🎙️#2 Power Lunch: Does Web3 have a growth playbook?

We're live. Welcome to the 51, 51 Insights Power Lunch today with Justin, Jared, and Emily. Uh, we're gonna talk about does Web3 have a growth playbook, and I'm super excited to have you all here. Hi, everyone. Hello.

Excited to be here. Thanks for having us. Yeah. Uh, for everyone who joined now on live streams, either on LinkedIn or on Twitter, feel free to comment. Um, we, we see all your comments.

Uh, we'll do a short Q&A at the end of this session where we can talk about your questions. Today we got a pretty exciting lineup with Justin, Jared, and Emily.

All of you are very experienced in Web3 marketing, Web3 growth. Whenever it comes to community, to growing, to branding, marketing, you are the experts.

And, uh, one of the reasons why we met here today is also that Safary, uh, which, uh, Justin founded, released a Web3 growth report about two weeks ago, which shattered the Web3 growth scene because it's always exciting when you release this.

You- you've done this every year so far, and I think it's super interesting what kind of data and insights you share with that.

And most of us are also contributors to that report, so that's, uh, the basis of our discussion, and, uh, I'm sure there's a lot of things we can unpack here.

And, um, yeah, I would wanna start right off with a short introduction, um, from all of you. Uh, why don't you give your background briefly, uh, what you do, and also one of, uh, your favorite growth hacks as a start.

[laughs] Justin, let's start with you. I'm Justin. I'm co-founder of Safary. Uh, Safary is both a user analytics platform for crypto teams, um, in addition to being the leading community of Web3 growth leaders.

Jared and Emily are both in the community, so you know that we have the, the best of the best. Mark, we'll get you soon as well.

And in terms of my, I'd say like favorite growth hack, I think that any time where you're exploiting a channel for distribution would be a great one in my book.

So for example, um, at my last company, we were a job marketplace, and so we heavily were using Craigslist, even though Craigslist saw us, us as like a indirect competitor.

Um, we were constantly like circumventing their ban, them continuing to ban us, but we got, uh, like great distribution on that channel over time, even though they definitely didn't want us to be doing that.

So I think that those are always the best growth hacks, is when you can sort of like exploit a channel for distribution to your advantage. Thanks, Justin. And Emily? Sure. Hey, I'm Emily. I'm the VP of marketing at Hype.

We're a full service crypto native marketing agency. We've been around since 2017. There's about 90 people on our team.

My day-to-day is really managing the agency operations, making sure our clients are happy, and then finding innovative ways to bring crypto and Web3 to market.

I've been in marketing for eight years, and I've been in crypto marketing for the last three years. I think a recent crypto growth hack is,

that I'm seeing and that we're utilizing, is kind of I think we're moving from the intern meta, so if you're familiar with crypto Twitter and how it can get pretty unhinged, we're now moving into more of a mascot meta, where you have a cr- a character and then you can use this character to create user-generated content.

Um, your community can use it for replying back to other posts and also rating other posts, and I think that's what we're seeing success with right now.

I don't think growth hacks in crypto are timeless, um, but it's something we're seeing success with right now in hacking a distribution channel. Uh, hey, guys. Um, I'm Jared. I lead growth at Supernova.

Um, we're an innovation agency, so we work with large corporates and emerging technology startups, um, that are dabbling in experimental fields and, and new technologies, and a lot of that overlaps with blockchain, Web3.

I've only, my only job I've ever had has been in Web3. I graduated school in 2018 and working in DeFi and crypto marketing ever since then.

I would say the main, uh, one of our favorite like growth hacks right now is, uh, Justin's talked a lot about like communities and channels.

Uh, we call 'em like filter bubbles and just I think the future of socials is just posting in, in uncrowded areas and, and just more niche content that's very specific and topical, um, and then just speaking directly to these channels.

Instead of just like posting into the ethers of the algo and hoping to, you know, engage with the whole world, you're gonna be focused on a specific topic. Cool. Cool insights. I'm Marc. I'm founder of 51 Insights.

I used to be the CMO of Bitcoin Swiss, and one of the growth hacks, if you can call it like that, that we used were kind of guerrilla marketing campaigns.

Like we, for example, painted a tram in Switzerland with Bitcoin and then let that run around in Zurich throughout, you know, Paradeplatz and all those places where the big banks sat, and this created a lot of buzz, especially in a community like crypto, where ev- everyone is kind of focused on like creating that narrative and having pics, uh, on Twitter that show that there's a kind of small revolution going on.

