Report for Q1 2023
Dear ccFound investors and fans!
1. First big success!
In the last quarter, we managed to achieve a key goal: we created a marketplace of online courses and ebooks.
This means creating and programming dozens of new views, processes and components.
Let me remind you that ccFound was supposed to combine two worlds: a social media and a knowledge sales platform.
Thus, we have become the first place for online creators to build their online authority and monetize it by selling their knowledge.
We are currently supplementing the marketplace with new courses. The platform will see the light of day within a few to several days, when we are still polishing the last issues that the trainers tell us about.
I did not expect so much interest from trainers in a completely new platform. I thought we would start with just two or three courses initially.
We used our connections in the online education industry and - with the help of the ccFound administration department (special thanks to Kinga) - we recruited as many as 33 teachers!
Some of the trainers have not one product, but entire catalogs of online courses!
This result does not include the teachers of our parent company, i.e. the Institute of Cryptography. We will also gradually import its training catalog to ccFound. We are limited by the missing functionalities required in individual courses. As a result, products will be added gradually.
I am extremely pleased with the thematic range of the courses we have acquired. For example, these are:
- Personal productivity
- Investing in the stock market
- 3D printing
- Investing in plots
- Building houses
- Healthy back
- Public speaking
- Correct diction
- Weight losing for women
- Creating online courses
- Working abroad
- Personal trainer
- Filming and photography
- Deepening the relationship
And many others.
Currently, the most important task is to supplement the marketplace with functions that were supposed to be omitted in MVP, but turn out to be crucial for trainers, such as: multi-currency support, various (cheaper) payment processors, automatic invoicing, reports related to tax settlements.
In addition to these requirements, our priority is to add an affiliate program that will allow trainers to give a commission to affiliates who recommend their courses.
When we take into account that in recent months we have mastered the advertising processes on Facebook and TikTok, it means that we will participate in paid advertising of our trainers. However, these costs will not be covered by our share in the 20% margin of the ccFound platform (some of which goes to the token holders). An affiliate program is needed.
Note that the client acquired in this way also becomes a user of the ccFound platform.
2. WHERE WE ARE
We currently have 24,824 confirmed registrations. Since January 1, 7,333 people have registered, which gives an average of 80 people a day. Statistically, 64% of people confirm the registration.
The partner program of the portal turned out to be a bad idea so far, generating only 39 registrations in the last quarter. We can make it livelier in the future, but we prefer to focus on the marketplace, because it has more potential.
On the other hand, as many as 491 people came to us from unidentified sources, which means specifically SEO (Google) and user recommendations (WoM - Word of Mouth). It's still not much, but - what's important - this number is growing! For example, in December 2022 it was only 45 people, and in March 2023 - already 186.
To confirm this good news, we have results from Google Search Console, which show that search engines show our questions in different languages. We build the so-called "long tail" of search results. To illustrate the phenomenon, we positioned ourselves on phrases such as:
- gaminate side effects
- a toy shop for a tourist voucher
- perforation of the maxillary sinus during root canal treatment
- pologne sports national
- chat gpt killer
Google has indexed 50,000 ccFound subpages and reports that we've had 5,256 clicks since January. Until mid-February, it was 15-40 clicks a day. In mid-February, the results shot up, stabilizing at the level of 50-130 per day.
What's even more interesting, filtering the results from the last 3 months, I see mostly general queries, such as "ccFound earnings" or "ccFound login".
However, looking at the results for the last 7 days, I see - apart from the phrase "ccFound" - mostly "long tail", so real questions! Keep it up.
What else is stopping us? We still only have a few languages on ccFound. I would like to add Chinese and Indian to the platform as soon as possible. That's almost 3 billion people spread all over the world. Unfortunately, adding a new language means several thousand EUR just for translating existing content in Google Translate.
We have recently discovered that we can replace this service with ChatGPT translations! It turns out that after the recent OpenAI price reductions, these translations will be as much as 50-100x cheaper.
Unfortunately, this company's API is still clogged and unavailable. We are now seeking partnership and independent access to their service.
ACHIEVEMENTS
We launched important new features in March!
1
PM4A - pay me for answering - is to be used to post offers for answering a question. There are many situations where the answer requires time-consuming analysis of the client's inquiry, e.g. in medical, legal and tax advice. Then we issue an offer and only after someone pays for it we start writing the answer.
As you can see, it differs from the paywall in that we do the work after payment, not before. But beware, this feature currently works so that the answer we write will be visible to everyone. In the PM4A function, the buyer pays for the work. He needs this answer the most, but it will also be visible to others.
