Greetings Coorestians,
Kudos to everyone that participated in our AMA session on the 25th.
This time around, we decided to make it easier for everyone and have all the questions from the AMA written in text. Without further ado, here are the questions you asked together with our answers.
I’d like to get a decent insight into the current funding. Can we get a breakdown of what came in with the IDO, possible grants & other funding, and what’s remaining?
Diana Taborda: The one-pager that we have shows the use of funds. We keep 36% in reserve while we have invested the remaining 64% of the funds in operations and expansion – 25% in Tech development and 10% in marketing and communications.
We will use 25% of the funds in reserve to expand our operations, and 35% of those will go toward Tech. This year we will also focus heavily on marketing and sales and we have dedicated 40% of the reserve to those activities.
We have made a significant restructuring within the team, which had a significant financial impact on our operations. Because of this, our burn rate is reduced by 50%.
I propose to prepare a financial insight report for our early investors that can be sent to our initial investors by email.
Based on the current funding: what are the current costs and how long can you operate without a stable revenue stream?
Diana Taborda: With the current funds that we have, we can operate until the rest of the year. However, I doubt the fact that we will stay without funding for long because we already have a whole product up and running as well as ongoing sales.
What about the IDO?
Nick Zwaneveld: The market has become a bit more positive and open to investing in IDOs. I’ve been reaching out to launchpads to see what is the appetite on their side to launch new projects. We’re trying to see if it makes sense for us to do it in Q1 or Q2…But we don’t have a fixed date yet.
What about the talks with investors, people want to know how it’s going.
Nick Zwaneveld: We’ve been talking to a handful of VCs, ranging from traditional to VCs that invest in blockchain. They understand the problem we solve…the need for an alternative to carbon credits is highly appreciated. We expect to get good results from one or multiple VCs in the next couple of months.
On your new Roadmap, Q3 will be a Seed Round Fundraising, what is this?
Diana Taborda: A seed round is when a company starts looking for capital injections so at the moment because of the size and timing of Coorest, we are going through a phase known as a pre-seed round. While (we) have planned that during Q3, at the moment Coorest is growing in an organic way and we’re not looking into having a big fundraising effort or seed round.
Is Coorest still partnered with Rooted?
Carmen Perez: The short answer is no, we no longer collaborate with Rooted. As the community probably knows, Rooted is owned by William, the former director and shareholder of Coorest. The collaboration consisted of a donation made to Rooted every time an NFTree was sold. By stopping this collaboration we reduced our burn rate and avoided unnecessary expenses.
Is Coorest still involved in tokenizing wildlife?
Nick Zwaneveld: The answer is we would love to (get back to wildlife tokenization) but at this moment we don’t have the resources. We do have the connections to start the project but that requires resources to develop the concept. We would rather focus that on CO2 compensation. It’s still on the radar and in the future, we would like to develop that into a working product.
What do you expect from the community or how can the community help the project?
Nick Zwaneveld: If the community sees projects that can be boarded by us then they can definitely help us and the project to get in contact. Another way to help would be finding traditional and crypto projects that want to be sustainable.
Where do you see the company in 2 years?
Nick Zwaneveld: The first goal is to make the term carbon credits obsolete. The next goal is to onboard way more projects and farmers. It’s difficult to name hard numbers because farmlands are different in size. (Let’s say)…A minimum of 2000 hectares. Another goal is for the CO2 token to be integrated into multiple marketplaces, and be used by multiple companies across multiple industries. One of the goals is to have a burn rate of the CO2 token between 50-80% per year as an indicator that people are using the tokens to compensate for their footprint instead of for speculation.
When onboarding “farmers, ranchers, and landowners”, do the project owners plant new trees, or can they tokenize existing trees?
Carmen Perez: We only onboard projects that plant new trees. The reason is it is a requirement of the Coorest Carbon Standard and the additionality principle. Tokenizing existing trees does nothing for the environment and doesn’t reduce the global carbon footprint.
Are there specific types of farmers you want to onboard?
Carmen Perez: In my opinion, the easiest way to answer the question would be: We’re looking for farmers that meet the requirements of the Coorest Carbon Standard. We need projects that are going to take care of the trees in the long term. We need farmers that are here for the long run and respect the principles of the Coorest Carbon Standard.
Nick Zwaneveld: I’m particularly fond of projects that do agroforestry. Projects that harvest food and provide to the local community and the local economies. The end goal is to stop people from destroying the environment. We all know that economic circumstances dictate what people do. If we can stimulate those local economies then it’s a win-win situation.
We are particularly interested in small-scale projects from developing countries because doubling the income of an African farmer is easier than doing the same for a farmer in Europe.
In your weekly update, you mentioned “Sales and commercial operations” – who is running this department?
Diana Taborda: The person that is leading (that) directly is Alejandro. He has been within Coorest from the very beginning and now he took ownership of all the sales and commercial initiatives.
Are vineyards (grapes) worth onboarding?
Nick Zwaneveld: As long as they comply with the Coorest Carbon Standard, I don’t see a reason not to onboard them.
Aaaand that’s everything from our AMA. Be sure to tune in next time for more Coorest news and updates.