Exitor

Inspiration

I hail from Kenya in East Africa. I spend my time as a developer and entrepreneur. One of the challenges that I face trying to even ideate building a business is how I am going to exit from it when I need to, say when I want to build another business or liquidate my business so that I can use that money to buy another asset(physical or digital) or even easily raise fees to pay bills. The option I and many entrepreneurs have is to use the Nairobi Stock Exchange but to be honest you need connections and many times you will have to pay investment banking brokers and even other shady brokers you just aren't sure are legit. It's also really time-consuming since you have to do lots of paperwork. I see it as unnecessary since as long as your business by absolute metrics has revenue and a future outlook, then it is ideally healthy to sell it or do an exit, any investor or buyer mostly needs that to make a decision. I feel that some professionals have complicated the process and thus made this service inaccessible to the common people who just work hard, build stable & authentic mom & pop shops but then are put through too much unnecessary fees and hurdles. This industry needs a change with a simple and incorruptible system, and that is what Exitor brings to the table. Another motivation I got is that I realised this problem is pervasive across the whole world and there is a market need especially for businesses in developing countries.

What it does

Exitor in its ideal standard(still work in progress) includes a decentralized application built on the Algorand Blockchain(It's actually built as a monorepo meaning there is a web app and a mobile app). Using it, you are able to tokenize your business ownership and then sell your business to am accredited seller. I am trying to reinvent the capital markets here from first principles, so I intend to vet potential sellers and businesses and really understand their needs so that I can be able to make Exitor really cheap and effective, not just some other corporate product, it has to serve the absolute needs, no jargon or financial ambiguity, just simple to use and straightforward.

How we built it

Using React with Typescript(for the frontend), a GraphQL API server, a React Native mobile client, and MyAlgoConnect(to send and query transactions to and from the Algorand Blockchain

Challenges we ran into

My PC crashed 2 days before submission date and I have been trying ever since to recover it to no avail. I luckily was able to access my friend's PC so that I could make the submission. However, I was not able to upload the Prototype Code so that you could see how the business logic works and actually how to use Exitor step-by-step. On the app, it does not have good UI/UX though, it's mostly barebones but at least it works! Once I can get my PC working, I should upload the code on my public Github workspace

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Prototype done Validated idea after talking with legal firms

What we learned

I learnt a lot about Mergers and Acquisitions and how to crystallize that into a simple Web application backed by a Blockchain protocol. I also learnt how to sync writing code and talking to users, legal experts and also reflecting on the market need for the product one is working on, don't just code blindly

What's next for Exitor

Securing letters of intent from potential first clients in the city of Nairobi(the heart of Silicon Savannah), majorly asset management firms/investment banks/small businesses(our main target). Brushing up on legal research to enable ease of decision-making in programming Exitor's architecture so as to avoid any disputes during future operations Once we have our legal research/opinion letter and letters of intent, we will raise our first round of capital to build Exitor's to its ideal product state and then make sales to our first customers in the heart of Silicon Savannah