Uh, that worked very, very well. All right, so let's start with the first question, uh, focusing on the Safary Growth Report. Um, and that's is there even clear growth blueprint in Web3?

As you just mentioned, Web3 is changing very quickly all the time. How do you see that? And maybe we can split that up.

Is there a growth group blueprint for, you know, Web3 startups, and is there a growth blueprint for brands entering the Web3 space? Maybe you can take that, Justin. Sure. I'll start us off.

I think that there is a playbook, but that playbook is constantly changing.

So, uh, what we see at least in, from like a little bit more of a macro view, um, and Emily probably has, Emily and Jared probably have better sort of like more specifics, uh, within this, is we see that there's probably a playbook that exists like every like up to three months basically, that somebody f- finds something that works, it works for one to two months, and then it starts to fade, um, and then there's something new that they have to come up with.

And I feel like a lot of times this, the innovation in the meta is driven by agencies. They find something that works, they distribute it across clients, and then it stops working.

[laughs] They have to figure out something new again.

So I hadn't even heard about the mascot meta until Emily just mentioned it, but that could be the next meta that's coming down the pipeline for what the next blueprint will be. But maybe by the time this podcast airs...

Well, I guess it's live, so if you're listening to it a month from now, the meta might already be over. But that's what I would say, is that there, there definitely is a blueprint.

The blueprint lasts, but it lasts for a lot shorter of a time than these playbooks last in Web2.

And, and, and Emily and, and Jared, what would you tell a client that, that reaches out to you and says, "You know, I just wanna have the Web3 growth playbook from you"? Yeah.

I think, I think to add off this, it's important to zoom out a little bit and define what Web3 is. So some people think of Web3 as a new internet, right?

So if we replace Web3 with, "Hey, what is a marketing playbook for the new internet?" That just, it just doesn't make sense.

So I think at Hype, our framework, we definitely have marketing fundamentals and foundations we use, but to Justin's point, within the marketing funnel, there's different tactics, different distribution channels, different ways to attract and get attention that constantly change.

And I think one of the main questions we need to ask, too, is what is the stage of the company?

Many of the clients and projects we work with at least, they're working with us anywhere from a three-month to eight-month horizon, and it's for a big TGE or a big launch.

A lot of these products or projects are very different than my experience in the Web2 world, which can be consumer goods, supplements, fintech apps.

That would be a completely different funnel when there's already a product ready.

In the case of crypto and Web3, oftentimes, um, I'm using this word to generalize it, the space, but oftentimes you're essentially building the product, and the product isn't ready yet, so the product that you need to focus on marketing is a community, the values, and that comes from the vision of it.

Um, so yeah, I think to echo what Justin said, there isn't a set playbook.

There's always marketing foundations and fundamentals that you need to follow, but you need to go back to first principles every time and define what is the stage, how much time do we have until launch, if that is the goal, oftentimes it is for us as an agency, and then really think about what are the distribution channels we're going to use for this project, and how can it be a slight deviation from another project since we're also oftentimes targeting the same people.

Yep, totally. And yeah, I, I totally agree in that there's really like two different types of businesses or companies or projects right now.

They're the ones who have either come from the 2017 wave and the 2020, 2021 wave, and now they're, maybe they dried up all their growth and they're looking to find new ways to grow.

Um, or they've started up in the last couple of years and they're trying to, to catch their first big win or find ways to retain their community.

Like, pretty heavy focus I'm seeing and, and interest is around targeting more builders. I think there's just kind of like this builder war going on right now. Everyone's trying to target developers.

And so if you're like a consumer, like you're trying to do like a vape to earn project or something, uh, it's, that's n- might not be your focus. So it totally just depends on where your subcategory is.

As we're maturing as a space, people are having different, uh, focuses, and we're even seeing a lot of infighting because of that.

So I think the, the industry has matured to a point where there's totally different avenues of growth and areas that you might have diverted completely from any sort of a strategy.

But there seems to be like some overarching themes, and a lot of it, to, to Justin's point, is just reinventing itself every couple of months.

If you, if I like took a nap or went on vacation for four weeks, I would feel totally behind.

I, I, I just recently spoke to a big Web2 gaming company with the ambitions of, of, uh, accessing Web3, um, accessing the Web3 gaming community, and they told me, you know, they, they would love to do that, but they're also fearful of the short-term incentives and the speculative nature of building up those communities within Web3.

What would you answer a brand like that? How can you build communities that are more sustainable? Is it true that all of Web3 is just short-term and financially driven and hype and speculation?

I'll tackle this one first. I think that they're-- I would say no. But I, I think that what it's also good at is the same thing, right?

