ICO Red Flags

[Grant Hero]

I thought that this may be helpful for others. Here are my red flags (no particular order):

- Anonymous Team ie. FuckToken
Is anyone comfortable handing over money to someone they have never met, seen, or heard of before?

- Inexperienced Teams
I prefer to see teams and developers that have been in their respective industries for years. Startup and corporate experience are very important here too.

- Fake Profiles
Integrity is perhaps the most important trait for me personally. Once that is betrayed, it can't be recovered.

- No Prototype
Teams with no prototype give me a good indication of a team's ability to execute and gain traction. It doesn't require much time to develop a proof-of-concept for any demo. And quite frankly, every team should be required to prove that they can sweat and hustle (in a short period of time) before trying to raise millions on the open market.

- One Person Companies
Self-explanatory

- A large number of team members and advisors
This scares me for multiple reasons. First, I always laugh when a startup has no prototype but displays a large team of employees and advisors. Additionally, teams can not be efficient at the startup stage with both. Having a large team increases payroll and operating expense. If a team doesn't have a product or prototype, a large team is not going to be efficient in the early stages of the company. The same goes with having a lot of advisors as the leadership team will be pulled in many different directions.

- Quick ICO Timeline
Everything that is worthwhile in this world takes time. Companies that drum up an announcement, website, and try to ICO in short period of time are always questionable.

- Questionable ICO Terms
If a team is raising a large amount of funds despite not having a product or vision to accompany the raise amount, that is always questionable. Additionally, if the token distribution favors the founders versus the investors. Lastly, if there is no max cap.

- Solution vs. Problem
If a team isn't solving a problem with a large pain point across many people, it is likely to not have a lot of impact and potential.

- No Clear Roadmap
A team should be able to articulate the results and direction for the company the last six and next six months, respectively. If not, then they haven't done the necessary diligence to plan and succeed.

- Lack of Communication / Unresponsiveness
This is pretty self-explanatory; however, applies to communication across various boards such as Bitcointalk.org, Bitcoin Forums, Steemit, Reddit, Telegram, and Slack. If a team is active on communications from those channels or responsive when you reach out to them directly, it's a telling sign of what you can expect in the future.

[kingscrown]

Great ideas

[sncwebx]

Great read my man! On point and your ideas are damn good ones

[Grant Hero]

Thanks all. Just trying to do my part in helping the community identify scam projects so that it doesn't cripple the growth of this industry.