Eligma — Everything I never told you
I figured I would never put these thoughts to paper, because there are some things that I usually like to keep to myself. I use these uplifting thoughts when things get hard or when I hit obstacles on my path. But since the community is so important to me and Eligma, I decided to share my thoughts with all of you.
Every great project starts with a great idea. In this sense, Eligma started almost 10 years ago in Shanghai. I was running a small business that was controlling if manufacturing factories can deliver the products they were promising. While I was doing that, I realized that a huge margin percentage was hidden in middlemen. The first thing that came to my mind was to create Crowdering — a platform for listing factories and their products on one side, and individuals that will establish connections with people and order products in bigger quantities directly from the factory on the other. I became obsessed with the idea, but my lifestyle at that time didn’t allow me to realize it, so I proceeded to live my live without risk but also with little passion. The idea resurfaced when I was living in Amsterdam under the name Crowdordering, but again I was unable to act on it.
At that time, we created the ABC Accelerator, where I worked with start-ups a lot. I was watching them often … all the hard work, obstacles to overcome and night shifts — I really wanted to be a part of that again. The idea was still present in my mind, so I conducted a lot of research on retail, e-commerce, AI, mobile, blockchain, crypto and commerce in general. In August 2017 I was confident enough that I dared ask my wife what she thinks about the idea of creating an amazing company, to which I would dedicate the next 10 years of my life. It was hard to convince her, because she is one of the few people that really understands what that means. 100% dedication and execution are the only options. She finally said “YES, go for it, otherwise you will always ask yourself what if.”
So after work at the ABC I stayed in the office, pulling all-nighters to write, think, research, talk to people and collect information that I needed for the project. I never thought about doing a crowdsale then. In October 2017 I already raised 1.5 million EUR of investments from a company called BTC d.d. and another 1.5 million EUR was on the way. That meant I already had enough money to start and build something amazing. I also received an offer of 5 million EUR from a very good friend of mine, who runs a huge venture fund, but we already had enough resources.
In November, I was in Silicon Valley, where I met with guys from Amazon, JET, Walmart, RetailNext, Almaz Capital and many others. It was interesting to see that they all liked the concept and none of them saw Eligma as a threat, but rather as a perfect add-on. Silicon Valley mentality in a nutshell. But there was another interesting thing. They all asked me about crowdsales and blockchain technology. How do they work? They knew I was coming from Slovenia, the blockchain country, and said that crowdsales are the perfect way to create a critical mass of people that engage with your project. They also thought that they are ideal not only for collecting money but also securing ambassadors of the project — people who spread the idea and are the real believers.
Now imagine. I came back home to Slovenia and I was still thinking about the question of critical mass. I knew that we could collect up to 30 million EUR without a crowdsale, but that would leave us without that first movement, a movement that Eligma will need. First ambassadors. People who believe in us. That’s why we opted for a crowdsale.
You must understand that being a start-up and doing a crowdsale is really not easy at all. You are a start-up that needs to behave as a public company, you have limited resources, but you need a global presence, you are naked in front of many, but you still need to hide your main differentiations from big players, you are so small, but you need to answer to millions. It was a hard decision, but at least we are aware of the responsibility.
I would like to invite all of you to join us, so we can run with the biggest players on the market — let’s create the future of commerce together!
In my next blog, I will answer your 30 most frequently asked questions, as I would like to keep everything about Eligma as transparent as possible.
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