Choosing the Right ICO Project
An ICO platform’s perspective on the features that make a project exceptional
An ICO platform’s perspective on the features that make a project exceptional
During the past few months, Cryptonomos has received over 300 applications from ICO projects looking for us to partner with them in developing and hosting their token sale. From this huge number we are proceeding with only four of the very strongest ICO candidates. There are a variety of factors that guide our team’s collective decision making process, and in this post I’d like to explore the factors that have been the core determinants in guiding our choices for the future Cryptonomos marketplace.
It’s all about teamwork
The projects we elect to our platform have either strong existing businesses and/or technology that are transitioning onto the blockchain, or are being developed by a team who have successfully operated a business in the relevant industry for many years. The experience of the team is crucial for demonstrating their proven potential to transform the ICO from a crypto vision into a viable long-term project. If a team has deep experience in the relevant industry, but lack suitable blockchain advisors, one of our roles will be to build a team around them that adds the necessary depth to thrive in the crypto space.
For an ICO project to be a success we are interested in the long-term viability of the project and how committed the team are to it. It’s also crucial to us that they are a team that the Cryptonomos team will work well with. An ICO is a short-term, complex, exhaustive project, that only works when the whole team is pulling together. We look for partners during this process, not just clients.
“It’s the economics, stupid”
The token economics, the case for the blockchain, and the affiliated materials (white papers, landing pages, etc.) all need to be watertight. While we regularly work with our partners to bring any deficiencies they may have up to scratch, there are some core issues that can’t be worked around from our perspective — namely: does it make sense for this project to be on the blockchain? Is there a sound economic underpinning to what they are trying to achieve? Does the business make sense? One of our partner projects, Cereal, is an incredibly exciting, revolutionary new business model without precedent. It creates an entirely new avenue for utilizing crypto assets. Our choosing to partner with them combined rare business opportunity with a blue water approach to expanding the blockchain.
We perform a rigorous business analysis and due diligence on all of our partner projects. We want to partner with the best. It’s why our community of 120,000 token buyers keep coming back and exploring each new project we offer them.
An ICO by any other name would smell as sweet…
Branding and general aesthetic is crucial for all projects, though for some the requirement is higher. If the project is aimed at targeting artists and designers like Leonardo Render, then its aesthetic feel has to be right on point. Leonardo Render is a crypto ecosystem and software platform that connects designers to the computational power of crypto miners to deliver CGI rendering in near real time (a process that today can take up to a month for each second of rendering).
If on the other hand, the project is aimed at the medical industry like Dr Smart, then the art can be more formal and more in line with the visual sensibilities that are standard in that industry. Dr Smart is a highly innovative health service that utilizes telemedicine, blockchain medical records, and bleeding image A.I. technologies to deliver a new standard of medical care and accessibility at revolutionary cost. In all cases though, the project materials must have a professional and polished look.
Our team will analyze the existing visuals and materials of a project and if they are not up to par, we will work together with the ICO and connect them with our designers so that their branding is on point.
Bandwidth
In a perfect world we might have chosen several more projects as many of them possessed great strength in some, if not all of the the various attributes I discussed above. But much as in love — timing is everything — and some projects had to be passed over merely because we didn’t have the scope to take them on. We’re a tight-knit team and we strongly adhere to the principle that a job worth doing is worth doing right.
