3 Reasons No One Will Buy Into Your ICO in 2019
06 May 2019 #Ethereum
It's no secret that ICOs are failing at a massive rate. In fact, the research suggests that an ICO will fail just under half the time. In fact, research shows that almost 46% of ICOs have failed since 2017 and that number is growing, with the immense number of ICOs that were plain scams and were never taken into account in that statistic.
Blockchain has the potential to transform entire industries and is a major tool that has yet to be properly leveraged. However, it is not a silver bullet and the failures of past companies that rode the ICO positivity wave of 2017 have brought a healthy amount of both cynicism and skepticism into the investor pool for ICOs.
Last year started off brightly, with ICOs raising more money in the first four months than in the entire previous year combined. However, the bubble popped and much the like dot com bubble of the late 90s, it was a dumpster fire of companies that were in over their heads filled with people who had great ideas but no solid business fundamentals.
So what can you do to make sure that your business not only survives this year but thrives? There are three things that you need to pay attention to, and you will have beat out the majority of ICOs that were released in the last year.
Go-to-market strategy
A product everyone might want is a great start, but it is not the be all and end all of a solid company. Your product could be a total game changer, but if you can't bring it to the market in an easy and affordable way, then all the starry-eyed wonderment won't help you at all.
Smart investors – the type you want buying into your ICO – will not only look at the product you have but what your marketing and PR plans are for your product. How visible will your product be to consumers? Added to that, you should also make sure your budget can cover the costs of any marketing campaign you might want to do.
Having a marketer on your team, someone with tech industry experience is a must in this day and age. If you do not have a set budget and plan for marketing, along with someone with experience to lead the charge... any investor worth their salt will simply ignore you.
Utility is key
A study done by Boston College found that only 44% of tokenized projects were active after their fifth month. They did this by tracking a project's social footprints via Twitter and other social media. There is a lot of reason for this to happen, but one of the major reason was to do with utility.
The utility is defined as the total satisfaction a customer receives from consuming a product. The problem with a lot of the toke projects that we have seen in the past is that while technologically sound, there is no minimum viable product (MVP). This is needed at a minimum or else the more clued in investors will simply ignore your ICO.
Business fundamentals need to be robust
There is one last thing that keeps on being ignored in every round of new technological progress. No matter how good your team or your product, you need to have the fundamental economics of your business worked out.
If your token is not scalable, that is a problem. If it can't resist inflationary pressure, there is a problem. If you do not take these things into account, why would anyone take money out of their own accounts and put it into yours?
