Smartz Team. Interview with CMO Smartz Vadim Buyanov

We continue to introduce our founders to you. This time we interviewed our CMO Vadim Buyanov.

— In our first interview, Yuri said that you came up with the idea of smart contracts marketplace. How did you come with this idea in the first place?

— I think that the idea of Smartz platform was collaborative. Each co-founder added his own vision based on past experience. I worked in digital marketing and web development for a long time. From my point of view, a new technology that aims to reach broad audience has to be easy to use. It is all about improving UX and accelerating mass adoption of the technology. Blockchain now has to develop just like web did years ago. Right now, ordinary users have no idea how to use it. One of the main ideas of Smartz platform is providing user-friendly tools so that people could easily use smart contracts and at the same time to encourage blockchain developers to create and distribute useful DApps.

— You graduated from Finance University under the Government of the Russian Federation, but you’ve decided to work in digital marketing? Why did you choose this area?

— I studied accounting and audit at the university. At that point of time, I started working for a big digital agency. I found out that accounting and digital marketing are quite similar because one of the most important things in both areas is the preciseness and transparency of data. But in digital marketing creativity is also important. Well, I guess that I am not creative enough to imagine the legal use of creativity in accounting. The choice was easy for me, I decided to work in digital marketing.

— Digital marketing is one of the trendiest areas for people that start their career now. What advice would you give them?

— It all depends on a personal motivation. Right now, there is tons of information related to digital marketing, you can read and learn everything that you want, but the experience is important. I would recommend finding an internship in some digital agency that serves different kinds of business from various fields. After 2–3 years in a digital agency, you will be a professional.

— Developers of smart contracts are one of the target audiences for the platform. How are they different from ordinary users? Is it easier to communicate with them?

It’s obvious that programmers, in that case, developers of smart contracts have their specific views. I know that because on 2/3 our team consists of programmers. Usually, they value act, experience, and competence. Product can’t be just marketing bate for programmers. It has to be fundamental, detailed and opensource. It is, of course, a great responsibility to develop a platform that will be used by both hardcore programmers and ordinary users.

— Do you use any special mechanics to attract developers?

— Yes, we do. We have online workshops, participate in meetups and conferences, where we share our experience. We take part in hackathons sometimes as participants sometimes as a jury. But in the future, we see our platform as the main source of attraction. Platform’s economic model will motivate developers to use the platform.

— Which direction of digital marketing is your favorite and why?

— Strategic planning. It is the interesting challenge. There is a number of different tasks for me. Finding the right price-quality ratio, a team that will stick to the plan and will work together to achieve it. Plus, the marketing strategy has to be flexible.

— You know that we have the question that we addressed to Yuri, Sergey, and Alex before. We changed it a little bit this time. How can the idea of using smart contracts be sold to both government and people?

— As a marketer, I think that the first step is finding weak spots and problems for the target audience. For a government, it is transparency and control. Collection of taxes, target spending of funds, simplifying bureaucracy. There is a number of use cases for a government.

For end users, use cases are a bit different. Eliminating third parties is the main advantage. It is obvious that eliminating the third party will decrease prices. Using smart contract in certain spheres we can decrease prices by up to 50%. Taxi services, pizza delivery, there is a variety of options.

Smart contract launch can be performed by users themselves so there is no need for trusted third parties when we talk about a contract between different parties. I can list you all advantages of blockchain technology, but those are the main ones.

— The last question is personal. What are your interests despite work?

— Aside from work I visit a gym, read professional literature and take English classes. I love traveling. I am trying to plan my vacations so that I can truly get acquainted with a new culture. My dream is to make a trip around the World and to write a book about this trip. Maybe it won’t be a printed book and I will make a blog, we will see.

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