Tech & Innovation
Tech & Innovation
Q & A iGB LIVE!
LAUNCHPAD WINNERS
This year’ s LaunchPad awarded joint winners after judges were unable to separate Moonify and Betflow. We caught up with both start-ups to find out what they plan to do next
iGaming Business: What are the key features of Moonify and why is now the right time to launch it? Pascal Jardé: Moonify is a CPU-based monetisation platform for digital publishers and content creators. This means that digital publishers can now open up a new revenue stream by allowing non-paying users to trade their device’ s unused computing power in exchange for content access and rewards. Digital publishers have noticed a steady increase in ad-blocking software and have struggled to maintain and grow their revenue share. This made now the perfect time for Moonify to present its monetisation platform as an alternative.
How has the start-up been funded? The founders invested personal funds and then raised a first round of € 210,000 from business angel investors. We also obtained tech subsidies from a French government programme called BPI France.
Which jurisdictions will you be targeting and over what timescale? We are a global business. That being said, Europe was our first target because we’ re based in France and usually attend conferences in Europe.
Our product is sold via an SaaS model and we have partners and customers from all around the world. Regardless of region, core needs remain the same: they want to monetise their content by respecting their users’ personal data, not alter the user experience( as ads often do) and find a way to monetise non-paying users.
We decided to natively integrate GDPR, one of the most restrictive set of rules set by European institutions. Those rules are set for all our partners, whatever their jurisdiction.
What are the biggest challenges to getting this project off the ground? As an innovative technology addressing a new market, the evangelisation phase is necessary and could take time.
Monetising content through processing power is not necessarily intuitive and can generate more questions: will the solution respect my device? Can I control how much processing power I share? How is my computational power used? This means we need to build the best UI possible – one that’ s slick, intuitive and respectful.
What’ s the next major milestone for the business? We’ re opening a second fundraising round before the ICO. Our product is ready to go into production and we now need to go to market. This will help to achieve another important milestone: the preparation of our third round of fundraising through an ICO.
Funding a project with an ICO allows us to raise money without diluting previous investors’ shares. As a next step, we’ ll create our own Moony( MNY) coin and this will be the centre of our ecosystem. Most of our services will be payable using this coin and our partners will be able to redistribute it to their users as a valuable asset to enhance their retention.
The MNY coin has four major utilities, the first being that it will be the only method by which publishers will access paid services on the Moonify platform. It will also be the means by which brands will gain visibility on the Moonify Marketplace. Furthermore, the MNY token will be the only way to receive rewards on the platform, and users will be able to use them to buy and sell digital assets from the Moonify Marketplace.
What’ s changed since you won the iGB Live! LaunchPad? The event allowed us to get in touch with several investment funds that are interested in our solution. Having a good product is not enough – it’ s important to raise awareness with the biggest audience possible. Most of the money raised will be used for marketing purposes and evangelisation. We’ re among the first to reach this market, but the number of competitors is growing fast. Staying out in front requires a lot of energy and money, potentially provided by investors.
iGamingBusiness | Issue 112 | September / October 2018 13