Fund and Scale Your Web3 Start-up with Mikhail Skoblov, CEO at Forcefi | S4 E04

Mikhail: 1:09

Better projects will get better support, and it all makes the market more healthy. And what is good is that it's decentralized, also without any possibility of corruption.

Joeri: 1:19

Hello everyone and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories podcast. My name is Joeri Billast and I'm the podcast host, and today I'm so excited to be joined by Mikhail. Hello Mikhail, how are you?

Mikhail: 1:32

Hello, Joeri, I'm great. Thank you for inviting me to your wonderful podcast. It's great to be here.

Joeri: 1:38

Yeah, great to have you, Mikhail. Guys, if you don't know, Mikhail, he's a serial entrepreneur in fintech and crypto and he's also the founder and the CEO of Forcefi. io. So, Mikhail, to start this podcast episode with, I would like to know a bit more about your background and the inspiration behind creating Forcefi. So go ahead.

Mikhail: 2:05

My background is in economics and finance. In terms of my education higher education I am a financial economist and before crypto, I was working in fintech and doing several startups there. But in 2017, I turned my attention to crypto market because for me, as a financial expert, it's a very interesting, evolving thing I would say decentralized and so on evolving thing, I would say decentralized and so on and we have decided me and some friends of mine, we have decided to do several businesses in crypto at that time and at that time even now, market is still a little bit like wild west, but at that time it was completely wild west and there was a lot of scam going on and so on and a lot of people who were providing the service or willing to provide some kind of service. They usually scam people like making promises to do something or something like that and taking up rat payments and not delivering what they have promised. At that time, there was also, if you remember, in 2016-17, there was a very popular website called ICO Bench, where experts were able to review ICO projects and provide the scores to these projects and, for example, if the project had a five-star rating by many advisors, by many experts on ICO bench. It looked like a legit project and a lot of people have invested in this project and so on, but generally ICO bench got corrupted in the sense that all this not all, I would not say all but many experts they started to take money for rating without even reviewing the project. So it all got corrupted, all the system. And, in the end of the day, all these ratings and scores they didn't provide any real how to say it quality of the project was not really there, in other words, even if it had very high scores.

Mikhail: 4:12

So, basically, my inspiration regarding Forcefi has been to help early stage projects, to find the right people on early stage of their project, the right people who can help this project really, and the goal of Forcefi, the mission of Forcefi is to connect the right people with the right projects. So, in other words, if you are a young entrepreneur in crypto and you are doing your first startup in crypto, you will basically have two problems. The first problem that you are going to have is problem with funding. If you don't have a lot of money yourself, you will need to attract funding for your project. So this will be your first challenge. The second challenge for you will be to find the right people to help you by different means. It can be fundraising, it can be tokenomics, it can be marketing and so on People like myself who work in crypto since 2016-17 and so on. They already have quite a big network of people, their own network, so they know whom to work with and so on. But young entrepreneurs they don't know, and these young entrepreneurs is a good target for scammers in order to try to extract money from them.

Mikhail: 5:27

So, basically, what Forcefi does? It solves these two problems. You, as a young project coming to Forcefi, you gain direct access to a group, a big group of curators. At the moment, there are already more than 180 people in this group and these people are industry professionals, advisors, influencers and professionals and advisors in many spheres, like economics, fundraising, marketing, like whatever else. Whatever you can imagine, whatever needs your project might have, there are people ready to help you with your needs, and these are people who have been invited to this group on invite-only basis, so these are not just random people from the street. So these are trustworthy individuals who can really help you with their knowledge and expertise.

Mikhail: 6:14

So, basically, if you, as a young project, as early stage project, you coming to Forcefi, you save a lot of time and a lot of money by getting direct access to the people whom you would have to find, for example, on LinkedIn or anywhere, but it will take you a lot of time and, in the end of the day, trying to find these people, you will get mistaken many times and you will get scammed. This is 100% what happens with Yank Project. So we basically solved this problem, and my inspiration regarding Forcify has been to make the market more healthy, so to provide real value to early stage projects, so that good ideas would evolve and good projects would evolve together with us.

