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Meet the Boss – Exclusive Interview with Birdchain CEO Audrius Vrubliauskas

Birdchain ceo interview Audrius Vrubliauskas

Birdchain introduces a blockchain-powered solution that solves many of today’s SMS marketing problems while at the same time reducing inefficiency in SMS usage.

What the platform does is it offers great delivery speeds to a business’ customers at a fair and transparent while still keeping costs low.
The reason why costs are kept low is because of the decentralized and distributed nature of the platform.

What does that mean?

Birdchain is going to distribute the workload to regular people by providing them with a way to earn money from sent messages. This means that normal users can make passive income with just their phone!
The Birdchain mobile application does this by allocating unused regular people’s SMS’ to businesses for a fee.

Anyone with a phone will be able to download the Birdchain app, sell their unused SMS quota to businesses, and receive payment for every SMS message sent from their phone.
We recently sat down with Audrius Vrubliauskas, the CEO of Birdchain to have a chat with him about the project as well as finding out his thoughts and insights.

Hi, Audrius. Thanks for joining us today. Can you tell us more about your company and Birdchain?

bird chain logoWe are successfully operating in A2P SMS business for almost 10 years. The idea of Birdchain was born from something we do every day – deliver A2P SMS – and see all positive and negative aspects of the market. And the negative ones started to really bother us. As an independent aggregator, we see come crucial market flaws as opportunities for Birdchain.
Mobile operators are increasing prices of their services to an indecent level while at the same time they are lowering delivery speed and overall service quality. And then there are big players who keep SMS delivery market closed to new companies which means that there are very little of competition and virtually no innovation.

Keeping in mind these flaws, we came to the conclusion that we have to start a change. And we joined transparency revolution that is already happening – adopted blockchain technology with smart contracts. It will guarantee companies that all SMS were sent and it will prevent fraud and misconduct. Moreover, using phones of regular people will decrease the price for companies and people will get their share of the $63 billion market.

I believe Birdchain will solve several problems

First off, why did you decide to use the blockchain in building Birdchain?

Transparency is our number one priority. The current generation of A2P services heavily lacks transparency. In fact, there were cases when aggregators offered much lower price of services than average, but they delivered only a fraction of SMS and claimed the delivery rate of 100 percent. That is 100 percent cheating. Sadly, there are no tools for clients to check the delivery rate.
Blockchain and smart contracts solve this problem easily. Each sent SMS will have its own smart contract, so the payments for selling SMS will only be provided when the message is actually sent.

What do you think is the biggest problem Birdchain will solve and why is the problem important to solve?

I believe Birdchain will solve several problems. Transparency is the first of them. It will also decrease A2P SMS prices drastically and will allow smaller companies to use SMS marketing. It is a very powerful tool, but until now it was mostly accessible by bigger and well-established companies.
And last but not least – people are paying for unlimited SMS plans but do not use them. That means that they are overpaying for the service. Birdchain will enable them to cover costs of their mobile phone and even have passive monthly income.
I even believe that Birdchain will help to create Global Basic Income. That would be the first ever non-governmental initiative to provide earnings to almost anyone everywhere.

How does Birdchain determine the relevancy of ads to users?

While SMS marketing is extremely effective, not everyone would appreciate ads via text messages as much as an ad on Facebook or Google.
How does the platform target audiences to ensure that ads only reach people who are interested?

It is a common misconception. That is not how Birdchain is going to work. Birdchain will not send SMS to random people.
Birdchain will only facilitate service of SMS distribution. We will not provide contacts for the companies. They will have to gather this information by themselves. It means that people will receive transactional or promotional SMS only from companies they gave consent to.

Birdchain ceo interview Audrius Vrubliauskas

Aside from the high costs, why do you think many companies neglect SMS marketing? Are they unaware of the benefits or do you think SMS marketing is not as exposed as other advertising channels?

The high price is the only reason why some companies do not communicate via SMS. In Germany single message cost 0,08 euro. If you have 10 000 customers, a single campaign will cost 800 euros. And our clients usually have several campaigns per month and much more clients. And most of the price goes to operators, not A2P SMS aggregators.

Birdchain will not only send out unused SMS. We tried your simulation app and it looks a lot like any other instant messenger. Why did you choose this approach?

Birdchain app for people first of all is instant messaging app. They will be able to use it to communicate with their friends and family, but at the same time app will automatically sell their unused SMS in the background.
We chose this approach because instant messaging is more convenient and more intuitive solution. We use such apps every day. It is something very well-know.
To make Birdchain fly, we need at least 50 000 app users. If the app would look distant or unfamiliar, people would not use it. So, the decision was made for the comfort of Birdchain app users.

How are you planning to distinguish Birdchain from other instant messaging apps?

