Analysis of Experty.io ICO

The Experty team is formed by the software consulting company React Poland, which was created in 2014. Experty.io was conceptualized in early 2017 and the team has created a prototype of their Minimum Viable Product by this juncture. This product is a blockchain based platform that can support payment processing by consultations or knowledge provider for voice or video calls consultation. 

The knowledge and advice providing industry as well as the consultation industry is a multi billion industry. The management consultancy industry alone is a $250billion industry and Experty will serve not only management consultants but a wide spectrum of consultants and knowledge providers such as lawyers, doctors, psychologist, business consultants, life coaches etc. Experty focuses on the adhoc voice and video calls consultations where advice seekers can have access to a global pool of knowledge providers within the Experty ecosystem.

Experty reminds me of when Fiverr.com started and a wide spectrum of freelancers and service providers are available to customers with a click of a mouse. The key difference here is that Experty are serving Knowledge Providers or Consultants who will set their own rates, hence Experty is serving the higher end market. Looking at the success of Fiverr and the similarities in the ecosystem of knowledge providers that Experty will be developing, I believe that Experty will be widely received. 

What Is The Problem Experty Is Trying To Solve?

The Experty team sees a need for a payment service that can solve the knowledge providers and consultants have in how to charge for phone consultation. Currently knowledge providers have a problem in how they can charge each of their clients up front for phone consultations as the length of the phone conversations are not known up front. Hence payments are often done after the call by means of off-line invoicing. 

This can be a problem as it requires a lot of trust on the part of the consultant that the client will pay. This can also lead to misunderstanding and friction when clients are surprised with a larger than expected bill. While a third party payment processing servicing can help to reduce the friction, the uncertainty or rates and length of consultation cannot be eliminated. 

Experty is developing the blockchain platform that can ensure rates per min of each and every consultant or knowledge provider are open and transparent. The platform will also ensure sufficient funds are available on the clients’ wallet before a call is initiated and payment will be executed via the blockchain. 

This will give the Knowledge provider instant payments and calculations of the call durations are all done via the platform and translated to payments via the blockchain.

This market gap and their ability to identify it gives them a 4.0/5.0. 

What Is The Total EXY Supply?

The total EXY Supply is 100 million EXY. The hardcap is only $9 million USD or 33 000 ETH which is modestly small compared to many of the ICO released last year. The ICO price of EXY will be 1000 EXY = 1 ETH. 

The circulating supply of EXY would be about 37 million EXY as these are generated during the token generation event (33% TGE Allocation Tokens, 1% to TGE costs and 3% Airdrop and Bounties). The remaining 33% tokens for the company will be vested over 3 years while the 30% of partner tokens will be locked for 18 months.

At 1 ETH = $1200, this would priced EXY at $1.2 each, making the market cap of EXY at $44.4 million USD. 

There is a lot of room for growth. I would give this a 4.5/5 as a 10x ROI is definitely possible. 

Does Experty has a MVP as well as a viable Business Plan/RoadMap?

At this moment, Experty has a proof-of-concept prototype for the platform. This is for Experty team to test the user experience as well as the functionality of the smart contract as per the intended architecture. The beta mobile application and WebApp is scheduled for release in Q1 2018. 

Reviewing the Experty architecture for their smart contract, based on the white paper, I do not see a huge technical challenge for the team. The Experty ICO shines in that the most valuable part of their platform is not their technology but it is in their concept.

They have rightly identified a gap in the market where blockchain can be applied to benefit a wide range of users; the consultant marketplace. This industry is a high value industry where top dollars get paid to experts who are able to provide the best advice to paying clients. With a platform like Experty, these knowledge providers will have a means to now charge for their phone call and video call consultations in an environment where they can trust that their clients are able to pay for their services. 

While I like their roadmap in terms of their product development, I think there is a need to pay more thought to their business roadmap. What is their strategy to market Experty to knowledge providers as well as to third party services/platforms that have an existing pool of consultants and knowledge providers. I believe that a business and marketing roadmap will serve Experty very well. To give credit to their whitepaper, there are some snippets of a business or marketing strategy in various parts of the document. For example, their go to market strategy in terms of integration with large portals and working with influencers and companies in the blockchain space. They just need to put everything into a single business roadmap and it will give light on how they intend to achieve their goals.

Hence I give Experty 4.0/5.0 in this area. If they come up with a business/marketing roadmap, I will probably give them 5.0/5.0 easily.

Listing in Exchanges

As an investor, this is something I am concerned with. I would like to see the tokens that I have invested in being listed on major exchanges. However I also understand that many teams are obliged not to divulge the exchanges that they will be listing on. So for this part, I will simply give Experty a 3.0/5.0 as a neutral rating although I do believe that listing on major exchanges for such a token would not be a challenge.

Team And Advisors

The team is filled with very strong developers and they are from the founders’ web consulting firm ReactPoland. Hence they already have a support system in place and can manage uncertainties that may arise during development. 

As for the advisors, they have advisors from a broad spectrum of the crypto industry. Some of these advisors will also become pilot knowledge providers for the platform. This is a good strategy to convert more experts to Experty and to leverage their influence for mainstream adoption of Experty.

In this respect, I give a 4.5/5.0 for Experty.

Overall I would give Experty.io 4.0/5.0 based on this analysis. 

Feel free to let me know what you think.