I'm Kris - the founder of Monaco. Just opened an account on Bitcointalk to answer all the questions you may have regarding our company and the token sale.
We'll be posting a thread shortly...
I think we have to start by acknowledge, that:
- in hindsight, we should have had done a few weeks of pre-marketing to make a good first impression on the community
- we are late with even the basic stuff - like posting ANN on bitcointalk
- but at the same time, we are very happy with the results so far with our minimum being hit in under 2 hours and that we hit 10,000ETH milestone during the first 24 hours.
- we think since we had zero pre marketing ahead of ICO launch, the results are amazing and the only reason behind it is simply our product: people love the Monaco Card & App
In terms of addressing the single most common question: why only 1 day notice. It's actually pretty simple. The single thing that pushed us to launch ahead of our original July schedule was a competitor running towards an ICO with a 90% same value proposition (FX+crypto). Our CFO was at an event at VISA Innovation Centre in Singapore on 11th of May, where he ran into another founder, who basically told him what they're working on and that their ICO is going to launch in June. We made a judgement call to finish working on our ICO within a week and launch, then spend the next 30 days to gradually build exposure and increase our brand awareness, so everyone has plenty of time to get to know us and do their due diligence.
Naturally, we had no idea people would think this is a scam.
- we've been working on the product for almost 1 year
- we have very experienced team of entrepreneurs (I sold my previous business for US$21m in 2013, our CFO is ex-Mastercard)
- we have serious heavy-hitters on our Advisory Board from companies like AWS, VISA, Adyen, Emarsys
I guess to a certain extent it's a function of us not understanding how does this community think and operate. We're learning fast and we're committed to being open and transparent, so that everyone can have their questions answered. I will be here and on our ANN thread answering all the questions you may have. I also encourage those who find our project intriguing to join our slack channel: https://monaco-card.slack.com/ - it's growing steadily and is probably the most convenient way to get to know us personally.
One final note: the team is based in Hong Kong, so please note the time differences in case we don't respond instantly, it's probably middle of the night on our end.
Kris"
This is really sad. As an investor how can I invest in a company who doesnt know the industry?
Learning as you go is good but it also means mistakes are bound to happen. Major ones I think judging from whats happening now, poor judgement in launching the ICO without proper marketing and lack of knowledge in the community.
The damage is done. No one will trust your coin. Some of your employees on the webpage as so many people here on this thread pointed out are questionable due to the lack of representation of the Monaco company on their LinkedIn profile. At this point, your coin/token is very questionable.