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DigitalTown (OTC:DGTW) has rebranded, launched a new website and published new mobile applications to “equip municipalities and communities with the tools required to co-create more resilient and equitable local economies”.
The announcement continues:
The DigitalTown turnkey solution of ‘a digital city in a box’ makes it easy and convenient for cities to get online without investing in expensive custom systems. With DigitalTown, merchants are eligible for a free online storefront. Residents and visitors receive a SmartWallet for carrying out transactions. In addition, upon registration, residents receive 10 free blockchain-based CityShares in their city and have access to Community Tools for sharing and distribution of local interest content, discussions, news, events and projects.
DigitalTown CEO, Rob Monster, says: “DigitalTown is the leading Internet of People platform. We put people at the heart of the Smart City movement with our decentralized web and mobile applications. DigitalTown connects local merchants with residents and visitors and provides everyone with a free SmartWallet for low-cost, frictionless transactions in both conventional and cryptocurrencies. Our free community tools encourage and reward active participation in a local community that benefits everyone.”
DigitalTown Chief Brand Officer, Karen Floyd, comments: “The rebrand comes at a very exciting time for the DigitalTown movement. As interest from investors, municipalities, Community Leaders, co-ops, NGOs and especially youth groups is accelerating, the DigitalTown brand needed to better reflect the movement’s core value of empowering co-creation of thriving local economies and communities around the world in a bold and appealing manner. The ‘Be local. Everywhere.’ slogan lets you know that DigitalTown is the solution to support local economies and communities wherever you happen to be in the world. The logo shows a dot in the center symbolizing the world, community, wholeness, unity, town or city center, a hub, meeting point, the place to be. The D is strong yet yielding and supports the global community.”
Rob Monster adds: “DigitalTown advocates the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly through an emphasis on Digital Identity and Economic Inclusion. With DigitalTown, users retain ownership of their data and control who knows what about them and for how long. In some cases, our free SmartWallet can be accessed by those who cannot participate in the mainstream banking system. Our solution is inclusive of all.”
“DigitalTown grants municipalities the opportunity to take control of their locality and fund projects via revenue rather than taxes. Citizens can claim a stake in their town or city with the CityShares and have a say in the direction the platform takes in their community. DigitalTown provides the tools for communities to take control of their economic future in the Digital Age,” concludes Rob Monster.
Visitors to the new DigitalTown website will find a host of new materials, designed to facilitate the adoption of DigitalTown in any community, whether from the top down via municipality licensing or from the grass roots level via residents and visitors. The DigitalTown mobile apps grant users the ability to manage their digital identity, pay merchants, send funds to other SmartWallet holders and engage in community tools, as well as discover the area where they happen to be.
The DigitalTown solution is currently being adopted by towns and cities around the world including Central Texas, Florida, India, the UK and Asia.
184k in assets on their balance sheet.
2.3M in liabilities.
In the last year their revenue was $327k. And in that year their expenses were $10M.
I’d love to know how much of that $7.4M SG&A the CEO is pocketing himself which bringing in no revenue.
Will be bankrupt in less than one year, too bad it is OTC or I’d short it.
They let many of their .city domains expire.
I was trying to figure out digital towns business model but it can be explained better here. Forward to 2:02 and watch for about a minute
Hopefully Rob will find a way to steer this ship out of oblivion. Great clip above. Was awesome movie.
Who cares. How does this even make it as “news”?
this is ridiculous! a year passed and there is not one city that uses this?? and you can still convince investors!!
their website looks unprofessional.. i found a few bugs
Quick comments:
– This is a challenging project but a worthwhile one. Our rollout focus is Central TX from Austin to San Antonio as proving ground for operations. Merchants in Austin are actively processing payments via DigitalTown. However, other cities are going live in India, UK, and Brazil. Miami is also the first major US municipality to license — that is a matter of public record though no PR has been released yet about My.Miami.
– The idea of a Super-App for cities seems foreign to many. However, in China, the SuperApp is standard. WeChat has about 1 billion users. 90% of payments are done via mobile. The country is rapidly going cashless. I actually met with execs from WeChat parent Tencent on Monday in NYC per their invitation. I invite you to download the DigitalTown app. Feedback welcome. Head of development is Clint Skidmore, clint@epik.com.