If we think about like the average play cycle of a game, a lot of these games are played, you know, like they look at like seven-day retention when they're looking at like somebody onboarding into like a Web2 mobile game.

These are like fast casual games for the most part.

So I think that like if you're thinking about that ti- time horizon and then trying to hook them beyond that, then some of these short-term incentives shouldn't seem that scary, um, and should still seem like good opportunities for games.

I definitely don't come from the gaming growth world, but I was just actually chatting with somebody who does yesterday, so I was getting some of these insights, so I'm primed for it.

But, um, yeah, I would say there's, there's no reason to be afraid of the sort of like short-term incentive nature.

I think what is difficult for a game though is that it was already difficult to build a game in Web2 and layering on the sort of like Web3 elements of it from like sign-in decisions to like divining, designing like your tokenomics and your in-game economy, that's when things get like really, really difficult from like a more long-term standpoint.

So I think that the Short-term incentives probably isn't the problem for games. It's probably the long-term incentive design that is the problem for a lot of games, uh, both like fast casual, um, and longer-term games.

Yeah. I'm also not a expert on games, but last week I spoke to someone from Mysten Labs, and the way they're setting up their blockchain, which is sweet, they are taking a bet in using games as a way to adopt masses.

And there was a discussion about this, that apparently it takes five years to build a really great AAA game.

So, you know, we're coming-- There's still games that started from the last cycle that maybe aren't in market yet.

I think gaming that is using Web3 components, so maybe they have some type of blockchain add-on or some type of ownership component with, with in, in-game playables or assets, it's not so much about that.

Like, if I was a gamer, I'm not likely gonna g- going to be playing a game because I can own some in-game asset and prove it on chain. I'm likely going to play the game because it's fun.

So I think that would be the key there if you're developing a game. I think to your first question, Mark, about is it true that all of the audience is purely speculative, I think all is too broad an, of a generalization.

There's definitely people that are not just here for number go up, but I do think that is a big motivation for a lot of the, the, the masses that are in, like interacting in crypto Twitter, and that's why you've seen this capitalized with the airdrop farming metas and points programs earlier on.

I think the goal and the idea, at least from a marketer, is this is our-- If this is our CAC, so similar to how Uber had like, I don't know, you, you join in, you get free $5 that you can also give to a friend.

We're also thinking like, "Okay, if we give out potentiality for some type of reward, will they be sticky enough to stay on?"

Um, I think we've seen this play out to kind of know the answer to that, but I think the very fact that these types of programs existed to get a bigger user base or vanity metric or just seeing your followers and community size go up is a testament to the types of motivations on why many people are in the space right now.

Yeah. And like just going off of like airdrops, I was like talking to someone who's been doing like pr- a grants program for the last six years.

It's been really popular in the space, and they've been around forever, but they're like, "Yeah, we've been giv- we've given out millions of dollars in these grants, and we can't figure out, figure out a way to retain our community."

So I think a lot of people are, are dealing with that challenge of, "Hey, we've-- we're offering these incentives and these rewards, and now we're seeing this like

next wave of like how can we re-engage people after giving them these opportunities." Um, but like listen to like what Emily and Justin saying. I feel like in a lot of ways crypto is not a get rich quick scheme.

I mean, most people who are building things are building for like five to 10 year, uh, s- maps, roadmaps. I, I mean like, think of like a story protocol.

That is not like an overnight success problem that they're looking to solve.

So I feel like a lot of projects are very, have a very long-term view, and that's maybe on the retail and like the consumer, like the mass user side, yeah, people are speculating.

For, yeah, from like a, a founder or builder side, very few people I meet are just looking for quick wins, maybe to a fault even. [chuckles] Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, and maybe, uh,

uh, Justin, I mean, you've, you've built up s- uh, community very successfully with Safary, and in fact it's, it's been your go-to-market strategy almost for the product that you've built.

What do you think is a key reason for the Safary community to be that sustainable and that lively and that good? I think that there are a few elements of it.

Uh, the first one is that we designed the community from the beginning to be something that I alone could sustain.

I think that when we got started around like twenty twenty-one, twenty twenty-two, there were so many like large, large Discord communities that required a ton of maintenance, a ton of bots to keep running, a ton of like moderators all over the world to like keep sustained.

Um, and so when we started Safary's community, I was like, "I need to design the community in such a way that I'm the only one that needs to like maintain this thing, basically."

And so with that, we made a lot of, uh, decisions at, from the very beginning that I think helped sustain the community. So for one, we were like, "We're gonna be a small community.

Um, we're gonna be a private community. We're gonna be audio only. We're not gonna be like a text-based community with like rolling texts like twenty-four/seven."

