We were asked questions from the community on Bitcointalk so we decided to make our answer public in our blog. Please let us know if you have any questions and we will answer in the same way.
- “Are you an already existent company or a newly formed team? Do you have some previous product to show us?”
We are a balanced team of developers and growth professionals who have known each other for a long time professionally and personally. We have developed the team to reflect the technical and business problem we are solving – meaning we have the perfect blend of technical, publishing, and growth talent. Our team has worked on several big products in San Francisco (Radius, Drone Deploy, Full funnel ) ranging from machine learning AI platforms to the Verizon app store, apps for Toyota, and NASA. Blockchain and Distributed systems expertise is strong on our team. We are looking to release a proof of concept (POC) of the publishing platform Rakugo before the close of the ICO and will start onboarding content producers to the platform from our 20K database of writers and content creators. The ‘Kenzo’ POC will be released after we start building our publishing community and the readership base in September/October. Our team and experience is a major strength and upside to our ICO.
- “Why choose Rakugo when there are monsters in the market like Medium, Steemit or even BAT? What’s your fundamental difference?”
We are fundamentally very different to all of those platforms and offer a much different value proposition. Therefore, we have structured our token sale to have a clear roadmap and pathway to value for our token holders and the community. We are building a revenue generating platform that is not dependent on the adoption of blockchain technology to build an active user base or generate returns for investors. Furthermore, we are partnering with large publishers to bring an Enterprise platform to the market based on ‘Kenzo’ and ‘Shogun’ APIs. Giving 20% of all revenues generated by our platform to token holders provides a very clear return on investment and growth in token value. Moreover, you can convert Rakugo Seed Tokens 1:1 for an equity token when regulation allows us to issue one. A revenue paying token is innovative and safer for investors.
When comparing Rakugo directly to Steemit it is our view that their platform is generally built for crypto enthusiasts and is not accessible to a wider user base which is limiting for growth. We do not see Steemit integrating with Buzzfeed or The New York Times; with Rakugo, this is on our roadmap and is part of our horizontal growth strategy. In addition, Steemit is more of a Reddit style platform which is not what we are going to be. We expect the same users of Steemit to come to our platform to get payments in ETH for their content on top of a broader, less crypto savvy audience. In addition, Steemit relies upon internal economics to provide revenue to their system which we feel is self-limiting in terms of revenue and growth of contributor rewards. We are going to be capturing a 0.20% market (very achievable) share of a $250BN global digital advertising market, which would give Rakugo revenues in the order of $484M by 2021. Due to our strong links into the publishing and content industry, as well as proven track record in growth and user acquisition, we will have a rapid adoption of users and viewers to Rakugo that come from crypto and non-crypto backgrounds. This is in fact far more desirable than other platforms as discussed above. This in effect creates a high value onramp for new users to the blockchain and cryptocurrency space. Users will be able to use Rakugo tokens within the ecosystem to pay for services if they wish as well as transact BTC and ETH to make micropayments within Rakugo.
When comparing us to Medium, for example. We will be offering a deeper and much more comprehensive suite of publishing, copyright protection, and monetization options. None of which are currently available on Medium. There is a very active community of users who are against this lack of copyright protection on Medium – read this blog (https://medium.com/@Haje/copyright-just-because-i-have-an-rss-feed-it-doesnt-mean-you-get-to-steal-my-content-c8ea505a8b07).
It is also important to note that Medium grew 140% to 60M users in under 12 months – read this article (https://venturebeat.com/2016/12/14/medium-grows-140-to-60-million-monthly-visitors/), therefore our growth targets in this market are in fact not that aggressive given the market size and opportunity. Medium does not have a clear strategy for revenue generation on their platform – we do!
BAT is fundamentally different as a platform, we are not redefining the ad market and believe that there are people better positioned than us to solve that problem. BAT being a great example. We are going to be looking to establish partnerships to bring this technology to Rakugo as and when the time and opportunity is right.
Please participate in the ICO by following the link here.
For more information, check us out at Rakugo.co
Best wishes,
The Rakugo Team