Hi! All systems are a go for a public launch of Glo in January 2023, with a soft launch planned for later this month. [UPDATE 4/11/23: we pushed launch back. See our Q1 '23 update for more information.]

Here’s a bit on what we’ve been doing to get there.

Company

• We added two new people to the team: Lori Golden, Director of Talent, and Alexander Drummond, Director of Partnerships. Welcome Lori and Alex! 
• This brings our headcount up to ten.
• We met in Istanbul for our quarterly retreat! Our main goals were to get aligned and to get stoked and on both counts it went well. 
• Here’s more on how we think about quarterly retreats.)
• We incorporated as a public benefit corporation and registered a fiscal sponsorship with Global Impact. This arrangement helps us get off the ground faster. 
• Long-term, we plan to register as a 501(c)3. 

Partnerships and Marketing

• We’ve been having some very promising conversations with crypto exchanges and other DeFi organizations. More to say about this soon.
• We’ve been collecting supporter testimonials.
• We’re spreading the word about Glo on social media. We’re aiming for 10% growth in combined Twitter and LinkedIn followers per week, and sharing the results in a public spreadsheet.
• P.S. If you're a Glo fan and a social media whiz, we’re hiring for a Content and Social Media Manager position – and many other roles as well!l

Product and Engineering

• We initiated the Glo smart contract on Ethereum and Polygon!
• We set up the three co-founders as members of the governance council, which required, among other things, their setting up hardware wallets and amending their wills to include a succession plan.
• We underwent a security audit by Certik, a blockchain security firm. The audit identified three issues which we mitigated/resolved.
• We are currently recruiting for six additional spots on the Glo governance council.
• We’re building an interface for getting Glo in the hands of the public.

Upcoming milestones

We aim to have all of the following done by the day Glo launches on an exchange:

1. A bug bounty program with Immunefi.
2. Our first business purchasing to Glo.‍
3. Real-time attestations of our reserves provided by a well-regarded accounting firm (this one might happen post-launch).

If you’ve already got the smart contract on ETH/Polygon, why not launch tomorrow?

Because Glo is fundamentally a financial product, which means that we need to get the security and governance details right from day one. The maxim that if you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve waited too long to launch is fine for, say, a social network or an analytics tool, but we have to meet a higher standard if we’re going to ask folks to put some of their savings into Glo. So we’ll launch when we’re completely confident about Glo’s fundamentals.