From Our CEO: Hiveterminal Is All in for Success
Two and a half years ago, all we had was an idea and an ambition: to help SMEs worldwide get the liquidity they need in order to succeed in the global economy, while at the same time providing individuals from around the globe with an opportunity to multiply their investments in a growing market of invoice financing. In the past 30 months, we went from words to deeds, making a patent-pending blockchain based invoice financing platform a reality. Now, it is time to make a business out of it. This year will show us the true potential of Hiveterminal. In Q1 of 2019, we will build momentum and fine-tune the marketing and sales approach in our native Slovenia. Later on in the year, we will enter the larger factoring markets quickly and efficiently. The bar has been set high and we will not rest until we get it done, making Hiveterminal a household name in the global factoring business in the process!
Making an impact in the global invoice financing business is not an easy task. This year was all about setting up the foundations of our business and I can assure you that we have those covered. We are in the process of receiving the patent for the Hiveterminal’s evaluation algorithm, a technology solution based on the blockchain and a model that enables anyone to participate as invoice buyer, moving away from the exclusive bank model. We haven’t put much emphasis on that in our communication efforts, as we think the patent just may be one of the key factors for the company’s long-term success — when blockchain technology hits mainstream and all the biggest players in the fintech field adopt it in their everyday business. Months of long working days of our tech and legal team were devoted to this and, so far, we received positive feedback at every instance of the process. I believe without a doubt that the tech ecosystem of blockchain technology, the integration of different corporate intelligence data sources, a proprietary scoring algorithm, and the ERP data module that enables us to establish a marketplace with real-time invoice rating, will gradually build a fully transparent culture of trust between actors involved in buying and selling invoice receivables. Hiveterminal will become a household name for invoice financing due to significant cost saving for SMEs and considerably higher returns on investments — compared to bank deposits — for invoice buyers.
The team and I know that the blockchain-based industry has been known for producing hype and setting unrealistic expectations, making many feel unease. I didn’t want our team to become that, instead, for every statement and every cooperation, we drew up a legally binding letter of intent and a joint plan for execution. A good example is the joint press release for our cooperation with Gosocket. Their PR team shared their CEO’s comments on our deal, proving that there is an actual agreement in place. I hope we get back on track and implement it as fast as possible. I am waiting for the confirmation from our legal advisors for the permission to speak freely on the topic, but, as the negotiations are still ongoing, we could be jeopardising the talks and we have one aim only: to get the deal done and provide the Gosocket user-base with our invoice financing solution. We could do things differently, probably some could have done better, but we did it all with our best intentions and I believe things will come to a successful conclusion soon. Same goes for the lack of invoices on Hiveterminal so far, which has been a disappointment for all involved with the project, but there is something that motivates us for long hours in our Ljubljana HQ. We know we have an amazing product that will solve pressing problems for SMEs (and investors alike). However, with deployment issues and delay in localisation, I knew that December was extremely unfavourable for starting a business. We did it anyway because we made a promise, and the distrust of the community is only giving us additional motivation for long working hours in our Ljubljana HQ. We proved those that didn’t have trust in us wrong before, and we will do it in 2019 yet again!
But, looking back at 2018, I am proud of what we accomplished and thrilled over what 2019 has in store for Hiveterminal, our hardworking employees and our amazing and supportive community.
A patent-pending blockchain based invoice financing platform: tech development
Our tech team, under the direct supervision of our co-founder and CTO Dejan Jovanovic, did exceptional work this year and they will continue to add functionalities to Hiveterminal as we move forward. The timeline of new releases will partially depend on the business development, user growth, and especially regional expansion, but the first improvements will be delivered by the end of Q1/2019. We are finalizing the Mycrosoft Dynamics integration (The Adacta Deal), that will ease the adoption of Hiveterminal among SMEs and fully automise the factoring process for invoice sellers. I believe it is important explaining what Adacta intergartion with ERPs based on Microsoft Dynamics in both desktop & 365 versions unlocks for Hiveterminal. Through the cooperation, Hiveterminal can not only reach the client base of Adacta, but also other ERPs in markets we’re looking at for expansion when we’re satisified with the offering we have provided for our primary market, Slovenia. This eases Hiveterminal’s entry into new markets as the plugin that Adacta has provided to us is also compatible with other similar ERPs based on Microsoft Dynamics and when the international expansion plan is finalized, we only have to localize the product we will deliver by the end of Q1/2019. Same goes with our solution, which will ease the token buying process for invoice buyers, but the release date of those functionalities will depend on Hiveterminal’s user growth. Some other improvements are in plan for the 2019, such as the bulking of invoices, so that larger institutional investors would have an easier time buying more at once.
