Bitcoin Forum

So I have an idea, I identified the problem and the solution, I have the prototype, I'm working on the MVP.
I roughly know some of my potential clients.

What I don't have:
1. Team - suggest places where I could recruit people. I tried job boards, but I only got a ton application from newbies, when I need someone serious who will work for me for free, initially.
2. Money - where do you look for investors in crypto projects?
3. Followers - what stage is the right moment to start promoting a project?

Give me advice. (This is serious btw.)

So you just have a concept? What's your prototype, is it actually something scripted?

I think finding someone to work to free and finding funding are going to be the hard part - you're better off just waiting to raise the funding yourself if you can as therell likely be a trust problem on both sides.

That being said the startup and initial testing will probably not be too expensive if you can get the coding done initially cheap.

It's working, although not tested.


What is your suggested order? I thought it should be this way:

team > followers > investors > clients

Do you know of any boards focused at crypto startups, from the founder's perspective?

1. Team : Best place to find the team is friends, acquaintances, LinkedIn, and this forum itself, I think even on your this post, you might find a few people who will be ready to partner with you but remember, higher the expertise of that person more stake he will want in your idea. If you want t hire someone try on the services section of the forum clearly stating the experience requirement.

2. Again the forum is full of wealthy investors who wouldn't mind investing a bit in your project if it's actually good. But for this you will have to share a lot of details with that person it won't be just free money, you would be highly accountable for it. Generally, people take seed funding from their near contacts.

3. Followers: There is no single answer for this one. This depends entirely on the type of project you have and how scalable it is. The risk of someone copying your idea is pretty high too, so if it's a product make sure you get it patented before disclosing. 

I would also give a caveat it's not going to be a very easy task to be honest. It takes a long time to build a good team and get reasonable funding. These are the major reasons why most of startups fail too.

Thank you for all the answers.

Does anyone know a board specific to that topic?

+Team: when looking for a too to work with on your project look for those who have time, passion and knowledge, this characters are individual based and not by country, so if they have portfolio or a recommendation, team is the first success of a project or the project failure.

+ Money: loan, Investment, crypto-currency investors are much and there are more crypto-currency, still coming out, I think good place for investors are group communities

+ Followers: start promoting you project from when you have your confidence to the project, do let the market to that for you.

Better look for team members around you, colleagues that you know have the skills that you're looking for. It is quite a challenge if you will get team members outside your realm as they can drop anytime especially if they don't invest much of their resources. You can always expand your team members but I suggest once you already established your foundation and have the framework of what you want to do. And regarding investors, if you believe you have solid concept, you can start pitching it in your local angel investors. Because they will be the one to reach out easy. Once you get their attention, it would be easy afterwards as they can endorse it to their connections. Building a project is not easy. It would take hard work, and dedication to move forward. That is, if you are sincere about your goals. If not, a lot here can even make a 5-min ANN to introduce their project.

If you already have a working piece of software even if it is untested you could release it as is, you can be sure that if your project is in fact worth it good developers will immediately realize the worth of your job and could be willing to work for free with you to make your coin a success.

Otherwise you will have to settle with offers from newbie developers as no one has any reason to believe the word of someone else unless they can see some of the source code by themselves.

if it forms a good team, which will include people specialized in different branches of business, everything else can look much "easiest"
For example, if one or two marketing experts joined his team they would probably make a good strategy for building followers and community. The same things are in the financial sector and crowdfunding of the project.
So, my opinion is that a good team is a basis for the realization of a good idea.

You'll probably either have to release it closed source (potentially with a video demo) or publicly open sourced. If you try to do somewhere in the middle, someone might come along and steal your concept.


Not sure on investors crypto based. You might be better off sourcing those and skills locally to you (or moving/advertising where you can find investors).

The good thing is that it works. Bugs are easier to fix compared to conceptualising how you'll build everything.

The orders also might want to attract followers and team at the same time too to try to get people interested in the project to develop it. You might want to ask for some to apply by solving problems (eg a hackathon) that can be used in the code but using a non winners' code is a red flag and might put off investors.

For the team, you should look for a circle that can really help you when you are in the early stage. just look for a few people as a core team who have the same dedication and goals as you, so you won't be too wasteful in spending. This core team must also be a pillar of the project you are working on, make sure all the core teams that you form know exactly what you are doing and are willing to fight together to achieve future project success.

