The Hito Protocol says “Hello World!”
We are Hito :) Nice to meet u!
Today is the day! Alongside the launch of this article, we also launched our Website at https://hito-protocol.io — check it out and let us know what you think :)
We’re super excited to be here and officially start operations on becoming a worthwhile crypto-startup in 2022.
So far, we have made it out of the ideation phase, started applying for grants and accelerators (if you got any input on that, we’re more than grateful if you reach out!), and will work hard to impress you in the upcoming weeks and months with our combined team-power!
Brief History
At the moment, we are a two-person team, based in Germany, looking to expand as soon as we have secured some funding.
The idea for Hito was born at EthLisbon Hackathon in October 2021. If you’re interested in our nerdy beginnings, let me know — I have a half-baked article in the pipeline that I could publish to take you on the journey alongside our idea space and mindsets ;)
The current VC and investing situation
At the moment, our experiences with getting investment for a startup idea have been rather dull.
The Fiat World
You’d think that in the traditional investing world (a.k.a. the Fiat World), startups present their idea to investors, and the investors either give the startup money to build/scale their idea. Or not and the startup repeats the process with other investors until one finally bites and pulls out the checkbook.
Prior to this beautifully centralized process, there is a lot of work going on on the side of the startup that first-time founders often don’t realize:
You need to have a design, possibly already a website. You need to invest in marketing measures or at least have a strategy on what to do. And in the best case already have a user base or target group that is impatiently waiting for your product to finally launch so they can pay you for it. And all of that needs to be written out immaculately in a 3–5 year business plan type of document.
In the bestest of best cases, you even have a prototype ready or an MVP launched that already serves the most urgent needs of your user base.
Then the investors will invest and from this incoming funding, you can start to build a team, start to build/optimize/add features to the product, or scale your whole operation to a bigger magnitude.
Crowdfunding as an alternative
An alternative to this is crowdfunding, using many small investors and funding contributions instead of a few big ones, in order to get that initial monetary influx.
In both cases, the investors (small, medium, or large ones) will evaluate heavily whether they want to invest in your company, because: once they hand over the money to you and your startup, there is a (statistically rather high) probability, that the startup won’t fly but crash and burn — and the invested amount is irrevocably gone forever.
Our idea
The core idea for Hito was basically the thought:
Why don’t we just … change that? You know? Like just … make all of that a lot easier for everybody involved?
If investors wouldn’t have to worry about losing their initial investment, especially if they are medium or smaller-sized investors, they could invest their money more freely. Because if they cannot lose their hard-earned savings anymore by a crashing startup, but either get their invested money back or profit from startups riding to the moon — what would stop people doing that?
And this is where the magic internet money from the blockchainzzz comes into play!
Not only can we programmatically create a base layer of trust, that enables participants to use protocols and tools without worry for their funds (as long as they are properly audited and yadda yadda yadda), we also have the amazingly awesome, newly emerging DeFi space to buidl new tools and strategies!
Our idea is super simple, yet also because of that amazingly elegant:
Risk-Free Early-Stage Investing
We want to build a platform, where startups can create funding pots for their ideas.
But alongside those funding pots with the general idea of their projects, they specify a first, very concrete milestone goal (i.e. build and launch a website) and a milestone timeframe (i.e. one month), in which they want to reach their goal.
Like on normal, centralized crowdfunding platforms, investors of all kinds can now put their investment money into those funding pots.
But as soon as the money is in the pot, it gets locked for the milestone timeframe and transferred into DeFi protocols, where it earns stable and predictable interest.
The startup, on the other hand, can access those generated interest moneys and use it for reaching their milestone goals. They cannot, however, access the initial funding amount from the investors. This is important because:
Once the milestone timeframe is up, the startup team and the investors review the progress made. In terms of the previous examples, the startup would present and launch its website. The investors can then take a look and determine if they’re satisfied with the quality of the produced work.
If they are not satisfied, the investors can leave the business table super easy and straightforward, no hard feelings: They simply withdraw their funding from the pot, get (nearly) all of their initial funding amount back and can go on with their lives and their money and invest in other startups or things :3
If, however, the investors are satisfied, they can leave their funding amount in the pot (or even put more funding in the pot), so the startup can use the generated interest in their next milestone round, where a new milestone goal and a new timeframe are specified.
But… what’s in it for me?
But what’s the incentive for investors to put their money in those pots if they could just invest their precious money in the same DeFi protocols and earn the interest themselves?
No worries — we got u covered, boo!
Since, for the moment, we’re 100% in the blockchain space, the emerging startup will at some point very probably do one of the following things: Found a legal entity, create an NFT sale or even launch their own protocol token.
This is where being an early investor pays out: Through the participation in the Hito pots, the investors will be guaranteed a reward from the startup when they do that. This could be a special NFT, a part of the equity of the new company, or an airdrop after the token generating event.
Pretty cool, huh? — We know!
Roadmap 2022
This is why we’re currently not only very much in love with this beautiful and elegant idea but have prepared a roadmap in order to take y’all with us to the moon.
- Milestone 1: Launch a Website. Start social media activity. Begin preparing for a Utility NFT sale (more information following soon!) — This milestone is reached by January 9th, 2022.
- Milestone 2 (happening in Q1 2022): Develop and implement a marketing strategy. Develop smart contract side of the NFT sale. Raise initial funding to further accelerate and build an MVP.
- Milestone 3 (happening in Q2 2022): With the NFT sale completed, found a legal entity, cooperate with strong partners and advisors, start building a team and begin development of our MVP
- Milestone 4 (happening in Q3 2022): Go live with the MVP, add DAO structures to enable direct and decentralized community engagement. Raise further funds (probably the traditional way) to grow from MVP stage to product-ready stage. Prepare ICO.
And those are just the big milestones we want to hit this year. Reaching and passing them will involve a lot of tiny steps along the way. Some of those will for example be the creation of a Discord server and a Telegram group, more updates on medium, the doxing of our founder's team, partnerships with existing projects, and much much more!
If you want to be a part of this journey with us, if you have questions or input or if you just want to get in touch — reach out to us on Twitter at @HitoProtocol or leave a comment under this article :) We’re very hyped to take y’all on this adventure with us!
More to follow soon!
Now, kindly fasten your seatbelts and stop smoking, as this spaceship is about to launch!
