Entrepreneurs are turning to the more traditional means.
If by traditional, you mean ac investors and venture funds, then let me give you an insight as a guy who runs errands for projects both in and out of cryptoverse, to raise funds, I know for a fact the general mood for most traditional self-certified accredited investors. They have an extremely negative outlook towards crypto which is sometimes justified. But 9/10 times those outlooks are the result of "their friends" investing in a scam project where they lost all their money.
I understand their reasons but I don't accept their logic behind it most of the times. Just because "their friends" were duped into a project that was a failure does not mean that; that all crypto related projects - all legit crypto related projects are going to fail just like that.
As a negotiator, it always falls on my shoulders to convince people to either invest in the project or issue a line of credit. And they're not the easiest investor type to 'convert'.
Starting to raise funds (with the ICO model or whatever) ok, but for what? If you don't have a real project with a real product then what is the use collect money from people.
You're assuming I was implying "ICO" I did not. I said "investment into crypto projects." Not all kind of investments are done through ICO or crowdfunding, that's still a relatively new thing that gained momentum with Kickstarter and Indiegogo.
Generally, you think about the project firstly, and then think about how to develop it financially. Not the other way around.
okay, so lets say you are a guy with $100k in your pocket and I come to you after spending 5 months of volunteer dev / self work into a project that's not unique but actually has a working alpha.
Now at that point even if I offered you equity, lets say 10% for your 100k, wouldn't you rather hire top of the line coders and devs and develop 100% of the project on your own and retain 100% equity instead of investing in someone else's project with just 10%?
See, then it becomes a question of the kind of investor you are approaching and mostly, I think, the kind of investors that are best suited for a crypto project is the one who has disposable money that he can invest and let others take care of his investment and grow the project while he does other things. And these kinds of investors have to be brought into the project at the early stages. Not after spending a few months working on the project.