BMJ Score: 3.4
Market
Transparency
Team
Token
Adoption
Quick Summary
61 crypto investors read thisCommentary
There are many inefficiencies in the recruitment market including process inefficiency, difficulty finding the right person for the right job/company, lengthy time to hire, and high costs. Impresso Labs is a blockchain and mobile application-based company providing profile and CV data validation for the education, recruitment, and networking industry. The Impresso platform will allow a user’s skills, education,l and career data to be validated. Validated data stored on the blockchain will provide both security and privacy with access rights belonging to the user. The platform will allow users to own their own profile and resume data and monetize their data through token rewards while they are matched with appropriate job markets. From the business side of things, organizations will have access to user data for better informed recruitment and business decisions. The team behind this project is a Swiss-based tech startup managed by a team of developers, HR business, technical and financial specialists. There is a large advisory group and while the team mentions that partnerships are a goal for the future, we think that having actual relationships with institutions and organizations for the network will be essential to growth. We are very impressed that Impresso has a working platform, but would like to see more information on the number of users leveraging the platform. We think that blockchain is a perfect solution for solving some of the inefficiencies in the recruitment market, and we love that Impresso Labs has a strong team and a working MVP behind it. Our biggest concern with this platform is whether or not Impresso will be able to develop a strong enough network and user base to compete with larger platforms like LinkedIn.
Investment Information:
- How to invest: The first step in investing in Impresso is registering for the whitelist at the following link.
- Discount: Discount included in price of token. Original price is 1 XIM = 0.77 USD.
- Eligibility: Restricted countries include the US, North Korea, and Iran.
- Token Price: 1 XIM = 0.64 USD
- Jurisdiction: Switzerland
- Minimum purchase: $25 min purchase
- Accepted currencies: ETH, BTC, LTC, BCH, FIAT
Market: 3
- Problem addressed/solved: Impresso wants to address inefficiencies in the recruitment market including process inefficiency, difficulty finding the right person for the right job/company, lengthy time to hire, and high costs. Recruiters and job seekers alike often have to deal with the consequences of not finding the right fit, namely, lower productivity, higher employee turnover, unhappiness, etc.
- Target customers/customer/ segments/verticals: The main parties that are part of the entire ecosystem are candidates, value networkers, recruiters, networking event organizers, and advertisers.
- Value creation: Organizations and users will experience different benefits on the platform. Organizations will have access to verified candidate information, certificate storage on the blockchain, AI matching, and shorter recruitment timelines. Users can monetize data through token rewards, securely store educational and work certificates, access validated profiles for valued networking, and match with companies that are more likely to hire them.
- Competition: Impresso will face competition from the heavy hitters like LinkedIn and Monster.com, but it’ll also find that other blockchain startups are attacking the recruitment space as well. Having said that, companies that use agencies or even platforms like LinkedIn spend an average of $4,000 USD just to acquire one employee. Impresso looks to use that stat to its advantage and essentially offer companies a far cheaper method of acquiring top talent that is verifiable on the blockchain.
- Market size/potential: Impresso’s target markets are in job hunting, career applications, company recruiters, recruitment agencies, and professional networking with a focus on the growing blockchain community. In 2016, the employment industry generated USD $574 billion of sales revenue worldwide. Five countries (the US, Japan, the UK, Germany and China) made up the majority of the revenue. Overall revenue growth is mostly driven by agency work, accounting for USD $410 billion according to the 2018 edition of the World Employment Confederation Economic Report.
- Regulatory risks: Biggest risks here are around how Impresso Labs will protect customer data and abide by regulatory mandates like GDPR.
Transparency: 4.5
- Investor value: Since the XIM token will function in a utility format, the value of the token is entirely dependent on the number of users on the platform. A high number of users will lead to an increase in demand for the token, and thus a higher valuation.
- Disclosures: Impresso has an impressive whitepaper coupled with a hyper-detailed roadmap. It’s actually the first project to offer an “extended roadmap” that projects its future plans all the way to 2022. There is an operational MVP that users can access on the Google Play Store, but we’d like to see some common stats on the MVP such as # of users, avg. time spent on the app, etc. Having said that, Impresso would be a solid project to model basic transparency as it has all bases covered with the whitepaper, MVP, and website.
- Token distribution: 76.72% ICO, 18% team & advisors, 5% enterprise development, and .28% bounty.
- Use of proceeds: 30% operations and administration, 30% R&D, 25% community development, 10% business development, and 5% legal.
- Caps: Soft cap: $3 million USD; Hard cap: $54 million USD
Team: 4
- Track record: Impresso has a medium-sized team consisting of thirteen core members and a five-man advisory board. It’s immediately evident that Impresso places a huge emphasis on marketing as nearly half the team is dedicated to social outreach, marketing, and media relations. CEO Benjamin Beh has an impressive LinkedIn presence with nearly 11,000 followers. He’s a serial entrepreneur who’s founded multiple companies including Arklens and Protopidea. Ivan Solomichev, CTO, has worked on numerous blockchain projects where he served as the lead developer, consultant, or smart contracts developer.
- Integrity: Impresso is led a by a prominent CEO and the rest of the team has clear talent and excellent credentials. The only place of concern would be the project’s lack of partnerships (only have a few) when a huge part of the business model is acquiring partnerships for a few technological aspects of the project. Other than that, Impresso should not cause worry to investors in terms of its trustworthiness and integrity.
- Benjamin Beh, CEO
- Ivan Solomichev, Blockchain Lead Developer
- Agata Balcerowska, Business Development Director
Token Mechanics: 3.5
- MVP: Impresso has an operational MPV app (off-chain) that will be replaced with a version update once the ICO funds are collected. That version will have the backend on-chain with a new UI for tokens. The app is downloadable for all smart phones and available on the Google Play store and will soon be on the Apple Store as well.
- Token use case: Impresso tokens (XIM) are utility tokens. XIMs are used to enable transactions in the Impresso ecosystem. The Ethereum smart contract and sets of governing AI algorithms will allow for a seamless token exchange process within the token economics model of the platform. For example, all users in possession of an Impresso Smart-CV can use Ethereum-based smart contract functionality to enable transactions for a variety of interactions. In doing so, they will be compensated in Impresso tokens for sharing their data.
- Value-added: Although the XIM token is pure utility, it still has a lot of functionality on the platform. As mentioned above, they will function as a reward for users who choose to share their data or actively participate on the platform. Impresso plans to implement tons of different smart contracts, and many of them will feature XIM tokens in some way, shape, or form.
- Decentralization: Impresso features a completely decentralized platform.
- Token Supply: Max supply of 100 million XIM.
User Adoption: 2
- Technical difficulty/investment expertise needed: Impresso Labs has one of the easiest projects to understand as it already exists in the form of LinkedIn and Monster. The difference maker will be the blockchain, which Impresso hopes will put the project in a league of its own compared to existing competition. A quick video overview of the project can be found at the following link.
- Halo effect: Impresso Labs is partnering with numerous companies that will help it accelerate the project and implement technology like AI, validation tech, API, and even its own blockchain. With all these plans, Impresso must have a multitude of partnerships, but right now it only lists Switzerland Innovation, Token Rush, Udax, TokenGet, and Arklens as active partners.
- Buzz: Impresso is very active on social media channels, but has only garnered 1,500 combined Facebook and Twitter followers as of writing. Having said that, the project has been featured on a few well-known news outlets such as Market Watch, Oracle Times, and Business Insider.
