Transcript of the AMA on September 5th, 2024

On September 6th, our third AMA of the year took place, featuring Lebnan Nader, CEO of Stables, Jérémy Coste, Head of Community & Marketing, and Sylvain Willekens, Game Designer. We've compiled this transcript for you to be up-to-date on all the upcoming exciting changes to the Stables platform!

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Jeremy:

‍Great, we’re ready to go. Let’s go! Hello everyone, and thank you all for being here for this new AMA. Most of you know Lebnan and Sylvain, but we’ll do a brief introduction anyway. We have some exciting things to share today. We’re going to review the recent updates. If you’ve been following the developments lately, you know about the new game and all the new features. We’ll start the presentation with the past two months and then move on to the end-of-year roadmap and early next year’s plans to show you what we’re working on. Lebnan, could you reintroduce yourself for those who don’t know you yet?

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Lebnan:

Of course, I’m Lebnan, the CEO of Stables. My background is in video games, lottery, sports betting, and PMU. I know a little bit about both worlds. I’ve been with Stables for about six months now, working with a great team. My goal is to work with the team to transform Stables into the world’s leading fantasy horse racing racing platform. This involves partnering with various horse racing operators worldwide, not just in France. That’s it in a nutshell.

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Jeremy:

Great, thank you. Sylvain, I’ll let you introduce yourself as well.

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Sylvain:

‍First, thank you all for being here as well. I’m Sylvain, the Game Designer on the project and Product Owner. I’ve primarily worked in gamification before moving into UX and eventually into gaming. Today, I’m the Game Designer on the project, and I’m very happy to be here at this AMA with you all.

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Jeremy:

Great, thank you both. I’ll continue right away with what we have to show you and recap the past few months. Before diving into the details, Lebnan, can you tell us a bit about how you’ve experienced the last two months from the inside? How do you see the progress and the major changes that have occurred recently?

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Lebnan:

‍It’s not just the last two months, Jeremy. It’s been like this since the beginning. We started with the idea that we have a platform, a great community, and a solid concept. There’s something happening, something good.

When we started, we had a plan to transform the platform into something gamified, with real connections to the world of horse racing. Over the past two months—since our last AMA—we’ve been working hard, especially during July and August, with the Olympics and summer vacations. We focused on transforming the platform and adding new features that we believe are relevant to our users.

We wanted to create a sense of partnership with our players. The idea that anyone can create their own race and invite friends or random players was very important to us. It’s about building a sense of belonging to the platform and the project, and strengthening that partnership by awarding 10% of the race’s winnings to the race creator. Other fixes were community-driven or features we felt needed to be added to keep users engaged on the platform.

We don’t want Stables to be a platform where you register for a race in the morning and check the results in the evening. We want it to be a place where people can come at any time and find something to do, participate in, or create. It’s not 100% a video game, but a platform where the focus remains on horse racing and Web 3, while fostering community engagement and fun.

I hope the community has enjoyed the features we’ve added over the past two months. There’s still a long way to go, but we’re focused on making the platform a place where users spend time, have fun, and take pride in their stables. Ultimately, it’s all about enjoying the experience.

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Jeremy:

‍Thank you, Lebnan. Speaking of recent features, we discussed them in the last AMA as upcoming additions, and now they’re here. Not all features apply to everyone.

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On the screen I’m sharing, you can see the simplified onboarding for new players, which was essential for the game. Previously, you needed a wallet to start, which was confusing for many. That’s all in the past now. It’s now very easy to log into the platform using Google sign-in or a password login, even if you started with a Web3 wallet. This feature was developed and implemented in July to make it easier for new players to join.

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This login page is followed by the onboarding process, which includes the choice of a first free horse. If you remember your experience as early players, you would arrive and be directly welcomed on the homepage without much explanation. Today, we have this free horse that is given to new players, as well as to the previous ones. This is just one example of how the onboarding process has improved, making it easier for players to start racing and explore the platform.

