GoBazzinga, building the true Web3 social media
Dec 16th, we invited Rishi Chadha, the Co-founder & CEO of GoBazzinga to do an AMA in the ICP League community. GoBazzinga is the world’s first decentralised “Short-Video X Draft Kings” Social Speculation Platform Powered by Dfinity!
Q:
Why did you decide to build on the Internet Computer?
A:
Internet Computer provides some inherent advantages for entrepreneurs like myself to build our ventures on top of the same. Storing all our platform content on level 1 blockchain along with having web scale, cost and speed for all the smart contracts on our system was off paramount importance for us, and hence we decided on building on top off Internet Computer. Also looking at the core founding team of Internet Computer, we are ready to take our bets on the future of Web 3.0 and the evolution of smart contacts through IC.
Q:
How long has your company been established, and what is GoBazzinga?
A:
The company was established in May 2021, but the idea has been under conceptualisation for years now. In our previous stint while working together, we were marketing really heavily on various social media platforms and that is where we started noticing the broken systems of various social media platforms.
The truth is, that the big giants exploit data of millions of users, while putting billions of dollars into their pockets. The average joe gets tricked into the system by the algorithms which have been designed for getting the users addicted to these platforms. Hence, the average social media user spends more than 2.5 hours on the platforms on an average, everyday, without receiving any financial rewards. Essentially, the users paying their time and attention for the big giants to reap financial rewards, has been heartening for all the co-founders to see. This is what we are looking to change with GoBazzinga.
GoBazzinga is the world’s first decentralised Short Video Content-Speculation platform which allows users to receive financial rewards for participating the GoBazzinga eco-system be it through putting up short-video content in the form of challenges or just by interacting with the short-video content in various forms. Basically in exchange of their time and attention, users of the platform will earn financial rewards.
Q:
What challenges have you faced while building your company?
A:
Internet computer is a fairly new level 1 blockchain and to find the right resources for building the GoBazzinga platform has been challenging for us. The right human capital working on IC is being demanded by many other similar projects alike which in turn makes it difficult to onboard and grow the team fast. That being said, we have received outstanding help from the community and looking to overcome the human resources challenges fast.
Q:
What overall vision do you have for GoBazzinga? Do you have a roadmap? If so, what does it involve?
A:
The overall future vision for GoBazzinga is to create the world’s first completely decentralised Short-Video Social Content-Speculation platform, driven entirely by its community members. We would want the users of the platform to retain the control of the platform through decentralised decision making and ownership of content in the form of NFTs, while earning financial rewards for participating in the ecosystem.
Roadmap would be launched soon along with the whitepaper.
Q:
What advantages do you believe you have over other competitors?
A:
Having web speed and scale for smart contracts and the provision to store short-video content on top of a Level 1 blockchain, in the future, while giving out complete freedom to the users to retain complete control on the platform as well as their content, gives us a huge competitive advantage with respect to other Web 2.0 & Web 3.0 short-video social media platforms. Other Web 3.0 short-video social media projects building on top of Level 1 blockchains, other than IC, mostly store their token ledgers on the Blockchain and content on various clouds, still making them centralised in nature.
Being one of the first movers on Decentralised short-video content is the USP of GoBazzinga, which we would be taking advantage for the future growth of the platform.
Q:
Tell us about the team
A:
We are team of 4 Co-Founders, who have been serial entrepreneurs for the last one decade and have worked with each other over the last six years. The team has over 30+ years of collective experience in complimentary areas of business ranging from sales, marketing, finance, fund-raising and technology. All the founders are serial entrepreneurs and thus understand the nuisances of building and scaling a business.
Among the members of the founding team, we have a deep expertise in (1) building and scaling communities (build a community of more than 40000 event vendors in just 9 months), (2) building varied technology products (SaaS platforms, VR-based sales solutions, ed-tech platform and blockchain-based apps), and (3) blockchain technology (actively involved in the blockchain community for the last 3 years). Further, being serial entrepreneurs, we understand what it takes to build and scale a disruptive product which can transform legacy industries/ecosystems (VR-powered sales solution for Hospitality and Phy-gital courses for Children).
The details about each founder is below:
- Rishi Chadha (CEO): More than 10 years of experience in sales and marketing; Founded 3 startups previously, Shopinstaan, TheKnottyTales, VR1.ai; Worked in DronaHQ (Enterprise Sales), Virtuasa Polaris (Software Engineer); Education — ICHEC Brusels and IMT Ghaziabd (MBA), Computer Science Engineering (Amity School of Engineering & Technology); Active investor in the cryptocurrency space over the last 5 years.
- Utkarsh Goyal (CFO): More than 7 years of experience in finance and strategy; Founded 2 startups previously, TheKnottyTales and VR1.ai; Worked in Darashaw and Co. (Corporate Strategy) and AIS Glass (Corporate HR Recruiter); Education — UBC Sauder (Diploma in Accounting) and IMT Ghaziabad (MBA), Mechanical Engineering.
- Saikat Das (CTO): More than 10+ years of experience in technology and product; Founded 2 startups previously, TheKnottyTales and VR1.ai; Worked in Automate.io (Product Manager)[Acquired by Notion], DronaHQ (Product Manager) and Cognizant (Application Engineer); Education — IMT Ghaziabad (MBA), Computer Science Engineering
- Daniel Preus (COO): More than 8 years of experience in the field of Technology and Crypto-currency. Founded a startup previously, CryptoSparta; Worked in Infosys (Enterprise Sales) and DroanHq (Enterprise Sales); Education — ESADE Spain (MBA)
Q:
What advice do you have for anyone working in the same space as you?
A:
For anybody working in the same space, my advice would be, to not follow the age old methods like shilling for building the initial community, since the initial community members for your platform will become the guiding force towards getting the initial version of the product right, specially by giving you constant feedback, while also helping you focus on launching the right features for your product, features which are mostly needed by your early users. This constant feedback from your early users and community members will set the right tone for your product in the near future
Q:
Do you have any token sale planned for the future? If so, when? Can you give details?
A:
Yes, we are waiting for the SNS standards to be incorporated under the NNS on IC, post which we would do a public token launch. The timeline for the same looks to be around six months from now, but there is no fixed date for the same. We would also do a private token sale to include the right stakeholders to share our vision of a decentralized social platform.
Q:
Do you have any plans to collaborate with other projects building on the Internet Computer?
A:
Yes, we do have plans to collaborate with other projects building on Internet Computer. The plan starts with integration of other social media platforms building on Internet Computer, so that the users coming onto our platform are free to move between other social media apps, where in the user identities are shared and users get a seamless just like what Facebook does for other daughter apps like Instagram and What’s app.