In my opinion, this is a valid assumption, because the goal of the platform is to create content for everyone, but this solution is already controversial among users. Do you think this is a good or bad idea? Write in a comment!
2
At last! We have published an Android application. You can download it at: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ccfound.ccfoundwebview
The Android application required a system rebuild so that it would not log the user out for a long time. We've rebuilt the system to send push notifications on your phone.
Anticipating the questions... Some of you may remember my reflections on the difficulty of adding an iOS application. We will verify these issues in the coming weeks.
3
We have created onboarding tutorials visible on the homepage and in the profile settings.
4
We now automatically answer questions using ChatGPT OpenAI. We can see you having a great time commenting on the robot's answers. You also see that the robot is not yet ready to replace the human. And yet... sometimes it adds value.
5
We have implemented quick card payments for products.
However, we are facing problematic payment processor rates for our company. Just a moment ago I received information that we will probably come to an agreement with one company that will reduce the commissions charged to us several times.
6
Since March, after the first login, a new ccFound user is invited to select their interests. This results in subscribing to the tags he is interested in. It is possible to filter only the content that interests us - display "subscribed only" in the filters on the home page. [Note, we have a temporary glitch in this feature at the time of publishing this report].
7
We have completely rebuilt the reputation system! From now on, you have a completely new tab with a report of your activity at your disposal.
8
We are moving away from displaying featured content in the carousel in the right column. We are starting to promote the best authors there. We will be adding more features there.
9
We made it possible to share not only questions, but also direct links to answers.
10
We've rebuilt the comments list views and the notification inbox.
11
We have optimized the views on mobile devices.
12
We sent the first tokends to FOUND coin hodlers.
...
We fixed about 70 bugs.
3. WHERE WE ARE GOING (PIVOTS)
YouTube and Facebook started out as dating sites, and we know what they are today. Every startup is looking for product-market-timing fit (matching the product to the needs of the market at a given time).
In every startup, there comes a time for pivots, i.e. significant changes in direction.
Pivot 1.
Analyzing the market, I came to a conclusion that seems obvious only when you hear it. The Internet has democratized the means of expression, as I said in webinars promoting ccFound a few years ago. But what does that really mean?
That means Facebook, blogs, forums, YouTube... have made it possible to post whatever you want, to anyone who wants to. Holiday pictures? Memes? News? Stories? Thoughts? You can post whatever you want.
If everyone publishes everything, the result is information chaos. How to deal with it? By creating attention algorithms. Facebook's and YouTube's artificial intelligence learns what you pay attention to and optimize the content you see.
We have arrived at a new kind of economy: we call it the economy of distraction. The one who can distract and make the user addicted will earn the most. Social media platforms don't play the same game as you.
The result is information overload, memory impairment, shallow information processing (e.g. we can no longer read carefully, but only scan the text), media pauperization (this is a spiral of content optimization to the lowest common denominator of audience's intelligence) and instant culture.
I only remind you of the arguments from our webinars, but now they have a second bottom.
There is a second solution to information chaos. It is the media that limit the above-mentioned freedom of expression.
A tweeter came in and said "your post must be as short as a text message" - the concept was met with interest. Twitter has become an opinion-forming medium.
TikTok came in and said, "upload whatever videos you want, but keep them short." Browsing through them is like a slots game, providing quick stimulation. Today, shorts are everywhere: on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.
Q&A sites came in and said, "ask questions and get answers." However, the Internet is littered with the corpses of such services, such as Google Answers and Yahoo Answers. Why did this happen? Because this narrowing imposes too much discipline.
However, Quora survived, as well as the startup of my would-be partner from ZadajPytanie.pl and Odpowiedz.pl from 18 years ago ... Brainly.com, which specializes in students.
Here's a key takeaway: Q&A sites have a hard time scaling because they restrict freedom of expression too much.
A portal where I can only post a question (and nothing else) inhibits building a community understood as: people interacting freely with each other.
I have noticed that people have neither discipline nor (note, difficult word) meta-cognitive self-awareness. This is not some critical assessment ... This is how our minds work, regardless of the level of intelligence.
My experience in mastermind groups shows that even experienced entrepreneurs and financiers need support and guidance (inspiring or asking questions) in getting to the point where they admit that they have any problem to solve.
As you can easily guess, the ego's defense mechanisms also work to our disadvantage here. Admitting you have a problem requires humility.
We think chaotically. Noticing that what's in our stream of thoughts is a question (that we might ask on the platform) requires mindfulness and burns glucose in the cerebral cortex. As a human species, we naturally avoid such costly activities.
