Classical Internet thinking is out: learn new thinking about Web3

In short, how do you "get to market" and convince potential customers to spend their money, time, and attention on your product or service?

In the web2 era — the internet era defined by large centralized products/services like Amazon, eBay, Facebook, and Twitter, where the vast majority of value accrues to the platforms themselves rather than to users — most organizations responded by investing heavily in sales and marketing teams as part of a traditional go-to-market (GTM) strategy approach focused on generating leads, acquiring, and retaining customers. But in recent years, a whole new model for building organizations has emerged. Rather than corporate control — where centralized leadership makes all decisions about a product or service, even when using consumers’ data and free, user-generated content — this new model leverages decentralized technology to bring users into the role of owners through digital elements called tokens.

This new paradigm, known as web3, changes the entire idea of ​​GTM for these new types of companies. While some traditional customer acquisition frameworks still make sense, the introduction of tokens and novel organizational structures like decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) requires multiple ways to go to market. Since web3 is still new to many, but there is a huge opportunity to build in this space, in this post I share some new frameworks for thinking about GTM in this context, and the different types of organizations that may exist in the ecosystem. I’ll also provide some tips and strategies for builders who are looking to create their own web3 GTM strategy as the space continues to evolve.

The catalyst for new market entry incentives: tokens

The concept of the customer acquisition funnel is core to go-to-market and is very familiar to most businesses: from awareness and lead generation at the top of the funnel to customer conversion and retention at the bottom of the funnel. As a result, traditional web2 "go-to-market" attacks the cold start problem through this very linear customer acquisition lens, including areas such as pricing, marketing, partnerships, sales pipeline maps, and sales force optimization. Metrics for success include time to close a lead, website click-throughs, and revenue per customer, to name a few.

Web3 changes the entire approach to bootstrapping a new network because tokens offer an alternative to the traditional approach to solving the cold start problem. Instead of spending money on traditional marketing to attract and acquire potential customers, the core developer team can use tokens to bring in early users, who can then be rewarded for their early contributions when network effects are not yet evident or have yet to kick in. Not only are these early users evangelists who bring more people into the network (who also want to be rewarded for their contributions as well), but this essentially makes early users in web3 more powerful than traditional business development or salespeople in web2.

For example, the lending protocol Compound [full disclosure: we are an investor in this and some of the others discussed in this piece] uses tokens to incentivize early lenders and borrowers, offering additional rewards in the form of COMP tokens for participating in, or “bootstrapping liquidity”, a liquidity mining program. Any user of the protocol, whether a borrower or lender, receives COMP tokens. After the program launched in 2020, Compound’s total value locked (TVL) jumped from ~$100 million to ~$600 million. It’s worth noting that while token incentives attract users, that alone is not enough to make them “sticky”; more on that later. While traditional companies do incentivize employees with equity, they rarely financially incentivize customers in a long-term way (except through acquisition discounts or referral bonuses).

To summarize. In web2, the primary GTM stakeholders were customers, typically acquired through sales and marketing efforts. In web3, an organization’s GTM stakeholders include not only their customers/users, but also their developers, investors, and partners. As a result, many web3 companies find that community roles are more important than sales and marketing roles.

web3 market entry matrix

For web3 organizations, the GTM strategy depends on where an organization sits in the following matrix, based on its organizational structure (centralized vs. decentralized) and economic incentives (tokenless vs. tokenized).

Each quadrant’s “go-to-market” is different and can range from traditional web2-style strategies to emerging and experimental ones. Here, I will focus on the top right quadrant (decentralized teams with a token) and contrast it with the bottom left quadrant (centralized teams without a token) to illustrate the differences between web3 and web2 GTM approaches.

Decentralized Team with Token

First, let’s look at the upper right quadrant. This includes organizations, networks, and protocols that have unique web3 operating models, which in turn require novel go-to-market strategies.