Joeri: 7:02

Yeah, thanks for explaining all that, and indeed it's what you're saying. I'm also in touch with people on LinkedIn, but you don't really know what is the quality of them. Are they honest? Are their profiles even real? These days, you have a lot of fake profiles and because you work with the system that you have, which you invite curators, you can ensure the quality of people, of curators that you have within Forcefi. I also wanted to know about the comparison between your approach and the more centralized approaches, because you are celebrated for your permissionless launchpad on Arbitrum, and so can you explain a bit more how this model democratizes access for startups and investors?

Mikhail: 7:50

Exactly my general opinion is. The best thing I like about crypto and everything related to Web3 market is the idea of decentralization. Unfortunately, in my opinion, wherever there is centralization, there is a possibility of the system being corrupted, and this is what I have seen many times. If there is centralized decision-making process would it be a launchpad, would it be a centralized exchange or whatever else there are people sometimes there are many people, sometimes there is just one person making a decision, and wherever there is such a decision making, this can be corrupted. In other words, this person. At one point of time when there is a big hype, there is a bull run, there is a big demand for, let's say, launchpads and so on, all these guys become corrupted and they start asking money for being listed on the launchpad or something like that asking money for being listed on the launchpad or something like that. So all these things go completely against the whole idea of crypto, democracy and decentralization, in my opinion, and this is something what we wanted to avoid on our platform. That's why we made access to our platform completely permissionless.

Mikhail: 9:13

Whatever project can come to the platform and get listed, but getting listed on Forcefi does not guarantee your success for your project. It's just you get some exposure. First of all, you get exposure to curators. In the end of the day, you as a project, what you will be willing to achieve is that curators will support your project, and the support of the curators is something that gives trustworthiness to your project, because these guys are industry professionals and they have very big experience and they can easily tell the project if it's come or not, and they will never support a project that it's come because it will ruin their reputation and so on. They don't get any money for getting support for the project by just supporting it.

Mikhail: 10:02

The idea is that these projects can get support from these curators. Later they can make a token sale on Forsify and if this token sale is successful, then there is monetary incentive for curators, because the curators that have helped this particular project, they will get a part of this success fee. So this is our model. In other words, by just getting listed, you get nothing. What you need is to get a lot of support from curators. In order to get this support from curators, you have to be as transparent as possible, you have to be doxed, you have to I don't know KYC, your team. There are a lot of things that you can do in order to improve the trustworthiness of your project and, in the end of the day, there will be projects that got curator support and look legit and people trust in them, and there are projects that just got listed, got no support, nobody knows, like, who stands behind this project, and so on, and it's up for community to decide which project to support. There is no centralized decision-making process. Everything is community-driven and curator-driven, I would say.

Joeri: 11:11

You mentioned the word community. I know about the growth that you have with your community, Forcefi.. Can you talk a bit about the community and how important it is for Forcefi?

Mikhail: 11:27

Yeah sure, community is important for any Web3 project like it's one of the pillars that any Web3 project would stand because community gives support for the project, it gives initial ground for other people to join and the CIFI is based on three pillars it's projects, curators and community. At first, when launching for CIFI, we were building the first pillar, which is curators, and we have built it quite significantly. As already said, more than 180 people have joined this group on an invite-only basis. Then, having these many curators, we have value proposition for projects to come so they can get listed and they can get access to all these curators. So there is very good value proposition for projects to come right now. And if you look at Forcefi, we have already quite many projects listed and there is a lot of action going on between projects and curators already, even though by now there were not too many token sales.