So what to do? If we allow full freedom of expression on ccFound, we will become another (chaotic) Facebook. If we narrow our scope to gathering knowledge through questions, we will never build critical mass.
Solution? We expand the freedom of expression while cataloging publications in separate sections.
Users define what they post, such as questions, memes, vacation photos, or articles. (This is just an example).
This makes the user in the "Home" section see everything (chaos providing stimulation like on Facebook), but can easily jump in the menu to "Questions", where he sees the specifics: only problems and solutions.
The entire ccFound is geared towards allowing the user to filter what they want to see, which is why you're already seeing the content filters thrown on top. (Previously they were hidden under a special button).
How will we implement this idea with us? Initially, we wanted to add two sections to "Questions" and "Articles", "Humor" and "Beauty".
We debated for a long time whether to call this last section "Inspirations" or something else. Neither option was fully understood by users.
So we decided to make just one new section called "After hours" for now. You will see it on the platform in a few days. It provides full freedom of expression (within reason :-)).
We will analyze how it works and whether it encourages you to spend time on the platform also ... after hours. We should see an increase in the number of comments on ccFound.
Result: We are building a place where you can spend time on the Internet in a pleasant way, and share knowledge at the same time. We are a social medium, but we solve the problem of information chaos on the Internet.
Pivot 2.
In recent months, we have also considered narrowing down the topic of ccFound to finances and investments.
This would clearly define the target group of the platform, which is now somewhat blurred.
We sat down to design what the category tree would look like in this case. We decided that the task is impossible and ends up returning to what we have, i.e. tags.
For example, create categories: Economy, Geopolitics, Technology, Commodities, Stocks? This is already a mix of investment classes with general topics, and it gives us 27 categories.
Should we distinguish completely different markets in the subcategories: US Stocks, Poland Stocks, India Stocks? So which markets to skip? Which financial instruments to merge into one group? Who will suffer?
As you can see, the division of investment categories is a multidimensional matrix in which subtypes and investment classes overlap in parallel with geographical categorization. The above-mentioned tags solve the problem.
We also considered creating "Spaces" following the example of Quora or Twitter. This also ends up returning to the tags that you can already subscribe to with us. It's no different now. Alternatively, we can rename the function from "tags" to "spaces".
We decided that it would be best to promote investment topics at ccFound in a different way:
1. We invested in programmatic SEO. About 600 different landing pages are created using the semi-automatic method, which will position themselves in Google for narrow investment phrases (long tail) and will acquire registrations.
2. We will promote investment topics with our internal editorial department. We simply ask questions related to investing on ccFound and thus encourage users to direct their thoughts in this direction.
3. We test the investment theme in ccFound ads. We say that ccFound is a good place to ask questions, e.g. about securing savings against inflation. (Instead of talking about the platform in general, as before.)
Pivot 3.
We recently got in touch with "Grizzly Hamster" user @Chomik_Grizzly, who inspired us with a post with an amazing idea for ccFound to be an aggregator of questions sent to many different external services: https://ccfound.com/en/news/4006/
The idea is great. Unfortunately, after analysis, we decided that it was almost unfeasible. This will depend on Facebook, Reddit or Quora API requests and will probably result in a ban. Our team members already have experience in building services based on these closed APIs. It has short legs.
Using a robot for this purpose instead of an API may end up breaking the terms of service and a lawsuit when we reach a larger scale. Unfortunately, going this route will not allow you to build a large international service.
If any of you have experience in solving such a dilemma, please contact me by e-mail "piotr" in the ccFound.com domain.
To sum it up, we are fully implementing pivot 1, we are testing pivot 2 via marketing communication and pivot 3 is not possible at least for now.
I correspond privately with the Grizzly Hamster, who is an invaluable source of inspiration and ideas for new functionalities. We also have a group of advanced users on Telegram with whom we consult functionalities and bugs, so ccFound is not created in a vacuum.
4. FINANCES
At the moment, we have PLN 5.7 million left (USD/PLN = 4.29), of which I will pay invoices for about 330,000 PLN within a week.
At the moment, we have completed the cost-cutting process and we estimate expenditures of PLN 4.8 million for this year, of which we have already incurred PLN 1.3 million. We have less than PLN 3.5 million of expenses left until the end of the year. In the previous year, we spent PLN 6.9 million, so we estimated to reduce costs by 30% on an annual basis!
It can therefore be estimated that we have capital left for 14-16 months of operation. You may remember when I wrote that our goal was to achieve security for 24 months. This state of affairs is naturally behind us and we are striving to achieve profitability of the startup.