Um, and so some of these like early design decisions made it so that it was both sustainable to run for me as like a founder, but also I think led to a sort of like higher quality, different type of experience, community experience than people typically ex- typically find themselves in in crypto.

Um, and that has helped us just attract more and more bright, interesting people to join the community, to meet each other, uh, to find new projects that they wanna explore together.

Jared actually met his co-founder in Safary. Um, so there are different like stories and elements of when you bring really good people together, magic can happen.

So that's what I think has sort of sustained Safary over all this time. And, and it's true, there are not that many communities in crypto that have been as long-running as Safary has now.

We're going up on, uh, two and a half years as a community. Uh, that's super interesting. A-again, for everyone who's tuning in, you can ask questions in the chat. Uh, we have a Q&A at the end.

I see there are already couple of first questions. I would like to dive deeper now into the Safary growth report, and I prepared a little overview here. That's a picture that you featured in the report.

It's actually a database of, uh, the Web3 growth landscape, and that's just a superficial overview of all the info you have in the report.

As a start- What are some surprising things that you saw this year that you think are worth highlighting or mentioning?

And that can be part of the report, Justin, that can be something you've seen with clients, Jared and Emily. What is something surprising in Web3 growth, uh, in 2024? A couple quick surprises from my end.

One is really around the sort of like diversity of community tools. Um, this sort of goes to my previous question.

There are so many different ways and styles to run a community, and a lot of different companies are doing it differently because it's so important, which I think is good actually, uh, for people to be doing different styles of communities.

And so we're seeing lots of different types of community tools rise up to support different strategies. The other interesting thing from my side, um, was the ad networks.

It seems like all those companies that kind of struggled in whatever space they were in have pivoted into founding an ad network so that we're seeing a lot more competition there.

Um, the other sort of interesting thing I would say is the, about the companies who didn't make it, um, or really struggled.

Messaging is one of those categories that raised a ton of money, um, back in like the 2017, uh, bull cycle and in the te- 2021 bull cycle, and they've mostly been like kinda coasting.

Um, there's been-- So th- this is a category that's raised over 240 million, um, and only seven million in new funding in the last year, calendar year.

Um, so I think that that says a lot about like the state of messaging of this like wall-wall-wall-to-wall messaging. So those are a few different call-outs from my side.

I was on a, a past podcast with Emily where everyone wanted to talk about all the alpha on, on marketing agencies, so may- maybe Jared and Emily will also talk about that.

But yeah, that, that, those are some of the interesting things from, from my side about the report. Yeah. I think the, the funding in messaging is wild.

I, I think something else that's an interesting call-out just from somebody that came from the Web2 marketing space, so Hype is my third or fourth agency.

It's also been the most dynamic because given the constant changing of distribution channels and ways of working in crypto, there's so many moving parts. But something else to call out are the growth tools.

So in the Web2 space, w- we often use things like Amplitude, Mixpanel for tracking, um, HubSpot.

There's all of these, I guess, mature growth tools, where in Web3 we're always testing new ones, and there's also this need to constantly go back and test old ones because these teams are c- are continually building.

Sometimes they, they even completely pivot. So they might start off like an analytics tool, and then suddenly they're a referral tool, and then now they have an ad network.

So keeping up with that is just so interesting, and it's, it's been super helpful for Safari to put out these reports 'cause it also puts new tools on my radar.

But yeah, that's more of an interesting fact or insight coming from the agency side of what we need to keep up with.

You see this static graph now, but give it a few months and maybe the logos will like sit in different spaces. Yeah. I, I can, I can totally confirm that.

I mean, we, we did a big report on loyalty and community as startups about one and a half years ago, and probably half of those companies are out of the market or completely pivoted what they do.

And by the way, that's also part of the report, um, Web3 brands l- largely abandoned crypto in 2023.

A big sector of that was loyalty companies, for example, CoCreate, who suddenly started, um, doing tattoos, um, and Hang as well, yeah. Well, what's your view, Jared? What do you see when you work with clients?

Is there kind of a big shift going on in 2024, or is it still kind of the same? Um, in like from what, like perspective, like, like in terms of growth strategy or tooling? Yes. Yeah.

I mean, I, I agree that there's like always new tools popping up in terms of like, um, like one, just like shout-out a friend like Dave Phelps at, uh, Joe Graze.

There was some-- Like, they're doing contests, so you can launch new contests for your project and find ways to engage your community that way to offer like new incentives, and it's very creative.

They have their own platform. There was a company we talked to like four years ago, [chuckles] I met in Denver, that we were trying to work with them to do something similar.

