Blockcast.cc: Welcome everyone! Gaimin.io has stepped up their game and are gearing towards their first IEO. Starting with the Founders! Today, at the helm is their Chief Marketing Officer, Andrew Faridani, who believes they have just “awoken a sleeping giant.” Hi Andrew, can you give an introduction of yourself?
Andrew: Hi Melody, I am lucky enough to call Toronto Canada, my home, where I reside with my wife and three little girls aged 1, 4, and 5. I have been an entrepreneur all my adult life. For the past 18 years, I have surrounded myself with some of the most brilliant people in the industries I have had the privilege of working.
Blockcast.cc: How did it all begin for you?
Andrew: It all started with our little web conferencing company where my passion for technology and marketing began in early 2003. I utilized digital advertising to acquire clients for our web conferencing business. My love for digital advertising grew as I saw the success of our company. I was self-taught, and I started my training with a $99 PDF on how to use Adwords. From there, we grew our web conferencing business to a point where it was the perfect timing for our exit strategy. After the sale of the company, with my passion still in advertising and marketing, I decided to help other companies thrive in providing them digital advertising services.
Almost 15 years later, and many awards and accolades behind us, our advertising agency is one of the fastest-growing agencies in Canada, one of the largest mid-size agencies with over 100 staff members and we have serviced over 3,000 clients in over 300 verticals, so we know a thing or two about doing a good job.
The culmination of my advertising experiences has brought me to where I am today, Gamin, where I look forward to applying my strengths in the advertising world to make Gaimin a household name.
Blockcast.cc: How do you know the other founders who are all European?
Andrew: That’s a great question and one I get asked quite often. My business partner (Ian Dore) in our web conferencing company was from Manchester, UK, where we initially started the business. His good friend was Clive Aroskin (COO of Gaimin), whom I met and started doing business with. His other friend was Martin Speight (CEO of Gaimin), who is from the UK but lives in Spain. So I’ve known Clive and Martin for almost 15 years. Clive introduced me to Calvin (CPO of Gaimin), who lives in Sweden, about ten years ago, but we never did business together until five years ago. The only newly acquainted founder is Rob van Schaik, whom I met on this project almost two years ago. We’re all like-minded businessman, we have the same vision, goals, and we also understand what it takes to succeed as a startup.
Blockcast.cc: Why did you get involved in Gaimin?
Andrew: Numbers, numbers, and more numbers… When Clive and Calvin called me to pitch me in becoming an investor in Gaimin, it took me 5 minutes on the phone with them to state: “I need to be a founder and a part of the company, this deal is too good to miss.” As they were pitching me, I was on my laptop going through the numbers. The number of gamers worldwide, the number of active PC gamers, market growth percentages, PC gamer growth, revenues generated in the gaming world, esports growth, is blockchain something for the future? Are there rendering farms and how much are they in demand, and how much do they charge to render movies, cartoons, video games, and animations. All of these questions I was searching online, and all arrows pointed in one direction, UP, UP, UP, Yes, Yes, Yes. I was truly so excited about the deal; I wouldn’t keep it in. There was no downside, and because I have all the tools at my disposal at my agency, I ran some quick diagnostics of the numbers, impressions shares, viewer audiences, and found out that this would be an exciting and very successful venture to be a part of.
Blockcast.cc: How do you plan on getting gamers on your platform?
Andrew: I have developed an extensive strategy for onboarding gamers onto our platform; it’s a simple, powerful, and integrated marketing strategy. The full details can be found in our Whitepaper, under the “Marketing Plan.”
The short version is simple, leveraging my 18 years of experience in digital marketing/advertising, and the backing of my 100 staff members to target our users with the lowest CPA (cost per acquisition) possible.
Gamers by nature are all digitally savvy, they are well versed online, and this is where they thrive. I remember a quote that Peter F. Drucker who said,
“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”
I have been positioning ads, targeting the right segments, deploying search, display, video, programmatic, retargeting ads for over a decade now. We speak the same language and know each other’s buying habits very well. Our traditional digital methods, in combination with an offline strategy, plus our engagement with esports to sponsor events and teams, is just the tip of the iceberg.
