TL;DR;
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Want to develop cryptowatch.com and seeking investors/devs/artists to make it happen, possibly with a community funded project. Asking questions about the best way to raise funds and for input in regards to site features.
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I've purchased the domain cryptowatch.com some months ago and intend to develop a service on this domain. It's a side project, and not a full time project of mine. Currently I'm running a bitcoin node (Credit for stats: Shorena -he's not affiliated with this project though) and a bitcoin testnet node on the server. The aim is to help the bitcoin project, and I intend to keep the node running as long as possible, and to always update it to the newest version coming out. I don't store any bitcoins on the server.
As this is quite the premium domain name, I intend to develop it into quite a good service, and I intend to add the following services:
- Blockchain explorer tool. If anyone knows about a good open source implementation, please give a shout.
- Bitcoin price updates + updates of other interesting cryptocurrency prices (it's not an aim to compete with coinmarketcap.com in that regard). Perhaps also trade volume and other info, much like bitcoinwatch.com. Perhaps a rest API for this, that could be used in various apps/clients.
- Possibly a blog, but blogging is always time consuming, so this is not certain.
- Possibly a wallet service, as the community has suffered many 'hacks' I'm not certain how this will be welcomed, and perhaps a solution similar to that of blockchain.info, where privkeys are not stored in the plain on the service is a way to go about it. This will need to be considered further.
- Currency conversion tool, much like preev.com.
- Price updates/charts, much like bitcoinity.org.
- Ads system.
- Email alerts with price info.
- Syndicate headlines from bitcoin news sites.
(That's a long list - and obviously, one must start out small and build it step by step.)
Since I cannot spend 100% of my time on this project, and there's not a big budget either, it will have to slowly be brought into fruition. However, I've thought of a few different models, as I'm rather proficient as project lead, assembling resources and directing them to accomplish a good result. I've therefore thought about raising some capital, and then hiring freelancers to build the site. I'm myself a dev/admin, but much of my time is already invested elsewhere.
Obviously the community is weary of any newcomers and their ideas. I'm serious with this project, and there will always be some negative voices, and suspicion, and I understand trust is important. This will be built over time, and I will not spend my time with flamewars in this regard. Critical questions are welcome, but negativity will simply be ignored.
Some questions to the community. Are there any other features on the site you would like to see than those I listed above? Preferably I would like to have features on the site that's updated automatically and does not require a lot of manual work like writing blog posts, updating news-stores or administrating a forum.
Intended sources of revenue:
- Ads. Ads for scam operations would not be welcome.. Ads could be listed through an ads agency, or preferably directly on the site.
- Donations
- Fees, if any paid services are developed that users will pay for to use.
- Premium features (?)
Expenses would be:
- Salary to anyone involved.
- Payout to investors.
- Hosting costs / domain renewal / SSL Certificate.
- Any associated costs (cloudflare/CDN etc.)
I've thought of selling shares of the site to raise capital to use for developing the site, and then use that capital to pay developers/graphics artists. Then as the features are developed, and users start using the site, and the add revenue starts coming in, the income would be distributed to investors, and it would also be possible for investors to trade their shares.
How would this best be accomplished? Should the investor funds be held with an escrow agent or several escrow agents before any payment could be done to freelancers? Or would it be okay for me to control the funds as it would give more flexibility, I would prefer the latter, but I understand that as a new user on this forum, trust is an issue. By having shareholders/investors, there could also be votes over features that the site should have, and your vote would count relative to how much you have invested in the site.
I've never done any fundraising/IPO in the bitcoin community before, although I have followed the bitcoin development closely for years, and apart from the fact that I have an idea about what I want to do with the site, currently there's not anything more to this project so far than a good domain name and a running bitcoin node. But you have to start somewhere.
What would the best method for raising capital be? I was thinking of selling shares for 49% of the site. How would this best be done? I'm aware there are various cryptostocks sites, but I've seen several warnings about the fact that some of them are not too reliable. It's quite important that funds are available when needed, as it would be a disaster having devs doing work, and then not getting paid, or the funding site vanishing altogether. I've heard of decentralized funding methods, like Lighthouse by Hearn, is that a feasible method?
As for the site, I would like it to be responsive, and behave well on computers, as well as pads and mobile devices. As for the tech stack, this would be discussed with any devs.
