ICO OR STO? – [7 STEPS TO SUCCESS]

How to determine and what are the milestones?

This post is part of our blockchain and business series. But before we continue, let’s first recap what topics we have covered till now. 

In the previous posts, we have viewed briefly what is blockchain (from an oversimplified nontechnical perspective) and how your business can profit from it.

In the first post, we have discussed the benefits of integrating blockchain to your business. If you have missed this one you can read it now to get familiar with the technological promises of the blockchain and to learn how it can help your business grow. What is blockchain? Is it suitable for your business needs? What problems it solves, and how to boost your business with blockchain?

In our second post from this series, we spoke about the ways to finance your business idea or existing business through ICO or STO.

If you are unfamiliar with the difference between ICO and STO you can view the previous article here, boost your business with blockchain.

The aim of this post is to help you define the steps you have to take to bring your idea to life.

Assuming that you already understand what blockchain is and you can make difference between ICO and STO. You are now confident that blockchain can help you realize your idea and you have decided to make a coin offering. 

The typical development of a project is having the following milestones.

1. Putting the idea into a business plan

Although some successful entrepreneurs claim that they managed to develop their business without a business plan, in most cases, you will need one. The business plan will give you directions and will help you to visualize all details related to making your idea a successful business. It will help you organize yourself, define your revenue streams, your competitors and your weaknesses.

2. Writing a White Paper

“A white paper is an informational document, issued by a company or not-for-profit organization, to promote or highlight the features of a solution, product, or service. White papers are sales and marketing documents, used to entice or persuade potential customers to learn more about or purchase a particular product, service, technology or methodology. White papers are designed to be used as a marketing tool before a sale, and not as a user manual or other technical document developed to provide support to the user after making a purchase.”

Investopedia – whitepaper

3. Building a website to show your idea to the world

Needless to say how important is your online presence. If your aim is a global market than you have to have a global presence. A company website is your first step towards it.

4. Starting an international marketing campaign

Your campaign should be ready to launch ideally 2-3 months before the coin offering. If you don’t have a marketing guru in your team, I recommend you to hire a specialized agency. Besides a solid idea and a good team, a key factor to your success is your marketing action plan.

5. Building the token

The step of building your digital asset /token/ actually consists of several others.

First, you need to develop, secure and publish the crowdfunding smart contracts for your token sale event.

Second – something that will ease your future investors’ experience and showcase your professionalism is an investor’s dashboard – a dedicated web-app where investors can easily contribute to your campaign. It is also the place where you will be conducting your KYC (know your customer) and AML (anti-money laundering) verifications in order for your project to fit the regulatory framework.

If you are not a technical guy make sure that your project development is in good hands and you have everything ready prior to the launch of the coin offering. Small mistakes in your code can cost you millions, so leave time for an independent company to make a security audit to your smart contracts.

6. Conducting the coin offering

A few things can happen that can disturb your token sale event. Hackers and fraudsters are constantly sniffing around the space and are figuring out some clever tricks.

For example, one hacker changed the target Ethereum address during the CoinDash token sale and stole $7 million worth of Ethereum overnight.

This sort of behavior is happening almost daily — hackers or con artists pop up in Slack telling users that token sale sites have changed and pump-and-dumpers post fake claims on social networks to help move the price.

TechCrunch

In this step is very important that you are in continuous communication with your community and potential investors, so that they dont get tricked and lose money.

7. Developing the product

After a successful campaign, the real work begins. Start allocating the funds and push the progress of the project. The project development itself should be divided into milestones including past achievements to give a clear picture of your progress to the investors. Your timeline should include what has been done, what are you doing now and what are you going to do in the next quarter, in the next years.

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Conclusion

Those are the 7 steps to be taken to lead the project to success. Their order should be respected and none of them can be neglected. Each step has its own budget and most of the times is conducted by a separate team/company. ex Marketing, Legal, Development etc. The most costly will be the marketing if the goal is a global reach. Second, depending on the nature of the cryptocurrency (if you choose a STO) could be the legal part which will depend not only on local jurisdiction but also on the jurisdiction of the investor’s country. The third will be the development of the cryptocurrency and all related builds around its launch (website, investor’s dashboard etc).

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If you have a great idea — but you are not a blockchain expert, Get in touch with us at hello@hack.bg.

The full list of our services could be found on our website at https://hack.bg/#services

We bring ideas to life.