Ignium Q&A Session #1: Summary

September 27-th 3 PM GMT+3 Ignium co-founder and CEO Reimo Hammerberg & Ignium co-founder Kevin Murcko hosted a live streamed Q & A session. Here you’ll find the text summary of the Q & A session.

10 min readOct 14, 2021

At first Ignium CEO, Reimo Hammberberg made the short presentation on current development process, updates and future plans for Ignium, by the presentation end Kevin and Reimo took a fireside chat with everyone who had joined the live stream.

There are 3 things to be shared, let’s get straight into this!

1. This is what has happened during the last 3 months.

1. We’ve onboarded 3 new issuers and are in the process of onboarding 3–5 more companies issuing assets on Ignium, they are coming from Estonia and Latvia.

2. We are about to start collaboration with another crowdfunding company from Latvia. Now it’s already 3 crowdfunding companies connected to Ignium infrastructure.

3. Recruiting three new engineers and CM & SMM manager. Our product team is quite complete.

4. Working on delivery on our Mission: Giving capital markets back to the companies.

Here’s Ignium current team set:

Talking about our mission:

64M incorporated SME’s in the world with unmet funding needs still need our help.

Our solution is creating an Investomer market.

The big context out there is that there are SME’s and they do have the unmet funding need, also that gives us an understanding that this market is really huge. They might not have enough investors but at the same time they have thousands or even tens of thousands of customers.

At the same time those customers are all investors in some other asset classes, they invest in public equity, crypto, Forex, crowdfunding etc. Why not invest in the companies which they actually like and the products that they like.

Customers could perceive the risk is smaller and therefore the funding could be more accessible for those companies as well as the cost of funding could be lower.

We have built our global decentralized infrastructure connected with Coinmetro, Fundwise, Apertum. But the question remains, “How do we actually connect to that huge global market with millions of SME’s?”

Phase 1

We enable companies to effectively plug the Ignium infrastructure into their social media or website and raise money through their website. And this is the phase one community based investomer market, that’s how we create the investomer market, we turn the customers that companies have into investors.

The strongest point here is that the engagement happens through the social media directly by the SME itself, that means that it is really truly decentralized without any dis-intermediated solutions, nobody in between just infrastructure and customer facing social media or website.

And the same way as the fundraising happens, the fundraising company puts the announcements, followers coming along with the invitation, click and invest in the end and the funding round closes.

But the door for that matter still remains opened which means that a secondary market would be happening through the same door, simply later there will invitation to buy, to conclude the community based funding is nothing new, even the most famous unicorns also uses the same strategy with inviting their own customers to invest in secondary markets.

That’s what Ignium is enabling on a scalable basis, taking the infrastructure and plugging it to SME’s social media & website. What does it give to Ignium as a marketplace? — Constant activation and engagement by the SME’s itself.

Phase 2

That’s where Ignium comes into play more visibly.

Investomers come along with some companies, now they are with Ignium, after some time we invite them towards the other companies as well. Where they can invest and where they are not a customer, simply they liked the company for the purpose of investment. That’s how companies share liquidity with one another.

Phase 3

Investors to Customers/Investomers.

Where the investor now goes further and also becomes a customer over the same company or another company where it was not invested before. From social media side it will be inviting to invest, from the inside of the Ignium it will be inviting to purchase

Those are three phases of how we have been working on our vision.

2. Main Tasks for next few months!

The most important is validating the new type of the market, hence we will be focusing on phase one mostly by running a series of real-life experiments on the companies. The goal is to get 10 to 15 SME’s who would be early adopters for this new type of market. The main focus at this moment would be SME’s from Estonia.

Also we will continue to collaborate with crowdfunding platforms whom we already have ( Coinmetro, Fundwise, Apertum (soon)) and onboarding companies referred by them.

Who are those SME’s whom we can help the most?

1. Small companies, often micro companies with 1 -10 employees;

2. Retail facing. Selling products and\or services to retails customers;

3. They having business for a few years and actually have customers in thousands or tens of thousands;

4. Company has an active managed community;

5. As a plus would be if the company sells products and\or services via it’s website;

3. You know some SME’s might be interested? Bring them up!

If you know any of SME’s who would be located in Estonia let us know or let them know about the opportunities for their business along with Ignium.

FireSide chat!

Q: In the last 6 month what have been the biggest challenges for Ignium?

A: Building something that has never been built before is already a challenge. First year of adoption has been slower than was expected and that is the second challenge to overcome. But you always think faster.

Q: What are the benefits of being an Ignium shareholder (i.e. dividends, voting, meetings, reports, etc.)?

A: The financial benefits are dividends, in other words it’s still capital gain in the end of all. Secondly as the shareholders you will have all the benefits of the shareholders ( ask questions, vote on shareholders meetings etc.).

Q: Will Ignium shares be available to be bought or sold (traded) on Coinmetro clients or other exchanges to improve liquidity (book / LP’s in future)?

A: Such shares type, as Ignium shares cannot be traded without a relevant license. That’s why the answer is probably no.

