ccFOUND Archive
ccFOUND Archive
Piotr Michalak
•2 years

Report for 3Q 2023

Dear investors and fans of ccFound!

1. Where are we - statistics

We currently have 32,886 registered users on ccFound with confirmed registration (out of 46,800 total registrations). Since June 1 this year, 5,384 people have confirmed their registration. Most new users come from advertising on TikTok and Facebook, from Google searches and from viral marketing (referrals).

On April 20 this year, I wrote that our marketplace had launched . So far, 42 trainers have joined our platform and have published 108 products. As of October 2, 2023, the value of all courses listed on the ccFound marketplace is $3,331 (PLN 14,535). From June 1 to September 30 this year, 1,337 courses (including 48 paid) were purchased for the amount of $852 (PLN 3,719).

So far, 22 trainers have joined the Affiliate Program, which we informed you about in the mailing and on the platform. You can all join this program and earn money by recommending courses on ccFound. You can find the partner panel in the marketplace at the bottom left, or at this link .

Thanks to this functionality, trainers offer a commission, which also gives us the opportunity to advertise them. We have implemented a marketing strategy aimed at directly advertising courses on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter (X). We also regularly publish posts on our social media in which we refer to these courses to increase our reach.

We currently offer 19 free publications that are very popular.

Since the beginning of June, we have published 79 posts about trainers, courses, platform and substantive content that can be learned thanks to our courses. We reached over 75,000 people with the message. As a result of our activities, a total of 1,341 courses were downloaded and purchased in the third quarter, the vast majority of which were free.

Last quarter we also had technical problems, which unfortunately suspended sales activities for several weeks.

Meanwhile, our SEO strategy is working better and better. Over the last 3 months, we have recorded 22,000 clicks from Google, compared to 12,000 in the previous quarter. Google views look even more optimistic: 682,000 versus 246,000 a quarter earlier.

The statistics of individual countries look very interesting. Results from France tripled - from 1 to 3 thousand clicks. Similarly, Spain, from 300 to 1,200. Fourth in the ranking is the United States, at a similar level as before, 560 clicks versus 450 previously. The remaining countries form a long tail, ranging from several dozen to several hundred clicks per quarter, while the results from Poland still lead, growing from 7,000 to 11,000.

We are currently trying to stimulate the English-language market with advertising, but this must be done carefully, because the costs of acquiring one user are at least five times higher.

In the following quarters, we will also focus more on the quality of acquired users, testing ads on Twitter and Reddit, ads acquiring course authors and opinion leaders, and ads for specific thematic groups.

To sum up, we are not making much progress in acquiring users or selling on the marketplace. This is a conscious choice related to our reflection on the nature of ccFound and the new direction that is in the process of implementation. More about this reflection - below.

Therefore, we do not completely abandon promotional activities, we just keep them at a minimum level to ensure a fresh supply of users to the platform and the feeling that the platform is alive. However, we know that at some point we will have to completely cut off these activities and change the strategy.

2. Roadmap and progress in IT

We see and hear your feedback that ccFound collects strange questions and low-quality statements. I thought a lot about what to do with it. In recent months, I have carried out some research on your expectations at ccFound:

Currently, it is difficult to express yourself and ask questions on the website because they are lumped together - on the home page. The use of tags has not caught on at all. Therefore, ccFound is only suitable for asking general questions.

These and other analyzes indicate that the creation of thematic groups is crucial for the development of ccFound. Only by creating groups will I be able to ask a specific question about the butterfly swimming technique to a group of other enthusiasts of this sport. I can't imagine asking such a question on the ccFound home page.

Personally, I'm even planning to create a group of fans of high-end portable audio equipment - it's a very narrow and specific field, but it brings together thousands of people around the world. Many of them do not speak English well and will welcome our translation of content into other languages.

I can't wait until we start meeting the needs of these specific target groups. I believe that this will allow ccFound to come out of its cocoon and spread its wings. The basic functionality of the groups will see the light of day in approximately 2-3 weeks.

The next step is closed subscription groups - this is currently the main trend in online education in the world, namely selling access to the community instead of just access to the course.

Creating groups like these will eventually allow my other company, the Cryptography Institute, to work more closely with ccFound and potentially list their products on that platform.

