Anchor Point

April has already come and flown by us in what felt like merely a few days. We started the month off strong by releasing a major update to the app stores. Version 2.5 went live just a few weeks ago, while Gabe and I were in Miami at the Bitcoin 2022 Conference. This update is packed full of improvements and positions the platform for frictionless onboarding moving forward. More about the app updates in the next section.

Upon returning home from the conference, we analyzed our roadmap and reprioritized some of our objectives and timetables for the better. We’ve elevated our integration with Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, and are accelerating that function, so that we can enable “Surveys for Sats”, and appeal to a broader audience this summer.

We’ve also been busy developing all the new relationships we formed while in Miami. Gabe and I were able to meet countless individuals who are building and investing in the space. Having a physical presence at certain conferences adds to the trust factor for outsiders, who are then able to put a face and a name to a project they may have seen or heard about. Curating engagement this way helps observers to better discern a platform’s viability, by getting to know the humans building it.

The rest of our time this month was spent preparing other unreleased features we’ve been working towards since the beginning of the year. As we draw near summer, these features will be going live in waves. For starters, Google has approved our Gmail integration after a lengthy vetting process and penetration testing; we opened closed beta testing yesterday. We’re also designing ways to gamify earning, making it more fun and competitive.

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The App

Our recent v2.5 release was packed full of new stuff. As a review, here are the features we shipped:

• One-tap crypto wallets — Created with login.
• In-app, gas-less claims; “meta-transactions”
• Rewards for consumer surveys
• Rewards for referring friends and family

Since our objective this year is to increase user engagement by orders of magnitude, our 2 main key-results are:

• Increase daily active users count to 5000
• Increase total (KYC’d) user count to 100k

To achieve these goals, we are actively working to:

• Activate Gmail integration — This enables automatic tracking number uploads on all your orders.
• Lightning Network integration — ability to swap XPORT for Bitcoin directly in the app!
• Deliver episodic and/or themed surveys on a weekly/monthly cadence
• Distribute PORT Badges — Achievement NFTs that are earned by continued app engagement.

We are very excited about all of these initiatives and will be releasing them in waves throughout Q2-Q3.

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The Business

We’re delighted to share that we’ve brought in a new team member and business consultant to catalyze our developmental efforts. Please give a warm welcome to Jacob Cohen! Jacob graduated Harvard with an M.B.A. as a Goldsmith Fellow, and he brings his wealth of experience as both a startup cofounder and a business strategist to the PackagePortal team.

He’s been with us for a couple months now, and has already brought immense value to the company, by stepping right into sales meetings, and leading the research and analysis efforts for our Pilot program with KeoniCBD, and also by introducing PackagePortal to various members of his network

Stepping away from our internal team for a moment, and looking towards external partnerships, we are still in talks with a number of retailers and prospects, and those relationships continue to develop positively. What’s exciting us most lately, is that we are on track to potentially close a partnership with a leading service provider in the e-commerce space.

If you recall, in the previous newsletter I mentioned that this company has over 1K retailer clients, and over 100M end users who would all gain access to our platform through this integration. Our code has been optimized to provide a seamless onboarding experience for those who know nothing of crypto, and a partnership of this caliber would demonstrate our readiness for growth spikes; but it takes time and effort to secure deals like these. Will share more soon.

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The Tokens

Our focus in regards to PORT has been squarely centered on exchange listings and token accessibility. Q2 has been our target to begin listing PORT on various Centralized Exchanges, and we’ve made the necessary in-roads to start those processes.

All security audits and legal opinions required by these exchanges have been procured, and we’ve recently submitted multiple applications to quality exchanges. In months past, we had the opportunity to list on some lower ranked exchanges, but in the big picture of listing strategies, this did not align with our grand objective, so we held off.

Being careful there provided us the opportunity to control the narrative and momentum of an initial ERC listing. And as of last week, one of our applications to a top 20 CEX was approved, and we are actively sorting the details for the listing. We cannot divulge when, nor with whom this will occur, but we feel the reassuring news of an impending listing might provide encouragement to holders in this volatile marketplace.

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A Final Word

The narrative of “The Tortoise and the Hare” is a world renown child’s story about an animal built for speed, ultimately losing a foot race to an animal that’s notoriously slow. As a child, I actually identified more with the spritely hare, who ultimately loses the race against the slow as molasses tortoise that kept a steady pace.

This wasn’t because I liked to lose like the hare does, but it was because it seemed like the hare just had more fun. After all, it was just a foot race, I’ve won and lost those lots of times; it’s not life or death. So I felt the furry little guy was just making it lively by hanging out with friends and showing off and such. In the end he takes an L for it…but life goes on, right?

Obviously as I matured into a teenager and later an adult, I embraced the moral of the tale, coming to respect the reptile’s steady drive that pushed him to victory…while scoffing at the foolishness of the hare for squandering his gifts and advantage. But never before this season of life have I felt the realness of the tortoise’s relentless journey; this creature who is physiologically limited to a certain speed, being forced to compete against a creature designed for agility…it seems cruel. But the tortoise doesn’t complain or give up, he just perseveres.

I liken this to building a startup. Why enter the race at all if all the odds are stacked against you and the competition has unfair advantages. I suppose I’m just a competitive individual that could never back down from a good race. Our team has invested over 3 years into bringing this idea to life via computer code, with countless hours spent developing enterprise level partnerships while fostering a growing community.

While others may grow faster, or appear to be more agile than us, sticking to our own plan and using our natural gifts will allow us to outlast and outperform our race division at the end of the day. Time is the ultimate judge. We’ve invested a good amount of that at a steady pace, and are ready to cross the finish line. Even still…this is only lap 1; The Marathon Continues. 🏁

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