Sharpay, a multishare button became one of the best-known projects gathering funds last months. Now their ICO slowly comes to an end and they are burning the candle at both ends to boost their results. In this busy days Anton Solodikov, the CEO of Sharpay found time to replay on some itchy questions I had about project itself and crypto market future.
Anna Hare: Can you describe us shortly the first experience with the crypto market you had?
Anton Solodikov: Well, I made my first steps in this field around 5 years ago. Like many others, I started from buying and selling coins. That was just a very first experience, a very interesting one, although more for fun than for profits. I was dealing that day with another IT projects, but I already had a Sharpay prototype somewhere back in my head. Although the same year, there was a great market drop and I thought that global economy is not ready for such an experiment as cryptocurrencies. And crypto market itself is not mature enough to grow. A lot of has changed in 2016 when the market visibly sped up and a new era for cryptocurrencies begun, including token sales and etc.. That year GOLOS appeared on the market and I became its CMO, and another idea of Sharpay popped up…
A.H.: Let me interrupt you at this moment. You just said that the Sharpay came to your mind a while ago. Can you tell me, what was first, the plan to make the project on the blockchain or rather the ‘share button’ itself?
A.S.: Sharpay as a share button was first and went through many different forms and names. Just in 2016 the idea of tokens implementation into multisharing scheme appeared, when I already had the experience with GOLOS, all prototypes, drafts, community support. Just then I’ve decided to make the project on blockchain with a new look, to collect the team, change the name. Soon we started to work on Sharpay tokenization and from December 2017 we were conducting the Pre-Sale. And soon it will be a year since I work as a CEO.
A.H.: I really have to ask this question. You have such a cute mascot, how did you come up with the idea of using a Shar Pei dog in your advertising campaign?
A.S.: As I already told you, Sharpay made a long way to the look it has today. For example, when the idea of share-button just appeared we called it “Multishare” just to point out the unique multisharing technology. But, when we’ve decided to use the blockchain, we wanted to have it somehow reflected in the name. To have a word with different meanings and dimensions. So, we made a brainstorming looking for a name which could reflect sharing and tokens and Sharpay (share + pay or rather share and get paid) was invented. Obviously, the name reminded us the name of the dog’s breed from China. Shar Pei is an ancient, beauty and a very noble breed, with a golden, sandy coat. Later on, we went through the thousands of Shar Pai dogs to chose the one, who would suit our design and the idea. And when we found a puppy, you can see on our website, we immediately bought the rights for a trademark, to make sure, he will stay with us for long.
A.H. In March, with a very difficult situation on the market, you have decided to conduct the Token-Sale. Why?
A.S.: That has been a question of priorities. We were planning our schedule for a very long time. We had the Pre-Sale by the end of this year (from 11.12), a break (12.02) and token sale (01.03- 31.05).
The Pre-sale we finished one week before, cause all tokens were sold. That was the prosperity time. Shortly after the decline began, but we have decided that keeping the deadlines is more precious to us, cause once the community trust is undermined nothing can build it up again.
A.H. So you placed the bet on the community instead of the numbers?
A.S.: Well, we have a very responsible approach to the words we gave, and community is a key point for the project’s success. We made a new strategy and we jumped into the deep end. Besides, nobody knew how serious this drop would be.
A.H. Was it?
A.S.: Very much. According to same statistics, buying expectations fell more than 5 times. Obviously, there are more people in the prosperity time, they appear when statistics are increasing and they leave when the numbers go down. Or in the best scenario, they are just waiting for another growth, at worst they change crypto into fiat. Not many invests in new projects. We all lost much of our expectations but this is how this market works. The situation reminds the weather. You cannot fight against the bad weather, but you can dress up in a coat and take an umbrella. That is actually what we did - working in a very bad weather. And we achieve the success, although we couldn’t gain as much as we wished. Nevertheless, we collect enough to work further and we will continue to work on Sharpay future.
A.H. If you didn’t want to postpone the main sale what about the prolongation?
A.S.: We have a record in our Whitepaper which allows making so. And we are considering such a decision. Firstly that would be in our community interests. More funds Sharpay collects, stronger it stays on own feet. Everybody who put the penny would like to see SHRP tokens trading on the biggest exchanges like Binance for example. It is not an easy and cheap thing. Listing requires a similar or even higher amount of work then token sale. Crypto market is overflowed with money, so PR services, marketing, partnerships and listing costs itself, are just enormous. So we have two paths to take, either we will be present just in smaller exchanges for the beginning, or we will ask our community to wait a bit.
A.H. And when will you announce your decision?
A.S.: If we will decide to prolong the token sale it will be announced before 25 or 28th of May.
A.H. Facebook and some other social media banned or restricted crypto advertisement. How did it influence your marketing campaign?
A.S.: We made some adjustments to our marketing strategy. We actually understand the restrictions they made, at least until the crypto market is not transparent enough, it makes sense to protect some users or at least to warn them to act with the caution. But actually Facebook never been the most convenient tool for ICO promotion.
A.H. You seems to have busy days, not only with ICO but also with the schedule full of blockchain events. How do you think did direct marketing help you with reaching the soft cap?
