The Token Metrics Podcast

If you’ve ever run a small business, then you know the financial effort it requires to stay afloat. That’s where crowdfunding can give entrepreneurs a helping hand. Simply put, crowdfunding is the practice of funding a business or cause by raising small amounts of money from a large number of people typically via the internet. By leveraging the power of social media and crowdfunding websites such as Kickstarter, Go Fund Me, and Angel List entrepreneurs scan expand the pool of investors from which they raise capital beyond the traditional venture capitalists and angel investors. So, for example, if you have an idea for a product, let’s say an app that scans the ingredients in your fridge and gives you recipe ideas, then you can go to a crowdfunding website and pitch your idea. Promote it and hope that people will be interested enough to invest and help you get the funds you need. You can promise investors free access to the app or other special deals. IPOs vs. Crowdfunding Let’s imagine that you have a $100 to $1,000 and would like to invest them. Should you invest in an IPO or invest in a crowdfunding deal? The answer isn’t that simple. In the United States, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) restricts investments in companies before an IPO to only Accredited or Sophisticated investors. The reason is understandable: most of these investments come with a risk, and people don’t have the necessary financial background to make educated decisions. So, only individuals making more than $200k a year for at least two years or having a net worth of a least $1 million can invest in companies before they go public. Things have changed. Back in 2012, President Obama signed the Jump-Start Our Business Start-Ups Act (or the JOBS Act) which allows small businesses to advertise shares for sale to anyone, regardless of their income. The Act was pretty straightforward, but it took the SEC more than four years to put it into practice. They were concerned about protecting people from scammers, bad investment ideas or their poor judgment. The new rule allows people to invest between $2,000 and $100,000 a year in crowdfunding projects. So, if you’ve ever dreamt of playing real life “Shark” like in the hit show “Shark Tank,” you now have the opportunity to do it, but with some limitations. http://ianbalina.com/hacking-venture-... Website: http://ianbalina.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/diaryofamad... Twitter: https://twitter.com/diaryofamademan Snapchat: https://www.snapchat.com/add/diaryofa...

s the name suggests, an Initial Public Offering, or IPO, is the process by which a company goes from private to public by selling stocks to the general public. One of the main reasons companies go public is to raise funds and have more liquidity on hand. They can reinvest the capital in the business’ infrastructure or expand the company. Another added benefit of an IPO is that you can increase your chances of attracting top management candidates by offering them perks such as stock option plans. Not to mention that being listed in major stock exchange markets like Nasdaq or NYSE gives credibility. Once the company goes public, the stocks the investors bought are no longer “paper money.” They now can sell or liquidate their stock in exchange for real money. Let’s take Snapchat as an example since they went public recently, and managed to raise $3.4 billion at a valuation of $24 billion. They priced their IPO at $17, meaning that anyone in the world can now go to an online brokerage site, such as TD Ameritrade or ETrade and buy shares in Snapchat under the trading symbol SNAP. In reality, however, the IPO process isn’t very democratic, and it favors large institutional investors (venture capital, hedge funds, private equity and ultra-rich individuals known as angel investors). We can illustrate this by going over the Snapchat price before the IPO. Snapchat Valuation If we look at data from Pitchbook, we can see that the Seed Round (Series A1) valuation for Snapchat was only $5.3 million. Compare this to the post-IPO valuation of $24 billion. Snapchats Cap Table Looking at Snapchat’s cap table, we see that their pre-IPO price for Series A1 was $0.01, and $0.21 for Series A. Compare that versus the current post-IPO price of $17.00!!!! This is exactly how startup founders become billionaires, and how early investors become millionaires! To put things in perspective, a Series A1 investor received a 169,900% (1,699x) return on their investment after five years, when Snapchat had an IPO. A Series A investor received a 7,900% (79x) return on their investment after five years. If you had invested $100 in Snapchat’s Series A1 or A, your $100 would now be $169,900 (Series A1), and $7,900 (Series A). If you had invested $1,000, your money would now be $1.7 million (Series A1), and $79,000 (Series A). If you had invested $10,000, your money would now be $17 million (Series A1), and $790,000 (Series A). This is what Angel Investors and Venture Capital funds do. Except instead of investing $10,000, the average Angel Investor invests a minimum of $25,000, and the average Venture capital fund invests $3 million. When it comes to raising money using traditional investment methods, startups are incentivized to keep the number of investors as low as possible, resulting in only people with the most money being able to invest. As a result, regular people who don’t have a minimum of $25,000, miss out on these opportunities of making money pre-IPO and have to wait until a private company goes public to buy its shares. IPOs are not without risks, though. More often than not, there is little data on the company so it can be hard for investors, especially angel investors (rich individual investors), to predict how the stock will behave in its initial day of trading and the near future. Add to this the fact that most IPOs are for companies that are going through provisional growth periods and you’ll understand the uncertainty that lingers above their future value. Maybe these are some of the reasons why the number of companies going public has declined in the first half of 2016. Or maybe it’s because change is upon us. http://ianbalina.com/hacking-venture-... Website: http://ianbalina.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/diaryofamad... Twitter: https://twitter.com/diaryofamademan Snapchat: https://www.snapchat.com/add/diaryofa...