So I see a few ways how the site could be developed.
1. I do the development and hire freelancers when budget allows. This will work, but it will be a very slow process.
2. I get help from the community with fund raising, and the funds would be used to develop the site, and investors could either sell shares for a profit, as I anticipate they will raise in value once the community sees the site being developed, or they could keep their shares and receive dividends. A specific plan for this has not been developed yet, but once I hear the opinions from the community, and before any fund raising occurs, I will develop such a plan.
3. A few investors, or perhaps just one would be willing to spend enough money to hire me full time and/or to have me as a project lead and to assemble a good team to make the site.
4. Developers/graphic artists would work for free, or very low pay, but would receive equity in the site. So, if a developer had a 15% share in the site, and the site made 10 BTC in a month, the developer would receive 1.5 BTC pr. month. The developer could then chose to have this as a passive income later on, or sell his shares to anyone willing to purchase them.
Marketing is another part of the project, and I've never been big on marketing, so if resources allow, some marketing person should be brought in to help in this regard.
I'm aware that the suggested features I listed above are quite extensive, so to start with just displaying cryptoprices, with an emphasis on bitcoin would be a sound first step, then as the project expands, other features will be added.
The idea is that to check the current price for bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, people go to cryptowatch.com. Easy to remember domain name, and since the price is constantly changing, as long as people visit that site, there will be many eyeballs on any ads the site serves. Perhaps an idea could also be to display the information without ads, for a small charge. Of course users might use adblockers, but any ads accepted should not be annoyingly intrusive, like full page ads, ads playing music and so on. The ideas and concepts will develop as I gain knowledge of how the site is used, and from the feedback from the customers.
My promises are:
- I will take 100% responsibility for the project, and I'm in this for the long run. I'm not impatient and I know that making a successful site is like anything else in life you want to be successful at, it takes time and effort.
- I will create a special free member-site only for shareholders where they can log in and see specifics/status about the project, and their earnings.
- I will take shareholder feedback in regards to which features they want on the site, then I will make a proposal containing these features, including those I might have myself. I will do a writeup about the technical challenges involved. For instance, it's rather easy to get bitcoin prices from a few exchanges, and displaying those, however making a secure wallet service, is much more complicated.
- Since I will always hold 51% of the shares, I will always have the final word, but I'm more than willing to listen to the shareholders. From experience, a strong lead in a project is very important to have any kind of meaningful progress. Endless debates does not bring us anywhere, and while some investors might think that integrating an exchange in the site with limit trading and the ability to short bitcoins etc, such a project is quite demanding, and might not even be feasible without the right resources, and it's also a bit outside the scope of what I envision for the site. As such, it's impossible to make everyone happy all the time, but I promise to listen to all shareholders, and in the event I disagree, I will clearly explain my position, and I think that will work out quite well.
- As far as possible, everything, and i mean everything related to the project should be paid in bitcoins. I will go to great lengths to achieve this. The idea is to contribute to the bitcoin ecosystem by actually using the bitcoins to pay freelancers, pay for hosting (this is already done), and also to pay other stuff needed with bitcoins. Hardware, Tea and coffee comes to mind!
- Investors does not need to identify themselves, your bitcoins will be good enough, and after doing some more researching and getting some input from the community regarding how the shares could be distributed, there will be established some method whereby shares will be associated with the specific investor.
- There will be a specific road map with deadlines. This is derived from discussions/voting in the group.
- I will run a thread/blog with specific updates, one aimed at the shareholders only, and the other one a public one that would typically announce new features on the site etc.
- I'm always responsive, and most often will answer within 24 hours, but usually I will be rather quick at answering. And if I'm away for a longer time, it will always be announced in advance.
- Those involved as freelancers will be able to work on their own terms, do you want to work from a cafe, in the middle of the night, only on weekends, whatever you choose it's fine with me as long as there's progress and you do the task.
- Site earnings will be published on the members site, and be distributed monthly, if that's too much work and/or income is very small, I will revert to a quarterly payout. So if you're a shareholder and you invested let's say 0.3 BTC and there was a total of 20 BTC invested, then you own about 0.75% of the site. Your investment (0.3 BTC)/(20BTC/49% shareholder ownership) ~ 0.75%, would give you a payout of 0.075 BTC pr. month if the site made 10 BTC net profit a month. In this example it would take you 4 months to recoup your investment, and in addition you could also sell the shares if you wanted to. Which has the likelihood of doubling your initial investment over the span of approximately 6 months. Of course, as with all other investments, there's always a risk.