You can introduce some of the basic information of your project here and see if it can catch the attention of the others: Project Development (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=12.0)

1. That will be tough as they will work with you for free. There are lots of seriously skilled people around but they won't spend time offering their service without a pay, at most. How about looking around you, obviously crypto-oriented, as it will give you more chance to find someone. What "newbies" are you referring to here? Newbies in the forum or a literal newbie to crypto? There is nothing wrong if you will hire a newbie if they got the skill you are looking for.

2. Give investors a reason why should they support your project. That's why you need to show some basic information about your project as investors won't come to you without a purpose and just stating " I identified the problem and the solution, I have the prototype, I'm working on the MVP."

3. For a start, here in the Bitcointalk forum. Slowly create awareness and community discussion e.g Q&A, AMA, etc. If everything is now taking place then you consider promoting on various social media platforms. Don't jump in the promotion of a project that is not yet ready.

What are positions open for your team? Many are not into coding and technical but you may want to get some team members from the forum as long as there's a reasonable pay for it.
For marketing, as long as your project has been done several tests and it works outright, I think that you should start the initial marketing of it. Where can we read more of your project?

Thank you for all the advice.

My project is open source. I'm not gonna patent it. Patents are bad for open source and for decentralized ledger. (That's why I'm targeting crypto investors, who should share similar values.)

The project is a practical implementation of white-box cryptography, or indistinguishability obfuscation. I want to use it to implement a tool to gather information from banking system and put it onto blockchain. With the coming crunch of exchanges this will be the only way to push cryptocurrencies forward.

Since I can take care of technical aspects, I'm looking for marketing founders, who would help find other people.

Source: https://github.com/haael/white-box-fapkc (https://github.com/haael/white-box-fapkc)

Basically finding other people and marketing are two different things. But I'm sure that you needed most first finding the right people that will work for you that will share the same value and goal with what you're working at.
And then the marketing would come next, good luck for building your project and team.

If you have the prototype, at the least, try it first to see if you can really solve the problem that you were trying to solve. You might want to look at LinkedIn for your human resources or you can ask your technologically inclined friends to create team with them. For money, you might want to do some grunt work yourself to fund your project and if you're lucky, your team might pitch in some money. The popularity will take the last priority, don't worry about it and just do the work needed.

It's great that you have an idea and you are pursuing it. I'm just concerned about how you are tackling this.

Let's talk about this one by one.

If you are going to take someone in and you are not going to pay them, definitely the ones that are going to accept that are newbies. Don't expect to get a high-quality team if you are not going to pay them. Think of them as someone who has what you need and in order to get that, you need to give them something. For sure they are not working for free.

For the aspiring newbies, it can be a chance to give them the opportunity to work and have to have that experience. Why not give them a chance?

Do what other crypto projects are doing, form a team, and create your own ICO style or something. It's the best way to fund raise a project that is worth investing in. I believe if you have the capacity to change something in the world, you should do it. Even if it costs your personal money.

I think this is done once you have laid out the necessary foundation of a project. Forming a website, roadmap, etc. Actual results are the best way to make investors see that it's worth investing in.

I hope this helps you in some way.

Agree, you need to find the right ones that will stick to you for better or worse of the business venture, this will be hard though as you can't find it easily on friends or acquaintance, let alone a stranger. Focus on finding the people that you will work with first because it will be detrimental to the potential of your company.

create a project that is needed at this time. Well, I can't give you any suggestions on what projects are good. however, think of a project that can make the tokens you create have a price that is difficult to drop, and continue to increase. Besides that, you also need a trusted team, and also the support of great people. never betray the trust that you have built, because many teams only care about their investors, but not for the people who have supported them since they were founded.

Am I the only one who believes this will likely not end well when project owner decides to pick team members from people online without knowing them before? There is always conflict of interest along the line with this type of arrangement and this is why most projects fail woefully and turn to exit scam. I will suggest you look for team members among those around you or at your place of work if you have a regular job.

I always wondered - how real startups do this?

Do real startups hire newbies for free, experts for free or experts for money?

Does anyone know any recent stories?

He'll definitely going to have that good team. Some may not be the ideal but there will be folks that would join his board. As long as the interest are flocking together with him.
Even it will cost it small on his team or he's a tight budget. It's just about the vision and interest that one must have.

