Financial markets are becoming fair, active, and transparent thanks to tokenization. It’s revolutionizing the way things work in financial markets and will most likely transform the financial market infrastructures in the coming future. We got a chance to talk with Ross Shemeliak, the Co-Founder and COO at Stobox.
We talked about tokenization and how Stobox works. Ross Shemeliak provides advanced expertise in the crypto and tokenized assets industries with Stobox. Stobox is the TOP-5 turn-key tokenization provider globally and focuses on leading toward upcoming digital assets’ evolution and progress. Ross Shemaliak is a hardworking and dedicated entrepreneur who focuses on facing challenges head-on and finding innovative solutions.
Stobox is an award-winning fintech and tokenization company having highly skilled professional teams. They help businesses to create new opportunities and easily enter the crypto world. The company also has active social media profiles on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Telegram. Learn more about Ross Shemaliak and Stobox below.
Explain the background of you and the company in detail.
I was fascinated by economics and everything related to it from my teenage years. After graduating, I attended a study-in-practice economics course by the Vice Prime Minister of the economy of Ukraine, where my team and I were proudly recognized as the best students.
I started my finance career as a financial analyst in a hedge fund. My job was to consult and help business people invest in the US stock market, commodities, and cryptocurrencies. This fully immersed me in futures and stock trading, the Wall Street market, and how it works in practice out in the real world.
While working there, I came across the technological and fast-growing blockchain market. So, I began to study this technology much more deeply and started building my crypto portfolio. I also started trading Bitcoin, which allowed me to get a much closer look at the blockchain technologies and instruments and navigate within the various projects.
While monitoring different exciting blockchain projects and outstanding job opportunities, my attention fell on Stobox. I started at Stobox as Business Development Manager and was one of the first employees at the company. Since I have always been attracted to building business processes, I quickly took the initiative to make the operations department. With the rapid and successful growth of the company, I rose to the position of Chief Operating Officer. After going through a rough “death desert” of our company, I became a shareholder and Co-founder of Stobox Project.
Tell us something about your company.
Stobox is a multi-award-winning company that provides technology and consulting to assist clients leverage digital assets and tokenized securities. During the last three years, Stobox developed two blockchain-based products, conducted 55000+ hours of research, advised 30+ clients, and built partnerships in 10+ countries. Stobox exists at the intersection of traditional finance & crypto and strives to enable businesses to implement decentralized technologies, simplify operations with digital securities, and remove obstacles to their adoption.
Stobox is a TOP-5 turn-key tokenization provider in the world. The company acts as a system integrator and covers services and products related to the security tokens and tokenization, from feasibility studies to the secondary market.
What are your goals?
My first goal is to introduce other private companies to tokenization and help fundraise using the Stobox services and products successfully.
The second goal is to educate and help create new business models that will open new opportunities for entrepreneurs worldwide using solutions such as web3, utility tokens, security tokens, and NFT.
Also, I aim to open a possibility for public investors worldwide to participate in the small offerings of private companies and benefit from it because tokenization helps common investors participate from $1.000 and become shareholders of the companies.
Finally, I want to provide an instrument of a secondary market for companies without being public. In this case, shares become liquid, so you don’t need to wait for the IPO and spend much time and money on it. That’s why Stobox will launch in a few weeks a Digital Securities Swap (DS Swap), a unique DeFi liquidity solution for security tokens and crypto assets, to meet the market fit.
What do you feel is the biggest strength of your company right now?
People, community, perfect knowledge, and corporate culture!
I believe in community-driven businesses, and your customers are your best investors. For example, in the case of GameStop, we see that a critical point is a community in today’s world. If you have fans of your project, you can expect loyalty and full engagement with your company’s activities.
For the last four years, we at Stobox have made many mistakes, spent a lot of money and time around tokenization (corporate structures, cases, pitfalls, regulations, etc.), and are currently helping other companies avoid them. Nowadays, the tech part is easy, but to provide such innovative services, you need to have a perfect knowledge of the industry. You need to spend a lot of time and money to get it.
What was the path you/your company took to get to where you are today?
Life is a big journey. We started the Stobox company just from the idea of merging the concept of digital crowdfunding with crypto and traditional finance markets, with 0 money and a lot of energy. Now Stobox is a big company with 70 people working on projects and a valuation of USD 25.000.000. During this journey, we made many mistakes, did a company pivot, and now faced a market fit.
What have been the biggest challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It was 1.5 years ago. At that time, we had 0 clients and 0 revenue and invested a significant amount of money in R&D. In that period, we took a big step in our company development, conducted crisis management, created a realistic plan, and tested many hypotheses.
Give us one word that describes you the best.
What makes you excited about Mondays?
I treat weekends only as an opportunity to reboot to continue working hard mentally. As a Chief Operating Officer, I have a lot of communication with the Stobox team members. Every day, I face many challenges and problems because the rest are solved via the departments’ leads. I love the complexity and don’t know what can scare me or surprise me. I’ve been through hacks, loss of funds, and problems so that nothing can stop me now. Also, I want to reach the goals that I mentioned above.
