Blockchain coding made easy

Jiri Kobelka is founder of Tatum. Jiri, can you tell me, in one sentence, what your company does?

We are a developer tool that makes all developers blockchain developers. Our mission is to make the blockchain adoption for enterprises very easy.

So not every developer is able to develop blockchain apps?

You’re right. A few days ago, I saw a report that about 99.9 percent of developers don’t know how to code or how to develop blockchain apps. Even if you’re a blockchain developer, it usually takes somewhere between six months and two years to build a blockchain app, which is way too long. Most developers know just one, maybe two blockchains. But there are hundreds of different protocols, and it is very difficult for companies and developers to keep up.

Ok. If I’m a developer, with Tatum, I can start coding blockchain apps right away. Is it that simple?

Yes, it really is. Any developer can use Tatum and build blockchain apps, that’s our mission. A couple of months ago we did one hackathon. It was with 40 people that didn’t know anything about how blockchain works. They didn’t know what blockchain actually is. And those people were able to start building quite difficult blockchain apps in four hours.

If you are, let’s say, mid experienced developer, Tatum is API for you. It is effortless to use, and you can create an app in a couple of hours. Coding an app took most of our customers no longer than one or two days. Companies are often using Tatum for proof of concept. Because if you can do it in few hours, if you can verify your business case in days or weeks, you save a massive amount of time and money. It’s much better than spending two years on a project just to fail.

The reality is that 90 percent of blockchain projects are unsuccessful. The reason is that most people do not understand how to work with blockchain. Yet they spend too much time with technology rather than delivering the business value. Founders often spend 80, maybe 90 percent of the budget on the blockchain backend. When it comes to the frontend, where the real added value for customers happens, they just have no money left. To finish their app, they rush and deliver poor user experience, because most of the money was spent on the backend. With Tatum, you can focus on the frontend, on user experience, on bringing value to your customers, validating the market, and marketing.

Days instead of years, great! You are seen as a fintech company, but Tatum can be used in many other industries.

We are now focused on banks and fintechs. The banks in the past years became the first adopters of technology and the ones who are most involved in blockchain. I have spent over 15 years in banking, and I know how to work with banks and what they need. It is the market we know best. Of course, we have people approaching us from other industries. We also have people from aerospace, for example. But to be honest, I know nothing about aerospace, and it is more difficult for me to understand its needs.

Many customers are asking us to explain the blockchain use cases. But we are not management or IT consultants. We are just a tool. If you already know what you would like to build, we can help you to do it much faster and cheaper.

There is a huge number of blockchain use cases. Most people see Bitcoin. We can easily create Bitcoin accounts, but that is something that most banks are not interested in, except for new, small, innovative banks. When it comes to regular banks, they are more interested in cross-border transactions, micropayments, instant payments or escrow services, and similar projects, for example, content monetization — paying for small pieces of content like minutes of the movie you watched. That’s where blockchain can help.

I was just wondering what will be the real use of blockchain? Why will it become really, really important?

Well, I think the idea behind blockchain is a shift of mindset, where the relationships between parties will become equal. Also, access to information will be easier than with centralized databases.

Is it a developer who decides about a blockchain adoption?

Shouldn’t be. It should be someone who is responsible for finances, for processes. Blockchain is still a new technology and a lot of developers like to play with the new toys. They don’t care about the money and time that much, and they are very happy to play with a project for six months.

As I already mentioned, from our experience, the massive number of blockchain projects fail. Blockchain must save money, time, and also be safe. Tatum is a perfect tool for that.

Is your product already finished and ready for the market?

Yes, it is. We have version n.3, it’s working and tested. We already have a good number of companies using Tatum, in fintech, gaming, etc.

We even learned that there is another value we can bring to the customer. Sometimes companies don’t want to use blockchain for internal reasons. We have a layer that can mimic blockchain, and when the company decides to adopt it, they can switch to blockchain in minutes. The story goes much further. Because once you switch to the blockchain, you have to choose the protocol you will use. Sometimes, the decision is not correct, or the situation changes in time. At that point, you wasted your time as most of the work is lost. But with Tatum, you can change protocol easily, in five minutes, just with a simple configuration.

That’s the value we bring to the enterprise customers. They don’t have to do their R&D.

What’s your revenue model? How do you charge customers?

Tatum is a typical software as a service. Customers pay monthly subscriptions. It starts from 499 euros a month, and it goes up based on how much you are using the platform, so it scales with the customer.

What are your ambitions? What do you want to reach in a few years?

By the end of 2021, we would like to become a platform number one for enterprises when it comes to blockchain development.

Our ambition is to get customers mainly from larger enterprises. We know how big is the value that we could bring them. We need to reach them because they don’t know about us yet.

What do you want to focus on?

At the moment, we are working on scaling our sales and marketing. We don’t have to invest in the product that much. Of course, we will improve it, and we are improving it all the time. But the product is working, and we are way ahead of our competition.

Also, we would like to increase our presence in Europe and enter the US market.

Are you raising money right now?

Yes. We are looking for 1.5 million euros in the next round. We would like to finalize the round in six, maybe eight months.

To be honest, we don’t have a big necessity to raise. We started selling in November 2019, and it seems like we will be cash-flow positive in a month or two. We grow quickly. Therefore we will need the next round for scaling to move faster.

How big is your team, actually?

Two days ago it was ten people, and now it’s twelve. We are hiring even now, during COVID crises.

Where does your revenue come from now?

Most revenue comes from the UK. The rest of the revenue comes mostly from Europe and Asia as well. The US is still on our waiting list.