 What I want to talk about today is both the pros and cons of running an ICO and whether it has any validity in your business. Does it actually make sense to do initial coin offering from a technological aspect, from a utility aspect and from a financing aspect? Because it's all fun to raise millions of dollars, but if that hinges your business, if that doesn't increase longevity of business, if your token doesn't have utility in business, you're pretty much running a fraud, tell you the truth. So ICOs, I think they're a remarkable innovation and I think the revolutionary platform or revolutionary method to raise money, but it only applies to a specific set of circumstances in as doesn't make sense that your company has an initial coin offering. So first thing I'm going to ask you is, if you want to raise money from an ICO, the first question you're going to ask yourself is, from a technical aspect, your company does the actual token that you want to create for your company have a utility? Does it actually have a need in your ecosystem? Many people are raising money vis-a-vis ICO and your token has no utility. Mind as well call it a securities because that's what it is. You're literally selling shares in your company, but you're actually not. You're selling people nothing. There's no correlation to your business. That token has no validity in your ecosystem. Good example of a token that has validity in the ecosystem is Civic. A good example of a crypto that has validity in their ecosystem is Ethereum. You have to ask yourself, the token that you create in your company, is it a necessity? Without this token, does your company fall apart? Without this token, can your company still exist? And if the answer is yes, meaning your company can still exist without the token, then the token is not really a necessity. A token should 100X the business model that you have, 100X the utility model that you have, and 100X, let's say, the barrier to entry model between you and your customers. So that's the first thing you got to take into consideration is, does the actual token that you want to create in your company have a utility that you can utilize it for? Next thing I want to talk about is technical issues. So let's say you checkmark that based on your own due diligence, based on talking to crypto economic specialists, based on talking to people who understand game theory and understanding the blockchain architectural layers. The first thing you got to ask yourself is the actual tech stack and the team behind it. Because right now, it's easy for some people to create an ERC-20 token in Ethereum. You can hire outsourced people. But the bottom line is, it takes a very, let's say, mature tech team to A, launch a token, and B, to make sure the token is secure, and B, to evolve the technology. And C, which I will be talking about later, is a scalability, userability. How many users can your platform actually handle based on the different blockchains you're in? So it's very difficult these days to find very good talent in the blockchain space that understands crypto economics, that understands crypto security, that understands game theory, that can put all this together. And so the biggest problem you see right now, there's a lot of cookie-cutter tokens being created. People going on GitHub, copying, pasting the code, finding people overseas, outsourcing that and just launching it. And that's why you see a lot of hacks. Even good people can get hacked. For example, parity got hacked, millions of dollars were stolen. So security is a big issue. Understanding the technology behind what you want to do is a big issue. Understanding the scalability is a big issue. For example, if you want to build your startup on Ethereum currently, you cannot have millions and millions of users using Ethereum on a second-to-second basis. It's not there yet. They still got to launch Casper. They got to get Sharding. They got to get Raiden up there. They got to get all these scalability platforms and these protocols before your company can even scale. Same goes to Bitcoin. Well, now it's a little bit further. Hopefully Lightning Network is activated in the near future. Segwit is locked in. So that's a big issue, the actual technology and the team behind it. And it's very difficult to find that team. I'm going to circle around back to security, talking about that again, is I can't stress this enough. So just picture this. You raise money. Where are you holding your private keys? Who's holding them? How is your wallet created? Which wallet provider are you with? The browsers that you use, the actual security model behind, if I'm going to use your platform and use your token, am I safe enough? And do you have a safe enough protocol to protect me as a consumer and a client of your business and be to protect you as a business? Or are you going to end up like everybody else, just like these parody hacks a couple of weeks ago, where your business literally loses millions and millions of dollars? So there's a lot of risk at hand, holding millions of dollars in private keys. And if you don't have a proper tech team, if you have a proper, let's say, contingency plan, security protocols, you are a red target. I'm going to repeat this. If you are a company and you raise money vis-a-vis an ICO, you are automatically a red target for hackers around the world to get hacked because you're a massive purse, a lot of money that can be taken from you into their own pocket. So let's talk about the final thing. Business models. So a lot of these ICOs are business models, pretty stupid. I'm going to tell you that right now. The business model speculation might as well be a commodity then. It's not an actual business. If you're a token of speculation, you're on a downward spiral. You're racing to the bottom, pretty much. You really have to ask yourself the question is, what are you selling, either a product or service? One of my favorite business books of all time is Clayton M. Christensen, Innovator Solution. And he has an amazing sentence in there. And the sentence is this. Always ask yourself this question. What are people hiring you for? Whether that is a service or product. So if you're doing an ICO, what am I hiring you for? What is the business model behind your startup? What is the business model behind your token? If your token is just there to raise money and be for speculation, that's not going to fly. You can do that, but you're talking about them more like an IPO. You're talking about more securities issues. You're talking about maybe giving out crypto equity for your company as opposed to just a token. It's mind as well, donations. Why am I giving you money into this token when there's no business model attached to it? There's no intrinsic value that your business can do to actually increase the value of the token so sustainable and renewable. So pretty much I'm betting on commodity, like gold. So it's the securities, tell you the truth, okay? So these are things to take in consideration when doing ICOs. And I'm simply saying I'm just going to raise money and join the hype bubble right now. And I think ICOs have a huge room to grow. And I think they're, like I said, I think they're revolutionary. I think they're going to help many entrepreneurs around the world. And we're going to see many different deviations of ICOs from ICOs in pre-seed. Then we do Series A, B by a VCs and vice versa. Maybe VCs go first, then ICOs are Series A, Series B. Then we're going to see ICOs for like ICO equities where we actually have validation. And we go through things like coin list, et cetera. So we're going to see this evolutionary path of ICOs in different ways and different methods and different formulations that companies can utilize to A, get money, B, get a community behind them, and C, actually change business models in general and really increase the network effect of people using their business. So I just wanted to leave you with this. Keep this in mind when doing this. There's many, many hurdles when doing ICOs and don't be sucked up into this, let's say hype about I'm just going to do it then because everyone else is doing it. That's not, you know, that's not the path to success. The path to success is being contrarian and being different and being honest. And if you are the one of the few that actually makes sense that your token is utility and it maximizes the value of your company, meaning it's 100X better than your competition, it increases the network effect. There's a tangible, real business model behind your startup in the blockchain space. It actually makes sense where you're selling this product, you're selling this service vis-a-vis your token and your token increases network effect and has many different utilities within your ecosystem. If that makes sense, then all the power to you, that's very rare, but 80-20 rule like always. So I'll leave you with that. If you have any questions for me about an ICO or in general whatever, leave a comment below this video and I will speak to you guys soon. Peace.