What do you value most about your company’s culture and vision?
Our vision is to be the ultimate gateway to the world of the upcoming digital assets’ evolution and progress. We work to enable businesses to implement decentralized blockchain technologies, simplifying operations with digital assets and removing the obstacles to their adoption.
Also, we implement decentralization — and further benefits it ensures such as freedom, transparency, and the absence of intermediaries. Applying such decentralized technologies, we develop and assist in implementing the new business models. Digital assets should be easily accessible and manageable for everyone.
The community appears from day one alongside the business. It consists of customers and investors, and the community essentially defines the purpose of the businesses as one of the principal stakeholders for the company. The more in sync the community and business are — the more results they get.
One of my key responsibilities is to take care of the Stobox microclimate and improve the efficiency of the Stobox employees. In addition, from my personal experience, a critical point is corporate culture. Here are the parts of our rules:
Welcomed:
– Real notification of the state of affairs or a mistake made.
– Ask any question, even if it seems silly.
– Repeat the question an n-number of times until the information is assimilated.
– Asking clarifying questions about a task if the criteria for completing the task are not clear-cut.
– Initiative.
– The speed of your work.
– Support of colleagues.
– Logical and reasoned delivery of a point of view or criticism.
Not allowed:
– We do not sneer at each other’s communications.
– Toxic and confrontational.
– We do not raise our voices.
– We do not interrupt each other during conversations.
Tell us about a project that forced you to be innovative and creative.
Tokenization is an emerging market, so you can’t survive without being creative and innovative. At Stobox, we help our clients in issuing shares, which is a significant and responsible step in any company, and in creating new modern business models.
For example, I am very impressed with the Landshare Company that is doing tokenization of real estate with Stobox. Landshare has a unique business model with interaction between security token, utility token, and NFT, and it’s completely changing the paradigm of selling traditional real estate. In this case, Landshare allows small investors to buy a part of the real estate of tiny houses in the US and get dividends from it. Landshare will be the first company to run a secondary market of STO, using the new Stobox product Digital Securities Swap.
Also, I am very sympathetic to the Сandela Project, which is building luxury villas in Tulum, Mexico. With the Candela team, we are building an innovative dual token business model and NFT to get and monetize loyalty from the customers.
What are the strategies of your company, and how do they stand unique from your competitors? What benefits do your clients get from your company in this competitive world?
There are many reasons why, from COVID-19 to the global trend to move from web 2.0 to web 3.0. First, you have to understand that tokenization is a trillion-dollar market. There is more than $5 trillion worth of real estate globally.
Besides this, tokenization also suits many other industries, such as investment funds, natural resources, and many other private businesses. In the last year, the demand for tokenization has grown by more than 1.000%, so SMEs now have a big request to use such innovative tools for their business.
From my perspective, the tokenization market is not about competition but cooperation. Because in such an innovative and large market, it is necessary to share working practices more quickly and teach businesses what these technologies are and how to use them to speed up the transition process.
When we started this business four years ago, not many people believed in us, and on our long journey, I saw dozens of providers that closed their businesses. Still, I see more and more institutional companies entering the market, which confirms that this market is promising.
A key feature of Stobox is a turn-key solution for businesses to implement tokenization. We cover all stages of STO: Consulting, Legal, Technical, and Secondary Market. This allows our clients to focus on their business and enable Stobox to act as a system integrator.
Thus, the client does not need to spend his time explaining all the nuances of his project to consultants, lawyers, or technicians. Stobox covers all of these stages. It is crucial to understand that the business of providing these services is very complex, and the entry threshold is expensive and lengthy because you need to get perfect knowledge and go through a lot of difficulties and mistakes.
We at Stobox have spent more than 55,000 hours and $500,000 on R&D and have accumulated the industry’s best knowledge to close the needs of our customers and help implement such innovative solutions.
Tell us something about your upcoming products or services?
Stobox plans to release a new complementary product to our SaaS white label existing solution in a few weeks – Stobox DS Swap. It is a unique DeFi liquidity solution for security tokens and crypto-assets. DS Swap opens a secondary market for security token issuers via automated market-making functionality. In addition, DS Swap enables secondary trading of security tokens following international regulations and compliance procedures.
Stobox DS Swap is the “Uniswap” for security tokens. It will be one of the first Decentralized Exchanges for security tokens in the world. Before that, businesses could only open a secondary market through a centralized exchange like NASDAQ or the London Stock Exchange, which took three years and cost $8 million.
In today’s reality, with the DS Swap solution, every private business can provide liquidity and open secondary trading without being a public company. It is not about bringing you to NASDAQ. It is about NASDAQ bringing to you.
P.S.
“Suppose you have any questions about your business and how you can implement tokenization solutions in your business. In that case, I will be happy to answer all of them in the comments or private messages on my social media.”
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