Adventure #1 - Cheq.xyz

Welcome to the first issue of web3adventures where I shed light on web3 businesses.

We’ll use a simple framework that covers: (1) the company(2) the founding team(3) hiring and funding(4) why the business excites me

Today, we're looking into Cheq.xyz 

(1) The company

You can summarize the company in one sentence: It’s Stripe, for crypto. It's advertised for merchants and developers but I'm sure soon enough more people would use it. I'm betting even crypto-native people!

Sending funds through etherscan, copying a long address and so on - things can go wrong! Well that's why we've got ENS domains, right? Oh well 🤔

Not sure what happened to the 5k, but this NFT got sent back.

I never looked for these, they were just in my bookmarks from a few months ago. Now, imagine how many more there are if I really looked, let alone the unreported ones.

Anyway, what about the b2c and c2b transactions?

I think that’s when it gets really really interesting! Imagine paying for a concert with crypto or other real-life cases. Would certainly help with mass adoption. In fact, the Cheq team has partnered up with a UK-based event.

See top right corner? That's Cheq!And this is how the payment window looks like if you want to pay with crypto.

Kudos to the team for pulling off this collab! Disclaimer: I’m not, in any shape or form, promoting the event. DYOR

Anyway, what if we take the event use case even further? You've probably heard of Coachella? They’re well familiar with the crypto world and not long ago they launched their NFT collection.

Now imagine if they partnered up with a company like Cheq!! The sky is the limitHere's how Cheq works👇

a) Starting off –  connect wallet (try with a burner first) and write a number

b) Input our address. I used a burner of course

c) Then an email containing another legendary number. No, I don’t own this email address, unfortunately. Supposedly, they only email you when you get paid so my fren won't be getting spam.

d) Then 3 options in regards to the payment – very straightforward

e) And BOOM, you get a link!!

f) The next screenshot shows how it looks when someone clicks on the link.

Mind you – I think it says unverified because it's not been checked by the Cheq team. If you’re doing a payment to a big(ger) business (e.g. Coachella) – I would expect the link to be verified by the Cheq team for extra security.

g) If you prefer to pay manually, you copy the address and use Metamask or you can scan the QR code.

Overall, the experience was reaaaally smooth and enjoyable! Would certainly recommend you take a look at it👌

(2) The founding team

The team is actually how I found out about this! I was scrolling on LinkedIn when I saw a post about an acquisition Chris (the founder) went through. He even shared the pitch deck he used!

Seeing a founder who’s built and sold a venture is such a bullish sign! Even more so that his previous startup was crypto-based!

If we also look into Chris’ experience, we’ll see he’s actually a business veteran

^Entrepreneur First is a wild network of entrepreneurs and CharlieHR is a decent size company now (54 employees on LinkedIn).

I won’t go into more detail about the Cheq's team but here’s their LinkedIn page. But TLDR: 5 people in total and below are the founding members! Would you look at those bright smiles!!

You’ve probably heard the term Gary Vee uses “Bet on the jockey”.Well, other people have made bets! Cheque raised $2 mil in a pre-seed round led by Connect Ventures, alongside Semantic Ventures, firstminute Capital, and 30 angels including former leadership from Monzo, Revolut and Tide. WILD!!

(3) Hiring and funding

In this section, we usually look at 2 things – a) hiring, b) funding

A) HiringThe team is currently hiring for 2 positions. 

I'm not tech minded but this Growth Lead position does look pretty juicy!👀 

Let me show you something that I find extremely interesting

Notice something different? Instead of the range being £60-110k, they’ve reversed it!

Have you heard of the anchoring effect? It’s a bias that largely influences your thinking based on the first piece of info you see!! And in this case - £110k is what gets your attention first (here's an article by Harvard Law School on it).

Maybe you think – these guys have just read up on a bit of psychology. Well maybe but they’ve also sold a business before and that requires a lot of negotiations! Did I also mention they raised VC money?? Guess what – negotiations!🧠 I'm a fan

Besides the 2 roles, nothing else is advertised. It is a start up though so I imagine they'd need more people than advertised. If you’re interested in this business, I’d definitely recommend you drop em an email.

B) FundingNot sure if they need more funding as they announced raising $2mil in May (2022). I’m not aware of their runway but I’d imagine they’re good for money for now.

(4) Why this business excites me

Oh maaaan, I can write so much on this topic hahah But here’s a mini TLDR:

Right now if you have USDC, you can’t do much with it in real life. My landlord won’t accept crypto. If I want to withdraw my USDC, I need to pay a 1.8% fee. Let’s do some math:

The average rent in the UK for 1 bedroom flat is $810 (£640 in our money). $810 x 12 = $9720 per year in rent.

Imagine you wanted to pay that with crypto but you need to cash it out. 1.8% of $9720 is $174 and that is an extra just for fees. Doesn’t sound like a lot but imagine you needed to pay for a bigger house, car expenses and/or other things… It quickly racks up :/

And isn’t the point of crypto to cut out the middleman? Speaking of the middle man – what if the CEX doesn’t allow you to withdraw those funds, or if the bank messes up and locks your account.. No bueno :/

Let’s take it a step further – in developing countries it’s not easy to even create a bank account. What then?? That's an issue that requires a whole issue dedicated to it!

I’m excited for a world in which people around the globe can transact, without relying on a middleman and/or needing permission.

For that to happen, we need mass adoption of crypto! Cheq is pushing in that very direction!

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So yeah, this was the debut. 7 bloody hours all in all but hey, it's a learning curve right.I remember writing an article on Eth back in January and took me 4hours :| 

Anyway, hope you've enjoyed this and will tag along for next Sunday's adventures.In the meantime, you can find me on Twitter. 

If you are, or know of, a cool business that I should look into - DM me📩