How Top ICO Advisors Assess Your Projects
What makes a good ICO project and what do top ICO advisors look for when they invest into your blockchain project or join your crypto project?
We speak to Miko Matsumura (Evercoin), Nikolay Shkilev (Top ICO Advisors) and Vladimir Nikitin (ICO Bench) on how they make the assessment when looking at your ICO projects.
The key takeaways
— Build trust by delivering promises and keeping deadlines
— Marketing with large communities, events attendance and strong social media presence
— Maximum transparency of the project with MVP (minimum viable product) or working product
— Team members and the team’s experience
— English is the global crypto language
How Forestlyn Can Help You
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Speakers
— Lucy Lin, Forestlyn, www.forestlyn.com
— Miko Matsumura, Evercoin, www.evercoin.com
— Nikolay Shkilev, Top ICO Advisors, http://www.topICOadvisors.com
— Vladimir Nikitin, ICO Bench, www.icobench.com
Link to the interview:
Abridged transcript of the interview below
Lucy Lin: Hi everyone, my name is Lucy Lin. I’m the founder of Forestlyn. I have three of the most prominent ICO advisers with me today. Miko Matsumura is the co-founder or Evercoin. Nikolay Shkilev is a Top Three advisor on ICObench, and I’ve got the chief of ICObench, Vladimir Nikiti is joining us as well. They were on a panel earlier today to talk about how to invest in ICOs, how to advise in ICOs and also token sales. I’d love to talk a little bit more about how you pick the projects, and also why you pick these projects to invest in.
Miko Matsumura: Well, so my keyword now is reform, which means the industry is going through a radical reform, so anything that you’ve learned over the past six months throw it away. What we really need to focus on now is that we really need to focus on trust and building trust. The way you build trust is you keep your promises, and in fact you deliver. So by shipping software, building traction, strong team, what we really want is trust. Right now, having a bunch of bots in your Telegram channel is not going to get you invested.
Miko Matsumura: So how can you be trusted? To me, the way you can be trusted is by delivering promises, sometimes you can even deliver ahead of time. If you can self-fund your way to a profitable product or even revenue, you’re in a much better place than anywhere else.
Lucy Lin: What about you Nikolay? What’s your number one thing that you look for now?
Nikolay Shkilev: I agree with Miko, I think that if you want to have a successful ICO or STO project (but I know Miko doesn’t like STOs projects), you need to build a large and solid community without any bots. You must use all social media channels, not only Facebook and Twitter. You must use KakaoTalk, WeChat, and Line in Japan. In Russia for example we don’t use Twitter or Facebook, we use vk.com. Instagram is used by celebrities and popular amongst the people. That’s why I think if people see a real team with maximum transparency in the project, they will invest to these projects. If you’re hiding behind your computer, your chances to receive money is near equal to zero.
Vladimir Nikiti: For me, ICO projects need transparency, and good team experience because rookies who are running ICOs and have no business experience, may fail. Projects need to keep promises, as mentioned by Miko, and if the roadmap state that they will deliver a product in March, and then they need to deliver in March, it shouldn’t be delayed.
Lucy Lin: Well, Miko has to leave now, thank you so much. So we’ve got the top recommendations, but what about the one thing that makes you feel uncomfortable when you look at a project? What’s the number one thing that you go, “Oh, I don’t feel comfortable,” once you review a project?
Nikolay Shkilev: As I mentioned in the summit, if you want to be successful project, everyone must see your team, your experience, and you must have a MVP, minimum viable product or prototype. You must go to various events, for example, here at the Malta Delta Summit and engage with the CEO of Binance, OKEx, Roger Ver, Prime Minister of Malta. You must have a good marketing budget. It’s now not enough to only have a beautiful website.
Nikolay Shkilev: For me, maximum transparency is also important. Everyone on social media must see your team, and your advisors. You must prove that you’re not fake, you’re not scam, that you built a real product as investors consider ICOs as a serious business investment.
Nikolay Shkilev: From now and in 2019: trends may be asset-backed tokens and security tokens, with full KYC verification, and an anti money laundering system in place. Verification is needed for the market, but I know that, Miko does not like security token offerings because it’s not good for general community.
Lucy Lin: Yes, STOs is mostly for accredited investors which shuts out the public. Just one last question, so how is the space in Russia? I’ve heard that the crypto and blockchain space, is very, very big. You’ve traveled a lot, what do you see is the biggest difference in Russia compared to rest of the world?
Nikolay Shkilev: In Russia, we only have one problem. People cannot speak the English language very well. For example, in one month we’ll hold one of the biggest conference in Russia, it’s called Blockchain Life. We invited a lot of big names to St Petersburg, and I hope we can explain to the Russian people how to invest into an ICO, how to create a white paper, because we have differences culturally. We have very strong IT specialists inside the country, who can make good websites, but not enough experience with social media. You say that in blockchain and in cryptocurrency, we’re like one big family. It’s really cool.
Lucy Lin: So maybe you need to open an English school, Nikolay?
Nikolay Shkilev: No, my son speak English much better than me, because I’m from fourth generation and our next generation will speak much better than Vladimir and myself, but we will help our community bridge the gap, because a lot of people can’t speak English.
Lucy Lin: As crypto and blockchain is a global market, it seems like English is the international language to communicate in.
Nikolay Shkilev: It is the same for people in China, in Japan, and many other countries who have the money, and have a big community but don’t understand blockchain and crypto and and not using global platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. We need to educate the Russian people locally.
Lucy Lin: That is very interesting, we learnt a little bit more about Russia today as well. Thank you so much Nikolay and Vladimir for your time.
Nikolay Shkilev & Vladimir Nikiti: Thank you.
About Forestlyn
Forestlyn is the creation of founder Lucy Lin, a blockchain marketing leader who has worked on multiple blockchain projects, raising more than $60 million in investment.
Forestlyn advises founders and delivers a personalised and dedicated embedded marketing and advisory service for Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), Token Generation Events (TGEs), Security Token Offerings (STOs), cryptocurrency and blockchain projects. For more information: www.forestlyn.com