Can Small Businesses Survive the Next Technology Revolution? Yes They Can!

Hi guys!

My name is Sergey Grybniak. I am a serial entrepreneur and blockchain enthusiast with a brand new idea that will revolutionize the way businesses interact with each other.

As of today, ninety percent of small businesses fail to survive beyond their first year in the market. The main reason they fail is their inability to build a solid base of early adopters and regular customers.

Often, lack of customers is associated with offering a product that customers do not actually need or desire. Another reason for failure, however, is that small and medium businesses cannot compete with corporations and established brands, who can easily cover the majority of customers with their services.

Even the best concepts and ideas for products or services may fail due to lack of customers willing to take a chance on an unknown brand. For instance, imagine a small city where there are only a few furniture suppliers. An IKEA store will decimate their businesses and attract almost all their customers. Put most simply, small businesses need solutions that will help them reach and convert new customers under affordable conditions. One common solution is the use of lead-generation platforms.

I closely studied the market of lead-generation platforms and figured out how they function. Basically, they are a marketplace where businesses find customers willing to pay for their products or services. They address the first and most important challenge in business development, which is finding customers, but they do it for their own benefit.

When I established my first business, I faced the same problem. It is hard to build a base of customers who will be willing to consume your services or products. Using lead-gen platforms, businesses may sell their services. However, when you start a business, you cannot afford to pay your last dollar to lead-generation platforms. The problem is that lead-gen platforms provide their services for fees that small businesses cannot afford.

Newly founded businesses often lack the resources to invest in growing a customer base. Considering the volatility of the market, the inability of businesses to survive ongoing changes in the environment and lack of capital mean they cannot afford to rely on lead-gen platforms. And even if they manage to allocate enough resources, they still face the challenge of competing with established companies with much higher exposure to local customers.

I remember myself trying to promote my startup to the market. I quickly realized that established companies command almost 70% of the market. Basically, your potential customers are already someone else’s customers, and you do not have the resources to drive them to your site or to your brick-and-mortar store. Of course, you can always offer a higher-quality service at much better price. But in doing so, you may have to sacrifice the last bits of your company’s revenue.

To make a long story short, small businesses should have the same opportunities as established companies and corporations. Although this may seem a bit unrealistic, cutting-edge blockchain technology has the potential to level the playing field.

Opporty — Lead-Generation Platform with Fair Conditions

Business development might be costly and take a huge bit of your revenues. Among the solutions which can drive more customers to your business it is essential to incorporate some free or freemium tools. Since paid services require bidding to acquire valuable customers. Bidding is excellent solution for established companies who have enough resources to participate in auctions and acquie the most valuable customers.

Free Services

When I saw how much businesses suffer from the lack of exposure I used to think how could I change the way they conduct the business. I thought lead-generation could be provided for free or at least a limited amount of offers or responses. Unfortunately, modern lead generation platforms rarely provide their services for free. To give smaller businesses a chance to acquire more customers for initial development, Opporty provides a limited amount of free offers and responses. Small businesses can use this opportunity to get up and running, and create a base of loyal customers. Through gaining higher exposure, quality service providers can establish their position in the market.

Gaining Free Requests, Offers and Responses

All lead generation platforms charge a fee for their services. This disencourage smaller companies to use them. The majority of platforms offer their customers a chance to make bids for quality leads. For instance, you want to reach a gas station chain. This customer will bring you a large buck. You may want to acquire this customer, however, more established companies will pay a lot for this customer and you will never be able to reach them. The quality of leads defines the amount of money that must be paid to acquire customers.

I designed Opporty to have a unique functionality to allow users to earn internal coins which can then be spent on additional requests and offers. Small businesses can save money on acquiring new customers while at the same time contributing to the overall promotion of the platform and of their own business. To earn coins, they contribute content that adds value to the knowledge-sharing platform, making it possible for businesses to attract more customers, almost for free.

Lead Generation Platform with Smart Contracts

Protection of the Deal Between Service Provider and Customer

Small businesses admit they have faced issues where they supplied quality service, but the quality of the service was disputed by a customer. In such instances, payment is delayed, while time and resources have already been spent, which hinders business development. Filing a lawsuit against the customer is not a good solution, because the lawsuit may fail, and will not provide compensation for wasted time and resources. I know how it can affect the business well-being and how much damage it causes. Opporty provides the support of decentralized Escrow judges who supervise the execution of agreements between service providers and customers. Conditions of an agreement are spelled out in immutable strong smart contracts, eliminating the threat of disputes and misunderstandings of the agreement. Escrow judges look through the disputed agreement and the alleged misconduct to determine whether the smart contract has been satisfactorily executed or not. This helps to ensure that both parties have fulfilled the conditions of agreement.

Global Business Standardisation

Established businesses tend to standardize their services to ensure quality of services, meaning that small businesses can follow those standards and supply customers with high quality services. I find it very important to provide smaller companies insights regarding the proper development of their businesses. For this purpose I designed the ultimate knowledge sharing platform on Opporty. In addition to sharing expertise, it supports standards of service through the use of blockchain and Escrow-judges. Escrow-judges who are experts in certain industries create standards for doing business and fulfilling certain services. These standards are saved in the form of blockchain smart-contracts. Small businesses follow the best practices provided by experts and acquire loyal customers. This is beneficial for both smaller companies who have little experience and understanding of the market, and for larger companies who can secure their position by demonstrating their expertise.

Conclusion

Technologies can dramatically change the way companies conduct business. This is especially true for larger companies who can afford to employ tech experts and embrace high-tech devices and applications. However there are tech solutions available, not only for established companies, but also for smaller businesses. Opporty has developed a technology to bridge the gap for small businesses to compete with larger established companies. Opporty features a lead generation platform with a well-developed business model that provides the support of Escrow-judges to protect companies from fraudulent activities, helping them survive the challenges of the modern world and, eventually, become an integral part of a blockchain-led Brave New World.