In review: Q&A with Bistroo Founder Bas Roos
Didn’t manage to make it to our Q&A, but still want to read what was said on your own time? In this blog, we have outlined all the questions that were asked by the community and our CEO’s answers.
There is a hint of buying back the token in the whitepaper. How is this done and where is the money coming from?
Buying back tokens will help us maintain circularity of the token and refill the reward pools in the future. This will be done on a periodic basis to ensure we can keep the rewards systems running. And will be funded by the operational growth of the platform and its revenues/transactions.
It could also be done when there’s a need for certain partnerships that form. Since we are busy with the first implementation of the smart contracts; the settlement (transaction) contract and the referral reward contracts (first reward pool contract) we will be defining any supporting buyback strategy when these contract are taken into the production environment.
I wanted to know where the tokens that are not yet in circulation are located (56% of the total)?
Reserved for the reward pools and treasury. Also still the pools for teamtokens etc are still completely filled. As we have not distributed the teamtokens even though the lock-up has technically passed.
Why you haven’t distribute team tokens yet? Are you waiting to achieve a milestone? If so, which one?
Our team is in it for the long term and we are fully committed to bring the token into a sustainable future before having the tokens in circulation amongst teammembers. If any tokens will end up in circulation we assure this is done in a sustainable matter.
Which planned utilities do you think will have the biggest impact in the ecosystem?
For starters, the settlement and referral reward contracts. Settlements are at the core of the commercial transactions we would like to facilitate and really turns the protocol in a fully peer-2-peer protocol, even on the transactional level.
Fundamentally very big for our ecosystem vision. Referral rewards obviously influence network-effect and are envisioned to expedite growth and reach.
Are you satisfied with the sale volume in the platform so far? Do you think it’s enough to maintain operations going?
We are very happy with the results of Q4 and going into 2023.
Corona/COVID and lockdowns really disturbed any measurements and reference points for fundamental growth.So right now, we have confirmation of improvement of key growth KPI’s; Q4–2022 was 94% higher in order volume than Q4–2021. Even though 2021 was inflated due to lockdowns being active.
Our CPO dropped significantly for paid orders. A 70% decrease in CPO in HY2 of 2022. Meaning our paid advertising is going through big efficiency improvements. When we consolidate our paid orders as well as non-paid orders (through free referrals etc) the CPO even dropped with almost 90%.
Do you already have funding to expand to other regions?
We always carefully plan our burnrate and runway. Especially since the economic tide has turned for startups and their investor attractiveness. This investor readiness will return in the future and at that point we will show them the KPI’s they want to see.
What are you looking in partners for expansion?
Partners within the restaurant business (franchises for example) and suppliers within the industry (POS or other serviceproviders) mainly. Also partners in the field of loyalty or promotions.
When you will expand to Belgium?
Belgium is one of the first two countries we will enter. With a self-onboarding pilot starting later this year when we have implemented all the necessary features for this. We are looking for and talking to partners to help penetrate this market.
What is the next country you will expand to after Belgium?
We’re assessing our opportunities in Germany as we are currently in some partnership talks with parties that have significant coverage in that region. If there’s anything official to share on this we will drop it here ASAP.
How many team member are working in the project nowadays?
We’re employing 15 FTE at the moment.
What do you think Bistroo needs to have mass adoption?
We will have to reach our most sought after goal of being a fully PaaS protocol. Which is a very unique proposition to have in this market and which we feel is the future of food e-commerce.
This will have to be achieved on multiple levels; Onboarding, KYC for merchants, transactions and platform technology. We are getting closer and closer though, with all the infrastructure and back-end improvements done last year and onboarding & KYC in the last stages of development.
Is the company already profitable? If not, do you have a projection to when this can happen?
Becoming a sustainable and profitable business is very important for us as it shows a different outcome for entering this market. As all our traditional competitors follow the ‘winner takes all approach’ (feel free to check our blogs on this subject) and still cannot show profitability. Especially not when not having full market control by marketshare.
We will focus on proving profitability and sustainability on the KPI metric and unit economics level first and potentially invest in expedited growth at that point. Effectively delaying the profitability on the bottom line but having proven the business economics work at scale before blowing runway and ‘buying marketshare at any given costs’ as has been the standard for this market.
How many unique business are on Bistroo?
300+ unique businesses currently active and growing with 5–10 merchants per week at this point. We are moving into the new regions within the Netherlands in a few weeks and really curious if we can even increase that weekly number a bit when penetrating a new region.
Do you have a bullish trend over the years with users?
So, we have a bullish trend in number of merchants for sure but we did have some churn of merchants just after the COVID lockdowns ended. As we launched in COVID time and about 50% of the merchants that started during this period of crisis were only active in the take-away and/or delivery market because of the lockdown restrictions for their dining-in restaurant.
How many business and users do you imagine you would need to be profitable in the sector? How far are you from that goal?
It’s complicated to give a definitive answer for this at this point as our product catalogue is growing as well. Meaning we can sell more products to a single merchants, and therefore changing the ‘break-even number for merchants’.
What I can say definitively is that with our PaaS structure, self-onboarding and effecient overhead costs our breakeven point for % marketshare is WAY lower than any of our traditional competitors. Especially when looking at a bigger region, like EU marketshare. So, with this PaaS structure we potentially expedite onboarding of merchants in a bigger region simultaneously by not having to scale expensive operations like a Delivery Service in those area’s too.
This software & protocol first approach allows us to grow quicker and cheaper, but also maintain a more healthy cost-structure.
What further utilities would you like to have in your token but you can’t make them happen right now?
We are very much intrigued by a ‘merchant cash advance’ use-case. But financial and crypto regulation actually prevent any design choices for this at this point.
This would be a DeFi use case where a merchant can take out a investment amount (or cash advance) to, for example, invest in mobility for their delivery. As eachtransaction is processed through the protocol, it would return a bit of interest and return funds each time to the lender. We feel this might be a major catalysts and a great co-relation between merchants and consumers but realistically not feasible at this time.
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Bistroo is a peer-to-peer marketplace for food & beverages, powered by the BIST Token. Bistroo is a pioneer in the blockchain-based food industry, building protocols that empower the merchants in an ecosystem that also benefits the customers.
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