Business development
If — or rather, when — our Ambassador Program proves successful, we will add a new & interactive “admin” site for different partners to use in order to easily follow their affiliates (SMEs), as that was one of the requests of our partnering companies and organisations. For now, the Ambassador Program has been well received among accounting services and partnering organisations. The only negative feedback we received so far regarded the lack of localisation on both our website and Hiveterminal. We changed all that, equipped the accounting services and partnering organisations with the necessary marketing materials and tutorials, and our sales team is already following up on how we could help them get news about our solution to their clients. The feedback we have received in the last few days was overwhelmingly positive and, from what we have been told, the majority will present Hiveterminal to their clients in the beginning of January! This means that 83 accounting services will send the presentations and materials that our team provided them to their SMEs. The Ambassador Program is not “locked” for accounting services only. They are simply the ones with the direct and permanent contact with the majority of SMEs in Slovenia. More importantly, they have done the work necessary to earn the trust of companies that work with them. Therefore, their recommendation of our product will create ROI far greater than any advertisements we would push through our channels. We are open for cooperation with any company interested in making our story a success, but we want to meet and discuss every suggested company personally, as our brand and reputation are at stake.
We found common ground with The Chamber of Craft and Small Business of Slovenia (http://www.ozs.si/ozseng/Aboutus.aspx) and its regional chambers of craft and small business and we already presented Hiveterminal to their regional directors and will start with the presentation of the solution to their members in the beginning of January. Our team will introduce different financial instruments to SMEs (such as differences between invoice financing and bank loans), introduce them to Hiveterminal and register them as invoice sellers on the spot. We will perform a similar campaign online for those unable to get to one of these events in person, as our cooperation with The Chamber of Craft and Small Business of Slovenia provides us with different ways of reaching out to all of their 52,000 members. The number one priority in the beginning of 2019 is user growth and the implementation of go-to market strategy, which was postponed partly due to the prolonged development of Hiveterminal and, consequently, delays with localisation. We are not depending on third parties for on-boarding, thus, the team will grow in size and some necessary improvements will be made in the sales, marketing, and communication departments. Learning from our mistakes, we are making progress, trying new techniques and taking different types of people and outside providers on board as we move toward what is a make or break year for Hiveterminal. Thus, a call centre campaign, an online advertising campaign, PR campaign, content marketing campaign, offline advertising campaigns and so on, are already in place, but we had to wait to get our foundations ready to launch them.
Our Vision: Hiveterminal in 2019
As I mentioned, there is only one thing to do in Q1 and that is to grow the business one invoice at a time in our native Slovenia, finding what works and what channels are the most effective before going onwards to new markets later on in the year. We will work harder to ensure sustainability and profitability of our product — and going forward with deals we have in place while always looking for new possibilities of cooperation in different countries, focusing on EU markets, covered also by our integration with Adactas ERP. I cannot stress enough that in markets where we can cooperate in any way with our existing community members, we will do just that. We plan on having our long-term supporters take marketing aide, country manager, local support team, and translator roles, among others. I still believe the community is among the best in the “crowd-sale” world and that together we can thrive. I can assure you all, we will do our part of the job, bringing invoice sellers and invoice buyers together in one marketplace on Hiveterminal! The road will be bumpy sometimes, but the near future is bright. The turmoil on global financial markets is the bearer of good news for the invoice financing industry because the banking system is unable to provide SMEs with the liquidity they need to do their work. If today we are working in an unfavourable environment, tomorrow things can change in the blink of an eye — and we will be ready for expansion on new markets!
Hiveterminal is all in for success and we will not wait on macroeconomic changes to work on our behalf. Rather, we will take advantage of our breakthrough technology and our vast knowledge. We will, on the other hand, make changes to our team in the most important departments, with some outside market-leading agencies helping us deliver our message and solution to SMEs in Slovenia and (later on) abroad.
Hiveterminal in numbers
I am not making the assumption of our future success out of thin air — the numbers are there. We have more than 1250 registered users on Hiveterminal, with nearly 300 individual invoice buyers having made the KYC procedure, waiting eagerly to begin multiplying their investments. The lack of localization has slowed us down on the invoice sellers side, but 50 SMEs registered (with word of mouth marketing alone) is a number that shows potential. I believe the number will increase rapidly when starting the proper marketing and sales campaigns in Q1 of 2019!
We are happy to see that it was so well received in our community and among financial investors alike as it shows that investors are I would like to thank you for the support, questions, and discussions and all the help you provide every single day to Hiveterminal and its team. I know, that all your comments are in good nature and are helping us grow and succeed.
We made some strong steps toward success in 2018, I am certain that we will make leaps forward in 2019, with invoices starting to change hands on Hiveterminal in Q1/2019, followed by rapid growth later on.
Wishing you a Happy New Year with the hope that you will have many blessings in the year to come!
Jure
PS: A special thanks is devoted to those cornerstones of our community: those of you supporting us from day one of our crowd-sale who makes our Telegram such a vibrant and knowledgeable community channel! I am in constant contact with some of you and the questions I received in the past few days show that you are knee deep in our project, understand the situation and have the same eagerness for long-term success as we do. I hope I provided you with some insight into our short-term plan and long-term vision of Hiveterminal, but, since the majority of the topics raised there deserve in-depth replies, the team will address them in a form of joint senior management team blog — a joint reply from the founding team of Hiveterminal. This way, we will be able to provide detailed enough answers regarding the technology, strategy, marketing/sales, and the financial future of Hiveterminal!
