How Pundi X Smashed Their $35m Hard Cap

I had the fortune of collaborating with the core Pundi X team and I learned a lot about the factors that led to the success of their token sale. With their permission, I’m sharing for the next generation of blockchain founders.

Regarding their hard cap, Pundi X stated to me, “Our hardcap had a plus minus 20% float on the price ($35m-$42m USD), since due to cryptocurrency price flux, we set our hard cap in USD. It dropped a week prior to token sale.” Technical mumbo jumbo aside, Pundi X raised $40m USD.

For starters, Pundi X had the benefit of a bull market behind them when they raised. They confirmed raising in a bull market shortened the time frame to raise the funding, as they impressively hit their hard cap in 90 minutes. In fact, “Over 6,000 transactions took place in the first five minutes after the public sale started and due to the intensity of our transactions, half of total Ethereum blockchain traffic was from Pundi X.”

To be fair, Pundi X raised $17m of the $40m leading up to the public token sale. Nevertheless, raising $23m in 90 minutes is impressive.

• Pre-Token Sale and Extended Pre-Token Sale: $USD 17 million. (see: calculation)
• Public token Sale: $USD 23 million. You can check the detail on our blog post.

At the time of the Pundi X Token Sale, some noteworthy stats include:

• 30,000+ whitelisted participants
• 6,000+ transaction in the first five minutes after Token Sale starts
• 86,000+ Facebook followers
• 20,000+ Telegram followers (Official group and news channel)
• 12,000+ Twitter followers

When asked, what the top preparations were that they felt led to their token sale success, the Pundi X team stated, “A working product, named advisors and team members, and constant updates across communications channels”. It may sound obvious, however, during the Pundi X token sale, I personally recall investors in my circle agreeing the working product and video demo was very impressive and really set Pundi X apart.

To clarify, at the center of the Pundi X solution is XPOS, a point of sale hardware device that transacts with cryptocurrency:

• Any store can buy, sell, and accept Cryptocurrency.
• Empowering blockchain developers and token holders to sell cryptocurrency and services at any physical store in the world. Making cryptocurrency accessible to everyone.

Having a persistent content marketing campaign running across the Pundi X channels (Telegram, Twitter, and Facebook) was pivotal in creating buzz about the project and ultimately building a community of loyal followers. The Pundi X team stated, “We constantly communicated updates to our community members. Community trust and confidence in this project were key factors leading to our success.”

Another very key ingredient to the Pundi X Token Sale success was convincing 7+ reputable private sale and pre-sale industry players to invest $17m USD. This list includes but is not limited to: NEM, Qtum, DigixDao, AChain, Mr. Sasaki of Cardano, China’s MCG fund and RuShang fund. It’s clear that this helped to raise the public’s confidence to invest the remaining $23m USD.

In a world of Telegram bots adding artificial community members and youtube shillers, I finally sought to understand if Pundi X paid for advertisements, features, news stories, influencer reviews, or any additional coverage. I was told, “We did not spend money on ads. It was purely word of mouth and all the growth is organic till now”. Further they stated, “We were lucky to have organic review by several leading crypto influencers, including Boxmining, an AMA with Ian Balina, and several other media interviews/coverage to generate awareness”.

In summary, the following contributed to Pundi X hitting their $40m USD hard cap:

• WORKING PRODUCT
• IMPRESSIVE VIDEO DEMO
• BULL MARKET
• KEY PRIVATE SALE INVESTORS
• GREW FOLLOWERS WITH PERSISTENT CONTENT MARKETING
• NO PAID ADS / 100% ORGANIC
• POSITIVE COVERAGE FROM KEY CRYPTO INFLUENCERS

Not every ICO that hits their hard cap performs well when they hit the exchanges. However, despite entering a bear market since their token sale, somehow Pundi X has managed to return the public sale investors 4X their purchase price, and up to 10X for private & pre sale investors.

Great work Pundi X! Best of luck executing your business plan!

© COPYRIGHT 2017–2018 JASON NORTH. | All rights reserved. | jasonfnorth.com

ABOUT JASON “NORTH” — Blockchain Advisor

• Founder of Blockchain Investment Group — Rocket Fuel Capital (1,000 Global Investors & Influencers, 60,000 ETH fund, fueled 15 blockchain startups including EOS, Bluzelle, Yggdrash, Seele and more)
• Author of “Smash Your Hard Cap — ICO Strategy Playbook”
• Featured in Forbes, CNN Media, Venture Atlanta, Hypepotamus, and more.
• 5X Entrepreneur, CEO, Founder
• Leader of CEO Advisory Board
• Speaker @ EO Organization, Dreamforce, and various technology focused events.
• 20yrs software experience in Silicon Valley
• Recipient of various Tech Awards including: Web Summit 2015 Finalist, 2013 B-Corporation’s “Top 10% in the World”​, CRN Media’s “Top Cloud Companies”​, and more.