Initial Coin Offerings are similar to a crowdfund. Blockchain startups offer investors the opportunity to invest in their projects by purchasing a part of their cryptocurrency in advance. In exchange for financing the project, investors receive digital tokens (cryptocurrency) at a very low purchase price. The investors expect the value of the received tokens to rise over time, with the option to sell the tokens on online exchanges like Bittrex or Poloniex at a higher price than the initial purchase price. ICOs usually take place in the early phases of a project. The entrepreneurs use the funds to continue developing their products and launch it. Nearly all funds come in the form of Bitcoin, although Ethereum, Bitcoin’s main competitor, is starting to get a considerable size of the ICO market. Here’s how Initial Coin Offerings typically work. Let’s imagine that a Blockchain startup creates a new product (application) on the Ethereum Blockchain. The Blockchain startup determines the value of the product, based on what they think the product is worth, and how much money they need to raise to build and scale their idea (proof-of-concept / MVP). This value, however, doesn’t remain fixed and changes according to the dynamics of the market. In other words, the market supply and demand set the price instead of a central authority or government. To get a better understanding of how ICOs works, imagine that I propose creating a competitor to Netflix called Webflix. It does everything Netflix does, except it’s open source and decentralized, meaning no company or central authority controls it, data is peer-to-peer, similar to BitTorrent. At Webflix, membership can only be purchased using tokens I create called Flix Coins. To fund my Netflix competitor, I pre-sell these tokens to the public. People buy them because if they jump on the bandwagon early, they can either resell the tokens for a higher value or trade them for membership at Webflix for pennies on the dollar. That’s if my Netflix competitor takes off. If it doesn’t, they end up with a bunch of worthless tokens. So, in a way, ICOs took the best from both Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) and Crowd Funding and created a decentralized system that has no single point of failure or middle man being in control. Is that a good thing? To answer this question, let’s try to understand how IPOs and Crowd Funding work. http://ianbalina.com/hacking-venture-... Website: http://ianbalina.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/diaryofamad... Twitter: https://twitter.com/diaryofamademan Snapchat: https://www.snapchat.com/add/diaryofa...

