Thanks for your message buzzcry. Please see our response below.
> 1. Do they really have the tech chops to challenge the likes of Amazon & Microsoft?
Do we have the resources to replicate like for like what Amazon, Microsoft, Google, are offering today? No, of course we don’t. They have invested many millions of dollars and many years into their centralized infrastructure and I think very few - if any - organizations would have the resources to challenge this in a traditional setting.
Do we have the resources, skills and vision to disrupt the traditional market with a revolutionary new architecture – one that scales with existing hardware and doesn’t require incredible capital expenditure? We definitely believe so.
What we’re building is not intended to be a “meaty platform”, quite the opposite. We’re focusing on functional simplicity that scales. It’s a common myth that the better a system is, the more complex it must be. The more complex a system, the more problems you will have. The more complex a system is, the harder it will be to use and to maintain and to extend.
We have 12 engineers on our team (and we’re hiring more!). Between us we’ve worked for many big companies, across a diverse range of projects. Our combined experience and skillset bridges the majority of the required disciplines a project like this demands.
It’s also worth noting that we’re not pitching to VCs and we’re not planning an exit. We’re engaging with our community and embarking on this project together with them. Some of the team have worked together before, it’s true, and in fact all three of the founders have worked together before (and successfully exited their previous businesses). This is something we’re proud of: we have a great team and this is nothing to be shy about.
> 2. How come the numbers don’t add up?
In our business overview we set out that our directly addressable market – PaaS and SaaS – should exceed $100bn by 2020, and we provided a couple of scenarios to illustrate the potential for Miners through participation in the network. These are not financial projections or targets.
On the question of growth, it’s worth noting that for the past four years we have been focused on research & development, not on growing the business.
> 3. Why have they underestimated scaling?
This isn’t really right. If you assume that the only devices that will connect to and power the network are mobile, then yes, higher data rates are critical, but this is not the case. The network will be comprised of a diverse range of devices with a diverse range of connections. The concept of edge computing is to reduce the geographical as well as the topological distance between devices. The concept of Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of physical devices and embedded tech that connect and exchange data. These are two different concepts, though of course having better mobile networks will be a huge positive for everyone.
> 4. Why aren’t they showing us their crown jewels?
Simply because pricing for the network has not been locked in yet. We have examples from real-world use of the web services, which have been supplied. Pricing with existing businesses is Enterprise and custom per engagement. Pricing for the network will be released as we get nearer to launch.
> 5. Where’s the true crypto devotion?
We don’t really see how a wallet be beneficial to us at this stage. Our plans on this front focus on the provision of a bundled interface for purchasing web services. A wallet on its own contributes nothing to the ecosystem. Rather we’ve spent our time focused on the network itself, which is currently live as a testnet, and in production testing with a key customer.
> 6. Why ask for $29 million when $1 million will apparently do?
1m is enough for us to get the network live _at some point_. As covered elsewhere, to meet the breadth of ambition, depth of service, and pace of delivery in our roadmap (
https://dadi.cloud/en/roadmap), we need to raise significantly more than that. The network is a big idea, and it needs the resources to match.
We’re engaging with our community and embarking on this project together with them. We believe in a decentralized and democratic internet owned & controlled by everyone, not just a select few. This is why we’re running the Crowdsale rather than pursuing traditional VC funding.
> 7. 300 years of combined networking and they can only find ONE advisor?
We obviously have the experience on the team to deliver a working testnet and the core set of web services for the platform (as both of these have been delivered
). Looking to the future, of course we don't have all of the answers in house – we will be hiring to increase capacity and to fill the gaps. We also have some good advisors around us (more on that soon), and are working with the industry to roll out a backbone to ensure network stability from the get go.
(As a side note, the advisor we have announced is not one of our suppliers, and he doesn’t have a master node.)