Organizations in this quadrant follow a decentralized model (although they typically start with a core development team or operations staff) and use token economics to attract new members, reward contributors, and align incentives between participants. (For a deeper discussion of web3 business models and the seemingly contradictory problem of capturing value, see this talk from a16z Crypto Startup School.)

The fundamental difference between web3 organizations in this quadrant and those using a more traditional GTM model involves a key question. What is the product? While companies in the second quadrant and those in the lower left quadrant must largely start with the product that attracts customers ("come for the tools, stay for the network"), companies in the third quadrant approach market promotion through the dual lens of purpose and community.

Having a product and a solid technical foundation is still important, but it doesn’t have to come first.

What these organizations need is a clear purpose that defines why they exist. What is the unique problem they are trying to solve? This also means more than just raising money on the basis of a whitepaper and a founding team. It means having a strong community — not just “community-led” or “community-first,” but community-owned — blurring the distinctions between owners, shareholders, and users. What will make web3 successful long term is clarity of purpose, having an engaged and high-quality community, and matching the right organizational governance to that purpose and community.

Now let’s take a closer look at the motivations for going public in the two broad categories of web3 organizations in the upper right quadrant: (1) decentralized applications; and (2) layer 1 blockchains, layer 2 scaling solutions, and other protocols.

The GTM Movement for Decentralized Applications

“Decentralized applications” cover use cases such as decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), social networks, and games.

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) DAOs

A major category of decentralized applications are decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, such as decentralized exchanges (such as Uniswap or dYdX) or stablecoins (such as MakerDAO's Dai). While they may have similar listing motivations to standard, non-decentralized applications, the accrual of value is different due to organizational structure and token economics.

Many DeFi projects follow a path where the protocol is first developed by a centralized development team. After its protocol is launched, the team often seeks to decentralize the protocol to improve its security and distribute the management of its operations to a decentralized group of token holders. This decentralization is usually accomplished by simultaneously issuing a governance token; launching a decentralized governance protocol (usually a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO); and granting control of the protocol to the DAO.

This decentralization process can involve many different structures and entities. For example, many DAOs have no affiliated legal entity and operate solely in the digital world, while others use multi-signature ("multisig") wallets that act under the direction of the DAO. In some cases, a non-profit foundation is established to oversee the future development of the protocol under the guidance of the DAO. In almost all cases, the original developer team continues to operate as one of many contributors to the ecosystem created by the protocol and develop complementary or ancillary products and services. (This White Paper
https://a16z.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/DAO-Legal-Framework-Jennings-Kerr10.19.21-Final.pdf contains more details on the DAO legal framework, from taxation and entity formation to operational issues and considerations).

Here are two popular DeFi examples:

• MakerDAO started as a DAO in March 2015, established a foundation in June 2018, and exited the foundation in July 2021. MakerDAO has a stablecoin, Dai, which aims to enable its users to transact in a fast, low-cost, borderless and transparent way with a stable unit of value. This may be through the purchase of goods and services or engagement with other DeFi applications. It also has a governance token, MKR. The DAO approves various governance changes and certain parameters of the operation of the protocol, including the collateralization rate used by the protocol to mint DAI.

• The Uniswap protocol was launched by a centralized company but is now owned and governed by the Uniswap DAO, which is controlled by UNI token holders. Uniswap Labs is the creator of the protocol, operates an interface to the Uniswap protocol, and is one of many developers contributing to the protocol’s ecosystem.

So what does "going to market" look like here? Take Dai, the algorithmic stablecoin issued and managed by MakerDAO. One of the goals of most algorithmic stablecoin issuers (such as MakerDAO) is to generate more stablecoin usage in the financial ecosystem. Therefore, the activity of going to market is to have it: 1) listed on cryptocurrency exchanges for retail and institutional trading; 2) integrated into wallets and applications; 3) accepted as payment for goods or services. Today, there are more than 400 Dai markets, it is integrated into hundreds of projects, and accepted as a payment method through major commerce solutions such as Coinbase Commerce.