Q: Opinions on whether potential competitors like Bitfinex securities, LCX, Bitpanda are doing anything innovative?

A: Haven’t heard of the competitors in Ignium’s field. And that’s for a few reasons, most of those companies you mentioned actually are looking at places where they can make the most money the quickest possible way, when it comes to crypto assets they’re all over there. They’re all unlicensed but they all still do it because that’s quick money for them. Trying to compete with Ignium is way out of their scope.

Q: Are the current shareholders able to increase shares whenever we want as the current market valuation?

A: Currently the main source for increasing your shareholding is the secondary market at Ignium. Also the next opportunity can come with the next funding round.

Q: SME’s could also list as penny stock to fund money, money lender, p2p lending, bank loans, etc. How does Ignium stand by?

A: For SME’s banks and bank products are not available, that is simply the fact. When SME’s, especially micro companies come to the bank, the bank’s answer would be: “Yes, thank you for coming, but your capital structure is too weak.” — that basically means that they don’t have enough equity. To raise equity SME’s surely can go to the stock market and raise it there, the minimum deal size should be 10 millions or preferably 20 millions to make it a little bit worthwhile, otherwise it doesn’t make any sense.

But we are talking about the companies who need money between 100.000 to 1 million, that’s where the vast majority of those 64 million companies are. So for them the only available alternative actually is crowdfunding, the only thing with classic crowdfunding is though it’s very expensive ( over 7% and more).

Here Ignium comes into play, you have the customer, raise money from them with no transaction fees. And crowdfunding is the only solution in this case, as private equity funds start with millions minimum tiket sizes, no way SME’s can really need that, moreover they are looking for the scalable growth companies already buy out funds. VC’s and angels as well are there for smaller tickets but they are looking for tech companies, out of those 64 millions companies only 1% or even less are tech companies.

To summarize, the regular SME’s they are stuck and that’s what we are here to change.

Q: How was the Ignium share euro price of 17.66 euro established (based on) from the last offering and what will be the catalyst to support and increase its value in the future for Ignium shareholders?

A: It’s actually very simple math. It’s usually the function of two things, how much money we need at this stage and that founders and the existing investors should not dilute more than 10 -15% in a given round. Share capital of Ignium is 11325 euros, so the Ignium tradable share unit is the minimum possible amount that is one euro cent. When you now multiply 11325 with 100 to get the sum and then divide 20 millions with that number then you’ll get exactly 17.66. Effectively it’s a 20 million valuation divided with a capital.

The catalyst to support and increase it’s value in future will be proving the product market fit for this new kind of investor market raising money without intermediaries. Proving that it works on 10 to 15 companies will grow the value.

Q: Would Ignium be listed in Nasdaq? Or Ignium would become the next Nasdaq?

A: Listing on Nasdaq we don’t see it happening at the moment, you never know of course. But, yes we are ourselves see as a competing infrastructure and competing marketplace for that matter

Q: Based on the difficulties you are currently facing to establish yourself in the SME marketplace (slower than you believed), what is your outlook that Ignium will survive and be ultimately successful?

A: Our outlook still remains positive. Slower than we initially believed indeed. The execution of the mission on the solution level has been a tweak but we think we have found a smarter way. We’ve paused marketing expenses as we foretasted. Instead of that we are post doing it quite materialistically and at the same time trying to prove this new type of market that it works. We’ll see it very soon. We remain faithful.

Q: Will there be updates for shareholders to keep us informed or will you be accessible via Telegram, Email, etc?

A: Definitely yes. We’re going to be reporting via email and on our social media, but as well this new live stream monthly or bi-monthly format is considerable. We’d appreciate any feedback!

🤝Leave Feedback here 🤝

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Watch the Q & A record on Ignium YouTube. Time codes for each part and questions raised during it.

0:00 — Intro
0:46 — Updates, latest news and plan presentation by Reimo Hammerberg
16:42 — End of Presentation, Fireside chat Opening
19:37 — What are the benefits of being an IG Shareholder?
21:59 — Will IG shares be available to be traded on CM or other exchanges to improve the liquidity?
24:24 — Quick recap on current business developments, goals & objectives
26:15 — Comment on real estate integration with maa amet at Estonia
28:43 — Are Bitfinex, LCX and Bitpanda are the potential competitors?
30:26 — Speakers background and how did they got together on this project
34:13 — Real estate deals on IG?
36:17 — Bond/equities on IG, when derivatives on CM?
38:17 — How to increase shareholding of IG Shares?
39:22 — How does the future collaboration look between the two companies?
43:05 — Any plans to allow users transfer funds directly between IG and CM?
45:14 — Why SME’s choose IG but not bank loans, p2p lending etc?
48:35 — Do you think future funding will be required?
50:48 — How was the 17:66 euro per IG share established?
54:37 — If someone copies the IG, how to tackle on these?
57:30 — IG would become the next NASDAQ?
58:04 — What is your outlook that IG will become untimely successful?
1:02:58 — What is difference between crowdfunding & p2p & IG?
1:05:59 — Where to follow the IG updates?
1:07:36 — THE END.