Author: 2muchcoffee

Introduction

Imagine a world where every spoken word is instantly captured and transformed into a neatly organized script. This isn't George Orwell's 1984 vision of surveillance and control; instead, it's the empowering reality crafted by modern speech-to-text technology. In this world, technology serves not as a tool for monitoring, but as a powerful ally in enhancing communication, productivity, and accessibility. A sales manager dissects her team's strategies with precision, a doctor focuses more on patient care than paperwork, and every student gets a front-row seat in lectures. Here, technology liberates rather than confines, turning everyday conversations into opportunities for growth and understanding.

Historical Context and Technical Evolution

Historically, speech-to-text technology was limited by computational power and the complexities of natural language. However, with the rise of deep learning and neural networks, it has become more refined and capable of understanding various accents, dialects, and languages. This newfound robustness has paved the way for its widespread adoption across industries.

Strategic Architecture for Scalable Speech-to-Text Services

As demand for robust speech-to-text capabilities escalates, it is imperative to design a system architecture that is not only effective at launch but also scalable to accommodate future growth. This requires a carefully planned infrastructure that can adapt and scale without sacrificing performance. Here’s how we architect a future-ready speech-to-text system:

• Microservice Architecture

  Transitioning our proof of concept into a microservice architecture ensures modular and scalable growth. By decoupling services, we enhance our ability to scale specific functions independently and manage multiple instances based on varying workload demands.

• API Development and Integration

  A well-defined API acts as the backbone of our system, interfacing between the microservices and the end-users. It ensures seamless communication across services and centralizes the request management to maintain efficiency and reliability.

• Task Queue Management

  Implementing a robust task queue system is crucial for managing asynchronous tasks and ensuring that our services can handle high volumes of requests efficiently. This system prioritizes and dispatches tasks to available resources, optimizing throughput and reducing latency.

• Infrastructure Strategy

  Choosing the right infrastructure is critical to supporting the anticipated load and facilitating easy scaling:

• Load Distribution

  Utilize a hybrid approach for load management. Regular operations can run on cost-effective Hetzner Servers, while spikes in demand are managed through scalable cloud solutions like Google Cloud, which provides on-demand resource allocation.

• Scalability Considerations

  For gradual user growth, a scalable server setup is essential. Starting with a base capacity, we can incrementally scale our resources, ensuring that the infrastructure grows in tandem with the demand.

Choosing the Right Libraries and Infrastructure for Advanced Speech-to-Text Solutions

In the pursuit of creating an efficient and scalable speech-to-text system, the selection of appropriate libraries and robust infrastructure is paramount. Here’s how we ensure that our system not only meets current demands but is also primed for future challenges:

Optimizing with the Right Libraries

Our choice of libraries is driven by the need for high performance, versatility, and real-time processing capabilities. Whisper by OpenAI is a cornerstone of our architecture, lauded for its ability to handle diverse languages and complex audio environments efficiently. It’s an excellent choice for developers who require a reliable and versatile speech recognition tool.

Building on the strong foundation provided by Whisper, WhisperX stands out as the best choice for scenarios requiring instantaneous transcription and precise speaker identification. Its enhanced features are crucial for settings where every second counts, such as live broadcasting or high-stakes business meetings.

For situations where internet connectivity is a constraint, Vosk offers an ideal solution. Its robust offline capabilities ensure reliable performance on mobile and server applications, making it perfect for use in remote areas or in privacy-sensitive environments where data needs to remain on the device.

Leveraging GPU Technology for Infrastructure Efficiency

The backbone of our infrastructure strategy hinges on the power of GPU technology. Modern speech-to-text applications, with their intensive computational demands, necessitate the use of GPUs to process large volumes of audio data swiftly and accurately. This is essential not only for maintaining real-time processing standards but also for enabling high-throughput systems capable of handling simultaneous transcription tasks.

To manage these demands effectively, we implement a hybrid approach to load management. Regular operations are supported by Hetzner Servers, known for their cost-effectiveness and reliability, making them a staple in our regular workflow. During periods of peak demand, we leverage Google Cloud solutions to scale resources dynamically, ensuring that our service remains uninterrupted and responsive.

Furthermore, our scalable resource planning allows for the gradual expansion of server capacity. This incremental approach ensures that our infrastructure can grow in tandem with user demand, safeguarding system performance and efficiency as scaling needs evolve.

Applications Across Industries

Applications in Healthcare

In healthcare, the use of speech-to-text AI technology is proving revolutionary. Physicians and healthcare professionals are often bogged down by administrative tasks like record-keeping and note-taking. By automating these processes, speech recognition software allows them to focus on what matters most: providing care.

• Enhancing Patient Records

  Speech-to-text systems can immediately transcribe voice dictations directly into electronic health records (EHR), reducing physician workload and minimizing transcription errors. This allows doctors to spend less time typing and more time diagnosing and treating patients.

• Supporting Real-Time Clinical Decision-Making

  The ability to access patient data swiftly during consultations enhances diagnostic accuracy and treatment efficacy. For instance, a pilot study in a Chicago health network demonstrated a 30% decrease in diagnostic errors due to the integration of speech-to-text AI in their clinical workflows.

• Improving Telemedicine Interactions

  With the rise of telemedicine, clear communication is crucial. Speech-to-text technology not only ensures precise documentation of these digital consultations but also supports regulatory compliance and accurate billing, making healthcare more accessible.

• Challenges in Healthcare

  Ensuring the confidentiality of sensitive health information remains a paramount concern. The sector is also grappling with the need for higher accuracy in recognizing diverse accents and medical terminologies. Ongoing training and enhancements in AI algorithms are crucial to address these issues.

Applications in Education

The education sector has also embraced speech-to-text AI technology to enhance the learning experience and streamline administrative processes. Educators and students alike benefit from its accuracy and accessibility.

• Assisting in Lecture Transcription and Note-Taking

  Students often struggle to take comprehensive notes during fast-paced lectures. Speech-to-text systems can automatically transcribe these lectures, creating accurate, easily searchable records that students can review later. This frees students to engage more fully with the material instead of being preoccupied with note-taking.

• Facilitating Accessibility for Students with Disabilities

  For students with hearing impairments or learning disabilities, speech-to-text technology provides invaluable support. Automated transcription ensures that these students have access to the same information as their peers, promoting inclusivity and equitable learning opportunities.

• Language Learning Support

  Speech-to-text AI can support language learners by providing accurate transcriptions of native speakers, enabling them to understand pronunciation and structure more clearly. Additionally, automated translation features allow international students to follow along in their native languages.

• Challenges in Education

  Implementing speech-to-text AI technology in education presents challenges, such as ensuring high accuracy in different classroom settings and handling varying accents and teaching styles. Privacy is another concern, as transcription data must be handled responsibly, especially in settings involving minors.

Applications in Business and Customer Support

Businesses are leveraging speech-to-text AI technology to streamline their operations, improve customer satisfaction, and enhance productivity.

• Improving Customer Service

  Automated transcription tools can convert customer support calls into text, allowing for quick analysis and follow-up. Customer support teams can use these transcriptions to identify recurring issues, track response times, and evaluate agent performance. This data-driven approach ensures a consistent and high-quality customer experience.

• Streamlining Meeting Transcription and Note-Taking

  Modern businesses rely on numerous meetings and collaborative sessions to make decisions. With speech-to-text AI, organizations can transcribe these meetings, enabling participants to focus on the conversation instead of worrying about comprehensive note-taking. The generated transcripts also make it easy to reference decisions and track follow-up actions.

• Enhancing Accessibility in Business Communication

  Speech-to-text technology can make workplace communication more inclusive by providing real-time transcriptions for remote and hearing-impaired employees. It also enables the creation of subtitles for internal video presentations, ensuring every employee stays informed.

• Analyzing Customer Interactions

  Organizations can analyze transcribed customer interactions to identify trends, needs, and pain points. This information can inform product development, marketing strategies, and service improvement initiatives.

Applications in Media and Entertainment

In media and entertainment, speech-to-text AI technology is a powerful ally for creators and audiences.

• Speeding up Content Creation for Podcasts and Video

  Transcribing spoken content into text helps creators produce accurate captions, subtitles, and show notes faster. It also aids in creating summaries or written versions of podcasts, increasing accessibility and discoverability.

• Enhancing Accessibility through Subtitles and Transcripts

  Subtitles and transcripts are essential for providing content accessibility to non-native speakers and those with hearing impairments. Speech-to-text AI allows creators to generate subtitles automatically and edit them quickly for accuracy.

• Streamlining Live Event Transcription

  Live events like conferences or sports broadcasts can be transcribed in real time using speech-to-text technology, enabling broader participation and easy post-event review. These live captions improve audience engagement and provide a written record for organizers and participants.

• Challenges in Media and Entertainment

  While highly useful, speech-to-text technology in this sector faces challenges like maintaining high accuracy across different audio qualities and understanding various accents and industry-specific jargon.

Applications in Legal Services

Legal services rely heavily on accurate transcription for case preparation and record-keeping.

• Simplifying Transcription of Legal Proceedings

  Court hearings, depositions, and client meetings can generate vast amounts of audio data. Speech-to-text AI enables faster transcription, reducing the time required to prepare legal documents and providing easily searchable records.

• Automating Evidence Review and Analysis

  Transcribed audio can be analyzed quickly to identify relevant segments, patterns, or themes, aiding legal teams in constructing stronger cases. This technology can also speed up e-discovery processes by making it easier to sift through extensive voice recordings.

• Ensuring Compliance and Maintaining Accurate Records

  Law firms must keep detailed records of their interactions and proceedings. Automated transcription ensures that accurate records are maintained and that compliance with regulatory standards is upheld.

• Challenges Specific to the Legal Industry

  Challenges in this field include ensuring that AI understands legal jargon and maintaining client confidentiality. Transcripts need to be highly accurate to ensure fairness in legal proceedings.

Practical Evaluation of Speech-to-Text Libraries

As part of our initiative to harness the most efficient speech-to-text technologies, we conducted an in-depth evaluation of several notable libraries, comparing their functionality, performance, and suitability for various applications. Here’s a detailed comparison of our findings:

Vosk

• Capabilities:

  Offers essential functions such as transcription, synchronization, and speaker identification.

• Evaluation:

  The base models from Vosk fell short of our efficiency standards, primarily due to issues in context retention and suboptimal translation quality when files were split into parts.

OpenAI Whisper

• Initial Tests:

  Focused on evaluating the basic transcription quality, which was found to be satisfactory.

• Performance Optimization:

  Performance was significantly enhanced when processed on GPU-based servers, demonstrating Whisper’s capability to handle extensive and diverse datasets effectively.

WhisperX (by m-bain)

• Capabilities:

  Builds on OpenAI's Whisper model to provide fast automatic speech recognition, with word-level timestamps and speaker diarization.

• Features:

  Includes batched inference for real-time transcription speeds up to 70x, utilizing the faster-whisper backend. It supports phoneme-based ASR, forced alignment, and voice activity detection, making it suitable for high-efficiency requirements.

• Performance:

  Showcases significant improvements in transcription speed and accuracy, especially with batch processing, which greatly reduces the time required for transcription tasks.

Comparative Insights

• Vosk vs. Whisper:

  Whisper outperforms Vosk in handling complex audio scenarios and managing diverse accents with better overall accuracy and efficiency.

• Whisper vs. WhisperX:

  WhisperX offers enhanced features over the basic Whisper model, particularly in speed and the ability to perform speaker diarization and more precise word-level timestamping, which are crucial for detailed analytical tasks.

Conclusion

The contribution of open-source libraries to the speech-to-text AI landscape cannot be overstated. They democratize access to cutting-edge technology, allowing startups, educators, and multinational corporations alike to implement sophisticated speech recognition systems. By utilizing these tools, industries can drive innovation forward, tailoring solutions to meet both broad and niche needs effectively.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. What is speech-to-text technology?

   Speech-to-text technology is a system that converts spoken language into written text. It uses advanced algorithms and machine learning models to transcribe speech accurately in real time.

2. How has speech-to-text technology evolved over the years?

   Initially, speech-to-text technology was limited by computational power and the complexities of natural language processing. With advancements in deep learning and neural networks, it has become more accurate and capable of understanding various accents, dialects, and languages, leading to its widespread adoption across different industries.