How did they do it? MakerDAO was initially run through a more traditional business development team, which drove many of the early partnerships and integrations. However, as it became more decentralized, the business development function became the responsibility of the Growth Core Unit, a sub-community of Maker token holders often referred to as a SubDAO. Additionally, because MakerDAO is decentralized, the protocol operates trustlessly and permissionlessly, allowing anyone to generate or purchase Dai using the protocol. And because Dai’s code is open source, developers can integrate it into their applications in a self-service manner. Over time, as the protocol became more self-service — with better developer documentation and more integration playbooks — other projects were able to build on top of it and scale.

DeFi DAO listing metrics: With the emergence of new web3 listing strategies, new ways to measure success have also emerged. For DeFi applications, the typical success metric is the total value locked (TVL) mentioned earlier. It represents all assets that use the protocol or network for trading, staking, lending, etc.

However, TVL is not an ideal metric for measuring long-term organizational health and success. While new DeFi protocols can copy open source code, offer high yields, and attract large inflows of capital aggregated into TVL, this is not necessarily sticky - traders tend to leave when the next project comes along.

Therefore, the more critical metrics to track are areas such as the number of unique token holders; community engagement frequency and sentiment; and developer activity. Additionally, since protocols are composable — able to be programmed to interact and build on each other — another key metric here is integrations. The number and type of integrations tracks how and where the protocol is being used in other applications, such as wallets, exchanges, and products.

Social, Cultural and Artistic DAOs

For social, cultural and artistic DAOs, entering the market means building a community with a specific purpose - sometimes even starting with a text chat between friends - and growing organically by finding others who believe in the same purpose. But isn't this just "just a group chat" or like a traditional crowdfunding on Kickstarter, for example?

No, because while organizers of traditional web2 crowdfunding projects may also have a clear purpose, they must be more clear about the means to achieve this purpose from top to bottom. Project sponsors usually list in detail the use of raised funds, a clear product roadmap and a comprehensive timeline. In the web3 model, the purpose is the most important, but the means are often thought of later, including how to use funds, product roadmaps and timelines.

For example, for ConstitutionDAO, the goal is to purchase a copy of the U.S. Constitution; for Krause House, the goal is to purchase an NBA team and pioneer fan-managed teams; for LinksDAO, the goal is to create a virtual country club with a community of golf enthusiasts; and for PleasrDAO, the goal is to collect, display, and creatively add/share back to the community NFTs that represent culturally significant ideas and movements.

In the case of ConstitutionDAO, it raised $47 million from a community of strangers around this purpose, all in a matter of weeks, with a clear purpose at the beginning, and raising funds only for this specific purpose. ConstitutionDAO didn’t have much else — no clear roadmap, execution plan, or even a token at that time (it was created after a failed bid). The individuals who provided the funds were aligned with the purpose and incentivized by the community to just want to contribute and spread the word, flooding Twitter with memes.

Friends with Benefits is a tokenized social DAO that started out as a tokenized Discord server for web3 creatives. In addition to a minimum buy-in of FWB tokens (which represent membership in the DAO), potential members must apply to join FWB via a written application. The community grew, connected in various Discord channels, hosted IRL events, and eventually realized that one of the products they could build was an event app that a tokenized group could use. FWB lets creatives have real benefits in the community, and the DAO framework enables this decentralized social group to coordinate at scale, such as allocating budgets and completing projects from publishing content to producing events.

Listing Metrics for Social DAOs: One of the key measures of a DAO’s health is high-quality community engagement, which can be measured by the primary communication and governance platform it uses. For example, a DAO could track channel activity on Discord; member activation and retention; attendance at community calls, participation in governance (who is voting on what, and how often); and actual work being done (number of paying contributors).

Other metrics might be new relationships established, or measuring the trust that develops between members of the DAO community. While some tools and frameworks do exist here, social DAO metrics is still an emerging space, so we’ll see more tools emerge and develop as the space grows.

