Coaching Blockchain Dream Teams
Please read Cofound.it’s announcement blog post for an introduction to the project
Crypto crowdfunding is a fantastic evolution of project financing. Projects are now directly connected to a worldwide pool of potential supporters and early adopters, with a much higher chance of finding supporters that understand the business prospect and wants to engage in the vertical the project operates in. However, only bringing in the capital and not the support of the VC model is severely limiting the chance of success for these projects.
In the months I’ve been evaluating crowdsale projects, both as a personal project and later professionally for ICONOMI’s Performance digital asset array, it has become clear that just as in the normal startup world the team is the most important ingredient for a successful project. When it comes to evaluating team strengths, we have found that one of the simplest and best ways is to plot them on two axes based on their business and technological competence.
In terms of quadrants, we have teams that score low both on the business and technical competence level — those are not interesting to potential supporters. Teams that score high on both are superstars, but there are very few of those. Most of the teams I have engaged with in the past few months fall somewhere in between — typically (but not always) with a very solid technology background but lacking the more business-oriented pieces of the puzzle.
Cofound.it’s value proposition is simple — we bring the missing pieces of the puzzle and create dream teams! In essence, this is the “smart” part of the money a traditional VC investment brings but on steroids since we can leverage a much larger and global network of experts and services tailored to each project.
In order to make this work, a few key items are needed: a structured initial evaluation, an experienced project manager for coordinating experts and the crowdsale process and a financial model that helps us get first-rate experts that at the same time the teams can afford.
After initial project evaluation and acceptance, Cofound.it will assign a head coach that will work with the teams to identify the key areas where Cofound.it experts can add value — both to fill whatever gaps exist in preparation for the crowdsale and immediately after, to kickstart operations until the project can recruit or buy the necessary expertise.
Today, this is a network of experts in areas such as branding, design, UI/UX design, communication, sales coaching, business strategy, investment banking, M&A, law and more.
The head coaches are experienced professionals with previous first-hand experience of being involved in an crowdsale. Their role is to set the key goals for individual experts, monitor progress and milestones and work with the project to make sure the crowdsale process goes smoothly.
Aligned incentives are key to any successful venture. That is why Cofound.it coaches are paid using the crowdsale project tokens — in fact, most of the tokens Cofound.it collects go to them. That allows us to price their services high to attract the best talent, while making sure the projects can afford them. And as the tokens are only paid in the case of a successful crowdsale and locked for a 3 month period, all the coaches are incentivised to do a great job with lasting value.
We will be introducing some of our coaches soon, but we also want to expand the network globally. If you have a specific expertise and business vertical experience that you think would be valuable in the expert network, please contact me directly and we’ll talk more.
