Article author: Maven11
Article author: Block unicorn
With the exponential growth of the web3 industry in 2021, the attention war has really begun. However, the battle was fought on multiple fronts. On the one hand, teams are finding it increasingly difficult to attract top talent, and salaries for experienced developers are skyrocketing. When you, as a founder, find the person you're looking for and start building your vision, the next challenge arises:
"We believe our ideas are really needed in the industry, but how do we communicate our mission to the outside world?"
Many times, very promising projects fail because of a lack of appeal, exposure, and excitement in a fast-moving industry. That's why we, as Maven 11, try to emphasize that projects start thinking from the start, not only about who their ideal user is, but also who their ideal advocates are. The advocate can also be a user, but not just using the product, she or he will also promote your project with your passion for the product. How do you find, attract, and engage these advocates? We'll try to dive into the best practices we've seen so far and what to avoid when trying to build a community.
Having a large community should not be the goal, having the right community is
Imagine this: your team has been building the next great infrastructure for L1 and L2, and while it's very technical, you believe people will love it once they understand it correctly. After all, you've had a great third round of investments even before your product. Now, the only thing you need is a large community that will use your products. So what would you do? You host NFT giveaways in your discord server to attract as many users as you want them to stay and read your documentation.
See what's wrong with this approach? First, this will bring a lot of mercenaries into your Discord/Telegram, with only one question to consider: how can I win this NFT. If someone is really interested in your product, their question will most likely disappear in digressive conversations or get lost in the GM of someone who might leave your server after the giveaway.
Instead, especially if you're building something that needs to explain something, focus on attracting the right people. An easy way to do this is to collaborate with other projects that may have a lot of synergies with your project. Reach out to the community of these projects through AMA on Twitter Spaces or Discord Stage. Get people to post their questions about your project on your Twitter or Discord and answer them as enthusiastically as you would as a builder of your own project.
This approach will ultimately be more beneficial in the long run. You end up with a community of people who are genuinely interested in your project and who often take the time to ask questions. Best of all, because you recorded the AMA, when people want to learn more about the project, you can direct it to it without having to read your entire documentation. As one or more founders, your community will also feel more connected to you because they have heard your voice and passion for your project.
If you only convert 1 listener into a believer or advocate we called in the presentation, your 1 hour is well worth it. We've seen time and time again that these people will be the key to the success of your project. They often lend a hand, help newcomers get into your server, help correct documentation, or think about new ideas you might have missed as a team. Having a large community should not be the goal, having the right community is.
Fireworks or bonfires, why keeping the community engaged is key
So now you have your initial community, thanks to a community call or funding announcement. Maybe some of the topics of these champions spread and draw attention to your project. What are you doing now? As certain as death and taxes, you can be sure that the focus of attention will change dramatically in the coming months. From bull markets to bear markets, from Defi to infrastructure, from airdrops to early participants. So even in times when there may not be much to talk about, keeping your audience engaged is key.
One way to achieve this is to hide certain products/features from the public. If you still have to deliver these features, it's best to commit less to more, especially if you're confident in your team's ability to execute these ideas. That's why you have to aim for a campfire and slowly add wooden blocks to your fire to keep your community engaged and interested. By showing you weekly or monthly that you seem to be built on top of your original vision, it will increase the community's confidence in your project's long-term vision and success. Compare it now to the fireworks method, where you release a grand vision with all the possible features at once, only to realize months later that it will take years to deliver on that promise.
Without darkness there is no light
There is no doubt that your project will go through some tough times. Maybe your long-awaited product launch has to be postponed, your token price movements can be very volatile, or even worse, your code may be exploited to cause loss of user funds. Either way, in these moments, you have to be very open and honest with your community and yourself. If you've taken care to recruit the right type of community members, you'll often be surprised when you show uplifting spirits when you show up during difficult times.
These moments can serve as an opportunity to clarify the facts, highlight how you will turn things around, and show that there is still a very talented team working towards achieving your vision. Sure, you may lose some momentum, but if you get involved for the right reasons, you know you'll survive in the long run. Instill this belief in your community and they will be champions of good times and bad times.
When things start to get positive again, give credit where you deserve it and thank your community for its belief, support, and understanding, and for creating the spirit of "we are together." Because, after all, there is no light without darkness.
DAO is the worst form of organization besides all other organizations
Recently, many projects have either started or been converted to DAO-like structures. Whether this is due to regulatory or ideological reasons is usually unclear. However, it can be a convincing form of organization that builds a community and rewards the people who help build your project. A very attractive aspect is that anyone can step up and build a project. Regardless of their education, experience, race, gender, or even appearance. This removes much of the friction that exists in traditional organizational models and increases diversity, ownership, and inclusion.
To be sure, the concept of working in a DAO structure is still quite new. There isn't a single preferred template structure out there that has proven to work long or shows that it can scale to accommodate more than 100 contributors. In addition to this, most DAOs are not very decentralized. Typically, a tight-knit group of core contributors determines most important decisions, while the DAO structure is used only for secondary tasks and governance.
In addition to this, we see a severe lack of infrastructure in the market, which makes IT difficult for DAO operations. Take, for example, the topic of wage payments. How do you do this in an anonymous world? How do I pay my taxes? What about insurance and benefits? How do you hold people accountable without signing a contract? What about hierarchies? A lot of smart people are trying to solve these problems, and there will be major improvements next year. But for now, the DAO is the worst form of organization besides all other organizations.
VC community engagement should be like a great movie soundtrack, and you shouldn't realize it's there
If you throw a rock down random street in an upper-class community, there's a good chance you'll bump into someone who's just starting to focus on a web3 VC. While the exponential growth of our industry has brought in record amounts of funding, VCs and their practices are often scrutinized by the community. After all, they have access to private seed rounds, are perceived to have short-term thinking, and are perceived to use strong communities as exit liquidity.
With this perception, how can VCs help their portfolio companies in meaningful ways? One approach is to push for a more inclusive token economics design in which participants have sufficient access to it, in addition to the normal tediousness of VCs, angels, and advisors. In doing so, it will adjust incentives for all investors without creating an attack vector for those who want to emphasize the skewed distribution of early investors. An interesting placeholder article discusses this topic in more depth. One last point worth emphasizing is that different projects require different token economics, i.e. Incentive L1 is different from incentive Defi projects.
Our message to VCs is: Support, don't lead. VC community engagement should be like great movie music, and you shouldn't realize it's there while it's playing. This means that you must be a member of the same champion community that we described earlier. Assist with governance, organize events, create threads on Twitter, and provide feedback on documentation. Don't be an everlasting force that overshadows other champions, but help communities where they're needed.
The community, the web3 team decrypts the hardest code to crack
The crypto community remains a mystery for many builders, but it should be an important aspect of the project's entire lifecycle. While it may be tempting to adopt a big bang approach, teams should focus on building a lasting, sustainable community that aligns with project values. Focus on nurturing advocates in your community and rewarding those who do. As a team, it's critical to always be visible, open, and honest with your community, for better or worse. By doing so, you will build trust and respect with those who follow you.
Be aware of the challenges that the new organizational structure poses to web3, but don't be afraid, as they solve many of the problems of the traditional world from which many people flee. If you are an investor, actively participate in the community in which you invest as an equal partner to other community members. This will be seen as a more aggressive approach and may even change the industry's perception of these investors.
While the battle for attention isn't going to end anytime soon, the best teams know that the community isn't something on top of the product they're building. It is an important part of it.
For others, the community is always the hardest code to crack.
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