Andy Halko 0:03
Okay, welcome everybody to the tech founders show with adservio, where we interview really cool guests talking about interesting products and technology. Today I’ve got Oleg. Oh, now we just practice two seconds ago.

Oleg Kurchenko 0:25
Yeah, we just practice

Andy Halko 0:27
From BinaryX. And you’re coming from Kiev tonight.

Oleg Kurchenko 0:32
Yeah, currently I’m look, my location is Kiev. And I’m really glad to be here. And thank you for your invite Andy. And let’s talk about some tech stuff.

Andy Halko 0:46
Yeah, so let’s talk a little bit about your company, first. Tell us what you guys do and who you are. And we’ll kind of watch off from there.

Oleg Kurchenko 0:56
Yeah, the company name is BinaryX, like you say. BinaryX, so digital assets exchange, and why we call this BinaryX, because we’re doing digital assets exchange with the feature like digital assets, the communication, and the under binary, we means like, our world is binary, you know, like 0 1 0 1 everywhere right now in the digital world. And also, that our business is the market like an exchange. And also there is like, you can see binary when you’re switching or exchanging the Bitcoin to United States Dollars, there is a binary pairs. And so and X in the end of that name means that we can digitize anything. So it’s BinaryX.

Andy Halko 1:54
Yeah. And tell me a little bit about how you got into this.

Oleg Kurchenko 1:59
Oh, like, you know, long story short. Yeah, all the time. I have a lot of experience in tech, most last 10 or 11? Yeah, right now, it’s last 11 years I do in different software stuff. My, my education is like I am specialist and bachelor and in software engineering, okay. So on the second course of the university, I have started my own company with I start to do web development, we start doing the websites, internet shops, etc, etc. And then little bit later, I start my other business in E commerce, then I come back to software development and start developing different products startups, and etc. And currently and, and start the first time when I heard about cryptocurrency, it was 2000, 2011 year. So this was two years after Bitcoin was burned on the world. And, and Mike, I hear about Bitcoin in the first time from my client from Germany. And he’s saying to me, he gave me a link and send to me, okay, you can you this is great thing, and you need to learn about it more. And he’s saying to me that this is

Andy Halko 3:47
Oh, looks like you froze. Not sure if you can hear me.

Oleg Kurchenko 3:52
Hello. Yeah, you hear me?

Andy Halko 3:54
Yeah. You froze for a second.

Oleg Kurchenko 3:56
Yeah, I’m sorry. There was a call from phone. Yeah. And he said he sent me that link on the on Bitcoin talk and saying to me, that is the future. And I say to him, Okay, we’ll learn then I installed the first bitcoin wallet on my personal computer. I don’t even remember where this computer is. And we’re just bitcoins was mined on my computer, but I’m not sure there’s a lot of them. Hopefully, a few days, you know, not much not much. And after that, I involved in Bitcoin and one more time when I have a client that was lawyer from Kiev, in 2014. He has some client who wants to develop the platform for bid for using the currencies. And then I start developing the platform and the in 2016 I started my own journey in cryptocurrency world, and it’s right now. Right now what’s going on. You know

Andy Halko 5:12
Yes.

Oleg Kurchenko 5:13
Yeah. I start from the mining then I started develop the trading robots investment platforms, payment services, so a lot of stuff you know, because all my life I doing business in with software so and by the end we started after after we have a lot of experience to develop products for other people, we started developing our own payment system, it’s called pation, like pay tion. Pation Yeah, it was, we represent that systems that payment system like revolutionary theme in the payment world, but by the way, that we are developing our product, we understand that this the payment system is great idea and that starts working perfectly in few years, but not right now because the world is not ready for pay with Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. If To be honest, the world wants to store that assets, digital assets, we understand that we stopped working with we stopped developing our payment system and start developing our own exchange, we buy the software from the guys from the United States who develop in the software for stock market, then reconstruct is it if and the over the more than two years we start, we’re developing and improving our platform. So, and step by step, we understand that this assets tokenisation and SS digital digitalization is the future because if you can transform asset in digital form, and then you can easily transfer it from one guy to another guy. So this is boost economy economy in 100 times, because you know, like you don’t need lawyers, you don’t need the notary to start to send the to send your assets to somebody writes on that assets to somebody. So we started developing that organization platform based on the exchange. So currently, if you talk about current situation that I can say that we are building the ecosystem where you can use the cryptocurrency, like payment methods, like assets exchange, like investment platform, with crowdfunding in other businesses, so this is a huge, huge thing, what we’re doing right now.