3. What is the importance of a scalable architecture in speech-to-text services?

   A scalable architecture ensures that the system can handle increasing amounts of data and user requests without sacrificing performance. It allows the system to grow and adapt to future demands, maintaining efficiency and reliability.

4. What role do microservices play in speech-to-text technology?

   Microservices architecture breaks down the system into smaller, independent services that can be developed, deployed, and scaled separately. This modularity enhances the system’s ability to handle specific functions independently and manage varying workloads efficiently.

5. Why are APIs crucial for speech-to-text systems?

   APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) act as intermediaries that enable communication between different services within the system and between the system and its end-users. They centralize request management, ensuring seamless interaction and maintaining system efficiency and reliability.

6. How does task queue management improve speech-to-text systems?

   Task queue management prioritizes and dispatches tasks to available resources, optimizing throughput and reducing latency. This system ensures that high volumes of requests are handled efficiently, maintaining the system’s performance during peak loads.

7. Which libraries are recommended for building advanced speech-to-text solutions?
   • Whisper by OpenAI: Known for its versatility and high performance in diverse audio environments.
   • WhisperX: Ideal for real-time transcription and precise speaker identification, especially in high-stakes scenarios.
   • Vosk: Suitable for offline applications, providing robust performance on mobile and server applications without the need for internet connectivity.
8. How does GPU technology benefit speech-to-text applications?

   GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) are essential for processing large volumes of audio data quickly and accurately. They enable real-time processing and support high-throughput systems capable of handling simultaneous transcription tasks.

9. What are the benefits of using Hetzner Servers and Google Cloud solutions in speech-to-text infrastructure?

   Hetzner Servers are cost-effective and reliable, making them suitable for regular operations. Google Cloud solutions allow for dynamic scaling of resources during peak demand, ensuring uninterrupted and responsive service.

10. How is speech-to-text technology used in healthcare?

    In healthcare, speech-to-text technology automates administrative tasks such as record-keeping and note-taking, allowing healthcare professionals to focus more on patient care. It improves efficiency and reduces the time spent on paperwork.

11. What were the findings from the evaluation of different speech-to-text libraries?
    • Vosk: Good for basic functions but had issues with context retention and translation quality.
    • OpenAI Whisper: Provided satisfactory transcription quality, especially when processed on GPU-based servers.
    • WhisperX: Showcased significant improvements in transcription speed and accuracy, particularly with batch processing and real-time requirements.
12. Why are open-source libraries important for the development of speech-to-text AI?

    Open-source libraries democratize access to advanced technology, allowing various organizations to implement sophisticated speech recognition systems. They drive innovation by enabling the development of customized solutions that meet diverse industry needs.

There’s no such thing as too much when it comes to the 2muchcoffee team. We’re a Ukrainian-based company that’s the all-around technology partner that’s ready to help you elevate your business. We have vast experience working on different technologies like JavaScript, Ionic, Angular, Nest.js, Next.js, Flutter, REST API, and more.

In honor of our impact, we’ve been recently recognized as a Clutch Global Top 1000 Company this 2021!

Clutch is a data-driven B2B platform headquartered in the heart of Washington DC. All year round, analysts from the platform research through the different B2B industries to determine which service providers lead their respective markets. Following their 2021 evaluation, Clutch ranks 2muchcoffee as one of the top-performing service providers because of our dedication, market position, and our clients’ success.

This recognition is such a great boost for our confidence! We will continue to aim even higher, and we hope to achieve more momentous milestones like this in the future!

“We are on the right path! Our plan for 2022?  to be recognized among the best 100.” — Chief Executive Officer of 2muchcoffee

Thank you so much to each and every one of our clients! We attribute this wonderful award to you and your team. Without your support, we wouldn’t be here today. If it weren’t for your appreciation and success, 2muchcoffee wouldn’t be a five-star company!

“2muchccoffee is very diligent which translates to the high quality they deliver. The team’s professionalism, code quality, and responsiveness are their main strengths. Also, this software company is very customer-centric and gave us the impression that they understood the requirements from start to finish.” — Co-Founder & CEO, Scholyr

“2muchcoffee team is communicative and responsive to requests, which results in a supportive partnership. The whole team was very easy to work with. They demonstrated a lot of technical expertise and a very strong understanding of the project and its aims.” — Co-Founder, Health Technology CompanyDo you have an idea for your next project? Not sure what tech stack or business model to choose?

Don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and the 2muchcoffee team will assist you in any inquiry.

Startups need outside capital to grow. However, the process of raising that money is often long, complex, and ego deflating. It is a path all founders must take to succeed in business, but when is the right time to raise? And is it the right way to do it?

Let’s discuss all possible questions about seed fundraising for startups that every business owner should keep in mind.

What is the purpose of seed-stage funding?

Seed funding is the initial form of capital a startup will raise. In our post How to Build Fundraising Strategy for Early-Stage Startups? we defined every fundraising stage including seed one. Seed-round aims to collect capital to pursue a certain goal to prove if the hypothesis. Thus, seed funding helps to define further research, product development and testing product-market fit — meaning being in a right market to satisfy customers’ demand.

According to Crunchbase research, seed-round funding has massively grown in the past 10 years. In fact, three of Silicon Valley’s largest and best-known venture firms — Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock and Khosla Ventures — announced large new dedicated seed funds. Crunchbase data underscores an impressive rise in funding to the smallest startups: Fewer than 3,200 companies received seed funding in the period between 2006 and 2010. A decade later, that had ballooned to more than 23,000 startups.

When is it the right time to raise seed funding?

For some founders it is enough to have a story and a reputation. However, for most it will require an idea, a product, and some amount of customer adoption, a.k.a. traction. Luckily, the software development ecosystem today is such that a sophisticated web or mobile product can be built and delivered in a remarkably short period of time. Even hardware can be rapidly prototyped and tested.

The best timing to raise seed capital for startup is when you are sure about your product, market and team. The combination of those components will build a strong company that will deserve to have a venture interest.

As the team at Y Combinator stated:

“Founders should raise money when they have figured out what the market opportunity is and who the customer is, and when they have delivered a product that matches their needs and is being adopted at an interestingly rapid rate. How rapid is interesting? This depends, but a rate of 10% per week for several weeks is impressive. And to raise money founders need to impress. For founders who can convince investors without these things, congratulations. For everyone else, work on your product and talk to your users.”

So, if you feel that your business has what it takes to generate massive returns for an investor, it is likely time to start your fundraising process.

How to raise seed funding?

To successfully raise seed capital, you need to develop a system and build a process. You can think of fundraising as a traditional sales or marketing process for B2B. In this case, a sales or marketing funnel contains the following steps:

• Searching and attracting qualified leads on a regular basis.

• Nurturing and moving the leads through the funnel with the goal of converting them into a customer.

• Serving customers and creating a great experience until they become loyal and long-term partners.

In fact, the same steps can be applied for fundrising and will look something like this:

1. Make a list of potential investors at a top of the funnel. These investors generally come from cold outreach, warm introductions, or inbound interest.

2. Nurturing relations with investors and moving them through your funnel.

3. Communicating and building relationships with your current investors. As a founder, one of the first places to look for capital is current investors. One of the first places a new investor will look to for guidance will also be your current investors. At the end of the day your current investors should be the ultimate evangelist for your business.

4. After a while, you will gain a successful partnership and be able to develop your startup.

To get started, you need to understand who the right investor is for your business and how you fit into their vision and can be of benefit to them.

How much seed capital to raise?

Ideally, you should raise as much money as you need to reach profitability, so that you’ll never have to raise money again. If you succeed in this, not only will you find it easier to raise money in the future, you’ll be able to survive without new funding if the funding environment gets tight. In general, you need to raise enough money to get to your next “funding milestone” which is usually within 12 to 18 months.

In choosing how much to raise you are trading off several variables, including how much progress that amount of money will purchase, credibility with investors, and dilution. If you can manage to give up as little as 10% of your company in your seed round, that is wonderful, but most rounds will require up to 20% dilution and you should try to avoid more than 25%.

In any event, the amount you are asking for must be tied to a believable plan. That plan will buy you the credibility necessary to persuade investors that their money will have a chance to grow. It is usually a good idea to create multiple plans assuming different amounts raised and to carefully articulate your belief that the company will be successful whether you raise the full or some lesser amount. The difference will be how fast you can grow.

Types of Seed Funding

Let's conicder different types of seed funding for stratup developemnt.

Crowd Funding

There are a growing number of new vehicles to raise money, such as AngelList, Kickstarter, and Wefunder. These crowdfunding sites can be used to launch a product, run a pre-sales campaign, or find venture funding. In exceptional cases, founders have used these sites as their dominant fundraising source, or as clear evidence of demand. They usually are used to fill in rounds that are largely complete or, at times, to reanimate a round that is having difficulty getting off the ground. The ecosystem around investing is changing rapidly, but when and how to use these new sources of funds will usually be determined by your success raising through more traditional means.

Corporate Seed Funding

This is a very good source of seed funding as start-ups gain more visibility because of the big corporate investors. Large companies like Google, Intel, and Apple support start-ups regularly with seed funding. Such investments can prove to be very useful for new firms to build their brand.

Incubators

These investors, along with providing small seed funds, focus on helping the new ventures through training and often also provide office space. Many leading educational institutes, like IITs and IIMs, also provide such services. Generally, Incubators do not ask for equity holdings from start-ups.

Accelerators

These investors mainly focus on helping the new firms in scaling-up rather than supporting them in early-stage innovation. They also provide help through various training, mentoring, and giving networking opportunities. Unlike most incubators, accelerators usually take equity.

Angels & Venture Capitalists

The difference between an angel and a VC is that angels are amateurs and VCs are pros. VCs invest other people’s money and angels invest their own on their own terms. Although some angels are quite rigorous and act very much like the pros, for the most part they are much more like hobbyists. Their decision making process is usually much faster--they can make the call all on their own--and there is almost always a much larger component of emotion that goes into that decision.

VCs will usually require more time, more meetings, and will have multiple partners involved in the final decision. And remember, VCs see LOTS of deals and invest in very few, so you will have to stand out from a crowd.

There are many new VC firms, sometimes called “super-angels,” or “micro-VC’s”, which explicitly target brand new, very early stage companies. There are also several traditional VCs that will invest in seed rounds. And there are a large number of independent angels who will invest anywhere from $25k to $100k or more in individual companies.

Choosing investors for seed funding

Who you are and how well you tell your story are most important when trying to convince investors to invest in you. Investors are looking for compelling founders who have a believable dream and as much evidence as possible documenting the reality of that dream. Find a style that works for you, and then work as hard as necessary to get the perfect pitch deck. Pitching is difficult and often unnatural for founders, especially technical founders who are more comfortable in front of a screen than a crowd. But anyone will improve with practice, and there is no substitute for an extraordinary amount of practice. Incidentally, this is true whether you are preparing for a demo day or an investor meeting.

A seed investment can usually be closed rapidly. It is an advantage to use standard documents with consistent terms. Deals have momentum and there is no recipe towards building momentum behind your deal other than by telling a great story, persistence, and legwork. You may have to meet with dozens of investors before you get that close. But to get started you just need to convince one of them. Once the first money is in, each subsequent close will get faster and easier.

Documents to keep in mind

You will probably want an executive summary and a slide deck you can walk investors through and, potentially, leave behind so VCs can show to other partners.

You will probably want an executive summary and a slide deck you can walk investors through and, potentially, leave behind so VCs can show to other partners.

The executive summary should be one or two pages (one is better) and should include vision, product, team (location, contact info), traction, market size, and minimum financials (revenue, if any, and fundraising prior and current).

Generally, make sure the slide deck is a coherent leave-behind. Graphics, charts, screenshots are more powerful than lots of words. Consider it a framework around which you will hang a more detailed version of your story. There is no fixed format or order, but the following parts are usually present. Create the pitch that matches you, how you present, and how you want to represent your company. Also note that like the executive summary, there are lots of similar templates online if you don’t like this one.

Final Thoughts

For an early-stage startup, the prospect of securing financing through seed investment for up-front capital expenses can be daunting. We hope that this post will answer the relevant questions about seed fundraising and prepare every business owner for a new fundraising round and further business development.

If you still have some questions regarding startup seed fundraising, drop us a line in the contact us section below and we gladly help you!

Non-fungible tokens are becoming more and more popular steadily establishing a range of trends in digital ownership.

