It gives us great pleasure to see the invoice financing sector evolving in a way that the blockchain is becoming a new reality. Just a few days ago, we saw Russia‘s third largest food retail firm implement blockchain technology into its corporate finance system. We will see that large financing corporations are going to move in the same direction and I am happy to see Hiveterminal ahead of the industry, with our technology and business already waiting to be granted exclusivity in a patent-pending procedure and satisfied customers in our first market. This will help us immensely when the time comes to expand to new markets, either by ourselves or with carefully chosen strategic partners.

We have added important functionalities to the platform, grown exponentially in terms of registered users, hosted more than 20 events for Slovenian SMEs and investors in the past 100 days alone. We have had also more than EUR 50,000 worth of invoices funded so far, with investors receiving ROI and Slovenian companies getting the money they need to thrive in their business through the blockchain-based invoice financing platform. We have, however, come across some roadblocks to that needed to be addressed urgently. We had EUR 201,367 in invoices that unfortunately could not get sold on our marketplace as debtors did not provide confirmation for them. We will address that with an update of our business model shortly, resolving this with a form of “flash,” non-recourse factoring, providing invoice sellers with an opportunity to sell invoices without confirmation, but at the same time giving investors considerably higher ROI for these invoices.

That was not the only set back we encountered. Our ERP plugin should have been implemented and reviewed by Microsoft some time ago. This set back has been costly to us as some larger companies, which previously announced that they will start using Hiveterminal as their early payment discounting platform, are waiting for automation that the plug-in will provide.

However, literally as I was writing this blog post, we received confirmation that our ERP plugin for 365FO and NAV have been approved and released. Now, any company using MS Dynamics 36FO can download it from Microsoft AppSource and connect it to their Hiveterminal account.

The ERP plug-in will streamline the adoption of the platform among bigger debtor companies and automate a lot of the previously manual interaction with the platform. Developed in joint cooperation with Adacta, the Hiveterminal ERP is now available for installation! We now have an open highway to all Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations (365FO) and NAV users and our marketing and sales teams are already launching activities to reach out to them and bring them to Hiveterminal. We will present the long-awaited ERP plug-in and its functionalities (with an exact “how does it work” section and videos) to our community and users in the days ahead.

1000 Registered Companies is Now a Reality!

Just a few days ago, we passed an important milestone in our business development, with the 1000th company registered by our very own call center employees. Our growth in the last three months is impressive and we are happy to see our team successfully reaching our internal goals. We are constantly pushing all registered companies through our funnel with follow-up calls, e-mail campaigns, and direct mail to convince them to start selling invoices on Hiveterminal.

With this achievement surpassed, we sat together with the team to create a business and tech development roadmap, determine key obstacles and threats to our success, and set new KPIs for the near future.

Business Development: Growth is the Key Word

We know Hiveterminal has amazing potential to grow, not only on our first market, but in global terms as well. Our team, with Ugur leading the way, is currently working on realizing two different paths:

Organic growth: We have launched a strategy to implement organic growth in Slovenia’s neighboring countries and will be able to serve as regional center. The team has already made the initial steps, with legal and business analysis for market adoption in Croatia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Austria, and Hungary.

Strategic growth: Focused on strategic partnerships. The team under our CFO’s leadership has established a shortlist of strategic partners like banks, factoring companies, and other legal entities. These institutions are from Germany, Poland, Turkey, and Greece, and we are currently defining rules of engagement for these partnerships.

We have also discovered some potential areas for UX improvements in the Q1/Q2 period and set all our efforts towards providing our users with impactful improvements. One of the first important updates is already in the staging environment/internal testing stage (the “flash” sale function, a.k.a “forced approval“) and with only 1 in 5 invoices receiving the green light under our current conditions, we can expect fast growth in invoices available for purchase and faster adoption, as our marketing and sales team has new benefits to offer.

Product Development: Adding Functionalities

The team, under the leadership of Dejan Jovanovic, our CTO, has created a very intense timeline of releases, with the first, as described, happening in the next 14 days. “Flash” sales will take center stage of it all.

Other releases in the next 100 days will contain some other important functionalities and features, such as:

• An invoice buyer dashboard;
• New ERP integrations;
• Upgrade on notification functionality;
• Improvements to our rating engine;
• And many other smaller improvements of the UX and other functionalities.

Moving Forward

We are moving forward on a daily basis and I am positive about our future growth, both organic and with partnerships, and in terms of platform functionalities. While there will be setbacks, we have proven we can overcome difficulties and rise to new highs while delivering a state-of-the-art product.

Jure

From the CEO: New Markets, New Functionalities was originally published in Hiveterminal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Making an impact in the global invoice financing business is not an easy task. This year was all about setting up the foundations of our business and I can assure you that we have those covered. We are in the process of receiving the patent for the Hiveterminal’s evaluation algorithm, a technology solution based on the blockchain and a model that enables anyone to participate as invoice buyer, moving away from the exclusive bank model. We haven’t put much emphasis on that in our communication efforts, as we think the patent just may be one of the key factors for the company’s long-term success — when blockchain technology hits mainstream and all the biggest players in the fintech field adopt it in their everyday business. Months of long working days of our tech and legal team were devoted to this and, so far, we received positive feedback at every instance of the process. I believe without a doubt that the tech ecosystem of blockchain technology, the integration of different corporate intelligence data sources, a proprietary scoring algorithm, and the ERP data module that enables us to establish a marketplace with real-time invoice rating, will gradually build a fully transparent culture of trust between actors involved in buying and selling invoice receivables. Hiveterminal will become a household name for invoice financing due to significant cost saving for SMEs and considerably higher returns on investments — compared to bank deposits — for invoice buyers.

The team and I know that the blockchain-based industry has been known for producing hype and setting unrealistic expectations, making many feel unease. I didn’t want our team to become that, instead, for every statement and every cooperation, we drew up a legally binding letter of intent and a joint plan for execution. A good example is the joint press release for our cooperation with Gosocket. Their PR team shared their CEO’s comments on our deal, proving that there is an actual agreement in place. I hope we get back on track and implement it as fast as possible. I am waiting for the confirmation from our legal advisors for the permission to speak freely on the topic, but, as the negotiations are still ongoing, we could be jeopardising the talks and we have one aim only: to get the deal done and provide the Gosocket user-base with our invoice financing solution. We could do things differently, probably some could have done better, but we did it all with our best intentions and I believe things will come to a successful conclusion soon. Same goes for the lack of invoices on Hiveterminal so far, which has been a disappointment for all involved with the project, but there is something that motivates us for long hours in our Ljubljana HQ. We know we have an amazing product that will solve pressing problems for SMEs (and investors alike). However, with deployment issues and delay in localisation, I knew that December was extremely unfavourable for starting a business. We did it anyway because we made a promise, and the distrust of the community is only giving us additional motivation for long working hours in our Ljubljana HQ. We proved those that didn’t have trust in us wrong before, and we will do it in 2019 yet again!

But, looking back at 2018, I am proud of what we accomplished and thrilled over what 2019 has in store for Hiveterminal, our hardworking employees and our amazing and supportive community.

A patent-pending blockchain based invoice financing platform: tech development

Our tech team, under the direct supervision of our co-founder and CTO Dejan Jovanovic, did exceptional work this year and they will continue to add functionalities to Hiveterminal as we move forward. The timeline of new releases will partially depend on the business development, user growth, and especially regional expansion, but the first improvements will be delivered by the end of Q1/2019. We are finalizing the Mycrosoft Dynamics integration (The Adacta Deal), that will ease the adoption of Hiveterminal among SMEs and fully automise the factoring process for invoice sellers. I believe it is important explaining what Adacta intergartion with ERPs based on Microsoft Dynamics in both desktop & 365 versions unlocks for Hiveterminal. Through the cooperation, Hiveterminal can not only reach the client base of Adacta, but also other ERPs in markets we’re looking at for expansion when we’re satisified with the offering we have provided for our primary market, Slovenia. This eases Hiveterminal’s entry into new markets as the plugin that Adacta has provided to us is also compatible with other similar ERPs based on Microsoft Dynamics and when the international expansion plan is finalized, we only have to localize the product we will deliver by the end of Q1/2019. Same goes with our solution, which will ease the token buying process for invoice buyers, but the release date of those functionalities will depend on Hiveterminal’s user growth. Some other improvements are in plan for the 2019, such as the bulking of invoices, so that larger institutional investors would have an easier time buying more at once.

Business development

If — or rather, when — our Ambassador Program proves successful, we will add a new & interactive “admin” site for different partners to use in order to easily follow their affiliates (SMEs), as that was one of the requests of our partnering companies and organisations. For now, the Ambassador Program has been well received among accounting services and partnering organisations. The only negative feedback we received so far regarded the lack of localisation on both our website and Hiveterminal. We changed all that, equipped the accounting services and partnering organisations with the necessary marketing materials and tutorials, and our sales team is already following up on how we could help them get news about our solution to their clients. The feedback we have received in the last few days was overwhelmingly positive and, from what we have been told, the majority will present Hiveterminal to their clients in the beginning of January! This means that 83 accounting services will send the presentations and materials that our team provided them to their SMEs. The Ambassador Program is not “locked” for accounting services only. They are simply the ones with the direct and permanent contact with the majority of SMEs in Slovenia. More importantly, they have done the work necessary to earn the trust of companies that work with them. Therefore, their recommendation of our product will create ROI far greater than any advertisements we would push through our channels. We are open for cooperation with any company interested in making our story a success, but we want to meet and discuss every suggested company personally, as our brand and reputation are at stake.

We found common ground with The Chamber of Craft and Small Business of Slovenia (http://www.ozs.si/ozseng/Aboutus.aspx) and its regional chambers of craft and small business and we already presented Hiveterminal to their regional directors and will start with the presentation of the solution to their members in the beginning of January. Our team will introduce different financial instruments to SMEs (such as differences between invoice financing and bank loans), introduce them to Hiveterminal and register them as invoice sellers on the spot. We will perform a similar campaign online for those unable to get to one of these events in person, as our cooperation with The Chamber of Craft and Small Business of Slovenia provides us with different ways of reaching out to all of their 52,000 members. The number one priority in the beginning of 2019 is user growth and the implementation of go-to market strategy, which was postponed partly due to the prolonged development of Hiveterminal and, consequently, delays with localisation. We are not depending on third parties for on-boarding, thus, the team will grow in size and some necessary improvements will be made in the sales, marketing, and communication departments. Learning from our mistakes, we are making progress, trying new techniques and taking different types of people and outside providers on board as we move toward what is a make or break year for Hiveterminal. Thus, a call centre campaign, an online advertising campaign, PR campaign, content marketing campaign, offline advertising campaigns and so on, are already in place, but we had to wait to get our foundations ready to launch them.

Our Vision: Hiveterminal in 2019

As I mentioned, there is only one thing to do in Q1 and that is to grow the business one invoice at a time in our native Slovenia, finding what works and what channels are the most effective before going onwards to new markets later on in the year. We will work harder to ensure sustainability and profitability of our product — and going forward with deals we have in place while always looking for new possibilities of cooperation in different countries, focusing on EU markets, covered also by our integration with Adactas ERP. I cannot stress enough that in markets where we can cooperate in any way with our existing community members, we will do just that. We plan on having our long-term supporters take marketing aide, country manager, local support team, and translator roles, among others. I still believe the community is among the best in the “crowd-sale” world and that together we can thrive. I can assure you all, we will do our part of the job, bringing invoice sellers and invoice buyers together in one marketplace on Hiveterminal! The road will be bumpy sometimes, but the near future is bright. The turmoil on global financial markets is the bearer of good news for the invoice financing industry because the banking system is unable to provide SMEs with the liquidity they need to do their work. If today we are working in an unfavourable environment, tomorrow things can change in the blink of an eye — and we will be ready for expansion on new markets!

Hiveterminal is all in for success and we will not wait on macroeconomic changes to work on our behalf. Rather, we will take advantage of our breakthrough technology and our vast knowledge. We will, on the other hand, make changes to our team in the most important departments, with some outside market-leading agencies helping us deliver our message and solution to SMEs in Slovenia and (later on) abroad.

Hiveterminal in numbers

I am not making the assumption of our future success out of thin air — the numbers are there. We have more than 1250 registered users on Hiveterminal, with nearly 300 individual invoice buyers having made the KYC procedure, waiting eagerly to begin multiplying their investments. The lack of localization has slowed us down on the invoice sellers side, but 50 SMEs registered (with word of mouth marketing alone) is a number that shows potential. I believe the number will increase rapidly when starting the proper marketing and sales campaigns in Q1 of 2019!

We are happy to see that it was so well received in our community and among financial investors alike as it shows that investors are I would like to thank you for the support, questions, and discussions and all the help you provide every single day to Hiveterminal and its team. I know, that all your comments are in good nature and are helping us grow and succeed.

We made some strong steps toward success in 2018, I am certain that we will make leaps forward in 2019, with invoices starting to change hands on Hiveterminal in Q1/2019, followed by rapid growth later on.

Wishing you a Happy New Year with the hope that you will have many blessings in the year to come!

Jure

PS: A special thanks is devoted to those cornerstones of our community: those of you supporting us from day one of our crowd-sale who makes our Telegram such a vibrant and knowledgeable community channel! I am in constant contact with some of you and the questions I received in the past few days show that you are knee deep in our project, understand the situation and have the same eagerness for long-term success as we do. I hope I provided you with some insight into our short-term plan and long-term vision of Hiveterminal, but, since the majority of the topics raised there deserve in-depth replies, the team will address them in a form of joint senior management team blog — a joint reply from the founding team of Hiveterminal. This way, we will be able to provide detailed enough answers regarding the technology, strategy, marketing/sales, and the financial future of Hiveterminal!

From Our CEO: Hiveterminal Is All in for Success was originally published in Hiveterminal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I am thrilled to announce that from this moment on, one of the first use cases of blockchain adoption in the real economy is here, ready for its scaling to international proportions.

Welcome to hiveterminal.com, a blockchain-based, global, invoice-financing platform!

Hiveterminal is making history in global factoring as one of the first real-life use cases of blockchain adoption in the international invoice financing industry. Being among the first to tackle this multi-trillion market while using the blockchain — the technology of tomorrow — we are leading the way in automatisation and trustworthiness, doing what the factoring industry will do in the years ahead. The World-wide Factoring Sector 2018–2022 report predicts that the global factoring market will increase at a compound annual growth rate of 13.3 percent from 2018 until 2022. More importantly, it states that the advent of the blockchain in factoring services is inevitable and will reshape the industry! I am proud and thrilled the Hiveterminal team foresaw the industry’s future and is ahead of the pack, changing global industry, just like so many fintech unicorns have done in the past!

We Are LIVE!

Hiveterminal launched its business for companies (invoice sellers) from our native Slovenia, while invoice buyers (investors) can be from all countries — with some exceptions listed in our terms and conditions. Just as we announced in the past, Hiveterminal will be free to use for invoice sellers, making it the ideal tool for getting instant liquidity and building financial history. So, from this moment on, companies from Slovenia are able to upload their invoices and get instant and free liquidity, while invoice buyers from all around the world are able to buy their receivables, finding high-return investment opportunities in real the economy! For those in our community that have not yet registered for our platform, I would urge you to do so now and start trading the real economy!

What Comes Next?

With the Hiveterminal platform delivered, we will focus heavily on building our user-base both in our native Slovenia and globally (invoice buyers), while at the same time planning to enter new markets and working on improvements and new functionalities on the Hiveterminal. We have to stress that, just like with any other marketplace, the launch is only the first step and scaling will take some time. There is bound to be slow growth at the beginning as invoice sellers could not upload their invoices prior to the launch due to expiration dates.

Our marketing and sales efforts will focus on invoice sellers in Slovenia, thus, a-lot of content (commercials, ads, blogs and media coverage and sales materials) will be published in the local language only. But, there will also be a strong push towards onboarding industry leaders, traders, and community members of the blockchain world, to our platform as invoice buyers, since we believe our platform can help them diversify their holdings, bridging the gap between the crypto and real economies! Our team will therefore be dividing their efforts. On the one hand, they will be working in our native Slovenia with accounting services, ERP providers, large corporations, and local, national and international SME representative bodies. On the other hand, they will be traveling the world, presenting investment possibilities of Hiveterminal to crypto-communities and members of the international finance sector.

I would like to invite all of you to join hiveterminal.com and start using our solution! You can start trading real economy today!

Stay tuned for more exciting news we have scheduled in the days and weeks ahead!

Hiveterminal: WE ARE LIVE! was originally published in Hiveterminal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We have made it perfectly clear to our business partners, our pre-registered users, and our community members, that we mean business. We have given them insight into our work on a daily basis and improved the portal’s foundations in order to ensure its long-term success.

The Foundation: The Product & Business Model Are Receiving Recognition

Our co-founder and the team have been working to secure recognition for the Hiveterminal business model, evaluation algorithm and the blockchain-based technology solution. Thanks to their efforts, we now have a patent pending and this will, if successful, give us the right to stop others from making, using or selling the invention without our permission. Hiveterminal is a unique product, as is its business model, and a patent will prove that we are at the peak of our industry. This can, of course, be used in our favor towards our marketing efforts. You can check out the details in Dejan’s recent blog:

Hiveterminal: Cutting-Edge Technology Solution Receiving Recognition

The Foundation: Onboarding

When Hiveterminal launches, one thing will be of the greatest importance: How quickly and effectively our team onboards new users. The team and I have vast experience from our past successful businesses, which is why we are making this a top priority. Our Ambassador program is showing amazing potential now even before the official launch and full automation, and we are looking into new and efficient ways of delivering users to the platform. I am happy to say that we have struck a partnership with the largest representative body of artisans and SMEs in Slovenia, which has more than 52.000 members and incredible potential. Our CMO and sales team, which delivered the deal, will provide you with an update and additional information in the following days.

The Foundation: The Release

Our testing, which uncovered a flaw in the system, has just begun again and, so far, we have reason to be optimistic. The uncovered issue has been resolved and we are back where we were before the error was revealed, putting an even bigger emphasis on testing. We will take our time with testing as we cannot have a bad reputation among our business partners and users for not delivering on time. This is why we will not be making any announcements about the product release date. All I can say is that the product launch is going to happen THIS MONTH for sure.

With our foundation in place, I have all reason to believe Hiveterminal is going to be a success.

Jure

Hiveterminal: A Brief from the CEO was originally published in Hiveterminal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Our goal is to be the golden standard for projects funded by token sales, showing the world that the true adoption of the blockchain can be done in the real economy. Hiveterminal has an amazing community, which is helping us raise awareness about the product on social media and coming up with different ways to help us gain visibility almost on a daily basis. We are also taking the business approach, which has proven successful throughout history. This means we are sometimes torn between our willingness to share everything with the community and trying not to reveal our unique strengths and advantages to our competition.

Cutting-Edge Technology Getting Recognised!

Hard work by our Co-Founder and CTO Dejan Jovanovic and our legal team has paid off and I could not be happier to announce that Hiveterminal’s unique blockchain-based technology and business application are patent-pending solutions!

This not only shows the product is truly groundbreaking — which is what we have promised since day one — but that using blockchain technology in different areas of invoice financing is also a world first. The procedure tied to our patent-pending solution is the brainchild of our Co-Founder and CTO and he will publish a blog about the case in the days ahead.

User Acquisition

Prior to the launch, we want to have the Hiveterminal Ambassador Affiliate Program in full swing. The feedback from accounting companies taking part in the program has been very positive so far. Not only have they presented the solution to their customers, we received quite a lot of registrations already. I am personally monitoring the on-boarding and sales process on a daily basis, so, when the time comes, we will have the numbers to back the product. We created an automated affiliate program for tracking purposes and the accounting services in Slovenia will receive their unique codes as we launch.

The Release

We fully understand that our supporters are as eager to use Hiveterminal as we are to show it to the world. But, as we have openly communicated, we have been undertaking the in-depth testing of Hiveterminal and discovered a problem with one of the features. Let me reassure you that we could launch Hiveterminal even without this feature, but that would mean a diminished experience for early adopters, and our current partners, the accounting companies.

The partners at Hiveterminal decided that postponing the launch was a small price to pay for ensuring a hassle-free user experience and safety.

We are already fixing the issue and will review it again after some additional testing. At the end of next week, we will publish an additional report about the situation and I am optimistic that things will become much clearer at that time. I would ask the community to stay focused and patient and keep moral high. Launching is the easy part, what will get us the necessary recognition, and ensure global adoption, are the pillars we mentioned above.

And we have been working hard to get those ready.

Hiveterminal: Project Update was originally published in Hiveterminal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What a year it’s been!

Exactly one year has passed since the end of our successful token-sale, where we stated our intention to build a revolutionary platform to help SMEs (invoice sellers) get instant liquidity and build their financial history — all for free — while at the same time providing investors (invoice buyers) with high-return investment opportunities and real-time invoice risk analysis. We demonstrated our intent when we presented our PoC in Las Vegas last October, laying the foundations for our rapid expansion with the agreement on the full integration of our platform into a leading regional ERP (the “Adacta deal”). We then cemented our presence in the global fintech world by entering into an agreement with Gosocket, a Latin American e-invoicing giant, that requested our solution for their +1 million active Gosocket users in 12 countries throughout Latin America.

We travelled the world to present the Hive Terminal to global crypto-communities, spoke at some of the leading fintech conferences and presented our revolutionary invoice financing platform to those that matter most in the fintech world — cast your mind back to our CFO Ugur Yildirim presenting the Hive Terminal at the prestigious Benzinga Global Fintech Awards Ceremony in New York! And our name has consistently been heard where it matters most — among SMEs and investors in our first go-to markets, where we were able to raise brand and product awareness significantly. Our business development, marketing and communications teams were hard at work and did an immense job. The fruits of these efforts mean that we will be one of the very first blockchain-based startups to enter the established economic framework, showcasing just what a token sale can accomplish in a little over one year!

However the vast majority of the work we have done has gone unseen by the masses and has been completed by the teams in our Ljubljana, Toronto and Sofia offices. Under the direct supervision of our co-founder and CTO Dejan Jovanovic, our development team have ensured that the first version of our product will be as revolutionary as promised. And now is the time for that potential to be realised. With all details for technical implementation now with the Gosocket team for the launch of the HVN-Anticipos Terminal, our team has been focused on the Hive Terminal ever since. With its all-new UX and design and the plethora of options available for sellers and buyers alike, it will be a masterpiece. Our marketing, advertising and sales departments are working round the clock, dealing with potential platform users directly, as we close down to getting our countdown set for launch!

HIVE TERMINAL: THE DATES ARE SET!

After 12 months of sometimes consecutive all-nighters, making sure everything required for a successful launch will be in place, I can see the all-new Hive Terminal beginning to look and feel as it should, with our marketing, advertising and sales teams working side by side with our developers for the launch of the platform and rapid on-boarding.

It therefore gives me great pleasure to announce the official dates of the soft and official launches of the Hive Terminal!

Our soft launch will commence at 18.00 hrs (CET) on Monday, 17 September, with the Hive Terminal opening up to investors from all around the world, subject to their completion of our KYC and AML requirements. We are in constant discussions with several major institutional investors and individuals that would like to benefit from this kind of financial instrument and so I have no doubt that on-boarding demand is set to be high.

The second stage of our soft launch will commence on 1 October, which is when the registration process for Slovenian businesses will start, taking their first steps towards cutting costs, automating processes and opening up new sources of financial liquidity. With the ERP agreement we have in place with Adacta, our sales team is already well known among domestic accounting services (we have received over 20 signed LOIs for future cooperation). Now our marketing department is all set to start delivering our message to other ERPs and accounting providers, large corporations, publicly owned enterprises, governmental bodies and local, national and international SME representative bodies in the run up to our official launch date!

THE LAUNCH!

Our official launch — the location and exact timing of the event is still yet to be revealed — will be on 15 October, a month after our soft launch, with invoice sellers and invoice buyers already pre-registered, so the platform can start strongly on day 1.

Our co-founder and CTO will soon present more details on all the features of the first version of the Hive Terminal — as well as providing some insights into its brand new look, feel and design!

The next few weeks will once again put us to the test, but as always we will show the world what a team of motivated individuals can achieve! We will be pushing all new information and statements soon — with our CTO, CFO and CMO reporting on all the latest in their respective areas. So there you have it — stay tuned for the exciting news we have scheduled in the days and weeks ahead!

Jure

One Year Later — the Dates Are Set was originally published in Hiveterminal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Winning the social vote for “Best Use of Blockchain” and the social vote in the overall category means a lot to us. Getting this level of recognition from those who will actually use our platform is, ultimately, all that matters — and we could not have dreamt of a more overwhelming response. Those who have been with us since the very start understand that we have been building towards reaching a tipping point of awareness, and we are well on the way towards a deafening crescendo when our platform launches. Our success here in New York is just the latest indicator of this trend and has given us the visibility and credibility we deserve, but we also wanted to seize upon this rare opportunity to make a very special announcement. The progress to be revealed today is just the latest in a series of giant leaps towards creating a unique blockchain-based marketplace where we can unify data, run dynamic risk analyses, confirm the authenticity of every invoice issued, suggest a price for each invoice and bridge the gap between small businesses and liquidity providers.

Live from Benzinga Award Ceremony in New York

Since attracting over 2,200 backers and being proclaimed the best blockchain-based crowd sale of 2017 at CoinAgenda in Barcelona, we have consistently delivered the very best the fintech world has to offer. And I am delighted that all our backers, our community and our amazing team, who are split between Ljubljana, Sofia and Toronto, can all share in this special moment. The Benzinga Awards showcase the companies that are pioneering the most impressive technologies and setting the benchmark for the future of financial services and capital markets, and so we are blessed to be here. But make no mistake — our presence among such exalted company is well deserved and backed up with strong fundamentals. This recognition is long overdue but we all knew it was inevitable.

We have our incredible future platform users to thank for helping us win these accolades, and we wanted to take this opportunity to reveal more of the progress we have made instead of simply recapping our meteoric advancements. Today is all about the future, and so it makes sense for us to show what our future looks like.

It therefore gives us great pleasure to announce the launch of the HIVE TERMINAL landing page (http://hiveterminal.com), which we are confident will become the first port of call not only for small businesses looking for funds, but also for liquidity providers searching for good returns. Under the guidance of our co-founder and CTO, Dejan Jovanovic, our developers are working day and night to get the platform operational by the end of this quarter.

Presenting HIVE TERMINAL

To quote our CFO, Ugur Yildirim, on stage at the Benzinga Global Fintech Awards Ceremony: “The Hive Terminal is a Bloomberg-like solution that will connect small businesses with investors on our terminal, helping them get the liquidity they need.”

The Hive Terminal is a blockchain-based ecosystem which has been designed, on the one hand, to solve the liquidity problems faced by small businesses and, on the other, to provide urgently needed and reliable data to liquidity providers.

Our unique blockchain-based marketplace will soon be going live, and the benefits yielded by blockchain on the invoice financing process, as well as other financial instruments, will prove to be epoch defining. By harnessing the incredible power of this revolutionary technology, we are able to give every issued invoice a unique fingerprint, which allows them to be traded, thereby rapidly increasing the liquidity available to small businesses around the world.

As well as ensuring maximum speed to market, our ERP integration strategy also means we have sufficient control points over payment histories, past transactions between all parties involved, stock numbers and several other features to ensure that our invoice pricing algorithm is precise and reliable.

Future of Hive Project is bright & global

And so there you have it. Yet another piece has been added to the puzzle, building on what we already have in place — an interactive DEMO of how the Hive Terminal will work and amazing business deals to back up our rapid technological progress. With our developers working around the clock to deliver, my focus is already on scaling up the product to the rest of the world.

And having seen what our team and community can produce when the stakes are high and the heat is on, I have complete confidence in their abilities. We believe that Benzinga represents the beginning of a general awakening and we are relying on our positive community to give all newcomers the warm welcome we are now famous for.

Jure

Live from Benzinga Awards Ceremony: A FIRST LOOK AT THE HIVE TERMINAL! was originally published in Hiveterminal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Our CFO, Ugur, made it clear we are on right path in his Business Report, and Dejan and his team of developers are making swift progress on the delivery side, with some of the brightest minds from the AI and factoring industries now on board to help us deliver the truly ground-breaking platform we promised. And our expanded marketing, sales and legal team here at Hive Project HQ in Ljubljana have already exceeded expectations, often sacrificing their spare time and working late into the night to the benefit of the company, the product and our amazing community. Seeing all these incredibly smart and highly motivated people working as a unit makes me incredibly proud of what we have already established and what lays ahead of us all. The solid foundations we have taken so much time to lay make us increasingly bullish about our long-term success.

Q1: Still on track for long-term success!

The end of Q1/2018 is here and we have made some very important steps forward regarding our business and product development, securing new markets, getting new deals in place and working on delivering the platform we are all waiting for. As you all know, we are very hard on ourselves and have delivered on every milestone we have set ourselves so far. And as can be seen from the evidence to date regarding factors within our control, we will continue to progress on the business and tech development, the areas where our long-term success will be determined.

Unfortunately, however, we will miss the deadline we set ourselves to get HVN listed on a major exchange. I am not running away from responsibility. We had an agreement in place, but the other party changed its conditions once the deal had been concluded. These changes meant that the deal was not right for Hive Project, causing it to be revoked, and negotiations are now at an impasse. I had to think long and hard before making this decision, but I am duty bound first and foremost to consider the interests of the company, product and our contributors.

Nevertheless, this delay with getting listed on a major exchange has no effect on us achieving our business objectives. We will continue searching for the right deal and, most importantly, with an exchange that conducts itself properly and serves its purpose as a long-term partner. To reiterate, we are on track with our technical development, business progress, sales and compliance to bring the platform to its full glory by the end of Q2/2018.

With regulation now the key word in the blockchain world, we have been making sure that we conduct ourselves in a manner that is compliant with the regulatory and legal requirements in all of our markets, ensuring we are here to stay for the future. And the biggest exchanges out there, some of whom have hit the top of the volume rankings only recently and may leave just as quickly, are no exception to that. Regulation is now a reality for them too, and many are very underprepared, which is in fact the norm for such a fledgling and rapidly evolving industry. We are therefore only interested in working with exchanges that have a long-term future. Decentralised exchanges such as Next.Exchange or exchanges, such as Lykke, give us the confidence we need to ensure that HVN can be purchased easily once our platform is up and running, and they are both solid bets to ride out the regulatory storm to come. Nevertheless, we are not closing any doors and firmly believe HVN will be listed on a high-volume exchange very soon. We are back at the negotiating table, and now that our self-imposed deadline is going to pass unmet, our negotiating position has become vastly stronger. We refuse to let that deadline be used as leverage against us and our contributors — and we refuse to blink first.

[Q2/2018] In one word — DELIVERY!

During this quarter, the focus of the community, which includes our contributors, users, small business owners and investors, will be on getting the platform done on time. And we will deliver. Simply because we always do so when all factors are under our total control. I am convinced this will be the case as we deliver v1.0 of our platform in Q2, opening our first markets and scaling up quickly — with the foundations set by all our amazing team leaders in the past weeks, and we have no intention of letting up the pace now.

We are now in the process of compiling a database of the first users of the platform, working closely with our partners in the ERP and e-invoicing businesses. Our sales team is also making swift progress with clusters of potential users, joined under the umbrellas of institutions, partnering organisations and accounting companies, getting the word out to small businesses and investors. The funds we have set aside for incentivisation and sales are proving crucial to our early successes here.

With our new and improved UX of the platform and our ALL NEW PRODUCT PAGE, small businesses will soon be able to get a real feel of what it will be like to use the new platform. Here, you can get some early insight into what we have in store, and we are incredibly proud of what we have managed to get done.

We will be releasing more screenshots of the platform’s new look landing page very soon!

We continue to try keeping our heads while those around us are losing theirs. And we are on the verge of something great, but there will always be ups and downs along the way. Life does not always go according to plan, especially in an industry that changes as quickly and dramatically as crypto. We must keep our feet on the ground and be ready for minor falls when they happen.

However, it is how we get back up on our feet that will define us, and we have always fought back to deliver after every setback. And that is why I know we will fulfil the key promise we made to our contributors: to create a state-of-the-art invoice financing platform, powered by blockchain and HVN utility tokens. And to be the first.

Thank you, as ever, for your support. We remain undaunted and our focus is unwavering, and our ultimate victory will be all the sweeter for having gone on this journey.

EXECUTIVE UPDATE: ON TRACK FOR LONG-TERM SUCCESS! was originally published in Hiveterminal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Our interactive DEMO is up and running, and we have some amazing stats and positive feedback from users to share. From a business development perspective too, we have made huge steps forward this quarter, bringing us even closer to millions of SMEs and investors. Our marketing and sales teams, with our incredible powerhouse community backing us all the way, continue to be our best ambassadors, and we are busy creating demand in our first go-to markets. We have no doubts that we are on the brink of huge global success in 2018!

BUSINESS (development) as usual — bringing millions to our platform!

When it comes to business development, our objective is simple — to scale up the platform globally as quickly as possible. And as our CFO Ugur Yildirim stated in his blog a couple of days ago, “speed to market is a key focus”. That is why we have been exploring several partnerships around the world, not only with leading global ERP providers, but also business network organisations and other international financial players, all with great success!

Our multi-country ERP deal with Adacta (Gold Microsoft Dynamics partner), a leading regional ERP, was announced on 21 December and understandably grabbed significant media attention (Bankless Times: Hive Project Buzzing after ICO). This deal will ensure that Hive Project is integrated with businesses throughout the Central and Eastern Europe region and Russia — a USD 700 billion market ripe for the taking!

With momentum on our side, we then followed up by announcing our exciting partnership with InsurePal, a blockchain-based platform powered by the science of social proof, giving Hive Project even more accurate credit scoring. And if that wasn’t enough, not long afterwards we announced another exciting partnership, this time with FintruX Network, a blockchain based online ecosystem connecting borrowers, lenders, and rated service agencies. FintruX will refer clients who are looking for factoring services to Hive Project and give us another route to our target European and Russian markets.

Our CFO, Ugur, the man responsible for the deals we have in place, continues to be busy. Only a week ago, he gave us an update on our meteoric progress by reporting on letters of intent covering the HUGE Turkish and Latin American markets, making us now the undisputed go-to blockchain choice to help millions of SMEs get the liquidity they need.

Tech development on track — count down to launch!

On 21 December, we also released the DEMO version of our platform, giving everyone the opportunity to use the platform as an SME, investor/factor or both. The DEMO runs on a private instance of the Ethereum blockchain and once again demonstrates the professionalism and competence of our development team. Under the leadership of Hive Project co-founder and CTO, Dejan Jovanovic, they continue to set the bar high, meeting and even beating every deadline they are set! The DEMO’s drastically improved performance and added functionalities are turning heads and we have received great feedback from users — not only from the HVN token holders in our amazing TELEGRAM community but also from the SMEs in our go-to markets.

With 256,418 impressions for our DEMO posts, over 800 SMEs & factors registered, and as many as 1,000 invoices now virtually bought and sold, our interactive DEMO has already received a rousing reception!

A growing team & global presence — WAY AHEAD OF THE PACK!

With our workloads ramping up substantially as our launch date draws near, we have been gradually adding to our back-office support staff and now have 15 team members, with a PhD staffer about to join to develop our Artificial Intelligence (AI) programme, which will further cement Hive Project’s role as a global leader & future fintech giant.

To underline our global presence, we are taking our expertise to the global stage. We understand how important it is to be seen and heard by SMEs and our community members, and it is vital that we keep raising awareness about how far we are ahead of the pack in the invoice finance blockchain revolution. And in order to continue consolidating our status as the true pioneers in our field, we will be making our names heard in conference halls and meeting rooms from Frankfurt to Istanbul. We will also continue raising awareness by speaking and networking in Hong Kong and Shanghai, and holding meetings arranged with our rapidly growing Asian community. However, since establishing a presence in our first go-to markets is our priority, we are ensuring that we have a constant presence there! And with numerous meetings with our team and ERP providers, national and international business network organisations (chambers of trade and commerce, etc.), investment funds and other future partners already in place, we will continue to push hard until the platform launch and beyond.

THE ROAD AHEAD — COUNTDOWN TO LAUNCH!

Despite the huge progress that has been made in the last 6 months, we are still in the early stages of development, and the months ahead are full of promise and excitement. Our next major exchange will be announced before the end of this quarter, and this will position us very well for the launch of the Hive Project Platform before the end of Q2! With our completed deals covering Latin America and Turkey to be announced by the time the platform launches, we are delighted to see so many respected names understanding our potential. And with some great news and announcements due to be made in the meantime, along with the efficiencies gained from our Adacta integration to come into play, we will be able to greatly increase our speed to market. As you can see, we have hit all our milestones so far and have no intention of letting up the pace now.

Our focus is unwavering. We will fulfil our promise to get the platform up and running by the end of Q2, with businesses around the world getting the funding they need! As pledged, HVN tokens will fuel our platform and their full utility will be exploited. That is our primary goal and we will not stop until we have achieved it.

Let’s continue spreading the word!

Best,

Jure

PS: And, if you haven’t already done so, you are more than welcome to join our TELEGRAM channel for all the latest news and updates from our team. Please come and say hello!

Hive Project Q2 Report: Countdown to the Platform Launch! was originally published in Hiveterminal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Ending 2017 in Style: A DEMO Revealed — Backed up with First Business Deals!

It has been an epic journey. Since our award-winning ICO, Hive Project has progressed from promise and potential to becoming a recognized and trusted fintech brand with a DEMO version of the platform to show, but there is still no end in sight to our progress. My team and I are still working all-nighters to deliver the first ever blockchain based platform to give SMEs worldwide fast and low-cost liquidity. And on time too, just as we promised. We just keep on delivering: our Proof of Concept (PoC) in Las Vegas and the DEMO version a week ago being two examples!

The fact that we have been focusing solely on the product and ensuring its long-term future by backing it up with business deals is, in my opinion, the best investment in Hive Project’s bright future! There is no time for bulls**it here. We are here to deliver and create long-term value for our contributors! And that is why it gives me such great pleasure to get so much feedback, emails and phone calls of support and praise from SMEs (debtors) and investors (factors) from all over the world! This confirms that we are on the right path to achieving success, and we will continue to work just as hard in the future.

For those asking about how you can test out our DEMO, you can play around with it HERE! As my co-founder and CTO, Dejan Jovanovic, explained, the Hive Project DEMO is a fully clickable demonstration of the Hive Project Platform’s capabilities, and interacts with a private instance of the Ethereum blockchain. With added functionalities, drastically improved performance and an intuitive user experience, I believe we have made a crucial first step towards ensuring the Hive Project Platform’s long-term viability.

And when adding our first ERP deal (!) and the FUNDS (!) committed in our “Jump-Start Liquidity Pool” to the equation, it is now becoming crystal clear that 2018 will be HUGE for Hive Project and our amazing community of contributors!

2018: SCALING UP TO A €2.5 TRILLION MARKET!

With our development team working wonders on a daily basis, we have been keeping pace with the business side too. We made our TELEGRAM ONLY ANNOUNCEMENT on our ERP deal just last week — going public with Hive Project’s integration into a leading regional ERP provider for SMEs. We are delighted that Adacta (https://www.adacta.si/) has seen what Hive Project Platform can bring to the table for their customers, and that they will fully integrate us into their systems. With this agreement now signed, sealed and delivered, we are already working on other ERP providers to follow. For now, however, we will be making Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Germany, the Czech Republic, the UK and Russia (!) our first go-to markets when delivering our platform during the period Q2 to Q3 of 2018 — and there will be more countries to come!

Tomaz Volk, Founder and Managing Partner of Adacta Holding: “Hive Project’s blockchain-based liquidity-providing platform is a unique solution for SMEs around the world. It is a truly revolutionary product and we are looking forward to implementing it into our systems and making it available to our clients.” For more information about Adacta, please check here: https://www.adacta.si/

With a powerful business backing up our development, we are surer than ever that we will deliver exactly what we promised — and create long-term value for our contributors in the process! The numbers are there for everyone to see. And we believe that that the targets set in the Business Roadmap Summary are eminently realistic and achievable.

Let there be no doubt about it. Our first go-to markets have incredible potential, including powerhouses of the European economy, and we will do our best to continue delivering as we have done so often until now!

With 5.67 million small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in Russia (!) and an annual turnover of USD 2.5 trillion for the companies in our first go-to markets alone (!!), we have laid strong foundations for our success and scaling up in 2018!

Although we made some strong steps toward success in 2017, I am certain that we will make giant leaps forward in 2018, and make Hive Project a fintech unicorn in the process! Our team is extremely dedicated and highly motivated, and our amazing community continues to back us up. So, here’s to making 2018 a year of success for Hive Project!

And as always: keep in touch and join our active, thriving and ever-growing TELEGRAM community HERE!

[$HVN 2017 -> 2018] Hive Project: An Epic Journey and a Fintech Giant in the Making! was originally published in Hiveterminal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.