Andy Halko 8:15
So you’re deep in this stuff, Bitcoin asset digitization. I have these conversations with, you know, folks all the time about where’s it going? And I’m not that deep into it. I play with Bitcoin here and there. So, tell me about what you think with Bitcoin and these other you know, exchanges and coins like, what do you see happening? Where do you think this is all going?

Oleg Kurchenko 8:47
As I say, I think it’s going forward. And this is our future. The future is now currently, and you can easily transfer money without bank to other parts of the world. One thing what the person needs this the internet to check his balance. That’s all. So this is the future and we going on. If we’re talking. I’m really sorry about noise.

Andy Halko 9:16
More fun.

Oleg Kurchenko 9:19
Okay, if we’re talking about the future, there were one of the first companies were doing digital assets to convey the essence tokenisation like we transform assets into digital form. And I’m sure this is the near future for cryptocurrency world. Right now. You can hear more many, many rumors and many interesting information about NFT and etc, etc. There is also hype, but the next hype will be is tokenisation.

Andy Halko 9:56
So I’m a guy on the street that isn’t very technical. What, can you explain asset digitization all this for me, too, on someone that just like doesn’t get any,

Oleg Kurchenko 10:10
of course, of course no problem. For example, your your guy who doesn’t understand nothing in the cryptocurrency, right? And we meet with you in coffee shop or somewhere and you’re going and you’re coming that coffee shop each day you buy in coffee in the morning, and then you walk in, by on, on on your work, but you like this coffee shop, and you know that it’s like, maybe I want to own my, my own coffee shop, I want to own coffee shop. But you don’t have a lot of time to do that. And you the you can, you can’t allow to you to build that coffee shop, because you don’t have enough money for that, but you have a few $1,000 What you can invest in that coffee shop. So we allow two businesses, we allow two businesses attract money in their business, through the crowdfunding investments and by transform the owner of their business into digital form. And that guy can buy that part of their business into digital form.

Andy Halko 11:29
Yeah, that makes sense. So yeah, and that’s not the only use, right. So that’s an example of one uses that

Oleg Kurchenko 11:38
this is most simple example. Currently, we are developing the organization for an edtech company, the company who make educational technologists who are who have courses, and they maintain specialists in internet marketing, software development, sales, and etc, etc, etc. You know, like many professions, so they’re growing up professional, professional analysts. And we are developing the mechanization for the company. So all people who are received the education from the company can buy their shares. This is incredible, I think. Yeah, that’s real. World World. Yeah, world right now going in split sharing, and world right now going and sharing economy. And you understand that everybody’s talking about this. And this is the part of worlds where you will be in few years.

Andy Halko 12:47
Yeah, I mean, it could be any asset that there’s really value in and I think like homes, like your the deed to your house. Yeah, you own a home and that could be a digital asset that could then easily be transferred, right?

Oleg Kurchenko 13:02
Of course, for example, you you want to invest in real estate, but you don’t have enough money for buy the whole house, but and you can create the community, what invest few $1,000 each, and you can buy house, put send it to the rent, and receive money from the rent and split that money. What will what you will receive between all shareholders.

Andy Halko 13:36
Mm hmm. So, also another topic, tell me about NF T’s. Yeah. And what is the crazy trend with the you know, there’s a really crazy little little graphics, these things that are selling for a ton of money. Can you shed some light on this stuff for me?