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And so, here we are on the homepage. We'll talk more about it a bit later; it's still set to evolve. We arrive at this new interface where we have the seasonal races at the top and the daily and community races at the bottom. So, with a certain number of daily races each day, the information is presented more and more clearly. I'll put it that way, even though we know you're still waiting for more information, particularly about distances and tracks. Sylvain will talk about that a bit later. We’ve also made it simpler to join races by providing more detailed information about horses and races, helping players make informed decisions about their participation.

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Very recently, if you noticed, we also included additional information about the horses. These were details that were missing before. Now, in a race that is currently open for registration, you can see who the registered players are, including both the names of the horses and the players. You can view the levels of the participants, the number of attributes of the horses, and what those attribute points are. Additionally, you can see the recent results of these horses in races for the same distance, and so on.

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Along the same lines as the Daily Races, we’ve introduced the Community Races, end of August, so about two weeks ago that allow you to create your own races, set your own race parameters, register your own horse to the race for free and make a commission as well. When we look at the number of races, I don't remember exactly, but there were more than 300 in two weeks. You are able to create five races per week. I’ve seen people successfully marketing these races on Discord channels!

We’ve seen some pretty hilarious race names. I was thinking yesterday that maybe we'll do a little contest for the race names and give away some prizes. I think that could be fun. But anyway, we can see that people are enjoying these races and managing to attract their friends and other players. Lebnan, do you want to say a few words about these Community Races? What was the idea behind them? In which direction are we going with these Community Races?

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‍Lebnan:

For me, Community Races are one of the best features on the site because they really include everyone. As I said before, it creates a sense of partnership with the players. When the player creates the race, their horse is registered for free. They earn 10% of the total winnings from the race. They invite their friends. And like you said, I’ve seen on Discord, and I’m really happy when I see someone create a race and promote it by saying, “Here’s a race, 2400 meters, go ahead, etc.” For me, that’s the win we wanted to achieve.

It’s really the sense of partnership for me. If you like horse races, you have horses, you understand how things work in horse races, on racetracks, etc. So, for me, it’s a nice and important feature to have. I can’t say yet if it’s working very well or not. The initial numbers are great. We’ve had about 400 races created in two weeks. So, that’s really good. We have a start rate of over 40-something percent. More than 8 out of 10 horses start in the races. And we haven’t really announced or marketed this feature yet. So, for me, it’s a big win so far. Now, what I hope is that people will create even more races and become marketers as well. They promote and advertise their races so they fill up quickly.

Other than that, what can I say about the races? For me, personally, I play mainly on this feature. I create races, I invite friends, and I hope the community likes it. In the future, we’d also like to collaborate with people in the industry. People who work in PMU, jockeys, horse owners in real life. So they can create their own races and invite people to participate. That’s my feeling on this point.

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Jeremy:

Great, thank you. Sylvain, would you like to say a few words about the Community Races?

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Sylvain:

Community Races are also, without a doubt, a great test to see how the community interacts with them. It also addressed a problem we had, which was the number of races we provided with the daily races. The idea of the Community Race was to add more races to meet the demand. We’ve been very flexible with the number of Community Races that can be created, and that’s because, as I mentioned before, we’re in a testing phase.

I know that we’d like to develop certain concepts, like, for example, “My horse is unbeatable on 4000-meter grass tracks, come challenge me on my home turf.” That was part of the spirit of this feature. Right now, I would say we’re in the testing phase, but it’s really interesting to see the number of races created.

I’m not sure how it’s been perceived—I read Discord every morning—but I’m not entirely sure how the community feels about this concept. But for us, it’s a big project and one of the major releases of recent times.

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Jeremy:

If I continue, we’ve also introduced mass horse registration, which was also highly anticipated. It was quite tedious for large stables to register multiple horses when you had 10, 20, or 30 horses. So, it was a much-needed feature. It’s out now, and it’s working well. We’ve also recently added a “Select All” button so you can select all your horses with a single click. So, that’s been developed, it’s in place, and it’s working, and we’ve seen positive feedback on that.

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If I continue, we’ve also added a race history page, which will be improved further. We’ll be adding more information. We know we need to include the strategies chosen by the horses that ran. You’ll see a “coming soon” notice here. It’s developed and almost finished, so it will be available very soon. So, a simple view where you can see all the results of these races, for all the horses. We’ll also be adding filters, as we know it can be difficult to find the results of a specific horse. So, that’s coming—more details on strategies, more filters to help you find the races you’re looking for on the race history page.

