What Is ICO Advisory and Why Your Project Needs It

Let’s say you’ve come up with a great idea for a blockchain-based solution, and want to offer an ICO to sell tokens and raise money for your company. You’ve got a great development team, and they are making strides. Everything looks good, but unless you have hired an ICO advisory firm, you might be getting ready to make a big mistake.

While many projects use individual ICO advisors, there are many advantages to using an ICO advisory service. First of all, many individual advisors are taking on too many projects and spreading themselves too thin. A company dedicated to advisory services will be properly staffed and prepared.

Some individuals do have the experience and bandwidth to be effective, but many ICO teams use these individual advisors to simply puff up their project. Someone with a well-known name might draw attention, but are they actually helping you solve problems and avoid pitfalls?

We’re going to take a look at why your project needs ICO advisory services.

ICO Advisory, Part of the Winning Formula

If you’re seriously considering an ICO in the current climate, you have to recognize that the percentage of them which succeed has been steadily dropping. Wired magazine predicted the bubble for ICOs bursting at the end of last year, and this year has borne that out.

Last year, less than half of all ICOs were successful, and that has been trending downward all year for 2018. In fact, in October only 19% of the 90 attempted ICOs were a success. This means it is more important than ever to make sure you have everything you need to find a place among the ever-shrinking number of successes.

You can’t go it alone, you need seasoned experts who know the winning formula. While it may seem like a smart move to use a high profile advisor, that’s purely a marketing move. Someone with that high of a profile will be in huge demand, and not able to really be a resource.

But if you go with an ICO advisory service, like OpenLedger’s, you’ll get a team of dedicated experts with a proven blueprint and the experience to actually contribute to your success. Whether it be tweaking your product, marketing, listing on exchanges, designing rewards or air-drops, or simply auditing for pitfalls — the right advisory team can make or break your project.

Good Intentions Don’t Produce Success

Hiring an individual might not seem like a bad idea because of that ICO advisor meaning well, but when the rubber hits the road they may not be there for you. ICO advisory is about more than good intention;  there needs to be a serious amount of work to prepare.

Having the right team also frees you up to focus on your product. If you get wrapped up in the ICO project, it’s easy to take your eyes off the development ball. In fact, this is a common reason for ICO failure. Potential backers want to see dedication to development, lots of updates and proven progress.

Good ICO advisory professionals will direct you to focus on development and engage in constant communication. Clear and regular updates are key, and the right team will have the experience to help you deliver just that.

ICOs Are about the Product

While raising money is the goal of an ICO, the product is what sells. Making sure your offering is unique, compelling and achievable are keys to success. You can’t sell what you can’t produce, so making sure that you have a realistic roadmap is important. Falling behind on predictions, especially before an ICO, is a sure way to lose the trust of potential investors.

Your ICO advisory team will be able to analyze your product against all the other offerings on the market. At this point in 2018, there have been 1227 attempted ICOs, so there’s no way you can be familiar with all of them. But it’s the job of ICO advisory firms to be aware of the market. They can help you make your offering sufficiently unique.

Because of this, it’s really important to obtain an advisory firm early in the process to make sure you don’t spend time doing wasted work on a redundant product. If your product is like another one, it’s important to be sure yours is a better version and you can prove it.

Increase Your Chances of Success

The most important thing you can do to improve your chances for a successful ICO is to involve an advisory firm. With only 8% of all ICOs making it to the stage where they are traded on an exchange, it’s critical to get things right. So now more than ever you need to involve an experienced advisory team to comfort the public that is skeptical of ICO offerings.