carVertical co-founders Rokas Medonis & Audrius Kučinskas: To our greatest token holders (early 2020 letter)
When the carVertical idea was born in the summer of 2017, we had only a great vision and a strong will to change the automotive world. Now, after almost 3 years, we have invaluable know-how and proof that our efforts are starting to pay off.
Undoubtedly, it wasn’t a bed of roses and lilies. It resembled the Procrustes bed more often. We have paid quite a high price of trial and error for the gained experience.
Let’s have a quick look at what happened since the first letter to token holders in the autumn of 2018.
- Our B2C product sales established on 15-20% growth every month.
- At the moment, we have entered 20 markets with vehicle history reports.
- carVertical.com gets more than 1 million unique monthly visitors - you can check it anytime here.
- Users inquired about the history of 2,6 million vehicles.
- 6 Car History Check apps launched both on App Store and Google Play.
- At the moment, the team consists of 34 automotive robin hoods (11 developers, 17 marketers and support, 2 business developers and 4 co-founders).
- Among 2000 promising startups, carVertical was chosen as one of the Top 5 in Europe.
- 710+ influencer videos on YouTube.
- 400+ affiliate partners.
- Since our last annual letter in Autumn 2018, carVertical was 600+ times mentioned in global media.
- Finally, a tremendous job was completed recently. In February, we launched report version 2.0 – a fundamentally reconstructed product, including both a sophisticated IT “interior” and a more visible UI/UX “exterior”. You can read more here.
However, most essentially, we have survived the crypto winter, and started generating constantly growing revenue from the vehicle history reports. Even more importantly, hard lessons have been learned in what we had presumed the market needed and what it actually needed.
The long-term
This February, we hit a 1500 report sales a day average. Only a year and a half have passed since our first product launch, but we’re already offering our products in 20 markets.
Due to our accelerating growth, carVertical is naturally getting noticed in the automotive world. We’ve already become a leading vehicle history report company in several countries.
However, we consider this phase only as the beginning of the carVertical history. We are only interested in the long-term game, especially as we see an exciting future in both our business model and the cV utility token.
We still believe in our initial vision of carVertical where selling car history reports is only one side of the coin.
The summer of 2020 brings the third anniversary of the carVertical idea. However, we still have faith in the same original ambition to bring more transparency to the market and utility to the carVertical token.
We know we can achieve our goals only with a long-term approach.
That is how we see it.
That is how our mindset works. Two words. Long. Term.
Back in the post-ICO days, quick profits were within easy reach for all of us, together with you. But didn’t choose that path, because our idea is larger than profit.
When we say “our”, we mean you and us, because you, the token holders, are a significant part of the carVertical journey. You and we are the same, actually.
The crypto market continues to fluctuate, but we all together are on the same boat. At the moment, 34 talents work at carVertical. Most of us are large cV token holders, some fall among the largest ones. And we still HODL, even if it’s not so fashionable anymore.
We believe in our goals and know the exact path that will lead us there.
When we say “our”, we mean you and us, because you, the token holders, are a significant part of the carVertical journey. You and we are the same, actually.
We have learned a lot in the last two and a half years, and that is our competitive advantage against anyone in the field. But this knowledge took its toll in terms of time, money, and failures. However, there was no other way to gain experience except being in the market. You have to burn down yourself to rise again stronger. And then repeat it again and again until you learn the lesson. And then take another lesson.
We have failed and stumbled. The crypto market has been painted in the color of blood. The absolute majority of ICOs died. Some post-ICO companies stated that they have already fulfilled their whitepaper goals, and distanced themselves from their tokens.
However, we’re among those few, which still exist, keep developing and reaching milestones.
Blockchain side of the project
From day one, blockchain has been the vector in which direction we are moving.
As always, buyers can get a 30% discount paying for car reports with cV tokens.
Moreover, we’ve been storing vehicle report hashes on blockchain to prevent tampering for a while. With report version 2.0, this became even more visible. From now on, a link to the chain is included in every carVertical report. You’re able to check them here.
However, these were only the first steps as a blockchain company. At the moment, we’re developing two significant projects you might find interesting as blockchain supporters.
CAR OWNERSHIP APP will assign a vehicle to its owner on blockchain and thus will bring car ownership to an entirely new level. Via the carVertical “engine”, the app will gather all car-related history and specs from all over the world and accumulate more data as the owner continues to use the car.
We’re working on the legal part to make state institutions legally recognize the app data as an official document – as a virtual car technical passport. The app will enable easy access to insurance, maintenance, fuel services, or allow drivers to fill accident statements on their smart devices.
On top of that, in the future, our app should build solid grounds for easier transfer of vehicle ownership – no more papers for sales and purchase agreement.