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The race rendering—some of you use it frequently to understand when horses’ abilities were activated during the race, at what point certain horse capabilities fall short, or when your horse becomes a bit too slow. Sylvain, can you talk about this and perhaps share our future vision for race rendering? Will we keep it as is, or how will things evolve?

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Sylvain:

To talk about this, I have to mention the algorithm, which I know is one of the upcoming questions, so I’ll touch on it without going too deep into it. Both topics—race rendering and the previous one you presented, where we’ll soon be able to see in the race history the strategies selected by our competitors—are connected.

The idea is to say that today, as you know, and we’ve already talked about it a bit, we’re somewhat limited by the current algorithm, which is being reworked, and we’ll talk about it later, so I won’t elaborate too much on that right now. But the idea is to say that our primary goal for the evolution of these subjects is to give more and more information to the users. Today, for instance, we can’t see when a horse’s “rush” ability is triggered, which is one of the attributes. We know this is an issue, and we need to fix it. These are things that will be addressed with the new algorithm. Our goal, as I mentioned earlier, both for the analytical reports of races and during race rendering, is to help users better understand the races through feedback and detailed reports of what happened—why a strategy was optimal in one race but not in another with the same parameters.

That’s the goal of these features. I see these two elements as keys to user understanding, and they will be greatly improved with the evolution of the algorithm. Again, I won’t get ahead of the presentation, as I know you have questions about this later.

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Jeremy:

We’ll discuss the algorithm a bit more later and how it will impact these features. The horse profiles already existed, but they lacked some information, such as the horse’s level progression and how far it is from reaching the next level. This was reintroduced in the patch note last week, I believe, or very recently. The profile page will continue to evolve with more data, including claim buttons to collect your points. This page, too, will evolve over time, and we’ll discuss that shortly. Still on the profile page, you know that in the performance and results section, you can view your horses’ race results. You can also check the analytics pages for a slightly different and more detailed view of certain data.

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If we move on now, coming soon, as I just mentioned, the horse profile page will also include a claim button to collect real-world gains. Sylvain, can you tell us more about this button? What will it do? Why is it there? What will players be able to claim?

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Sylvain:

Yes, of course. Today, the claim of S-Points from real-life races happens automatically. The goal is to reward users who are more engaged with the game. That’s why we’re reintroducing a manual claim system, where the player must take action within a limited time frame—one week, to be precise.

The aim is really to reward the most invested players. A week is still quite generous. Given that we’re on the web and can’t necessarily forward a notification, we’re giving players a week, which is more than enough time to claim their S-Points. But it’s a first step toward rewarding the most active players, who will get more passive S-Points, so to speak.

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Jeremy:

You’ll also see some charts appearing to show cumulative gains. We’ll talk more about that later. We know you’re eagerly waiting for the page that will let you track your S-Point accounting. That page is in design and development and will be released soon. It will be part of this horse profile page, which will give you more information about your specific horse.

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On this screen, we’ll introduce the beginnings of a user profile concept. Right now, there’s no real player profile. We have horse pages. We’ll introduce, as you can see on the right side of the screen, a feature that will remind you of the gains you’ve made since your last login—a sort of mini-accounting of what you’ve earned since the last time you were on the game. This will allow you to track your gains when you reconnect to the platform. You’ll see what you’ve won, how many races you’ve won recently, and this type of information. Sylvain, do you want to add anything about this upcoming feature?

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Sylvain:

The goal here is to give you a little progress tracking. We’re aware that the next step will be truly groundbreaking in terms of tracking your S-Points and all your gains. But for now, we’re offering a small report on your gains, which is less complex to implement. This was a request for a little accounting report on the races we’ve run, and that’s where we started.

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Jeremy:

Great. Moving on to the roadmap, this is a topic you know well—the famous re-roll. It’s a topic that players constantly talk about, and rightly so. For those who are newer to the project, we used to allow players to completely control their horse’s attribute evolution. Players could reroll their horses’ attributes multiple times. This feature disappeared recently with the new version of the game. Sylvain, we’ve discussed this with you as well. What’s our vision on this?

