During the last few months, we have been asked to evaluate and consult Whitepapers more than 10 companies that want to do ICO. Some had longer others shorter whitepapers but most of them were plagued by the same disease - their ideas were unclear or it required to reread few times to grasp a general possible, sometimes maybe your own imagined idea. One was clear - every single one of them had an idea for the project. However, not all knew how to present it.
There are two ways to earn money when starting a new business. One is to raise money during the ICO (attracting investors), and the second way is to make money from the project. Thus, if your main idea and the end goal is only to raise money from investors do not be surprised that it will be reflected in your whitepaper. If you do not burn with desire to actually deliver the project do not be surprised when your Whitepaper will be complicated, confusing and boring.
Today when on average a day appears 7 ICO projects, and the ICO project evaluators number at institutional investors practically doesn’t grow, you have to think how to dominate the interest of the reader from the first sentence.
1st rule - Short Essence
- If you can’t with the first and in one sentence attract your potential client attention than you have prepared poorly. Therefore you need to put all the essence of your project in the first sentence.
2nd rule - to Explain a Problem
- Once the first sentence catches the readers interest it is important to explain and outline the market problem which you with your project are ready to eliminate.
3rd rule - Demonstrate the Potential
- In short to explain why and where in your project is the hidden treasure. And the explanation shouldn’t be along these lines “It will transform them… industry”, “The next big thing”, “... Transparency” and etc.
For better understanding about the first 3 rules, we have prepared some examples.
For starters the first sentence of a sentence written before our consultation:
“XXXX is an expanding business which has been operating based on three main principles for the past 16 years: uniqueness, quality, and availability. “
The current business description took more than 2 pages… Who has time to read a romance story?
A totally different example:
“XXXXX lowers the barriers to entry for retail investors to invest in XYZ assets using co-investment through fractionization and tokenization”.
And a second additional sentence added to the one above with a focus on market need, problem, and Potential :
“Currently, investment in high-end XYZ (valued at $1 million and above) is a prohibitively high amount such that only wealthy collectors, family offices, financial institutions, and hedge funds can afford to do so”
Now you have read only 2 sentences and already made an impression that this idea just might be sitting on a very large pile of money!
4th rule when writing a whitepaper - Clarity.
- It is important to make a very clear explanation and outline the problem so that the reader would understand immediately and in his head, a clear image would appear - where the hidden treasure is at.
We have also received to evaluate projects that tend to be technologically innovative with huge potential but by the community and people perceive the service or technology as outdated.
Practical Example
One of the projects Birdchain. Was initially perceived as an outdated innovation since the project was related to the SMS. We were hit with the realization that the community assumed that the idea is outdated, that no one is going to use it. However, the funny part of it was that SMS is used widely around in the market but not directly by the people.. Majority of the people stopped using it with the arrival of instant messenger. However, people tend not to notice that when a taxi arrives you receive an SMS, one time passwords - SMS, business reminders - SMS, natural disasters in the area - SMS… It is simply the universal system that every phone has it. Thus noticing this community perception early on the company was able to avoid a disaster. At the end raised over $2 500 000.
5th rule - Always think about the Community Perception.
- When writing a paper always think about the community perception. Will, they understand it and will it be accepted by them? The essence has to be written in such a way that even your grandma would understand it.
Similar but from a different aspect arises when good projects are written in the technical language, and not in the marketing (general public) language. Some of the whitepapers focus heavily on the technical aspects. How it will be programmatically done and how it will improve or will be “better” than the existing technical solutions. However little do they think about a general Joe who doesn't have any experience in computer science further to say in Blockchain technology. You have to understand that the majority of people will not be able to deduce the benefit and the potential win from your technical description. You have to spell it out to them and not only tell them that there is such a win but also prove to them and also present it in a way that would be interesting to read.
6th - The paper essence should be understandable even to your office cleaner.
- Whitepaper shouldn’t be difficult to understand. There has to be information that is easily understood by general Joe and also technical aspects to backup your claims.
At the same time, an opposite problem exists. While some of the whitepapers are to difficult to understand some are written to easily understood readers tend to believe that the product is not fully developed, that it is a scam. Because it is to simple to understand and the technical part is nonexistent. It is essential to write both easy to understand part and show that you have an expertise.
7th rule - The paper should have sophisticated parts only for specialists.
- Whitepapers shouldn't be too easy to understand. If everything that is written perceived as a very simple technology than what is the point of collecting 10 or 50 million dollars? That’s why at the end you need to put all the technical information, but be careful, if they are going to read there they will be specialists!
Now if you are going to use visualizations in your whitepaper you have to think this through very carefully so you wouldn’t create the associations you do not want. Here is an example of a poor visualization from a project that wanted to create a DebtCurrency. A currency tied to debts.
8th rule - only positive visualization.
- Your visualization has to be impeccable. It has to express only positive message. Otherwise do not be surprised when people do not believe in your project success.
9th rule - Local projects should stay local.
- If your idea is too local, do not get bothered with an ICO and do not bother others.
And finally - something to think about. Some of the ideas and projects, which we evaluated, simply chased the new fad of raising money without thinking through. It is no secret to say that ICO marketing these days can cost anywhere between 50k to 1kk.
If you need to pay out almost one million, so that you could promote ICO, a question arises - is your idea is global enough?
For example, one team wanted to create a coin, where every investor would receive a percentage of the profits from the loft rent or sale. However, in the near future, they had only one object in a city with 200,000 inhabitants in a republic that the world has never heard off. Thinking logically they only needed that 1 million which they were ready to spend on marketing.