It’s said that savvy entrepreneurs see opportunity where no one else does. Then, why do so few of them pay attention to a new form of investment that is taking the world by storm? A better question would be: why do so few of them know that startups have raised more than $220 million in the past three years through a new financial instrument that has nothing to do with the traditional venture capital method. A lot of you struggle to make ends meet, working long hours and building side hustles that will eventually earn you money. But, what if I told you that we are living in one of the best times to make money right now? In this overly competitive economy, I hear you cry. I don’t think so, you say, raising your brows in disbelief. You better believe it and take action soon because we’re going through the biggest and fastest transfer of wealth in human history and it would be a shame not to take advantage of this new golden age. It’s a bold claim, I know, but let’s take a step back and see the big picture. Do you remember the late ‘90s when the word “dot-com” was on the tip of everybody’s tongue? Those who were savvy enough to invest at the beginning of the dot-com boom became millionaires and billionaires over the years. Think about companies such as Google, Amazon, eBay, and Cisco who rode the dot-com wave and made a fortune. The early employees and investors in those same companies also made a fortune. Well, there’s a new boom happening and, unlike the dot-com era, it’s largely flying under the radar. I’m talking about Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), a way to raise funds for Blockchain projects, one of the most disruptive innovations in technology since the invention of the internet itself. No, you don’t need a Ph.D. in this to understand it or make money from it! In this guide, I’m going to teach you everything you need to know to understand how ICOs work and what you need to start making money. http://ianbalina.com/hacking-venture-... Website: http://ianbalina.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/diaryofamad... Twitter: https://twitter.com/diaryofamademan Snapchat: https://www.snapchat.com/add/diaryofa...

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Get $10 free of Bitcoin to start investing in ICOs here: http://ianbalina.com/sixfigures/coinbase It’s said that savvy entrepreneurs see opportunity where no one else does. Then, why do so few of them pay attention to a new form of investment that is taking the world by storm? A better question would be: why do so few of them know that startups have raised more than $220 million in the past three years through a new financial instrument that has nothing to do with the traditional venture capital method. A lot of you struggle to make ends meet, working long hours and building side hustles that will eventually earn you money. But, what if I told you that we are living in one of the best times to make money right now? In this overly competitive economy, I hear you cry. I don’t think so, you say, raising your brows in disbelief. You better believe it and take action soon because we’re going through the biggest and fastest transfer of wealth in human history and it would be a shame not to take advantage of this new golden age. It’s a bold claim, I know, but let’s take a step back and see the big picture. Do you remember the late ‘90s when the word “dot-com” was on the tip of everybody’s tongue? Those who were savvy enough to invest at the beginning of the dot-com boom became millionaires and billionaires over the years. Think about companies such as Google, Amazon, eBay, and Cisco who rode the dot-com wave and made a fortune. The early employees and investors in those same companies also made a fortune. Well, there’s a new boom happening and, unlike the dot-com era, it’s largely flying under the radar. I’m talking about Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), a way to raise funds for Blockchain projects, one of the most disruptive innovations in technology since the invention of the internet itself. No, you don't need a Ph.D. in this to understand it or make money from it! In this guide, I’m going to teach you everything you need to know to understand how ICOs work and what you need to start making money. Get $10 free of Bitcoin to start investing in ICOs here: http://ianbalina.com/sixfigures/coinbase ------------------------------------------------------------- 1:19 Living in a New Golden Age 1:58 Remember the Dot Com Boom? 3:18 A New Dot Com Boom Has Arrived 4:37 What are Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs)? 11:22 What are Initial Public Offerings? (IPOs) 12:45 IPOs are Where Billionaires and Millionaires are Created 14:35 Snapchat IPO Example 21:33 What is Crowd Funding? 24:21 How ICOs are Disrupting Venture Capital and Crowd Funding 25:00 Lower Investment Minimum 25:20 Similar to Crowd Funding 28:12 No Need for Blockchain Companies to Give Up Equity in Company 28:26 ICOs Currently Unregulated by Most Laws 29:37 More Liquidity for Investors Than Venture Capital or Angel Investing 33:43 The History of Initial Coin Offerings 35:28 How ICOs Can Make You a Millionaire 40:28 Are ICOs Safe to Invest in? 46:52 How to Invest in ICOs 47:01 Initial Coin Offerings Calendar List 55:21 Conclusion _________________________ Website: http://ianbalina.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/diaryofamad... Snapchat: https://www.snapchat.com/add/diaryofa... Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ianbalina/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/diaryofamademan

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