I remember, after Loggly raised ~4.2M, our revenues hit $7,500 after about 4-6 months. At the time, I thought the effort to build what we had built, code-wise, could be done by 1-2 people in maybe a couple of years.<p>Marketing plays a big part in how much revenue comes in to a startup. The product also plays a big part, but if the product does what people need it to do, it becomes a marketing task to accelerate growth to justify the investments.<p>Startups are a balancing act, especially when there are multiple stakeholders involved. I'm not sure these crypto offerings offer anything "product wise" that is useful to getting things done, other than making more money.<p>Slight of hand models are tricky to evaluate.<p>With Helium, they need people providing Internet to other people. Helium's "offering" drops to being an exchange from the marketplace (which must be grown) to the user base (which must also be grown). This "burning the candle at both ends" approach requires many multiples of capital influx to achieve, and even then if the business model is not sound (we all already have Internet) it will fail.