We went down to profitability, we reduced the team a little bit, so we almost break even and we are launching now 2, 3 small products actually to see how the market reacts. It's like an acquisition channel for a lot of users because our competitors are on the iOS app stores. a lot of our user base is us-based and us is primarily an ios market. we know us are like our best users. are we building for serious traders who are, like you know, sitting in front of like 6 screens and like need the most, like sophisticated tools, or rebuilding more for like a retail trader who wants to be able to trade on the move, more like entertainment rather than a business income change? Now we're on our way to catch up with Gabriel and his co-founder from Coinru. We're here to find out what's going on for them and what are they launching? What are they working on? They've been in the game for a few years now, So really interested to see what's kind of really happening in the behind the scenes of their world. This is my third startup and probably ten years ago I just made peace with myself. I was like, yeah, I'm an entrepreneur. This is what I'm going to do, fact, when we talk in the company sometimes. you know about selling, you know exiting. we have received some offers in the past and I was like, yeah, okay, we sell it. but then what do I want to do? You know I'm going to start a new company where here, like you know, we have a dream team. all the processes are in place, the admins are in place, so we can actually try to build new products from this platform. That's for me, like you know, it's the best ever, because, yeah, I think that's what I'm going to do in the progress of my life. I think I'm super happy of doing this. I'm very happy, I mean, basically, when I wake up in the morning, I feel blessed, I feel like super lucky of being able to actually build a company, create value, being able to manage my own schedule and also take care of the team. I really like the people management part. I love that, Even if sometimes they see you as the manager or the founders, you don't get the same love back. but I love to do that. I don't think I'll go back to any ever. Basically, we had these policies, like the last 6 months that we went down to profitability. We reduced the team a little bit. so we almost break even and we are launching now 2, 3 small products actually to see how the market reacts. so we have a baseline of revenues. it's been growing, but not exponentially, but, like you know, solid revenues, and now we're launching new products for different markets as well, always in the crypto space, always on blockchain, a little bit more hardcore, for like big big trainers, let's say, because we understood that you know the market is more on the b to b side. yeah, so retailers are nice but also, like the big big whales are like somewhere else. so we're trying to capture those. Zarek is amazing because he already has 3 kids and he's expecting a fourth one. I don't know how he does. He's an amazing coder, super dad, 4 kids. he's building a house. It's an inspiration for us. It's a crazy inspiration. When is he due, Like in April? right? Yeah, I think it's April, Like the beginning of Can we catch up on something Like? one thing we could catch up on is this NPM. I think before that I also wanted to tell you something, by the way, What i thought that was coming after. oh my god man, congratulations. it's basically almost the same due date. you know, the first week of april. that's crazy. amazing, because yesterday, you know, from the way i was like, i already kind of knew: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, basically it was like so difficult to keep it, like your secret, like, uh, since when do you know? wow, man, it's funny, like 4 days before the wedding, we discovered it. it was a crazy, like crazy week. yes, yes, and even before wedding, yeah, and also for you was the same right. exactly, it was just before wedding, Christy. was, you know, transplanted, obviously, But she was like, oh, cannot drink anymore. That also means I was not drinking. So in April it will be a very interesting month in April. I mean, I'm telling you, it will be like you know, duty for one or 2 weeks, Beginning of April, yeah, first week. Wow, man, Wow, Congratulations, So many kids in this company. Yeah, you're all dads. right now we're going through the beta app and we are, um, basically looking for bugs, right, yeah, like, we're looking for yeah, areas, we're testing one specific thing, which is the payment flow, because we need to get it into the app store, yeah, which we submit. so we are testing, basically, if you go settings, Yeah on plans and then, yeah, exactly, buy, maybe put a monthly plans, Yeah, and then buy this one upgrade, Yeah, Yeah. so we are testing based the payment flow in this new version, if it works and Apparently the upgrade doesn't work, the upgrade buttons, That was the bug. If you get this wrong, What risks? Basically we lose a marketing channel. right, It's like an acquisition channel for a lot of users because our competitors are on the iOS app stores. So yeah, it's a battle. We are like 3, 4 companies doing algorithmic trading And we're always like neck to neck, like fighting. So every single channel, no matter how big or small it is, we try always to saturate it as much and always get the first position. And actually, Javier, our CMO, he's like a magician on iOS optimization. So as soon as this app is out, I think we will gain a little. I think It's a big channel also because a lot of our user base is US based and US is primarily an iOS market and we have an Android app. but Android is more international, iOS is more US. We know US are like our best users. So I think users on iOS have more commercial power, But Apple is much more restrictive and picky in terms of like the app store. So the standard is much higher. So there was a lot of back and forth. We had to get out some regulatory concerns. We had to get that sorted. And then on the payments, they have, like, very specific expectations on the flow, which it's not the case Basically they don't like when you don't use Apple payments. Yes, exactly. And also in terms of tech dev, we wrapped the app so we built one web app and the same one was optimized for Android and iOS wrapped. so it's not a native app. That's good because it's easy to maintain, but it's bad because obviously the interactions are not as good as a native app. like all the swish and choreography, it's