Oleg Kurchenko 14:00
What exactly you want to know, you want to know that on which functions it’s based or you want to know how it works?

Andy Halko 14:10
Both so you know, how are people so, you know, hungry for right now?

Oleg Kurchenko 14:18
Uh huh. Yeah, about NF T’s. You need to be understand that you need to be careful about that. Because there’s all things worse, too many noise about them in, in financial sphere. They can be really tricky, you know, so you need to be be, you need to be careful when you’re buying some NFT. But NFT and how it’s, I tried to explain that by by the simple way, you know, like, I need to generate step by step. explanation.

Andy Halko 15:03
And this is the challenge right with with a lot of these things is that, you know, folks out there only so many people really understand.

Oleg Kurchenko 15:12
Yeah, yeah. But why right now, NFT is really popular, and this will be popular in the future. Many of us played in computer games, right? So and the we playing games to where you can buy some digital scheme for your weapon for your charter or anything, right and you paying for this. So NFT allow two people invest in, in the things, what will be just just once, you know, like, and there was only one, there’s only one example of this stuff, what they buy, like NF T’s. So NFT colon, like non tangeble tokens. So there is no second feature like you buy. So you can be sure that as you own something, something special, and the you invest your money in the in that stuff. I don’t remember how to call it, you know, like on English, but when this is social impact, coverage, there are so many psychology in that stuff in NFTs. And if you want I can share with you a great article about NF Ts, I will send it to link to you and you can split it with your audience. And where’s the good explanation. Why NFT hype right now too much because there was a lot of social impact in that stuff?

Andy Halko 17:01
Yeah, yeah, I, you know, honestly, that’s something I look at. And I see that there’s a kid making small graphics series and selling it for $300,000. And I go, Okay, I don’t get the value of these things. And it makes me feel a little bit like, Man, I’m getting too old. I don’t get it.

Oleg Kurchenko 17:22
You’re playing computer games?

Andy Halko 17:24
You know what I don’t. So maybe, why don’t

Oleg Kurchenko 17:28
maybe maybe somebody in our chat?

Andy Halko 17:32
I’m sure there is I’m sure there’s plenty of people out there that do I’m not one of those folks. So let’s get back to you know, BinaryX. So are is this, it sounds like it’s not your only product that you’ve got multiple things that are going on at once.

Oleg Kurchenko 17:52
Yeah, like, as I said before, currently, we build in the ecosystem. So that means exchange cannot be only exchange, like on stock market, because on stock market, when exchange building, then this is only the business what the guys who are building an exchange do. But when you’re talking about digital assets exchange, you cannot be just an exchange, you also need to be a broker. So you need to build the wallet for your users, you need to build the simple products like not the spot exchange or margin trading exchange like that with that graphics, like on the stocks, but also need to be the simple exchange where like, where you can convert your currencies in the any form. And then you start building like we are starting building the investing platform launch bot for some products, some projects, what people can invest, that can be other coins or the digital assets as we do. And I tell you a little bit more about our plans and what will be in one year we are running our own payment system with the prepaid cards. And right now, like you can use all financial services in one place. So you become like an whole ecosystem where you can buy cryptocurrency go to the shop or pharmacy or somewhere else in supermarket and or buy clothes with that cryptocurrency use it send to friends and so do any stuff what you can imagine in your head. Yeah. Oh, we’re great and super app, you know, like, currently, there is too much apps on the world and the there is not too much apps where you can combine all that stuff. Because sometimes you need to send a message in Telegram, then you can you need to go in Facebook, look that photo, and then you need to go into YouTube and look that video, because there was too much problems, if we’re talking about the business, then you need to open the Google Drive, open your Drive documents, then you need to go again to Telegram, WhatsApp, whatever, and go back to zoom to Slack Skype and your mind is blowing, you know, when you’re trying to do all that stuff. And we, we understand that it is the pain of the world and pain of the market. So we start building that, and exchange with whole ecosystem and whole products and cold financial services. What do you what you need in in daily life.

