A short time ago, Naval Ravikant, CEO of AngelList sent me a Tweet sharing something he wrote back in March of 2014 titled “The Bitcoin Model for Crowdfunding”. I vaguely remember seeing the piece back then but didn’t really recognize that this exact model is being refined by a few of the more professional and credible projects in this space.

Obviously he knows funding, but he wrote about this well over a year ago

The word “crowdsale” will immediately get someone accused of a scam or a pump & dump scheme, which is why it’s only been a very few of these projects that have built this as a valid model for funding. In a space filled with copycat altcoins based on bitcoin with no additional utility, it’s easy to see that in order for your crowdsale to succeed, you need to actually innovate.

Being able to take a step back and try to see what Augur’s place in history will be has resulted in learning a few things. The first thing I learned was that Augur raised $5.133 million in a bear market that was seeing a pattern of lower-returning crowdsales over time. One recent crowdsale surprised me greatly with a much lower amount raised than anticipated, especially given the level of marketing and credibility they seemed to have in the space. To put things into perspective, in about 20 hours Augur was able to raise as much as their total amount raised.

The second thing I learned is that many of these projects can be difficult to understand for some people, so the wisest use of money would be to create materials that make it as easy and pleasant to understand as possible. This aspect of marketing the crowdsale is important, but it’s also important to walk the tightrope of not doing too much while also avoiding doing too little. The media used to explain the project should look as professional as possible and the project’s team needs to have their full names and faces known, interacting with the community as much as possible. Integrity isn’t an option, it’s a necessity just like honesty and consistent communication with everyone following your project. A solid marketing strategy with money spent wisely will have the greatest return. The most important thing about this strategy is that the person who plans and executes it, needs to have experience and familiarity with the Blockchain/Bitcoin space, preferably with a proven track record of success.

To illustrate simplifying a very difficult to understand project/technology or idea, our “How Augur Works” video with narration from Country singer Shooter Jennings is perfect. This video received over 180,000 views in under 5 months, making it the most watched video about prediction markets in history, by a wide margin:

The third thing I learned is that in addition to the marketing aspect, Augur is unique in that it was the first crowdsale for an app on the Ethereum network. For every person that was skeptical of Ethereum and our use of it for the platform, there was an ardent supporter of the platform that would go out of their way to support us.

The forth thing is that Augur was very lucky to be able to learn from the mistakes of others and take precautions to protect the project as much as possible. Our Fiscal Conservancy is going to be something that we hope will help Augur during the development process.

Finally, I think it’s going to be much more difficult for crowdsales to match the level of success as the past two years have had. Augur had a unique, decentralized solution to the oracle program that resulted in something that many different fields have wanted to exist for years. It’s going to be hard for a project to top the apparent level of demand for a decentralized prediction market.

It’s so interesting that Naval’s Tweet got me thinking about what the future may hold for this method of building a business. More importantly, it made me realize that the amount of teams that are capable and prepared to pull off a successful major crowdsale are very few and far between. If these are rare, then the number of marketing planners/strategists that have knowledge and experience in this space are even rarer.

One of my goals is to provide as many valid projects as I can (or that are interested in working with me) with marketing assistance and guidance should they choose to start a Blockchain company.

Check out my new website at TonySakich.com and feel free to contact me if you are seeking someone to give some advice, or someone to provide further services for your project.

Twitter: @TonySwish