I also believe that as time goes by, we spend our resources more and more efficiently. The team has been minimized to the most needed people. As part of the team, the most effective people stayed with us. The costs of cloud environments have been optimized. We do not carry out ineffective marketing activities just for show. We look at each invoice from both sides.
What is most pleasing, however, is the fact that we are getting closer to monetizing the portal using the marketplace. By the end of June we will assess the effectiveness and on this basis we will re-enter the market with an investment offer.
On another front, we are still fighting with the Polish Tax Office, which - contrary to the interpretation of the National Tax Information (KIS) - classifies our token as a virtual currency. As a result, we received a call to pay 800,000 PLN of undue tax. Despite the fact that we have PLN 1 million of tax to be refunded in this company.
The case will probably end up in court and we'll win it. However, I do not understand why the Tax Office fights so hopelessly and destroys Polish entrepreneurship. It seems that officials are hunting for personal commissions for taxes imposed on the taxpayer dishonestly - even if they later turn out to be illegal.
As a side note, I explain: a virtual currency would be a token that can be exchanged directly for fiat currency. Meanwhile, FOUND coin is not even listed on any exchange. According to the KIS's interpretation, it is a multi-purpose voucher, i.e. a voucher that can be used to buy various products - and this is actually the case in reality.
In total, we have about PLN 2 million in taxes to be recovered from the Tax Office. The battle will go on for 2 years, so we will recover funds long after we may run out of capital if we do not start earning.
When will we be profitable? Suppose we want to generate 400,000 PLN to cover the costs. In ccFound, by default, 80% is the author's commission.
An additional challenge is Stripe, who in one of the companies eats as much as 3.9% + 1AED from each transaction (sic!). We are currently negotiating this rate and looking for alternatives (Zen, Revolut).
Coming back to the question, as you can see, ccFound takes 20% of the commission, but half of that goes to tokends. ccFound currently owns 47% of the FOUND coins, so that's our share in the tokends.
Besides, 10% is to be burned and 40% goes to the maintenance of the platform (DAO treasury). In total, therefore, we have a 63% share in the ccFound's margin.
From this it is easy to calculate that we need at least PLN 3 million in revenue per month (36 million per year) to earn a living for the team and IT environments.
It's a lot and a little. We have already achieved such results, generating sales of PLN 40-50 million annually in other companies.
When will we achieve it? According to the pitch deck, in 2023 we are to generate sales of USD 3 million, i.e. PLN 13 million. It can therefore be estimated that we will reach PLN 36 million in the next year, 2024.
For comparison, Udemy generated USD 9 million in sales per year in 2015, and in 2022 it was already USD 629 million.
Meanwhile, the $2.75 billion MasterClass had $119 million in sales in 2021, and I estimate around $180 million in 2022.
By the way, for those of you asking about FOUND's listing timing: check out Udemy's NASDAQ price chart. They entered at the very top and... they've been looking for the bottom ever since. We don't want to repeat this mistake.
Of course, not all investors actively follow what is happening at ccFound. Investors are generally divided into those who believe in the project and those who speculated on the token.
Many projects related to the cryptocurrency world have only the latter type of investors. As a friend of mine, let him remain anonymous, says: "marketing tokens is like taking cocaine" because selling tokens is mainly about the promise of quick profits. Profits disproportionate to the realities of the enterprise that needs to be built first.
Building a business doesn't take a month. On the other hand, doubling the price of a token on the exchange is possible even in one day and does not have to be supported by the company's results.
Therefore, please do not be surprised if in our telegram group every now and then someone reminds you that they have our tokens and asks when there will be a listing on the stock exchange.
This mainly concerns foreign investors who did not know me before ccFound and do not necessarily know or remember what this project is about. I totally understand that and I don't blame anyone.
I would like to remind all interested parties that we are building a real business. However, we do not pump the token to make money off the naive - it's just not our business model.
In this business, the token is deflationary and will be bought from the platform's profits. Ultimately, it is therefore doomed to success, provided of course our business will work.
I have 18 years of experience in the online education and community building industry, which is a huge advantage. On the other hand, our problem is the scale and size of the platform we are building, with over 100% inflation of IT costs in recent years.
We are closer than further: the team is getting better organized every month, and on the ccFound platform we are launching an online training catalog this month.
As I mentioned, in the next 3-6 months we will have a clear idea of what ccFound looks like and where it is going.
At the same time, in about 6 months, we expect the bottom of the impending recession. According to our analyzes (which I compare with several advanced stock market analysts), this will be the peak of unemployment and panic in the financial markets.
This will come as a surprise to most - not to us. I hope to enter this period with a business built on strong foundations.