These tokens are unique and provide real financial value at the same time. Thus, unique things easily become tokens: works of art, music, autographs and everything that can only be of any value. By purchasing an NFT token, such as the James LeBron clip on the NBA Top Shot, the user does not receive print rights to the clip, or possibly a physical copy of it. He owns only a few traces of the code, which shows that he’s the owner of the only digital asset.

Today, high-profile companies like Visa, Taco Bell, Coca-Cola, Asics try to dip their toes into the NFT market while experimenting with NFTs in their industries.

Consider the possible scenarios for NFTs development in 2022, 2muchcoffee elaborates on the main trends in non-fungible tokens.

1. Club Membership: Bored Apes Yacht Club

Being the first non-fungible tokens on the Ethereum blockchain, CryptoPunks are no longer the main brand in NFT. This month there was emerged a new one and the NFT world is going crazy for Bored Ape Yacht Club - a collection of 10,000 unique NFT digital collectible ape avatars with different facial expressions.

Bored Ape #4712 was purchased for 100.0 ETH
https://t.co/ckQepQxAQw

— boredapebot (@boredapebot) September 29, 2021

Each Bored Ape was generated based on various traits, like background color, style of clothing, fur, earring, eyes, hat, or mouth. Each Bored Ape costs 0.08 ETH (with is around $245 USD). In addition, Bored Ape NFTs are currently up for auction at Sotheby's, with an estimated haul of up to $18 million once it's all said and done.

Owners of Ape NFTs have their own Twitter profile and other perks with their membership. For example, access to owner-only merchandise drops (like from hot streetwear brand The Hundreds); access to a Discord chat for other owners (including the likes of NBA star Steph Curry); and free additional NFTs from BAYC, like Mutant Apes and Bored Ape Kennel Club.

Bored Apes create a status around their NFTs and a strong sense of community. As a user having the feeling of belonging to the membership club that drives users to exchange their experience and continue buying NFTs.

2. Unusual NFT Items: EtherRocks

If you think that the image of a stone could not be a valuable digital collectible, you are wrong. EtherRocks was launched in 2017 shortly after CryptoPunks. IT is a series of 100 crypto-collectibles NFT-type pictures depicting rocks. Except for the color, the rock pictures look the same. Yet these NFTs are selling for $1.3 million for a picture.

Current #EtherRock Price Floor: 500Ξ Ether ($1,542,920)

Rock Id 66 Ξ500 ETH
Rock Id 34 Ξ549 ETH
Rock Id 31 Ξ633 ETH
Rock Id 82 Ξ650 ETH
Rock Id 93 Ξ688.88 ETH
Rock Id 74 Ξ777 ETH

Recent Sales
Ξ790 Eth 12 days ago
Ξ599 Eth 18 days ago

ATH
Ξ888 Eth 23 days ago pic.twitter.com/U9Xs4RB5Hb

— EtherRock Price (@etherrockprice) September 20, 2021

You can ask “So, what are these rock pics good for?” The EtherRock website states that “These virtual rocks serve NO PURPOSE beyond being able to be brought and sold, and giving you a strong sense of pride in being an owner of 1 of the only 100 rocks in the game.”

EtherRocks is famous for its golden standard in NFT ownership. The NFTs, like the idea of EtherRocks, were inspired by the classic collectible toy Pet Rock made in 1975.

3. Big brands are stepping in: Сoca-Cola

During the second NFT boom, brands are doing something slightly different, and considerably more interesting: they’re buying existing NFTs, rather than making their own (that most people don’t want).

In July this year, Coca-cola launched its first-ever NFT collection. There are four unique Coca-Cola NFTs will be up for auction via popular marketplace OpenSea.

Our first-ever NFTs are officially up on @opensea! Check them out. #NFTCommunity #OpenSeaNFT Tap for details: https://t.co/SIJ0HnNfdu pic.twitter.com/ElZG9Btu1r

— Coca-Cola (@CocaCola) July 30, 2021

The NFT collection includes a friendship box that reveals a coke vending machine upon opening, a coca-cola bubble jacket that can be worn in Decentraland 3D virtual reality platform, a sound visualizer (the sound of the bottle opening and sound of the drink being poured over ice, to the “ahhh” that accompanies that first sip), and a friendship card that is inspired by Coca-cola trading cards from the 1990s.

Recently, Visa announced the purchase of a NFT for 50 ETH (about $165,000) with a view to adding it to its collection of “historic commerce artifacts.”

4. Fractionalized NFTs

While crypto billionaires are gleefully snapping up Bored Apes and CryptoPunks, those six-and-seven-figure NFTs are way out of the average crypto user’s price range. But unlike with traditional artworks, it’s possible to fractionalize an NFT, breaking it up into multiple (cheaper) parts that can be bought by the less well-off.

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) is specialize in buying up NFTs, in order to gain exposure to this new asset class. Moreover, now DAO is the place for hanging out with other crypto users.

5. Gaming NFTs: Axie Infinity

Nowadays you can’t mention NFT without mentioning gaming digital collectibles. Gaming culture was the first one that focused a lot of attention on the notion of digital assets and crypto.

We've just released 2 new pages!

The welcome portal will help new trainers get started with Axie ✨

The Product Catalog will ensure you always download our products from the proper sources 🤝

Welcome Portal: https://t.co/qyO1Z2JjPm

Product Catalog: https://t.co/WXeBmFkLRe pic.twitter.com/fxphl2fkWy

— Axie Infinity🦇🔊 (@AxieInfinity) August 16, 2021

Axie Infinity, the Ethereum-based crypto game has quickly become the most vivid and successful example of crypto games. It is racking up more than $1.6 billion of NFT transaction volume since June — more than any other single NFT collection or project. In this game the main characters, creatures, are NFTs which are required to even play the game. Players then earn crypto token rewards, which can be enough to fuel a living wage in some countries.

6. Generative Art: Art Blocks

Believe it or not, a blockchain can not only host the token representing a deed of ownership for a piece of artwork, but actually create the artwork itself.

1/

Art Blocks is a first of it’s kind generative art project. It represents fundamental innovation in the combination of art and technology.

What do you do? Unlock unique art on the Ethereum blockchain, each project produced by different artists.

How do you do it? See below

— Art Blocks (@artblocks_io) February 23, 2021

That’s the premise of the burgeoning generative artwork NFT market, in which a script or algorithm stored on a blockchain produces original, one-of-a-kind artwork during the minting process. Art Blocks is by far the biggest player in the space.

The Ethereum-based initiative encompasses a wide array of individual drops by various artists, spanning a diverse swath of artwork styles and approaches—and nearly all of it is surging lately. Art Blocks saw $583 million worth of trading volume in August alone as collectors created a feeding frenzy around new drops and paid top dollar for secondary market pieces.

A single Art Blocks NFT from Dmitri Cherniak’s Ringers collection sold for $5.66 million worth of ETH in late August to Starry Night Capital, a new NFT-centric investment fund started by Three Arrows Capital. Earlier that same week, a piece from Tyler Hobbs’ Fidenza project went for $3.3 million worth of ETH.

Meanwhile, an earlier, smaller generative artwork project called Autoglyphs—from CryptoPunks creators Larva Labs—has seen multiple single NFT sales above $1 million lately.

Final Words

We believe, that NFTs are unstoppable engines that will only evolve in the future. NFTs definitely has the potential to transform and improve different sectors and industries. If you’d like to add some arguments, pros, or cons into this conversation, feel free to contact us, so we include your thoughts in the next article!

You may be interested in other NFT articles:

• 50+ Materials About NFT Everyone Should Check Out

• Will NFTs be Used Outside of Digital Art?

• FAQ NFTs: Everything You Need to Know About NFTs

Let’s talk about business models from A to Z.

One of the reasons why startups fail is because they choose an unviable business model. If you want your business to be successful, start to analyze what business model to choose from the very beginning. We want to help you with that. That is why 2muchcoffee prepared this article explaining the most successful business models and what metrics you should pay attention to if your goal is to attract more investors.

Why do You Need a Business Model?

Experts argue that it is impossible to launch a successful project without a business model. It is explained as without a clear understanding of the business goals and ways to achieve them, it will be difficult for entrepreneurs to get investments for their business. This is exactly why we need a business model.

A business model is a companies core profit-making plan. This plan defines the product or services, its target audience, the market to cover, and any expected costs.

Today there are different approaches to what counts as a business model. They can all be combined by saying that the business model should explain what demand will be met by creating a company and how this idea is better than what competitors offer.

A business model is an outline of how a company plans to make money with its product and customer base in a specific market. That’s why the model should cover the following points:

• Product (what does the startup offer?);

• Consumers (who needs the product?);

• Marketing (how will the sales be carried out?);

• Suppliers and Manufacturing;

• Market (volume and type);

• The presence of competitors and their features;

• Method of generating income;

• Costs formation system;

• Non-economic factors affecting the project.

What Business Model to Choose?

To describe the structure of a business model, you can use a ready-made template (for example, Lean Canvas). However, if you decide to choose a template, it is necessary to adapt its structure to the needs of a particular business so that it can correctly convey its requirements. At the same time, the structure should be MECE (mutually exclusive, collectible exhaustive) in order not to miss any important component of the business model.

Thus, the Lean Canvas template, which was invented by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pignet, is a table with nine blocks, each of which is dedicated to a separate direction of business processes of the future project:

1. Customer Segments - Who are you creating value for and who is your most important customer.

2. Value proposition - what user problem you solve, what value you deliver to the customer, what package of products and/or services you provide to each segment of your customers.

3. Channels of interaction - how you interact with the consumer and how you communicate your value proposition to them.

4. Relationship with consumers - how do you interact with the client: directly, assigning a personal manager to each client, through customer self-service, through the community, through co-creation of a product, etc.

5. Streams of income - what value the client is willing to pay for, in what ways do you plan to monetize your product.

6. Key resources - what is needed for the product to be created and launched to the market, for the value of the product to be conveyed to the consumer and for the business to make a profit. Resources, for example, can be financial, material, intellectual, human.

7. Key activities - what needs to be done to make the business work. This can be the organization of production, distribution, search for a solution to a problem for a specific client, organization of the platform/network.

8. Key partners - all those thanks to whom the business functions: suppliers, dealers, support services.

9. Costs - what costs are needed to keep your business running.

But does everyone need to consider complex financial models in excel in order to understand whether the business will work?

The answer is no since it all depends on the complexity of the business and the stage of its development. Sometimes, simple calculations in your head are enough to understand that the model is weak to implement and the product has required some improvement.

However, if you aim to attract additional financing, you should consider the precise metrics of your business model. Investors will want to see precise metrics supplemented by qualitative analysis on the slides. To accomplish this task and provide investors with all necessary information about your product it’s important to set the right metrics.

How to Set the Right Metrics?

Usually, entrepreneurs rely on the industry vertical they are in like Healthcare, FinTech, BioTech, etc.. But this approach is wrong!

The right way to think of metrics is how do you plan to charge your users. Depending on your business idea, there are 99% that your product will fit in one of these models.

Anu Hariharan’s talk for Startup School by Y Combinator elaborates on these 9 business models and what metrics entrepreneurs should pay attention to. So, let’s discuss each of these business models and define what metrics you should be using in each case.

Enterprise

An enterprise company sells software or services to other large businesses like Facebook, Google, etc. When you work with enterprises it means you work in terms of contracts. This means it's your predominant focus from which you can frame your metrics.

Examples: Docker, Cloudera, FireEye

What are the key metrics to track?

• A number of bookings meaning the total number of contracts/commitments your company has;

• Total customers are the total number of unique customers that you get;

• Revenue which is a value that you got after providing the required services.

Common mistakes for Enterprise model:

• Confusing “Bookings” with “Revenues” and implementing contracts when working with the enterprises. The thing is, startups haven’t delivered any services unless the contract is fulfilled. So, you cannot report about the revenue since you haven’t delivered any service yet.

SaaS

The business that fits under this category sells subscription-based licenses for a cloud-hosted software solution. This model will charge users monthly for a provided software.

Examples: Mailchimp, Salesforce, Sendbird.

What are the key metrics to track?

• Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) —— meaning that people like the product and agree to pay for the subscription every month;

• Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) shows the pace of revenue growth as compared with the absolute revenue number. This metric should be tracked in comparison with MRR, to show the annual situation of the business when it comes to subscribers;

• Gross Monthly Recurring Revenue Churn (Gross MRR Churn) — pay attention to this metric if you are at the early stage of your business development and don’t have a large group of customers yet;

• Paid Cost to Acquire Customers (Paid CAC) — this metric is for cases when you decide to experiment with advertising and are ready to pay to acquire users.

