a multipart series told by the founders detailing how you can make all the right decisions and still fail.
Part 1: The Future’s So Bright!
The idea of IP.Gold started out innocently enough. Take an proven profitable business model in the IT space, buying, selling and monetizing IP addresses that everyone on the Internet has to use, develop an open and transparent tokenized funding model that shared revenues and profits with contributors and conduct an ICO. We thought, simple enough, as we were experienced entrepreneurs and tech guys with the industry experience, some great connections and the capabilities to pull this off. After all, there were literally hundreds of ICOs launching monthly that were being funded for millions in crypto with no operating history or viable product. Surely, an operating company with a profitable business model would set itself apart from the “on paper” ICOs and start raking in crypto contributions as fast as we could take them! No Brainer!
From the outset, we designed IP.Gold to be simple, secure and transparent: simple website, simple whitepaper, simple tokenomics with asset security and everything out in the open. To us, even the business model couldn’t be more simple: trade and monetize IP addresses. Used by everyone and everything on the planet to connect, IP addresses are a finite regulated asset that Service Providers and businesses pay for. For the past several years, it has become harder and much more expensive to get IPs, so a secondary market for trading IPs has been and is continuing to grow exponentially. Like any other finite asset, shortages in availability created significant revenue opportunities for IP address holders. This gave IP.Gold the confidence and belief that it had a solid business foundation for an ICO and a stable, long-lasting token.
In January 2018, after the unbelievable meteoric rise of ICOs and crypto valuations at the end of 2017, while the market was still riding high, IP.Gold landed what looked like a huge opportunity to launch its ICO without having to build everything from scratch. Tech Bureau Japan テックビューロ株式会社, who had just completed a $95M ICO for COMSA, its ICO launch platform, whose Chairman and CEO has worked together with a founder at IP.Gold, was interested in having IP.Gold be its initial COMSA platform launch customer. Needless to say, the IP.Gold team was ecstatic! $95M USD raise in the bank, 288,000 contributors, owners of the ZAIF crypto exchange and we were their inaugural customer! With a partner like COMSA backing us, confidence in the success of our ICO swelled!
So, while IP.Gold had in-depth discussions with Tech Bureau/COMSA in Japan, USA and Europe, we finished rounding out the marketing and ICO team, advisors and website in preparation for the private pre-sale and integration with the COMSA ICO platform currently under construction. IP.Gold set a date for its ICO launch of May 2, 2018, coordinating it with Tech Bureau/COMSA and went about discussing, coordinating and working on our private raise and finalizing the agreement with Tech Bureau/COMSA. We were so excited, we couldn’t wait to tell our interested private investor contacts the bigs news about COMSA, but we needed a signed commitment between all of us first.
The IP.Gold website went online in Late March, 2018 and the Private Sale started shortly thereafter. The service contract wasn’t yet signed with Tech Bureau/COMSA, but no worries, we had some private investors to lined up and we were very close on contract terms and deliverables. Even though the FSA, Japan’s version of the SEC, was investigating Tech Bureau, COMSA and ZAIF, we were assured and all signs pointed to the fact that while this might cause some delays, Tech Bureau/COMSA was actually working with the FSA to “write the rule and guidance” for future ICOs in Japan. We all felt this was a good thing in the long run, as it would give IP.Gold FSA-sanctioned access into the Japanese crypto/ICO market, unarguably one of the strongest and most active worldwide.
Then things started to slip little by little. A week into the IP.Gold Private Sale, with several private investors lined up waiting to hear our “big news”, Tech Bureau/COMSA, supposedly based on guidance from the FSA, started to push back on the agreement we were waiting on a final review from them to sign. First, the IP.Gold ICO was restricted from marketing in Japan, according to Tech Bureau so we lost access to more than half of COMSA most active contributors overnight. A week later, now more than 2 weeks into our 30 day private sale period and a few weeks before the public ICO, Tech Bureau/COMSA removed any and all marketing support from the agreement, including to COMSA contributors, ZAIF users, anyone. For another week we negotiated with Tech Bureau/COMSA to get some level of marketing support, but to no avail. IP.Gold’s “huge opportunity” now looked like nothing more than a simple software as a service platform play, with less than 2 weeks to go before our public ICO launch. The only ray of sunshine was the commitment of Tech Bureau/COMSA‘s Chairman/CEO, Takao Asayama 朝山貴生, who had been a trusted business associate with one of IP.Gold’s founders for over 15 years, that he has “private investors to introduce us to” as soon as we signed the agreement. So, with less than 2 weeks to go until our Public ICO, we decided that “a bird in hand is worth two in the bush”, signed the contract and prepared for the responses back from Takao and the other private investors. And then nothing came….
Part 2: “Failure To Launch“
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