why would companies employ these utility tokens and not just build their own?

[racistyui]

I’m sure there are companies working on it. I know a few smaller companies doing exactly this - in some cases even ignoring blockchain entirely to focus on building an ico as a quick money grab (imo).

Take a look at “listia” they’ve had their own listia token for a long time and recently did an ico to raise funds for the growth of their platform.

The downside with most of these companies creating their own tokens is:

A: adoption - just because you issue tokens to your users doesn’t mean they’ll use them if they can’t understand it. In the case of listia for example from the posts and comments I’ve seen in their subreddit and on their platform there’s a lot of confusion and even some backlash. B: most “big” tech companies are in the USA - sure they might have incorporated in Ireland or the Cayman Islands but that won’t stop the SEC or the governing bodies to come after them if they deem their token to be a security - same applies to Canada from my research, though on a case-by-case basis.

Lastly I will say it’s pretty hard for non-techies to get into the space and buy bitcoin or ethereum or whatever through an exchange and then send to another entity to buy or earn their tokens.

I’m sure we’ll see more small-medium sized companies try it and I know many will fail but that’s what it takes to move this space forward. Creating your own token doesn’t equate to success.

[1993jochico]

maybe they see a lot of potential on where they are investing and some of them are getting experience before they make their own coin I think some of those company investing on other coins is part of their studies before they introduce their own coin to increase the success rate of their plans in the future.

[Kakmakr]

A lot of these ICOs are just scams and a quick and easy way to make money from clueless investors. Some of them are legit, but they are too focussed on their project to manage the investor side of the ICO. <The funding hands>

We are dealing with small companies, where one person might do marketing and research and a lot of things at the same time and when this happens, things fall apart very quickly. A proper ICO will employ professional people to handle the investors and marketing side of the business and the technical people will focus on the project.