News from ConnectJob
Dear Community,
Again, we would like to thank you for your trust and your support in our project. We have noticed a global disappointment on our different social network channels and some of you point our lack of communication. We want first to apologize for this lack of communication which is highly correlated to the issues we are currently facing. We focus our effort on resolving those issues and this post has been made to share with you the current situation and bring the transparency you deserve regarding this project. Although the situation is quite tough those days, we will always be available and dedicated to the success of ConnectJob.
As explained in the last communication on Medium, we have been obliged to re-adapt our strategy due to external factors related to the fundraising process and also to the recent fall of cryptocurrencies prices. Beside this macro-economic effect, you will find below an internal detailed overview of the current situation of ConnectJob.
Before explaining the state of Connect Job’s current situation, we think that it is necessary to replace the background concerning the ICO execution:
In order to develop the company and to correctly prepare the ICO phase lasting more than 6 months, c. 1,000,000€, have been invested by the founders at the creation of the company. In our opinion, we efficiently used these amounts and were confident on the future success of our project. Most of the ICOs start with no money and ConnectJob is certainly one of the few that have invested personally in the project before raising the first dollar. In particular, this allowed us to implement numerous actions for ConnectJob:
- Important Marketing & Communication efforts: White Papers, Bounty program, referencing in ICO websites, publication of articles in international newspapers, animation of the community (Telegram, Facebook, Twitter, Medium), ICO and company website, etc.
- Recruitment of best-in-class teams in Tel Aviv and Odessa of which:
1/ A marketing team based in Tel Aviv: 1 manager, 3 content manager, 2 content social network, 1 designer1 Telegram Leader, 2 Telegram and Chat writers
2/ a sales team based in Tel Aviv: 1 sales manager and 3 sales assistants
- An equity partnership collaboration with a technical team based in Odessa to develop the application and the ConnectJob ‘s website composed of 9 persons for development, support, and design, and a team development leader
- Travel around the world to meet potential contributors including large investment funds
- Participation to blockchain events (including our own events) in UAE, Turkey, Korea, France
We thought that all these actions were rewarded when we agreed and signed an agreement with a British Virgin Island company, AKA Partners Limited, for the sale of €1.0m CJT Tokens and an equity investment of €2.6m in February 2018. Indeed, the following documents have been signed and witnessed by both parties:
- A SAFT (Simple Agreement for Future Tokens) signed on February 16, 2018 for the sale of €1.0m CJT Tokens
- A subscription agreement signed by AKA Partners Limited based in Dubai UAE on February 16, 2018 for an equity investment of €2.6m in ConnectJob
- A shareholder agreement signed with AKA Partners Limited on February 16, 2018 to define the new shareholding structure of ConnectJob (including AKA Partners Limited)
- A letter of amendment signed with AKA Partners Limited in March 8, 2018 to postpone the Tokens and Equity deal until March 22, 2018
In addition, AKA Partners Limited also helped us to agree a €7.0m CJT Tokens purchase contract with an investor from UAE. Considering the importance of those amounts and the alleged seriousness of Centurion & Co, the operational company of AKA Partners Limited, presented as a well-established company in Dubai, (see http://www.centurionco.com/ and https://il.linkedin.com/company/aka-partners ) we have focused our effort on those execution and invested less in external marketing and roadshows.
Unfortunately, those payment had not been realized whereas the corresponding tokens and shares was blocked for the sale. We decided not to give up on those payments and we still have the hope that those contributions would be honored. We are therefore currently working with our lawyers to find a quick solution.
Due to this default of payment, we must admit that we are currently in a problematic situation as beside of these investors we only raised a total amount of 1,637 Ethereum current value of $530,388 as Ethereum experienced a downfall since the ICO of c.72%. These funds have been used to pursue the operational development of ConnectJob during these last 4 months:
- 35% have been used for the operational development
- 30% have been used for the marketing development
- 20% have been used for the application development
- 15% have been used for the legal and legal issue with AKA Partners
Despite all those problematics and the fact that we have been victims of this situation, we tried to pursue our development since the end of the ICO. We have then been forced to reorient our development strategy to fit with the new situation including costs restrictions (in terms of staff, marketing, operational, etc.). On this subject we want to inform you that the staff is currently composed of 4 people, 1 Marketing,1 Sales, 1 Social Network and 1 project manager dealing with the external Development team. Those people believe in our project and make their best effort to develop an MVP that will satisfy the community.
Regarding the application and as detailed above, an equity partnership was agreed with the Odessa team at the launch of the company to co-develop the ConnectJob app (i.e. the beta version available during the ICO). But due to strategic divergence and conflict of interest with them (they were developing in the same time an application named Conci which connects local guides with tourists in major cities instead of being fully dedicated to the development of the ConnectJob app), this agreement was stopped in March 2018. We were then forced to develop a new version of the application with our limited financial capability. We clearly understand that this application is not at the standard of a project such as ConnectJob, but regarding our current capability we will need time to recover operationally and financially. On this matter, we will still need to recover the amount of €300,000 from the equity partnership with Odessa that will be used to develop our ConnectJob app.
On this topic, we are currently considering the option to seek new investors / contributors able to give us new financial or technical guarantees. We always wanted to integrate the community to the project development and this is why we are welcoming any new solutions that we will consider with an extreme humility.
Finally, we would like to sincerely apologize to the investors who believed in our project and supported us since the beginning of ConnectJob.
We would like also to apologize to all stakeholders of the project, and especially our former advisors for not being totally transparent with them notably by not communicating clearly on the difficulties we encountered.
As we did during the entire operation we will keep you informed of each new step / major decision we will take for ConnectJob. We will always answer to your questions and you will be able to contact us at the following email address:
Trustfully Yours
Yoni Assouline
CEO ConnectJob