Common Mistakes for SaaS model:

You should not confuse ARR and ARRR and especially use them interchangeably. In this case, you won’t have a recurring revenue business if the users do not like the product and are not willing to pay for a subscription.

Subscription

A business model that is similar to a SaaS model but it usually has a lower revenue per customer. Examples of companies are Linkedin, Netflix and any other company that is usually targeting B2C, and that offers a cheaper monthly subscription affordable for every customer. The metrics are pretty much the same here as they are at a SaaS model.

Examples: The Athletic, Dollar Shave Club, Netflix

What are the key metrics to track?

• Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) — users who are willing to pay to receive the full set of features of your product;

• Compound Monthly Growth Rate (CMGR) — pay attention to this metric since quite often on a subscription-based company the subscription revenue is smaller;

• MRR Churn — just like at a SaaS company this metric is important when you’re early stage and you only have a few customers, losing even one or two has a real impact on your revenues;

• Paid CAC — this metric is for cases when you decide to experiment with advertising and are ready to pay to acquire users.

Common Mistakes for Subscription model:

Don’t measure CMGR as a simple average — use discrete monthly growth rates. What happens with averages? It makes your growth look good because you had some spikes.

Transactional

The type of business model that charges a fee for each transaction. For example, Stripe, PayPal, Coinbase, Brex — since these companies do use a fee from the user every time they use the product.

What are the key metrics to track?

• Gross Transaction Volume (GTV) — this metric shows you that not all the volume of payments that goes through your platform is revenue. Since if you have 50 users that are going through your company processing you will have a large sum of money in total transactions, that’s GTV, but it won’t be your revenue;

• Net Revenue — money that you take out of the transactions flowing through your platform, those that go into the company’s bank account.

• User Retention on a Monthly Basis — due to the way of functioning of transactional businesses, you will most likely have a large volume of customers and because the customer has a high probability in gaining a lot of money, there should be no reason they stop using your platform, unless you have other problems with it that should be fixed as soon as possible.

Common Mistakes for Transactional model:

Instead of measuring CMGR as a simple average, try to use discrete monthly growth rates.

Marketplace

A type of company that acts as an intermediary between two consumers, connecting them to buy or sell a good or service. Examples of companies here include Airbnb, Ebay or Booking.com. Marketplaces connect sellers and buyers to exchange a good or service.

What are the key metrics to track?

• Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) — for example if the user sets a price for a good he wants to rent or sell, from that price a percentage will go to the marketplace company.

• Net Revenue is the percentage of the GMV that a marketplace company gets in their bank account.

• Net Revenue Compound Monthly Growth Rate (Net Revenue CMGR). Since Marketplaces are typically B2C companies the volume of users matters that’s why you should always check User Retention because a consumer that only uses the platform once and doesn’t come back won’t help your revenue, and your company grow.

Common Mistakes for Marketplace model:

Common mistake for a marketplace business model is blending paid user acquisition with organic user acquisition. If you don’t separate out the two metrics, you won’t have a good sense if your growth will be sustainable.

E-Commerce

This is a company that sells physical goods online. Generally they manufacture and inventory those goods — a good example for this type of business model is Amazon. In e-commerce, you may make the products, but you can source the products as well — Amazon does that too with some of their products on the platform.

What are the key metrics to track?

• Monthly Revenue — since there’s no recurring purchases you need to track the monthly revenue.

• Revenue Compounded Monthly Growth Rate (Revenue CMGR) — measures the return on an investment over a certain period of time, and the revenue that comes from it.

• Gross Margin is calculated by gross profit in a given month and divided in total revenue in the same month.

Common Mistakes for Marketplace model:

Not accounting for ALL costs that factor into Gross Profit. If you bought something and the cost is $10, a lot of companies wouldn’t include things like shipping costs, customer processing costs, and payment processing costs. If you don’t include those costs, you’re pricing it wrong.

Advertising

An advertising company is one that offers a free service, and derives revenue from selling advertisements placed inside the free service. Examples of companies that work on that model are Snapchat, Twitter, Reddit — basically platforms that are used by a high number of users, they are the most important part of your company — especially if you are early stage.

What are the key metrics to track?

Daily Active Users (DAU) — this is the number of unique active users in a 24 hour day, averaged over a period of time — the users who do not come back to your platform are not helping. You need to know how to keep them there.

Monthly Active Users (MAU) is the number of unique active users in a one month period, how many kept using your platform after day one.

Percentage logged in — users with a registered account that log in and log out over the same 30 day period.

Common Mistakes for Advertising model:

A common mistake for an advertising company is how they calculate their retention when it comes to the users they have. Some founders even forget to take that into consideration at some point and they end up regretting it.

Hardware

And the last business model that Anu Hariharan talks about is hardware which is a company that sells physical devices to consumers. Examples of such companies are Fitbit, GoPro, Xiaomi. This type of business model is really similar to the e-commerce one and that is why all the key metrics are the same.

What are the key metrics to track?

Monthly Revenue — there’s no recurring purchases, so simply track revenue per month.

Revenue Compound Monthly Growth Rate (Revenue CMGR) — since we are talking about users and tracking volume, and because averages aren’t the whole picture for this type of business you should track compounded.

Gross Margin where you need to make sure you’re making money on each transaction.

Paid CAC which is simply the average money you spend in obtaining a customer. Whatever business model your company has you should always take this matter into consideration so you can have a ROI (Return of Investment) from every action you do.

Final Words

A business model is an outline of how a company plans to make money with its product and customer base in a specific market. Choosing a business model has a key impact on a startup's success. To determine the appropriate business model template, you need to work with Lean Canvas. This will help you to go your future project through nine points devoted to various business processes. As a result, detailed information will help you choose the main business models for a startup.

The next step will be focusing on the precise metrics for your business model. These metrics should give you a clear picture of your business structure and goals to achieve. Focus on what metrics you think will be the best option for your business and go for it.

If you have any questions, please, feel free to write to us. We appreciate your feedback and will answer you in the clearest and most precise way. Consider the experienced IT consultants from 2muchcoffee to support your software development plans and business growth.

What are the best NFT marketplaces?

Where can I sell my NFT?

Where can I buy NFT?

Since the NTF has swept the world, 2muchcoffee will introduce you to the best NTF marketplaces where you can buy and sell digital assets in the simplest way.

NFT has evolved into a very popular way of owning digital assets. Now, we see completely new portals created exclusively for the purchase and sale of digital assets. If you are new to NFT, we would encourage you to check out our FAQ NFT to reveal some answers about non-fungible tokens.

So, let us walk you through the best NFT marketplaces for buying or selling digital assets.

OpenSea

Launched – 2018

OpenSea is an online platform where digital assets are created, bought, and sold. NFTs are categorized into hundreds of subgroups according to their features and representations. Many celebrities including Mark Cuban and Chamath Palihapitiya have expressed their interest in the platform and trading their NFTs. Gaining such high-profile customers, it has established itself as one of the best NFT marketplaces.

OpenSea is a decentralized platform for digital goods, including collectibles, in-game items, digital art, and other digital assets that are backed by a blockchain like Ethereum. Not only that, OpenSea is also a digital asset aggregator and hosts digital assets available in other markets. It is one of the largest NFT marketplaces with an average 24-hour trading volume of approximately USD 200 million.

OpenSea NFT Marketplace was founded in New York in 2017 by Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah and has been a pioneer in NFT since then. The organization recently invested $ 23 million to take its vision to the next level.

Trading on OpenSea happens through a smart contract, which means that no central authority ever stores your items. Instead, users store items in their favorite wallet - whether it's a mobile wallet like Coinbase Wallet or a Chrome browser extension like MetaMask. This provides transparency, security, and better recognition of the author's work through trade immutability.

OpenSea is known as a decentralized application (dApp), an interface for connecting users to the blockchain. Benefits of using OpenSea include the ability for an NFT creator, such as a digital artist, to receive royalties in proportion to the value of the token.

OpenSea uses the Ethereum ERC721 and ERC1155 blockchain standard to ensure that NFT users and creators actually own the items they trade. Now the company has begun work on supporting the Flow and Polygon blockchains.

OpenSea charges the seller a 2.5% transaction fee in addition to the gas fees charged for minting the token. Please note that the buyer of the OpenSea token is not charged a transaction fee.

In addition, due to the increase in gas fees of the Ethereum blockchain, OpenSea has announced a plan to integrate an Ethereum scaling solution. The marketplace recently announced that it will add support for trading through the Immutable X decentralized protocol. According to OpenSea, the technology will provide instant trade confirmation, increased scalability and zero gas charges.

Rarible

Launched – 2020

Rarible is the first community-owned NFT marketplace where you can create (“mint”), buy and sell digital collectibles. The project is based in Moscow, founded by Alex Salnikov and Alexey Falin in early 2020.

Any user can access the marketplace to create and showcase their artwork. Users can also collect artwork on display by purchasing them with Ethereum tokens. It is a non-custodial marketplace, and therefore, you fully own your tokens. The platform also offers the user intellectual property (IP) rights through Proof of Provenance.

At the time of this list of the best NFT trading platforms, the average trading volume in 24 hours is approximately USD 1.5 million. The commission charged by Rarible is 2.5% on the buyer and seller in addition to the gas commission charged to the seller for minting the token.

The ultimate goal of Rarible is to transform the platform into a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) where all decisions will be made by the platform users. For this, the RARI token will play an important role.

RARI is the first management token in the NFT space. As Rarible grows in size and market presence, it becomes a fully decentralized autonomous organization. Thus, the RARI token acts as a governance token for the Rarible platform and allows RARI holders to vote on any platform updates and participate in curation and moderation.

The rights that holders of RARI tokens will enjoy on the platform are as follows:

• System Upgrade Voting

• Moderating creators on the platform

• Curatorship of the works of art presented

The total supply of RARI tokens is 25 million and the turnover is 24.98 million. Thus, from a supply point of view, there is no possibility of further reducing the value of the token. The coin has a market cap of $ 753 million and a 24-hour trading volume of $ 11 million.

SuperRare

Launched – 2017

SuperRare is a digital art gallery featuring unique one-off digital artwork. Each piece of art is authentically created by an artist on the web and is tokenized as a crypto-collectible digital item that you can own and trade.

Collecting SuperRare is inherently social. Since digital collectibles have a transparent ownership history, they are ideal for the social environment. The social level can facilitate the assessment of value and other context related to products in the market.

The platform is built on the Ethereum blockchain and the standard ERC 721 token is offered against all digital technologies. Since the art is completely unique, the fees charged by SuperRare are higher. A 3% transaction fee is charged to buyers. However, the transaction fees for sellers are a whopping 15% (including gallery exhibition fees). Obviously, all of these fees are added to the gas fee for minting a token on the platform. In addition, on a secondary sale (each secondary transaction) of digital art, SuperRare pays 10% of the transaction value as royalties to the original creator of the NFT. The average 24-hour volume on the platform is $ 0.5 million.

The platform is in its early stages and has not yet been fully deployed. Consequently, he currently receives art from several carefully selected artists. Interested artists can apply through the site. SuperRare recently raised $ 9 million from investors to further develop the platform and relaunch it next year.

Foundation

Launched – 2020

Foundation is another NFT platform that allows artists and collectors to sell, buy, auction, bid, and bid on digital art featured on an Ethereum-based non-fungible token. Foundation is also a non-custodial smart contract platform that doesn't have access to your private keys.

In addition to gas fees, the Foundation charges the seller a 15% transaction fee. The platform does not allow transactions with fiat money, so a crypto wallet must be connected before the transaction.

The platform has seen a huge increase in sales and trade volumes lately. Average 24-hour trading volume is $ 0.3 million.

Nifty Gateway

Launched – 2018

NiftGateway offers users to invest in crypto assets, famously called ‘nifties’. Nifty Gateway is a blockchain-based platform for accessing some of today's most sought-after art and collectibles, from artists like Jay Adams, Kenny Scharf, Jon Burgerman and Trevor Jones to popular crypto game collectibles like CryptoKitties. Each collection opens at a specific time (drop) and is only available for a limited time.

Nifty Gateway was founded by the Cock Foster brothers (Duncan Cock Foster and Griffin Cock Foster) in 2018. The company was later acquired by Gemini LLC, a cryptocurrency exchange website owned and founded by the Winklevoss brothers (Tyler Winklevoss and Cameron Winklevoss).

Nifty Gateway describes their vision is to team up with leading artists and brands to create limited edition high quality Nifties collections that are only available on the Nifty Gateway platform and nowhere else.

The trading floor is centralized. However, a nice feature of the platform is that users can buy NFT using fiat money, and merchants can withdraw their earnings to their credit or debit cards. However, PayPal is not yet available on the platform. Currently, withdrawal to bank accounts is available only to US banks. Other users will need to withdraw to their Gemini account.

Nifty Gateway's commission is 5% plus 30 cents in addition to gas charges. In addition, there is a 10% surcharge on resale, which is paid to the original creator as royalties.

Mintable

Launched – 2018

Mintable is a decentralized NFT marketplace founded by Zach Burks. The platform is backed by venture capitalist and cryptocurrency enthusiast Mark Cuban.

Mintable is one of the first platforms to allow minting without gas (although regular minting is also possible). Mintable has incorporated Immutable X's Tier 2 solutions that allow it to mint NFTs without any upfront gas charge. This way, the creator can stay on the Ethereum platform and save on the huge gas fees paid to the Ethereum miner. Immutable X addresses all three challenges of the NFT scaling trilemma: availability, scalability without sacrificing user control, and true decentralization. The same Layer 2 solutions will be included in OpenSea in the near future.

The transaction fee on mintable is:

• 2.5% on regular goods

• 5% on gas-free goods

• 10% on print series

Final Words

So, the above platforms summarize the best trading platforms currently available in the NFT space. Almost all popular digital assets available in the market can be found on these NFT platforms. There are currently over 50 NFT trading platforms available, some of which are asset-specific like Enjin and Decentraland, and some are generic like Opensea, which offers almost everything in the form of digital assets.

As a digital asset purchaser, you should always exercise caution as no platform can 100% guarantee the authenticity of an artist. You are encouraged to exercise due diligence before investing in any such asset.

For a whole year now, the question of when and how the return to work after the end of the pandemic will take place has haunted both managers and ordinary employees.

While vaccine distribution is well underway in some regions, and a recent survey found 79% said their CEOs plan to return employees to the office, teleworking and virtual meetings will not disappear any time soon, or perhaps never.

Returning to the offices will make certain changes both in the physical aspects of work and in the way we communicate with each other. Will meetings in break rooms and parties in the office kitchen still be relevant? Will the balance shift in favor of remote workers as they are better informed than their office counterparts?

Remote vs Office: What Do the Companies Plan to Do?

In the UK, a recent survey by the CIPD found that 71 percent of employers said: “remote work” either increased employee productivity or had no effect on it. Therefore, according to sociologists of the Institute of Directors, 63 percent of managers plan to allow subordinates to work from home from one to four days a week, and some will even be allowed to independently determine the hours of work.

Nor are they planning to say goodbye to the remote form of work in the United States, where, according to a report from the Upwork platform, in 2021 every fourth resident will work remotely. Therefore, many companies continue to adapt to these realities based on the experience gained over the past year.

For example, Marketing Refresh will minimize the number of working video calls, believing that redundancy is detrimental to performance. According to the Remoters website, many organizations set up "virtual coffee breaks" to maintain a friendly community.

The pandemic has also spawned a completely new phenomenon - the tourist places suffering from the absence of guests literally hunt for remote workers. Hawaii has developed a Movers & Shakas program for out-of-state Americans working remotely. They are offered to come to Hawaii and work for their company from there, while the host party will bear the cost of the flight and guarantee a discount on accommodation in local hotels. In return, program participants will consult local startups in various forms or allocate time for volunteer work. It turns out that such immigrants will spend the money earned in other states in Hawaii, thereby compensating the local tourist business for losses from tourist downtime, and at the same time supporting the local business with their experience.

In France, the "obligation" to work remotely, for violation of which was recently fined up to 15 thousand euros, will soon be over. From June 9, employers will decide for themselves what to do with the "remote".

Small companies, especially startups, have completely adopted this form of work and are not going to give it up. For example, the insurance agency Easyblue plans to work 100% in this mode even after the end of the sanitary crisis. Moreover, some employees intend to move out of town, where life is cheaper and more comfortable. But every quarter, the director will call his subordinates to Paris so that they can communicate with each other for several days.

Indeed, as revealed by a survey of the French Institute for the Study of Public Opinion IFOP, 55 percent of people come to the office not only for work, but also for communication, sometimes informal. This is especially important for young people. According to experts, we should not forget that offices are a space where a connection between employees and the enterprise is created, common ideas are born, motivation increases, and therefore, ultimately, productivity. The pandemic has spawned many ideas for hybrid forms of work - from renting a place for an employee near his home to moving to exotic islands.

This is understood in large corporations, where they tend to a hybrid form of work. For example, the telecom company ALE will offer its employees a mixed option: work in the office a few days a week and the rest at home. Moreover, without any restrictions in one direction or another. According to the head of the personnel department of the company Eric Leschelard, "remote work complicates the management of the company, does not fully understand the mood of people."

Finally, experts believe, the attitude towards the workplace will change. Under the new conditions, it will not be assigned to someone in particular, but will be treated as an ordinary means of production that can be used by any employee who happens to be in the office.

Dealing with Post-Pandemic Workplace Situation

In this case, the main questions that need to be answered are: What to do with tasks that are best made in person, if many employees today prefer to work remotely? How will the division of the workforce affect corporate culture in the long term?

The specific answers to these questions will vary depending on the organization and the situation each CEO faces, but the tips below can help.

1. Leaders should not make final decisions ahead of time. When uncertainty lies ahead, it is important to avoid steps that either create unrealistic expectations or limit the range of available alternatives. The key to success is to gain time to gather more information and to be able to choose for as long as possible.

2. When discussing return-to-work scenarios, leaders should keep their own preferences to themselves. Top-level government officials are taught not to voice their opinions too early to military and intelligence advisers, so as not to affect the quality of the analysis. Likewise, at this stage, CEOs should ask questions and refrain from making statements for as long as possible.

3. Do not overly trust the data obtained through employee surveys. Many companies ask workers how many days a week they want to spend in the office after the pandemic ends, and if they want to at all. Most of the comments boil down to the fact that once it is safe to return to the office, many will prefer to continue to work from home for most of the week. However, opinions often change. What people say after sitting at home for a year may become irrelevant by the fall, especially if by then they have lived several months under relaxed restrictions.

You should also separate the opinions of employees and managers and interview them separately. Many managers say that working remotely is more frustrating than satisfying because their responsibilities include tasks that are very difficult to do remotely.

They need to provide interaction between teams, advise them, resolve issues with employees and problems of relationships between them, and read subtle cues in day-to-day work that indicate communication difficulties. If these tasks are not performed well, morale, team efficiency and ultimately innovation suffer. Managing people remotely is always more difficult. Therefore, managers' opinions on a return to work plan must carry special weight and matter more than those of their subordinates.

4. The size of the company is an important factor in decision-making. A large company, unlike a startup, needs predictability and routine, since the risks and consequences of mistakes are more serious. Large organizations need to rely more on formal politics and a sense of fairness, which limits their ability to make individual decisions that are acceptable to small companies.

5. Do not dwell on the technological problems of remote work. When it comes to decisions related to going out to the office, the main question is not “How can we use technology to increase the efficiency of remote work?”, but “What can't we do well if we go too far in the passion for remote work?” and "What does 'go too far' mean?"

The CEO must take into account the costs of over-reliance on telecommuting. Real teams (unlike nominal ones) cannot be created online. Creativity requires spontaneity and regular, unplanned, sequential action. Loyalty and dedication to a common goal requires people to go through good times and bad times together, shoulder to shoulder. Employees who describe their telecom experiences for a year say discussions have become shorter and more superficial and that there is less time to think and analyze the situation.

6. Do not blindly imitate well-known companies (such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, Adobe and Oracle) that have announced plans to move to permanent remote work. The most active in defense of permanent deletion are those who benefit from it financially, primarily software developers. Remote workers use technology products and social media more than office workers. That is, tech companies are interested in more people working remotely. And it's not always worth taking an example from them when developing your own policy.

What’s Next for the Workplace?

Mark Zuckerberg has pledged that by 2030 at least half of Facebook's 50,000 employees will work from home. A few days earlier, Jack Dorsey announced that Twitter and Square employees would be allowed to work "exactly where they feel most creative and productive, even after offices start reopening."

These leading tech companies have spent a lot of time building highly-equipped campuses that are as seamless as possible for talent and ideas to interact to entice their employees to spend as much time in the office as possible. COVID-19 has shown them that their staff can be just as, and in some cases, more efficient by staying at home.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella isn't sure about this. A complete rejection of office work for the sake of telecommuting is "replacing one dogma with another," he explained in an interview with The New York Times. “We may be burning some of the social capital that we accumulated at the stage when we were all working remotely. How can this be measured? " Nadella asks.

Remote work is helping companies weather the current crisis, but what do company leaders want from it in the long run? Higher performance? Savings on offices, travel, and salaries for employees living in lower-cost regions? Improving morale and reducing employee turnover?

In fact, more or less active use of remote work is not a point change in a previously stable management system. Working from home is a system in itself, in which there are many interdependencies, both personnel and technological. These include:

• The technologies (which you have or need to build) you need to keep your system running, including tools for collaboration, creative challenges, and productivity.

• The resources (your physical presence, people, technology tools), rules, practices and processes your system needs to function. These include HR tasks such as staff relocation and development and remuneration, operational issues such as office design, and logistical challenges such as creating temporary jobs for remote workers when they need to work in the office.

• The rules, regulations and key metrics you will need to implement, maintain and improve your culture and values.

You can model this system to some extent, but its characteristics will have to be revised after they come into contact with reality. Do not expect the system to start successfully the first time.

Conclusion

It’s more than a year since most offices closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, there is a reason to expect that the pandemic will be over soon. That’s why so many companies are beginning to seriously consider returning to the offices.

Return to the office, stay remote, or incorporate a hybrid model - all require thinking of the employees and what will be the most effective, convenient, and safe way to fulfill their tasks. Global pandemic showed us that people can be flexible and transform the traditional notion of the workplace into a modern and productive solution.

If you're looking for a software developers team that will be perfectly matched with your industry, technology, team dynamics, and company culture - contact us so we can answer all of your questions.

NFTs flourish in many fields right from the music industry to real estate. Moreover, NFTs have all the chances to make a huge impact in the publishing sector, too. So, if you are a writer or working in the book publishing industry, you’d better find out how NFTs are going to shape the sector.

We tried to answer the most common question related to the NFTs for books. So, let’s begin...

Why Use NFTs for the Book?

NFTs for books retain both practical and creative significance. NFTs are digital collectibles. In other words, they are digital files with the ownership recorded in the blockchain which make them unique digital versions of items.

NFTs are different from the digital copies of books that you can buy online. While purchasing the ebook, you own it for as long as the online marketplace where you bought it, agrees to keep providing it. In this case, NFTs are similar to print book ownership where you own a unique copy within a series of different similar copies. For this reason, pirating an NFT book is difficult while the author’s copyright is protected.

Another great thing in using NFTs for publishing is the implementation of smart contracts. Usually, the process of publishing and selling a book includes various parties who earn a percentage of each sale. Depending on the publisher these are paid out several times a year. However, smart contracts eliminate this mechanism. Instead, the contractual payouts happen automatically and immediately since they are embodied directly into the transaction.

Check out "What Is a Smart Contract and Where to Use It?" for more benefits of using smart contracts.

What Types of NFTs Can Writers Sell?

• Book cover. An author can sell an NFT version of the book cover, for example, an alternative cover or diverse versions of the cover arts.

• Limited editions and book editions. As with printed versions book editions can influence the price and create demand. Thus, a writer can sell a limited amount of copies. Or perhaps, he decides to republish his book adding a new chapter, essay, or an alternative ending, by this means creating value to the 1st edition of the book.

• Digital objects as an addition to the storyline. As if it is a computer game, digital objects may help readers to solve riddles inside the book, understand characters or build in the timeline of events of the storyline.

• Additional content. An author can create video or audio content to supplement the storyline and give some extras to the readers.