A.S.: Taking parts in blockchain events is a must-have tool for us. It cannot be measured in direct sales but it helps in community collecting and development. Even after the token sale will finish, we will continue taking part in meets up or organizing own events. It is a direct step toward the community, possibility to chat with the most active part, who even if don’t have our tokens now, can gain it.
A.H. You have decided to make SHRP tokens basing on ERC-20 protocol. And after a year you want all tokens to migrate on BitShares. Why?
A.S.: ERC-20 is a wide-spread protocol. It would be much more difficult to make a new blockchain, more difficult to come out on exchanges. ERC-20 is an understandable protocol, on which resources can be easily transferred. Although in the future with our project concept, sticking to them is pointless. We are planning to have millions of users, with a huge number of small transactions. Ethereum blockchain has some limitations like a long transferring time and high costs of each transaction we cannot over jump. That is why we are planning tokens migration on another protocol like BitShares and, or even more, on Graphene.
A.H. Until the end of your ICO there is just 9 days left, do you plan any special actions to boost your results?
A.S.: Yes, we were planning couple events in the second part of May. For example, we have a strong partner in China who organizes events with our community. We started couple marketing campaigns, do some actions with popular youtube stars. We really do a lot and spend a lot to make our finish splendid.
A.H. Can you describe the Sharpay future in next 5 years?
A.S.: Well, I predict that our share buttons will be placed on more than 10% of all websites. This is a huge number, hundreds of millions of web pages. But to achieve this success we have already a lot. I am sure that our assets will over cross milliard USD and tokens will go over the capitalization point. I have to mention that this is just a very modest plan I am presenting to you, much below our potential. We are planning to grow, to be popular, to have a big team and big numbers, partnerships on all continents.
A.H.: Will you be the head of the Sharpay project all these years?
A.S.: More then in my personal position I am interested in the project success. If there will be somebody in the team more effective and better for CEO position I wouldn’t mind to switch, cause as I told project development is on the first place for us. I do not have the ambition to be a leader and Sharpay evangelist forever but I want this project to be successful. And as long as I can guarantee its integration and development I’ll be glad to be CEO.
A.H. And speaking more generally, how do you think, or rather how do you guess, how the crypto market will look like in next 5 years?
A.S.: Very likely the cryptocurrencies will build up the financial system of the future. But as all the innovations on the first stages of the development are very fragile. States, countries, governments have no interest in the transparent exchanges, they keep fiat as under control money and they will try to dominate or at least to influence on crypto markets. Almost for sure, this market will significantly grow, but just big players will stay afloat. It will be much more difficult for new players to conduct the ICO if this stage will still exist. Besides, I expect much more regulations from different countries. Maybe the community will decide to regulate the market. Maybe crypto market in today's shape is just a brick on another financial system, maybe more regulated, maybe not decentralized. We don’t know yet.
A.H. To sum up, could you give me 3 reasons why should I or anybody else invest in the Sharpay?
A.S.: Yes of course. Firstly, what makes us unique is an innovative project. You can see on ICO hundreds of project about the payments, currencies, stocks, buy-tokens-and-you-can-buy-goods and etc. but nothing like us. We have a multisharing button with the international patent priority. It is a very complex project from the technological point of view. If there would be somebody who wanted to copy Sharpay, it would take him many years to achieve the result we already have today.
Secondly, we have a very strong team. Me, personally I work in IT field for many years, with a great share of time spent on project development. I’ve been GOLOS CMO from 2016. Igor Karavaev has an experience in a big project management. He has been the head of Skolkovo Foundation, the big startup incubator. He can easily transfer his experience on our work, that is why he became a development chief. Our CFO (Arkady Yasashny) has an experience in banking sphere, he used to be a manager of top banks. Sometimes I laugh that our success has been determined by our history.
And last but not least, there is a common expression: nothing ventured, nothing gained. We really encourage to make such a step and take crypto risks with us. Be a part of our success!.
Anton Solodikov
BIO from the Sharpay website:
IT entrepreneur, blockchain activist, inventor, author of patent and international patent applications for content promotion, previously, the CEO at Balalike LLP UK (development of content monetization systems) and CMO at GOLOS.io (blockchain and social network, tokens x40).
Sharpay ICO will last until the end of May.
If you would like to learn more about the Sharpay project or obtain their tokens check the links below:
Website:
https://sharpay.io/
Whitepaper:
https://sharpay.io/files/Sharpay_White_Paper_EN.pdf
Presentation:
https://sharpay.io/files/Sharpay_Presentation_final_en.pdf
One-pager:
https://sharpay.io/files/Sharpay_One_Pager_EN.pdf
Social media:
https://www.facebook.com/sharpay.io/
https://twitter.com/sharpay_io
https://t.me/sharpay_io
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2518528.0
Disclaimer: this is NOT investment advice. This is purely my opinion, based on facts found on project website, whitepaper, social media and etc. Please do your own research and decide if it qualifies with your risk profile.
Anna Hare
You can find me here:
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Twitter: @44_crypto
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