Episode 5- Bye-bye Silicon Valley. Hello ICO!

ABOUT THE GUEST Jill Richmond is a Partner at Ark Advisory. Ark Advisory has built an end-to-end process for managing the full process of raising capital in digital markets. She has worked with over a dozen successful ICOs and token sales within the past several months driving the global marketing and investor relations efforts. She previously founded two technology companies and worked for the World Bank Innovation Practice and is a regular Forbes contributor. Being from an economics background and having worked at the World Bank, Jill has always been intrigued by the crypto world and making the unbanked bankable. She got into cryptocurrencies when she was pulled into a project in November of 2016, working for marketing of Singular dtv, which raised 12.5M dollars through initial coin offering (ICO). This intrigued her further which resulted in her consulting for them. WHY ARE ICOS LEVEL THE PLAYING FIELD (10:20) Syndicates have a larger number of people participating in them than would have been possible in another scenario and the ability for them to raise money in a way they haven’t before. With ICOs this has been made possible. One example could be Sensay and sense token. In another environment a female founder would have had a hard time raising money this conveniently. This is not the only instance where ICOs are levelling the field but also token sales. Also, geographically and by the product for which the money is being raised itself, ICOs are helping in levelling the field. NETWORK EFFECT OF ICOS (20:00) The most interesting thing about token sales is the fact that people who invest in them are probably the initial group of end users. This network effect is one of the incentives of the token sale. Thinking through the economics of the token sales and how it plans to incentivise the users and the retailers are some of the important things to be looked at before a token sale. Jill mentions that there are different categories of people involved in token sales. They include Underwriters who are supporting the running of the actual sale, retail investors who are the larger investment pool, traders who are traders on secondary market and finally the natural buyers and users of the future system who actually end up using the resource. And the token sales are pre-designed in such a way that they are maximising the contribution pool thus people who are investing are also the people who end up developing the community. WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF LEVELLING THE PLAYING FIELD? (27:30) For the company, what they’re building requires a network effect, so they have to think broad and in terms of potential global participation and enhance the value of what they’re building. That way it levels the playing field. The idea of participating in a massive future infrastructure of a project is fantastic and exciting for everyone involved. WHAT ARE YOUR INSIGHTS ON THE AVERAGE JOE WHO HAS A VERY FOGGY IDEA ABOUT AN ICO? (32:30) You’re starting to see 2 things that are happening which is great, the space is growing really fast, the material & automation that is available, the open source & technology that is available for these companies are starting to grow up a lot. There are places like Superbloom Capital that is starting to democratize this process on the flipside. So, the good news is that there is a lot of package-able support & information for someone looking to get into the space. The ICO Handbook by David Siegel is especially brilliant. IF YOU WANT TO DO A TOKEN SALE OR ICO, WHAT WOULD BE THE FIRST STEPS YOU’D TAKE? (36:30) First, figure what your token is. Explore the role, purpose and features of the token. That is the first thing to start and understand. Challenge your token. Do your due diligence & a peer review. Then, you get your lawyers involved. But it always starts with how is your token structured? What are your assets? These are questions you need to answer before the sale. In terms of research, to wrap your head around cryptocurrency, token sales and block chain, and if you’re really interested in investing, set up a Coinbase account, throw a bit of money in there, read a bit. I’d like to share my list of resources with you, which can answer all the questions and concerns you have. WHY SHOULD I USE SENSAY RATHER THAN A QUORA? (44:30) Sensay will find you a person who can actually answer a question for you and you can have a back and forth conversation or there are bots who can answer your questions until they can’t and they connect you to someone who can. THE LEVEL OF THE PLAYING FIELD IS ALSO ALONG THE AGE DIMENSION, WOULD YOU AGREE? (47:00) I would. We were already seeing this. Exponentially, yes. There are lots of reasons why. Today, there is a lack of boundaries. A centralized environment is something that they don’t wrap their heads around. Socio economic divisions have diminished. The world has been preparing itself for this block chain technology over the last few years. LINKS MENTIONED: https://www.ark-ico.com/ We are a full advisory service to support digital token capital markets. As it relates to resources mentioned: Best 101 guide ever: https://medium.freecodecamp.org/cryptocurrency-101-7197684775fd?source=linkShare-41caf8d5b59-1502410463 Differences between: https://medium.com/startup-grind/understanding-the-difference-between-coins-utility-tokens-and-tokenized-securities-a6522655fb91 FUND announcement: https://www.wired.com/2017/03/initial-coin-offering-stock-thats-not-stock/ Decent guide written by the founder of Pillar David Siegel who's ico ($24m in 3 days) https://hackernoon.com/the-ico-handbook-705a89fa8978 Best 101 guide ever: https://medium.freecodecamp.org/cryptocurrency-101-7197684775fd?source=linkShare-41caf8d5b59-1502410463 Token Economics: http://startupmanagement.org/2017/06/10/tokenomics-a-business-guide-to-token-usage-utility-and-value/ Token Analysis: https://www.smithandcrown.com/ Differences between: https://medium.com/startup-grind/understanding-the-difference-between-coins-utility-tokens-and-tokenized-securities-a6522655fb91 FUND announcement: https://www.wired.com/2017/03/initial-coin-offering-stock-thats-not-stock/ Bloomberg for investors https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-09/here-s-what-goldman-is-telling-big-money-clients-about-bitcoin?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits Ico skeptic https://www-crowdfundinsider-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.crowdfundinsider.com/2017/07/119526-eyes-wide-shut-icos-new-path-startup-fundraising-password-required/amp/