The 9 Things You Need To Know From Our Webinar On How To Execute A $100M+ ICO
On February 1, in partnership with Cointelligence, we held an hour long webinar with Moshe Hogeg, Founder and Co-CEO of Sirin Labs, the…
On February 1, in partnership with Cointelligence, we held an hour long webinar with Moshe Hogeg, Founder and Co-CEO of Sirin Labs, the maker of the first blockchain enabled mobile phone. Sirin completed a $157 million ICO in December, and we asked Moshe to share his thoughts on how Sirin was able to execute the third largest ICO in history (behind only Tezos and Filecoin per Business Insider). You can listen to the call in it’s entirety below:
Here are what we think are the nine most important thoughts Moshe shared on the call:
Israel is emerging as a Crypto powerhouse. A year ago, when Moshe looked for Israeli ICOs in which to invest, he only found about half a dozen. Now, the Israeli blockchain ecosystem is one of biggest in the world.
First things first, pick a good law firm. Sirin sees real value in going with a top law firm, whose lawyers regularly have a deep apprecaition for the global securities landscape, particularluy the U.S.. More broadly, however, Sirin thinks the market would benefit from more clarity in regulation, particularly from the SEC.
It takes 3–5 months and $300,000-$1,000,000 (depending on how much you want to raise) to ICO. Moshe also said that companies should also only sell a small percentage (e.g. 20%) of it’s total tokens to leave the company positioned to raise more money in the future.
Take an in-house approach the key ICO tasks, including the White Paper and community building. Sirin’s team of 50 employees, including 40 engineers handled the White Paper. They started by looking at other White Papers. Then they wrote a first draft. They got feedback from their advisors and others. And they ended up with a great White Paper. Sirin also managed the community, staffing Sirin employees as community managers 24/7. Moshe believes that Sirin’s 8,500 Telegram members were a key factor in the ICO’s success. Moshe felt that the community knew the community managers were deeply committed to the project and had a deep understanding of Sirin. As a result of the passion of the community managers, the community responded with high engagement.
It’s hard convincing non-Crypto investors to invest in Crypto. Even though Moshe had great relationships with traditional investors that he had known for many years, most did not invest in Sirin Labs because they simply didn’t understand how Crypto works. Moshe estimated that only $20 million of the $157 million came from non-Crypto investors.
Investors in Japan were the largest source of ICO capital for Sirin. Moshe said that Japanese investment syndicates made up a sizable portion of the $157 million. Japanese syndicate leads would work out discounts and lock up periods with Sirin, and then go back to their individual investors who would invest 10–100 Ether. Collectively, those individual investors aggregated in to a lot of money. Another Israeli company, Bancor, made many of the original introductions to Japanese syndicates.
Bitcoin’s strong performance during the token sale process hurt the ICO. When Moshe began socializing the Sirin pre-sale in September, Bitcoin was below $5,000. When the ICO launched, Bitcoin was trading at $17,000. Ether ran from around $300 to $500. It turns out, that when Crypto is soaring, investors struggle to part with their Crypto and invest in new projects.
ICOs should include discounts and lockups. Moshe said that Sirin’s bonuses ran from 10% to 50% depending on amounts invested and the lockup period agreed to. He thinks vesting schedules of up to two years enable the projects to focus more on the business and building value and less on the tokens.
Post the ICO, keep some Crypto, but put enough in to fiat to reach initial milestones. Moshe has seen people lose 75% of what they raised when Ether went down in price, and they were left without the necessary capital. He’s also seen people who sold all their crypto immediately after the ICO, only to watch Crypto prices soar. Moshe believes the right strategy is a balance of enough cash to reach certain milestones, while leaving enough in a basket of Crypto to benefit if Crypto prices rise.
If you got at least 0.00000001 Bitcoin worth of value from this post go ahead and “Clap” (up to 50 times) below.