The hype over the cryptocurrency topic leads to various peculiar processes in the whole industry. Startupers discover and try different ways to attract investors; investors study the market and devote their time and attention to the potentially most profitable offers.

At the same time, on the modern market for a project to succeed, it is not enough to have a great idea or provide captivating speeches. Generally, there is something more vital for your ICO to end profitably. In this article, we will discuss the ICO pre-sale, its pros and cons, as well as the significance of MVP for ICO presale. This article will lead you to the understanding of how to make your ICO appealing.

Introduction to the ICO Presale

We will assume that you already have a brilliant idea for ICO that is intended at overwhelming the cryptocurrency world. Probably, your concept is something brand new and potentially profitable. But the point is, in the beginning, you are the only person that sees what benefits this ICO can bring. If your communication and presentation skills leave much to be desired, you would not even have an opportunity to share your thoughts with partners or friends. Furthermore, your idea should look really good and be special enough to attract the attention. There are tons of offers on the market, and Herculean efforts are required to make a difference and succeed.

The first step of the idea presentation is pre-ICO campaign. If you have not made a research yet, here is a short introduction to the topic of MVP for pre-ICO.

Pre-ICO is a stage that takes place before the start of the official crowdsale. It is also called ICO Presale. Its main aim is to attract as much attention as possible to the product.

There are three steps startup founders usually take to make the pre-ICO successful:

1. Advertise actively

It is the best way to inform the potential investors and partners about the product. High-quality ads all over the web will pick the attention. Announcing and promotion via social media channels is also a good way to declare your token sales.

2. Build the team

The ICO Presale has no chances to be beneficial if you have no one by your side. A competent team of the professionals helps to build the trustable relationship between you and your potential investors, as well as makes a contribution to your business development.

3. Organize the promotions

Another considerable step is event planning. You need to take care of proper organization, place, participants etc. In a nutshell, your event needs to be memorable and inspire only positive impressions upon remembering, so the investors consider your future ICO campaign worth the attention.

Even though Pre-ICO takes place before the start of the official campaign, it employs the same smart contracts that would be used in the ICO.

Investments at this stage are profitable for both sides: a startuper promotes the product; an investor gets a bonus price or a greater discount for a crowdsale. On the other hand, ICO-presale costs much for a startup owner but brings nice benefits for an investor. The further comparison of a pre-sale and a crowdsale shows that more often than not, more tokens are bought out on the first stage. The underlying reason is that most of the startupers run the pre-sale to attract more influential investors. Some companies even make the Pre-ICO closed and invite-only event. In fact, there's nothing to lose for investors: if they suddenly have the change of mind, they can sell the tokens bought at presale during ICO for a higher price.

Preparing for the pre-ICO, you also should be aware of the possible complications. First of all, due to the higher minimum contribution, some of the potential investors may refuse to participate in the event. Secondly, you never know how the crypto world will look like tomorrow, so this type of occupation is always a bit risky. Thirdly, you cannot measure your future success by analyzing the results of the presale.

How to Make the Investors Trust You?

The current digital market is full of fraudulent schemes. Even the major investors with years of experience may get into the pitfall, lose their money or even reputation because of the cooperation with the unreliable partner. We all take care of our businesses. And investors usually think twice or even more times before spending their money. Lack of product’s maturity is one of the main reasons for which you may lose the potential investors.

It is a common practice for businessmen to use money from the pre-sale for a further development of an idea. And as the experience of last years shows many ICOs ends in disappointment.

It is possible to create better conditions for your business development and inspire trust by presenting the impeccable MVP at the pre-ICO stage.

MVP for ICO Presale as a Way to Success

Some of the entrepreneurs do not consider the MVP because of two main reasons:

• they have a nice proof of concept;

• they believe the idea is so great and innovative that it does not need any proof.

Let us clarify the details to make the right conclusions. Cryptocurrency investments are always risky. Even though most of the projects like this are blockchain-based, investors always hesitate before making a decision. How to help them to get rid of hesitations? Validate your idea!

When it comes to validation, there are two possible ways to consider:

• Proof of Concept (POC)

Proof of Concept is a prototype of the future product that includes some of the features and reflects the main purpose of the product. It allows demonstrating the technical side of the idea but has no capabilities for the user reaction or business profitability assessment.

• Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

MVP is a completed product realizing the essence of the idea that can already be presented to users. It allows collecting user feedback, demonstrates the solution to the real problem and potential benefits.

POC	MVP
Some of the technical features	A ready solution that can be tested by users
No capabilities for UX testing	Fully suitable to collect the user’ feedback
No capabilities to calculate the profitability	Wide capabilities to analyze the data and make conclusions concerning the potential profitability

Your awesome concept means nothing if it is not validated and proved by the hard facts. This is where MVP will be extremely handy. It allows testing your idea by designing the prototype with basic UX that would implement the core functionality. Next would be the stage of user feedback collection. Most important are such statistical data as a size of the potential target audience or possible profits. Conduct deep research and create a good-looking presentation.

There is a large percent of the startupers that rely on the idea only. There is another part that is ready to present POC. Only a few companies are ready to demonstrate the MVP and organize the pre-ICO stage. Is it surprising that all the successful blockchain startups belong to the third type?

So, does ICO need MVP? Yes, definitely! And here are some reasons:

• It demonstrates the viability of the idea;
• It provides potential investors with a proof of reliability;
• It distinguishes the company amongst the competition and increases its chances to succeed.

No doubts, creating the MVP requires time (though, much less than the finished product), money and efforts. But at the same time, it allows avoiding much of the risks, increases self-confidence of the startup owner and inspires trust from potential investors. By analyzing the customers’ feedback, you get the additional opportunity to improve your product, strategy or the whole campaign in order to prepare for the alpha version properly. And the competent software developers would be your reliable partners when creating the best MVP possible.

Conclusion

Pre-ICO is a great way to attract the attention to your future token sale. But it can be only profitable if you prepare for it properly. The brilliant concept itself is not enough even if it is presented in the form of POC. The first step to your future achievements is the striking MVP. Strengthen your idea with the real evidence and bring your ideas to life. Find the right software development team and watch the MVP development for ICO projects that will lead you to success.

Originally published at webcase.studio blog.