May 2021 – a month of setbacks

The possibility of having to face a situation of hypergrowth was always something that we had envisaged at VETRI. We even encouraged it, knowing full well that solid and fast-growing metrics would make future fundraising initiatives far easier, or at the very least, less difficult. We also knew that with hypergrowth ensues a whole new set of associated problems. And pre-financing hypergrowth was clearly the first hurdle we would be facing. We knew all this yet completely underestimated how quickly things could turn into a living nightmare. By mid-may, we were on track to quadruple our user base and the earnings they generate by June, with the view to do so again every foreseeable month, quite possibly until market saturation. Yet in spite of these rather promising figures, we found ourselves struggling to raise the necessary funding needed to pre-finance this growth and came to the sobering realization that what holds true for traditional equity fundraising doesn’t always apply to crypto investing. As a result, and to make a long story short, by the time the proceeds from our fundraising efforts hit the bank, 3 weeks had passed during which our operations couldn’t be financed. Concretely, this translated into halted pay-outs, frustrated, angry users, and consequently, into a rapid dive of VETRI app store rating.

To make matters worse, by month’s end it became apparent that fraudulent users had penetrated the VETRI space and started to malevolently exploit the vulnerabilities of our payout schemes. As a matter of urgency, all development capacities were redirected away from new feature buildup and put towards beefing up our security systems.

June 2021 – A month of recuperation

By the end of May we had raised sufficient funding to support our target growth and bring us to self-sustainability, thanks to the OTC sales of our native VLD token to an institutional investor. The allocation of the proceeds is as follows:

  • 40% working capital
  • 40% marketing
  • 20% development of new app features

Immediately after accessing the funds, normal operations were able to resume, along with the progressive recovery of key growth metrics. As it stands today, our current growth for active user base and generated earnings is 32% month to month. Whilst still a far cry from the 100%+ growth of earlier months, we are confident that we will be able to quickly regain this higher, yet sustainable, monthly growth level thanks to the right mix of marketing spend and user incentivization. Similarly, on the development front, notably of new features such as PayPal withdrawals, wallet recovery, and Defi functionalities, we are pleased to announce that we will be tripling the time and resources thus far allocated to this all-important department, thereby considerably speeding up the respective releases of said features.

Last but not least, we will be implementing a sustained token buy-back program, starting next week and budgeted at USD 10k for the month, + / – 20%, spent throughout the month, as needed, and as buying opportunities arise. Going forward the buy-back budget will quite simply grow in line with the business and therefore reset each month.