Andy Halko 21:05
That sounds like a big daunting thing to build, right? How do you you know, I mean, is it just that you’re taking the approach of like, I’m gonna do a little bit at a time we’re gonna keep building and growing it? Do you have a master plan? You know, how are you going to fall trying to

Oleg Kurchenko 21:25
Yeah, like the management of all of it? Yeah. We are currently, from what we are building the company, the first stuff, we’re from we start build the company is the structure of the company. So the this is based things like this is base, before you start building the company to understand which which people should do their work? Like, you build the structure of the company, you build the departments, you will create the department’s processes. Like in the beginning, the high level processes we talked, we talked with the specialists how the product should be, we hire the best specialists from the market for already built some products, what is related with our product, what we build. So in each product, in our company, like if we’re talking about wallet, exchange payment system in West platform, is built in by the product owner who has already an experience in that stuff. If I am, like, currently, I’m doing work like CEO and CPO in the company. Because I really involved you know, like, I really like build the products. And this is my passion. So I start working with the product managers, and they started working with business analytics, and the business analytics grade the requirements for developers, that requirements go to development department, designer department, then many processes go through, go through afterward, like designers create the wireframes, they send it that wireframes on approval, and when it’s approved, then we start grading the content for all of that stuff. So there is a lot of stuff to do, you know, like and this is only a small part of the business. I cannot explain to you how to build such a big platform, in few words, without showing my screen or something like that. Right? If you want I can tell you a little bit more about management and how we’re doing that. But on the next session, not right now I need to prepare, prepare for them.

Andy Halko 24:10
So did you have you are you self funding this where, you know, you’re just bootstrapping or did you go out and find investors to help you

Oleg Kurchenko 24:20
The first and last month it was my own money. I’m with about not about like exactly doing half millions in that product. And right now, we attract investors. I cannot I am under NDA currently and I cannot say to you the amount how is it but we sell 25% of the company and so we will tell about that but not right now. Yeah. When I say that, we are developing the payment system on based on our exchange We’re like you guys, because our investor has an experience in payment system and he has his own solution, what we are integrate in our ecosystem. So we have a lot of stuff to do. And with good partners and good investors, we can do that. So currently we’re we start attracting investments and our business.

Andy Halko 25:24
What do you think what, you know, our show is really to be for other founders, you know, what have you found the most challenging part of trying to grow a business?

Oleg Kurchenko 25:36
Yeah. When you look on the cryptocurrencies, you can understand there was the, there was a lot of money, right? It seems like there was a lot of money, but for, for received that money from the clients, you need to be very, very loyal to your clients. You need to like you need to be honest with them, and you need to be the best in your in what you do. Anyway, your business going fail, because there’s too many, too many other companies who are doing such business and their their budgets in 10 or 100 times more than hours. So our passion is product. Our passion it`s Customer Care, and our passion currently on is like, doing what we do. I think in the near future, we will start growing much faster. And almost everybody in the world will know the name of our company, but for start fast growing, you need to build the good basement as I say before. And under basement, it means that you need to build good software solution and foundation core. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So this is the most important thing. Like

Andy Halko 27:27
you know, obviously, this is a worldwide when you’re talking about crypto, obviously, an exchange, the point is for it to be global. How do you find it building a product that does have to reach international audiences and, you know, have people from all over the world work in it is that has added been a challenge for you.

Oleg Kurchenko 27:51
You, you mean, the adoption of the product

Andy Halko 27:55
for adoption, you know, even building it like thinking about, you’ve got all these people from different backgrounds and languages, you have to think about the features and the you know, the language that it’s in and then going out to these markets and actually getting people to buy into it, outside of you know where you’re at. So how does, how do you, how do you approach that I guess?

