The Brave browser team concluded an ICO for their Basic Attention Token yesterday in about thirty seconds. This led to this tweet:
Of course folks will see ICOs as the end of the hated VC era of startup funding. And there is some truth to that.
But I see it a bit differently:
- Brave was VC funded prior to doing their ICO. We talked to Brendan when he was doing his seed round. He’s a great entrepreneur and technologist and he has assembled a terrific team. Although we are not investors in the company, we are sympathetic to the cause they are addressing. VC has had role in the Brave story. It helped them launch a product and get to the point where they could do a highly anticipated ICO.
- USV has a number of portfolio companies that will do ICOs. I have mentioned Kin and Filecoin in a previous blog post. There will be others. Like Brave, it often makes sense for a company to raise VC to build the team and tech and get to a place where it can do an ICO.
- Not every company can do an ICO. Contrary to the hype machine working on ICOs right now, they are not simply a funding mechanism. They are about an entirely different business model. The token that you sell in your ICO is the atomic unit of your business model. You are selling some of it to raise capital but the main purpose of the token is to monetize your product or service.
- The investors who bought your token, like public market investors, may be gone tomorrow, next month, or next year, having moved on to the next big thing, leaving you with little to show for it other than the money you raised. VCs, at leas the best ones, are there for your company in good times and bad. There is a difference, trust me.
So, while ICOs represent a new and exciting way to build (and finance) a tech company, and are a legitimate disruptive threat to the venture capital business, they are not something I am nervous about and they are not something USV is nervous about. We are excited about them when they are the right thing for our portfolio companies and we are encouraging those companies to use this new approach. We are also investing in tokens, through token funds, and directly on or own.
Now I need to go put on my sweater vest.
