Mas is no newcomer to social networks. His first project, 'Tree of Friends', appeared in 2000 on the Ukrainian portal UAportal, owned by investor Alexander Soroka. In 2004 he launched Infostore.org. UAportal was later sold to the holding, and Mas himself said in 2019 that he had been nurturing the idea of 'craft social networks' for three years. He intended to build the new project on the same logic as his previous ones, only without a single large platform: each network is created for a specific client.
Money from a syndicate
Mas decided to finance the project in an unusual way. At the time of the interview there was no lead investor yet, but one was expected to invest between $100,000 and $1 million. In parallel, a syndicate of friends was being formed, open to join with a contribution from $100. Vector gave an example: a participant owning 10% of the syndicate, which in turn received 5% of the project, gets 0.5% of the project. Users were to join a council, which was called the 'board'. The investor and the syndicate manage the project as equals.
The plan envisaged five prototypes, of which one would be kept. Testing required 15 to 25 clients, and 10 potential ones were already lined up. A mobile web version would launch first, while Android and iOS versions were being developed in parallel.
The project intended to earn from several directions. Companies would pay for organising communities and buy licences for the apps. Users would buy an internal currency, with revenue from it shared between community organisers and the founders. 'We want to hand people the keys to groups,' Mas explained.
A billion and a 'unicorn'
The project's ambitions were large: a valuation of one billion dollars and the status of Ukraine's first 'unicorn'. According to Mas, since 2009 Facebook had been covering 80% of users' needs, and that was precisely what created space for niche networks. He formulated the main principle thus: 'The main thing is to grow 10 times faster than the market, then everything will work out.'
By the time he left Kyivstar, Mas already had experience organising industry events. He was a co-organiser of iForum, whose first edition took place in 2009, and he ran the 'Internet Business' track. In autumn 2019 the syndicate joined the project gradually: by November 2019 it numbered around 280 people.
What happened next
On 10 March 2020 the organisers announced that iForum-2020 was being postponed to the autumn because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In August 2021 Mas said that the syndicate had 411 investors, about $58,000 had been raised, and the prototype had reached its 77th version. At that time the project still existed as a working development, not as a presentation.
On 6 October 2021 Oleksii Mas died. His brother Viktor announced the death on 8 October, after which a wave of obituaries and retrospectives appeared in the media. On 29 November 2021 a dispute arose over the fate of the project: one side declared it closed, while the syndicate continued to be run by Bohdan Hnatiuk. He renamed the project Craf on 30 November 2021. Hnatiuk owns Maralles magazine and the Chakloon project, and it was in Chakloon that what began in 2019 as 'craft social networks' ultimately turned into.
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