I need a reality check, is an ICO right for me to fund a business?

[siddartha1492]

If you are providing free meals then how is it a business? Also as far as I know you can only do ICO with regulated investors in America. Since your token isn't providing any utility to holders, it might as well be classified as security and you might have difficult time going around it.

[Chuky92]

The idea looks good to me, that is looking for a way to end the hunger problems in America, but however there is a big roadblock and that is the fundraising method you are choosing, which is the ICO. ICO method of fundraising is long gone into oblivion thus no one is saying anything about it and even if any project comes up with, there will likely be no chances of success which is as a result of the known fraudulent nature of ICOs. Nowadays, people prefers IEO because the project team can't outrightly scam them unlike in ICO. Therefore my own suggestion is, if you really trust in your project or idea, get a team if possible, work on the idea to be more better, perfect it and seek for IEO on good exchanges.

[masterrex]

I think you're at the wrong time to implement that project funded by an ICO. because we all know that the ICO's nowadays are not working well anymore so even your goal is good(charitable) I might say that your chances to succeed in raising funds using the ICO method is very slim. I might suggest that you should find an alternative way to fund your startup business (if its a business). but not the ICO method because it's already dead.

[rexxarofmoknathal]

I see where you're coming from but I struggle to see why would any investor be interested in funding this project since there'll be no profit generated. Their financial contribution would simply be one based on them willing to do a good deed but then even that would be temporary rather than long term. In my opinion, you need to think of giving something back to these investors, something they see as value.

[serjent05]

If you are providing free meals then how is it a business? Also as far as I know you can only do ICO with regulated investors in America. Since your token isn't providing any utility to holders, it might as well be classified as security and you might have difficult time going around it.

I think OP has work around on this "free meal".  As stated earlier, this can be a form of promo, wherein every x purchase of foods a y number of a free meal is allocated.  It not that hard to maintain this while profiting from a business.  Though I agree that if their token is classified as security then it will need legal documents to proceeds.

I see where you're coming from but I struggle to see why would any investor be interested in funding this project since there'll be no profit generated. Their financial contribution would simply be one based on them willing to do a good deed but then even that would be temporary rather than long term. In my opinion, you need to think of giving something back to these investors, something they see as value.

This may answer the question stated by OP.

Well before I feel like I'm on to something I need someone to give me a reality check, because in my mind (based on my limited knowledge) offering tokens as say 'shares' of the company can be later cashed in as the companies Marketcap continues to expand, or as more people donate/invest.

It seems that it would be a speculative asset since the investors need or wait for the token to increase in price for them to get a profit and that is not attractive since it is actually a common scenario. 

[Mianae]

If your business model is a charity organizational, u don't think you need to tokenized such project because the target audience are not cryptocurrency savvy. People you want to offer a meal per day do not have any knowledge of blockchain technology. You can raise funds to kick start the business.

[ameliana]

You have a good idea or something like Amal. but the problem is that investors are not currently very interested in the ICO project for several reasons, especially fraud. because ICO's reputation is bad, it makes most investors worry about investing in it. but it also doesn't hurt if you plan to develop a project through ICO, because that is your own right.

[Sanugarid]

I think you're at the wrong time to implement that project funded by an ICO. because we all know that the ICO's nowadays are not working well anymore so even your goal is good(charitable) I might say that your chances to succeed in raising funds using the ICO method is very slim. I might suggest that you should find an alternative way to fund your startup business (if its a business). but not the ICO method because it's already dead.

I must agree that that the timing now is bad for ICO. We already lost so much investors through the years due to scams and unwanted fails of most speculated projects back then, even Libra of facebook didn't show up. Investors now are losing confidence to invest on projects lately, there have been a huge decrease of investors if you would look at the raised funds of projects lately, unlike back then. Especially now that we are facing a world catastrophe, we are getting less support if we plan a project now. The best thing to do now for profit earning is trading and futures trading.

