The term ‘ICO’ or coin offering that was first burst to the collective consciousness in a significant way in 2017. The financing plan went from being a novel idea thought up to a way for organizations in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space to raise millions of dollars in a matter of hours.
With the cash raised in the year rocketing to over $ 3,000,000,000 through ICOs, it’s not surprising that an increasing number of companies are wanting to learn more about the potential. And, while the great majority of ICOs have been tech-related, companies from different industries are discovering success in the space.
In which they looked for investors to put money to the indaHash Coin 24, indaHash, a Warsaw-basedinfluencer advertising and marketing company, recently launched an ICO. The results were pretty astonishing: 53,000 ETH increased (which equates to about$60 million in value in the time)along with also the pre-ICO hard cap (when the entire amount of created coins has sold out) in only 4 days.
We caught up with CEO and co-founder Barbara Soltysinska to talk about how the influencer marketing platform created a bold step to the universe of cryptocurrencies.
What was the level of knowledge concerning ICOs and cryptocurrencies before settling on this plan?
“In our situation, the ICO is not as a funding strategy, and more of an advanced approach to cultivate our company and be ahead of the contest. We want indaHash to turn into a clear and decentralized platform for influencer advertising campaigns, fueling the needs of follower actions and influencers, brands.
“With regards to knowledge, we cooperate with the top advisors and crypto-influencers in the event the market, working to the best solutions together for our product.”
Did you encounter scepticism about utilizing an ICO?
“We had both, I believe. Of course you may encounter, although people believed it was a great idea. As you know and because it isn’t understood by them, many people are skeptical of cryptocurrency. Lucky for us, our ICO went really nicely so that we proved the skeptics wrong.”
What tactics did the business use to advertise the ICO?
“We used several tactics to advertise our ICO for example traditional media outreach (we were featured on Forbes, CNBC, etc.) and promotions on our societal channels. But, as an influencer advertising firm, it was a clear decision to use people influential in the social networking space that is crypto to help us.
“People go to YouTube to get crypto-related information, so we partnered with over 100 distinct YouTubers from all over the world to review our ICO. This result in nearly 5k videos on YouTube for ‘indaHash ICO’.
“We organized several media trips and invited more than 40 crypto YouTubers to our HQ in Warsaw so that they could see our working company up close and personal, fulfill our workers and get first access interviews with myself to the undertaking. We also worked really hard to expand our Telegram team. We made sure we had personnel around the clock updating our associates and answering questions because maintaining communication when conducting and ICO is vital. Another cool thing we did was send out a newswire daily our ICO launched and had our picture displayed in Times Square.”
What were the largest challenges/lessons learned during and after the process?
“We’ve got a very intensive and detailed whitepaper. Putting this together in a way that has been on brand but also stimulating and informative for people was a challenge. We worked extremely hard on it received so many compliments on it, with many saying it had been the whitepaper they’ve ever encounter. That’s a large, important lesson for those reading this – make your whitepaper stand out!
“And, clearly, there’s a lot of pressure to succeed when performing an ICO. It is challenging to not question your ability and yourself to be able to hit on your goals, therefore a huge lesson here is never to stop. Throughout our pre-and principal ICO, my team and I worked hard to maintain the momentum moving with marketing and the distribution’s strategic issues. I learned to actually lean in my ICO group and advisers because everybody played a major part in making it happen.”
What was behind the choice to cover influencers in IDH tokens? What are the benefits of this approach?
“Our goal at indaHash is to make innovative solutions according to market demand. We believe in a vision of the influencer area where brands and influencers can cooperate in a way.
“As the largest influencer advertising platform on earth (450,000 influencers registered working with customers such as Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Unilever etc.), we decided to proceed to some blockchain based approach to accomplish this objective. We would like to develop our platform and give the option to conduct campaigns through contracts that are smart and utilize indaHash tokens as a reward and remuneration alternative to brands and influencers.
“Envision an influencer who wants to run a campaign and generates an auction via clever contract and brands may bid for the article, or brands producing attempts via indaHash smart contracts with a blocked number of IDH coins as a reward and influencers employing to the effort creating posts and receiving payments in a quick, secure and trusted way. Imagine performance attempts for influencers based on referral programs where commission is received by influencers and determine rankings of influencers participated in a totally transparent way. But to do all that influencers and brands need a user-friendly interface and technologies created solely for their needs. This is our vision of indaHash for a solution provider, producing unique and useful technology for both parties.”
What is the business planning to do with all the money raised?
“The capital will be used to grow our business even more inexpensively, expand to new markets, develop new influencers faster and become a dominating market leader in terms of influencer marketing activities.
“At this point we’re ahead of competition not just in terms of cash – but also in terms of our vision that the planet is shifting from older centralized media to decentralized micro-publishers. And we would like to be a key participant in this new media landscape”