– There is a tremendous amount of copy being produced so any QA is appreciated. Our new Chief Brand Officer, Karen Floyd is very talented and will be looking for great talent so just reach out to her at Karen@digitaltown.com. She is based in beautiful Las Palmas, Gran Canarias, a global hub for digital nomads from where we also manage the Global Youth Ambassador Program.
– We did drop some .city domains as Donuts charged full price — the initial registrations were discounted. We are not wedded to .city. The world is going mobile and we own 11,500 mobile app handles for iOS and Android, including for very large cities. This was one of our 7 acquisitions. The world is also going decentralized — Blockchain won’t replace DNS overnight, but that is the trend.
– As for financial outlook, we are working to keep the monthly burn rate at below $250K. While that burn rate may seem high relative to the cash position, it is small relative to the opportunity. Our $1 million S-1 with Triton Funds is about to go live. A second tranche of 1.05 million RHOC is due to fund on July 31. An additional offering is out for up to $2 million. That should clean up the balance sheet, and put all on track.
– As for my compensation, the vast majority is common equity. For much of 2017 and 2018 I deferred salary and/or converted it to common stock. I am a minority shareholder (though material) and was hired by the Board to turn around a public company that had limited prospects with its prior business model. I think the DigitalTown idea is compelling. I have logged 3 years of ~100 hour weeks to turn it into a reality. No regrets.
As for shorting the stock, it is possible. Some people are shorting it already. Just be prepared to cover your short if, Lord-willing, we get this done. 🙂
Regards,
Rob Monster
CEO
DigitalTown (rob@digitaltown.com)
Having visited the DT website and picked up marketing info at NC2018 I have to admit, I really don’t understand what the actual product or service is. The city sites look to me like not much more a directory site with amazon affiliate links, and some RSS aggregated content. But if you are talking about connecting cities via one “Super App”, man, that’s a bold idea and still a very long way off based on the examples. The specifics are not currently well articulated, IMHO. You need to do one city as a prototype with fully implemented functionality rather than a bunch of half-finished sites the don’t show anything really new and innovative.
Actually, that is what we are doing in Austin, TX, working with representatives from the public and private sector ahead of SXSW 2019. The mobile app is the more interesting application. Download it on iOS or Android. The mobile apps have more functionality than the web app, including some versatile community tools.
More here:
https://digitaltown.com/blockchain.pdf
Wish you success on this journey, my friend. Will be interesting to see how things pan out. Do you see any trademark issues with smartcity.com?
@ Name – Thanks for the kind words. No trademark issue with SmartCity — it is an industry term. Check out Smart City Expo – attracts 18,000 registered delegates every year in Barcelona. Huge show.
Also, two comment on GAAP accounting:
1. We did 7 acquisitions of mostly acqui-hires and work in process technology. Our auditors required us to write these down within 1 year.
2. Historical payment of stock options required accounting for them using valuation according to a Black-Scholes appraisal model. It results in an inflated number. We have since moved to grants of restricted stock.
Feedback welcome on the app. As merchants come on board in these communities, as communities engage, that experience gets a lot richer. Change your city to Austin and you will get a better sense of the UX.
There was a comment in an earlier article about DigitalTown enabling cities to be their own Google. This does seem to indicate a lack of understanding as to what’s involved in building a search engine at local level. The problem with some of the geo gTLDs that DigitalTown has targeted is that they are still very early stage gTLDs with low web usage and visibility. The registration of a bunch of surname domain names in these gTLDs is quite toxic for natural development and growth of the gTLD. Many of these domain names now seem to have either been dropped or are in the process of being dropped.
One Mom and Pop operation using a domain name and promoting their shop/site is worth a thousand of these cookiecutter domain names with anodyne content that has little or no connection to the people in that locality. These geo new gTLDs need to grow their local web usage and awareness.
The attempts at establishing DigitalTown operations in localities outside the US does seem to indicate a lot of wishful thinking because outside the US, the ccTLD is king. Most of these ccTLDs have been operational for decades. The new gTLDs targeted by DigitalTown have only been operational for a few years.
Have any of the DigitalTown people any expertise in building out websites, directories, e-commerce and search engine sites?