Great to be back here. Took a pause from writing (and almost everything else) last week, because we got very close to getting done with our first product developed for -us-. Not for customers (In a way that we didn't get hired to develop it, of course we want to have customers on the platform).
Let me give you a little background on why we did this.
What steps you need to launch an ICO
Launching an ICO is difficult. There are regulations, there's a whitepaper you need to fill up mostly with BS (even if your product is good and you could sum it up to one sentence to anyone you need to create a lengthy whitepaper), you need to find a developer who takes care of the smart contract, you need to find a security company checking it afterwards, then they iterate on the code, then marketing comes on board and in the meantime the legal team is telling you about how it's not gonna work.
Many founders give up because they hire unprofessional people to manage their launch and end up not having any idea what's going on, wasting a lot of money and time.
This is where Seqton comes in the picture.
After working with a number of ICOs, including some of the most successful ones at Dakai we've seen a pattern emerging: People who hired companies got their ICO out and raised a lot. People who hired freelancers and individuals, trying to manage everything themselves mostly failed and just came back to the companies in the industry after their struggle.
Even in this case though, it's really difficult to find companies you can trust. Most are just simple scams who won't get your product very far.
How Seqton helps
We realized there is absolutely no product out there that can connect you with companies in the space to outsource your whole ICO in a few clicks. I personally think that as a founder your focus shouldn't be on micromanaging the last copy writer in the team. You should talk to investors, network, and all those things.
With Seqton we give you a roadmap and guidance. We show you how to do an ICO, what makes it successful, the steps you need to take and we connect you with the best companies for each step you can take, with their budget transparent so you can pick the right one.
There are reviews that help you read other users' experiences with the organizations and there is lots of info available without spending hours googling after references etc.
You can also just submit your project publicly, waiting for companies to approach you instead of the other way around.
What difficulties we might face
Of course it's not super easy. I'm really worried that thousands of Indian and Pakistani companies will add their companies, driving down the quality of the platform. We are trying to tackle this by having an invite system the first few months, approaching both projects and companies privately.
Also a worry of mine is that many companies who focus on similar things in the dev world can just simply create a part in their software that does the same thing as us and crush us with their marketing. Not so sure how I can protect myself from this.
Feedback
I love feedback, especially this early. If you have any advice, any experience, anything to share I would appreciate if you dropped me a line either to laszlo@dakai.io or here in the comment section.
Also make sure to check out our website to understand more of our culture: Dakai.io
Top comments (2)
I felt like the only one who felt this way. Way too much busywork to demonstrate you're trustworthy. (Kinda ironic that you need to show you're trustworthy on a trustless system, though.)
This is kind of an untold secret. I don't like keeping secrets though. It's totally obvious that out of those 20 pages a product can be summed up in 2, a business plan in another 2 and the blockchain bit usually in one. This is counted with graphics. The rest is clutter and ICOs pay a heavy price (usually over $4000-5000) to fill up the rest of the pages by one of the 'blockchain copywriters'.
I would say it's useless but it actually isn't. If we look at the stats, companies tend to raise a lot more if they have a long whitepaper than the ones who only had budget / energy for a shorter one.