Questions and Answers

MapMess v.1.1 15th Sep 2017

MapMess is a free platform for placing real-time geolocation-related personal and commercial ads. Ads are placed directly on the map. The audience is the entire world. MapMess is a free service. The project is preparing to ICO.
White paper can be viewed here: https://medium.com/@alexandermoskovich/white-paper-of-mapmess-ico-draft-17e5801e4bc0

Who is your target audience?

Our target audience is all those who use the services of personal ads. According to statistics, on average every tenth inhabitant (including small children, since it’s their parents who cater to their needs) places one ad at a certain point I time. The MapMess already has representatives in Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, the Pacific and Russia. The aggregate population of these regions alone is over 3 billion people (excluding the population of China where the MapMess project already has several representatives). Thus, in the next 4–8 years, up to 300 000 000 people living in these regions can become MapMess users.

When did your project start?

The alpha version was launched in January of 2017 and the first tests involving a wide audience were held in the fall of 2016.

At what stage of development is your project now?

The MapMess is currently available for users in Beta testing mode. There are no active advertising and marketing campaigns held since at this stage no attraction of a wide audience has been planned. Nevertheless, the website of the project has up to 200 visitors daily and the number of registrations varies from 5 to 15 people per day. The members of our technical specialists team continue working on the project introducing additional functionality and optimizing the server part and the code. In particular, in order to optimize SEO, they recently created a mechanism for generating static page addresses for all ads published on the site. We continue working in this direction. A list of all ads in a static format is available at:
https://mapmess.com/list/

What are the immediate and more distant future goals set by the project team?

In order to promote a large-scale project as MapMess, we need to spend 20 to 100 million dollars on our own promotion and PR. We do have a detailed marketing plan but since it was investors’ money that was used for it and it is a commercial secret, this information is not widely disclosed and will be available to new potential investors (whose participation in the project we certainly consider) after signing the NDA.

The stages of the project development have a detailed step-by-step structure, which does not exclude a flexible approach to planning and adjusting the steps due to the current conditions and changing situation in the market. As an example we can mention the fact that the initial financing was planned through traditional channels, but having analyzed the crypto currency market and the possibilities of attracting investments through the ICO, the MapMess team and current investors decided to move in this direction. The immediate goal is the ICO of two independent projects working on the basis of the interactive MapMess map platform. One of these two projects is the Objectopia Game. You can read about it here: medium.com/@alexandermoskovich/open-proposal-platform-kickico-game-objectopia-on-interactive-card-mapmess-fa59c3213b3b

Before the ICO of the main MapMess project, the team plans to have several subprojects ICOs in order to gain the necessary practical experience and prepare a wide audience of private crypto investors for our ultimate ICO, the purpose of which is to raise up to USD $50,000,000.

The ICO financing will not only provide the project with necessary funds, but will also attract a large number of first users of the platform, which will certainly attract the interest of traditional investors, both private and corporate (investment funds). Our further project development plans will undoubtedly depend on their decisions and proposals.

What marketing channels do you currently use for project development?

One of the main current tasks is building a large international team, because only in this case the project can reach a broad international level and be a success. To attract new participants (partners), we actively use personal connections as well as other most effective proven methods based on our previous experience. At the time of writing the answer to this question, the MapMess team has 34 business representatives in all regions of the world from Japan to the West Bank of the United States, yet excluding South America and Africa. Every day new participants join the project.

How do you build the team and who can become the team member? Does becoming a team member involve any investment?

No investment is necessary to become a MapMess team member. At this stage we do not consider taking third-party investments at all and do not sell shares in the company. We invite active enterprising and ambitious business people who already have their own business, but who feel up to participation in a large and promising project, which is very likely to help in their own projects. For example, thanks to MapMess, many of our partners have already got to know each other and have business deals on their own projects. It means that MapMess already works exactly as it was intended. We obviously invite to the team all those who like our idea, share our strategy and tactics, who see the future of the project and who are confident in its implementation just as we are. The presence of your own business or prestigious work is not considered to be a disincentive factor, but is rather welcomed in every way.

What are your goals? Your audience, capitalization volume, penetration into various regions?

Our goal is to become number one platform for placing ads by individuals, small and medium-sized businesses in the “here and now” segment. At the same time, we certainly understand the meaninglessness and do not set the goal to become a “killer” of existing services based on a similar or fairly close principle. We simply give users additional opportunities and our project will coexist alongside with other resources, just like various instant messengers or LinkedIn coexists with Facebook. For example, I myself have LinkedIn, Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, Viber and Wechat on my phone and I do not plan to delete any of them in favor of another. Not because I love them all, but because if you are doing serious business, you have to be present wherever your current and potential audience is.

As I have already answered above, our goal is about 300 000 000 users and the capitalization volume of not less than a billion dollars in the next 3–8 years.