- A contract with clear terms for the investment will be made once it's decided how the fund raising/IPO should be done. Not sure about what exact term is best used for this in the bitcoin community, but you understand what I'm aiming at.
Lastly, a main PGP key will be created for the project, which will identify me towards other project members, and everyone involved should really use PGP, esp. when important information is to be communicated, but also the member site will have a SSL Certificate (https), so those not wanting to communicate with PGP could use that member site, and we could also perhaps establish an irc-channel, or use other im-systems which could be used when issues needed to be discussed more and instant messages would be the best method of communication to resolve various issues.
Again, I'm open for any input and feedback, also constructive critisism, however, as I said earlier, I don't want to waste time on fruitless discussions about minor issues that won't bring us anywhere, or go into flame wars. Let's keep everything professional.
So if you're a small time investor, and while having only 1 or a few larger investors would be less administrative overhead, I think it would be a good idea to have the minimum investment set to something like 0.1 BTC. That way, many small time investors would have the opportunity to be involved, and it would be pretty cool to see a bloomberg story where they refer to the bitcoin price as seen on cryptowatch.com. Then you can tell your mother that you're actually an investor in that site!
As for how much funds would be needed for the initial fund raising, that's yet to be determined. All raised funds would be used solely for development of the site, and necessary expenses. Personally I would not take out any salary until the site actually starts to generate income, and if there would be a need to use any funds for whatever reason, this would be clearly communicated to the community. Any escrow /multi signature arrangement could be discussed, but I think it's important that this is done in such a way that the worst case scenarios are covered. I am open for suggestions, but at the same time it's good to have practical solutions, and avoid too much bureaucracy.
OK, I'm open for input from the community. As a final note, I'm pretty sure I will get this question: Who are you, and why should we trust you? Well, I can prove ownership of the domain cryptowatch.com by uploading a text file with any name and any content and post the link in this forum. Other than that, I do intend to establish an IBC in the future once the revenue of the site can justify it. But for the time being, there will not be any need to exchange real life identities. If there should be any serious investors with a proven track record however, I'm open for suggestions, but really, I would like to see this as the project of the small fish, keeping in spirit with the distributed nature of bitcoin, but as anyone else I do have bills to pay and a family to feed, so if the offer is right - that's always something that must be considered.
So let's see what the community have to say - and while this post was made in the spur of the moment, the purchase of the domain cryptowatch.com was not, and I've intended to develop it, but finally thought it was time to get the project kick-started. As for any team size, I would like to keep any team small, so if you're interested in becoming a team member, or an investor, please post in this thread or send me a private message. Please note that I would prefer to work with mature people in the age 25+ in actual site work, however it will be considered on a case by case basis if anyone younger wants to chime in. As for investors, you should make sure that you're of legal age to actually invest, and that you're not breaking any local, state or national laws by investing.
I want to keep this a professional project, and anyone wanting to come on board must accept the fact that in the event of disagreements, I will always have the final word, but as mentioned earlier, I'm very reasonable, and always welcome educated, professional, mature and logic arguments. As for skill level required, if you're a student or a junior freelancer, you'd still be considered. The most important abilities is to have the ability to make things happen, and to create good code. If you have something you've made previously and you want to show that to me, it would be great. Once funding is done, freelancers who's already been vetted will be assigned tasks, or freelancers will be hired.
As a ballpark number, I would think a modest 20 BTC would be a very good number to start with to hire a few devs and artists to create a very interesting and good first version of the site. However, I need to make more calculations before coming up with a final sum.
Note that although my bitcointalk.org user is new, this is no indication of my level of professionality or the amount of time I've actually spent reading the whitepaper, playing with bitcoin code, trading bitcoins, running various bitcoin services and otherwise participate in the bitcoin community.
Time will prove this. At the moment, there's nothing more I can add. I hope there will be a very interesting and fruitful discussion, and many good suggestions. And I can't wait to get started!
- Cryptowatch.com admin