I think that a crypto team needs a minimum of $10m these days to be competitive.
So many ICOs are raising huge amounts of money. Because of this, everyone needs more money in order to compete.
Otherwise, you will be relatively under-funded.
So, I really like that this team has not done an ICO. But I think they need a really large amount of capital to compete. So, I am curious how they will handle this?
It's a good point, that without the ICO, the team might run out of funds and run way to continue. I am not sure what the plan is behind the scenes, but I know they are self funded by the founder as referenced in tech crunch
https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/09/a-modcloth-cofounder-just-launched-an-invite-only-cryptocurrencyI imagine the 1 million can only go so far, but with something as promising as Merit, I am sure they will find a solution.