What makes you sure that your ambitious plans can be implemented?

Well, there are several reasons for that. First, from the very beginning the idea of ​​such a resource was supported by serious businessmen. And we keep on getting this support from new partners who join our team on a daily basis. Secondly, our team consists of serious business people. All information about the team is open; moreover, you can contact each MapMess team member directly through the MapMess platform and ask any questions about the project. Thirdly, we have a very diverse team where people achieved a lot in business. Most of the members of our team have experience building businesses in several countries, many speak more than one and some more than two languages. The team has experts in various fields: lawyers, marketing specialists, programmers, artists, athletes and writers. Each of them has a circle of partners, clients, friends. Therefore, we have almost no doubts the project will be a success; at the same time, we do understand it’s not going to be a smooth ride but we are ready to deal with that and go to the top. And lastly, we are fortunate that we started implementing this project now of all times, when there is a new technology to bring a large number of private investments through ICO. The ICO allows connecting the founder of a new business and a private small and medium investor without any intermediaries very quickly and effectively. Thus, the founders of a business looking for financing simply need to go out to investors on their own and then convince them that the project can be interesting for them. I am sure that we will be able to do both. And we are already doing it now.

Why ICO and have you considered any other options to raise funds?

Yes, of course, we have considered other options and we even received the first investment so that we could start developing our project from the MVP stage to the working version. The investor was a private business angel, whose name cannot not be disclosed under the terms of the contract.

The authors of the project initially did not plan any ICO and, frankly speaking, did not have a clue about the ICO. However, today ICO is the most powerful tool to secure massive private investments in new projects. We do not intend giving detailed description of the process. Those interested can find numerous articles about the advantages and disadvantages of ICOs. We are going to give here just one reason why ICO is a good way to raise funds for the project:

CRYPTO-MONEY OWNERS EASILY INVEST THESE FUNDS IN VARIOUS PROJECTS BECAUSE 80% OF THEM ARE BUYING (OR MINING) CRYPTOCURRENCY SPECIFICALLY FOR THAT PURPOSE. THAT’S WHY IF YOU CAN CONVINCE THEM THAT YOUR PROJECT HAS A FUTURE AND YOUR TOKEN IS GROWING — NUMEROUS INVESTORS WILL BE LOOKING FOR YOU…

To register on the MapMess platform, you just need to provide an email and come up with any user name. It means, in fact, that the users of the system remain anonymous. Aren't you afraid that the map will be flooded with spam or even ads of a criminal nature?

Yes, this problem certainly does exist, but it is not unique only for our service. All platforms based on user generated content (UGC) face the same problem. To solve it, there are both traditional mechanisms, like moderation and implementation of the rating system, as well as the state-of-the-art developments, including the use of artificial intelligence. The artificial intelligence will be fully utilized in the MapMess project to suppress irrelevant, illegal and “junk” ads. We will cooperate in this matter with third-party developers. The negotiation in this direction are already underway and there are specific agreements.

Which monetization model are you planning to use?

Generally speaking, this is a model that has traditionally been used for a long time by similar services. This is the model where the main platform features are available free of charge (both for individuals and corporate structures). The users will have to pay for additional features that allow them to be more competitive in their market. We build our platform in such a way that it can be easily adapted to the rapidly changing modern business models. Some of these solutions are our own know-how. The monetization system is built in such a way that it will benefit both our clients and us.

What are you going to offer private investors who want to buy your token?

One of the main motives for investors to invest in new projects is the speculative expectation that a token issued by a new startup company will grow in price in a relatively close future (from several months to 2 years). It’s happening now with almost all tokens, behind which there is a more or less active project, even if it is not yet profitable by itself. In the first place it’s because of the ever-increasing real money supply (fiat money), which is constantly invested by new users in the crypto currency. And this growth will continue and even increase in the next few years. Investors with large amounts of money enter the crypto currency market and they get tokens issued by a large number of different issuersб among other things for security and reliability of investments, which causes the growth of almost all crypto-currencies, albeit to varying degrees.

Nevertheless, we expect that in our case a significant number of investors will invest money in our project not only based on speculative expectations, but also because we offer them a real service at a very favorable price. For the MapMess tokens purchased in the early stages of the project, one can get a very significant package of services in the future, and the discount for the users who pay for these services in advance will be up to 90%. These figures will be announced in the near future, but now I can bring just one example. One MapMess token will give you a chance to use all paid services for one account for 1 year. The amount saved in this case can exceed ten times the prices from the price list.

Will it be possible to buy a stake in the company for a token?

No, we do not plan such a mechanism. However, tokens ownership gives advantages and entitles you to participate among the first ones in a closed offer of the company shares in accordance with the legislation of the countries, the residents of which will contracting parties be.

When will it be possible to buy MapMess tokens?

Very soon! Follow us on the MapMess map and in our social groups.