Dear ccFound investors and fans!
1. First big success!
In the last quarter, we managed to achieve a key goal: we created a marketplace of online courses and ebooks.
This means creating and programming dozens of new views, processes and components.
Let me remind you that ccFound was supposed to combine two worlds: a social media and a knowledge sales platform.
Thus, we have become the first place for online creators to build their online authority and monetize it by selling their knowledge.
We are currently supplementing the marketplace with new courses. The platform will see the light of day within a few to several days, when we are still polishing the last issues that the trainers tell us about.
I did not expect so much interest from trainers in a completely new platform. I thought we would start with just two or three courses initially.
We used our connections in the online education industry and - with the help of the ccFound administration department (special thanks to Kinga) - we recruited as many as 33 teachers!
Some of the trainers have not one product, but entire catalogs of online courses!
This result does not include the teachers of our parent company, i.e. the Institute of Cryptography. We will also gradually import its training catalog to ccFound. We are limited by the missing functionalities required in individual courses. As a result, products will be added gradually.
I am extremely pleased with the thematic range of the courses we have acquired. For example, these are:
- Personal productivity
- Investing in the stock market
- 3D printing
- Investing in plots
- Building houses
- Healthy back
- Public speaking
- Correct diction
- Weight losing for women
- Creating online courses
- Working abroad
- Personal trainer
- Filming and photography
- Deepening the relationship
And many others.
Currently, the most important task is to supplement the marketplace with functions that were supposed to be omitted in MVP, but turn out to be crucial for trainers, such as: multi-currency support, various (cheaper) payment processors, automatic invoicing, reports related to tax settlements.
In addition to these requirements, our priority is to add an affiliate program that will allow trainers to give a commission to affiliates who recommend their courses.
When we take into account that in recent months we have mastered the advertising processes on Facebook and TikTok, it means that we will participate in paid advertising of our trainers. However, these costs will not be covered by our share in the 20% margin of the ccFound platform (some of which goes to the token holders). An affiliate program is needed.
Note that the client acquired in this way also becomes a user of the ccFound platform.
2. WHERE WE ARE
We currently have 24,824 confirmed registrations. Since January 1, 7,333 people have registered, which gives an average of 80 people a day. Statistically, 64% of people confirm the registration.
The partner program of the portal turned out to be a bad idea so far, generating only 39 registrations in the last quarter. We can make it livelier in the future, but we prefer to focus on the marketplace, because it has more potential.
On the other hand, as many as 491 people came to us from unidentified sources, which means specifically SEO (Google) and user recommendations (WoM - Word of Mouth). It's still not much, but - what's important - this number is growing! For example, in December 2022 it was only 45 people, and in March 2023 - already 186.
To confirm this good news, we have results from Google Search Console, which show that search engines show our questions in different languages. We build the so-called "long tail" of search results. To illustrate the phenomenon, we positioned ourselves on phrases such as:
- gaminate side effects
- a toy shop for a tourist voucher
- perforation of the maxillary sinus during root canal treatment
- pologne sports national
- chat gpt killer
Google has indexed 50,000 ccFound subpages and reports that we've had 5,256 clicks since January. Until mid-February, it was 15-40 clicks a day. In mid-February, the results shot up, stabilizing at the level of 50-130 per day.
What's even more interesting, filtering the results from the last 3 months, I see mostly general queries, such as "ccFound earnings" or "ccFound login".
However, looking at the results for the last 7 days, I see - apart from the phrase "ccFound" - mostly "long tail", so real questions! Keep it up.
What else is stopping us? We still only have a few languages on ccFound. I would like to add Chinese and Indian to the platform as soon as possible. That's almost 3 billion people spread all over the world. Unfortunately, adding a new language means several thousand EUR just for translating existing content in Google Translate.
We have recently discovered that we can replace this service with ChatGPT translations! It turns out that after the recent OpenAI price reductions, these translations will be as much as 50-100x cheaper.
Unfortunately, this company's API is still clogged and unavailable. We are now seeking partnership and independent access to their service.
ACHIEVEMENTS
We launched important new features in March!
1
PM4A - pay me for answering - is to be used to post offers for answering a question. There are many situations where the answer requires time-consuming analysis of the client's inquiry, e.g. in medical, legal and tax advice. Then we issue an offer and only after someone pays for it we start writing the answer.
As you can see, it differs from the paywall in that we do the work after payment, not before. But beware, this feature currently works so that the answer we write will be visible to everyone. In the PM4A function, the buyer pays for the work. He needs this answer the most, but it will also be visible to others.
