Team interview for Inbound Marketing Agency, Auckland, New Zealand. Part II.
Segment Two: About Team
This is very inspired by Tim Ferriss’s latest book. The questions are quirky but they give the audience a huge amount of insight!
What’s one thing you believe your team does better than the rest?
We are driven by idea of creating safe cryptoexchange and make cryptomarket more stable. We believe that poor design of current exchange platforms should not be taken for granted. SafeCrypt.io is going to provide the safest solution for this major problem and will eliminate any chance for the traders to ever lose their crypto assets in the future. Thus, we are planning to establish a new base level for crypto-trading security and to allow the market to prosper and to tackle other problems of much great importance. You have to have a solid ground under your feet in order to move forwards and that is what SafeCrypt.io Exchange is to provide.
Bearing this idea in mind we have been able to get through rough times, that is what helps us to be whole as a team and to maintain focus, keeping progressing towards our goal.
Ilya Klimkin, Head Graphic Designer: We also put a lot of efforts into creating beautiful graphics. It is a common misconception that tech projects should only function flawlessly and graphic design is something that is often being dealt with last. I strongly believe that graphic content, whether it is infographics, type fonts, logos and user interface design is as much important as tech engineering. Our user is a person and not a robot, that is why we respect the aesthetic aspect of our design and that is one of the things that we probably do better than the rest; we are very idealistic in our efforts.
What is the book (or books) you’ve given the most as a gift, and why? Or what are the one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?
The book given the most as a gift would probably be one of Harry Potter or the Lord of the Rings series. And when it comes to the books greatly influenced our lives, the opinions vary. We decided to mention three books that greatly influenced the development of the SafeCrypt.io Platform:
1. Data-Driven Security: Analysis, Visualization and Dashboards
by Jay Jacobs and Bob Rudis
2. The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional
Programmers by Robert C. Martin
3. Incremental Software Architecture: A Method for Saving
Failing IT Implementations by Michael Bell
We highly recommend these books to anyone who is planning serious development. The other valuable mentions and references may be found in SafeCrypt.io Whitepaper.
How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a “favorite failure” of yours?
Every startup project is pretty much guaranteed to have its ups and downs. SafeCrypt.io is no exception. It has been very important for us to have a clearly stated mission in order to persevere in our efforts and adapt to the circumstances. The biggest problem we had on the start was to find the right people for data analysis and software engineering and to set the high quality standards for the project. However, it is now clear that it was mandatory to do that in order to build the project upon a solid ground which had to be established early on. So in the end all the complications enabled us for the future success.
What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made? (Could be an investment of money, time, energy, etc.)
We all agree that SafeCrypt.io is the biggest time and money investments we’ve made. The project’s mission is ambitious and the business itself not only unimaginably profitable but also highly demanded on the market. There is no other fail-safe cryptoexchange out there and we believe that it is within our power to stabilize the cryptomarket with SafeCrypt and also allow our investors to capitalize on the project’s success along the way. It should be understandable that development of such complex system is very time-consuming and requires a lot of financial investments, however we are proud to invest our time and money into SafeCrypt.io as it will help so many traders and developers to thrive on ever growing stable cryptomarket.
What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?
Alexander Sor (full-stack developer at SafeCrypt.io): Every morning I wake up to a random song from my playlist which I use as my alarm clock tune; it sets my mood for the first part of my day. The playlist contains more than 400 tracks and only once in my life the same song played twice in a row and I woke up laughing imagining that it was my ground hog day. Music gives me energy and helps me grow as software engineer day by day and I guess that’s a pretty unusual habit I have.
Tim Bahriddinov (co-founder/analytics): I always take my note book within my reach just in case I have to write something down, whether it is an idea I have or some valuable data that I need to remember and apply in my work later. That is probably my oldest habits of all and it must me a real note book, not a laptop or a smartphone but an old school paper note book.
Konstantin Kokonin (marketing): Whenever I’m stuck in completing my task I play bass guitar and just procrastinate for up to half an hour until the solution comes up naturally in my head. I actually advise others to do so as well. Your brain sometimes needs a reset and the best way to do that is to switch your activity for a while. You should try it, you’ll be surprised how effective it actually is.
In the last 5 years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has the most improved your life?
Max Efremov (co-founder/business): I realized that some ideas are bigger that us, even if we ourselves have created them in the first place. I believe that only bound together by one ambitious and positive idea we can do anything. You gotta have a clear path towards your goal and explain it to others, that is the only way to collaborate effectively and create real impact on the world we live in. I am sure we all agree on that.
What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the “real world”? What advice should they ignore?
Whenever you are in doubt, don’t rush with your decisions, always start from the basics and the right answer will emerge by itself.
What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise?
We do not waste our time on listening to bad recommendations in our professional area. There’s not a lot of people capable of giving recommendations among the blockchain developers. You could say that there are a lot of really bad trading advises all around the web but that would also be applicable to any other professional area. We don’t like taking advices or giving it. If you want to prove your point, do that through action and if you succeed, others will follow.
In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to (distractions, invitations, etc.)? What new realizations and/or approaches helped? Any other tips?
Whenever you are getting involved into creating something big and impactful, you stop being distracted by stuff that matters least in your life and that might have distracted you in the past. Set a goal for yourself and go towards it. It becomes so much easier to maintain your focus on the things that matter most when the goal is clear.
When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do? (If helpful: What questions do you ask yourself?)
Lisa Harlova (community management): Just take a break, have a snack and keep your phone away for a minute and if you need to sleep, don’t try to force yourself to keep on working, have a nap and you’ll have your focus back in no time!
We hope you find the interview worthy of your time and will probably apply some of our advises or try our techniques to become better as a person or bigger as a professional and improve your life as well as lives of people around you!
