investors, and of course, the team. We explained the situation: We had some prospects, but nothing materialized, so the reality is that we would be out of business in two months (we wouldn’t because the co-founders would have remained, and after talking to them, I know that many of them too).
Then I had a one-one conversation with each of them, explaining the situation individually again and making it clear that we understood that they may have responsibilities and couldn’t afford to lose their jobs. We offered them to help find new jobs if they decide to leave but that we needed to know with whom we can count. Nobody left.
It was then when we decided, instead of looking for equity investment, to launch our token, something that we had been talking about since we met in Singapore at the beginning of the year (2020, just a few weeks before the lockdowns).
To survive during the months of preparations, we secured a $240,000 loan.
What comes next?
We launched what we call profit-sharing at the end of 2020, probably in the best momentum ever, which gave us fantastic traction. We kept talking with the investors with whom we initiated the conversation during the summer, and many of them onboarded in the new investment. We had so good acceptance that we had the luxury of selecting the investors we thought were more aligned with our vision and could contribute more to our community’s success. I’m excited about the partnerships that we have got.
We expect to have more presence in certain local markets, we already hiring people for covering languages and thanks to our new partners we are deploying a marketing strategy there.
More people are coming, if you like what we are doing, we’ll love to hear from you.
Growth and expansion.
No coming back!
Morgan Stanley and other big players from the old financial system have recently (better late than never) started to talk about including cryptocurrencies in an investor’s portfolio.
Zignaly is the medium that the retail investor will use to allocate that portion of their investment’s portfolio to cryptocurrencies.
