ICO founders seem to be getting dumber — and the blame lies with marketing agencies. When the ICO boom started a few years ago, it seemed like a fantastic new solution for those founders who had little or no money. No more kowtowing to venture capitalists. Enough with groveling before angel investors. Investment funds despise you? Fine, now you can despise them, too.
A brave new world was forming in front of exalted founders’ eyes: you could raise millions — dozens of millions! — just by issuing a token. A business plan? Who said “business plan”? What, a prototype? No need for that. In that glittery mirage of free money, all you needed was a decent landing page, a “White Paper” (whatever that was) and bunch of set phrases like “transforming the way people do business” or “revolutionizing financial markets”.
As we all remember, it worked beautifully for a while — then two things happened.
First, rather than revolutionizing anything, hundreds of early ICOs ended in failure. Investors lost their money and became wary. Second, marketing agencies and consultants of all kinds realized that there was a lot of money-making going on — and they weren’t invited! So, sensing founders’ weakness, they descended upon them, saying, “Aha! See all those scams? You’re gonna end up just like them — unless you hire us!”
Sure, for those who view the whole decentralization/crypto realm as humanity’s hope for independence from the powers that be, this development is frustrating. Even to me, it’s a bit disgusting — and I have many friends in such agencies! But on the other hand, hasn’t the same already happened everywhere else? As soon as you start making money, there’ll be an intermediary wanting some of it in exchange for precious advice on how to make money. Wherever there’s a market, there are marketers. Actually, considering how many digital marketers there are on Twitter, I wonder if there is still enough stuff for them all to market!
So marketing agencies made their triumphal entrance on the ICO scene and started behaving like Italian mothers. Let me tell you about Italian mothers. They are the most annoying, harmful, frustrating creatures on Mediterranean shores. They damage their children for life by not teaching them how to manage their own stuff. At the age of four, kids still wear diapers. They are not taught to read until they go to school. They are not given any chores. They are told not to run or jump — because otherwise they will sweat, and sweating is the root of all diseases. At the age of 18, most Italian teenagers are absolutely helpless — they don’t know how to apply for college or even cook pasta.
Here’s my point: ICO marketing agencies do the same thing as helicopter moms do: they prevent founders from doing just about anything useful. What’s worse: they make them believe that a founder’s sole job is to produce an idea. Any further attempt at independent endeavor is like sweating: it will hurt the startup. The big difference, of course, is that ICO agencies charge ridiculous sums of money for what they offer.
What is it that they offer, then? Well, it starts with a White Paper. No, it’s not your task as a founder to write one. You can’t write; leave it to our copywriters. Then there’s the landing page, investor’s dashboard, token itself, smart contract, content plan, social media accounts, Telegram chat, press releases, partnerships, bounty campaign, airdrop, roadshow… It’s incredible how many ways of extracting money can be found once you put your mind to it. But it’s all absolutely necessary — removing even one item from this list will certainly result in failure. So founders pay.
The results are sad. Today’s ICO founders can’t write a single coherent paragraph — they can’t even explain their own idea, because most details in the White Paper were invented by the copywriter!
Example: the other day I was asked to take a look at the social media profiles of a certain project founder, and I commented that it would be good for him to have a Twitter account. To this, my friend from an ICO agency replied, “But then someone will need to write his tweets, and we don’t have enough resources for that!”
When I said that the founder should write his own tweets, she was puzzled. Like what, himself? With his own hands? No, this can’t be.
The results are very sad. Founders spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to be turned into dumb sheep. All initiative is stripped off them. And like in any oppressive system, eventually they give up and start believing that their own project is not their job.
What’s worse, once the agencies arrived on the scene, the ICO market got inundated by founders who were not really founders: not-so-capable chaps who were more willing to pay than to learn. Being a founder used to be akin to a noble title, a sign of bravery, of independence, of vision. Not anymore. Almost every week, I meet founders who seem to be proud of the fact that other people do everything for them.
Is there still hope for ICO founders? Can they redeem themselves, can they be weaned off agencies? I don’t have much hope, to be honest. Perhaps someone should start an agency teaching those folks how to be real founders? Would be far more useful than writing their tweets for them.
My frustration with ICO founders is also expressed in the following stories:
Three dumbest things ICO founders do