Mikhail: 12:24

Like token sale possibility is optional for projects. We're not like direct launchpad. I would say that we're a much-making platform with a possibility of a launchpad. We don't oblige. Again, one of the biggest advantages in Forcefi is that there are no obligations for you as the project. So you get listed and whatever you do next it's up for you. We don't oblige you with anything. It's completely open, transparent and so on. You can list your project just for the needs of exposure, or you can list your project for the needs of potential token sale which you plan to have and you can follow this route.

Mikhail: 13:02

As already said, curators, projects and community is the third and the last pillar which we have currently been building over the last months and we continue doing that because right now we have good value proposition for users to come, because there are already quite many projects that these users can follow and potentially, if these projects do a token sale, our users, our community, will be able to participate in these token sales. We keep building our community, for community there is no limit. The more people you have, the better, especially for a platform like ours, where people can, potentially projects can potentially make a token sale. And the more is a bigger community we have, the better is for projects to do a token sale because potentially they will so so sold out, and so community is very important for us. We love our community and we keep building it and we will do it even more. And yes, like answering your question, community is one of the most important thing, I would say for any web project and especially for our platform wise project.

Joeri: 14:09

Absolutely. I asked you the question because I've also been following Forcefi and seeing how it is growing and engagement that you have. Thank you for explaining all these three pillars and how it works, Mikhail, maybe, if it is possible, can you share an example of a project. Maybe you can give the name or without the name, just so that our listeners can understand how it could look. Like you mean a success story that we have?

Mikhail: 14:34

Yeah, if you have one already, yeah, yes, I would say we have several, but I will tell you one example. We have one of the first projects that got listed on Forcefi. It's called Chainback. It's a live project. They already have a token, quite like maybe for a year already, so it's a token that's traded on Uniswap with TAX.

Mikhail: 14:55

This is a project related to cloud computing infrastructure and so on, and this project got listed and this project got access to the curators and the curators helped this project to raise 100 Ethereum in private. So it was not a public round, so it was not a public token sale. So this project have Curators help these projects to raise 100 Ethereum. So this is the first success story we have and this is something that, on one hand, is a drawback for Forcefi itself but is advantage for project. For example, you as a project, you get listed on Forcefi, you get access to curators and you start working, engagement with them and these curators, for example, if they are fundraising advisors, they all have quite big network of potential investors whom they can connect the project to. Basically, this is their main. This is their main duty, would say, an interest to connect project with potential investors because in the end of the day, most probably they will get a success fee from this deal if it happens.

Mikhail: 16:06

But what I'm trying to say is that such private deals between investors and project through curator network can happen even without us knowing about it. There is no, technically we cannot know about it. We connect people and the curators help project raising money. If it doesn't go through Forsyth as a token sale for Launchpad, then we might not even know about it. So, to be honest, I believe there are even more success stories that might not even be shared with us.

Mikhail: 16:36

So that projects got listed, they used opportunity with this curator connections and that's how it goes and that's how it got with Chainback. But Chainback was open to us and they said that we helped them raise this money and we even got. We even made an article and press release about that. We shared it. So it's in the internet. You can find it. But, yes, it can happen this way so that we even don't know about this, unfortunately. But it can also happen in a traditional way, if it's a public token sale or forcibly. So there are many different ways how it can happen. In other words, our goal again is to connect the right people to the right projects how they communicate, what they do what they negotiate about we. We might not even know about that, because it's decentralized, it's democratic, it's open. Neither projects nor curators are obliged to provide any time kind of information to us or anything like that.

Joeri: 17:37

Yeah, I love that. That's also an aspect of the decentralization, that privacy and so on security aspect of it. But if, okay, if you can give now an advice, Mikhail, to these startup founders and they want to fund their Web3 project, what would be an advice that you would give them?