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Sylvain:

Sure. First, let me explain why it disappeared and how we want to bring it back, though it will be a bit different. I’ll try to summarize it overall. Feel free to interrupt me if it’s getting too long. The goal of the reroll system, back then, was to give players at least a minimal level of control over the random allocation of their horses' attribute points.

Why didn’t we allow players to assign the points directly? It’s because we didn’t want all the horses to have the same characteristics. The reroll system was designed to avoid this. However, we noticed that players really wanted to be able to assign attribute points to their horses themselves. Lately, we’ve been thinking about reintroducing the reroll, but in the end, we’re developing an entirely new system that will let you take back control of how attribute points are distributed as your horse levels up. I’ll come back to how this will work for horses that have already had their points assigned.

But the goal is to return control to you. So, forget about the reroll idea. The idea is to keep the spirit of rerolling, but we’re no longer talking about random rerolls. We’ll be looking at mechanics that will still have a bit of randomness, but you’ll have the chance to re-engage with your horse’s development. I’m being deliberately vague because I don’t want to promise something that isn’t finalized.

The key takeaway here is that we want to give you control over your horses' attributes, and there will be a new optimization mechanic for attribute points, which won’t be guaranteed but will feed into both the economy and gameplay loops.

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Jeremy:

I think that sums it up well. That’s exactly the idea. It won’t just be about clicking a button to re-roll the attributes; it will involve more interesting choices and more thought for the players.

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Sylvain:

Exactly. And as I said I would mention at the end, if we give you control over the points for your horses, of course, we’ll make sure that horses with already assigned points will be able to redistribute them properly, as if this system had always been in place. So don’t worry about that. The goal isn’t to be secretive. I see the comment in the chat saying we’re being mysterious. That’s not really the case. Basically, when your horse levels up, you’ll have the opportunity to use attribute points. And now, let’s say, the remaining 25% of attribute points will be earned in ways other than leveling up.

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Jeremy:

Exactly. And in any case, we’ll keep you updated as we make progress on this, which is an important part of controlling your horse’s development. Another point that I’m really excited about is achievements. You’ve seen achievements introduced through side challenges during the seasons, or at least outside the main platform. These weren’t achievements integrated directly into the game. We want to expand this format of challenges. We think it’s a fun way to engage players. Can you tell us more about what we’re planning with achievements, Sylvain? Maybe not all the details, since development isn’t finished, but can you give us an idea?

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Sylvain:

Achievements have several goals. First, they’ll immortalize your progress within Stables. They’ll also allow you to measure yourself against challenges and objectives. There may be leaderboards linked to this feature, depending on how the development goes. The idea is to see who managed to complete all the achievements, who invested the most time or strategy, which not everyone will necessarily do, and reward players accordingly.

Another goal—something I care deeply about—is to enhance the season concept, moving toward something more modern in the world of gaming today. Even though we keep reminding everyone that this isn’t purely a video game, it’s gamified. When I say "enhance the concept of a season," I mean that today, we have season races, but we’d love to tie achievements to proper seasons with specific themes that align with both player actions on the site and our ongoing releases. For example, if we introduce a new game mode, like a horse relay race where two horses run, and the second starts after the first one finishes, we could imagine a themed season around that, with challenges and rewards tied to it.

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Jeremy:

So the goal is really to structure the concept of the season and make it feel more exclusive—whether through Web 2.0 rewards or other rewards. Of course, these won’t just be Web 2.0 rewards, but I’ll keep part of that as a surprise. This is a big project for us, and when it’s in place, I think a lot of players will be excited. Now, Sylvain, your favorite subject and a question that comes up constantly—the algorithm. How can I understand it, how can I master it? You mentioned a revamp of the algorithm in the last AMA. Where are we with that, and what does a revamp really mean for the players and the game?

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Sylvain:

Last time, during the AMA, we started talking about a revamp of the algorithm. That revamp has taken place. Its main goal—let me start with this—is to help you understand it better. By "understand it better," I don’t mean that it’s incomprehensible today, but we don’t give you enough tools to grasp what’s happening. Additionally, we’re not entirely satisfied with how the current algorithm works. We feel, though it’s less of an issue than some may think, that there’s still too much randomness involved. I’m specifically talking about the effects of terrains, which have a random chance of triggering every 100 meters. We’ve read your feedback, and we want to reduce this randomness.

