Cutting your Web3 project’s time to market will increase fundraising potential: a DeSci case.
In a bear market like this, budding Web3 entrepreneurs have a challenging chicken-and-egg problem. Investors are increasingly well-educated and are expecting more than a snazzy white paper before parting with their money. But for tech teams to show a working product with all the intricacies of Web3, they need funds.
Infinite loop. Headlock. Frustration.
We see that in the current Web3 market, speed of development and speed of fundraising are interconnected.
- If you build fast…
- You can go to market faster.
- You can raise money faster.
- So you can build even faster!
We believe that by building on Nevermined, teams can break that cycle. Below is the case of one of our partners, VitaDAO, who cut their development time by 400–600%.
COMPELLING MISSION + NOVEL PRODUCT
Last year we worked with Molecule and a number of other organizations to develop and launch VitaDAO, the first ever biopharma IP-NFT transfer for scientific research.
As any entrepreneur knows: it all starts with spotting an opportunity. VitaDAO saw blockchain as an elegant and simple solution to an industry challenge. The mission is to support early stage longevity research. To do this, VitaDAO applies a decentralization angle to the funding of the research, as well as to the management and sale of the IP connected to the research.
In short: tokenize the IP and the blockchain magic will ensure access, transfer and other conditions that are pre-defined.
PRODUCTION-READY TECH
However, turning that promise of blockchain magic into the reality of Web3 tech is less elegant and simple. Tokenizing the IP of scientific research into an NFT sounds easy, but experienced Web3 thinkers and developers know that the devil is in the details.
We’re not talking about putting JPEGs on a blockchain here. VitaDAO is operating in the domain of medical research, and the technical context, as well as the legal consequences, are much more intricate and complicated than most use cases.
Complex use cases and on-chain development aren’t the best of friends. So, rather than build a solution from scratch and run the risk of getting lost in the complexity of tech details, VitaDAO implemented production-ready components from the Nevermined stack.
BUILD FAST
You can find a more in-depth explanation here. But the key phrase in the previous paragraph is ‘Rather than build from scratch…’.
In VitaDAO’s case, the immediate benefit of using our Tokenization Engine and our Decentralized Access Control module, was that they could deploy a solution for IP-NFT transfer in about 4 weeks. Building a custom solution from scratch, however , would have taken 4–6 months by our estimate for the same solution. That’s 4x-6x quicker.
That speed provided the basis to finetune their use case and add meat to the project’s conceptual bone. It then allowed the concept to move to MVP and finally to a live product in just a matter of days. In VitaDAO’s case, that also meant being one of the first movers in the DeSci space.
The consequence of all this is that you are in a superb position for investors to give you a call, especially as a Web3 project with an in-need, tangible use case. Investors are always more inclined to bet on projects that can demonstrate delivery, so rocking up with a mission, a live project and tech that works will make it so much easier for investors to choose your project.
There is no doubt that building on Nevermined gave us a competitive advantage. Set-up and integration with the rest of the tech stack was simple enough. This meant that we could focus on fine-tuning the use case, rather than get lost in tech detail.
And yes, this made talking to investors much easier. The fact that we had developed a working product at speed created the confidence for people to fund our vision: to decentralize the funding and the governance of longevity research.
- Tyler Golato, Co-Founder Molecule
COMPELLING MISSION + NOVEL PRODUCT IDEA + TECH DELIVERY = SUCCESS (i.e. 💰💰💰)
The results speak for themselves.
VitaDAO is currently designing a token sale and has attracted interest from pharma giant Pfizer to invest in their initial $4m round. For a legacy company to make a move into the Web3 space takes more than a white paper or a mission statement, it takes a working product.
👏👏🏼👏🏿
And there’s more… The Molecule team has leveraged their IP-NFT concept, plus the VitaDAO pattern, and raised a very tidy $12.7M to further the decentralization of bio-pharma drug and research ownership, as well as financing and governance of drug development. It’s no surprise that investors are happy to get on board the Molecule train. They know a great project when they see it, especially one with such an awesome use case, fantastic team and real tech behind it.
👏👏🏼👏🏿
Conclusion?
Build fast!
Go to market faster.
Raise money faster.
Build even faster!
So if you have a project where you want to add utility to your assets (read: tokens/NFTs), don’t reinvent the wheel and give Nevermined a try.
More info on https://nevermined.io/
Or join our Discord: https://discord.com/invite/GZju2qScKq
Photo by Randy Fath on Unsplash