Now let's get down to specifics from the IT department:

  1. This quarter, we drastically reduced the costs of maintaining the platform:
    1. Microsoft Azure by 60%
    2. Google Cloud by 86%
  2. We have added polls in the content with multiple choice options
  3. We have added translations into Indian, Ukrainian and Turkish
  4. We have added public portal statistics
  5. We have added internal chat (available soon in production version)
  6. We have added an affiliate program in the marketplace
  7. We have added reputation counting when selling free products
  8. We have improved notifications on the platform to display your name and surname
  9. We have changed the graphic display to a more user-friendly one
  10. We have optimized the search engine
  11. We have fixed hundreds of bugs and glitches

Our Android application is used by 1,360 users. Since June, we have been verifying the iOS application. The verification process is monotonous and very burdensome. After submitting your application for review, Apple rejects your application with a reason within two to five days. Usually this is the first one reason found. After correcting the app and resubmitting it for review, Apple rejects it with another single reason. We continue to fight like we did with the Tax Office.

Below are some examples of verification rejection reasons that we have already fixed. I am pasting it as a curiosity for those of you who are technical or interested in seeing what we are struggling with. If you are only interested in the progress of the ccFound project, you can safely skip this section.

  • Require users to agree to terms and conditions (EULA), and these terms must clearly state that there is no tolerance for inappropriate content or aggressive users
  • Content filtering method questionable
  • A mechanism that allows users to flag objectionable content
  • A mechanism that allows users to block abusive users
  • The developer must act on reports of inappropriate content within 24 hours by removing the content and banning the user who provided the violating content.
  • Provide the username and password for a valid demo account on the App Overview page in App Store Connect, which provides full access to the features and functionality of your app, or include demo mode, which shows all the features and functionality available in your app.
  • Your application contains an NSUserTrackingUsageDescription indicating that you are asking for permission to track users. To publish this information on your app's product page, you'll need to indicate what types of data your users are tracking. If this is incorrect, update the app binary and upload a new build to App Store Connect.
  • We have noticed that your application is accessing web content that belongs to you and contains cookies. Cookies can be used to track users, but App Tracking Transparency is not used to ask for user permission before collecting tracking data.
  • Your app's metadata includes the following call to action and/or URL that directs users to third-party purchase or subscription mechanisms for use in your app: https://ccfound.com/pl/support
  • We have noticed that your app metadata contains the following information, which is unrelated to the content and functionality of the app: In particular, the app descriptions and promotional text are identical.
  • Your app description contains information that does not sufficiently describe the app's content, features and functionality.

Apple verification staff also ask these types of questions - this is also just for fun:

  • Is your app only for users within one company? This may include users of the company's partners, employees and contractors.
  • Is your application intended for use by a limited or specific group of companies? If so, what companies use this app? If not, can any company become a customer and use this application?
  • What features, if any, of the app are intended for use by the general public?
  • How do users obtain an account?
  • Is there paid content in the app and who pays for it? For example, do users pay to open an account or use certain app features?

Seeing all these questions, doubts and obstacles thrown by the Apple marketplace, it is hard not to get the impression that full decentralization of applications is purely fiction.

If we want to be useful to ccFound users and available on various devices, we will always have to maintain a central organizational unit responsible for contact with institutions of the world outside the blockchain.

3. Promotion and advertising

In the last quarter, we took steps to organize the tracking and attribution system and set up full sales funnels in advertising systems. This is the foundation for more intensive activities in the following months.

We have set up campaigns on Facebook that collect remarketing groups of people interested in the portal in various interest groups. These interests correspond to the topics of courses published on the platform. We created 4 completely new campaigns in which we tested 37 new ads. These are still small-capital activities in preparation for larger campaigns.

We started gathering the UK community on TikTok - to which group we directed our newly created ads in English. As part of this campaign, over 400 people have registered on the website since mid-August

We have implemented Google Analitycs 4 in an extended version, the system allows us to track all the most important events on our platform at such a detailed level, such as adding a product to the cart or deleting a product from the cart.

We have decided to implement the advanced Hyros system, which allows for even more accurate tracking of the attribution of our ads. Integration with this system at the level of such an extensive platform as ccFound is a significant undertaking, but in the coming months it will give us a competitive advantage over other advertisers, because we will optimize our ads on higher quality data than other websites.

With Hyros, we made the difficult decision to set up entirely new ad accounts in USD billing currency to commonize reporting across systems. This means moving the entire advertising ecosystem to new accounts.

Over 50 new video ads promoting the portal and marketplace were created in English, Polish and Spanish.

In the coming months, in addition to continuing advertising activities on Facebook and TikTok, we plan to launch Google Ads campaigns on Twitter, Reddit and LinkedIn.