Personally, I’d like to see randomness reduced to about 20% in races. But randomness is randomness—whether we measure it over 10,000 races or over five races, the results will differ. The main goal of this algorithm overhaul is to help you better understand what’s happening. This includes feedback during races and clearer strategy descriptions.

There are things we can’t do today with the current formulas. For example, instead of saying that your horse gets +2 attribute points in speed, I’d rather say that your horse gains +2 speed points, which will increase its speed by 5 km/h on average. I think that’s much more interesting.

And that’s when you’ll really start to understand what your horse can do. That’s the goal. That’s what we’re aiming for.

Since I mentioned last time that we’re working on this, it’s only fair to ask where we are with it now. Today, we’ve revamped the entire framework and architecture of the algorithm. Previously, your horses' positions were calculated every 100 meters, and we interpolated the data between those points. Now, we have a system that calculates the horse’s position at any moment. This structure is already in place. However, we’ve reviewed all the new calculation formulas that were developed, and we’ve decided to simplify them to achieve a very simple result—being able to present things much more clearly. For example, "My horse runs at this speed, and using this strategy in this situation will give me this or that bonus." That’s the goal.

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Jeremy:

I think people are even more eager to see this. It’s planned for the end of the year, and we’ll implement it along with everything else we’re working on. Moving on to the platform UX update. Even though the new platform was launched in July with a complete overhaul, we’ve realized that the homepage is still quite difficult to grasp at first glance.

When players arrive, they see seasonal races at the top, daily races, community races, and although we released the tutorial a few days ago, we want to simplify the interface even more so it’s even clearer for players what’s going on. This UX update is an important project because it impacts how well the platform is understood. When players understand how the game and platform work, they’re more likely to play and spend time on it. We’re working on this, and it’s a key part of making the platform more accessible for both existing players and new players.

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The race time frame system—currently, races are slotted into specific time slots. If you regularly play, you know there are time slots like 6 AM to noon, noon to 6 PM, 6 PM to midnight, and so on. Until recently, races only launched at the end of those time slots. This was frustrating for several reasons. For instance, if you register for a race and it fills up quickly, you might have to wait five hours for the race to start. During this time, your horse is locked, and you can’t use it in other races, even if you want to. So, we’ve already fixed this by making races start immediately—or nearly immediately—once they are full.

The time slot system still exists, and we want to gradually phase it out so that the experience becomes much more fluid. We want players to be able to join races and have them start as soon as they are filled, without having to wait for a specific time slot. There’s also the introduction of the stamina concept. I’ll let you talk about that, Sylvain. How are we going to implement that?

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Sylvain:

Once again, several things. Let me quickly go back to the concept of removing the "starting grid" system. The goal is always to let you participate in more races. I’ll make a parallel with what I said earlier—one of the main limitations we face with the current algorithm is that you don’t have enough key understandings to limit certain effects. What we do is we ensure that across different levels of horses, you can have the feeling that it's fair.

Our goal is to ensure that you can participate in more and more races. But there are two aspects to this. The first is that it shouldn't become something that is—how can I put this—I was going to say 'without consequences,' but that sounds a bit harsh—something that has no cost. Playing indefinitely should drive the game's economic loop, and that's the main purpose of the stamina system.

Secondly, it's also normal that users with a larger stable can play more naturally. If I only have one horse in my stable and it's completely exhausted, it's logical that I can play less than someone who has two horses. But the main objective here is also to start introducing an economic loop that isn't solely tied to S-Points on the platform. The concept of stamina is something well-known and recognized in the video game industry; it's something you're already familiar with.

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Lebnan:

To add to that, I'll quickly go back to the details of the race. When you want to register for a race, you can see who has already registered and the recent performances of the horses. This is something that happens in real life, in real races. Today, we're trying to add features that closely resemble real-life experiences. For example, with stamina, if you are the owner of a horse, the horse can't race three times a day or even every single day. It needs some time to rest, to train, etc. So, we're introducing this. Of course, we won't set a stamina limit of a week or four days. It might be two or three times a day; we'll decide this over time. But the goal of all these aspects is to create strong connections with real life, with real epic races.