Um, and then it's just funny to see something, a good founder come in and build a really great product that speaks to exactly w- to a problem or an area that we were really interested in for campaigning, and it took like four years later and like now one has popped up.

So the other reverse side is like new things are coming in that we didn't expect before 'cause we talked about like failing projects or tools. Now, like every six months I'm like, "Oh, amazing."

Like this thing that I was like hoping would, uh, be like a perfect fit for a client, now all of a sudden we have a tool for that.

So that's the other really exciting thing we're, we're seeing in the space is just new projects constantly emerging. The spirit of entrepreneurship is really strong. Yeah.

And s- speaking about tooling, I also wanna focus a little bit on data, and I wanna take the perspective of, you know, a Web2 marketing guy sitting in one, one of those big brands and thinking about, you know, should we enter Web3?

Um, they're a bit skeptical, uh, due to various reasons, but one of the reasons might be, you know, we w- what, what kind of, you know, how do you even measure that? Like what kind of data can we get?

And that's a very interesting topic because, uh, and you can explain that now. Uh, I think there are very interesting data points that you can get in Web3.

Can you just outline that a bit for, um, the people with that perspective? Can you help explaining this? What is so interesting about Web3 data, and what, what data can we even get?

Feel like that's gotta be a Justin answer, right? I mean- And also maybe from a, like, agency perspective, you know, what, what kind of KPIs you track when you do Web3 projects.

I'll start on the data, and then I'll kick it to the, my agency friends for the KPIs, which is the much harder question.

In terms of what data you can see, I think that this is where things get really interesting for, for those of us who are Web2 marketers, and made the transition into Web3.

You can see a level of data that you couldn't have seen in Web2.

The way that we like to explain it at Safari is you can see who they are, AKA like their social profiles from like an on-chain sense or an off-chain sense, who they know, um, by their social graph, especially if it's on Farcaster or Lens, what they own based off of what's in their wallet, what they've done, which could be the first party, like what happens in your first party application, and then how it's all connected.

And so in Web2 we often got the what they've done within your first party application, and who they are from like a demographic and identity s- sense, but we didn't have that piece of what they own.

And what they own is really useful for qualifying users. And who they know is also a great way to qualify users as more important or less important.

So I think that some of the, um, some of these quality metrics are, are things that we didn't really have before in a Web2 sense, that we're only really starting to like scratch the surface of.

And there are lots of different types of companies that are being built around reputation, which is like one way of like a quality score, and then everything on what they own is public on the blockchain.

So I think that this is a area that Web3 w- will really innovate on in terms of how we think about establishing user quality before they convert on your website.

I, I almost feel like user attribution is probably like one of the strongest use cases for blockchain from massive adoption or, um, mainstream use. Uh, I think a lot of companies are thinking about how...

We all know like that statistic where like 90% of customer data is unused or something, some crazy number like that. Um, and then blockchain I feel like in,

generally has like a sense of being this like dark web anonymous tool, but it's actually very rich in data, as Justin just said.

So I think a lot of corporates are, yeah, they've like backed off maybe from more of the, like the NFT stuff, but they're thinking more ways about how to enable, and this is happening a lot in like, you know, behind the scenes.

Uh, really, really large global companies are figuring out how to launch, launch blockchain initiatives to, to capture more data in, in a way that's

both beneficial to the end user, so we're not, you know, there's not like a violation of privacy or anything like that. Um, but they're also finding more ways to personalize the user experience.

That's something that it might take a few years, but it's re- it's a really exciting opportunity, and it's happening in real time. Yeah. I will, I will add to this.

I have some additional color because I, I personally think the scale of Web2 data is so powerful.

So I sit on both sides of the camp of, you know, I've, I've heard some narratives or people say like, "Web3 data is superior to Web2," but I think it's really the power of combining the two together.

Um, so consider Amplitude is one of the most powerful Web2 product analytics tools, right?

You can see exactly where that person is from with their IP address, the initial first refer and session, and then you can see the recurring conversion events they have, but that only sits with that one specific product.

Um, where if you were able to add in a blockchain component where you can see the different wallets that are connected to that end user, you could possibly see their, their demographics on social media, what they own across different wallets, and that could be a whole another subset of interesting data.

My contrarian take on that as well though is not everything should be on chain, and I'm also pretty pro-privacy as a consumer.

As a marketer, it's like, "Please give me as much data as possible so I can use it in targeting." So I think it's important to, to balance both, both of those views.

The last point I'll make is also the way you execute your attribution and your marketing analytics tech stack is super important.

