A CryptoStandard Score of 7.7 and a Stable+ outlook are assigned to Cool Cousin (ICO starts on 3 Apr 2018)
Cool Cousin aims to enhance the tourism industry through allowing travelers to connect with so-called “cousins” in desired cities - an efficient way to obtain personalized knowledge from locals’ expertise. However, the blockchain is not a key component in their business. This can be seen through their prior non-blockchain operations for more than a year. Cool Cousin has yet to demonstrate the critical values that come with the switch. Also, well-established travel agencies already have strong expertise and have continually been enhancing their platforms, potentially creating an impenetrable wall for Cool Cousins to push through.
Cool Cousin’s platform allows travelers to easily connect with locals in their respective cities, enabling the occurrence of insightful conversations and personal recommendations on an on-demand basis.
The analysis is based on our rigorous CryptoStandard Score model which is supported by over 80 parameters. The distribution of the score and the explanation are shown below:
Idea
Cool Cousin’s on-demand connection to locals (“cousins") for unbiased travel information is quite an innovative idea. As Cool Cousin has been operating for a while without using blockchain, the true need of switching to a blockchain platform is not sufficiently substantiated in our team's opinion.
Competitiveness
Major competitors and close substitutes stand today, including various minor and major travel agencies, travel guide websites such as Tripadvisor, and local travel experience platforms such as Airbnb. Cool Cousin’s competitive advantage of being on-demand enables a greater degree of satisfying individual needs. It also enjoys the benefit of decentralization and low costs that come with the adoption of blockchain. However, we believe that Cool Cousin’s advantages may not be enough to gain a large market share when competing against existing platforms.
ICO
A developed platform has already been released to the public as an app and on the web. Therefore, we believe their hard cap of 17,500 ETH seems slightly unreasonable as their software and technology have already been developed. Other aspects of the ICO are generally clear and acceptable to our team. Unsold tokens will be proportionally distributed to ICO investors, and no future coin offerings will occur.
Team
The team at Cool Cousin is diverse and well equipped with people with a strong background in the business and blockchain field. However, startup experience seems to be lacking, which may limit the potential for Cool Cousin to grow further to be able to compete against major industry travel experience service providers, agencies and websites.
Community
The Cool Cousin community is quite large relative to other ICO companies. This is mainly because the company has been operating with a fully-functioning platform for more than a year. Their Telegram group has more than 8900 members, suggesting a strong level of hype for Cool Cousin’s ICO.
Marketing
Cool Cousin markets its company through a variety of platforms, including their website, Facebook, Twitter, etc. They also have news mentions from a variety of well-known presses, such as New York Times. This infers their strong marketing techniques, alluding to their success when forming a large community.
Documentation
All of the documents are consistent and well-written. It is relatively easy for a layman audience to understand the business model and the mechanics that run the firm. However, Cool Cousin should also discuss the risks that come with its business and ICO.
Financials
Cool Cousin does not provide financials regarding their revenues or profits, but does provide quantitative figures for their existing customer base and market potential. The large customer base may be able to boost investors’ confidence in the project.
Reliability
The platform has been developed and published to the public. The platform is available on both the app (albeit only for iOS) and the web. From the general comments, the platform is decently functioning and has generated a large consumer base. Therefore, the reliability of Cool Cousin lies more in their future development than the execution of the platform.
Feasibility
The biggest concern our team has over Cool Cousin is its ability to continue to gain a large market share. Even though they are introducing the blockchain, the blockchain itself is not a critical part of the technology behind the platform. Also, such large travel agencies already exist today; they have been operating for a long period of time, gaining insights and knowledge, and continually enhancing their platforms. Cool Cousin’s “cousins” may not possess the same degree of expertise. Last but not least, with the adoption of a fee charging system, whether the existing users will continue to use the platform and whether potential ones will be deterred are two huge question marks.
See their profile: https://cryptostandard.io/ico/cool-cousin/
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