We’ve been busy bees here at Pynk. Seemingly everything the team are working on is growth orientated. Whether it be growing our People Powered ‘proof of concept’ fund (which is performing incredibly well), or in the more traditional sense of marketing — we’re building growth as the central tenet of our culture. As one of our team reminded us all recently “Growth should be in our blood” and we’ve taken that to heart. If you’ve never worked in a startup before you might find the following of interest and will give you a keen sense of where we are focussing our efforts in the first stages of our journey.
As with most startups, raising cash (to fund growth!) is incredibly important and a full time job in itself. In our case, we are raising not only for the Pynk company but also for capital into the Pynk fund via our STO (Q3 2019). As such, co-founders Seth (CEO) and Ru (COO) have been on the road for much of March. First stop was Hong Kong for Blockchain week. Highlights included listening to (and clapping with:-) Vitalik Buterin on Ethereum Stage 2 and pitching non stop to potential investors fuelled by duck spring rolls a plenty.
We also like to have a little fun here at Pynk, and so we caught a few ‘crypto confessions’ @token2049 for our friends at the NotAnotherCryptoPodcast (if you haven’t heard it yet be sure to head over to their youtube channel). Not surprisingly, they often result in horror stories of lost private keys — even from clever chaps such as Jack Liao (aka Satoshi II and founder of Bitcoin Gold) and Caleb Slade (founder of Salt lending). So be careful with those keys kids!
And the guys are back on the plane this week with Seth off to New York and Ru to Poland for the Wolves Summit investment conference.
Pynk are inbound to @WolvesSummit
— Pynk.io (@pynk_io) March 16, 2019
Another week another investment conference
We’re coming in 😃
See you🐺👋🏼#wolvessummit#warsaw #poland #startup #fintech #Pynk #Blockchain #Investment #AI #ML pic.twitter.com/iNtWU1Set5
We launched a new price prediction challenge this week too and are giving away over $500 worth of BTC. As the name suggests, simply make price predictions on Twitter with the top 20 on the leaderboard being awarded Pynk Wisdom Points to their account, and additional WPs handed out to a few lucky individuals. And in case you haven’t worked it out yet — what to Wisdom Points make? Prizes of course! More specifically, they represent your claim to a share of the Pynk profits. If you’re thinking of becoming a Pynk Crowd member then there is no better place to start than our Price Prediction Challenge.
Price Prediction Challenge #Bitcoin #Pynk
— Pynk.io (@pynk_io) March 17, 2019
Leaderboard TOP 10 Positions 🏆
Contest is still running until the end of the MAY 🚀
🎁Join the Challenge 👇https://t.co/MNoQjwYtCy
1- @cryptoajt
2- @AliAlcantara19
3- @cryptomyk
4- @takhasimura2
5- chrisusej
6- @christinejay08 pic.twitter.com/0EO8vuVuof
And saving the best to last, we’re very excited to announce that Pynk was accepted into the Natwest fintech accelerator last week. For those readers outside of the UK, the National Westminster bank is one of the UK’s biggest retail and commercial banks, has additional investment banking arms and since 2000 has been part of the Royal Bank of Scotland group. With a super successful accelerator programme that claims 87% of graduate companies are still running after 2 years, needless to say, we’re feeling a little ‘in the pink’ on this one.
We’re a big fan of accelerators. Our founders Seth, Ru and myself all met at the Founders Institute accelerator in London in early 2017. So what’s so good about accelerators and why would a start up want to join? In my view there are a couple of big advantages. Firstly, there is the big brand name associated with your relatively unknown startup which drives much needed credibility. But more important than that is the independent perspectives and challenges that come your way from mentors. The better mentors on accelerators, the ones that really add value, are the ones that have ‘been there and done it’. The ones that have built successful businesses from the ground up are the ones that tend to be the most challenging and add the most value. They have a knack of seeing where you are about to go wrong before you’re even aware there is a problem lurking around the corner. You may not always like what they have to say, but if you have half a brain then you tend to listen. When friends ask me for advice on which accelerator to join — I always say do your research on the mentors, their backgrounds and the companies they have built. Afterall, building a business is one of the hardest, most challenging yet most rewarding things you will ever do-and you’ll need all the help you can get.
And if you think you can help us in anyway and would like to get involved then we would love to hear from you. Investment experts, techies, entrepreneurs, social and growth marketeers or most importantly want to join our Crowd of predictors — then get in touch. Get in the Pynk today or slide into our Telegram group.
Finally, if you want to read more about our longer term vision for Pynk check out my last blog post on why Pynk is ‘Built for the people, by the people’.
Mark Little
LinkedIn: markdmlittle
Twitter: mark_little2