Mikhail: 18:01

I would advise them to get listed on Forcefi and there are three different listing tiers that we have, and the first basic listing tier is completely free. It doesn't cost anything. So projects can get listed on Forcify for free and this is a great advantage to them. But for free they will not get access to all the curators, because access to all the curators is actually the biggest advantage that we can provide, and in order to get access to all the curators, they will have to upgrade their listing type. But even listing their project for free, they get several benefits in return. For free, first of all, they get exposure to curators and curators will see the project. Projects will not see the curators, but curators will see the project and there is opportunity that curators will approach the project with some kind of proposal regarding their needs or something like that. Secondly, we provide a free consultation call to every project that gets listed and this free consultation call the goal of this call is to dive deeper into the project vision, mission and their needs in order to understand what kind of curators the project needs. For example, the project might have a specific need. Let's say they need tokenomics advisory. They have everything else in place, but they need a good tokenomics advisor who can help them build their tokenomics. In this way, for example, if a project gets listed, it gets access to all these curators. It will need to spend time to find the right people who can help us to pick up tokenomics, but we our team knows all the curators. It will need to spend time, like to find the right people who can help us to pick economics, but we our team, knows all the curators personally because they have been invited there, and so on. In other words, after free consultation, call understanding the needs of the project, we can save a lot of time for the project later because we will connect the project directly to the right curators who are working exactly in this field and, in the end of the day, the project directly to the right curators who are working exactly in this field and, at the end of the day, the project will save a lot of time and we will connect the project, let's say, with three tokenomics advisors. The project will talk to them and decide whom to work with, depending on the project for you and why they should work with this specific person. Again, we're not obliging anybody to work with anybody. It's completely open.

Mikhail: 20:16

But imagine if you needed to economics advisor and you go to LinkedIn to find the one, how much time you will spend to do it and are you sure you will find the right person? I'm not sure about that. So, in other words, coming to Forcefi, you will save a lot of time and money and by getting listed, if you upgrade your listing tier, let's say, to the second listing tier, where you get access to all the curators, or to the third listing tier, where, apart from access to all the curators, you will also get connections to big ecosystem partners, L2s and so on, which will connect you directly with. By doing that, you pay only once. There are no recurring fees or something like that. So you pay, let's say, for the second listing tire, and you are forever listed as a second listing tire.

Mikhail: 21:05

Your project might exist for, let's say, I don't know five, ten years in future and during all this period of time you will be able to exercise like, take advantage of opportunities that we provide, because this curator group will only grow and it will be joined. Many more people will join it on an invite basis, because we'll keep building it because it increases value proposition for projects to come. And you, as a listed project, you will get exposure to all these new curators also. And you, as a listed project, you will get exposure to all these new curators also. And, for example, today you might need to economics advisory, but later, when you have attracted capital and so on, you need help with marketing and you will be able to find the right people there. So, in other words, by getting listed on Forcefi, you can turn back to Forcefi anytime you need a new person for specific needs and you will find a person there, believe me.

Joeri: 21:57

I think it sounds like a no-brainer. You mentioned community. Is this only online community, Mikhail, or are you also doing in real life events? How does that look like?

Mikhail: 22:11

No, by now it's just an online community. We're not doing anything offline for now, but of course we will plan to do something when we reach a certain point of awareness and when we go offline to also spread the word about Forcefi. But basically it's a decentralized project. It's focused on what's happening in Web3. And actually answering your question by by now, offline community building was not our goal and it was not relevant for us. We need to. We need to reach a certain point of awareness online, after which we can start doing something offline. I would say.

Joeri: 22:50

Yeah, makes total sense. Your focus is right now. Now the Web3 space is also evolving a lot. Forcefi is evolving and there is, you mentioned, also an impact. What are you now most excited about? The evolutions that you see in the market and what is happening at Forcify?

Mikhail: 23:10

To be honest, when we were developing Forcefi, we were looking at the project that can make the market more healthy and we even think that our model can become the next step for crypto fundraising in crypto. Why? Because what we do is basically a win-win on all sides, because curated projects have much better possibilities for success and the curators will choose only legit projects to support. In other words, curated projects will have better chances. So people investing in these projects will have much less risk in their investment and it's also good for any ecosystem. We are currently building partnerships with ecosystem and we position Forcefi as ecosystem development driver. For example, let's say, one of the recent partnerships and good connections that we have had is Linear, which we're adding as one of the chains that we support on Forcefi, and we got into deep relationship with them and they're interested in our project and we're interested in supporting Linear ecosystem. And what does it mean? Ecosystem development driver? It means that projects on Linear that will come to Forcefi will get curator support. In the end of the day, they will have a better possibilities of success. These are more legit projects and, in the end of the day, projects going through Forcefi projects only there going through Forcefi that they will be just better projects, better investment opportunities. So, by all means, it makes the market more healthy, rather than projects just getting listed on launchpads. Nobody knows what are these projects about, nobody supported them, they just got listed on launchpad and the majority of investors are inexperienced. Fomo. A lot of people, a lot of new people, are coming to try to earn money, invest, and they don't know where to invest and that's why there is a lot of possibilities of people like being scammed and so on. But in our case, it will be a good possibility to tell a good project from a bad project, like if it's supported or not supported, and in the end of the day, better projects will get better support and it all makes the market more healthy.

Mikhail: 25:37

And we believe that such kind of model and what is good, that it's decentralized, also without any possibility of corruption we believe that it all makes the market more healthy, which is good for investors or community, which is good for ecosystem, which we support let's say, in this case, linnea and many others like Scroll and so on and it's also good for projects, because if you are a legit project and you have a good idea and you want to build it and you get support, you can build it, and you don't have to consider that you will have to pay somebody for believing in you, in other words, or something like that, so you don't have to pay somebody for believing in you, in other words, or something like that, so you don't have to pay somebody for corruption in order to get anywhere. So, in other words, on this stage, whatever project gets listed, they have equal opportunities in the beginning, but later it all depends on them. How transparent are they? What good visions do they have? Everything depends on them, in other words.

Joeri: 26:35

Yeah, it makes sense. I love the way I explain all of that and I think it makes also now more sense and it's clear to our listeners what Forcefi has to offer. But I guess some of the listeners will be interested, will have more questions. So what is your message to the podcast audience if they want to be in touch with you?

Mikhail: 26:56

If these people are early stage project founders willing to get listed on Forcefi, you can share my Telegram handle in description or something like that. These guys can come directly to me. I will talk to them, trying to understand their issue and helping them, and maybe we even provide some kind of discount for the guys coming from your podcast, like for the second listing tire or something like that. This is possible. I am completely transparent and open. I am willing to help early stage project. So let these guys come to me directly and we will discuss potential opportunities with them. No problem about that.

Joeri: 27:32

Perfect. As people know, there is always show notes, there is an article. All the links are in there. It will also be mentioned in the podcast description, Mikhail, yeah, thanks so much for being a guest on my show. Thank you very much, Joeri. It was a pleasure. So, guys, again, really interesting podcast episode with a lot bit of value, depending on the state in which you are. Probably you will know people around you, other founders, maybe possible curators or investors. Be sure to share this podcast episode with them. Be sure to subscribe to the show if you haven't done already, and, of course, I would like to see you back next time. You want to say some last thing, Mikhail?

Mikhail: 28:21

yeah, you mentioned, by the way, I forgot. If there are curators willing to join our platform, they can also approach me directly and we will talk to them. And if these are good people, legit people who can provide real value to early stage projects, we will be glad to add them to our curator group as well. It doesn't cost anything for curators to be part of Forcefi and it will never be like for curators it will always be for free and curators we treat our curators very well because we consider it that the curators group we have is one of the biggest assets that we have at forcify a nice ps, as we say, and people that are now listening until the end of the episode, they will have heard that they will for sure be really good curators for you, Mikhail.

Joeri: 29:10

So thanks again, guys. I hope you you back next time. Take care.