Whenever I see a company publish a brand new website, I always ask myself why.

Did their graphic designers have spare time? Did the marketing department feel under pressure to produce something new? Was the CEO just interested in a refresh? Or did something change?

Supporting Evolution

Shortly after the DAI contracts were launched in late 2017, one of our co-founders and I started building a peer-to-peer lending protocol. We didn’t have a company. Just two guys looking into the future.

We were accepted into an accelerator in Hong Kong and changed our product. We couldn’t get an uncollateralized lending protocol off the ground without credit data, so we became the DeFi credit data provider. Feeling grown up, we incorporated Graychain in late 2018.

We built our product, doing just about everything from scratch. The ecosystem was young. We spent a year trying to sell our product. Lots of firms were interested, but none were ready to buy. We were too early.

So we pivoted again, we took lessons learned and changed our mission. Building credit models in crypto was hard. Building any model in crypto was hard. We decided to make model building within crypto easy.

We re-incorporate in Singapore as Credmark, rebranded, and rolled up our sleeves.

Within months we had a working prototype that allowed us to easily build sophisticated financial models using current and historical blockchain data. The Credmark Platform and its associated development framework was powerful, but complicated. We struggled to get new hires to understand it well enough to become productive. And we struggled to get clients to become self-sufficient.

Building a community of modelers was going to take time, and our runway was getting shorter. So we took a step back.

We needed to solve two problems:

1. how to get people to understand and leverage the Credmark Platform, and
2. how to remain solvent.

We are addressing (1) by building simple interfaces (APIs) to logically grouped models, and (2) by charging for their use. Classic SaaS.

Just as our new products sit alongside the Credmark Platform, our SaaS framework sits alongside our DAO. Some clients will pay for our products with a credit card; others will stake our token for access.

We continue to evolve.

New Products

Our APIs are designed for developers who aren’t interested in model development. They need access to DeFi data with as little effort as possible. In addition, we are making the raw data available to the world via the Snowflake Marketplace.

These APIs and this raw data are gateway drugs.

Eventually our API users will ask for something that is very specific and not suitable for a general-purpose API. They will need to access models directly.

Eventually our raw data consumers will become frustrated with their tools. SQL is powerful, but it pales in comparison to the Python data science ecosystem and our library of pre-built DeFi classes.

Since our products and delivery mechanism have evolved, we needed to reflect these changes in our website. We also needed to reflect them in our branding.

A New Website

We didn’t set out to build a new website because we had spare design cycles – we didn’t! – or because our marketing department was under pressure to deliver something – it wasn’t – or because the CEO just wanted a refresh – I definitely didn’t! We built a new website because things had fundamentally changed, and we needed to communicate those changes.

The platform and development framework are complicated. Our last website was complicated. Developers were confused unless they invested a lot of energy into understanding the product. The same was true with our website. I often spoke to people who’d been to our website and had no idea what we were selling. This wasn’t ideal, but at least no one could accuse us of being inconsistent.

Our new products are easy to understand and easy to consume. Our new website is easy to understand and easy to consume. The pendulum has swung in the other direction. The website is designed to be easy to navigate and all our copy is written to inform. We don’t want anyone to walk away not understanding what we sell.

When the message changes so radically, it’s always a good idea to change the messenger. And by messenger, I mean brand.

New Branding

Credmark’s brand was already mature and well established. We were happy with it, but we thought we could improve it, and we did.

Our new logo is strong. Our new fonts are bold and slightly surprising. And our color palette has matured. The entire visual language supports our direction and products perfectly.

What’s Next?

Our current re-focus is complete. We have solid technical foundations, a clear product direction, and a website to support those.

The next six months will be spent building product, selling it, getting feedback, and making adjustments along the way. Our website is an integral part of this process.

About Credmark

Credmark runs a financial modeling platform powered by reliable on-chain data. We curate and manages DeFi data making it available via API and the Snowflake Marketplace around the globe and across industries.

Our community of quants, developers, and modelers actively build models for the DeFi community by leveraging our data API and tools. Join the growing community and together we will advance the next-generation financial system.