I wanted to take a moment to discuss how I choose to select blockchain tech I want to put my money in. This is written in a way that may seem like I'm writing to designers and creators, but if you're looking to buy coins, consider how these theories may effect your buying process.
I see a lot of advertisements for buying into ICOs now that talk about % and ROI and not much about how they plan to engage the individual people, so it seems to me that now would be the time for me to share my point of view on choosing where to put my money in certain blockchain tech.
While understanding and breaking down how the actual tech works in a secure and decentralized manner is at the core of the success of the technology, I believe the true determiner of success of a business comes down to how the design and support team understands and engages a response from both individual people and the market. The market may still decide a resounding 'no,' with even the best ideas, but I think it takes a conscious person looking at how their product looks from the outside in order to communicate the idea properly and give their baby the best shot at success.
I have participated in street teams with only a few small blockchain apps, but each one fell short when it came to community engagement, individual onboarding(how they respond to the individual and empower them when they take their first steps in becoming involved), and general market strategy.
I will now discuss a few points I have found help me to determine my level of interest.
1 Speech
I see a lot of ads with grammatical errors, inconsistent themes and perspectives, and numbers! I get that numbers make people think money, which is an incentive to buy your coin, but think of this : If you love your idea, and want others to see its' true potential as a 'game-changer' do you think selling the idea as a money maker will attract people who will hodl? or people who will fomo and pull out the minute they hear about another project that they think will bring them an additional %.75 ROI? This gets into who your real target audience is(and I guess who I think my target audience is, lol) and whether or not you're interested in a more stable and decentralized ecosystem, so I'll move on.
A common language with your demographic is an important first step, but any team interested in engaging a group of people(small or large) needs to consider how their unique approach can be translated into a unique way of speaking about the problem they aim to solve. My personal favorite for this approach is using human emotion to tell a story. For example, If you are creating a decentralized market, consider telling a story that discusses how important decentralized markets are to our 'story' as beings that live in a centralized system.
Discuss how you aim to 'share a different perspective,' or, 'offer a different path' for those that feel the current narrative does not sound like theirs. I want to step to the side for the moment and mention that interjections into your 'story' with statistics, financials, and ROI are OK, but work best when they are used sparingly, and only when truly relevant to the 'story.' Maybe just make a separate section where you can put all the numbers in one place for those that need them to make a mathematical decision.
2 Social understanding
Well-rounded teams will understand how their idea will need structure in a social sense. Individual people are easy to manipulate with marketing(It's why people act crazy in supermarkets) but getting things to work in a social sense are an entirely different beast. I believe a solid understanding of economics, and maybe government, may point you in the right direction, but are not a perfect background for blockchain tech. We have not had a decentralized society for quite some time in our species' history, and not much was written down then, so we are currently in the 'wild wild west,' of social engineering. Find someone for your team that has some very practical experience in social engineering, especially experience with building larger teams, say at least 5-10 people, preferably above 50 though.
We are great problem solvers, and there will always be someone who finds loopholes, hacks, and ways to game the system, so there should be mechanisms(rewards and fees/fines) that make cheating an ineffective solution to their problem. Test your idea with a large group of people if you want to work those kinks out before a big release, and you'll avoid having to rework your entire concept when your pyramid-scheme type idea falls on its' head.
Social understanding also pays off when it comes time to 'snowball' into a big success. I had one tech company I was into totally tricked me into spending a good portion of my fomo fund, only to find out it was just another linkin park remix album: a retouching of their previous genial work with the relevant 'blockchain' type twist, and an ICO to keep out of the red. It worked though! Unfortunately it lost about %80 value when BTC took the dive this last winter, and when I started digging for evidence of productivity to encourage me to hodl, I found they had just designed the appearance of success into their system , and were also staking with company funds. A hard lesson for me, but one that taught me that even a bad plan is easily spun with a strong social engagement team!
3 The gift of giving
This is personally the most important to me, and the most difficult tool to discern with. How is your idea designed to give freely and without strings? Investing in people is going to your biggest 'ROI,' but is the biggest financial risk you will ever take. It won't make any sense from an investors point of view, because your returns may not be financial. Blockchain tech is poised to removed the meddling middle man, but in order to do so the product may involve removing you from a position of influence at some point in time. Consider how you can make your product mostly free, or so cheap that you feel existential crises creeping in.
Also, give the gift of transparency and objectivity to your demographic, and they will support your idea to the end. Vulnerability is an asset in blockchain, I believe, because trustless technology is dependent on you actually designing your personal success out of the equation. Welcome criticism of your flaws, use it to fuel your design process and establish trust with your investors. You need accountability in your team, so offer it up without it being asked for, and it will be the best decision you ever make.
That's all I have for the day! Thanks for stopping by