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Sylvain:

Yes, exactly. And to add to that, it's about the connection with real life that you mentioned. It's something we want to recreate. What we're aiming for right now is that you can race with a horse that has 20% stamina. However, your performance won't be as effective as with a horse at 100%. That's why I mentioned developing an economic loop around this. Essentially, we will likely introduce consumables that allow you to restore this stamina if you wish to play longer at 100% of your horse's capabilities. Thank you. So, a new game mechanic that will be very interesting, no doubt.

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Jeremy:

Thank you. So, a new game mechanic that will be very interesting, no doubt. We're also thinking about lending and renting horses. This is a topic that has been on the table for a long time and something you have mentioned multiple times. When can we borrow a horse or rent a horse? It's something we want to implement.

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The referral program—there was a question about this on Discord a few days ago—which would go perfectly with the community races. You could invite your friends to join a community race for the first time. The person creates an account through you, and then we have a referral program. So that would be interesting—sharing rewards, earning a bit more. These are things we're considering for the end of the year.

I've saved the most important topic, or maybe not the most important but certainly the most complex, due to legal aspects and the numerous issues surrounding tokenization. Lebnan, I’m passing the hot potato to you. Can you tell us a bit about what we want to do with tokenization? Why haven't we been able to do it yet? What steps do we need to take to have a token?

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Lebnan:

I wouldn't say we haven't been able to do it yet. I think that from the start, we were aware of our timeline. We always said it would be towards the end of this year for several reasons. The first reason is that we needed and wanted to transform the platform into a more gamified experience where people can spend time. The famous phrase we all agreed on is that at any moment, if a player is on the site, they should be able to do something.

They can create a race, they can play, etc. Once we achieved that, and I think today we are over 60% through our production plans and changes on the platform, there is still a lot to do, but the major topics—community races, daily races, etc.—are all done. So today, we've started working on this.

To put it simply and briefly, this requires many things. The first is technical development. The second is economic development. The third is legal development. I'll start with the legal side. Legally, we are working with two different companies, so to speak. One company deals with tokenization and Web3. They are legal experts and lawyers who are explaining to us what needs to be done, the documents to be provided, the laws to be respected. Everything must be very clear, honest, and transparent.

So, we're working on that and have already started. We also have a technical consultant who is helping us with these developments. The other aspect is also legal, but it's more about whether we can do this or not. Can we create a race, invite people, and earn S-Points that can be converted into tokens, which can then be converted into euros? So, as we said yesterday, Sylvain, there's really a fine line.

There’s a fine line between gambling and not gambling. We are not a gambling platform; we are an alternative to gambling. So now, the legal aspect that we hadn't focused on before is whether we can do this legally.

We're sorting all of this out, and everything seems to be fine, so there shouldn't be a problem. As for the economic aspect, that’s the easiest part. We have already discussed this and have worked a lot with the Tezos Foundation to create the economic loop within the game.

The third, and also relatively easy part, is the technical side—coding, development, etc. So, today, with these different aspects that we're working on, I like to say that we have a dedicated team for this. We are very serious about it, and we are developing a token that can be exchanged for S-Points. The S-Points themselves will remain on the platform, in the Web2 realm, so to speak. But the S-Points can be converted into a token. This token will be a Web3 on-chain token. So, we will be able to exchange our S-Points for a token. This token can then be used as you wish—exchanged for Tezos, euros, bitcoin, etc. As for the timeline, we've started the work, and all the plans indicate four months, three and a half to four months. So, I would say by the end of the year we will have the token, or at the latest in Q1, the first quarter of next year. So, if all goes well and there are no major obstacles, we should have it by the end of this year. If there are some obstacles, maybe just a few, it might be towards the beginning of next year.

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Jeremy:

Very clear, thank you for that answer. We're at the end of this presentation. We received some questions on Discord this week regarding the AMA. If you have any questions, please post them directly in the comments on the Discord conference.