We are also testing 3 new landing pages promoting the portal for users and the marketplace for course authors. These landing pages were additionally created in three language variants - Polish, Spanish and English:

For the last quarter, we planned budgets for advertising campaigns on Facebook and TikTok - we also implemented a strategy for the above advertising accounts. We plan to divide the budget into obtaining registrations (20%), promoting the marketplace (40%), promoting thematic groups (20%) and acquiring registrations from the UK (20%).

We also start managing through goals, defining plans for the next quarters. As a test, we have set the following goals for the last quarter of 2023:

  • Number of new registrations - 10,000 people
  • Number of new trainers on the platform - 40
  • Sales amount - we assume sales of USD 10,000 - we do not have full functionalities yet, which makes it difficult to plan sales goals at a higher level

Verification of the level of achievement of goals will help us specify goals for the next quarters.

4. Finance and taxes

We have obtained a positive interpretation from the National Tax Chamber regarding the qualification of our tokens as vouchers for various purposes. Due to this interpretation, we applied to the Tax Office for a refund of funds paid for VAT and CIT. We received a refund of the VAT paid in the amount of PLN 1.2 million.

We are currently undergoing an inspection procedure that will enable officials to determine the basis for CIT refund. The proceedings require sending to the Office dozens of pages of documentation and explanations regarding both revenues and costs. To sum up, we are still fighting to recover further funds. I also wrote about it in the previous report .

We currently have PLN 4.3 million of capital (approximately USD 1 million). Our costs amount to approximately PLN 220,000 per month. This means that we have funds left for 21 months of operation. On the one hand, we will want to increase advertising expenses when we implement open and closed groups. On the other hand, we will still recover funds from the Tax Office.

5. Introducing the token to stock exchanges

We agree on the technical and cost details and the strategy for introducing the token to the Kanga Exchange. We have decided not to introduce the token to decentralized exchanges for now, because it will not facilitate the stabilization of the token price. Ultimately, we also intend to enter another CEX (centralized) exchange.

We met with three market maker companies recommended by our partners. We are currently selecting the best offer. Market maker is necessary to manage currency pairs on the stock exchange.

We have selected the contractor for the new smart contract for the FOUND token and have specified the requirements for the new version of the token. We have verified the assumptions for the tokenomics from several months ago, calculated the sales pressure and - for now - we are of the opinion that there will be no changes to the established tokenomics.

Entering the stock exchange is also closely related to our cooperation with the Polish Tax Office. Taking all these factors into account, we plan to hold this event around April 2024.

Dear investors and fans of ccFound!

1. Where are we - statistics

We currently have 32,886 registered users on ccFound with confirmed registration (out of 46,800 total registrations). Since June 1 this year, 5,384 people have confirmed their registration. Most new users come from advertising on TikTok and Facebook, from Google searches and from viral marketing (referrals).

On April 20 this year, I wrote that our marketplace had launched . So far, 42 trainers have joined our platform and have published 108 products. As of October 2, 2023, the value of all courses listed on the ccFound marketplace is $3,331 (PLN 14,535). From June 1 to September 30 this year, 1,337 courses (including 48 paid) were purchased for the amount of $852 (PLN 3,719).

So far, 22 trainers have joined the Affiliate Program, which we informed you about in the mailing and on the platform. You can all join this program and earn money by recommending courses on ccFound. You can find the partner panel in the marketplace at the bottom left, or at this link .

Thanks to this functionality, trainers offer a commission, which also gives us the opportunity to advertise them. We have implemented a marketing strategy aimed at directly advertising courses on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter (X). We also regularly publish posts on our social media in which we refer to these courses to increase our reach.

We currently offer 19 free publications that are very popular.

Since the beginning of June, we have published 79 posts about trainers, courses, platform and substantive content that can be learned thanks to our courses. We reached over 75,000 people with the message. As a result of our activities, a total of 1,341 courses were downloaded and purchased in the third quarter, the vast majority of which were free.

Last quarter we also had technical problems, which unfortunately suspended sales activities for several weeks.

Meanwhile, our SEO strategy is working better and better. Over the last 3 months, we have recorded 22,000 clicks from Google, compared to 12,000 in the previous quarter. Google views look even more optimistic: 682,000 versus 246,000 a quarter earlier.

The statistics of individual countries look very interesting. Results from France tripled - from 1 to 3 thousand clicks. Similarly, Spain, from 300 to 1,200. Fourth in the ranking is the United States, at a similar level as before, 560 clicks versus 450 previously. The remaining countries form a long tail, ranging from several dozen to several hundred clicks per quarter, while the results from Poland still lead, growing from 7,000 to 11,000.

We are currently trying to stimulate the English-language market with advertising, but this must be done carefully, because the costs of acquiring one user are at least five times higher.

