Gathering our thoughts, we started preparing for the ICO and the first step, of course, was to sum up the information. We had to analyze which ICOs appeared to be successful and which did not, as well as observe the fund-raising all in all. We looked through accessible databases to list our ICO, created a spreadsheet and embarked on the further investigation. By that moment, the situation was as follows:
- Mainly the ICOs which did not have an actual and valuable concept had failed;
- Those who participated in the Asian market succeeded with token sale;
- There has been a huge percentage of SCAM. Some teams just collected money from investors and then disappeared;
- Some ICOs were prosecuted because of the government position remained unstable.
Having considered all the information, we made a decision to release the MVP as our first project. Unlike most of similar projects, it had to be a functional version, ready for usage — available for placing items, selling and buying goods and services for cryptocurrency. We chose that path, because ICO was our final target that would generate income and we were sure that our community would have trust in us and give our project a warm welcome.
Mistake 2. There is no connection between the readiness of the MVP and the willingness of people to invest in your project.
Besides, since our main task is the work of our project, we became more careful with legal documents and decisions, which we will review in the following chapter. The important point is the international law and compliance with the law, especially in the regions where cryptocurrency is treated with caution.
By the moment we started preparing for the ICO, the cryptocurrency market has already remained in stagnation. And on top of all, new regulating factors concerning cryptocurrency and ICO have appeared.
Mistake 3. Choosing the time for ICO consider the changing trends of national laws.
As we mentioned before, we had had no experience of starting our own ICO and that was the reason we decided to consult with those who could share some ideas. If you try to google or ask your friends, you will certainly find at least a couple of people who claim to know how to start an ICO or has done it himself. The best you can do is to keep your composure and not take much on trust. Many people nowadays tend to overprice their service as they hear the word “crypto”, and we came across that as well. Some time after the ICO events were over, I happened to become allergic to the number “250,000”, as it had been demanded as an average price nearly for any kind of work we needed to be done. In dollars or euro, of course. Besides, very often people tried to overestimate the amount of work, adding some tasks similar to “sitting and thinking about life” for $10,000 each. The most important thing, however, was that the majority of companies or advisers we found, in fact, were just facilitators and had no real experience of launching an ICO. They were nothing, but theorists. Crypto-theorists.
Mistake 4. Do not hire advisors to run the whole ICO give them exact and particular tasks.
The most unpleasant thing about this: briefings take much time while in the end you often get nothing more than empty promises. And briefings are held during the most vital marketing and project development time. Also there’s always a risk of being deceived by the people with fake reputation. We asked some advisors directly which ICOs they had launched, and then we asked the founders whether they knew those people. You may guess the answer.
Finally, we came to the conclusion that such people couldn’t provide us with useful information and decided to elaborate a strategy internally. It all began with the target audience. On the one hand, the crypto marketplace and ICO were attractive to the same audience — people who own cryptocurrency. On the other hand, as it happened with the marketplace, it was people, who treat crypto as a means of payment, while for the ICO it was those, who invest in it. At this point, we came across another problem — we could not legally enter the market having security tokens, while utility tokens would not make any income for owners. But we will review these features in the following chapter.
Originally published at support.alphateca.com.