We'll read them right after the comments I've already noted. I'll start with you, Lebnan. We've talked about fundraising. Where do we stand with that? How is it going? Who have we contacted? Tell us a bit about fundraising.

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Lebnan:

To start, it's important to clarify that the reason we want to raise funds is really to accelerate international growth. It's not because we need money here in France, especially after the fundraising we did with the Tezos Foundation in April or May, which was completed in the summer. We have what's called a runway, meaning we can sustain, continue to operate, and keep working for quite some time.

We're not in a hurry in that regard. The reason we're interested in raising funds is really to speed up international growth. When I say international growth, I mean replicating what we did here in France with PMU. We want to do the same in other countries. We are currently working with other horse racing federations to obtain the IP rights, the rights to use the names of the horses, their details, and their symbols to transform these horses into NFTs and welcome new users from different countries. Our goal, our dream, is for someone in France to compete against someone in Japan, someone in America, and someone in Brazil at the same time, in the same race.

The idea today is not just to have French horses but to have horses from all over the world. We're currently working with a target of eleven different countries to start with. We think we can add two more countries next year. So, instead of just having French horses, next year, we'll have horses from France and two other countries that we're finalizing. The goal is to accelerate this growth. Instead of adding one or two new countries per year, we aim for five or six. To do this, it requires a lot of travel, meetings, business development, and ultimately, a significant budget. So, the purpose of raising funds is really for growth.

Now, where do we stand? We have prepared the evaluation, the pitch, the ideas, the goals, and the plan. We started talking to a small list of investors in June-July, but the first round was more about introducing ourselves, explaining who we are, what we do, our project, and our goals. We outlined where we see ourselves in three years, five years, seven years, and so on.

The initial meetings went very well, and normally, how it works is that you sit down with investors, explain everything, they ask questions, and then you go back to them two or three months later with numbers, metrics, KPIs, etc., and continue the discussions. This is a process that typically takes six to nine months. By the end of September, the community races will have been running for a month and a half, and the daily races for three months. We'll have enough details, numbers, and data to continue the discussions with investors. The investors we met were very pleased with what we've done and are excited about what we're working on, so I think the discussions are very positive, and there are some promising prospects for the future.

But let me reiterate, we don't need to raise funds to continue development and expanding the platform. We need the funds to accelerate our presence in the international market.

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Jeremy:

Thank you, a very detailed response. I think we have a better understanding of where we stand on this topic. Let's move on to some gaming questions. We had another gaming-related question about the community races, specifically about the rarity of these community races since, for now, it's five free tickets per person per week, which are given out, as a reminder, for free every Monday. Is there an intention to start charging for them, to offer fewer tickets, or perhaps to introduce different rarities for the tickets?

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Lebnan:

Basically, as I mentioned earlier, we are in a testing phase. We started with a feature that was quite challenging to implement for the community races. However, we thought, this is a new feature, and we want to test it. We put a lot of work into it and wanted everyone to try it out, make it a bit festive, so everyone could create their race, play with it, and start recognizing the strengths and advantages of the feature.

Personally, I would like to make it a bit more challenging. Not necessarily because I enjoy being the one to spoil the fun, but to create a certain rarity around having a community race and give it a stronger impact, at least for the person who has the opportunity to create one. Right now, as I said earlier, since we are currently focused on giving you the opportunity to participate in more races, making it something very accessible aligns with this approach.

We did have a concern, though—if there are too many community races, we need to limit them. And I can assure you that we have the means to limit them since we initially planned to make it quite challenging in that regard. So, to sum up my response, for the moment, the feature has just been released. We are still collecting data on it. It's not impossible that, in the future, it could become something rarer or take on a different form. We'll see. But if we realize that there are far too many races and they are not being filled, yes, we will take measures sooner than expected.

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Jeremy:

Thank you. We have another question in the chat. I'd like to take this opportunity to mention that we moderate the names of the community races. We've noticed some offensive names, and we moderate them. And, of course, the tickets are not refunded.

