Rapid fire insight for the intelligent fools

Those are people who are financially or technically literate, or both. Enough so to see beyond bogus business models, buzzword bingo claims and straight out scams. Some are even in the crypto sphere for a long time, they just are not enough in tune with the ICO space. I myself probably fall in here. So here are the traps:

• It’s a good use case — yeah sure, but since last summer fifty teams did the same thing. Most of them probably worse, but some might be better. So depending on market cycle you can buy this at 30–70% discount on IDEX.

Do a simple competitor analysis. Who is doing something similar (most likely the same) how far along are they. Can you place a cheaper bet (at lower cap )on a more developed project?

• The space really needs this — some business bros and a part time dev found a great story to tell. Trouble is a business heavy team can rarely deliver on the more complex projects without serious developer backing and the market will hopefully price this accordingly.

An outsourced development is okay-ish for an AppCoin. It is a 100% no go for a protocol. Just because an integrated holistic solution sounds good this does not mean a bunch of things should be stitched together in a Frankenstein of a project (ala HybridBlock). Bros won’t be able to deliver on a complex consumer facing project with most of the stack still missing.

• Fundamentals are strong — this is a very irrational market with highly inflated early valuations (that are finally becoming reasonable). Even strong teams building real projects will flop if they are mispriced with respect to current market conditions

The team secured the funds to build something meaningful and the VCs backing it (that gave you the final push of confidence) got a decent discount, have a 12 month lock and a long investment horizon. Everyone else can wait, can you? Even though “market timing does not work” it should not be completely ignored.

Insight for the teams

Mostly calling bullshit, where it is due.

• Conventional marketing is a no go — recently at conferences there are hundreds of consultants structuring companies to sell their marketing expertise and experience in SEO, Facebook and banner ads, content marketing (paid articles, most likely in the Forbes blog). This is for most projects of substance a total waste of money.

If an ad for your project pops up on CoinMarketCap or Facebook its an automatic pass no excuses. It is common sense among ICO speculators (most call themselves investors, but let’s be honest here). There are hundreds of other teams fighting for my money and your ad tells me three things: 1) You are clueless about the space; 2) You are probably spending more time and money on fund raising, than on development of your “unique” product; 3) You are trying to target the most naive audience because you probably will fail the scrutiny of more experienced crowd

• Most advisers, especially serial “marketers” are FoS — having helped ScamCoin raise double digit millions to have the token be traded at -97% from the ICO price is not the type of track record that institutes trust. Someone who has “successfully done this many times” probably sells his clickbait marketing services that maybe work during peak hype, but are a waste of money today. Paying a website to include you in their “expert” list probably means you are no expert.

You should stay away from the types described above, unless of course you are a cash grab yourself. Do a simple background check on the advisers, you want people who have advised legitimate projects and/or have some other sort of value adding perspective (technical expertise, relevant experience etc.). In other words: Zero track record is better than having advised 20 projects who all have flopped.

• Websites that rate ICOs and also have promotion packages are a bad look — a lot of the websites listing new projects also have packages for promoting your particular project. Experience shows that only projects that purchase a package receive high grades. Not going to point fingers a general rule of thumb is if there is an ICO in the name of the website the rating is paid.

No one who has been around for more than a month will trust your 4.5/5.0 rating on those websites, those who did have already lost their money. In essence you are paying for a wide audience of people who either don’t have the money or know better than to trust rating with glaring conflict of interest. Furthermore experienced speculators will likely disregard your project if you promote your project on the basis of that review. Don’t waste your money on looking less legitimate.

• Anyone who says it is easy to raise funds with an ICO just wants your money — this includes advisers, service providers, conference organizers, ICO launching platforms, marketers and promoters

If the only reason for you to resolve to an ICO is the promise of easy money you deserve to fail but here are some quick tips for you also. The people listed above depend on your ICO budget for their commission so they wan’t tell you that the following list of strategies that worked in 2017 is a sure way into failure today:

1. Sprinkling decentralized and blockchain into your business plan and calling it a white paper might have worked last June, but won’t work going forward.
2. Saying you use blockchain to remove the middle man when your entire very much centralized business model is to be the middle man
3. Selling dreams of adoption with “Uber/AirBnB/Facebook/LinkedIn/Slack on the blockchain” to the “moon mission” crowd

Hope this has been worth your time and thanks for reading. As always claps and comments are appreciated.