Guide to launching a successful ICO

First things first, make sure your customers are going to benefit from your tokens means what is the ROI for investors.

If you can convince your potential investors for these questions, consider yourselves half done.

1. What is the purpose of the token in the project?
2. Can it operate without the Token?
3. Is there a proper way to bring the value to the token as well as into the chain where you are running the project and the ICO?

You may want to refer to How to determine if you’ve found a real blockchain use case

Setting up the Goals

Raising money is the actual goal of any ICO right? You will have to have clear understanding on the following aspects of the project

1. How much money do you want to raise and why?
2. How are you going to use the funds?

Key points to consider when youre planning an ICO

• Whitepaper
• MVP on github
• Bounty (Terms & Conditions)
• Project roadmap
• Setting up a solid team
• Technical structure of the ICO
• Legal structure

Whitepaper

Anything and everything you’re putting on your whitepaper is going to come back to you as money (well, $ETH).

Start writing the whitepaper from your knowledge and make sure you are not missing any valuable points on your business. Some important things to consider adding on a whitepaper are

• Project Background
• Market Problems
• Market Size
• Token Business modal
• Product & USP
• Usage of funds
• Roadmap
• Team

Bonus: Consider creating translations of your whitepaper and publish it.

MVP on github

It is good to showcase people the progress that you are making, consider makint it open source and keep it as active as possible. Well, you know this; if you are serious enough your platform should be active.

Bounty (Terms & Conditions)

Bounties are rewards for tasks like doing captchas, doing programming jobs or just wearing a signature of a project (most projects which hold an ICO) while you post. You can also get rewards for spreading the word of something on social media like Twitter or Facebook. You can decide the bounty scheme for your project, if you have any plans to integrate such a scheme.

Project roadmap

A Project Roadmap is a simple presentation of Project Ambitions and Project Goals alongside a timeline.

A Project Roadmap is NOT the place for detailed project plans and detailed information.

What is a Project Roadmap used for?

• To quickly communicate project plans & goals.
• To manage stakeholder expectations.
• To generate a shared understanding across the teams involved.
• To communicate plans with other important teams/organisations

Setting up a solid team

Like we all know, people will look for the team, who is who and what role he plays in the current company and whether it makes sense for the person to be on your team etc. Choose your team wisely, make sure you have a CEO, CTO positions filed with people with solid credentials. Also make sure those persons linked-in account is published on the website.

Technical structure of the ICO

This is actually a CTO’s job to do. Some example decisions would be

1. Whether you should accept BTC?
2. Do you need a dashboard for people to see?
3. Are there any special mechanisms like queue to ensure the smooth run of the ICO?

Legal structure

Another crucial part of the whole process, there is no point in planning ICO in a country where ICO itself is regulated or banned. Talk to your lawyers and see what are the best options to launch my ICO and why.

This is a non ending list, will be updated in the coming days

Disclaimer: We are not advising you to invest in any of the ICO based on this article.

This article originally appeared on lightrains.com