a bit different. arguably, this is like a first version and then at some point we would build like a full innate, because still like, trading is something that you do when you're sitting at the desktop. you know, like you're calm, you can analyze your data on trading, view on binance, checking the charts, and then you take your decision, your approach on trading and you place like strategy. it's not really something on the fly, unless it's like meme trading, but for that you have a telegram maps. i think the more sticky customers at the moment are the we call it pro users. so it's basically the one that really have a hobby in trading and they actually spend literally like hours every day. they log in around ten to 20 times a day on coin rule. there's at least a couple of users. we know they have a second screen at work, so it's actually. they trade twenty four, seven, and these are sticky. but the retailer, the hobbyist traders, the beginner that doesn't really know what he's doing and he just follows a strategy. after a few months he churns. So we are now after, like day traders and more and more funds, because funds actually for them. it's amazing. the use case: instead of having to employ like a full quant tech team of engineers, they can just get a standalone, you know, Conrule suite and like, they can just have a junior trader running a few strategies like accumulation liquidation strategy with swap trading. again they can just manage the portfolio with the twop. so it's basically buying a certain amount of assets every week or month and then accumulated things. so those simple automations you don't need, like a tech team, you know, and then you're in your edge funds or family office. you're better off just using a cloud platform like commonwealth. So it seems like. things have changed for a bit. We'll discuss it now with the colleague. So what do you use to excel? It doesn't work the same way anymore. So well, this is like all the affiliate traffic, all the relationships that we build with all the publishers. like they've lost so much, They get much less traffic because they themselves, In part because of the AI, like change to AI and how people are changing the patterns in terms of search, but also think that they were punished quite a lot by Google. So you know, whereas in the past there used to be lots of publishers sharing articles and even about us- not from the views but like best cryptobots and so on, a lot of that has disappeared. now it's just like our competitors and ourselves, just appearing in the results. so just if you search for, like the best crypto bots, you literally just get, you know, us crypto hopper, 3 commas instead of the articles talking about. no, it's in a way it's good, but in a way it's better. you know, we don't rank in the keyword we can get, um, the ios app published very soon like it's just submitted well it's just testing on the whale's phone actually on whale site interesting like yeah fantastic he's got a trade-off i mean you got stuck because you already tested before yes well you're like it was your first day poster i couldn't work virtually nice so that's going to be very cool because we can then do things without any regulation issues Whereas if you're thinking of Google, Meta, and so on, we still have to go country by country. In fact, another thing we need to look into is the status of licenses for advertising crypto products per country. So if you want to reactivate Google, Meta, and so on. In the UK, you can forget about it. It would be a nightmare. The US would be really hard. probably worse to look into but for sure it will be complicated I think in a way our best bet would be to pick like a country that has enough traffic and wealth like even Switzerland or something but where maybe the rules are a bit less strict around that and then just test it out But you agree, right? What is one thing that you wish someone would have told you at the beginning of the journey? It's interesting. It's always a good question because there is this joke that if as a founder you knew how hard it would be, you wouldn't start. So it's like there is beginner mind, right? So the less, in a way, almost the more naive you are, it's almost actually the better. So you don't want to tell people too much of like, wrong stuff i think the only thing that really matters is what they really like beaten to you at yc um the only things you should be doing is talking to users and building product and you're building product based on i mean that should be obvious but maybe it isn't to some people but like and certainly it wasn't to me when i was starting out because it's just kind of Yeah, so when you're talking to users, it's to build a better product, right? Because it's unbelievable how many people go out, they talk to users, but what they hear is not what the user says, they hear what they want to hear. And then they go and they build the wrong product. And every time that happens, it's a tragedy because it's a huge amount of time wasted for everyone. So the most rewarding part of the journey definitely has been being able to actually help users it sounds like kind of obvious but like seeing people who use your product and they actually really get product value out of it it's incredible like we have customers who've been using us for years and years uh who have like my whatsapp number and like the fact that they keep you know coming back it's such like trust that they put into us i mean we are a financial application right so people really trust us essentially with their investment strategies and like they're really an important part of what they're doing. And the fact that these people trust us so much is mind-blowing. I'm grateful for that every single day of running the company. product is a SaaS product. We are charging monthly for it and you need to get something out of it. And yes, you want to make money, but the market sometimes goes up, sometimes goes down. And if you are 9 months in a row of a terrible market, and we've gone through many bear markets now, then what's going to keep you there? Because in that case, it might not be that you're making money, but you're getting something out of it. You wake up 7 a.m in the morning 6 a.m if you've got kids and then you see your phone and your notifications of like pretty trades you've made overnight and you've made someone and that's exciting and we need to keep on delivering that and expanding that um yeah many challenges but many things that excite us