If you purely only have the wallet data and you don't have any, let's say, Web2 native data, it's very difficult to retarget. Let's just bring up messaging in that report, for example.

Peer-to-peer wallet messaging isn't as effective as, I would say, traditional Web2 email marketing.

So I think the power also comes from how you design the data buckets you want to collect and piece it together, and also what you plan on using it for.

Um, so I still think it's very early, like both of Justin and Jarrett alluded to.

The more we mature as a space and also the more interoperability we see amongst, um, possibly using someone's wallet holdings to reward them based on whatever they hold, and the more of those interop benefits that we see, I think we will see a bit more maturity, but right now it's still super early.

Yeah, like we're probably sitting on a database of like hundreds of thousands of wallet addresses from running all these like allow list campaigns for like the last few years, and like it's very limited what you can do with a list of wallets.

But if I was, you know, if those were like emails or some other data point, it'd be much more effective. So yeah, wallets are definitely limited. Doesn't tell the full story. Yeah.

So, uh, before we jump into the Q&A, um, I would like to go to, uh, the last question, which looks a little bit into the future.

That's if you look o- one, two years into the future, what are some emerging trends or things that might just be around the corner that you see that marketers, growth leaders, branders need to be aware about or start preparing for?

Yeah, I guess I can start there. Um, I'm really excited to see more people focusing on apps. 2021 at Hype, we've had different cycles, and in 2021 the main, um, client base we were getting were ecosystems.

So think the actual L1 monolithic blockchain. Now we have L2s. Uh, those types of marketing efforts, it's really B2B.

And the goal is to get as many builders as possible, I think Jared mentioned that earlier, so they can then build the apps that attract the consumers.

I think from what I've been hearing and what is the talk with the builders, that we finally have the infra, we have the throughput to build some more exciting apps.

And Polymarket is probably the biggest example of this, and gaming as well.

And I think that's mindful to be-- or something mind- that we should be mindful of as marketers because, to be very fair, as an agency who is trying to make our clients happy and also hit their KPI, the reality in this current place in time is most of the clientele we get, their audience is living on crypto Twitter, maybe some decentralized social, but we're, they're not quite ready for go-to-market outside of this very small and niche bubble we have.

So I think preparing for this next wave and also keeping tabs on what are the apps being built on these blockchains that have had so much research and technical input, and preparing for that, that will be, that will bring in a new wave of marketing talent that we haven't seen yet either.

Totally. Super interesting. Uh, what are, what are some of the trends that you see that we need to be aware of, Jared and Justin?

I, I actually wrote down, I had like a little like line here, or like, build things that people actually want. So I'm pretty aligned with Emily that I think we're gonna see a new wave.

It's like a lot of people have built things that they maybe find really interesting in their, in like their giga-nerd brain, and now we're actually finding that people are going to build things that are, have real product market fit.

So I think I'm pretty bullish on like building apps that scale outside of crypto Twitter, and we'll just see more of those.

I mean, there's a lot of people, like Josh Cornelius from Seed Club, just really championing consumer crypto, and we're seeing some really cool consumer products rolling out, like Chip Social and the Puff Paw guys, Vape to Earn, and I just think we're gonna see a lot more of those, and those companies are just gonna keep building, um, and finding ways to scale.

And then we're, I think we're due for like another Polymarket. I don't think they're gonna be a standalone. Um, and I think we'll see some unicorns on the consumer side in the next like two years.

Do, do you have bets, Jared- Which ones? -of who that could be? Uh, I'm gonna s- I'm gonna hold off on...

I think there's a, there are few out there right now that are doing well that I don't think are gonna sustain, but they're gonna be...

Like, um, like the meme coin market, I, I just, I don't see that as like a, a long-term sustainable market, like instant meme coin. But like the Pump Fun guys are really cool.

But yeah, I just, I think I'm, I'm still waiting for that killer u- use case, but there's a few out there that are really cool. Um, I'll definitely echo what Jared and Emily, um, are saying, but I'll take the other side.

I think that in order for crypto to reach mass adoption and bring in this new wave, we need to build culture that people want.

There's, I feel like in 2021, there were so many narratives around, uh, this new internet and disrupting intermediaries and really like building towards an optimistic future that, um, we all wanted to be a part of.

And I feel like that we kinda like lost the, got lost in the sauce in the, in the bear market, and a lot of people moved away from the type of values that, uh, crypto had been pushing forward.

And I feel like that all kinda came to a head in the beginning of this year as there were some like really loud voices that were saying a lot of things as we like n- drew towards the election, and a lot of people questioning, like, "Does crypto like represent my values, the values that I hold?"