Oleg Kurchenko 28:21
Yeah. Currently, we are making. Okay, I start from the beginning, when you start developing the product, they’re almost everyone right now in the world to understand English language. So the base language on which you build your product is English. And then you start adopting it for different markets, for example, the internal stuff of product, out it, everything for everything the same for all people. So because if you need to send money, you, you need to do just this. And all staff, what we need to do is make an translations for for our website for our like for our website. And then people can easily understand the like what we need to do, but we don’t do translations for the regions where we’re in what we are not interested in from for. For example, we have translations on Korean language, Chinese language, and etc, etc. But we don’t have translation on Indonesian language because we don’t have any clients from Indonesia. If we go on Indonesian market, we just need to do and translations. So the first stuff you start developing from the English, the second stuff, you start to adopt in your product, internal product or under that language on what on which market you’re going for. And the third part you start adopting your marketing funnels under for that, for that market, because if you can see the biggest products like a PayPal, right? If you go to paypal US, the landing page will be one. If you go to paypal Germany or PayPal, United Kingdom, PayPal or Poland, you have different different landing pages. So this is, yeah, this is like they adopting that there are funnels under the market. And this is everywhere. So it’s and it’s not a problem like because PayPal insights, this is PayPal anyway, like you have the money sending, receiving and the like, requests on for the payments. But outside, what users see, and where users understand how they interact with the businesses. We’re making that part different for everybody. But you cannot understand from the beginning, how the people on other parts of the world thinking and what important for them. So you need to hire. Hello? Yeah, yeah. You need to hire the specialists from that market, they understand to you or takes they explain to you how to make the business on their market. And then you build their customized, customized landing pages, my customized funnels, customized stuff for the market. But this is not first first step. This is the last step.

Andy Halko 31:50
Yeah, no, that makes sense. How have you um, can you talk a little bit again, for our audience of founders, how you started growing customers, and, you know, really getting traction from bringing, you know, users in?

Oleg Kurchenko 32:06
Yeah, different products has different growth hacks, you know, and I cannot say that is our growth hack is something unique. But when you are building an exchange for the stuff like we are built a unit two, I will explain to you on the example of exchange. When you started developing exchange, and if you have just 10 coins on your exchange, this, nobody doesn’t come forward to you. Because the people want to buy different coins, like new coins, what is under development. But if you if you add, sorry, if you add some coins on your Exchange, or, and that coins has some community behind them, then people come into you from that community to exchange that coin on other assets. The same thing with the digital assets, where, for what we’re doing digital assets with different platforms with the different businesses, because the clients of the businesses is our potential potential clients. So we’re doing that stuff for create, like, create our own growth hack, and to receive more clients.

Andy Halko 33:40
Um, I’m kind of interested in, you know, one of the things

Oleg Kurchenko 33:46
like, if somebody’s doing the business like we do, you can be sure that this the, the information what I told you right now cost too much money, you know?

Andy Halko 34:03
Yeah, I can imagine. Um, so, one thing that I have a question that kind of came to my mind is, I know, I read an article a while back about an exchange that I think either shut down or the founders left and then you know, millions disappeared, right? So part of customer acquisition for you has to be, you know, making people feel trust to put their money. How How have you done that? How are you doing that? Yeah, really? Yeah. I asked this partially for other people out there that are building products that maybe require trust factor.

Oleg Kurchenko 34:46
Yeah, yeah. The first of all, you need to build the like, why I’m right now or talking with you right? Because there is the part of our social communication because I don’t hide my face, I represent our business and show what we’re doing from inside. And talking to community. This is a really important thing. Like because people with the business, if people have the person who is related with the business, they then people trust more to that business. This is the first thing. The second thing is the legal stuff. Of course, like you need to do all legal stuff, because the many of the exchanges, what is shut down, as you say, they don’t, they don’t have any legal stuff behind. We are currently have a license in Europe. So we can work officially. And then when we will go on the United States market, we already make that restores that we need to receive a virtual asset provider license in each state in the United States. This goes few million dollars, but then people can understand that this they can trust us, and they can work with us because we’re verified by the government. And companies in cryptocurrency need, also need to work with the government because there is a lot of options, what will be opened if we will do old stuff by the right way. Like we put our business in the system.