In my opinion, this is a valid assumption, because the goal of the platform is to create content for everyone, but this solution is already controversial among users. Do you think this is a good or bad idea? Write in a comment!
2
At last! We have published an Android application. You can download it at: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ccfound.ccfoundwebview
The Android application required a system rebuild so that it would not log the user out for a long time. We've rebuilt the system to send push notifications on your phone.
Anticipating the questions... Some of you may remember my reflections on the difficulty of adding an iOS application. We will verify these issues in the coming weeks.
3
We have created onboarding tutorials visible on the homepage and in the profile settings.
4
We now automatically answer questions using ChatGPT OpenAI. We can see you having a great time commenting on the robot's answers. You also see that the robot is not yet ready to replace the human. And yet... sometimes it adds value.
5
We have implemented quick card payments for products.
However, we are facing problematic payment processor rates for our company. Just a moment ago I received information that we will probably come to an agreement with one company that will reduce the commissions charged to us several times.
6
Since March, after the first login, a new ccFound user is invited to select their interests. This results in subscribing to the tags he is interested in. It is possible to filter only the content that interests us - display "subscribed only" in the filters on the home page. [Note, we have a temporary glitch in this feature at the time of publishing this report].
7
We have completely rebuilt the reputation system! From now on, you have a completely new tab with a report of your activity at your disposal.
8
We are moving away from displaying featured content in the carousel in the right column. We are starting to promote the best authors there. We will be adding more features there.
9
We made it possible to share not only questions, but also direct links to answers.
10
We've rebuilt the comments list views and the notification inbox.
11
We have optimized the views on mobile devices.
12
We sent the first tokends to FOUND coin hodlers.
...
We fixed about 70 bugs.
3. WHERE WE ARE GOING (PIVOTS)
YouTube and Facebook started out as dating sites, and we know what they are today. Every startup is looking for product-market-timing fit (matching the product to the needs of the market at a given time).
In every startup, there comes a time for pivots, i.e. significant changes in direction.
Pivot 1.
Analyzing the market, I came to a conclusion that seems obvious only when you hear it. The Internet has democratized the means of expression, as I said in webinars promoting ccFound a few years ago. But what does that really mean?
That means Facebook, blogs, forums, YouTube... have made it possible to post whatever you want, to anyone who wants to. Holiday pictures? Memes? News? Stories? Thoughts? You can post whatever you want.
If everyone publishes everything, the result is information chaos. How to deal with it? By creating attention algorithms. Facebook's and YouTube's artificial intelligence learns what you pay attention to and optimize the content you see.
We have arrived at a new kind of economy: we call it the economy of distraction. The one who can distract and make the user addicted will earn the most. Social media platforms don't play the same game as you.
The result is information overload, memory impairment, shallow information processing (e.g. we can no longer read carefully, but only scan the text), media pauperization (this is a spiral of content optimization to the lowest common denominator of audience's intelligence) and instant culture.
I only remind you of the arguments from our webinars, but now they have a second bottom.
There is a second solution to information chaos. It is the media that limit the above-mentioned freedom of expression.
A tweeter came in and said "your post must be as short as a text message" - the concept was met with interest. Twitter has become an opinion-forming medium.
TikTok came in and said, "upload whatever videos you want, but keep them short." Browsing through them is like a slots game, providing quick stimulation. Today, shorts are everywhere: on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.
Q&A sites came in and said, "ask questions and get answers." However, the Internet is littered with the corpses of such services, such as Google Answers and Yahoo Answers. Why did this happen? Because this narrowing imposes too much discipline.
However, Quora survived, as well as the startup of my would-be partner from ZadajPytanie.pl and Odpowiedz.pl from 18 years ago ... Brainly.com, which specializes in students.
Here's a key takeaway: Q&A sites have a hard time scaling because they restrict freedom of expression too much.
A portal where I can only post a question (and nothing else) inhibits building a community understood as: people interacting freely with each other.
I have noticed that people have neither discipline nor (note, difficult word) meta-cognitive self-awareness. This is not some critical assessment ... This is how our minds work, regardless of the level of intelligence.
My experience in mastermind groups shows that even experienced entrepreneurs and financiers need support and guidance (inspiring or asking questions) in getting to the point where they admit that they have any problem to solve.
As you can easily guess, the ego's defense mechanisms also work to our disadvantage here. Admitting you have a problem requires humility.
We think chaotically. Noticing that what's in our stream of thoughts is a question (that we might ask on the platform) requires mindfulness and burns glucose in the cerebral cortex. As a human species, we naturally avoid such costly activities.
