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Alexey Mashinsky is one of the inventors of VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) with a basic patent granted in 1994 and is currently working on the MOIP (Money Over Internet Protocol) technology.
Alex has obtained more than 35 patents in the areas of exchanges, VOIP protocols, messaging and communications. Alex is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of seven New York startups that have raised more than $1 billion and left the game for more than $3 billion. Since 2000, Alex has founded two of the top ten companies in New York: Arbinet since its IPO in 2004 with a market capitalisation of over $750 million and Transit Wireless worth $1.2 billion. Alex has received numerous awards for innovation, including two nominations for Entrepreneur of the Year by E&Y magazine in 2002 and 2011, the Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2010 for Crain, the prestigious Albert Einstein Technology Medal in 2000 and the Technology Foresight Award for Innovation (presented in Geneva on Telecom 99).
As one of the pioneers of web exchange, Alex is the author of patents for the smart grid, ad exchanges, Twitter, Skype, App Store, the streaming concept Netflix and many other popular web companies. In addition, the Harvard Business School cited the fundraising activities of Harvard University as an example in 2001.
In an exclusive interview with the AsiaTechDaily, Alex says…
The best advice was to hire people who are smarter than you, who also have skills you don’t have, or not that good. My advice is to try it. Many people are afraid to start a start-up and then want to make their dreams come true.
- Find out what you do best in the world. Then go be that man.
- Give it to me, and you get
- Do good before you do good.
Read on to learn more about Alex Mashinsky and his career path.
Tell me about your personal experiences and what motivated you to work for your company.
Alex Mashinsky: I founded 8 companies, most of which were intended to destroy an existing industry, such as Arbinet.com in 1994, where I invented the Voice over IP service that we all use FREE today, or Transitwireless.com, which built a 5G & WiFi service on the New York subway and made it available free of charge to users up to 8 meters away. Celsius is just another system that conveys Wall Street’s secrets about creating and preserving wealth and distributes it to 7.5 billion people around the world via a bathtub block.
What is your current main product and can you give a product sales history?
Alex Mashinsky: Celsius pays up to 100 times more interest than an average bank, takes all profits from the management of the money and returns 80% to the depositors instead of the shareholders.
How much money have you raised so far? When was the last financing cycle?
Alex Mashinsky: For my first seven companies, I raised over $1 billion at VC, but we used the community for Celsius to build a service that still works for them. So far, we’ve raised over $70 million for Celsius.
What are the internal decision-making processes that determined the start of fundraising and what logistics are involved? And how many investors did you meet, how did you get to know these investors and which channels worked best for you?
Alex Mashinsky: Usually you build a prototype and then you look for a venture capital organisation to finance your idea; that’s what we did. If not, we wrote a white paper and issued a badge. Then we got more than 1,500 of our future clients to finance the project and let us build what they wanted, not what we or the venture capitalists wanted.
What are the main challenges and obstacles in the fundraising process? If you had to start over, what else would you do?
Alex Mashinsky: It’s hard to convince people that you really act on their behalf, that you care about them. I have 30 years of experience and more than 4B’s use my technology for free, but many were skeptical about the purity of my intentions and the fact that I wasn’t just trying to benefit from the ICO. I’d do the same thing if I had to do it again.
What are the milestones for the next cycle? And what are your goals for the future?
Alex Mashinsky: Our goal is to give as many average citizens as possible the opportunity to participate in the next round to benefit from the company’s increase in value instead of the big investors who don’t want to share the wealth as long as the company costs several billions of dollars.
How did you attract users and what strategy did you use to grow your business from start to finish?
Alex Mashinsky: We asked our community to tell their friends what we do, and it works very well; we took all the money normally spent on advertising and gave it to our users as a reward for taking their friends with us.
Which software has been the best marketing tool to help your start-up grow, and why?
Alex Mashinsky: We use Pipedrive, Monday and various other CRM programs to manage our tasks and relationships.
That most starters are usually wrong about marketing?
Alex Mashinsky: Starters spend a lot of money before the product is ready or before they build or test the idea with customers. Since many start-ups have to be flipped once or twice, it is advisable to configure the product and messaging correctly and not to rush the launch.
How would you like to develop your activities worldwide?
Alex Mashinsky: We already offer this application in more than 170 countries, but it provides support in the local language and promotes the development of the local community.
What are the most common mistakes companies make in their global expansion?
Alex Mashinsky: They go too fast, and without a real strategy or understanding of the needs of local markets, every country, or even every city, has its own microcosm of needs.
How do you manage the Kovid 19 flash situation to ensure the survival of your company?
Alex Mashinsky: We have always been a distributed company, with our +100 employees working in 14 different countries and cities. Covid made the Celsius run faster and we had to adapt and train faster; it was a bit difficult because everything was done from a distance.
What are the most common mistakes founders make when starting a business?
Alex Mashinsky: They think they have a better idea and nobody has tried it yet, they think it will be easy to raise funds or hire people to join them.
What is the best advice you have ever received? And what advice can you give to someone who wants to do similar things with you or go in a similar direction?
Alex Mashinsky: The best advice was to hire people who are smarter than you, who also have skills you don’t have or can’t do well. My advice is to try it. Many people are afraid to start a start-up and then want to make their dreams come true.
What are the three most popular books or movies (series) that changed your life and why?
Alex Mashinsky:
- The way you make friends and influence people, that’s Dale Carnegie.
- Think and get rich. Napoleon Hill.
- Filmmatrix
How do you maintain your motivation on a daily basis?
Alex Mashinsky: My to-do list is always so long and I’m obsessed with shortening it.
What are the three most important life lessons your (future) sons and daughters need to know?
Alex Mashinsky:
- Find out what you do best in the world. Then go be that man.
- Give it to me, and you get
- Do good before you do good.
Why do you want to be remembered?
Alex Mashinsky: That would give more to others than taking off this planet. For quickly correcting my mistakes and apologizing to anyone who might have been hurt.
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