Interview with Serge Ustiuzhanin COO of Gratzio

What’s the reason for creating Gratzio? What are the underlying problems that motivated you to start this project?

“I’m not going to lie. We started Gratzio to make our own daily lives more convenient and to outsource the tasks we do not have time for. Being a developer, I’m always trying to optimize the code of my daily life, and there are plenty of situations that I could’ve resolved much more effectively if I was assisted by another person. How much more convenient it would be if you can ask for assistance anyone around you without the feeling of being obligated, knowing that the other person benefits from helping you too? Many times a day I wish someone would bring me things I forgot to buy in the store, help me fix something I don’t have a right tool for, and just, in general, to feel that any situation or lack of anything can be resolved with a couple of clicks on my phone.“

What do you think about competitors like Fiverr? Are you targeting the same market, how do you differentiate yourself?

“There are many platforms that are offering services similar to Fiverr, but I wouldn’t say they are our competitors. Fiverr is more for the digital services that you can receive online by hiring a specialist for web development, copywriting, etc. Gratzio is for real-life small favors, so our potential customer is everybody. The main difference of Gratzio from all others on the market is that there are no preset services, so you can ask anything you want at any time in any location, and you don’t need to go through the process of hiring anybody. You just state your problem and that is it. The platform will automatically match you with the most qualified and available Gratzio nearby.”

Can you become a competitor for Deliveroo, Uber (Eat), Lyft? People can use your platform for asking a service like: Give me a ride to location X? Deliver me a pizza from restaurant Y?

“Absolutely. I’m sure people would prefer to set their own prices for their rides and drivers would prefer to pay $0.05 fixed fee rather than shelling out 20–25% of their profit to an Uber. As for delivery — Gratzio will make it possible to deliver from anywhere. There are plenty of stores that still don’t deliver or deliver to your vicinity. Gratzio will. Anything, Anywhere, Anytime. You just need to enter the fair price and there will be somebody who will bring you your favorite cake from the small out of town store, especially if he/she is already driving in your direction.”

Why did you decide to use a Stellar-based token?

Initially, the Gratzio team thought about using the Ethereum platform as that’s the easiest way to go. However, their CTO Dmytro Khovavko introduced them to the Stellar platform. The team gradually learned about the Stellar platform and its technical characteristics. It became clear to them that Stellar offers more possibilities to run the Initial Token Offering (ITO).

A summary of the key characteristics to choose for the Stellar platform:

• Micropayments and fast transaction time — Stellar implements a fixed fee model where each transaction costs 0.00001 XLM and take 2–5 seconds to be confirmed (1000 transactions / second).
• Built-in distributed exchange that offers immediate liquidity to the token.
• Investor-friendly platform — tokens can be bought directly on the exchange as the creators of the token can put out a buy offer on it. This makes the investment process for an investor more secure.
• By 2020, they want to move to a DAO giving more control to the users, maturing the user voting system and providing necessary mechanisms for users to govern the organization in a truly democratic and decentralized way.
• Stellar-based token: low fee, fast transaction, immediate liquidity, …
• Low fee is charged by Gratzio: $0.05 per favor.
• Live work progress video streaming.
• Get anything done — live a more efficient life.
• Strong competition for Uber-like services.

Originally published at medium.com on August 3, 2018.