So what to do? If we allow full freedom of expression on ccFound, we will become another (chaotic) Facebook. If we narrow our scope to gathering knowledge through questions, we will never build critical mass.
Solution? We expand the freedom of expression while cataloging publications in separate sections.
Users define what they post, such as questions, memes, vacation photos, or articles. (This is just an example).
This makes the user in the "Home" section see everything (chaos providing stimulation like on Facebook), but can easily jump in the menu to "Questions", where he sees the specifics: only problems and solutions.
The entire ccFound is geared towards allowing the user to filter what they want to see, which is why you're already seeing the content filters thrown on top. (Previously they were hidden under a special button).
How will we implement this idea with us? Initially, we wanted to add two sections to "Questions" and "Articles", "Humor" and "Beauty".
We debated for a long time whether to call this last section "Inspirations" or something else. Neither option was fully understood by users.
So we decided to make just one new section called "After hours" for now. You will see it on the platform in a few days. It provides full freedom of expression (within reason :-)).
We will analyze how it works and whether it encourages you to spend time on the platform also ... after hours. We should see an increase in the number of comments on ccFound.
Result: We are building a place where you can spend time on the Internet in a pleasant way, and share knowledge at the same time. We are a social medium, but we solve the problem of information chaos on the Internet.
Pivot 2.
In recent months, we have also considered narrowing down the topic of ccFound to finances and investments.
This would clearly define the target group of the platform, which is now somewhat blurred.
We sat down to design what the category tree would look like in this case. We decided that the task is impossible and ends up returning to what we have, i.e. tags.
For example, create categories: Economy, Geopolitics, Technology, Commodities, Stocks? This is already a mix of investment classes with general topics, and it gives us 27 categories.
Should we distinguish completely different markets in the subcategories: US Stocks, Poland Stocks, India Stocks? So which markets to skip? Which financial instruments to merge into one group? Who will suffer?
As you can see, the division of investment categories is a multidimensional matrix in which subtypes and investment classes overlap in parallel with geographical categorization. The above-mentioned tags solve the problem.
We also considered creating "Spaces" following the example of Quora or Twitter. This also ends up returning to the tags that you can already subscribe to with us. It's no different now. Alternatively, we can rename the function from "tags" to "spaces".
We decided that it would be best to promote investment topics at ccFound in a different way:
1. We invested in programmatic SEO. About 600 different landing pages are created using the semi-automatic method, which will position themselves in Google for narrow investment phrases (long tail) and will acquire registrations.
2. We will promote investment topics with our internal editorial department. We simply ask questions related to investing on ccFound and thus encourage users to direct their thoughts in this direction.
3. We test the investment theme in ccFound ads. We say that ccFound is a good place to ask questions, e.g. about securing savings against inflation. (Instead of talking about the platform in general, as before.)
Pivot 3.
We recently got in touch with "Grizzly Hamster" user @Chomik_Grizzly, who inspired us with a post with an amazing idea for ccFound to be an aggregator of questions sent to many different external services: https://ccfound.com/en/news/4006/
The idea is great. Unfortunately, after analysis, we decided that it was almost unfeasible. This will depend on Facebook, Reddit or Quora API requests and will probably result in a ban. Our team members already have experience in building services based on these closed APIs. It has short legs.
Using a robot for this purpose instead of an API may end up breaking the terms of service and a lawsuit when we reach a larger scale. Unfortunately, going this route will not allow you to build a large international service.
If any of you have experience in solving such a dilemma, please contact me by e-mail "piotr" in the ccFound.com domain.
To sum it up, we are fully implementing pivot 1, we are testing pivot 2 via marketing communication and pivot 3 is not possible at least for now.
I correspond privately with the Grizzly Hamster, who is an invaluable source of inspiration and ideas for new functionalities. We also have a group of advanced users on Telegram with whom we consult functionalities and bugs, so ccFound is not created in a vacuum.
4. FINANCES
At the moment, we have PLN 5.7 million left (USD/PLN = 4.29), of which I will pay invoices for about 330,000 PLN within a week.
At the moment, we have completed the cost-cutting process and we estimate expenditures of PLN 4.8 million for this year, of which we have already incurred PLN 1.3 million. We have less than PLN 3.5 million of expenses left until the end of the year. In the previous year, we spent PLN 6.9 million, so we estimated to reduce costs by 30% on an annual basis!
It can therefore be estimated that we have capital left for 14-16 months of operation. You may remember when I wrote that our goal was to achieve security for 24 months. This state of affairs is naturally behind us and we are striving to achieve profitability of the startup.
