Iconiq Lab (ICNQ) ICO Analysis: ICO and Token Launch Accelerator Program

Executive Summary

Project Description

Lately, a steadily increasing number of ICOs are being launched, and consequently, there is an increase in problems that plague these kinds of investments. In traditional early stage funding, there are many stages of verification to ensure that an investment is sound and well-organized. In the current ICO market, however, there are few formal financial valuations and firms hardly do their due diligence; this has led to a general lack of quality assurance.

As a result, even high quality startups struggle to launch successful ICOs, and there have been many cases where wrong legal advice led to disagreement between a project’s team and their investors. Cases where financial ineptness led to disputes have also been reported.

Iconiq Lab Accelerator offers a solution to this problem in the form of high-quality due diligence. They want to help promising new projects succeed in a field were failures abound, and at the same time, they want to help investors verify the quality of the project they are about to invest in.

Startups can apply for the accelerator program and on application, they will be put through a thorough evaluation process. If chosen, a startup will receive €25,000 seed funding and up to €200,000 in ICO-related expense coverage, along with a 12-week pre-ICO program that will provide access to various Iconiq Lab experts. The startup will receive legal, financial etc. advice from these experts on how to launch a successful ICO. For their work, Iconiq Lab will receive 5–10% of the total tokens from the chosen startups, depending on targeted launch size and funding provided.

Iconiq Lab’s token, ICNQ, will be used by investors to gain exclusive access to pre-sale information of participating startups. As an owner of ICNQ, you will have access to premium content (financial reports, research material, and a dedicated forum). In addition, you can also provide feedback and help startups in the Iconiq Lab program design their token model.

Hard Cap and Valuation

There will be a total of 20 million ICNQ. Iconiq Lab plans to raise €9.5 million selling 39% of issued tokens; 14% will be sold during the pre-sale, and 25%, during the crowdsale. 10% of the remaining 61% will be reserved for future growth initiatives and incoming major personnel; another 10% is kept for the bounty campaign; 18% goes to the team, partners, and advisors, and the final 23% is earmarked for participating institutions.

The token allocation for the team, partners, and advisors will be vested over a one year period. As a result, the available token supply at the start is 82% of the total issued supply.

During pre-sale, investors will receive a 50% bonus.

Important Dates

ICNQ pre-sale was supposed to be starting on the 3rd of December, 2017, but it was pushed to a later, unknown date due to waiting for regulatory approval.

Marketing Power

As at the time this post was published, Iconiq Lab has over 670 Facebook subscribers, 190+ followers on Twitter, more than 100 Telegram users and 20 followers on Medium.

Prominent Advisors

Dimitri Chupryna

• Co-Founder of TaaS.

Prof. Dr. Philip Sandner

• Head of Frankfurt School Blockchain Center.

Ismail Malik

• Editor in Chief of ICO Crowd.

David Drake

• Chairman of LDJ Capital.

Well-Known Team Members

Nearly all team members are well-known and well-experienced in their area(s) of expertise.

Howey’s Test

According to Howey’s Test conducted by Research Center analysts, ICNQ is unlikely to be considered a security.

Team Members’ Areas of Expertise

Business experts

Patrick Lowry, CEO.

• Co-Founder, and CFO of Voltaic Coatings (high value specialty electronics materials producer) for over 4 years.

Sandris Murins, Strategy Director.

• Founder, and CEO of Factury for a year.
• Founder, and CEO of a “Government consultancy & co-creativity seminars” firm.
• CEO of “Wise Contracts” for almost a year.
• Co-Founder, and Product Director at “SIA stakeholde.rs” (“Citizen engagement software”) for 2 years.
• Co-Founder, and Product Advisor at Idea Academy (“Gamified Facebook application”) for 2 years.

Arabdha Sudhir, Marketing Director.

• Founder of Get Your Masters for over a year (ongoing).

Target market experts

Patrick Lowry

• Venture Capitalist, PropTech at ZIEGERT for over 6 months.
• Venture Capitalist, Fintech at Deutsche Börse Venture Network for 4 months.
• Associate at Graham Partners for almost 2 years.
• Academic Intern at JPMorgan Chase for almost 2 years.

Maximilian Lautenschläger, Sourcing Director.

• Strategic advisor at Truckica (“Angel investor and member of the advisory board”) for 8 months (ongoing).
• Advisor at UpTick for 3 months (ongoing).
• Venture Developer at Crossbuilders for 5 months.
• Private Equity Analyst at Feri Trust for almost a year.
• Consultant at Parameta for 7 months and at Heidelberger Services AG for almost 2 years.

Sandris Murins, Strategy Director.

• Blockchain and ICO Advisor at LAToken for 7 months.

Lukasz Musialski, Portfolio Director.

• Investment Manager in Private Equity at FERI Trust for over a year.
• Analyst in Private Equity as a working student for almost 2 years + a sketchily-defined internship at GE Capital for 6 months.
• Intern at UBS for 6 months.

Marketing experts

Arabdha Sudhir

• Associate Director of Admissions (talent recruitment, marketing and PR) at IE Business School for over 2 years.
• Marketing Intern at IE Business school for 9 months.
• Content Marketing for “Gyro” (created digital and corporate communications campaigns for HP) for a month.

Legal experts

One of the advisors on Iconiq Lab’s team is Jochen Kasper, an experienced lawyer in Corporate Finance/Mergers & Acquisitions.

Software engineering experts

Arabdha Sudhir

• Software Engineer at Bosch over 2 years.

Blockchain development experts

They have no team member with outstanding blockchain development experience.

Token Sale Structure

No team member with prior ICO launch experience. However, the the Co-Founder of TaaS is an Advisor, and he is experienced in token sale structure.

Token Economics

They have significant target market experience, and given the connection between the target market of this project and token economics, it can be said that they have good token economics experience. In addition to this, they have advisors that have considerable token economics experience.

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Disclaimers:

• Nothing written in this article is a legal or an investment advice.
• Information is provided on a best-effort basis and is subject to change without prior notice. Be sure to verify everything you read with a project team.

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The analysis is produced by Research Center team members: Robin Davids, Mark Jedd, Eugene Tartakovsky.

We are constantly working on improving our work and welcome all constructive feedback. Let us know what you think.

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