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GetPaid is a place that connects creators, traders and freelancers in Africa with worldwide opportunities. We do this through digital gigs, trade, education and innovation. GetPaid exists out of a knowledge hub to learn, community group to connect and an app to get paid. GetPaid is a place built for our community, existing out of creators, traders and freelancers.
The GetPaid team is an experienced team well known with Stellar and its technology, as we have operated ClickPesa for the last 3 years. In addition we also know the African digital economy well. Bridging those two worlds is a perfect fit. Stellar’s open, low fee network is what creators, traders and freelancers in Africa need. However just giving them the technology is not enough, a simple user interface on top of Stellar is what this group needs. GetPaid is the result.
Earlier this year GetPaid started slowly validating assumptions through low tech solutions. We technologize where needed, as technology is not always the answer, and try different ideas catered towards our community of creators, traders and freelancers. This has resulted in a marketplace app open for African creators, traders and freelancers whereby they can connect with global gig-providers and earn money. The marketplace app is utilizing Stellar’s ecosystem and technology where possible. Each registered user (creator and gig-provider) gets a Stellar account to store their received tokens in.
Although we started with a community group and an app to store tokens in. The GetPaid product is far from finished. We just started, whereby utilization of the Stellar account functionality is step 1. Considering many exciting developments are happening on the Stellar network, there has been identified many interesting use cases such as NFTs on the Stellar network (low fees compared to Opensea on Ethereum, affordable for Africa, our community already loves the idea), yield earning, escrow and many others. The first step is accomplished and our community is guiding us what they further need. We do this with a Stellar first approach, utilizing its technology and ecosystem as much as possible. Think of directing more users to Litemint.com to sell NFTs and using Lobstr or Stellarterm to get access to other tokens.
GetPaid is in production, launched early this year as a low technology product. Since then GetPaid has further emerged and currently exist out:
Community Group - Our official community group launched recently and has 135 members being active
Application - A web based application live in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania (integrated with ClickPesa’s TZS, RWF and KES through SEP-6) and the rest of the world. There are currently 400 creators and 15 gig-providers live on the platform.
Knowledge base (going live in January) - A mix between our own and curated content with topics about entrepreneurship, sales, marketing, cryptocurrency, and, NFTs.
Since we started operating GetPaid has done over USD 1.5m in transaction value for creators, traders and freelancers. There are no funds raised and we are not planning to raise funding anytime soon.
Goal 1: Grow the GetPaid community and encourage collaboration
Engage our community and introduce them to Stellar’s technology stack. Why not utilize our community to build open-source features usable for us and anyone else building on the Stellar network. Secondly, provide value to our community with gigs provided by third-parties, like startups, corporates and other organizations.
Goal 2: Open up access to participate in the NFTs economy
The NFT economy is rapidly growing, about to take-off. However gas fees are high for African creators, traders and freelancers.
Goal 3: Research and implement additional features and tools that could be useful to GetPaid users.
We have been receiving great feedback and requests from the community to build out further the GetPaid application.
Goal 4: Support access to additional tokens
Different users have different preferences when it comes to getting paid. We plan to enable the support of payments in other Stellar tokens beyond XLM.
Goal 5: Reach 5 million USD sales by Q2 2022
As with any business GetPaid aims to grow. We can do this by providing opportunities for the community to earn.
We have identified four key areas to accomplish this goal and grow our business:
Marketing
Tech Development
Operations
Legal/Compliance
Mismatch between African creators, traders and freelancers and worldwide gig-providers
Young adults in Africa make up a large part of Africa’s workforce. Low cost laptops combined with cheap internet, opens new opportunities for knowledge, jobs and wealth. This has been noticed by young adults; the percentage entering into digital learning and entrepreneurship is growing. A group is emerging that conducts digital entrepreneurial activities such as development, design, selling photos, courses, music and writing services. Although emerging and growing, there is still a large disconnect with the rest of the world. African creators, traders and freelancers have limited knowledge and skillset to market and promote themselves globally. A missed opportunity, especially at this moment, Covid accelerated digitalization whereby half of the world started working from home and distance and location does not matter anymore.
Limited access to new technologies, innovation and knowledge
New technologies are emerging, think about NFTs, Web3. When can African creators, traders and freelancers tap fully into such opportunities?
Expensive tooling
Being a (starting) creator in Africa is tough. Doing marketing and sales is expensive. Payment platforms such as PayPal, Payoneer or either not available or expensive.
Providing a good solution is critical for future economic and social development of creators, traders and freelancers in Africa. GetPaid provides them with worldwide opportunities, digital knowledge and innovation. This is done via a community group, simple application and a knowledge base. The three combined make up the GetPaid product and give creators, traders and freelancers the tools, gigs and knowledge they need to live, work and get paid.
For each creator, trader and freelancer that registers with GetPaid, a Stellar account is created. Getting paid into this account works through Steller's XLM token and other tokens on the Stellar network (sUSDC is on the roadmap to be supported). Once the XLM is received, a user has the option to cash-out into their local currency to their local bank or mobile money account. At the moment GetPaid supports these types of payin / payout in Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania utilizing ClickPesa anchor services through SEP-6, SEP-9, SEP-10 and SEP-12. All user activities happen on the Stellar network, however considering our users are not (yet) familiar with Stellar technology, most of it is hidden under a simple UI/UX.