Take a moment to imagine what benefits the app could bring to a driver’s everyday life. For instance, you want to sell your car. With just a few taps, the app automatically transfers vehicle data to car classifieds and generates a “verified history” badge.
However, these were only the first steps as a blockchain company. At the moment, we’re developing two significant projects you might find interesting as blockchain supporters.
In other cases, the app will work as a maintenance assistant: it will notify you when you need to refuel, change tires, register for car service, etc.
Moreover, it could become an irreplaceable tool for automatic payment for the parking, toll roads, city congestion fees, etc. cV tokens should naturally become the primary payment method.
For carVertical, the app would become a unique data source that no one else has. Also, it will bring new partnership possibilities with insurance companies, gas stations, workshops, etc.
However, the world keeps reminding us every day that this app is far from the usual one, which you can develop depending only on your talents and resources. This time the process is far more complicated, because we’re creating something that has never been done before. We need to establish a precedent.
In this case, the hardest part is the legal framework that has to be built, collaborating with state institutions in various countries. Naturally, where public authorities are involved, it takes not months, but years to achieve the results.
DATA EXCHANGE (carVertical DEX) will become the world’s first public blockchain-based exchange market, dedicated to automotive data transfers.
The platform is going to induce one of the greatest pivots in the automotive history, which can change the whole perception of how the industry operates or even help create a totally new industry itself.
Every car data owner - from the major car manufacturers or insurance companies to the workshop next door or an ordinary driver - will be able to become a data seller or buyer. Even you might get money for the data your vehicle generates.
We will set a data standard and provide infrastructure for the fast and smooth data transactions using cV token.
The owner’s provided data will be encrypted, rated, and stored in secure vaults. Market players will trade consents on the use of specific data for a particular period. carVertical DEX will generate microtransactions where the cV token will be used as a currency.
According to our plans, the carVertical DEX platform will start operating as a data marketplace at first. Users will be able to buy high-quality standardized car data from the carVertical registry. When someone purchases a car history report, the system will track which records were used and distribute earnings to the data providers.
Token: price and value
Talking about exchanges, people keep asking when the cV token will be listed on top cryptocurrency exchanges. This goal is still on the list, but, as usual, we use a long-term approach here. Major exchanges require us $1-2 million as an entrance fee. It goes without saying this would be ineffective in the current economic situation and cryptocurrency and, especially altcoins, prices.
At the moment, spending crazy amounts of money on exchanges could only spark a rapid rat race for speculators. Token value could skyrocket for a short period, but this, again, contradicts our long-term approach. We prefer the value boost to the price boost.
We focus on utility, and our upcoming data exchange and car ownership app will solve real-life problems, so they definitely bring the cV token’s utility to a wholly new level.
One could identify several key factors influencing the token price: legal regulation, the prevailing mood in the crypto world, media attention, demand, and utility.
In terms of legal regulation, it’s lengthy worldwide work with multiple governments. Frankly speaking, we cannot expect to make a significant impact on state authorities in the near future. Although we’re developing a mutually beneficial dialogue with several governmental institutions in various countries, these processes take quite a while.
We have the least influence on the moods of the crypto world. However, the market periodically shows some signs of its potential, so we are optimistic about the future.
Basically, there are two ways of grabbing media attention: big money or big value for the audience. We prefer the second way, which is strongly related to the other two factors: token demand and utility, which are also interrelated.
As you could already understand, we focus on utility, and our upcoming blockchain projects: data exchange and car ownership app will solve real-life problems, so they definitely bring the cV token’s utility to a wholly new level. There is no doubt its demand and value will increase in unison.
Even virus can’t stop us
Naturally, the pandemic has struck us, too. The quarantine imprisoned our potential consumers at home and froze state institutions, including car registration offices. Therefore, used car markets only vegetate in many countries. However, we’ve got used to crises, and once again, we follow the same old truth: when the going gets tough, the tough get going.
In fact, we’ve organized a poll for the entire team, asking how has their productivity changed during lock-down. The dominant answers were “it maintained as usual” and “got better than usual.”
So, maybe Coronavirus slowed the pace of our growth, but it can’t slow down our progress. We once again concentrated on our fundamental values and strengths, and we just keep working.
The entire team focuses on their everyday tasks, making our small steps until we’ll be ready to announce the giant leaps.
Perhaps it’s our company’s culture not to waffle about the processes, but talk about the results. Consequently, we don’t want to invent “news” every week just to have something to talk about.
Therefore, we’d like not to set the periodicity of our announcements. Still, we promise to communicate as often as we have something to say about our goals, the progress, or when we’ll sense that a sufficient number of new questions in the community have accumulated.
Thank you for your trust, and let’s move further to the future. Let’s build this data company together.
carVertical co-founders Rokas Medonis & Audrius Kučinskas and the rest 32 builders