In the following quarters, we will also focus more on the quality of acquired users, testing ads on Twitter and Reddit, ads acquiring course authors and opinion leaders, and ads for specific thematic groups.

To sum up, we are not making much progress in acquiring users or selling on the marketplace. This is a conscious choice related to our reflection on the nature of ccFound and the new direction that is in the process of implementation. More about this reflection - below.

Therefore, we do not completely abandon promotional activities, we just keep them at a minimum level to ensure a fresh supply of users to the platform and the feeling that the platform is alive. However, we know that at some point we will have to completely cut off these activities and change the strategy.

2. Roadmap and progress in IT

We see and hear your feedback that ccFound collects strange questions and low-quality statements. I thought a lot about what to do with it. In recent months, I have carried out some research on your expectations at ccFound:

Currently, it is difficult to express yourself and ask questions on the website because they are lumped together - on the home page. The use of tags has not caught on at all. Therefore, ccFound is only suitable for asking general questions.

These and other analyzes indicate that the creation of thematic groups is crucial for the development of ccFound. Only by creating groups will I be able to ask a specific question about the butterfly swimming technique to a group of other enthusiasts of this sport. I can't imagine asking such a question on the ccFound home page.

Personally, I'm even planning to create a group of fans of high-end portable audio equipment - it's a very narrow and specific field, but it brings together thousands of people around the world. Many of them do not speak English well and will welcome our translation of content into other languages.

I can't wait until we start meeting the needs of these specific target groups. I believe that this will allow ccFound to come out of its cocoon and spread its wings. The basic functionality of the groups will see the light of day in approximately 2-3 weeks.

The next step is closed subscription groups - this is currently the main trend in online education in the world, namely selling access to the community instead of just access to the course.

Creating groups like these will eventually allow my other company, the Cryptography Institute, to work more closely with ccFound and potentially list their products on that platform.

Now let's get down to specifics from the IT department:

  1. This quarter, we drastically reduced the costs of maintaining the platform:
    1. Microsoft Azure by 60%
    2. Google Cloud by 86%
  2. We have added polls in the content with multiple choice options
  3. We have added translations into Indian, Ukrainian and Turkish
  4. We have added public portal statistics
  5. We have added internal chat (available soon in production version)
  6. We have added an affiliate program in the marketplace
  7. We have added reputation counting when selling free products
  8. We have improved notifications on the platform to display your name and surname
  9. We have changed the graphic display to a more user-friendly one
  10. We have optimized the search engine
  11. We have fixed hundreds of bugs and glitches

Our Android application is used by 1,360 users. Since June, we have been verifying the iOS application. The verification process is monotonous and very burdensome. After submitting your application for review, Apple rejects your application with a reason within two to five days. Usually this is the first one reason found. After correcting the app and resubmitting it for review, Apple rejects it with another single reason. We continue to fight like we did with the Tax Office.

Below are some examples of verification rejection reasons that we have already fixed. I am pasting it as a curiosity for those of you who are technical or interested in seeing what we are struggling with. If you are only interested in the progress of the ccFound project, you can safely skip this section.

  • Require users to agree to terms and conditions (EULA), and these terms must clearly state that there is no tolerance for inappropriate content or aggressive users
  • Content filtering method questionable
  • A mechanism that allows users to flag objectionable content
  • A mechanism that allows users to block abusive users
  • The developer must act on reports of inappropriate content within 24 hours by removing the content and banning the user who provided the violating content.
  • Provide the username and password for a valid demo account on the App Overview page in App Store Connect, which provides full access to the features and functionality of your app, or include demo mode, which shows all the features and functionality available in your app.
  • Your application contains an NSUserTrackingUsageDescription indicating that you are asking for permission to track users. To publish this information on your app's product page, you'll need to indicate what types of data your users are tracking. If this is incorrect, update the app binary and upload a new build to App Store Connect.
  • We have noticed that your application is accessing web content that belongs to you and contains cookies. Cookies can be used to track users, but App Tracking Transparency is not used to ask for user permission before collecting tracking data.
  • Your app's metadata includes the following call to action and/or URL that directs users to third-party purchase or subscription mechanisms for use in your app: https://ccfound.com/pl/support
  • We have noticed that your app metadata contains the following information, which is unrelated to the content and functionality of the app: In particular, the app descriptions and promotional text are identical.
  • Your app description contains information that does not sufficiently describe the app's content, features and functionality.

