IOV meets soft cap in Round 0 of our ICO. What else have we achieved?
The last three months have been the most challenging, yet exciting times for IOV. In these months we managed to grow our team from 6 to 17 very talented individuals; finish a successful round of ICO pre-sales; win a runner up title at the famous TechCrunch Startup Battlefield and make prompt advancements on the first public prototype of IOV technology. These achievements signify the beginning of an incredible journey. Now, as we have completed the first round of our ICO pre-sales, it is time to look back and reflect over the last months of really hard work and subsequent results.
ICO — from challenges to victory
When we started our pre-ICO in April, we did not imagine that the demand to participate in the token sale would so strikingly exceed our expectations. With the number of applicants growing by day, It was humbling to see so many people who share our vision and who want to contribute to the progress of IOV.
Running an ICO is an incredibly challenging task, while staying determined to delivering a product that has never been seen before. You also need to be adapt to new regulations, legal precautions and convince many skeptical investors that have been previously deceived by fruitless or dishonest ICO’s. Nonetheless, our brilliant team and the help of numerous supporters made it happen. We were able to raise 4.2 millions Euros and have over 5000 people whitelisted for the next private round of our ICO.
Round 0 was an invitation only round. The idea behind it was to facilitate a strategic fundraising round, in order to bring key international partners who could help accelerate IOV’s progress globally. We succeeded in establishing a network of partners, advisors and a growing IOV ecosystem around the world. We believe that this strategic funding round will prove extremely beneficial for the project, but we remain committed to a widespread token distribution in the public sale of our ICO
Know Your Customer?
One of the major concerns of a company that launches an ICO is the problem of trust and reputation. The concept, the team, and the solutions must build trust among investors and supporters of the campaign, and convince them of the reliability of the company long term.
This is why, we are determined to rigidly comply with Know Your Customer (KYC ) and Anti Money Laundering (AML) regulations, ensuring that we know our contributors and where their capital had come from. Conducting the due diligence and making sure that our ICO is aligned with KYC/AML regulations lays a foundation for protecting IOV from potential fraud and other risks of security voids. It is a timely and a demanding procedure but it puts a stamp of legitimacy on the project and garners credibility from the regulators, making the further operations smoother and irreproachable.
Community comes first
Preparing an ICO is a complex and time consuming process, and while doing it we also need to stay committed and transparent to our community, which at times can be a challenging task. One of our big challenges was the management of different time zones. Luckily, we always have some community members that are willing to respond to the questions that have been unanswered by the team in a different time zone. We are determined to provide the community with all the relevant information regarding our project. However, it is not always possible to disclose some information to the public, especially when it involves other stakeholders. Nonetheless, at IOV we are committed to completely honest and transparent public communication. We believe that all the developments should be transmitted to the community, whether they are positive or negative.
Overall, we were very happy to receive so much support from the community members. We are growing the IOV community completely organically and never had any intention to pay for our expansion. Many of the community members are ICO reviewers who voluntarily post positive feedback and acknowledge our project. This kind of support means so much to us and we really value that the IOV community is helping us reach our long term goals and objectives.
Recognition as a motivator
We were also very happy to be published in Forbes, with a great article by Rachel Wolfson explaining the vision of IOV to the extensive audiences of this leading publication. This happened just after we won the runner-up prize at TechCrunch Startup Battlefield — another extraordinary achievement of IOV team in the last months. We were very proud to be recognised as a second most promising startup in Europe by thought leaders in tech. It feels especially rewarding when the blockchain technology is still so niche that rarely blockchain startups are recognised as leading innovators in a general tech scene.
Meanwhile, there were other important industry events offering knowledge and opportunities which aligned with our objectives. We were exhibited at VivaTech in Paris, where we were invited by Cisco. We also attended Consensus in New York, Zurich Blockchain Conference and Crypto Valley Conference in Zug — all of which were extremely informative and assuring in our vision. Each event and conference provided us with more opportunities to raise awareness and connect with potential partners and advisors for IOV.
We are growing!
With so many extraordinary achievements, we can confidently say that one we are most proud of is growing a small team of 6 that we were in April to a highly experienced team of 17 by the end of June. And we continue growing. Our CTO Isabella Dell, with an expanded team of top developers, are working extensively on delivering a flawless prototype of IOV technology to the public as early as July. Meanwhile, our international team together with influential group of partners are joining the efforts to build awareness about IOV globally and scale the mass adoption of our technology when the product is ready. We are also very lucky to have a community around us that sees real value of our project and supports us in actualising our vision.
Finally, it is the last week of June and the round 0 is finished. But we are already preparing for the next round. The waiting list on the token page is getting longer and much more work is ahead of IOV team. But we are extremely proud and excited about our advancements and will keep informing our community with continuous and transparent updates.
Here is our only goal at IOV: to make it real! 🙌
To learn more about IOV, visit: www.iov.one
Ask us any question on our Telegram chat: http://t.me/internetofvalues
