I also looked at the Project because I didn'd knew it but it sounds convincing to me. Also I see no problems with the Whitepaper... think I'm going to invest soon
best of luck. imo they fail in quite some important aspects to consider when investing in an ico:
]-there is no prototype and actual product so far?! no github? i mean, they only sell their promise at this moment
- their range between soft and hardcap is between 5000ETH and 150000ETH (30x bigger) -> actually, i always thought that you need liquidity for some planned actions in the future (for instance further development of product, gaining attention etc) BUT you do this according to planned spendings and not by estimating them in an accuracy of 30x ?!?
- there are actually followers on twitter telegram etc but just because they got a TON of free token by joining
What I mean to say: I'd strongly recommend to define some important parameters before investing and not just rely on "your feeling"
Hope I can help you:
A prototype will be released before 12th September, some sneak peaks of it will be posted to our social media pages in the next coming days
The soft cap of 5000 ETH represents the minimum funds required to develop an MVP and launch it to market focused on the personal data segment (one of the verticals that Datum is targeting), with a limited and focused marketing budget. For any supply & demand driven marketplace reaching critical mass in relatively short period of time is key for success. The hard cap of 153000 ETH would allow for immediate expansion into multiple verticals beyond personal data such as IOT data and other device generated data, along with a corresponding marketing budget to entice data suppliers as well as data buyers to rapidly adopt the platform. The large difference between soft and hard cap reflects the fact that spending significantly more on development does not yield a linear return hence the relatively low soft cap, whereas an increase in marketing spending provides an almost linear return and accelerates the schedule to return value to token holders by cementing the marketplace dominance.
The free DAT Token giveaway is deliberate and central to our early growth strategy, over 10'000 people have subscribed to the giveaway already and these will all become users of the Datum app when they redeem their tokens. This provides an early and instant user base for Datum before the network has even launched. We invite you to join our lively discussion groups on Slack and Telegram to learn more. :-)
just remember to only invest money you don't really "need" 