And I think that that reckoning is pushing for, pushing the space forward actually.

I think that by the time we come around next year, I hope that we will see like a really, really powerful macro narrative that brings a lot more people who aren't in crypto today into the space.

So I think we need, we need both. We both need apps that people want, but we also need to be promoting a culture that people outside of crypto wanna be a part of. Yeah, I think that's a really important point.

Like both candidates have a pretty firm, in the US, I know we're a global industry, but both candidates have a firm stance on crypto, or they're developing one. They're being forced to.

I don't know if they really wanted to, but now this is happening. So I, I don't think that was the case four years ago. Um, so yeah, just interesting to see that. Yeah.

I, I, I would say my, my, uh, how I remember it definitely wasn't the case four year ago. Four years ago, that wasn't even like part of the discussion.

And I also feel like the, the, the spirit has become a little bit more neutral instead of being extremely liberalist- Yes... like it was in early days. Yeah, so that's maybe one of the trends.

But that was a very good ending word, and now let's go into the Q&A, quick Q&A, and then we have a little surprise at the end. I have three questions here that I think are particularly interesting.

The first one from Mats Brodin. He asks, "Web3 supports data provenance and traceability. What role will data provenance play?" Anyone wants to jump on that question? Is this like, is this like metadata?

Like being able to track the full lineage of data? I guess, yeah. I, I have, I have questions to the question to be, to be able to answer it better. Okay.

Uh, let's see if he answers, Mats, in the comments, um, if he's still with us.

I have maybe an answer to that data provenance, but that's not like focused on marketing, it's in, in general, how can you ensure that data is authentic, uh, especially now with the merge of crypto and AI, uh, technologies.

Or here, Mats, origin of data. Uh, Mats answered here, origin of data provenance. Okay.

I don't know as much about like origin of data provenance, but when I hear about pr- like provenance in, uh, crypto, I typically think about like content, right?

For the same reasons that you're mentioning, Mark, of like with the rise of AI, there's so much like-

You know, like deepfakes, like will crypto be a place where, uh, we can authentically verify that this piece of content or this thing came from this person?

I think that that is where crypto does have an interesting use case. But on the data- on the, like, the provenance of specific data points, I definitely need to, to learn more about that piece. Yeah.

I actually tweeted, I was just like shower thought. I was like, "Oh, yeah, there's got to be like a proof of human protocol." And there, I, I stumbled. There's one called Humanity Protocol.

I don't know how far along they are. I, I just found out about them yesterday, but they're trying to do that, like prove that you're human. I just think that's pretty necessary, and it's an interesting area to explore.

Yeah. Yeah.

Also, if you, if you want to learn more about that, we have an episode coming out I think next week or in two weeks with Scott from Space and Time and Amaya Vuchinovich from O Group, and we talked about data provenance, data and big corps, AI, and machine learning, and how that all interacts.

So, um, tune in if you're interested in that. Then another question from an anonymous user, "In your experience, which is the number one channel for building a community of crypto native users

or of a Web2 audience aiming to bring them into Web3 through the specific project?" I would say this, this answer has changed in the last three years.

Hype originally started in 2017 purely as a community agency, and back then it was purely Discord. And I think it's flip-flopped from Discord to Telegram to Discord, and now it's going back to Telegram.

I would also add in a caveat now that there is a need to build culture and build values on social.

Um, so if you're at a stage where you have no community yet, I'm defining community here as having a platform where people can talk asynchronously, Telegram or Discord usually.

If you don't have that yet, I think it's quite important to build up the culture and build up some hype in a social channel. Typically, it's Twitter.

This might change again in the future, but that's at least what I'm seeing happening right now and what we typically recommend to clients depending on if they have a existing community or not yet.

Yeah, if you're just starting out, it's really not worth exploring niche tools. I think, yeah, crypto Twitter, um, and Telegram seem to be the, the clear winners here.

Um, and I would also just do like a shout-out to Farcaster because I think what they're building is, is really good. It specifically feels, I mean, it's a stereotype that it's a base ecosystem.

Um, a lot of people feel like it's just like a base circle jerk. But I feel like ideally it becomes less tribalist over time, and I do think it's a little bit of a generalization.

But I, I had a, a meeting last week in New York and, uh, it's actually icebreaker.xyz. I'll give them a shout-out. Um, they're building a really cool networking on-chain tool.

Um, and they said 100% of their inbound at this stage has come from Farcaster. So, I mean, people are, are loving it, and then a lot of those people don't even look at crypto Twitter, if you can imagine it.