We have had discussions with hardware and software companies to have our platform pre-installed on their system, like anti-virus on your computer, to reach a wider audience. This is not “our first BBQ.” We have had a lot of success with subscription-based businesses where client acquisition is the only component to the growth of a business. Once momentum is created, we will have thousands, if not, hundreds of thousands of gamers come rushing to our platform on a monthly basis. To top it all off, at every step of the way, we are giving back to the Gaming community. I always say that,
“We didn’t find gamers for our platform; we found a platform for gamers.”
In the past, gamers have been taken advantage of, but now, with Gaimin, we are giving back to their community for letting us use their computing power, the gamers will get in-game assets, airdrops, hardware and software from us in return and so much more. We have very large goals and ambitions and have set ourselves short and medium-term targets that are very realistic and achievable, never mind the long term.
Blockcast.cc: What is your target client base?
Andrew: Our target is 1.3 million gamers. If we were dealing with any other industry, that number would frighten everyone. It might be unrealistic, but in our market, this number represents 0.1% of the PC Gaming population (1.3 billion). If we do horribly wrong and only managed to reach 0.1% of the PC Gaming market, we will have a multi-billion-dollar company in our hands, and all of our gamers would be extremely happy.
Blockcast.cc: You like your CTO, Buki ban Natan, are very confident that your project will succeed?
Andrew: Absolutely. I have never put this amount of time, effort and resources into anything before. The potential of what we have here is greater than anything I have ever seen and I want to do everything that I can personally to ensure its success.
Having spent a great deal of time researching the blockchain and gaming marketplaces and attending events, we know that gamers can register in their thousands; they can get the Network Expansion rewards Program. Their computational power can be put to work in many different applications that will actually pay. It is incredibly exciting.
Blockcast.cc: You are starting your global roll-out in the Asian Market, have you ever been to Asia
Andrew: Yes, I have traveled to Hong Kong and the Philippines. An absolute amazing part of the world, with all the different cultures and their unique ways of doing things. I am truly excited to role out Gaimin in Asia, which has one of the largest concentration of Gamers and crypto enthusiast in the world. Because Canada is a multi-cultural country, and especially Toronto, we have the privilege at our agency, of speaking over 15 languages, which makes communicating to the Asian population very easy.
Blockcast.cc: Is there anything else that our readers should know about you or Gaimin?
Andrew: My passion for the past 18 years as been digital advertising and bringing brands across the world to market. Gaimin is no different. I have a great track record of building some amazing campaigns with very popular brands that you see everyday, but my passion lies with start-ups and bring them to market. This excitement is what keeps me awake working to 3am or 4am, nothing else would drive me to spend those long nights and early mornings building businesses. Gaimin is no different. My passion for the success of the company, the ability for the first time to give back to the gaming community and provide the greatest good for the largest number of people is my next ambition in life.
Blockcast.cc: We would like to get to know the founders better, so what is your favourite pass-time?
Andrew: I am a huge sports enthusiast; my favourite sport being basketball. I was brought up playing in school and in leagues. I remember going to tournaments and the sheer excitement building up to the event and afterwards was amazing. When the Toronto Raptors won the NBA championship this year, it was very gratifying after watching them for almost 20 years without winning.
I like to stay in shape by exercising and I also like to read biographies of people who have done what I want to do, you know what they say: “sharp mind, sharp body”
Blockcast.cc: Thank you for your time Andrew! You have given us insights on Gaimin and we got to know you a little better. Thank you once again!
Andrew: My pleasure
About Gaimin:
The Gaimin platform is a powerful yet elegant AI-driven software that aggregates a gamer’s processing power, when not being used and therefore without affecting their gaming performance, to the Gaimin monetization network. In exchange for this the gamer receives purchasing power via the GMRX crypto token, which can be spent directly on gaming purchases. Gamers can now passively monetize their powerful PC resources without the need for any specialized knowledge or action.
