It’s your fifth meeting with a potential VC investor. You have done everything they asked: adjusted your business model, covered every possible corner of a ridiculous 5 year budget. You think to yourself, is this all redundant? The time, the effort. You have a vision and a plan. You have worked out scenarios on how it can evolve. But instead of focusing your vision and plan, you find your main focus to be chasing investors..

Before the exhaustion sets in, consider something new, a model in which you get to present your vision and concept, while the public decides to invest in your vision and concept. No I’m not talking about crowdfunding — I’m talking about Initial Coin Offering (ICO).

So how does it work?

Startups are able to launch their own cryptocurrency in the form of a token where people can purchase on a distributed ledger such as Ethereum. The technology through which transactions are made is called blockchain. People purchase your token using the most popular cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin or Ether. In order for the token to earn value, it needs to be used for the service/product your startup is making. Are you creating a marketplace? Does your new game app give credits during game play? If you launch your own token then you must make sure it will be part of your startup’s eco-system. By doing that, your token will, in time, increase in value. The more people who use it means your early adopters make substantial wealth holding onto your token. Thus, while your business grows, so does the value of your token.

The business plan that a startup produces to the public for interested crypto investors is called a White Paper (WP). You can view an example of our WP for your reference here. After you create your WP, make sure to share it and make it open for everyone, so as to allow them to give feedback. This allows you to gain trust with potential investors while also improving your business plan to increase your chances of success after your ICO.

Some people say ICOs are the ‘Wild West of of finance.’ And there is some truth to that. If you are an investor, it is important that you are aware that there are scams out there. I have read through many WP’s; while there are some amazing startups that can earn an investor a substantial amount of money with their promised execution, some are complete scams. We recommend checking out icoindex.com — which analyzes and posts about such scams — here.

Irregardless, the ICO wave is happening now. Cryptocurrency is at an all-time high with a market cap of 125 billion. Due to the rise of Bitcoin and Ether, people have excess coins to reinvest in the infrastructure of blockchain and market places for cryptocurrencies, creating the ground work of the future of finance.

I have been that person at a fifth meeting waiting for a decision. And that’s why I am pursuing an ICO. While fintech companies struggle for investment because their vision could in fact hurt banks or corporates connected with accelerators and VC’s, why not try this new approach?

The next stage is to actually create a bridge that introduces salaries to cryptocurrencies in order to unleash real markets where you can purchase from anywhere. This is why I am creating an ICO. I want to be that bridge where the community can co-create with businesses and receive crypto in return. This is a way to establish creative jobs and to prevent a future where technological automation creates vast-unemployment, while simultaneously enabling the drastic wealth increase of automating brokers who leach off people’s wealth (as they do on Wall Street.) By using blockchain, you can automate them! The future is near, and it is exciting.

To learn more about my startup’s ICO, check out our landing page here: ico.crowdholding.com. Now is the best time to avoid traditional investors and launch an ICO, because one thing is for sure: this new alternative finance is boundless.