1x KYC Specialist -> already signed 1x Junior Project Manager -> already signed 2x JavaScript Engineers For job applications go to https://cakedefi.com/jobs Challenges Continuous hiring activities with focus on outbound of internal Hiring Manager Strike a good balance between aggressive scaling and sustaining team culture 9.BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Hired David, our Business Development Manager, who started in late July: Commenced PR push: Articles about Cake published on multiple sites including: Bitcoin.com , Cryptonews , Coincodex , Ambcrypto , BTCManager , Crypto Adventure Articles are picked up by many other news sites, eg: Bitcoin Insider Article in Portugese: CryptoPortugal , Article in Italian: Blockfoglio Links to articles are also posted on social media platforms: Twitter Mentions in organic articles, eg: Bitcoin.com Grown network of writers, journalists and media publications sites Cake DeFi / Julian covered on podcast Blockchainenterprisespodcast Joined as member of Singapore Fintech Association — certification pending Listed on Staking Rewards , a site that compares and rates staking platforms and tokens Established new lending partners, which are highly regarded in the industry Secured a new fiat to crypto onramp partner Next quarter review Adding a new Head of Communications, and Head of Marketing to take over respective PR and Marketing strategies and campaigns Complete integration with our fiat to crypto onramp partner Expand into new markets currently Increase number of crypto / finance sites taking on our affiliate marketing links Expand partnerships with influencers Have Cake DeFi listed on more crypto lending comparison sites Challenges Large partners may not move at the same agile speed as Cake.10.RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT (DeFiChain) Last quarter review Lots of R&D work for DeFiChain Foundation that will be laid out in more details in the public DeFiChain Foundation transparency report.Cake’s board report will only focus on Cake relevant high level points.Stopped staking of foundation and investor nodes after community and tracker feedback.
This is well accepted by community and set DeFiChain towards a better decentralization path.
There was a DFI airdrop at Cake for BTC hodlers.Successfully helped DeFiChain to process and approve 2 DFIPs on Cake: #1 : Bitcoin anchor reward source and mechanics adjustments #2 : DeFi incentive funding Next quarter preview Liquidity Mining on Cake for various tokens on DeFiChain with world’s first on-chain native consensus liquidity mining and swap protocol.Challenges Hiring of blockchain developers, especially with live mainnet hard fork experience.
CEO’s THOUGHS ON Q4 2020 Dear board members, in Q3 we hit pretty much all of our product and business targets.Moving into Q4 of 2020 I see the need to keep focusing on our aggressive growth percentages, even though the base numbers keep getting bigger and bigger.We should do this via the following three areas: Marketing & Business Development: We have a solid process, a good budget and get consistent results, but we need to ask ourselves over and over again who our ideal customer is.I also believe that a strong focus on our affiliate program, with incentives and bonuses for new customers, will help.
I would like us to significantly invest in this area in Q4 with incentives and goodies for customers and active referrers.
Product: After adding a fiat onramp in Q4, I believe we should focus mostly on revamping our website, adding yield farming as a service, and then focus on polishing and improving our current offerings — especially in regard to UX.
We need to use Q4 to repay some of our technical debt and to make sure that our growth stays in line with our security and quality standards.At the end, user experience is what always ends up winning and our aggressive growth over the past year requires us to do some cleaning up.Positioning: We will discuss this in the strategic positioning in more details, however, I believe Cake needs to position itself as an easy-to-use platform for the average lay-man crypto user.The tech-focused cypherpunk should rather use DeFiChain’s applications natively.
A few other deliverables that we started in Q3 and will continue in Q4: Hire 7–10 new team members and focus on team culture Diversify our lending partnerships to improve returns and diversify the offerings for our users Repay our technical debt and work on UX .Most of the things described above are straight forward, and I am happy to answer any question you may have.The points I would like us to spend most of our time discussing deeper on, where we actually need the board’s approval, are the following: Q4 Budget approval Decision on Cake’s strategic positioning Approval of CEO’s OKRs and No-List for Q4 2020 Please share your thoughts and ideas on these points.You may find some insights and background information in the following pages.At the end of Q2, I used the analogy of all the puzzle pieces being on the table and us having to build the most amazing puzzle out there.