• Artwork. A writer can create any kind of artwork based on his book, characters, events and create unique artworks. For example, on Mintable, an author was managed to transform 64,000 words novel into an image. The imagination goes wild if you think how much you can create based on the book.

What are the Main Benefits for Author Selling NFTs?

Build loyal relations with the readers. The people who enjoy the book usually want to receive an additional piece of content from the author. Something that is related to the plot of the book, characters, or storyline that the writers created. NFTs allow the author to give the readers what they want.

When a writer releases a paper print or online book, it offers only limiting options to the readers. To fully dive into the world you’ve created, ardent fans will strive for more access to the book. An NFT book and digital collectibles will provide readers with access to the book-related extras, at the same time providing an additional value to everyone who will buy the book.

New way of book promotion. Authors can expand the traditional ways of book promotion. In addition to social media promotion, the author can create various multimedia possibilities. For example, create an online event telling all the details about the NFTs book, read a few chapters or tell the process of book creation. One way or another, NFTs allow authors to focus on the new way how to promote the book.

Getting additional income. In case an author sells an NFT, he can ask for royalties each time the item is resold. The standard amount of royalties are 10% – 15%, but in reality, it could be higher. This can create an additional source of income for the author. It means that every time the book or other digital collectible related to your book gets sold, the writer gets the cut of the percentage.

Helps to attract investors. It won’t be only the readers who will pay attention to the NFTs. The investors also will be interested in promoting and investing in NFTs. For example, some book collectors are ready to buy the 1st edition of the book due to they think that the author has great potential while his works will worth millions in the future.

What are the Main Strategies for Creating an NFT Book?

Offer limited editions. When a book is available for a short period of time, it works as an incentive to buy this item. You can set a certain timeframe when anyone can buy a book, after the time ends, collectors will yearn to buy the originals of the book that they have been missed.

Offer different versions of a book. You can introduce to your readers slightly different versions of each copy, meaning that each buyer will get a book that is genuinely unique. Think of the art of text that might supplement each book copy.

Sell alternative versions. Creating an alternative storyline or an ending is a great way to raise the demand for your book. After selling, for example, the first 150 book editions think of the alternative plot twist, so the next 200 editions will be the slightly different front the first ones. The readers who are hooked to your book will love the idea of the extra material.

Create digital items related to your book. Based on the storyline, the author can create digital extras to build a meaningful experince for the readers. So, you can think of digital artworks, audio or video content that could be officially sold and owned all due to NFTs.

Would Readers Care About NFTs Books?

Hell yes!

NFTs have a great effect on the art sector transforming the way people perceive ownership of digital art. Digital books are no different. NFTs books are just as real as physical copies. The new generation of readers understands the meaning of having the first edition of the digital item as clear as traditional book collectors eager to buy the first editions of the physical copies.

Plus, the NFTs in publishing allows to have several major benefits:

• The ownership can never be stolen since it is recorded in the blockchain;

• The NFTs book is more liquid meaning it is easy to sell;

• Easy promotion of the book through social media.

What’s the Future Hold for Book NFTs Industry?

Kevin Kelly in one of his essays said:

“To be a successful creator you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only thousands of true fans.”

The author and editor predicted that the economics of creative activities will be transformed by the Internet and online community. Taking that into account, NFTs have the power to revolutionize the publishing sector allowing writers to build a strong community around digital books, propose extra value to the readers and fans, protect their copyright and monetize their digital books.

Currently, when you buy a book from Amazon, you don’t have the right to resell it since you do not own the book. This can be explained by the fact that the secondary ebook markets have the tendency to lower the ebook prices, so the publishers and authors earn less money.

A startup marketplace offering services of buying/selling books on the blockchain will provide a new value to the top online marketplaces, like Amazon, eBay, Etsy, etc. introducing services that the mentioned leaders do not have yet. Such startups will allow authors to self-publish ebooks and transform them into NFTs. So, by selling the ebooks, the writers can have certain royalties from the purchase anytime the NFTs are resold. A person who buys the NFT book will own it and will be able to resell this ebook on OpenSea or Rarible using their ETH wallet.

The writers strive to have new ways of connecting with their audience and protect the authenticity of their digital works. The technology has already arrived so the authors should try to gain maximum benefits from it.

What’s the Cost of Creating NFTs for Books?

To “mint” the NFT for your book will cost money. Usually, the cost depends on the amount of traffic that is running through the network. Meaning that the fee for mining an NFT or simply “gas tax” might be correlated from $10 to $100. Therefore, creating book NFTs at low points will not eventually benefit you as an author. The best tactic is when an author creates one expensive item or a large number of medium-priced items.

Final Words

We believe that NFTs for the book industry will open a new chapter for ebooks. The development of NFTs in art revolutionizes the way we preserve authenticity and ownership of digital items. From ebook monetization to protecting the copyright for writers to providing extra content to readers, NFTs will continue to transform and benefit the publishing industry.

Hopefully, this article answers the common questions about NFTs book. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to fill in the form below, so we can help you in any inquiry.

Blockchain technology has become a buzzing topic for discussion in business. The technology can serve as the basis not only for mining cryptocurrencies but also for smart contracts. It is known that smart contracts on the blockchain have all chances to replace traditional documents.

There are three main characteristics that define smart contracts like immutability, transparency, and the ability to hold value. Nevertheless, these characteristics also may turn smart contracts into a security risk. In this article, we will discuss the most common issues to avoid when implementing smart contracts.

Issue #1: Block gas limit vulnerabilities

The block gas limit is Ethereum’s way of ensuring blocks don’t grow too large. It simply means that blocks are limited in the amount of gas the transactions contained in them can consume. Put simply, if a transaction consumes too much gas it will never fit in a block and, therefore, will never be executed.

This can lead to a vulnerability that comes across quite frequently: If data is stored in variable-sized arrays and then accessed via loops over these arrays, the transaction may simply run out of gas and be reverted. This happens when the number of elements in the array grows large, so usually in production, rather than in testing. The fact that test data is often smaller makes this issue so dangerous since contracts with this issue usually pass unit tests and seem to work well with a small number of users. However, they fail just when a project gains momentum and the amount of data increases. It is not uncommon to end up with unretrievable funds if the loops are used to push out payments.

Issue #2: Forgetting about monetary units

Since smart contracts exist on the basis of the blockchain, accordingly, all calculations can only be carried out using cryptocurrencies. And where to get cryptocurrency for someone who is not involved in mining? After all, there are quite a few exchanges that allow you to exchange cryptocurrency for fiat money and vice versa. Although with the legalization of cryptocurrencies by different countries and the opening of new exchanges, this obstacle will be removed.

Issue #3: Hoping for smart contract adjustments

When concluding traditional contracts, situations often arise when something needs to be corrected, clarified, changed. In this case, "appendices" are written to the contract. But in blockchain technology there is no "administrator" who could make corrections to the contract, there is no center that can stop a running program. Programmers know this, but people who give them terms of reference can forget.

The attitude of users and specialists to the fork is still ambiguous. Some consider it to be a mistake that undermines confidence in the system. One thing is clear: in more "ordinary" cases, if an error is found in a smart contract, it will be impossible to rewrite it! The only option is to write a "correcting" smart contract, which, of course, presupposes the goodwill of the participants in the transaction.

Issue #4: Forgetting about laws

In the off-line world, any contract can potentially be challenged in court. The agreement, which was declared invalid, loses its force and the parties return to their original position.

However, the invalidation of a smart contract will not affect its "legal effect" and will not allow it to be canceled in any way, and system participants will still see information about the transaction.

Although today there was not a single high-profile case when the laws of any country came into conflict with the written computer algorithms. But, perhaps, this will happen as cryptocurrencies are legalized in different countries worldwide. This is something to keep in mind for entrepreneurs who plans to work with smart contracts.

Issue #5: Trusting privacy

The use of cryptocurrencies assumes the complete confidentiality of payment parties. But the details of transactions, on the contrary, are available and open. For example, you can find a parsing of a smart contract that provides an online roulette game and the calculation of winnings. Enthusiasts who checked the code concluded that the casino plays fair and does not cheat players. But such openness is not always good for business.

Issue #6: Simple Logic Bugs

The most common type of issue consists of simple mistakes in the logic of the smart contract. Such bugs may the result of a misunderstanding of the specification, a simple typo, or a larger programming mistake. They tend to have severe implications on the security and functionality of the smart contract.

What they all have in common though, is the fact that they can only be detected if the entrepreneur understands how smart contracts work while the auditor understands the code base completely and has an insight into the project’s intended functionality and the contract’s specification. It is these types of issues that are the reason smart contract audits take time, are not cheap, and require highly experienced auditors.

Final Thoughts

Things have changed over the last couple of years in smart contract programming. Countless high-profile cases resulting in lost money have made projects aware of the need to take things seriously. We do find that developers are more aware of common vulnerabilities and frequently employ tools, such as static code analysis and symbolic execution to automatically scan their code.

If you still have some questions or you are looking for a reliable tech partner to implement the smart contract into your business, drop us a line and we assist you in any inquiries!

The prospect of meeting an investor makes the startup founder nervous a lot. It’s not a surprise. Since after a short conversation, you can provide your project with future or lose prospects. It all depends on the ability to present your idea effectively to investors.

If you’re raising money for your business, having an impressive pitch deck is a key component in your fundraising toolkit. A great pitch deck gets potential investors excited about your idea and engages them in a conversation about your business, hopefully leading to an investment.

In this article, we’re going to give you the recipe for what you should include in your own pitch deck. We’ve seen all different kinds of pitch decks and presentation styles and found that there’s a simple formula that just works.

What is a Pitch Deck?

A pitch deck, also known as a slide deck or start-up deck, is a presentation that provides a brief but informative overview of your business. It should cover the key points of your business plan, the products and services you provide, high-level financial projections, and funding needs. Your pitch deck should work well on its own as a visual document, but it will primarily be used as a tool to tell the story of your business.

There are several forms of pitch decks, like:

• Elevator pitch conventionally lasts one minute, in practice even less: up to 30 seconds. This is a short presentation that could be given during an elevator ride.

• Idea pitch is a different format, used in contests and events. This is a three-minute story in which you introduce yourself, talk about problems and their solutions, business model, market size.

• Funding pitch lasts up to 10 minutes, in which you can supplement the presentation with a strategy, details of the current situation, plans and the amount of required investments.

What is the Purpose of a Pitch Deck?

The goal of your pitch deck is not to raise money. What? I know that doesn’t sound right, but the real goal of your pitch deck is to get to the next meeting.

Remember, your pitch deck and pitch presentation are probably some of the first things that an investor will see to learn more about your company. And because investments rarely are made after just one meeting, your goal is to spark interest in your company. You want investors to ask for more after they hear your pitch and not just show you to the door.

So, while a solid pitch deck is critical to raising money, the key goal of the deck is to get to the next step—another meeting and a request for more information.

Ingredient # 1: Pitch Structure

This is the most crucial ingredient of the pitch. Why? Let's put it bluntly: you are the thousandth person investors will listen to. They do not have time and energy to listen to a hour long story about your business. The best thing to do is stick to the precise structure.

While every business is different, we’ve found that the following format works for most businesses and is most likely to generate interest from potential investors. Take a look at the major 11 slides you need to include in the structure of your own deck:

1. Vision and Value Proposition

This is a quick one-sentence overview of your business and the value that you provide to your customers. Keep it short and simple. A great way to think about this slide is to imagine it as a short tweet—describe your business in 140 characters or less in a way your parents would understand.

2. The Problem

If you aren’t solving some problem in the world, you are going to have a long uphill climb with your business. Use this slide to talk about the problem you are solving and who has the problem. You can talk about the current solutions in the market, but don’t spend too much time on the competitive landscape on this slide—you’ll have a chance to do that later on.

Ideally, try and tell a relatable story when you are defining the problem. The more you can make the problem as real as possible, the more your investors will understand your business and your goals.

3. Target Market and Opportunity

Use this slide to expand on who your ideal customer is and how many of them there are. What is the total market size and how do you position your company in the market? If you can find the data, investors will want to know how much people or businesses currently spend in the market to get a sense of the total market size. This is where you tell the story about the scope and scale of the problem you are solving.

4. The Solution

Finally, you get to dive into describing your product or service. Describe how customers use your product and how it addresses the problems that you outlined on slide two.

Most entrepreneurs are very focused on their product when instead they need to be focused on their customers and the problems those customers face. Try and keep your pitch deck focused with this format and you’ll tell a better story. If possible, use pictures and stories when you describe your solution. Showing is nearly always better than telling.