Uh, I don't know if that's necessarily a good thing, um, but clearly Farcaster has, uh, its own community and is living in its own world, so it- it's worth exploring that too.

But if you're not on crypto Twitter and Telegram, you're, you're just not in the majority of the space. Yeah, I'd say a hybrid as well. I think that it depends on whether your community is public or private.

If it's private, I would go Telegram. That's where Safary's community lives.

And if it's public, like if you were thinking about leaning towards Discord, I would actually lean towards the X community, like the Twitter community feature.

Um, it's definitely been coming up as like a new meta in the last like month or so, uh, with like Trader Joe and Monad and, and us as well, uh, building out our communities publicly on X.

There are a lot of different benefits to doing that over Twitter, same identity, content amplification, distribution.

So I think that that is new good place to build your community in a place that crypto users are already hanging out. Cool, thanks, Justin.

I think that was already the last question that we can touch upon here, also looking at the clock. Before we end, I want to do a quick lightning round with you.

Just a quick question, a very quick answer, um, that's mostly fun. Um, and then we end the show. First one, what's your favorite Web3 consumer app? Maybe we can start with you, Emily. Jared?

Justin? I'm pretty aligned with Emily in terms of like day-to-day usage. I'll, I'll shout out the Polymarket people because it's just crazy what they've built.

Um, did over like $400 million in transaction volume, I think this month or last month, um, built on Polygon, and yeah, so that's super impressive. Yeah, I think I'll e- echo Jared as well. I, Polymarket is

one of the first crypto apps I've actively sent screenshots of to my completely normie friends and family, especially when the election cycle was like, when like Kamala was being nominated and all these things.

I was like sending screenshots to my family that is like light-years away from crypto. So- Yeah... I think that they get a shout-out for that reason alone. Okay, next one.

Which protocol has the best product market fit right now? I've wrote about this a few times. I, I don't think a lot of protocols have product market fit.

Um, if you look at like the SumRatch analytics, type in any, any protocol from the 2017 cycle, likely you're going to see a decline.

What I do think has product market fit would be centralized exchanges, hardware wallets, wallets, and maybe even Aave. I haven't checked Aave, Uniswap, some of the OGs. But yeah, I don't think a lot has hit PMF. Yep.

Totally aligned there. I mean, like, like stable coins are also like doing well. But I think just like anything that's, um, I'll just like mention like Story Protocol again.

Like they're like in earlier phases of like, yeah, they have a product market idea, uh, that, that matches, but then we'll see if it's actually a fit over time. So I've, I see a lot of good ideas.

Um, I think we're- In a phase like we're in the early stages of the next wave of growth for protocols.

Yeah, similar, I, I definitely agree with everything Jared and Emily said, and similar to what we were talking about with that it takes like five to seven years to build a good game, I think that people forget that it often takes at least two years to find product market fit.

And one of the things that we've also mentioned is a lot of these companies often don't have products for a long period of time.

So, like, the clock starts once you have a product, and not when you start building your community. So for that reason, I think that it'll take a lot more time for more companies in the space to find PMF. Okay.

And last one. I- in one word, what would you say could Web3 brands or Web3 growth leaders learn from Web2 brands or Web2 growth leaders? One word. Fundamentals. Say, like, guerrilla. Like guerrilla marketing.

Analytics. Okay. One word is fine. Fundamentals, guerrilla marketing, and analytics. That's still to learn for Web3 growth leaders. I think that was a, a great ending.

Justin, Jared, Emily, thanks a lot for joining this live session. Where can people find out more about you? Uh, they can find more about us at, uh, Safary, which has a Y.

S- S-A-F-A-R-Y club, um,.club, and at that on Twitter. Definitely recommend checking out Safary if you're a marketer exploring Web3 or new technologies. Yeah, Twitter is a good place to connect, and, uh,

yeah, I guess LinkedIn too, to some extent. Uh, I don't know, we c- I'll sh- or we could share our tag, our usernames later. Yeah. Yeah. We'll do that.

My, my analytics on, like, time usage shows that I spend too much time on Twitter. That's usually where you can find me. And then also, yeah, shout-out to the Safary group.

We have a few folks at Hype that are in that chat and, uh, group as well, and it's been really helpful for us. Yeah, definitely agree with that.

Uh, check this out, also check out the Safary Growth Report if you haven't done so. And again, thanks a lot everyone for joining. We'll be in the comments later. Um, if you like this, retweet, repost, share.

Uh, that helps us keep it going. And all the best, and see you soon. Awesome. Awesome. Thanks everyone. Thank you.