GetPaid identified two target markets:
Geographical Target Market
Demographic Target Market
Key Psychographics
Challenges
Preferred channels
Preferred content types
Geographical Target Market
Demographic Target Market
Key Psychographics
Challenges
Preferred channels
Preferred content types
GetPaid has three revenue streams:
The pricing strategy GetPaid follows is that it needs to be affordable pricing, at the same time sustainable and enabling us to grow as a business.
Q4 2021: 0.7 million USD
Q1 2022: 3 million USD
Q2 2022: 5 million USD
Q3 2022: 12.5 million USD
Q4 2022: 30 million USD
Find here a simplified financial plan with profit & loss projection (included the use of capital), cash flow projection and break-even calculation.
According to the World Bank report in 2016, the global digital economy was worth about USD 11.5 trillion, equivalent to 15.5% of the world’s overall GDP. The digital economy is expected to reach 25% in less than a decade, quickly outpacing the growth of the overall economy.
Africa’s digital economy is a fast growing market. In a report from IFC (International Finance Corporation) and Google concluded that Africa’s digital economy has the potential to reach $180 billion by 2025, accounting for 5.2% of the continent’s gross domestic product (GDP). By 2050, the projected potential contribution could reach $712 billion, 8.5% of the continent’s GDP.
Despite the fast growth in the digital economy there are still gaps to be filled, in many African countries large part of the young adults are unemployed. In Tanzania for example, observations show that despite some 800,000 to 1,000,000 of young graduates entering the labour market in Tanzania every year (NBS, 2015), on average the economy creates only about 250,000 jobs a year, the remaining 75% of these young graduates remain jobless. In Kenya 34% of the young adults are unemployed. Both examples present a large potential labor force for the global digital economy. With the right approach and tooling, several African countries can witness a huge mobilization of young adults joining and engaging in the global digital economy.
Strengths
Weaknesses
Threats
Opportunities
There is competition on the product itself in the areas of freelancing, gigs and knowledge providing, however our largest competition threat comes from people not spending time on creating and freelancing due to:
Our sales funnel to attract creators, traders and freelancers is built up as follow:
Twitter <> Community --> User signs up ---> Usage of the platform
Everything with our marketing efforts is about attracting traffic to our Twitter / Community channel. From there, leads are getting nurtured and turned into actual users of the application. When becoming a user, they also remain in the community channel which will help us in further engaging with this user. We strictly measure the progress of our sales funnel to identify problems and add improvements.
Our sales approach towards gig-providers is direct messaging via Linkedin and community groups.
GetPaid will utilize as much as possible the Stellar Ecosystem and its partners.
To achieve our goals we are requesting a budget of 192,500 USD. The requested budget is divided over our 4 key areas:
Marketing
Tech Development
Operations
Legal/Compliance
RichardOperationsLinkedIn
OmarTechnology Lead / Full-stack developerLinkedIn
JustineBusiness DeveloperLinkedIn / Twitter
RickProduct and FinanceLinkedIn
GeofreyFull-stack developerLinkedIn
Elly Social mediaLinkedin
BenedictFrontend DeveloperTwitter
SuzanaCopy and account managementLinkedin
JohnMarketing leadTwitter / Linkedin
ChristopherCommunity ManagerLinkedIn
The USD valuation of the budget request in XLM will be calculated using the CF Stellar Lumens-Dollar Settlement Price on December 5, 2022 as administered, maintained, and reported by the cryptocurrency index provider CF Benchmarks Ltd. (using the ticker “XLMUSD_RR”) (available at https://www.cfbenchmarks.com/indices/XLMUSD_RR). Learn more in the SCF Handbook.
*The USD valuation of the award in XLM is calculated using the CF Stellar Lumens-Dollar Settlement Price on July 5th as administered, maintained, and reported by the cryptocurrency index provider CF Benchmarks Ltd. (using the ticker “XLMUSD_RR”) (available at https://www.cfbenchmarks.com/indices/XLMUSD_RR)
**The USD valuation of the award in XLM is calculated using the CF Stellar Lumens-Dollar Settlement Price on December 16, 2021 as administered, maintained, and reported by the cryptocurrency index provider CF Benchmarks Ltd. (using the ticker “XLMUSD_RR”) (available at https://www.cfbenchmarks.com/indices/XLMUSD_RR)
*The USD valuation of the award in XLM is calculated using the CF Stellar Lumens-Dollar Settlement Price on September 27, 2021 as administered, maintained, and reported by the cryptocurrency index provider CF Benchmarks Ltd. (using the ticker “XLMUSD_RR”) (available at https://www.cfbenchmarks.com/indices/XLMUSD_RR)
* The USD valuation of the award in XLM is calculated using the CF Stellar Lumens-Dollar Settlement Price on the date of transfer as administered, maintained, and reported by the cryptocurrency index provider CF Benchmarks Ltd. (using the ticker “XLMUSD_RR”) (available at https://www.cfbenchmarks.com/indices/XLMUSD_RR)
*This budget request has not been fully awarded to the project. The USD valuation of the budget request in XLM will be calculated using the CF Stellar Lumens-Dollar Settlement Price on day of payment as administered, maintained, and reported by the cryptocurrency index provider CF Benchmarks Ltd. (using the ticker “XLMUSD_RR”) (available at https://www.cfbenchmarks.com/indices/XLMUSD_RR). Learn more in the SCF Handbook.
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