i) Have a big vision, but start with a niche: you are more likely to fail if you try to be everything and do everything. Paypal started as a payment solution focused on only one platform — eBay. Not until they became successful on eBay that they started to expand to other platforms and services. When tenX started, they could have tried to tackle many issues related to payment all at the same time. However, they focused on doing one thing really well— getting people to spend crypto easily anywhere via a debit card.

ii) Be ready to pivot your idea if the market is not ready: tenX team initially had an idea to do a proof of property ownership project in Africa which won them a competition with Development Bank of Singapore (DBS.) However, they quickly realized that a key challenge for that concept will be the link between real-world legal system and blockchain. (I.e., will the legal system honor ownership info stored in blockchain) Realizing that it could take years before that happens, the team pivoted to a different idea, which later becomes tenX.

iii) Lay the ground work to build strong community: it takes tenX multiple years to build the community leading up to their successful ICO. tenX did this by engaging with supporters and focus on product development. Many companies try to replicate their success by focusing on replicating their mechanics of ICOs, but neglect to build a strong community of supporters. Ironically, in order to build a decentralized “trustless” system, the team needed to earn trust before that can happen.

iv) Focus on customer experience: your project might have the best technology, but if it is too complicated for an average user to use, you will not be able to get the user adoption. What tenX is doing and what they plan to do are not a complete novel idea, but what they focus on is delivering the best customer experience.

v) Execution execution execution: do not get discouraged if there are already people out there working on an idea you have. Do not fear competition. It is actually a validation that your idea has merits. It’s not about who has the best idea but rather who can execute the best.