[bhadz]

You have to understand what blockchain is. It's not like a share that you can distribute to your investors base on what you have said. It's where bitcoin and any other coin runs. It's the network for most cryptocurrencies so it's not like an asset or dividend that you can give to those people that's longing to invest or buy a share with what you're trying to discuss here. As I have said, as long as there is no business model and profitable service or product you'll going to offer, it's more of a charity.

Actually tokens in a blockchain is a good way of determining the share of a person.  You just need to look at the blockchain and you can see the addresses that owns the token and it is quite easy to distribute profits to the holder.

OP is having a different thought with that. If you have to back read, you will understand why I'm explaining it like that.

If you are providing free meals then how is it a business? Also as far as I know you can only do ICO with regulated investors in America. Since your token isn't providing any utility to holders, it might as well be classified as security and you might have difficult time going around it.

I think OP has work around on this "free meal".  As stated earlier, this can be a form of promo, wherein every x purchase of foods a y number of a free meal is allocated.  It not that hard to maintain this while profiting from a business.  Though I agree that if their token is classified as security then it will need legal documents to proceeds.

There's no profit in this kind of business.

[dunfida]

I think you're at the wrong time to implement that project funded by an ICO. because we all know that the ICO's nowadays are not working well anymore so even your goal is good(charitable) I might say that your chances to succeed in raising funds using the ICO method is very slim. I might suggest that you should find an alternative way to fund your startup business (if its a business). but not the ICO method because it's already dead.

I must agree that that the timing now is bad for ICO. We already lost so much investors through the years due to scams and unwanted fails of most speculated projects back then, even Libra of facebook didn't show up. Investors now are losing confidence to invest on projects lately, there have been a huge decrease of investors if you would look at the raised funds of projects lately, unlike back then. Especially now that we are facing a world catastrophe, we are getting less support if we plan a project now. The best thing to do now for profit earning is trading and futures trading.

True, even the most potential project nowadays do even hardly able to get some funding just because there is already some less interest
on investors side.This is the reality now thats why its really hard to raise up some fundings into this kind of situation and as said, we
are on a pandemic situation where people wont prioritize investment as of this moment but rather be focusing into their own
needs and priorities for them to survive.

[justdimin]

That's donation, you are not looking for ICO you are looking for donation. Just because you call it ICO doesn't mean that people will profit from it, you are going to use all of that money for helping the poor people which is a very noble gesture and I hope one day you can do it, but that doesn't mean that you can convince investors for something like this.

Maybe you can get a small amount, people do like to donate to charities and if you can actually provide proof that you are helping people with the money you get, there is a 100% chance you can get some donations. However what you get will be donations, it is not ICO, it is not crypto, it is totally unrelated donation and that's it, the only thing that this has in common with us is that you may accept bitcoin donations and that's it.

[Miaallen]

The nature of your business determines if you can raise fund in ICO. And you talk of owning a part of the business base on sum invested. That make your fundraising an STO. I just wonder how you will satisfy your investors in ICO when your business is a blockchain based.

[proparty]

The idea I have is to set up a collectively funded food bank/food truck that can provide one free meal a day to anyone in the city who needs it (trying to eliminate the hunger problem here in America), to keep contributions and business running, I incentivize the investors/philanthropists by giving them a partial ownership in the business via a token.

This part I still can't understand. Your business, as you called, is actually charity as people donate to your food bank/food truck right? How you keep 'contributions and business running' when you're relying on donation and from that, partial ownership in the business to investors for shares of your business is enough to convince them of profit? Are you going to steal a part of the donation to keep as your profit?

SO instead of the current business model, I want to give the business to the people who invest in it to operate. The only profit is given back to the business operations, paying employees, and expanding the business to more communities. Imagine you give $10 to a fund that is raising $1m, but we only use half of that $1m, so $500k to operate the business, and the other half is rightfully the investors making this happen. So out of the gate your $10 a month or your one time $10 is cut in half, but as soon as the company reaches $2m that initial $10 is now paid back, and when it's $4m, it's now $20 and so on and so on. Im trying to be creative in incentivizing people to fund programs that help heal communities. Make sense?