5. Revenue Model or Business Model

Now that you’ve described your product or service, you need to talk about how it makes money. What do you charge and who pays the bills? You can also reference the competitive landscape here and discuss how your pricing fits into the larger market. Are you a premium, high-price offering, or a budget offering that undercuts existing solutions on the market?

6. Traction and Validation

If you already have sales or early adopters using your product, talk about that here. Investors want to see that you have proven some aspect of your business model as that reduces risk, so any proof you have that validates that your solution works to solve the problem you have identified is extremely powerful.

7. Marketing and Sales Strategy

How are you planning on getting customers’ attention and what will your sales process look like? Use this slide to outline your marketing and sales plan. You’ll want to detail the key tactics that you intend to use to get your product in front of prospective customers. If your marketing and sales process is different than your competitors, it’s important to highlight that here.

8. Team

Why are you and your team the right people to build and grow this company? What experience do you have that others don’t? Highlight the key team members, their successes at other companies, and the key expertise that they bring to the table.

Even if you don’t have a complete team yet, identify the key positions that you still need to fill and why those positions are critical to company growth.

9. Financials

Investors will expect to see your financials: sales forecast, income statement (also called profit and loss statement), and cash flow forecast for at least three years. But, for your pitch deck, you shouldn’t have in-depth spreadsheets that will be difficult to read and consume in a presentation format. Limit yourself to charts that show sales, total customers, total expenses, and profits.

Remember to try and be realistic. Investors see “hockey stick” projections all the time and will mentally be cutting your projections in half. If you can explain your growth based on traction you already have or compared to a similar company in a related industry, that is extremely useful.

10. Competition

Even if you are opening up an entirely new market, your potential customers are using alternative solutions to solve their problems today. Describe how you fit into the competitive landscape and how you’re different than the competitors and alternatives that are on the market today.

11. Investment and Use of Funds

Finally, it’s time to actually ask for the money. That’s why you’re doing this pitch deck, right? I know—I said that this pitch deck isn’t about actually getting funded. That’s still true, but your potential investors do need to know how much money you are looking for.

More importantly, you need to be able to explain why you need the amount of money you are asking for and how you plan on using the money. Investors will want to know how their money is being used and how it is going to help you achieve the goals you are setting out for your business. If you already have some investors on board, now is when you should be talking about those other investors and why they chose to invest.

Ingredient # 2: Hooks

Just like we can count on the first few seconds of a first impression to be golden and unalterable, audiences are typically lost after about 5 minutes of a startup’s presentation. The audience’s attention curve is known to go up and down intermittently after the opening until a wrap-up’s final peak. Take this into account to keep investors motivated and interested.

The speaker should grab the audience's attention within the first minutes. In other cases, investors will be bored and won’t be able to focus on the idea of your pitch. For that, having an excellent hook as an attention-getter is the most effective business presentation opener.

There are no follow-through recipes to produce a great attention-getter. You need to find what will be natural for your business, whether it will be storytelling or putting yourself in the audience’s shoes. The better you can tailor your hooks to your specific business, the more powerfully your business presentation start will serve the purpose of captivating your audience.

Ingredient # 3: Design

If you're not a designer, it can be tough to design a compelling and beautiful presentation. Create a concise narrative that tells your business story and is backed by well-crafted slides.

1. Never Underestimate the Power of Strong Photography

Consider your slides as supporting material while you're presenting. You want the crowd to pay attention to you and your narrative and secondarily your presentation slides. Not the other way around.

Aim to keep to a single photo for each point you make. It's often enough supporting material for you to tell your story and get your message across. It's wise to keep text to the very minimum in your presentation. This ensures people are paying attention to you instead of getting distracted because you've overdone it with your slide designs.

2. Use the Right Colors, Contrast, and White Space

Color. Because design comes down to effective communication, you can understand the importance of colors and white space in your presentation deck design. This is why it's important to find color schemes that do the work for you. If your company has a style guide, use that as a foundation to pick the right colors. If not, you can use a website such as Adobe's Color, which has a nice selection of ready-made color themes.

Contrast. Contrast is something to keep in mind as well when designing the best pitch presentations. Make sure that your text is legible. You can assure this by having enough contrast between your slide background color (typically white or light-grey) and having an opposite text color (such as black for example).

White Space. Finally, you've got white space. The easiest way to deal with white space effectively is to give your slides enough breathing room. Simply put, don't put too many elements on a single slide. Give every element on a slide enough space. This makes your slide easier to digest. Otherwise, your slides will come across as unprofessional and disorganized. You'll just end up confusing your audience.

3. Say No to Animations

One of the trickier aspects of a slide design pitch deck to master is the use of animations. In general, the use of animations isn't recommended because:

• They tend to slow your presentation, especially if you're adding a transition animation between each slide.

• They tend to distract the audience while you're constructing an argument or story.

• Finally, they might feel cheesy while you're pitching in a professional context (such as when asking for funding from potential investors).

4. Apply the Rule of Three

Another psychological trick is that people tend to remember everything better in pairs of three. This can be helpful while designing slides. If you're adding keywords or benefits or any other type of list on a slide, it works much better to summarize them in three elements (or add an extra one if you only have two). An example of applying the rule of three can be describing product benefits: a product that's beautiful, sustainable, and high-quality.

5. Convey a Single Message

When you're designing a pitch deck presentation, it's best to stick to a single message. Forcing yourself to focus on one message helps you to put all your energy into getting your point across clearly. Practically, this translates into the following:

• What's the single message of my presentation as a whole?

• What's the single message of my next slide?

Especially the last question—the message of your slide—helps you identify what the best possible design for your slide would be. The ideal slide design might be a few words, a strong photo, or perhaps even a single number. The easiest advice to apply is to simply use as little text as possible.

Ingredient # 4: Intelligible and expressive speech

If you are often asked to repeat the sentence or if you are asked to speak more slowly, then these are signals that your speech is not expressive enough. You can try the following tips:

• Rehearse. There’s no easy way to go around this; you either rehearsed it, or you didn’t. And the major consideration there is, results truly show.

• Keep eye contact. Most presenters have a hard time with eye contact. And mastering a presentation has a lot to do with eye contact, actually. It defines how you come across to your audience, keeping the public engaged and, ultimately, losing fear as you feel a grasp over the room in front of you.

• Use your voice and speak up. Now, giving a presentation or speaking in front of an audience is all about being able to see and hear whoever is on stage. Make sure people can actually see and hear you. Tied a bit to confidence and your experience with being on stage as a whole, the volume with which one speaks is often the first thing over which we lose control as we attempt to speak in front of an audience.

• Keep It Short & Simple. Keeping your presentations short and simple is one of the eldest pieces of advice. Though we need to go through a set amount of slides that make sense in the overall scope of what we’re doing, make sure to focus on the main message and the purpose why you are presenting; narrow down what your core message is, and let the rest speak on its own, if you can.

It's never to late to improve your public speaking skills:

Ingredient # 5: Explaining

This is perhaps one of the most difficult skills. Presenting your business idea you should be clear and concise while be able to explain the significance of it. This skill comes with training.

For example, you can train your pitches on the subway, right in the train car. During the trip, you should pretend to speak on the phone with the interlocutor, but your gaze will be directed at the passengers standing next to you or sitting opposite. Such a hack helps to develop not even one trick, but several. What it gives: the ability to talk about your project and make it clear, polish phrases and successful remarks, memorize the text, the skill to "look" at people.

Of course, for the purity of the experiment, we also recommend that you conduct rehearsals in front of real people or specialized consultants who, unlike passengers in the metro, are ready to listen to you. They will provide feedback on both content and behavior.

Top Examples of the Perfect Pitch Decks

AirBnB

Airbnb is a platform that allows people to list, find, and rent lodging. This company is one of the greatest startup success stories of our time. Airbnb’s pitch deck has become a most used reference for entrepreneurs around the world.

Favorite takeaway: The intro. It’s all about hooking your audience. You need to describe your business using as few words as possible. Imagine telling a 5-year-old what your business is about. If you can’t do that, it’s time to put some time into nailing it down.

Buffer

Buffer is a social media scheduling platform that helps you schedule content to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. The almighty startup pitch deck that helped Buffer to raise half a million dollars gained popularity by becoming one of the first pitch decks openly shared online. The founder decided to put it up to help other startups to raise funds.

Favorite takeaway: Similar to Facebook, the deck was based on solid numbers from Buffer’s users (e.g., 800 users, $150,000 annual revenue run rate, etc.)

Mixpanel

Mixpanel is an advanced analytics platform for mobile and the web. They not only measure page views but also analyze the actions people take. This is the series-B deck for Mixpanel that helped them raise over $65 million.

Favorite takeaway: The deck started off with a problem: people guessing their analytics. It followed up by providing their solution to that problem and, ultimately, their competitive advantage.

Start Developing Your Pitch Deck

We hope that the article was useful to you. You can also find plenty of additional advice visiting Slidebean. You’ll learn how to deliver an impactful elevator speech and find all the resources you need to perfect your pitch.

If you still have some questions or you are looking for a reliable tech partner to implement your idea into a robust software, drop us a line in a contact form and we will help you!

The concept of smart contracts is not a new one and was introduced by cryptography experts 20 years ago. But the realization of these ideas in practice became possible only with the development of blockchain technology, which is compatible with all the necessary conditions for their execution.

Recently, smart contracts became a well-known opportunity to exchange existing assets like money, shares, and other property types without any intermediaries. In this article, we want to show how can the smart contract be used for your business.

What Is a Smart Contract?

A smart contract is a self-executing agreement built on the blockchain. It allows conducting transactions directly without the participation of third parties. Plus, because the data on the blockchain cannot be changed or manipulated by anyone - smart contracts built trust and transparency between parties since neither side can play with the contract terms.

In some way, smart contracts became a logical development of blockchain technology after the emergence of cryptocurrencies. Nick Szabo first described smart contract technology in the 1990s. He defined smart contracts as a tool that formalizes and secures computer networks by combining protocols with a user interface. However, the practical implementation became possible with the advent of the blockchain in 2008.

Blockchain made it possible to get rid of the involvement of third parties and build a reliable system for creating automated contracts. Thanks to a decentralized blockchain system, the code can’t be arbitrarily changed or prevented from being executed without interfering with the entire network. So, a smart contract is managed only by the rules laid down in it.

How Do Smart Contracts Work?

In simple terms, a smart contract works like a deterministic algorithm. It performs certain actions when specified conditions are met. Based on this, the smart contract system often uses "if… then…" expressions. For example, if Party A transfers money, then Party B transfers item/property rights.

A classic example of a smart contract is a vending machine. A person puts the coin into the machine to get a drink or a snack. This interaction is an agreement that involves the purchase of the product for a set amount of money. The difference between our example and the traditional contract is that the machine self-executes the terms of agreement and transaction: if the payment has passed, then the machine provides a drink/snack.

A smart contract is the same as a traditional one, except that there is no need for trust between parties. Each party of the contract must trust the other party, hoping that he will fulfill the obligations of the agreement. The terms of the smart contract are executed automatically by a computer program without any exceptions. As soon as certain contract conditions are met, the smart contract executes the transaction and guarantees. Thus, a bet between two people about what the weather will be like tomorrow is another good example of a smart contract.

The primary platform for the implementation of smart contracts is Ethereum, as it provides the most opportunities for their realization. Using this system as an example, the way smart contracts work can be explained as follows:

• The asset is introduced into the program and it independently monitors compliance with the contract terms;

• Upon execution, the seller receives money, and the buyer – the goods.

In the Ethereum network, smart contracts are responsible for performing transactions between users (addresses). Any address that is not a smart contract is called a personal account (EOA). Thus, smart contracts are controlled by software code, and personal accounts are controlled by users.

Essentially, Ethereum smart contracts consist of a contract code (containing execution conditions) and two public keys. The first public key is provided by the creator of the contract. Another key is the contract itself, being a digital identifier unique to each smart contract.

The execution of any smart contract occurs during a blockchain transaction, and it can be activated when initiated by a personal account (or other smart contract). However, a sequence of smart contracts is always launched from a personal account (i.e., by a user).