I also believe that as time goes by, we spend our resources more and more efficiently. The team has been minimized to the most needed people. As part of the team, the most effective people stayed with us. The costs of cloud environments have been optimized. We do not carry out ineffective marketing activities just for show. We look at each invoice from both sides.
What is most pleasing, however, is the fact that we are getting closer to monetizing the portal using the marketplace. By the end of June we will assess the effectiveness and on this basis we will re-enter the market with an investment offer.
On another front, we are still fighting with the Polish Tax Office, which - contrary to the interpretation of the National Tax Information (KIS) - classifies our token as a virtual currency. As a result, we received a call to pay 800,000 PLN of undue tax. Despite the fact that we have PLN 1 million of tax to be refunded in this company.
The case will probably end up in court and we'll win it. However, I do not understand why the Tax Office fights so hopelessly and destroys Polish entrepreneurship. It seems that officials are hunting for personal commissions for taxes imposed on the taxpayer dishonestly - even if they later turn out to be illegal.
As a side note, I explain: a virtual currency would be a token that can be exchanged directly for fiat currency. Meanwhile, FOUND coin is not even listed on any exchange. According to the KIS's interpretation, it is a multi-purpose voucher, i.e. a voucher that can be used to buy various products - and this is actually the case in reality.
In total, we have about PLN 2 million in taxes to be recovered from the Tax Office. The battle will go on for 2 years, so we will recover funds long after we may run out of capital if we do not start earning.
When will we be profitable? Suppose we want to generate 400,000 PLN to cover the costs. In ccFound, by default, 80% is the author's commission.
An additional challenge is Stripe, who in one of the companies eats as much as 3.9% + 1AED from each transaction (sic!). We are currently negotiating this rate and looking for alternatives (Zen, Revolut).
Coming back to the question, as you can see, ccFound takes 20% of the commission, but half of that goes to tokends. ccFound currently owns 47% of the FOUND coins, so that's our share in the tokends.
Besides, 10% is to be burned and 40% goes to the maintenance of the platform (DAO treasury). In total, therefore, we have a 63% share in the ccFound's margin.
From this it is easy to calculate that we need at least PLN 3 million in revenue per month (36 million per year) to earn a living for the team and IT environments.
It's a lot and a little. We have already achieved such results, generating sales of PLN 40-50 million annually in other companies.
When will we achieve it? According to the pitch deck, in 2023 we are to generate sales of USD 3 million, i.e. PLN 13 million. It can therefore be estimated that we will reach PLN 36 million in the next year, 2024.
For comparison, Udemy generated USD 9 million in sales per year in 2015, and in 2022 it was already USD 629 million.
Meanwhile, the $2.75 billion MasterClass had $119 million in sales in 2021, and I estimate around $180 million in 2022.
By the way, for those of you asking about FOUND's listing timing: check out Udemy's NASDAQ price chart. They entered at the very top and... they've been looking for the bottom ever since. We don't want to repeat this mistake.
Of course, not all investors actively follow what is happening at ccFound. Investors are generally divided into those who believe in the project and those who speculated on the token.
Many projects related to the cryptocurrency world have only the latter type of investors. As a friend of mine, let him remain anonymous, says: "marketing tokens is like taking cocaine" because selling tokens is mainly about the promise of quick profits. Profits disproportionate to the realities of the enterprise that needs to be built first.
Building a business doesn't take a month. On the other hand, doubling the price of a token on the exchange is possible even in one day and does not have to be supported by the company's results.
Therefore, please do not be surprised if in our telegram group every now and then someone reminds you that they have our tokens and asks when there will be a listing on the stock exchange.
This mainly concerns foreign investors who did not know me before ccFound and do not necessarily know or remember what this project is about. I totally understand that and I don't blame anyone.
I would like to remind all interested parties that we are building a real business. However, we do not pump the token to make money off the naive - it's just not our business model.
In this business, the token is deflationary and will be bought from the platform's profits. Ultimately, it is therefore doomed to success, provided of course our business will work.
I have 18 years of experience in the online education and community building industry, which is a huge advantage. On the other hand, our problem is the scale and size of the platform we are building, with over 100% inflation of IT costs in recent years.
We are closer than further: the team is getting better organized every month, and on the ccFound platform we are launching an online training catalog this month.
As I mentioned, in the next 3-6 months we will have a clear idea of what ccFound looks like and where it is going.
At the same time, in about 6 months, we expect the bottom of the impending recession. According to our analyzes (which I compare with several advanced stock market analysts), this will be the peak of unemployment and panic in the financial markets.
This will come as a surprise to most - not to us. I hope to enter this period with a business built on strong foundations.
Translation by Piotr Michalak
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