Opportunities:
The project has an above-average team and all-star advisors, which would legitimize the project even when the company is publicly launched only three months ago.
Presale has raised around CHF 30 million already.
New regulations or more stringent requirements around the distribution of specialty goods, such as medicinal products could increase demand for supply chain QA. For example, a recent change under the EU regulation, Good Distribution Practice of Medicinal Products for Human Use, requires companies to report any deviations to the distributor and the recipient of the affected medicinal products
Concerns:
Food sensor and tracking is very common and lots of companies are doing it already. Ambrosus faces stiff competition in the traditional space, such as GlobeRanger, Oceansoft, and Blue Maestro, as well as in the blockchain space from Modum.
The project is only launched for three months old based on the Linkedin profiles of the CEO and CTO. We feel like this project receives the attention it has solely because of Gavin Wood and other advisors. We don’t even see a picture of the hardware – the component that is essential to the Ambrosus platform.
We believe Ambrosus is an average business idea, one that is difficult for the company to gain a substantial competitive advantage over other competitors and gobble up market share.
Seems like the only advantage Ambrosus has over existing competitors is that data on the Ambrosus platform is incorruptible and tamperproof. However, is it really needed? We don’t believe so.
Moreover, Ambrosus is creating its own blockchain. We would question the security of it because there won’t be much decentralization of nodes as there’s no incentive for independent parties to validate the transactions on the Ambrosus blockchain.
Food contamination is not a very big problem that we are facing. Here is a list of major foodborne illness outbreaks. As you can see, they happen rather infrequently.
Conclusion:
Overall, we are neutral on the ICO’s short-term potential and dislike its long-term potential.
This project is hyped because of its advisors. All-star advisors are great for an ICO only if the project makes sense. A company that was launched three months ago raising CHF100 million to create food sensors and a related blockchain doesn’t make much sense to us. Without business fundamentals, all the advisors in the world would not help the project.
Our thoughts of the tokens for short term and long term are as follows:
For short-term holding:
Neutral. The team of advisors really bring the awareness up. However, the hard cap of CHF 100 million is exceptionally high, especially if you consider the company is publicly launched only three months ago. The two token ICOs raising over $100 million, Bancor and Status, are both delivering negative return so far.
In addition, with Modum and Ambrosus’ ICO being so close together, many investors would compare the market cap of each ($23 million for Modum and CHF 250 million for Ambrosus on a fully diluted basis if hard caps are reached). Doing so would make Ambrosus’ valuation seem that much more expensive.
For long-term holding:
Bad. As mentioned above, we don’t believe a blockchain solution is really necessary in the food safety supply chain space. Therefore, the chance of Ambrosus being a success is low.