To start a crypto project, in my opinion, the most crucial thing is to build a team, most projects don't go according to plan, because they do not
have a solid and reliable team. I agree that the project owner should choose a team not from online whose personal data is difficult to know.
Look for team members who are around us, such as friends, neighbors, and family. With team members we really know the character and
personal data, it's easier for project owner to work with them.

Building Network is essential in starting your project; look for people close to you with the same interest; they can help you in expanding.
I'm not that skillful but would accept to work for free IF we can meet physically, sharing ideas and teamwork can be effective with a physical group meeting. I know we are restricted right now, but CoVID will be over soon.

I have a classmate that are doing a start up and I do think that you should probably focus on team and @swiftbits said, your network too. The network should consists of a lot of people of different background but mostly related to your project. Finding a team is difficult because of loyalty and the uncertainty of doing a start up plus you also have to have a lot of funds so you can pay for them.

First, you need to have money to start your project.
Second, you can select your team from people you know and who can help you, then you can recruit people from here or out there. It is better you know people that you recruit.
Third, if you don't have money, you need to work to convince the investors around you that your project really has a bright future and what the investor can get when investing in your project hard.
Forth, start your project and try to introduce the project to the public to know what your project is all about, and if they interest, they will invest in your project.
Fifth, it is not easy to start a new project because that needs a serious thing from you, and you can spend most of your time working hard on the project.

Perhaps, you can gather people or friends around you and tell them about your project. From that way, I think they can suggest something, and that can give you a solution to your problem.

You can't underestimate newbies here because I think some newbies really have their skills in the crypto project, and that is not easy to know them by only open recruitment to the public. If you want to hire them, you can pay them per hour or daily, but you need to search for the right person.

Best idea to recruit people and the most important thing is to hiring trustworthy people because there were many projects failed because some team member tried to get some advantage. Also, you will need to recruit people for 2-3 months for a testing period and check if they really know their job, try checking LinkedIn for it.
Regardless of these three questions you asked, I'll say something that will answer your questions. Try to have unique and useful idea, many crypto projects are not really doing anything. Having unique will attract people into your project and that's how you will gain more investors and more followers.

First of all if you do not have any money, you are not going to have a project, simple as that. Anyone who dreams that they could build a project without any money at all, they are wrong and they are dreaming, it won't happen at all. What you need is money and without money you can't do anything in this world.

First you need to put up your own money, get a simple "idea" made on website or wherever you want, then you knock on investors doors, try to find them everywhere because they ARE everywhere, telegram groups, twitter, friends and family if you have to, and when you have a simple website that explains what you are doing, they will come, if the idea is good they will invest and if the idea is bad then they won't invest. After you got the money, there is nothing left, just use that money to get that MVP out and then you will start making profits.

To be honest, if you are looking for people for free who will work for you then most likely it isn't gonna happen. Expecting funds for such as project from the forum's investors also a wrong decision. There is a fact of trust you know. So for that, you need real-life investors. For the marketing, you need an initial investment as well. If you don't have enough funds then your dream wouldn't happen true. Even you are wondering to raise funds from your project, also you need an initial investment. Nothing is free in the world. Keep in mind marketing is the key to your success. So you need a huge amount for marketing as well. I will suggest just look for private investors nearby you to whom you can explain your plan.

For securing funding, the most common approaches would be venture capitalists or crowdsourcing. You could use a search engine to find VCs (venture capitalists) who will look at your proposal and decide whether or not to fund it. Kickstarter and crowdfunding platforms are another option.

Good people and good workers could be the hardest things to find.

Depending on tasks you need accomplished, it is possible amazon mturk could be a viable platform for finding workers.

https://www.mturk.com/

Followers can be acquired by having a social media presence on the typical platforms and releasing content.

1. Expect that you would get offers from noobs and considering that they would work for free then its unusual that theres someone who pm'med you as if that people wouldnt really care since they wont really be getting paid for the job that they do. Nothing is free on this world dude.
2. Ideas would remain ideas if its not materialized and if you do tend to create one and tend to make some crowdfund then it would vary on how
splendid your idea was but most of investors are smart nowadays and wont make out any investment if the project hadnt make out any start up or initial progress.
3. Marketing would be next in line but put this one in least priority for now.

