I have been thinking about an opening line for the past few hours. I was never the writing type and even now, I have had to ask our content writers for some advice. As I write these words looking back at our hectic last few months, a sigh of relief and a smile come over me.
Before I go into everything I thought I should say two things. The first is that Ouna has crossed the soft cap threshold and the second is that we have decided it’s time to bring this project all the way to the finish line.
My name is Jonathan Lampert and I’m the founder and COO of Ouna. I feel it is time we meet. It is time We take you into our lives and struggles over the past months. I’m not sure what I should or should not say. I know it is usually the “fake it till you make it” kind of industry but after all, it is all about the Ouna project. I have decided to share our process, successes and failures from now and through the next 120 days or so until we reach our target: the hard cap.
So here goes.
We think ICO stands for Initial Coin Offering. When my friend Steven Nerayoff created the ICO the way we know it today, it was Initial Crowd Offering / Initial Community Offering. It was all about how your project can give back to the community.
I have been doing tech for over a decade, now as an investor and before that in dev and marketing teams, but you can never be prepared enough when launching something new. When I saw the platform, what we now call the Ounalyzer, I was filled with excitement. I saw the potential of reshaping the HR industry. Finally, we could offer people a way to look for the jobs they should be doing. We could help people fulfil their potential instead of being miserable.
We all hope to find our dream job right?
Helping people find purpose, learn what they are good at, where they should focus — that is Ouna, and we cannot give up on this life mission. We have to make it work.
So, we gathered a team — an experienced CEO and a phenomenal developer as our CTO and we embarked on our journey. We decided early on to jump on the blockchain wagon as we believe it serves many aspects in our vision and eco-system (I will probably elaborate more in my coming posts but you can check our WP and prior articles).
Jonathan Lampert, Founder and COO of Ouna
We put out our own money, found the companies to help us, built the plan and got to work. Korea, Australia, Japan, Hungary, Israel, London and so many more countries. Events, meetings, investors, trolls, journalists — we met them all. The need to push the product led us to work hard but maybe just not in the right direction. Time goes by so quick and you believe you are doing the right thing, the best thing for your project, your baby. Months went by, the market crashed and we felt as if someone was taking the wind out of our sails, like we were trying hard not to drown in the kid’s pool. So, we decided to just let go and focus on the product. Let the current of thoughts take us. Maybe it was time we rethought our project, Ouna.
We started this whole company to make a change, to do good. We started exploring all of our mistakes, writing them down. We looked at the amount of people reaching out to us and the community of people we met along the way who love our idea. It took us a while to figure out what should be done. We have decided to move forward and relaunch the ICO but make sure we are more transparent so that you, our community members, feel you can trust us and that we could truly make a change, together.
So what now?
Let’s kick ass and build Ouna, or should we say share Ouna. The platform is ready and we will start inviting some members soon to join our QA and some to help us with UI/UX. Yes, we will redesign some aspects and might lose the pyramid shape (our team will talk about this in a future blog post).
120 days. That is it. We will end our ICO in the next 120 days and we call upon everyone to take part. We owe it to everyone out there looking for their dream job: the people who hate their jobs, those who have no clue what they should do when they grow up or even worse, have no clue what they might be good at. Ouna is utilizing the power of the masses, the blockchain and our crypto market to build the future. Not just to disrupt an industry, but to bring good and share something new with everyone out there.
We are rewriting the White Paper, redoing the website, changing some other stuff, working on engaging our community in new ways and making sure we talk more, share more. You are the reason we started all of this, you are the reason we keep going and the reason we will succeed in 120 days.
Once a week I will try and post an update for you here. But beware: sometimes it might be sad news, but I want to make sure transparency is part of what we talk about here. I want Ouna to become the leading standard. If you believe in what we believe I would encourage you to join us or share our mutual belief.
The Ouna team believes this project will be our main focus in life for many years to come and I could not be more excited to relaunch our ICO. I do hope this has answered some of the questions about the project, the fact that it is not only alive and kicking but also raising more money.
Now it is up to us to make Ouna a reality for everyone.