Gaming DAO

Today, most web3 games, whether play-to-earn, play-to-mint, move-to-earn, or other types, are very similar to popular web2 games - but with two key differences:

1. Use game assets on an open, global blockchain platform rather than the closed, controlled economies of traditional pay-to-play and free-to-play games; and

2. Gamers are able to become true stakeholders and have a say in the management of the game itself.

In web3 games, market strategies are established through player referrals and partnerships with guilds. Guilds like Yield Guild Games (YGG) allow new players to start playing a game by loaning them game assets that they might not otherwise be able to afford. Guilds choose which games to support based on three factors: the quality of the game; the strength of the community; and the robustness and fairness of the game's economy. Game, community, and economic health must all be maintained in sync.

While developers of blockchain-based games may have lower ownership percentages and/or take rates, by incentivizing players as owners, developers are helping to grow the overall economy for everyone.

But unlike web2, purpose and community lead. For example, Loot, a game that started with content and then moved on to gameplay, is an example of purpose and community, not product, driving GTM. Loot is a collection of NFTs, each called a Loot Pack, which has a unique combination of adventuring gear items (examples include the Dragonhide Belt, the Silk Gloves of Wrath, and the Amulet of Initiation). Loot essentially provides a hint - or building block-like building blocks - upon which games, projects, and other worlds can be built. The Loot community has created everything from analysis tools to derivative art, music collections, realms, quests, and more games inspired by their Loot Packs.

The key idea here is that Loot has grown not because of users flocking to an existing product, but because of the idea and vision it represents - an open, composable network that welcomes ideas and incentivizes users through tokens. The community creates the product - not the network creating the product in the hope that it will attract the community. Therefore, a key metric here will be the number of derivatives, for example, which can be considered more valuable here than traditional metrics.

GTM Initiative for Layer 1 Blockchains and Other Protocols

In web3, layer 1 refers to the underlying blockchain. Avalanche, Celo, Ethereum, and Solana are all examples of layer 1 blockchains. These blockchains are open source, so anyone can build on top of them, copy or change them, and integrate with them. The growth of these blockchains comes from having more applications built on top of them.

Layer 2 refers to any technology that runs on top of an existing Layer 1 to help solve the scalability challenges of Layer 1 networks. One type of Layer 2 solution is a rollup. Layer 2 rollups do just that — they “roll up” transactions from the chain and then put the data back onto the Layer 1 network via a bridge. There are two main categories of Layer 2 rollups. The first, optimistic rollups, “optimistically” assume that transactions are honest and not fraudulent via fraud proofs. The second category, zk rollups, use “zero-knowledge” proofs to determine that. Most of these Layer 2 solutions are currently being developed for Ethereum and do not have their own tokens yet, but we’ll discuss them here because their success metrics for coming to market are similar to other networks in this category.

In addition, protocols can be built on top of other L1 or L2. Taking the Uniswap protocol as an example, it supports Ethereum (L1), Optimism (L2), and Polygon (L2).

Growth for layer 1 blockchains, layer 2 scaling solutions, and these other protocols can come from forks, where a network is copied and then altered. For example, the layer 1 blockchain Ethereum was forked by Celo. Optimism, a layer 2 scaling solution, was forked by Nahmii and Metis. And Uniswap was forked to create SushiSwap. While this may initially seem negative, the number of forks a network has is actually a measure of success — it shows that others want to copy it.

These examples and ways of thinking are all concentrated in the upper right quadrant, decentralized networks with tokens - broadly speaking, the most advanced examples of web3 today. However, depending on the type of organization, there is still quite a bit of hybridity of web2 GTM strategies and emerging web3 models. Builders should understand the range of approaches when beginning to develop their go-to-market strategy, so now let's look at hybrid models that blend web2 GTM and web3 GTM strategies.