We will have our ICO in 10 waves. Each wave brings different bonuses for our contributors and they also represent how much more Birdchain can be. The instant messaging app is just the first step on the ladder.
Higher waves will allow us to add the ability to watch video ads and receive our tokens as payment. This feature proved to be very effective and desired in our other projects.
Then we will implement in-app purchases so that Birdchain app users could spend their earnings in the app without the need of using exchanges and paying fees there. When we will reach the eighth wave we will develop Voice call gateway and even personal data marketplace. It means that people will be able to sell their data to companies and get paid. Now Facebook and other companies do the same (sell personal information of their users), but people do not get rewarded. We don’t think that it is fair, so we would like to change that too.

Birdchain ceo interview Audrius Vrubliauskas

What has been your funniest moment so far working on Birdchain?

We want to have proper ICO that is held under all laws and regulations. That is why we decided to have KYC check of our contributors. It was funny when we addressed financial authorities with a request to review our KYC procedure and they were shocked.
You see, now the crypto world is unregulated, but we believe that the situation will change soon and when it will, a lot of companies that raised funds in ICOs will be in a lot of trouble. ICO can be described as anonymous crowdfunding when projects are funded in cryptocurrency. When companies will decide to exchange collected cryptocurrency into fiat money, governmental institutions will ask where the money came from.

If there will be no proof of where funds came from, it can be interpreted as money laundering scheme or affiliated with criminal or terrorist activities. In that case, authorities can confiscate the funds, freeze the accounts or order to return funds to contributors. Either way, it will mean the end of the project and contributors will lose all or portion of their funds.

We don’t want that to happen, so we will implement our ICO differently – we will have KYC check. It is a procedure similar to the ones held in banks – our contributors will be screened and whitelisted to contribute. It will guarantee that our contributors do not have a criminal background, prevent any money laundering activities and much more. Our goal is to make our ICO 100 percent transparent and compatible with the law.

When we addressed authorities with this idea to do transparent and properly legal ICO, they were very surprised and did not know what to do for a while. They make the rules, but they did not expect any ICO to contact them and ask for advice. A couple of weeks they were checking our safety, privacy and screening procedures only to approve it.

Editors Pick: Birdchain ICO

Is the Birdchain platform already working with notable businesses or firms? Are there any future partnerships in the process?
If yes, can you explain briefly about it?

This question needs a bit of explanation because we do, but at this second Birdchain does not.
You see, Birdchain is yet to be developed we have no clients, but we are a company that operates as A2P SMS aggregators for almost 10 years. So, we have quite a few clients and some of them are very well-known globally. When we will develop the service, we will transfer traffic from our current systems to Birdchain.
Moreover, we will employ A2P SMS auctions and Birdchain app users will be able to sell their unused SMS from the very beginning.
Companies like Uber, Amazon, Airbnb, or Google do not purchase A2P SMS services directly from A2P SMS aggregators. Instead, they use auctions. Basically, company posts request on a special platform to send X million messages and it is willing to pay not more than 0.0X euro per SMS. All A2P SMS vendors who participate in such a platform offer their prices and the lowest price wins.
Birdchain price will always be the lowest.

Birdchain ceo interview Audrius Vrubliauskas

Tell us more about BIRD

What was the idea behind designing the BIRD token and what was the process like behind it?
Development of BIRD is a very natural step. As we will operate globally and companies will send global campaigns, we needed a universal currency and creating our own cryptocurrency that will work with smart contracts and have all other features that we need, was the easiest solution.
Companies that will want to use Birdchain services, will have to purchase BIRDs. People will get paid for BIRDs and they could hold them and wait for the price to increase or sell them in exchanges or use to make in-app purchases.

Can you express one personal opinion of yours about the blockchain? It doesn’t matter if it’s negative or positive, we just want to hear your thoughts on it.

Blockchain is wonderful technology. In 10 years it will change our world and how we manage information so much that we will think of today as the stone age.
It already has change banking – one of the most conservative businesses – and 5 years ago blockchain did not have such power as it has today. Thanks to blockchain we will change A2P SMS marketing – a market that did not innovate for decades. There will be an ICO which will change how we buy used cars. The snowball started to roll from the mountain and it gains momentum very quickly.
I wish only that there were more real-world applicable ICOs because most of them are interesting only for a small group of specialists. They should solve problems of real people or real companies – just like Birdchain does.

Finally, what other personal goals (besides your career) do you have in life? Is there anything else in life you want to achieve?

I believe that support from parents is crucial and I am doing the best I can for my son. But there are a lot of unlucky children who do not have parents. Our company frequently donate to charities that takes care of orphans.
Our company is one of the topmost donating companies to orphanages in our country. Also, we analyzed how our donation is getting to those who need them and we came to result that not money is needed. For example orphans, kids are in need of inspiration, path, and understanding of some common things. that most of us are getting from our parents. That’s why recently we employed a person who will work exclusively with charity projects and will try to make real changes in young lives.

I truly believe in this cause.

That concludes our Interview with Audrius Vrubliauskas

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