Snip 2018 — Detailed Roadmap

Greetings to the Snip community!

As 2017 is coming to an end, we’re excited to share our plans for the upcoming year in a more detailed and up-to-date format. In startups things change quickly, but our vision is constant and the ideas and high-level plans that were described in the white paper are still valid today. In this post we’ll detail the Snip roadmap, including the product itself, hiring, marketing and user acquisition, and building a healthy token market.

Product Roadmap
We have decided that agile development is more desirable than long stretches of isolated development and therefore will be releasing features as they are being added. This was already apparent in our November Update and will continue in our future communications. The result is that there will be no official “alpha” or “beta” for Snip features but constant development and improvement.

Our product goals for 2018:

Q1

• iOS app: Open for public use, in-app SNIP wallet integration
• Android app: development and initial testing
• Content filtering in comments
• Full content search in app and website
• Increased focus on user acquisition, including engineering efforts
• Expanding the writer community (~40 writers)
• Additional writer features, making it easier to create a snippet
• Starting to reward writers with SNIP

Q2

• Android app: Open for public use
• iOS app: Additional features and bug fixes
• Content filtering in posts
• Improved recommendation engine for writers
• User profiles and tagging
• Improved incentivization models for writers
• Advanced content personalization

Q3

• SNIP wallet in Android app
• Advanced content filtering in comments
• Upgraded podcast, including personalization and more content
• User acquisition becomes top priority

Q4

• Rewarding top comments on the platform with SNIP
• Feature requests and improvements from previous quarters

Marketing And User Acquisition Roadmap
A great product is never enough to build a successful company and ecosystem. Therefore, a significant amount of our attention will be towards user acquisition and growing the Snip community. These efforts will be lead by the founders but will also include employees who are 100% focused on marketing. Engineering resources will also be applied to improve user acquisition.

Goals:

Hiring Roadmap
Our hiring strategy derives from the technical, product and marketing challenges that we face ahead. In 2018 our focus will be on recruiting engineering talent, which will allow us to build a platform which can be easily usable by millions, with an emphasis on mobile usage. At the same time, we will also be spending recruiting efforts on marketing and community management, with the goal of rapidly growing the Snip audience.

Some numbers on the expected team size:

End of Q4 2017: 2 Founders (Ran & Rani) + 1 Engineer

End of H1 2018: 2 Founders + 3 Engineers, 1 Marketing Advisor, 1 Part-Time Community Manager

End of H2 2018: 2 Founders + 5 Engineers, 1 CMO, 1 Part-Time Community Manager

Hiring is limited both by funding runway and a desire for the right kind of growth (wide product adoption before team growth). Since salaries are Snip’s major expense and are denominated in US dollars, most of the company’s funds are currently in US dollars.

SNIP Token Roadmap
In order for SnipCoin to be useful as part of the Snip ecosystem, it must be easy for anyone to buy and sell SnipCoin. Once a healthy token market exists, more writers will be rewarded with SnipCoin and more users and advertisers will be inclined to hold the token.

SNIP is already listed on the decentralized exchanges EtherDelta and Radar Relay but currently trade, and therefore liquidity, is still minimal. We are working to improve SNIP liquidity and aim to reach $10,000 in daily volume in February 2018, and improve on that with $40,000 of daily volume in Q4 2018.

As part of these efforts, we plan to add SNIP to the Bancor Decentralized Liquidity Network, starting with support for small transaction sizes and gradually growing. We also plan to join a small exchange during the first half of 2018 and a large exchange during the second half of 2018. Joining exchanges can be very costly and come at the expense of product development, therefore we don’t expect to list on a wide variety of exchanges during 2018. Growing interest in the Snip network and increased trade in the token will assist in exchange listings and could hasten the schedule.

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We expect to continue updating and are happy to hear feedback from the community. For advice, questions, or clarifications, you’re welcome to ping us on Telegram.

Best,
Ran Reichman, CEO

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After publishing the post, many of you were interested in the intended use of the funds from the token sale. Due to our belief in radical transparency, we’re sharing our expected expenditure for 2018. The company’s current cash on hand is approximately $4.8M, with a large majority in fiat. The plan is of course subject to changes.