Now, by the end of Q3, we have assembled a team that has shown to be capable of delivering in an extremely fast and productive manner and it is now about to scale even further.Q2 was about the right formation.Q3 was about starting to scale.Q4 will show what we are made of.Now it’s about true blitzscaling.
We have to stay vigilant, as things will pop up and try to mess with our puzzle building.We have to keep doing the right things, keep focusing on adding team members with a like-minded mindset and keep listening to our customers for product-market-fit, for us to finish 2020 extremely strong .
I am convinced that we, as a team, can do this.I am looking forward to a fruitful discussion with you during the Q4 board meeting.Regards,Julian PS.: On a personal note, if I may: Bettina and I will be “hardforking” a hopefully healthy baby boy in October 2020.With that I get to enjoy not only the fantastic growth of our company, but furthermore that of my own child.I want to express my personal gratitude to you as I know you have not only been fantastic business partners, but more importantly wonderful friends.Thank you for being part of this journey together with me.DISCUSSION POINTS & BOARD DECISIONS 1.Q4 2020 Budget Approval Background: In Q3 we were cashflow positive.
Considering that we want to grow the team by approximately 7–10 more members and our need to increase our marketing cost to keep up with our goals, we can expect a higher burnrate in Q4 than in Q3.Since no budget has yet been approved for Q4, the board has to make a decision on this.
Discussions Points: Splitting our burn into operational and variable costs can help us make a decision how much budget to approve.With our increased head count I expect to increase our needed budget slightly.It’s important to point out that it will be difficult to adjust this amount downwards afterward.
You can find all the financial details in the PnL in the Executive Summary.Aside from that, we need to increase our marketing budget.Our marketing department prepared some details of our campaigns from Q3 that went extremely well and for now I believe we should continue our marketing strategies as we had them.
Since I am very confident in our ability to generate revenue at the moment, I would recommend approving this budget for October 2020 and then automatically approve it for November, as long as we are cashflow positive in October and then for December, as long as we are cashflow positive in November.This poses very low downside to Cake’s shareholders, while allowing me as the CEO to plan for aggressive growth.
Decision result: 2.Additional Fundraising Background: If approved, the budget laid out in Discussion and Decision Point Nr.1 will put us in a strong position to gain market share in the space.However, it is tiny in comparison to the millions of dollars other companies are spending.
The board should therefore discuss and decide whether Cake’s funding is sufficient to achieve its goals.Discussions Points: The point of additional fundraising is not an easy yet an important one.
On the one hand, Cake is cashflow positive, growing strong and does not have any large investors trying to steer the ship.On the other hand, it is limited by its own current revenue and is lacking institutional partners that can open many doors.Especially over the past weeks, with the increased coverage in the media and the strong user growth, more and more investors have been reaching out to ask about our fundraising situation.For now, Cake has only been relationship building and no concrete talks have started.
However, the board should weigh the up- and downsides of getting one or more institutional partners in.Upsides: If Cake raises for example 10 million USD to go nuclear with its growth, this would bring the growth trajectory to 1 million customers with 1 billion USD AUM much closer than with self-funded growth.Institutional investors have connections and can open doors, that founders or angel investors might not be able to do by themselves and which might become necessary the larger Cake gets.
Institutional investors have experience in guiding startups and may give advice on difficult crossroads.Institutional investors build even more confidence for customers.Having an actual valuation on the company drives exposure in the media.Downsides: More money does not always mean more success.Sometimes it can actually backfire.Additional investors also means additional opinions and institutional investors will definitely ask for a board seat.Additional investors mean less equity for existing shareholders.
Decision result: The board of directors unanimously decided that we are not in immediate need of fundraising, but agreed that the CEO should stay in talks with potential investors for DeFiChain and Cake to present concrete investment offers to the board.The main focus should be on additional reputation building when adding an investor.