That is exactly the point I made there. It will not be good for OP to ask for investors money with a set of uncoordinated and unreliable team members only for them to disagree along the way and then abandon the project midway. Investors will suffer loss when this happens and I have witnessed it happen a lot of times. Most times the team leader will want to deliver but the rest of the team may want to run with the cash once ICO or listing is completed by dumping on investors.

First of all your second and third  priorities should be reversed, you should seek followers and than look for investors and money, as for a team you need to find like minded people who are willing to help you in your project, the way i did it is i had a couple of friends that i proposed the general idea of the project and they helped me out, even with a small team of three poeple you can do and the skills you don't have you can learn, and for the followers and money there are a lot of startup websites where you can post your idea and share it with the world and whoever is intressted in it can donate.

Creating a project like this is not going to be easy, it requires hard work to be able to achieve success in it. And it’s not just about hard work, you also need funds to be able to push the project forward, because there are times you’re going to need to run paid promotions on social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook and Twitter to be able to get followers to your page to support and invest in it.

If you do follow other big cryptocurrency institutions or companies closely you will notice that they are steady doing paid promotions. Then you can also start with this bitcoin Forum, and also on Reddit. And don’t forget LinkedIn, that’s where you’re more likely to meet like minded people who are ready to invest.

It's sad if we look at the fact that there are currently many projects that are not going well, not even a few projects are abandoned, due to not
creating a solid team in managing projects. We can see that Ethereum and BNB are performing very well in the market, because they have
a well-coordinated team. In the end, there are many investors who suffer losses if they invest in projects with a bad team of developers.

Because in the first place, only few of them have sincere intentions of making a solid blockchain project. Most are only after for the get-rich-quick- scheme. As you noticed, a lot of them are anonymous projects, wherein, they can easily disappear once they got their target funds. Only few can emerge successful here as only few have concrete plans to deliver their objectives. Very few can actually realize their objectives. And if they don't have sufficient funds to move forward, they will lose their interest to further develop their platform. And so the reason why a lot of them turned out to be crap and abandoned.

What are you skills?
If you idea is truly original,then why do you try to register a patent?
What problem will be solved by your project/product/concept?Is this a product or a service?
What is your budget?Do you need a big budget or a small budget?
It's crucial to know how to present your idea in front of potential investors in a compelling way.
Finding investors will be hard and convincing them to invest in your project will be even harder.

If we know all this in this forum why are there people suggesting a way out to OP on how to get team members so he can go ahead to achieve his aim then? There has to be a way of this forum preventing an incoming scam when spotted rather than keep quiet and wait till the scam happens. Old and well learned members should speak out and help in situations like this.

This is the function of this forum, where members who are knowledgeable about the crypto world will provide advice to those in need. And being
able to discuss the best steps that can be taken, it seems that starting a crypto project requires a solid team. This at least prevents scam projects
from happening and reduces the risk of failure when building crypto projects. I also have 5 years in the crypto world, pay attention to most projects
that fail, because there is no competent team of developers who can deal with problems in the crypto world. And I admit it is very difficult to gather
people who have the same vision to make a good crypto project.

Your project probably involves some programmers.
So my advice for hiring a programmer or coders that will create your crypto project, if ever you don't have experience in coding or you will not do coding, is to outsource especially if you are from an expensive country.
For now, I can say that the developers in cryptocurrency or coders that are into crypto are still very few, so expect that you will need to pay much higher compare to common coders like coding websites, mobile apps, desktop apps that are non-cryptocurrency related.
You can hire some freelancer, you can try upwork for that or any other freelancer websites.

No one will accept free service on this day mate especially in such way wherein you always should have some money in your pocket even it's just for the starting because it's not an easy work to do.. And you're assuming trusted team? Well unless if they saw your project is good, because if its not it's like a wasting of time, indeed how can you pay them when it will not become successful? Btw no offence mate I'm just sharing my opinion..  ;)

For number 1 is a bit impossible if you don't have a previous connection. how can someone who is professional or understands what you need want to join when he gets nothing. and for number 2 to get investor funds for projects in crypto most cases people offering ICO token. as long as the project you are planning are is serious and there is evidence you can do it and other people trust with your project very likely to get investors from here. as long as there is no purpose to scam people.

