We've never looked for investors. We make presentations to entrepreneurs who have goals, own resources, and we match each other's values.
We've also never asked anyone to come in. We always just showed what we were doing, how we were doing it, and with which goals. And when a person understands that this will have a positive effect on his results, he is interested in how to get it.
We have 80% of our deals on project stakes between $2,000 and $200,000 with people who have never had investor status. They are just entrepreneurs who have already achieved financial or other results and want to move on, not turn around» just with 10% a year.
Someone says, «So you're a startup». Here I partly agree, but not everyone even fully understands the meaning of this word. This is the type of company with high risk, more than 92% of which close in the first year.
But those who have been at our presentations, whether they bought a stake or not, I think they can confirm that the way we considered the project, launched, managed, and gained altitude is a little bit even stressful, because their companies are streamlined sometimes much weaker.
All because Vymex uses its own methods and technologies in running the company. As of today we have 48 people. By the end of the year we will have 60+.
Someone says, «You are taking a big risk by staying in Ukraine». Below I will explain why it is better.
In general, our product is hosted on AWS (Amazon servers), development management system and technical documentation is in Atlassian (somewhere in Australia) and company management system is insanely structured and lives in Google Workspace.
We understand the possible physical risks to people, but we also take into account the motivation and the moral component. I could go abroad, probably always. But I will be here.
Back to Vymex.
We were not originally launching a project. A project is when a team of ambitious developers, designers, and PMs who «THAT» came up with, create, and then move between foundations with it and ask for money, forming a mass of unfeasible arrangements.
We have been creating this «THAT» for two years. Making a living at it, going through company after company, setting up their structures and processes, constantly developing methods and tools.
It wasn't until a second person was hired to accelerate the «manual work» in 2020 that he confirmed all my hypotheses and assumptions about the structures and understanding of the results.
The models that I had already created at that time, he commented, «I don't know how you did it, but a lot of mathematicians in the world just keep trying to get to it...».
He and I spent another couple of months together providing «manual labor», and in parallel we were making assumptions about starting a company that would develop the application on those models which we had actually been testing for two years on real companies.
Creating a new company is not organizing a project team. It's a crazy staff with a full-fledged structure that covers all angles and needs of the company. From watering plants to managing resources located on Amazon servers.
One risky move that increased the odds. (RECOMMENDATION.)
Many companies at the start, while there is little money (we were just like that), hire Junior (specialists without experience) in order to save money, create a prototype and move along the usual «beaten path» of launching projects.
Since I strongly love myself, but always believe in the team (and this was the mathematician at this stage), I with all my faith in our calculations «put the pedal to the floor» and began immediately to hire Senior (specialists with extensive experience). Designer and developer, at the same time attracting the first money and at crazy speed tried to refine our calculations with the assumptions of the company development at the expense of the data given by these Senior.
A crazy risk. Those three months of my life cost me three years of nerves. But we only later realized the power of such a decision.
The first and most important thing for us was the accuracy of calculations because of their experience. Today we deviate from the assumptions by only 10% (already 17 months from the start).
The second, no less important, is the team. When you have a Senior in the company, it becomes easier to hire the next Middle (average +). They don't charge a lot at the door, and they immediately understand what kind of tasks will fall on them.
Also, such specialists don't «train» for your money, but actually do the level of results almost from the first time, which corresponds to the company's goals. This is when you don't tell the designers and developers what to do, and you don't ask anything right after the first planning and checking the results.
The packaging or what a company looks like with a team like this. We had two pages on the website that created interest in us until we revealed the product. These were the team, which we showed right away in all its glory, and the investor page, which had numbers from assumption and fact.
This created new requests for all of our needs.
Well, and then already a lot of new data, planned confirmation of assumptions, analyzing the fact, refining calculations, month after month systematically holding loads. Who we know, they know my love of spreadsheets, but even they have no idea what it is like when you have a team of 48 people ( ⅔ engineers, 30% Senior) and the goal of a company whose competitors are only Musk's projects and a couple of other companies in the world.
As of today, we are so expensive, not because we're overpriced, but because all of our assumptions and the risks for new entrepreneurs that are added are confirmed.
The price for 1% of the company today is $88,000 and rising every month. The closer to release and market entry, the more expensive it gets. And when we enter the market, the sales will stop, because we calculated everything on purpose so that a person could choose when it was convenient for him to enter in relation to price and risks.
I will have more than 45% of the payback after release, and there will be about 30 co-founders besides me, with a par value of 0.1 to 10%
With this publication I wanted to express my great respect to all who believed in us from the co-founders and from the team. No one in Ukraine has done what and how you did before today!
Someday we will make a movie about Vymex co-founders and the team. It will be very interesting to listen to all these stories and fears. But for now everyone is busy with more important things.
I wanted to write a post for all new companies and projects, so that they don't have to come up with a portrait of an investor and that it's some uncle from abroad. It has always been entrepreneurs. There are a lot of cool and decent businessmen in Ukraine. His goals and resources do not change much from his status of an investor or not.
I still want everyone to understand one thing. If the co-founders are from Ukraine, then all the money that your company manages to earn will stay in Ukraine and feed our economy.
All that matters to you in choosing is the goals, the resources of these entrepreneurs, and how comfortable you will be with them.
Yes, you choose a co-founder, and they choose you as the project where their funds will be involved.
We have determined for ourselves that we are interested in entrepreneurs who have ambitious goals and enough resources to enter into a share in co-ownership of a large and global company.
What is «global»? It's when you don't do something within Ukraine, but fly abroad just for a vacation. And when the products of the company you co-own are sold in other markets and you are respected there for the way you do it, and your competitors can't do anything to you.
During the war we stayed as a company in Ukraine as a matter of principle without relocating. Not for lack of money, but because Ukraine is an ideal place to launch global companies. Even with all the risks today. I am insanely high on the fact that we, contrary to all the predictions of analysts and military experts, are making it clear which people really have «iron balls»!
Isn't that a pleasure of life, which you will remember for the rest of your life and tell others about, instead of living year after year, turning 10% a year on some exchange, and not once risking to deviate from the accepted norm.
We have been in a kind of «shadow» for a very long time, to work out and calculate everything stronger. We strengthened the foundations and only now we are beginning to open up.
We submit the app to the AppStore on July 12.
By the end of the year we will enter the markets of other countries, after Ukraine gets all the advantages of the Vymex app first and for free.
Yes, we will come out with Beta. It will be version 0.6, but it will be stronger than anything that people have been able to find for managing their results in companies. We will gradually, step by step, upgrade the application to a huge speed and functionality. But it's the architecture, not the features, that are most important. This is what our team is working through with all its depth in understanding the math and nature.
Who wants to become a co-founder, the entrance to today from $10,000 to $1,100,000 in one hand and there is a probability that this figure in the first five years will grow into cosmic values. All the reasons for this will be presented at the meetings. Therefore, we invite you. Well, or suddenly you want to understand yourself, then, please, we have long spread throughout the video and text on our website. But you have to strain your brain a little bit, because this is new, this is unusual and unaccustomed.
I think we will surprise the cofounders and the markets very much in 2023-2026.
Never be afraid to do what you think is best relative to your goals. Even when the «authorities» tell you it's all nonsense and it doesn't work that way. At that point, if you have the strength, another product may be born that will greatly benefit mankind!
* facebook post
