ICO project log 09: product first, token second
why the first thing we tell founders is to wait
Over the next 60 days, we’re documenting every step of what it looks like to launch a token the right way, in the United States, in 2026.
This is the project log: a written companion to each daily video. Short updates on what we’re working on, what’s blocking us, and what we’re learning along the way.
Day 16/60
Cliff, Tally’s Head of Strategy, sits down solo for this one. No product demos, no legal deep dives. Just the conversation he has with nearly every founder who comes to Tally thinking about a token launch: you’re probably not ready yet.
The sequencing problem
There’s a pattern in crypto that everyone recognizes but nobody wants to name. A team has an idea, maybe a whitepaper, maybe a testnet, maybe nothing at all, and their first move isn’t “let’s go find users.” It’s “let’s go raise.” The token becomes the product. The incentives run completely backwards.
Cliff has spent five-plus years across teams like DYDX, Arbitrum, and now Tally, talking to dozens of founders about their token strategies. His advice is almost always the same: slow down.
The core of his argument comes down to one idea: a token sale is a pinnacle event. It’s the single biggest marketing moment a project will ever have. The biggest community-building initiative it will ever run. The one time the entire market pays attention at once. That moment only comes once. If a team doesn’t have a product with genuine traction and real users when it arrives, that moment is wasted.
What happens when teams move too early
Without product-market fit, everything downstream breaks. Projects end up optimizing for the wrong participants: airdrop farmers looking to extract value, speculators flipping on day one. Token mechanics don’t fit because the team hasn’t figured out what the product actually needs yet. Distribution reaches the wrong audience because no one has identified who the real users are.
The harder truth is that most projects don’t recover from a launch that underperforms. The team burns through its biggest window of market attention, the community loses confidence, and the token trades below launch price indefinitely. Now the team is trying to keep building under all that weight. Cliff has watched this happen to strong teams with good ideas who simply moved too early. In most cases, it was avoidable.
The advice
Cliff’s message is direct: give it six more months if that’s what it takes. Ship the product. Build real traction. Attract real users. Then figure out the token.
This is part of why the 60 Days series exists. We’re not documenting the fast way to launch a token. We’re documenting what it looks like to do it carefully, and we’re holding ourselves to the same standard we’d ask of any team. Every decision, every trade-off, every hard conversation: all of it is out in the open.
Why this matters
It might seem counterintuitive for a token infrastructure platform to tell founders to wait. But this is the whole point. The platform we’re building is designed for teams that have done the work: real products, real users, real traction. Helping a team launch before that foundation exists doesn’t serve anyone.
This episode is Cliff laying out the framework we use when evaluating whether a team is ready. It’s the same lens we’re applying to our own process throughout this series.
We’re documenting everything: the legal sequencing, the tax strategy, the custody setup, the go-to-market, all of it. If you’re building in crypto and thinking about launching a token, this is the playbook we wish existed.
Disclaimer: This content is for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing in this series constitutes financial advice, investment advice, or a solicitation to buy or sell any token or security.