Centralized and Tokenless: Web2-Web3 Hybrid

Many companies in this lower left quadrant (centralized teams without tokens) provide on-ramps and interfaces for users to access web3 infrastructure and protocols.

In this quadrant, there is a large overlap in go-to-market strategies between web2 and web3 — particularly in the SaaS and marketplace sectors.

Software as a Service

Some companies in this quadrant follow the traditional software-as-a-service (SaaS) business model, such as Alchemy, which offers nodes as a service. These companies provide on-demand infrastructure through various tiers of subscription fees, which are determined by factors such as the amount of storage required, whether the nodes are dedicated or shared, and the number of monthly requests.

SaaS business models typically require traditional web2 go-to-market campaigns and incentives. Customer acquisition is through a combination of product-led and channel-led strategies:

Product-led user acquisition is primarily about getting users to try the product itself. For example, one of Alchemy’s products is Supernode, an Ethereum API for any organization that builds on Ethereum but doesn’t want to manage their own infrastructure. In this case, customers try Supernode through a free tier or free model, and these customers recommend the product to other potential customers.

In contrast, channel-led user acquisition focuses on segmenting different customer types (e.g., public sector vs. private sector customers) and aligning sales teams with those customers. In this case, a company might have a sales team focused solely on public sector customers, such as government and education, and develop a deep understanding of the needs of this type of customer.

I provide an overview in this post to help explain the difference between web2 and web3 market strategies, but it’s important to note that developer-centric outreach and developer relations — including developer documentation, events, and education — are also very important here.

Marketplaces and Exchanges

Other companies in this quadrant rely on the model of markets and exchanges that consumers are relatively familiar with, such as peer-to-peer horizontal NFT market OpenSea and cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. These businesses generate revenue based on transaction fees (usually a percentage of the transaction) - "taking", which is similar to the business model of classic online markets such as eBay and Amazon.

For these types of companies, revenue growth comes from growth in the number of listings, the average dollar value per listing, and the number of platform users - all of which lead to increased trading volumes while benefiting users in terms of variety, market liquidity, and more.

A key market move here is to increase channel distribution by partnering with other platforms to feature curated items. This is similar to Amazon’s affiliate program, where bloggers can link to items they like, and any purchases made through those links provide the blogger with a commission. But a key difference from web2 is that web3 is structured to allow for royalties to be distributed back to the creator in addition to the affiliate fees. For example, OpenSea offers a traditional affiliate sales channel through their white label program, where purchases made through referral links give the affiliate a percentage of the sale, but it also allows for royalties, where the creator can continue to earn a percentage of any secondary sales. (This web3 feature is uniquely enabled by cryptocurrency, as smart contracts can pre-encode percentage arrangements, blockchains track provenance, and so on).

Since creators now have the opportunity to continue to monetize their work through secondary markets — value they were previously unable to see, let alone capture, in web2 systems — they are incentivized to continue facilitating the market. Creators also become evangelists.

GTM Tactics

Now that I’ve shared an overview of key mindsets and use cases, let’s look at specific go-to-market strategies that we often see in web3 organizations. These are core ingredients, not a complete playbook, but can still help inform tactics and options for builders entering and exploring this space.

airdrop

An airdrop is when a project distributes tokens to users as a reward for certain actions the project wants to incentivize, including testing the network or protocol. These can be distributed to all existing addresses on a particular blockchain network, or distributed in a targeted manner (such as to specific key influencers); typically, they are used to solve the cold start problem - bootstrapping early adoption, rewarding or incentivizing early users, and more.

In 2020, Uniswap airdropped 400 UNI to anyone who used the platform. In September 2021, dYdX airdropped DYDX to users. More recently, ENS airdropped to anyone who owned an ENS domain (a decentralized .eth domain); the airdrop took place in November 2021, but anyone who owned an ENS domain before October 31, 2021 is eligible (until May 2022) to claim $ENS tokens, which provide holders with governance rights related to the ENS protocol.

