Maksim Balashevich. He’s a former IBM software engineer and co-founder of a successful, hosting business in Belarus. He now manages the overall product and leads the Santiment team. He’s a veteran leader, having spent more than a decade trading successfully using Santiment and Elliot Wave as analysis. He’s also a guru in yoga and meditation.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – N/A
What CEO do you follow? – Nick Szabo
Favorite online tool? — Blockchain and Reddit
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Move faster to the same goal

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:53 – Nathan introduces Maksim to the show
02:30 – Santiment builds information for the emerging cryptocurrency token economy
03:30 – When Santiment had their ICO, they’ve established a token for their platform
03:36 – To get access to Santiment, you can buy the monthly subscription by paying in dollars or by depositing your tokens into the platform
- 04:12 – There’s no revenue on the SaaS side yet
04:33 – Santiment has raised $500K in July 2017
- 05:03 – Santiment has sold 45K tokens
05:17 – Santiment’s token name is San
05:44 – Santiment got 720 participants on their token sale
06:14 – Santiment has 8 full-time people and a few contractors
06:29 – Santiment hasn’t liquidated their funds yet
06:43 – Santiment got 12K ethereum from their presell, which they used to fund the development of the business
07:44 – Maksim is hoping to start charging in 3 months, but it seems like it will take 6 months
08:10 – From the community’s response, Maksim can’t charge for Santiment yet and people are asking for specific kinds of data
- 09:34 – It’s not that they will not charge, but they can’t charge just yet
10:00 – Maksim shares how Santiment works in the crypto economy
11:15 – Prior to ICO, Santiment didn’t take additional capital and just used the presell
11:46 – Maksim shares how they came up with the number of tokens to issue
- 11:49 – For crowdsale participants, it is 54% of their outstanding
- 12:04 – For presell participants, for every 12K ether contributed, Santiment will issue them 50M tokens
- 12:21 – The rest will be part of the team’s tokens, which is currently locked
13:55 – Maksim hasn’t seen any active competitors yet
14:34 – Iconomi is one of Santiment’s partners and is also in the same space
16:16 – Maksim’s prediction for the next blockchain that will do well
- 16:48 – Maksim personally likes Polkadot which connects blockchains
- 17:10 – There are also projects that introduce the token economy
- 17:24 – There’s a growing number of blockchain companies providing decentralized storage solutions
18:17 – Maksim shares the latest issue on hacking in cryptocurrency where $7M was stolen
21:00 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

When to charge for your service isn’t an easy to decision to make—you have to consider the community and the value that they want to get from the company.
In recent hacking events with ICO, security issues are being called into question.
If possible, start working towards your goals as EARLY as possible.

Resources Mentioned:

Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

811: Crypto: After $2m ICO, He's Building the Bloomberg Terminal for Crypto

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders