Simon Sovic on Cherr.io’s blockchain charity platform

0:00I'm ashtin Addison from event chain Dario for FinTech news network and investment pitch media today on blockchain interviews we have Simon sobic the PR and business developer of cheerio Simon welcome to the show hey thanks for having me any time Simon so if you would to start please let me know what is cheerio all right so cheerio is a blocking solution for charitable

0:26donations and what we're trying to do is we're trying to increase transparency and reinforce trust back to the people so the donors who donated charitable projects sounds pretty simple but is it really that simple I know there are a lot of issues right now in the donation and charity space maybe you could elaborate on those problems a little bit and how cheerio is implementing the

0:50solutions yep for sure so some of the issues right now in this space are that there's low trust so donors are very doubtful at what they're seeing of the projects that are going on they don't know where the money is going there's not a real transparency charitable organizations aren't held sort of they don't have to show where the money is going there's high organizational fees

1:11that charities have there's high marketing costs because often what happens is that trainee organizations they actually hire some outside marketing help who bring in donations and these organizations are paid as a percentage of the donations that they get there's a high risk of frauds so you don't know actually the origins of charitable projects and there's a

1:33slow execution so those are some of the issues that we're trying to solve with cheerio that's great so I know I've heard a lot of successful people say that the success of a project really relies on the team so can you tell us a little bit about your team how big is it right now and are you guys expanding so right now we have 12 team members of them I think we have like four blogs and

2:02developers so we're very strong on the tech as well as on all the others and all the other skills that we need to actually succeed in to help bring this project to reality we are also looking to expand in the next coming months looking more for more people and development and marketing PR design and also what we're going to need and we've already realized that as well

2:26as user support and also testing so we already have 30,000 users so user support is something that we are going to need Wow 30,000 users already how long has the project been been around for and like when did you start with the project so we really started working on this project about a year ago and it's been it's been going on since that and most of it most of the you know

2:55first of all when you start the project like this it's a lot of planning a lot of development work so we started marketing only I think in the towards the end of last year and the reception that we received from people in this spaces it's been astonishing so it's been absolutely mind-blowing and we believe we have something that's it has a great market value a great value for

3:19this industry and we're seeing that also in the partnerships and and outreach that we're getting wow that's great to hear so if you could elaborate a little bit more on how the blockchain technology is integrated into your platform and if you guys are using a token how it's being utilized within the platform as well so what we essentially are is a peer-to-peer charity so we enable

3:46person-to-person donations so it's it's individual it's it's it's something that can help an individual from anywhere around the world we're also trying to decentralize you know charity marketing one of the things that we've as I mentioned is a high marketing cost and we're trying to give you know the marketing efforts back to the people with the with a system that we call

4:11proof of charity and it's actually a mechanism that utilizes all the social networking activities of of individuals to help and promote and spread awareness of different charity projects also some of the things that we are very keen on is course transparency and we believe utilizing the ethereum blockchain is something that's amazing for that because it's a public ledger also what

4:36we're doing is we're giving people decision-making power so when projects get donations we don't immediately immediately release those funds to the project instead there's milestones and people have the power to decide for each milestone whether it was reached or not and if it was not reached the money doesn't get to the project because it seems that they didn't fulfill what they

5:01were trying to do and it held it and holds them accountable using you know a smart contract also one of the things that we're doing is we have an anti-fraud system so what often happens in this space is that projects again so some people are doing are gathering money for projects that aren't actually charity projects but instead just cover-up of something that's not real so

5:23we have an anti-fraud system in place with where people have to use tokens to stake them to ensure that this is a real project and it's and it in this way with using this economics it holds them accountable for something so those are some of the ways that we're utilizing blockchain and also our own token that's really great to hear that you guys are

5:47prioritizing on accountability and transparency and I feel that's part of the root of blockchain technology is is opening up this transparency and I also like what you said about giving back on from the marketing sense one notorious thing with charitable organizations is they spend a lot on marketing and those numbers are sometimes opaque and it's hard to tell how much money you donate

6:13it actually goes to the cause that you were trying to give money to yeah I know we looked at some statistics and some studies and I know the ten worst performing charities in the u.s. in the last ten years they raised I think around 1.7 billion if I'm not mistaken I'd have to check the figure and of that amount only 25 percent went to the people in need and that's that's

6:40at 75 5% got lost somewhere in between you know it's it's the exact opposite of what charities are of what it's supposed to be of what this industry is all about so we're trying to change that and we really think that you utilizing blockchain in this way and also you know creating this community that's encouraged to help and spread the word so spread awareness to gather more

7:03donations I think we believe that's the right approach I mean yeah and that's a great approach to take so if we could just dive into the technical side very briefly you know you're using the etherion blockchain to achieve these solutions do you guys foresee the ethereum blockchain itself being a driver of the solutions for cheerio in the long term or are there limitations

7:28with the platform and would you consider using other platforms for the best business solution so we've discussed this a lot internally with our developers for now we believe ethereum is the best the best platform to use pros but in the long term we were also looking at other options so we were we were quite excited about Neal and its prospects so it's something that

7:52we're we're also looking into but for now for also this phase you know of this early this early stage of in our project is we have very high goals and we believe that it's most suitable to use it there good answer so speaking of the development what is the upcoming development roadmap look like and you know how far ahead are you guys looking so we have a plan for the next two years

8:22and we have quite quite quite big goals so for the next half of year one of our goals is to to to go to two key UN events we've been a part of the UN hackathon but we also want and we're trying to help you men actually solve their sustainable development goals and where are you going to to an event next week I thinking in New York it's a UN conference and that's one of the things

8:52that we're trying to do you know on board organizations with these huge potentials and these huge visions and help them do that through cheerio also we have some development things going on as well I think we're working on an iOS app Android app as well that's something in the coming months and the coming year as well yeah I think that's the primary

9:21things that we have also what we're trying to do is onboard more organizations so that's some of the things that were focused on quite a lot as well and well I know that sometimes it's tough to acquire organizations and people to use the platform do you guys have a marketing strategy and how you're going to acquire more organizers and people to put up campaigns for other

9:45people to invest into so we've as I mentioned we have this this one of the integral parts of our platform is this concept that we call proof of charity and we've seen it work we've seen that help us get to 30,000 users and it's something that we're also going to utilize on the organization side and we believe that through that we can get more projects as well it's and what

10:13we've seen is now that as I mentioned we have to you know onboard these big organizations or organizations like the UN like Amnesty International and get them on our platform and these are organizations that have huge projects and they know they have you know problems they know they know they have problems with transparency with marketing costs and they see us as a

10:35solution to those problems that's great so if people are looking to get more involved in the community or start a campaign what's the best way for them to learn more so one of the things that we always do is that this should go to our website they should see how our platform works because we have an MVP that's working they can see they can donate to

10:58the ongoing campaigns and they can also try out our proof of charity concept you know they can see it work and real time they can see the benefits of it they can see how how it helps organizations and they can see maybe potential partnerships as well and also the consider describe to get news and upcoming features I know another upcoming feature that we

11:22have is a journey market cap because we believe that today there's not really like a ranking of the best charities around the world and which ones are actually doing the most for the people so that's something that we're going to develop in the next months as well and it's gonna base maturities based on total fundraising sort of cord for charity organizations and also ratings

11:45for from the people so what they believe to be the actual rates or grade of these organizations but yeah things like those features they can subscribe to get news and also join our telega I think we have a community there of 17,000 users so it's quite a big community and yeah everyone's welcomed it wow that's great to hear

12:10thank you for your time Simon I will leave your guys telegram down in the description box of the video for anyone who wants to join and I appreciate your insight into the donation and charity industry and I'm looking forward to following up with you in the coming months to see how cheerio is doing great thanks man thank you you