The problem with this one is that OP is that the programmers have to be a loyal and will stick to the start up through ups and downs and given how it is close to impossible to live without money these days, I am pretty sure that OP needs a lot of money for the loyalty of these programmers.

Nothing can be achieved for free they need to have adequate capital and their reliability to run the projects and the active teams must be very good. Blockchain can be used more than just creating cryptocurrencies and businesses have already begun to implement technology to improve secure information and in many cases efficiency. One of the few things that allows access to crypto blockchain funds both sides have set a deadline to complete the project work in their hands starting from the approval of the project the project work will move forward quickly.

In order to recruit a team, you have to look for circles that can really help you when you are in the early stages.  just look for a few people in your family as a core team who have the same dedication and goals as you, so you won't be too extravagant in spending.  This core team must also be a pillar of the project you are working on, because the core team is very influential in a project.  Give some important lessons to your core team and make sure all the core teams you form know exactly what you are doing and are willing to work together to achieve project success in the future.

You want serious people working for free? That sounds like a bad expectation you have there because professionals tend to value their time and work for good money, unless your project is related to a very good cause (like charities). As for investors, you can look for them here or on some crowdfunding website. Being open about your ideas has more chances that someone will get interested. As for followers, a really simple thing is launching a token and making a Bounty campaign in the Altcoin section, but this will just give you numbers, not a truly dedicated community. When you have funds, launching a Signature campaign on the forum can raise the popularity of this project.

If you have something in mind then you need to have a proper build up for that plan if you want to tell others about it in detail or even briefly.At least you should have a presentation ready with you to show to investors for fund raising.

Team : The best part is to recruit some of your known person from different fields like sales, marketing,developers,designers who will help you to make a departmental team work among all of them.Start with 5-6 people who you know closely or have crypto exposure

Money : For fundraising you need to have a proper speech to convience the investors even if the project is not sound enough or ready but your confidence should be high.Sources are investor's,family,bank loans, borrowing from friends, savings,rent out some thing,sell your property as many suits you.

Followers: Don't run for followers in the start just focus on your project and if it is quality work and interesting you will soon gain momentum easily as internet is widespread so it will fire out your news to the market.

It's a Unforgettable if your idea can't be realized.  maybe if you join together with the developers you will find a partner to discuss with each other. ( join https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=12.0 ) .  Once you have found the results and are looking for investors, you can open a campaign.  that's what people usually do.

Oh, you are thinking of it all worng! You have to think about:
- Create a fake community to make your project look legit. It should be easy as most people are ok to be paid in tokens.
- Hire a team, again with tokens. The team you need is just 3 community managers, one blogger, four people to call names to anyone who speaks the truth about your project.
- You will also need a programmer, but you can just use someone´s name without permission. That is also valid for advisors.
- Fake partners are important, for example if you use Azure to host your web, you can claim Microsoft as "strategic partner"... easy!

Now, tweet campaign, sig campaing, blog campaign,... all tokens remember?

Launch the ICO, IPO pay an exchange (sorry, they accept only hard cash - bitcoin) and dump all tokens ASAP. Go live somewhere nice and progressively update less often until the project dies.

My advice, don't look for outsiders to work freely because sometimes we never know the extent of his commitment. It's better to just look for the closest person who can be brought forward and can maintain mutual trust, who has the same vision and mission. I think it's much better than looking for an outsider with whom you don't know the commitment. Moreover, they have to find investors, building a team with the closest people first is a better solution.

That's the best advice I've seen so far! A fullproof plan that can't fail.  ;)

Get-rich-quick schemes are indeed the goal of some people who intend to create new crypto, therefore there are many new projects that have
unclear functions. And what makes it interesting, is not too difficult and also does not require large capital to create new projects. Therefore,
there are currently a lot of new projects that are scams popping up. So stop creating new crypto if it's just a copycat of existing projects.
It will only harm many newbies who do not have good research and analysis skills in choosing projects.

The world is full of solutions. There are CRM teams who can manage your whole project if you make an agreement with them. Now the terminology is different in different countries. But more or less these are the company itself who has all kinds of skilled workers with them. They will manage your project from scratch to end with the roadmap.

All you need is to look for genuine and Reputed marketing companies in your country. Meet them, discuss the contracts, hire developers to keep up the upgrades and rest will be done by CRM.

Money is a thing which you can look from your banking partner and most probably that would be a loan since it’s gonna cost you big buck.