Initial Coin Offering (ICO) has been touted as the new way for startups to have it their way. Everything about them is impeccable. As per the reports, the end of 2017, the amount raised by ICOs was $4 billion in funding, which was even higher than the total amount generated by the Venture Capital Funding in that year. More companies are choosing the flexible ICO kind of fundraising as compared to traditional fundraising to jump-start their business. Apart from helping in raising funds, ICO is also helping startups in establishing a loyal group of investors.
ICOs are definitely on the boom but they do have certain risks associated with it. However lucrative ICOs look they do have a dark reality to it. Today, many startups are fascinated with the idea of ICOs and are exploring the option of launching their own ICOs however, not all of them are fully aware of the essentialities, complexities, and legalities involved in an ICO launch.
Here are a few tips and must-knows that will help you launch an ICO that is only if you have made peace with the risks that are aligned with ICO.
1. Launch or showcase Minimum Viable Product (MVP) before you launch actual ICO as it helps you authenticate your product, service or idea quickly to decide whether to continue your product idea and if so, whether and how to modify it. This generates interest amongst investors for a particular product even before the full version of that product is ready for publishing. Remember, MVP’s represents a ‘Proof of Work’ and investors are attracted to ICOs having an MVP ready.
2. Make sure that your team has ideal traditional startup members who have an in-depth knowledge in the cryptocurrency domain and personnel who have tasted success in their previous ventures. Unknown members or who do not have any serious background information should be strictly avoided. Team members play a crucial role in bringing pertinent experience and connections to the table. Investors like a team better that can evaluate their capabilities to collectively carry through with the vision of ICO.
3. A Whitepaper is not just your tool to illustrate clearly about your project is about but it is the document that will encourage trust and create authenticity in the minds of the people who are going to buy the tokens. Your white paper should ideally include a vision of the project, technology used, assessment of the problems faced by the certain industry, how and why these problems are important, how your product will solve these problems, etc. It should also contain a token generation model how the tokens will be distributed, timeline and milestones of the project as well as about the core team and its record of accomplishment. Investors consider ICO white papers as a signaling tool used to reduce risks of falling prey to a fake ICO.
4. Along with your business idea, investors are also interested in the proposed roadmap of the project. Serious investors or early buyers believe in speculative analysis of the crypto asset (Pre and Post ICO launch), investors are interested to know about the previous milestones achieved and when the next one is bound to happen. You will notice a hike in the price of the asset when you are nearing towards achieving a milestone. Thus, the roadmap and its content help investors to understand when to be more participative in the project and when to steer clear.
5. Marketing and advertising is an important aspect as unless people are not poked and told about your product there won’t be any curiosity among them. Telegram and Slack have been prevailing and most preferred social media channels by the crypto community. Use Reddit to build a ‘democratized’ platform allowing people to upvote/downvote depending on the quality of the content you will be posting. Along with using Facebook and Twitter to their fullest potential you need to market your ICO on certain Bitcoin forums to attract the crypto scholars.
So the long and short of it is putting the best of your efforts into every possible opportunity even to make a small change happen. Sometimes the result won’t be up to the mark, but you get to learn something at each ICO launching stage. Maintaining proper documentation with the utmost care is also crucial.
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