Summary of the Cofound.it AMA on Community Reviews from 17 July 2018

This Tuesday, our regular AMA took on the topic of Community Reviews, a project that has been in development and testing since last year. Who better to host than Matjaz Slak and Matic Pipan, the leading developers for this product? Since its beginning it has been tested on more than 500 startups and fine-tuned, so we felt that it was time to share some insight into the process.

We will be holding AMA’s every Tuesday from now on, so be sure to join us for the next one on Tuesday, July 10th at 5 pm CEST.

N.B. I have rephrased the Q&A in my own words. I’ve also reordered and grouped questions into common themes to make it coherent for reading. If you feel there is a mistake or something is unclear, let me know.

Q1: What led you to start developing this product? Who finds reviews most valuable?

A (Matjaz): Our focus, at least initially, goes from what we were told by a lot of crypto ecosystem participants that the lack of clear and validated information about ICO projects is a big issue.

We could address this information gap to provide better information delivery for:

- the community (validate published info and share additional insights of the projects)

- the projects team (inform them where the community thinks they are strong and where they should improve)

- supporters/investors (to decrease the risk of investing into scam/bad projects).

Interestingly enough, exchanges were the most keen potential user. They stated that managing risk for listed tokens is very important — for example, if one suddenly changes course or is a proven scam.

A (Matic): This is why we are considering additional review services specialised for exchanges and investors.

Q2: Has there been any interest from projects being evaluated for new services? One example would be “exchange readiness”.

A (Matjaz): Great question. Yes, “exchange readiness” is a big challenge. And we’re working on both sides of the story: on one side, with exchanges, we’re working on creating an exchange-independent review that would be accepted by exchanges as a key factor in their tokens-to-be-listed process

On the other side, we’re working on creating a project-focused service that would assist projects with going through the listing process (speed it up, increase probability of success)

A (Matic): I’m also setting up a process for a project to follow in order to get listed. There are a lot of challenges and the path to the big exchange listing is quite long. This is not meant as a part of the review process but more of an advisory guidelines and “how to”.

Q3: What is “maturity review”?

A (Matic): Reviewing an early stage blockchain startup is tricky — you’re primarily looking for potential and doing your best to identify any red flags. It all boils down to two things: project maturity and business potential. A startup needs both to be successful. In this kind of review, we focus on maturity.

The review is structured to identify weak/strong areas and give improvement ideas/guidance. Crowdsourced to a pool of reviewers (pre-vetted experts, who were chosen based on their analytical ability and are engaged in the reviewing process).

Q4: Is there information projects are asking for that’s not a part of their evaluations?

A (Matjaz): Yes. Unfortunately, the most common is (obviously) “how can I get more supporters, preferably whales?” That one we can’t help them with. On the other hand, the “maturity evaluations” we currently have are a great tool for advisors — they help them work in the right direction.

Q5: Do you have an ETA on when the evaluators’ product will be finalised?

A (Matic): Never, I hope — this will be an ever-evolving service, adapting to community needs. :)

We have the beta-level service working now. We plan to have a first production version out in H2, hopefully with a prototype token model around it. Where we go from there will very much depend on feedback and interest from community and other stakeholders.

A (Matjaz): To expand on that a bit: Currently we are completing the beta phase with so-called project maturity reviews. To date we have processed 12 projects, and received positive feedback from everyone who was engaged in the process.

For the future we are planning to expand our community expert reviewer ranks as well as preparing new types of reviews for different stakeholders in the crypto space — for example, providing a service for token review of pre-ICO or post-ICO projects for exchanges.

Q6: How can a project apply for a review?

A (Matjaz): We’ll be setting up a new way to apply on our website (the current one is no longer appropriate). Until then, you can send an email to projects@cofound.it and we’ll get the process started. Projects can apply for the review by themselves or someone else can enter a project for evaluation.

It is not restricted, but we do have a selection process if the project is “ripe” enough for a review.

Read full the AMA session!

Thank you for your contributions, we appreciate all the feedback and involvement.

Do you want to join the Community Reviewers? matic@cofound.it is your address.