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Lebnan:

It's been only two weeks since we launched this. As we mentioned, over 400 races have been created, with a high percentage of them actually starting. Today, I imagine, and I'm sure, Sylvain, that we see it the same way. We still need more data to make such decisions. Maybe another two weeks, three weeks, or perhaps another month and a half to gather enough data to decide in one direction or another. But as Sylvain says, nothing is impossible, and nothing is set in stone. We need to be open to change and do whatever it takes to ensure our users are happy, including new users.

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Jeremy:

Great, thank you. We have a question about in-game accessories. It's a broad topic. Accessories, in fact, have never really been clearly defined. What exactly is an accessory? Sylvain, could you please talk about that?

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Sylvain:

Yes, it's something that has been promised. Inevitably, you can imagine this topic has come up more than once during meetings. My view on this is that accessories, or items, have something very interesting to offer from a gameplay perspective. We could easily talk about cosmetics, but that’s not how we've approached it so far. We were more focused on something that impacts gameplay.

Right now, my primary focus is ensuring that the fundamentals—by fundamentals, I mean the attributes of your horses, the elaborate system, the understanding of strategies—are solid and well-functioning. We need to have a strong foundation on which to build. And that's where items and accessories can come in to enhance these elements. For example, if I tell you that by adding a horseshoe, strategy X no longer improves by X% but by Y%, provided you have this accessory equipped, that becomes exciting. But to do these kinds of things, we first need a base that is solid and stable.

For the moment, we know this is something that was promised and will be implemented. However, since we see it as a way to optimize the game—and as I mentioned earlier, we're currently revisiting the algorithm, which is the literal foundation of the project—we are not yet working on developing these elements at this time.

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Jeremy:

Great. Thank you. A question about breeding. We didn't touch on it in today's presentation. Is it still in the pipeline on our end?

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Lebnan:

As we said, nothing is set in stone, and nothing is unchangeable. But for now, we're leaning against breeding for a very simple reason: we want to maintain a strong connection with real life. We want all our horses to be real horses—horses that race, horses that we can see.

We want to add a lot of horses. In France, we still have some more to include, and we will be adding horses from other countries as well. I know breeding isn't just about adding more horses, and we’re considering whether to implement it or not. However, up to this point, we've been leaning towards not including breeding. This could change, but for now, it's a no. The simple reason is that we want to preserve that connection with real life.

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Sylvain:

In this case, my answer is similar to the answer I gave earlier about accessories. If such a mechanic were to be introduced, it would be centered around optimization. Right now, we need to establish the fundamentals before we can explore optimization.

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Jeremy:

We have a question about the Paddock Collective. Indeed, we always have a meeting with the Paddock Collective just before these AMAs. We have a bit of a closer relationship with them, and we try to share our developments with them in advance. We don't yet have a dedicated platform to give them access to features before they are fully developed. The idea, in the long term, is to have an environment where we can provide privileged access to a select number of players to test features before they are released to the public. This will be the evolution of the Paddock Collective.

We continue to have regular meetings and almost daily discussions with them, incorporating their feedback into the game. So, it's been about an hour and five, an hour and ten minutes since we started. I think there are no more questions. Lebnan, would you like to say a few words before we wrap up this meeting?

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Lebnan:

I think we've covered just about everything. First, I'd like to start by saying thank you to everyone who was here. Thanks to all the users and players in our community. We need you, as always, to keep playing, sharing your feedback, your ideas, and everything you have in mind. Go ahead, share with your squad, talk to us, and tell us what you'd like us to do. Our mission is to transform Stables into a platform dedicated to international horse racing.

Our vision might be a bit broad, but we believe we can achieve it at some point. We aim to be the world's one and only platform, partnering with different countries and featuring real horses, to democratize epic racing without gambling, involving everyone around the globe.

My vision, my dream, is for a Brazilian, an American, a Japanese, and an Indian to race in the same event against a Frenchman, a Belgian, and a German. We will get there; it takes time. We have a great team—not a large one, not 50 people, but around twenty or a bit less. We work tirelessly to add new features. There's a lot of development happening, many things going on under the hood, things you might not see, optimizations, security measures, and maybe even some commercial aspects. So, stay with us, keep sharing your ideas and feedback, and we'll get there.

Thank you once again. Thanks to all of you.

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