You mean like this? http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html
I hope this shows you that I am very serious about the "idea".
But is there even a mechanism here?
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My issue with ICO's is that there is neither a mechanism (in fact it's explicitly barred by law) or even an expectation for a company that executes and becomes profitable, to "repay" the people who bought into the ICO, by repurchasing at a multiple.
In other words, if you raise $1 million on coins, the expectation is that if you use it to become a profitable company, you will not rebuy any of those coins.
In financial terms here is what is going on when you raise money for a white paper using an ICO.
You're in two markets: you're in the market of selling collectible, limited-edition playing cards with cool branding. Theoretically you don't really care about the market for them, because selling playing cards isn't the business you're "really" in. The cards don't represent shares in your company. They just happened to be called Virtual Shares Collectible Playing Cards. And you sell them because you're trying to raise money. The "cooler" your white paper, the cooler the cards. The "real" business is just branding for the collectible cards. But what happens later to the cards has no relation to your white paper / real business. They're separate entities.
Separately, you use whatever funds raised, to fund whatever you wrote about in your white paper. There is no promised or expected flow back from the second to the first thing.
It is literally illegal to do an ICO and say that if you become a profitable business, you will repurchase the coins at a 4x multiple to their ICO price. That is illegal.
So while selling collectible playing cards by branding them with a really cool white paper might be a great way to raise money -- and who knows, the market for them might stay strong for a long time -- it really has nothing to do with the financials of the business you use those funds for.
someone correct me if I'm wrong. where is the flow back from a successful business to the coins? They don't represent ownership. The business isn't rebuying them.
What does the success of the business have to do with the coins they're branding? Nothing, right?