What really upsets me is that most of the whitepapers pumped out by ICOs today are emphatically not the way we best understand how sustainable new companies come into existence. Many contain big grandiose plans that stretch years and don’t admit the necessary network effects, new technologies, etc., for even modest success. An idea, a LaTeX installation, and WordPress landing page are a very low bar for raising millions of dollars, especially by today’s standards. With open source software and services like AWS and GCP, we should expect more.
Startups by definition are organizations in flux seeking their scalable business models, and claiming to have all the answers upon inception is an exercise in hubris and/or grandstanding. The late Steve Jobs did say that customers don’t know what they want, but many of these ICO firms don’t even seem to take the first steps in talking to early prospects.
1999 is calling, and they want their 18-month growth plans, 50-page business plans, and million dollar war chests back.
That's probably an optimistic view of the motivations of a lot of the ICOs. Your comment reminds me of an HN thread from about a month ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15072257).
> How to make money in ethereum, from high to low risk ... 3. Even more profitable is kicking off your own ICO. Go through the checklist - fancy HTML5 theme that you can buy off of Themeforest and edit the HTML a bit for the landing page, create a Slack channel/Twitter account/subreddit, write a "whitepaper" that is easy enough for the shmucks you're targeting to understand, yet replete with enough pseudo-academic crypto jargon and irrelevant/unnecessary mathematical symbols to get the shmucks nodding their heads and pretending to understand how this particular algorithm/equation based on the "turing-complete ethereum blockchain" will "change the world" or "bank the unbanked" or, more importantly to them, appreciate 500x in value.
Startups by definition are organizations in flux seeking their scalable business models, and claiming to have all the answers upon inception is an exercise in hubris and/or grandstanding. The late Steve Jobs did say that customers don’t know what they want, but many of these ICO firms don’t even seem to take the first steps in talking to early prospects.
1999 is calling, and they want their 18-month growth plans, 50-page business plans, and million dollar war chests back.