The structure of any smart contract includes the following attributes:

• The contract parties that have accepted the agreed conditions (for this, an electronic signature or multi-signatures, if there are several parties, is used);

• The environment in which the contract will be located (for example, Ethereum);

• The subject of the contract – namely, resources for exchange;

• Terms of the contract – a description of the mathematically confirmed conditions under which the contract will be considered as fulfilled.

A smart contract will store all of the listed funds until the set goal is reached. If the goal is not achieved, then the money is returned to investors.

ERC-20

Tokens issued on the Ethereum blockchain comply with the standard also known as ERC-20. This standard describes the basic functions of all tokens based on the Ethereum network. These types of digital assets are often referred to as ERC-20 tokens and represent most of the cryptocurrencies in existence.

Many blockchain companies and startups are developing smart contracts to issue their digital tokens on the Ethereum network. After some sort of issuance, most of these companies distribute their ERC-20 tokens through an Initial Coin Offering (ICO). In most cases, the use of smart contracts made it possible to exchange funds and distribute tokens in a trusting and efficient manner.

How Smart Contracts Can Be Used?

Since the smart contract is a transaction protocol, they are highly customizable and can be developed for different types of services and solutions.

As a decentralized and self-executing program, smart contracts can provide increased transparency and lower operational costs. Depending on the type of business, they can also improve efficiency and reduce costs. The benefits of smart contracts are particularly evident when it comes to money transfers or exchanges of funds between two or more parties.

In other words, smart contracts can be designed for a wide variety of use cases. Some of the examples include the creation of tokenized assets or shares, voting systems, cryptocurrency wallets, decentralized exchanges, games, and mobile applications. They can also be co-implemented, along with other blockchain solutions that address areas such as healthcare, supply chain, government, and decentralized finance (DeFi).

In the twenty-first century, there is the possibility of translating all kinds of paper contracts into digital smart contracts, and therefore a wide range of potential applications is emerging. Let’s consider some of them:

Automation of payments: the contract can be programmed to ensure that the requested amount arrives at the specified time to the specified persons or organizations.

Registration and change of ownership: The necessary documents can be registered on the blockchain to establish ownership from the start and change ownership through smart contracts.

Energy Transactions: This is believed to create a digital ecosystem for the exchange of energy. Thus, the sources of electricity or fuel will be associated with smart contracts concluded only between individuals or with organizations involved, which, in turn, can personalize the consumption of each client.

Intellectual property: You can embed a smart contract in any object that is digitally controlled. This is where the smart property is born that can be assimilated with networked IoT objects. They can range from home to cars. In this way, for example, the rental of these properties can be automated.

Also, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin can be viewed as a set of smart contracts that enforce property law. Cryptographic techniques are used to ensure that only the owner of the digital token can spend them. Several decentralized asset markets already exist, so that many different digital assets can be traded on the same blockchain. The same principle can be extended to physical products with electronic control or embedded microchips.

Financial Services: Cryptocurrencies obviously open up a wide range of different use cases for smart contracts that would not otherwise be possible. For example, systems like the one used by BurstCoin can run auctions that automatically check for the highest price at a given time and automatically transfer inactive funds.

Pros and Cons of Smart Contracts

Compared to traditional contracts, smart contracts have many advantages, and the most important of them is autonomy. Smart contracts are concluded by two parties, no intermediaries, and the blockchain ensures the implementation of the agreement. You don’t have to spend money on the services of a lawyer or notary. Also, you can be sure that no one will deceive you and the terms of the contract will be fulfilled.

Another advantage is speed. In smart contracts, all stages are as automated as possible and require the presence of a person only at the initial stages of creation. This significantly saves the parties time and speeds up the processing of documents.

Smart contracts are secure, as is the blockchain itself. The data recorded in the blockchain can’t be changed or destroyed, which imposes obligations on the parties. If one party didn’t fulfill its obligations, the other party would be protected by the terms of the contract anyway.

Cost reduction is what makes blockchain so attractive. Using smart contracts you save on involving additional specialists (lawyers, notaries, brokers), as well as on operating expenses. Such savings enable the parties to conclude an agreement on more favorable terms.

Nevertheless, this mechanism does have its drawbacks, like:

• Legal status. Blockchain and cryptocurrencies are relatively new tools and in most countries, their legal status is not yet completely defined.

• Creation complexity. They are based on the program code, which already creates difficulties for the average person. Also, when creating a smart contract, you need to provide several conditions and scenarios for the transaction, which is time-consuming.

• Gas consumption. With every transaction client pays the fee, in gas, in order to execute so-called smart contract functions. On the Ethereum blockchain, gas is an execution fee used to compensate miners for the resources required to power smart contracts. And since network usage is progressively increasing, the gas costs are being millions of dollars per day. As the ecosystem continues to grow, so too will the value of gas optimization.

• No flexibility. The data included in the blockchain can’t be changed during the interaction.

• Innovative technology. Most people still do not clearly understand what smart contracts are and this prevents them from actively spreading.

Despite all the problems described, most experts agree that smart contracts are headed in a very promising direction and they have great potential to take a foothold in our lives in the future.

Smart Contract Market Forecast

Global Smart Contracts Market is expected to reach approximately 300 USD Million by the end of 2023 with 32% CAGR during the forecasted period from 2017 – 2023. The same research shows that Europe is the market leader for smart contracts. However, in the forecast period, North America is showing significant growth. This has greatly expanded the use of digital technology in countries such as the United States, China, Britain, and Japan.

Market players in the regions are actively focusing on product innovation and implementing strategies that allow them to consolidate their market position. Many companies are also investing in mergers and acquisitions.

Final Thoughts

The creation of smart contracts is quite a new direction and certainly one of the most important technologies implemented in the blockchain. It clearly exceeds those centralized systems that are now used in many economic sectors. So, smart contracts introduce the new vision of running the business in various sectors.

Obviously, such benefits as cost savings, time-saving, security, and eliminating the need for intermediaries will contribute to the technology being distributed all over the world. If you are looking for a reliable partner to implement smart contracts in your business or you simply have a question about smart contracts, drop us a line in a contact form and we will help you!

The IT outsourcing industry is a flourishing and growing field that helps businesses cut costs and scale up their services while working remotely. At present, quite an extensive number of companies have realized the benefits of outsourcing internal IT projects to remote dedicated teams.

Due to this, there is a lot of demand for remote software development services. IT outsourcing firms now work endlessly to fulfill clients' needs because businesses are adopting cloud services and their applications to scale up, connect, and collaborate with their employees and customers.

According to Gartner, as many as 88% of the companies worldwide have introduced the possibility of work from home after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. As it turned out, hiring remote employees is an excellent idea. And if you are wondering why — we invite you to read this article.

How COVID-19 changed the rules for software development?

According to McKinsey Global Survey, COVID-19 has speeded the adoption of digital technologies by several years. The pandemic forced entrepreneurs to introduce new strategies and practices, allowing them to operate freely without the need for face-to-face meetings. The key changes include mainly:

1. Increase the importance of technology and the use of modern tools

First of all, to work efficiently in remote teams, companies must use appropriate tools. This applies to solutions to:

• communication (e.g. online instant messaging);

• online meetings, including remote onboarding integration of new employees;

• signing contracts (use of electronic signature etc.);

• tracking working time;

• task and project management;

• analytics and data visualization; and many others.

2. Reduce the geographical distance between customers and business partners

Moreover, also meetings with clients and business partners took the form of online meetings, which significantly reduced the importance of geographical distance. This new situation made the companies more open to cooperation with foreign companies because nowadays, the geographical location of the contractor is no longer important. It is confirmed by the results of the above-mentioned study, according to which companies confirmed that at least 80% of their customer interactions today are digital in nature.

3. Wider choice of employees and business partners

The aforementioned reduction of the importance of the employee's or partner's location has resulted in companies having much greater possibilities to establish valuable cooperation. This is particularly important in the case of experienced software developers who are still hard to find on the labor market. Thanks to the possibility of remote cooperation, the entrepreneurs can find specialists with a profile and skillset perfectly suited to their company's needs.

Why remote software development is the future?

Speeded digitalization caused by pandemic showed that remote software development is the future of product development. Why? There are several reasons for this.

1. Huge talent pool

The first and most important advantage that makes remote software development the future of product development is, of course, unlimited possibilities of searching for new employees. As an employer, you don't have to limit the search for employees from the nearest area — you can search for them all over the world!

According to a McKinsey survey, 87% of organizations are experiencing or expecting to face a tech talent shortage within the next few years.

The solution is to look for remote employees, especially in countries where the shortage of programmers is relatively low. A good direction is Ukraine, which has 20,000 IT specialists and provides around 16,000 IT graduates per year.

2. Costs reduction

Hiring a remote IT team also reduces costs. Product owners can look for service providers from the regions where rates are more competitive.

However, the lower costs of an employee do not necessarily mean lower quality. Offering a remote job offers a better chance to find talented specialists on the market. For example, if you decide to look for employees in Central and Eastern Europe, you can work with some of the best programmers in the world (the confirmation you will find in point 6).

3. Speed up the recruitment process

As an employer, you surely know how difficult it is to find a good and qualified IT specialist. Recruitment processes take months, which also generates high costs and frustration for HR departments. Expanding the search to other countries is a step that will allow you to shorten the process of searching for new candidates and make HR departments' workers easier.

4. Improve efficiency

According to the CoSo Cloud Survey, as many as 77% of people who work remotely claim that they're more productive during working from home. People are focused on their tasks, have fewer distractions, and what's more, they want to show that they perform their duties properly. These results show that remote working is the future of many sectors, not just IT.

5. Maintain a competitive advantage

If you don't decide to hire remote developers, you risk losing your competitive advantage. Nowadays, most digital companies choose this option because it is a very important issue for employees who just enjoy working remotely and can't imagine returning to the office. After a pandemic, remote work opens many opportunities, such as working from any place in the world. Lack of such an opportunity in your organization may result in big problems with finding valuable employees.

6. Access to world-class developers

Do you want to find world-class software developers who will help you build a top-quality product? If you decide to hire remote workers, you will have this opportunity.

As we mentioned before, one of the best directions both to outsource IT services and hire software developers is Central and Eastern Europe. Why? For example, according to Hackerrank, software developers in Ukraine are in eleventh place among the most skilled software engineers in the world. If you decide to build your software remotely, you will have the opportunity to work with the best specialists from this country without the need to offer them relocation.

7. Create a diverse work environment

Nowadays, building a culture of diversity is extremely important. A remote team consisting of employees located in different countries can learn a lot from each other with valuable tips. It is also a factor that shows that you are an open and forward-thinking employer who is focused on development and innovation.

8. Perfect choice for small and medium-sized companies

If you are a start-up owner, you should consider outsourcing your software development services. This is a great option if you need the support of experienced software developers in specific product development.

Currently, depending on your company’s location and direction of hiring, you will probably encounter two terms: offshoring and nearshoring.

Offshoring is one of the most budget-cutting methods of outsourcing. It means outsourcing the processes to vendors from distant countries, such as India or China, where the talent pools are vast, and the expenses are low. The biggest challenge of this option is the timezone as well as a cultural difference.

Nearshoring means outsourcing to a nearby country. This option allows holding face-to-face meetings more frequently, at a lower cost. Moreover, cultural compatibility is higher, which facilitates work coordination and reduces the risk of misunderstanding.

How to make remote software development work?

Remote working is a prominent part of the work at 2muchcoffee. Our employees can work from the office and remotely - depending on their preferences. Our team works effectively, which is proved by a significant number of satisfied customers. So, what is our recipe for effective remote working? Here are some tips that may be useful for your company.

Use of the best tools for remote teams

The key to effective remote working is good tools that facilitate processes such as this:

• communication in a team,

• onboarding new employees,

• workflow,

• classification and status of the tasks.

Regular online meetings

In remote teams, clear and regular communication is essential. That is why we meet every day for 15-minutes daily meetings, during which we talk about issues that come up in a project. The principle is simple - it has to be short and concise.

Building a culture of trust and support

Remote working, especially for beginners, is a real challenge. To help them find their way in the new reality, you need the support of more experienced colleagues. At Ideamotive, we make sure that every employee feels an important part of the team, in which we trust and support each other.

Final Thoughts

Switching to remote work was associated with many challenges. However, as it turned out, it was a much-needed change, which gave many new opportunities and made software development in a remote team almost mandatory.

If you're looking for a software developers team that will be perfectly matched with your industry, technology, team dynamics, and company culture - contact us so we can answer all of your questions.