Ransu Salovaara. He's the CEO of TokenMarket, the leading token sale advisory and information hub based on Gibraltar. He's also an advisor for numerous blockchain startups.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Digital Gold
• What CEO do you follow? – Travis Kalanick
• Favorite online tool? — Coinbase
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Don't be so arrogant, don't think that you know it all. Listen more, talk less

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:28 – Nathan introduces Ransu to the show
• 02:00 – In February 2014, Ransu's friend called him and asked if he knew about bitcoin
  • 02:14 – His friend told him to get into bitcoin
• 02:50 – Ransu is like the Bloomberg of crypto stuff
• 03:07 – Ransu gets money from the commission of their services to raise money for startups
• 03:15 – Ransu is involved in Firstblood
  • 03:55 – Ransu shares what he knows about Joe Zhou of Firstblood
• 04:21 – Christoph of DAO was in Episode 781 of The Top
• 04:55 – TokenMarket didn't exist yet during the DAO
• 05:15 – Ransu is getting 7% of their deal with the startup
• 05:52 – Ransu shares how they advise startups who are looking into raising money
  • 06:28 – Ransu believes that startups focus more on building their company
• 06:46 – TokenMarket markets ICOs by going into different community platforms
  • 06:52 – BitcoinTalk, Twitter, Facebook and Telegram are some of the community platforms
• 07:33 – There are 5000 investors in the ICO field
• 08:40 – Ransu shares why startups won't just use ether
• 09:38 – Civic is one of the ICOs that TokenMarket just recently advised
  • 09:57 – Civic has a KYC system
  • 10:24 – Civic has raised $33M
• 11:07 – TokenMarket has advised Edgeless, which is their TokenMarket's first ICO
  • 11:23 – Edgeless raised $3M
• 13:25 – For the first time, Ransu feels that the USA is falling behind in the crypto world
• 13:58 – Ransu's rule of thumb for startups
• 14:50 – Nathan shares why he thinks ICOs are a scam, and how they actually are not scams
• 17:00 – The hype of crypto explained
• 17:20 – Ransu believes that crypto is the beginning of the new digital assets era
• 18:48 – Every month, the market gets better
• 19:15 – Nathan shares what he thinks about Uber's surge pricing and its relativity with ICOs and the crypto world
  • 20:08 – Modern day businesses and startups are the best concepts to go launch ICOs or token issuance
  • 21:38 – There are ICOs with the same concept as Uber and Airbnb, but are still not at par with the two
• 22:40 – Ransu often receives different pitches and some have concepts that are difficult to execute
  • 23:00 – An ICO fail because of the team, the market, the demand, their failure to deliver and lack of tokens
• 24:45 – Transitioning from a regular startup to an ICO is difficult
• 27:20 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Companies looking into their ICO should focus on building their business and strengthening its foundation and service first and foremost.
2. Not all concepts work for an ICO.
3. Cryptocurrency is the beginning of the new digital asset era.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you're doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives