Bitcoin Forum

What are the 5 most common mistakes that startup teams commit when writing whitepapers - that really annoy your investors and hurt your chances of raising capital?

Check out our free resources at the Whitepaper Academy (https://www.intellicore.press/whitepaper-academy/) to find out if you're guilty of one (or all) of them...

Damn, I never thought that hiring someone to write Whitepape is that expensive, maybe ICO is really the future  ;D. What are you stance though regarding ICO Whitepaper plagiarism? Its been one of the biggest issues so far and what if someone accuses you of plagiarism? I also suggest that you put up a official Twitter account, so that potential clients can contact you right away and can post questions about your services. Goodluck.

white paper is no quality feature of an ico.

Some companies may help you write ICO whitepaper, and you can save much time to do other things.

$5 or $500, at least this academy recognises that the best person to write the whitepaper is the project owner. There's no substitute really. Of all the things projects outsource, the soul of the project is one that shouldn't be. Hire someone to edit, clean, tidy up, sure. Another to create marketing one pagers and presentations out of it, of course.

But no, never to write your whitepaper. Would you outsource deep sea diving and brain surgery if that were your profession? (To use the examples on the website itself).

Definitely agree to this one which if you do have an idea into your mind about a certain project i cant think of that i would let others do write of the whitepaper which this is tending to be the backbone of your entire project and no other people would able to put out every single detail of it which is on your mind and as you have said they can either edit, check for grammar errors and any related things but this would only be their job no other than that.

white paper is no quality feature of an ico.

Considering the whitepaper or one pager might be the first thing an investor reads and some specialized investors might read quit a few I would strongly advice strongly against plagiarizing. I never understood ICOs, that are looking for big investors and just slam together a cheap copied whitepaper and wonder why nobody takes them serious.
No matter how good your idea is, if you can not communicate it professionally you will not get funding.

Couldn't agree more.

Also, it's important to specify the product's key features strategically and well-planned. Writing same features again and again bore people to death!

I think that hiring someone to write the ICO whitepaper may not be worse, yes definitely the ICO projects must be fully understand and known by the project owner or the team, but I have realized that sometimes people that they are very good at development might not be good at doing expressing ideas by word, while a person helping your team to review once more may can also return you some possible problems and reasonable feedbacks.

That is why humankind invented the distribution of labour. ;)
So yes the super great tech guy developing the amazing application might indeed not be the best person to write the company communication and communicate with investors.

Hiring just "someone" is not that expensive. ;) But a subpar result will just cause you more work and losses in the long run.

Whitepaper plagiarism can easily be proven, so that has not really been an issue for us so far. If someone plagiarizes a whitepaper, they should expect that the community will find out sooner or later.

We have, it's here at @intellicore_pr (http://www.twitter.com/@intellicore_pr).
Thanks! :)

Exactly. Except maybe a writer who becomes so familiar with the subject that they practically become one of the project owners.

True!

The whitepaper is the soul, as I said. Maybe the coding later on and the infrastructure, should all be the brain and the heart, and you can always plug people into it. But the conception of the idea. The why and the how. That's probably way underestimated and the reason why so much crap is out there. BIPs published here are currently many times better than the standard WP fare in just so many aspects.


How would that be possible unless the project launched without a whitepaper? The subject isn't enough for a whitepaper, though said writer could certainly be a good critic or peer reviewer... which again goes back to the earlier point I made. By all means, get your WP peer reviewed, get it looked at and do whatever you need to professionalise it. Add a better communications slant. But there's no logic to having a WP written by someone else other than the project owner. If the project could work that way... I'd say it's a pointless project.

How would that be possible unless the project launched without a whitepaper?
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As you said yourself, the coding can (and often does) happen after the idea has been defined and described in detail in the first iteration(s) of the whitepaper. Kind of depends what you mean by project "launch" - the start of the fundraising or the release of the software/platform.