What should you do before the TGE?
The pre-launch window decides whether launch week is an event or a shrug. Eight to twelve weeks out, you need a narrative that answers one question: why does this token need to exist? That narrative gets seeded through founder content, podcast appearances, ecosystem partnerships and a steady drip of product proof — not through paid shilling, which exchanges and journalists now discount instantly.
Operationally this phase runs $8k–25k per month at market rates and covers community building (Telegram, Discord, X), an ambassador program, waitlist mechanics and two to three narrative-seeding placements in trade press. The KPI is not followers; it is the number of people who can explain your token's purpose without your help.
- Lock the narrative 12 weeks out — one sentence, falsifiable, repeated everywhere
- Founder X/LinkedIn cadence: 4–5 posts weekly, starting 90 days before TGE
- Seed 2–3 trade-press stories before you ever announce a date
- Build the KOL shortlist early and vet engagement quality, not follower counts
How do you coordinate launch week?
Launch week is choreography: exchange announcement, tier-1 press embargo, KOL waves and community events all firing in a planned sequence, not a scramble. The standard structure is three waves — announcement (exchange + press), amplification (KOLs and spaces), and proof (on-chain metrics, listing performance) — spread across five to seven days.
Budget honestly: tier-1 placements run $6.5k–9.5k each through most agencies, serious KOL waves start around $20k, and full launch campaigns land between $40k–150k depending on exchange tier and market conditions. Anything materially cheaper is usually bot reach you will pay for twice — once in cash, once in credibility.
- Wave 1: exchange announcement + embargoed tier-1 story, same morning
- Wave 2: KOL threads and X Spaces within 48 hours
- Wave 3: performance proof — volume, holders, integrations — by day 5
Why do most tokens die after listing?
Because the marketing budget was spent by day eight. Post-TGE, attention decays exponentially — and with it, liquidity. The teams that survive treat the listing as the start of a retention program: weekly ecosystem updates, holder-only utility drops, a public roadmap cadence and continued founder visibility.
A sane post-launch retainer runs $5k–15k per month and is the highest-ROI spend in the entire lifecycle, because it compounds on attention you already paid for. The metric that matters shifts from impressions to holder retention at 30, 60 and 90 days.
How Chalk Labs runs token launches
We run launches as one experiment with three measured phases, under one accountable team — PR handled by the operator behind 50+ launches and 500+ placements, community and performance handled in-house, and the landing infrastructure (site, analytics, CRM) built by our product team so no lead leaks.
Every phase has a hypothesis written before spend and a scorecard after. If a channel underperforms in week two, it is erased and the budget moves — that is the entire point of running marketing like a lab.
Questions we hear about this
Eight to twelve weeks minimum. Narrative seeding, community building and press relationships all have lead times you cannot compress — a tier-1 journalist relationship built in launch week is worth almost nothing. Twelve weeks lets you run the pre-launch phase at $8k–25k/month and arrive at launch day with an audience that already understands the token.
Serious launches spend $40k–150k across the full lifecycle: pre-TGE ($8k–25k/month for 2–3 months), launch week (press, KOLs, events) and at least one quarter of post-listing retention at $5k–15k/month. Meme-coin speed runs can be done for less, but sub-$20k 'full launch' packages are almost always bot reach.
Yes, when vetted on engagement quality and used in coordinated waves rather than one-off shills. Micro crypto KOLs run $500–2k per post, macro accounts $10k–50k+. The failure mode is buying reach without narrative — a KOL wave amplifies a story; it cannot replace one.
Spending the entire budget by listing day. Attention decays fast after TGE, and the projects that survive are the ones still publishing, shipping and marketing in weeks three through twelve. Reserve at least 25% of the total budget for post-listing retention.