Andy Halko 36:35
Yeah. Pretty interesting. You talked a little bit about the future of the product, but yeah, where tell me more about where you see this going with your team and with the product and, you know, what’s the what is this big vision that you have?

Oleg Kurchenko 36:55
This is the reason for the next few years. So you can be sure that will be and there was nothing special what I can add right now. I’m sure that this in 10 years, almost everybody has his own cryptocurrencies, not his own cryptocurrencies, but they have cryptocurrency in their digital wallets, and they will have digital wallets because few years ago, like 15 years ago, nobody doesn’t understand or is paypal or worse, the digital money. Everybody use the cash, but right now, there is no cash and cryptocurrencies is the next step to like the next step of evolution of the money.

Andy Halko 37:43
Yeah, so if you were giving advice to someone that wasn’t in any of this, where should they start looking at investing and, and some of their money?

Oleg Kurchenko 37:53
Yeah, the first what you need to do, like education is the most the most important thing because you need to you need to understand how all stuff work and before start investment. And don’t jump all with the head in that stuff. Like Don’t be crazy, because there is a lot of syndromes like FOMO you know, like feeling of missing opportunity FOMO and in cryptocurrency, you can in the wall of really easily in FOMO. Yeah, and on BinaryX, we are developing we already developed BinaryX Academy, where you can learn more about cryptocurrencies and the course course is free and you can use it without any problems and you start learning from the beginning of the ages, when the people change the skins or the shells for the guard goods, then how they develop the money and then how money in what evolved in cryptocurrencies. So there’s a lot of interesting stuff to understand and to read. So

Andy Halko 39:15
I’m gonna go check out the academy.

Oleg Kurchenko 39:17
Yeah, let’s go. Yeah,

Andy Halko 39:19
for sure. So, I mean, this was a great conversation. It just, uh, you know, I know you’re out on the road, but to just kind of close things round the question I always ask folks is you know, if you were able to go back in time before you started you know, let’s say BinaryX and yeah, you have coffee with yourself. What advice would you give?

Oleg Kurchenko 39:48
Advice whould I give? Yeah,give to yourself, mm. In back in time before I started, start BinaryX. Like in how much years?

Andy Halko 40:01
Let’s say two or three years before you went back and had coffee, what would you tell your old self to do differently? Or that they should, you know, think about

Oleg Kurchenko 40:13
buying cryptocurrency on Monday easy is the easiest I just wrote. If I come back in few years, I will tell to myself, like, be a little bit more patient. And don’t worry about if you like, I can tell you a little bit more story about BinaryX. The BinaryX starts like my investments, and I hire the another guy on CEO position. And the most important thing what I recommend to myself, like start growing company by yourself.

Andy Halko 41:04
So do it by yourself or you recommended

Oleg Kurchenko 41:07
do it do it by yourself. If you if you want to do the things buy the right way. Do it by yourself.

Andy Halko 41:14
Interesting. So where can our audience find more? Okay, where can they connect with you and find out more about BinaryX?

Oleg Kurchenko 41:25
In social media. Whatsup, the Facebook, Instagram, anywhere.

Andy Halko 41:32
You’re on all of it. Okay. And then your domain name is BinaryX.com easy to understand, easy to remember. So that’s perfect. Go check it out. I really appreciate you joining us. I think it was great conversation. I definitely learned a good bit.

Oleg Kurchenko 41:49
Yeah. Thank you very much. I’m really, really appreciate and I am glad to be here and have conversation with you. You’re great guys. And thank you so much. I appreciate.

Andy Halko 42:01
I appreciate it, too. All right, everybody. Thank you. And we’ll see you next week. Have a great, great day.

Oleg Kurchenko 42:09
Thank you. Bye bye.

Andy Halko 42:10
Bye bye.