In the not-so-distant past trading was simple - most people did not need a portfolio tracker
2020 came along, and with it, massive growth in the decentralized finance space
We recognized the need for an industry-specific portfolio tracker
Focused on beautiful design and being user-friendly
Raised $300,000 to make Dexfolio a reality
The app was launched after: 6 months development, had a 3-month beta testing period
Launch day - Over 3000 downloads!
Rapidly growing community - over 20,000 members!
Ben Sash’s backstory
Started as a crypto investor. He started investing in 2017, experienced the ups and down of the crypto world
Returned to crypto in 2021
Experienced the frustrations of trying to track his portfolio:trackers were built to track centralized exchanges, not decentralized wallets, and the inability to find a suitable tracker for his needs
Decided to create a portfolio tracker that met these needs.
Having 6 years experience in product design, he designed the concept and published it online within 3 days. Started on building a working MVP within a month.
The process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing the app
Design the features of the app
Decide how to incorporate the features throughout the app screens. Search button on bottom nav bar or on the browse page
User testing - to finalize the design - what we learned? The buttons didn’t look interactive - so we added outlines around the text that were interactive; The portfolio page needs color to symbolize up or down changes; The portfolio page should be denominated in USD instead of Ethereum (a popular cryptocurrency) since USD is what most people monitor crypto prices with; The portfolio page should have more data for each token — specifically the current price and the price the users purchased the token at; It’s better to set up the alerts automatically with default settings instead of interrupting users to set up the alerts exactly how they want it
Started the business with a more edgy tone but later switched to a more professional one
Funded by pre-selling in–app currency - pro features require payment in $DEXF. We had 3 funding rounds and which includes a $300,000 raised from IDO.
Lesson learned - increase your expected costs by 50%. We spent a lot on Bug bounty. Would have been better positioned with $600,000 raised, but we made it work.
Attracting and retaining customers since launch
Find low cost, creative ways to get visibility - trending news was a great way to get visibility
Identify areas that your target customers communicate and join them together
Identify techniques that worked well for other popular crypto projects. Organized whitelist competitions to pre-purchase our token. Had 137 responses in one day - doubling community size. Did this 3 more times - exponential success
Switched to viral sweep for future competitions. One competition got over 30,000 views
Later whitelist competitions used sweepstakes - allowing for task validation
Always have a marketing strategy - even if you’re getting free publicity - we needed to pivot after launch to keep growing
Leverage SEO content to increase search rankings across strategic keyword groups - driving traffic to our website. Had 1,211 Positive Google Position Change. The well-structured SEO strategy came together to significantly improve Dexfolio's online visibility — moving the needle on keyword rankings by greater than 2,000 positions in total.
How are we doing today and what does the future look like?
Dexfolio is in it’s infancy - focus on user growth over profit
Our community is over 20,000 large across Twitter, Telegram, Youtube, Email, SMS
Short term vision is to reach reach 100,000 monthly active users - in 2022 and get VC funding to continue growth of the ecosystem
Long term vision is to provide an all-in-one web3 ecosystem allowing users to outperform the market. Users will be able to track tokens, DeFi, and NFTs across 30+ chains and exchanges; get personalized buy/sell calls based on investment style and market metric; swap, stake, transfer, invest and earn with a cross-chain wallet; discuss and compete with friends in token chats and leaderboards.
Have we learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous through starting the business?
Our biggest mistakes cost us around $4,700. A feature in the app ran up our backend costs (feature is now removed) as a result we started reviewing cost impact of every new feature we plan to add.
Another mistake was not finding a CTO/co-founder for the project. This would have alleviated the development cost (which is our largest expense), added passion to the project's development, and provided a dev lead that understands the business side.
We now use a development agency. This is good but costs us a lot as they don’t work at weekends like a founder would and they also don’t fully understand the business. The agency implemented the costly feature without thinking of future impact on the business.
Now on the search for a CTO
Big advantage of starting during the crypto rush: constant growth and a raise of over $300,000 with almost no marketing spend.
What platform/tools do we use for our business?
We love Telegram for community building. You may want to consider discord though as it has more features. Telegram has a bigger issue with spam, especially in the crypto space.
We use Webflow for quick website development. It’s great because anyone can learn it, even non-coders.
We have had massive success using Upwork to get focused projects completed. Make sure you have comprehensive job descriptions, and milestones with clear deliverables and due dates, cancel a job right away if the freelancer misses a commitment, and avoid hourly-based contracts.
Figma is great for cross-team design collaboration. Make sure to use plugins, it will save you time!
Gleam is amazing for running sweepstakes. You can get a huge amount of visibility for a very low total cost.
Our most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
Never Split the Difference by Christopher Voss and Tahl Raz. In the book, Voss, a former FBI hostage negotiator, teaches how to negotiate as if your life depends on it. It taught me the core fundamentals of negotiation. When running a business, there are countless negotiations each day. You should know how to turn them in your favor.
Fundraising by Ryan Breslow is another book. Learn the secrets of the fundraising process from the founder and CEO of one of Silicon Valley’s most successful companies. As a project seeking funding, this book has opened my eyes to countless tricks to get funding.
Our advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
Do market research first before going full force into the project. You need to make sure there’s a real market for your product.
Map out how much revenue/growth you can expect in the first year - only proceed if you consider these values sufficient
Lastly, map out the cost of creating the minimum viable product and running the business. This should include: Where will you get the money to build this MVP from? Where will you get money to keep building? Will your estimated revenue offset your costs?
Don’t forget there’s a huge amount of hidden costs e.g. legally forming a company. Spend time on the budget stage to ensure you have enough money to keep the business running until it’s revenue positive.
Are we looking to hire for certain positions right now?
Yes, we’re looking for a lead developer experienced in the backend (Node.js and TypeScript) and/or blockchain. Experience with frontend (Flutter) is a plus, but not needed.
You’d be responsible for: Managing a small team of developers, Optimizing the backend, Adding features, Adding wallet functionality for EVM and non-EVM (i.e. Solana, Cardano, Polkadot) blockchains, Integrating and optimizing APIs to pull blockchain data into the app. The position will be compensated with equity only.
Ben Sash is the founder and CEO of Dexfolio, the company behind the industry-leading cryptocurrency tracking app.
Ben has led the development and design of digital products for over six years in his various roles with prominent e-commerce brands.
With his experience in leadership, product design, and agile development, Ben has built an unstoppable team and compiled the vision for Dexfolio to shape the industry and become a leader in its sector.
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