The year 2018 is coming to its end and it is about the time to look back, summarize our progress, evaluate the results and share our plans and vision for 2019. It has been indeed a very busy and exciting year for the whole LEXIT team, with lots of campaigns and accomplishments which has prepared our team for the launch of the LEXIT platform in the beginning of the next year.
In terms of product development, our team has managed to finalize fully the vision and the design of the first blockchain powered M&A marketplace to make it an easy-to-use solution for both entrepreneurs with no previous experience in mergers and acquisitions and professionals who work in the M&A space on daily basis.
As we know, traditional M&A is a complex industry that still relies on manual processes, excessive amounts of paperwork, and connectivity through personal networks. It can be difficult to source the right opportunities, transactions tend to be slow, and finding service providers and specialists for a good price is challenging, which ultimately leads to higher costs, limits the scope of global screening and matchmaking, and results in lower efficiency in the deal-making. Existing services in the M&A industry include virtual data rooms, matchmaking services, and online brokers. Current marketplaces also allow the sale of websites, domains, and apps, or offer a matchmaking "marketplace". However, there is still no single solution that enables deal sourcing, tendering, negotiations, and data room services for M&A transactions. The transaction volume in M&A industry reached 3.6 trillion USD in 2017, which shows us that a unified M&A solution and marketplace would have an immense potential at the global market.
Among the other benefits of our full M&A solution LEXIT also utilizes blockchain technology for some essential product aspects such as incorruptible data and deal room. This is why we have been focusing a lot on establishing and growing our community involving people who are leading the development of blockchain technology. We are proud to say that LEXIT community has reached almost 100 k members this year!
This year can also be called the year of LEXIT partnerships. We believe that the successful transformation of M&A is only possible if we create new opportunities for existing industry participants and integrate them as partners for deal-sourcing and consulting on a revenue-sharing basis. We are very happy with all the partners who started working with LEXIT in deal sourcing, service providing, and technical cooperation including companies such as. BDO, Collider, LXA, Polymath, Selfkey, Hosho, Metaverse, WeOwn, TokenPort and LvH. Here you can read more about our Global Partner Program.
Our marketing team has been focusing a lot on creating content to present various aspects of our project, industry we are working with and network that we have build around LEXIT. We believe that creative and high quality content do not solely help to explain the main idea and the concept of LEXIT, but also provide our community with a valuable insight into various industries, cutting-edge technologies and people who stand behind them. We were happy to cooperate with top professionals in the video production to release five episodes of ‘Life at LEXIT’ series and 11 episodes of ‘LEXIT Founder Series’, that can be found on our YouTube channel. Both series had a great reception from our community and we are planning to keep both formats for the coming year.
It has been a great year in terms of expanding the LEXIT team. We have tripled the size of our team by hiring top talents in development, product design and marketing. As we work on creating a global M&A marketplace, we have a goal to increase our presence in all regions. This year we had a successful team expansion in the Middle East and Asia by adding new team members Tony Jaw, Arjen Brussé and Joe Santiago who hold a wealth of experience in these regions and will help us to enter into these booming markets. We are flattered to welcome all our new team members in our big LEXIT family!
Besides expanding our core team, we have expanded our advisory board with the top experts in M&A, corporate finance and investment banking. We have been happy to welcome Ed Cotler, former vice President in Investment Banking at Goldman Sachs & Co. as our an advisor at LEXIT, as well as Marc Brouwers and Werner Leermakers from LvH whose experience in M&A spans for over two decades including EY since 2000.This summer, we also gladly announced Peter Kavounas as a new LEXIT advisor. Mr. Kavounas is CEO and President of Cloud Strategix, LLC, an attorney with 13 years of experience in financial services, blockchain, and technology regulation, based in Washington, DC.
Together with growing our advisory board in the M&A space we have been reaching out to the global M&A community via events and partnerships. in November, our CEO Amir Kaltak participated in the M&A Advisor Summit in New York, where he took part in the panel discussion about how new technologies such as Blockchain and A.I. could improve and transform the M&A industry. Our participation in such events confirmed that the concept of LEXIT resonates not only among serial entrepreneurs, but also among M&A professionals who have been working in this space for decades. This enabled us to close new exciting partnerships with companies working in mergers and acquisitions, which will be announced early next year.
Our development and design teams have been doing their best and focused on product development during 2018. We had highly helpful product sessions with our M&A advisors in Amsterdam where we aligned our product vision with the insights from buyers, sellers, and independent consultants, and made sure that our platform and its processes correspond with all industry needs. During these sessions we also received global input on diverse user types and roles that participate in the different stages of deal-making.
All of our hard work has led to this moment, in which we proudly announce that the LEXIT platform will be launched in the first quarter of 2019! It has been a long journey full of challenges, achievements and milestones, and the whole LEXIT team is thrilled to get to the point when we are ready and confident about launching our MVP. We know this is only the start of our journey and we are more confident and excited than ever to face new challenges and show the world what we have developed.
We would like to thank everyone who has been supporting us during this year. Every team member, partner and advisor has helped us to reach this moment. We would like to thank our community as well. Your support and trust has always been a main source of inspiration and motivation for us.
Thanks again to each and everyone of you! We wish you new challenges, achievements and successes as you continue working together with LEXIT in 2019!