Apple verification staff also ask these types of questions - this is also just for fun:

  • Is your app only for users within one company? This may include users of the company's partners, employees and contractors.
  • Is your application intended for use by a limited or specific group of companies? If so, what companies use this app? If not, can any company become a customer and use this application?
  • What features, if any, of the app are intended for use by the general public?
  • How do users obtain an account?
  • Is there paid content in the app and who pays for it? For example, do users pay to open an account or use certain app features?

Seeing all these questions, doubts and obstacles thrown by the Apple marketplace, it is hard not to get the impression that full decentralization of applications is purely fiction.

If we want to be useful to ccFound users and available on various devices, we will always have to maintain a central organizational unit responsible for contact with institutions of the world outside the blockchain.

3. Promotion and advertising

In the last quarter, we took steps to organize the tracking and attribution system and set up full sales funnels in advertising systems. This is the foundation for more intensive activities in the following months.

We have set up campaigns on Facebook that collect remarketing groups of people interested in the portal in various interest groups. These interests correspond to the topics of courses published on the platform. We created 4 completely new campaigns in which we tested 37 new ads. These are still small-capital activities in preparation for larger campaigns.

We started gathering the UK community on TikTok - to which group we directed our newly created ads in English. As part of this campaign, over 400 people have registered on the website since mid-August

We have implemented Google Analitycs 4 in an extended version, the system allows us to track all the most important events on our platform at such a detailed level, such as adding a product to the cart or deleting a product from the cart.

We have decided to implement the advanced Hyros system, which allows for even more accurate tracking of the attribution of our ads. Integration with this system at the level of such an extensive platform as ccFound is a significant undertaking, but in the coming months it will give us a competitive advantage over other advertisers, because we will optimize our ads on higher quality data than other websites.

With Hyros, we made the difficult decision to set up entirely new ad accounts in USD billing currency to commonize reporting across systems. This means moving the entire advertising ecosystem to new accounts.

Over 50 new video ads promoting the portal and marketplace were created in English, Polish and Spanish.

In the coming months, in addition to continuing advertising activities on Facebook and TikTok, we plan to launch Google Ads campaigns on Twitter, Reddit and LinkedIn.

We are also testing 3 new landing pages promoting the portal for users and the marketplace for course authors. These landing pages were additionally created in three language variants - Polish, Spanish and English:

For the last quarter, we planned budgets for advertising campaigns on Facebook and TikTok - we also implemented a strategy for the above advertising accounts. We plan to divide the budget into obtaining registrations (20%), promoting the marketplace (40%), promoting thematic groups (20%) and acquiring registrations from the UK (20%).

We also start managing through goals, defining plans for the next quarters. As a test, we have set the following goals for the last quarter of 2023:

  • Number of new registrations - 10,000 people
  • Number of new trainers on the platform - 40
  • Sales amount - we assume sales of USD 10,000 - we do not have full functionalities yet, which makes it difficult to plan sales goals at a higher level

Verification of the level of achievement of goals will help us specify goals for the next quarters.

4. Finance and taxes

We have obtained a positive interpretation from the National Tax Chamber regarding the qualification of our tokens as vouchers for various purposes. Due to this interpretation, we applied to the Tax Office for a refund of funds paid for VAT and CIT. We received a refund of the VAT paid in the amount of PLN 1.2 million.

We are currently undergoing an inspection procedure that will enable officials to determine the basis for CIT refund. The proceedings require sending to the Office dozens of pages of documentation and explanations regarding both revenues and costs. To sum up, we are still fighting to recover further funds. I also wrote about it in the previous report .

We currently have PLN 4.3 million of capital (approximately USD 1 million). Our costs amount to approximately PLN 220,000 per month. This means that we have funds left for 21 months of operation. On the one hand, we will want to increase advertising expenses when we implement open and closed groups. On the other hand, we will still recover funds from the Tax Office.

5. Introducing the token to stock exchanges

We agree on the technical and cost details and the strategy for introducing the token to the Kanga Exchange. We have decided not to introduce the token to decentralized exchanges for now, because it will not facilitate the stabilization of the token price. Ultimately, we also intend to enter another CEX (centralized) exchange.

We met with three market maker companies recommended by our partners. We are currently selecting the best offer. Market maker is necessary to manage currency pairs on the stock exchange.

We have selected the contractor for the new smart contract for the FOUND token and have specified the requirements for the new version of the token. We have verified the assumptions for the tokenomics from several months ago, calculated the sales pressure and - for now - we are of the opinion that there will be no changes to the established tokenomics.

Entering the stock exchange is also closely related to our cooperation with the Polish Tax Office. Taking all these factors into account, we plan to hold this event around April 2024.

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