Hiveterminal: Moving Forward
with Tech Development
The Hiveterminal HQ is currently buzzing with work. Most team members have returned from their home offices, which has further intensified the preparations for the upcoming pan-European expansion. VC not only opened doors for entry into other markets for Hiveterminal, but it has also provided us with a new point of view on improvements needed in certain areas of the product. In this blog, we wanted to highlight some of the steps we are taking to improve the technology side of the Hiveterminal platform.
By delivering the Swiss VC company investment, the business development team checked off a major goal and brought us closer to our plans for the future. The technology team must now follow suit. We had put development work on most new features on hold as we were finalizing our new leadership structure. We wanted all new work to accurately reflect the joint vision of the entire ownership and management team for the product going forward. With the new company ownership and leadership now in place, the road to the future of Hiveterminal as a product is now much clearer.
As our CEO Domen Ursic explained in the previous blog post, we have decided to partner with Kalmia, a development team synonymous with great customer experience, exquisite software ingredients, great usability, cutting-edge design, and a top-notch tech stack and support services. Following the departure of former CTO Dejan Jovanovic, we decided to make a shift in a short timeframe and switch the development team out entirely. We decided that in order to have a faster turnaround on features, we simply need a team located closer to us in both geography and mindset. We are happy to say that we have found exactly the team we were looking for, one that is experienced in building and scaling platforms and optimizing the costs of hardware. They also have a deep understanding of the startup mentality we would like to foster at Hiveterminal.
Those of you who were very involved with the platform have seen certain hiccups happen, especially over the course of the past two months. The new dev team performed a deep sweep of the platform’s security, tweaked the server configuration, moved it to an entirely new server environment, and upgraded some of the integral third-party services to the new versions.
We also reviewed the architecture of the product and the roadmap that was sketched out for its future. We merged that list with a backlog of team and user requests we have received in the past and ended up with a list of core improvements. Let’s get down to business!
Multi-Market Features: Two-Step Market Entry
By the end of June, the Hiveterminal platform will allow non-Slovenian companies to register and sell invoices on the Hiveterminal platform. We will also enable non-Slovenian companies to purchase invoices on the platform, a user request that has been iterated by the community many times. This will boost the liquidity side of the platform and create an even faster sales process for invoice sellers, making our product more desirable among companies searching for fresh capital.
The multi-market feature will be rolled out in stages. Learning from our experiences in Slovenia, opening the platform to everyone across the world is simply not feasible. Selected companies will be able to still use the platform (with minor limitations) to sell and buy invoices. Once the number of foreign companies in a specific country reaches a certain threshold, the mass market option will become available for that country.
At first, only selected companies will have the ability to use the platform as invoice sellers. This will help us accurately adapt to different legal systems and data sources around the EU. Once the testing period is over and we are satisfied with the solution, we will open up the market for everyone.
There will not be much changed in terms of the product itself, apart from different languages and minor tweaks of the platform.
Crypto-Fiat Gateway
Shortly after the launch of the multi-market feature, we will implement another much-requested improvement to the platform. We are happy to say that we have found a partner company that will enable us to implement converting crypto to fiat for invoice purchases within the platform. This will enable the vast crypto community to enter our market and disperse their investments by trading in the real economy. This will create an additional boost to the liquidity side of the platform and enable invoice sellers to get fresh finances faster!
Responsive Platform
In order for Hiveterminal to succeed, we need to support buyers that are on the go and not always near their desktop or laptop. We have looked long and hard and decided to make the platform work well on mobile devices.
Responsive design will allow Hiveterminal users to continue using the platform on the go, without the need for the team to develop a fully native mobile application.
Partial Payments Feature
We have seen some of our invoice buyer users receive money from debtors in installments. While this in itself is not the perfect scenario, we want to reach out a helping hand to these users and assist them in tracking the exact amount of money they have received and when.
The Road Ahead — Our Business Development Roadmap
Our CEO Domen has already provided an overview of what lies ahead for Hiveterminal and will prepare a detailed overview soon. We are involved in multiple discussions regarding business cooperation on global markets and will provide you with the updates timeline when there are exact dates to be set.
Stay tuned!