3.Strategic Positioning Background Thinking from first principles, we can ask ourselves what are the main hurdles companies in the fintech space have to solve: Financial Literacy/Education in general.Access to the company/protocol, especially for users in excluded jurisdictions or users who are being excluded due to local regulation.User Experience, which is a general first principle problem for companies.In order to tackle these 3 problems, two big trends have been emerging in the cryptocurrency space: CeFi and DeFi.
Centralized Finance companies attract lots of users with easy user experience, especially with familiar login-password-tools and excellent customer support.Decentralized Finance Applications on the other hand, mainly win by being compliance easy, thus giving anyone access and by being completely trustless.Discussions Points: A CeFi based offering comes at the great cost of KYC and AML requirements.In the recent years, we have seen the significant increase in the compliance requirements of companies providing cryptoasset services to users.These costs can be easily as high as $10 per user per year.The way many companies such as Bitmex or Binance have been outmaneuvering this, is by registering in compliance-easy offshore domiciles.With upcoming global regulations, however, many loopholes are being closed and companies such as Bitmex are actually being sued.
DeFi applications on the other hand have not managed to gain mass traction yet, mainly due to the lack of blockchain knowledge and difficult user experience for the average crypto user.In order to get the best out of both worlds, we should discuss on how we at Cake want to position ourselves in these regards.Cake could appeal to users who want to get access to the financial system, without needing to get all the technical knowledge but want an easy user experience.Going this route would definitely cause some criticism from very cypherpunk-oriented users, since Cake itself will always be focused more on the average retail user.
Setting a clear direction now is quite important as it will drive the focus of our branding and marketing, especially now that we are ramping up our scaling, I would like us to have this product- and business-strategic decision.Decisions to vote on: It was unanimously decided that Cake should appeal to the average lay-man crypto user and not to the crypto geeks or cypherpunks, as this shows a way larger user base going forward.4.Approving, Rejecting or Adjusting CEO’s OKRs & No-List Background: Every year and every quarter, the board of directors lays out several OKRs and their action items for the CEO to work on.
Additionally, there is a No-list of things that the board of directors does not want the CEO to work on.You may find both at the very end of this document.Discussions Points: The board of directors may approve, reject or adjust any point in the OKRs before it comes to a vote on Cake’s CEOs OKRs and No-List for Q4 2020.
These discussions may happen at this point.
Decisions to vote on: Is the board of directors approving the CEO’s OKRs for Q4 2020?Is the board of directors approving the CEO’s No-List for Q4 2020? Result: OKRs and No-List for Q4 were approved by the board of directors.5.Ad hoc discussions and board decisions Based on the Shareholder Agreement, the board may add any discussion and/or decision to be voted on, as long as the decision to include it passes a simple majority vote of all attending board members.None were added.
2020 OKRs Reminder (set at the beginning of 2020) OKR Nr.1: Be one of the top 3 players in the crypto lending space OKR Nr.2: Be a sustainable company Q4 2020 OKRs Looking at the set OKRs for 2020, we should be well on track and therefore I suggest to completely align our Q3 OKRs including the 3 action items with our annual targets.OKR Nr.1: Be recognized among the top 3 crypto lending companies.
OKR Nr.2: Be a sustainable and cashflow positive company.NO-List for Q4 2020 NO mobile app -> this is the Nr.1 wish from our users though, so we need to consider adding this asap.I see it as a challenge in Q4 2020 and would like to address this next year when all our UX and tech is cleaned up.
NO selling of Shares to other coins NO budget for events/trips NO other language than English, German, Chinese and Italian We are looking forward to your feedback and questions in the comments.We will keep focusing on our mission to bringing you cashflow from any type of blockchain asset in the most transparent and most attractive way possible in order to build a one-stop platform for you to manage all your finances in an automated AI-supported manner — be it crypto, real estate, stocks, gold, and much, much more.We appreciate your trust and business.Your Cake Team .