In the unforgeable token space, airdrops for NFT projects are also becoming increasingly popular to help make them more accessible to more people. A recent notable airdrop was from the Bored Ape Yacht Club, a collection of 10,000 unique NFTs; on August 28, 2021, BAYC created the corresponding Mutant Ape Yacht Club. Each BAYC token holder received a mutant serum that allowed them to mint 10,000 "mutated" apes, and a new 10,000 mutant apes became available for new joiners. Because there are different types of serum, a serum can only be used once, and because a Bored Ape cannot use multiple serums of the same level, the serum adds a new mode of scarcity.

The rationale for creating MAYC was to “reward our Ape holders with a brand new NFT” — a “mutant” version of their Ape — while also allowing newcomers to enter the BAYC ecosystem at a lower membership level. This maintains accessibility to the wider community without diluting the exclusivity of the original set or making those original owners feel downgraded for their contributions. (Another way to address accessibility is NFT fragmentation, where a single NFT has multiple owners). MAYC’s reserve price, or the minimum listing price for a MAYC, has always been lower than BAYC’s, but owners have essentially the same benefits.

These airdrops are done retroactively to reward NFT holders or network and protocol users (like the ENS airdrop), but airdrops can also serve as a proactive GTM campaign to generate awareness for a specific project and encourage people to check it out. Since the information is public on the blockchain, a new project can, for example, airdrop to all wallets that use a specific market, or all wallets that hold a specific token.

In any case, projects should clearly lay out their overall token distribution, classification, and plans before conducting an airdrop. There are many examples of airdrops being used for nefarious purposes and airdrops going wrong. Additionally, in the United States, airdropped tokens can be considered a securities offering, so projects should consult an attorney before engaging in any such activities.

Developer Grants

Developer grants are grants from the protocol’s treasury to individuals or teams who contribute to improving the protocol in some way. This can serve as an effective GTM mechanism for a DAO, as developer activity is an integral part of the success of the protocol. Examples of projects and protocols that have developer grants include Celo, Chainlink, Compound, Ethereum, and Uniswap.

But grants can be used for everything from protocol development to bug bounties, code audits, and other activities outside of programming. Compound even has a type of grant related to business development and integrations, funding any integration that increases the use of Compound. An example of this is that they funded a fund to integrate Compound with Polkadot.

memes

Viral images with text overlays are another GTM strategy for web3 organizations. Given the complexity and breadth of the cryptocurrency ecosystem, and the short attention span of social media users, memes can quickly convey information. Memes can also signal belonging, community, goodwill, etc. in a highly information-dense way.

The NFT project Pudgy Penguins, a collection of 8,888 penguins, took off due to its meme properties. The main drop of the collection sold out in 20 minutes, and the collection was covered by major media outlets, which in turn helped to bring such projects into the mainstream. The social display and community element of the "PFP" (profile picture) series - in web3, this would be displayed as an NFT on social media as the owner's profile picture - also allows for this virality. Twitter recently launched a feature that allows users to prove their ownership of an NFT through a hexagonal profile picture linked to OpenSea's API.

Collectors with large social media followings draw attention to a project when they change their personal photos to that of the project, and project collectors often follow all other collectors of the same project. These moves in turn give rise to other memes, such as in Crypto Covens and the "web2 me vs. web3 me" meme, where users put their witches alongside their real faces to signify identity and belonging, among other things.

So what does all this mean for the founders of web3? The biggest mindset shift is from planning to something more like a gardener.

In web2 companies, founders not only set a top-down vision, but were also responsible for cultivating a team and planning and executing against that vision. In web3, founders play more of a gardener role, helping to cultivate and nurture potentially successful products while also providing space for it all to happen. While web3 founders still set the purpose of the organization, as well as the initial governance structure, the governance structure itself may soon lead to their new role. Founders may optimize for protocol usage and the quality of the community, rather than optimizing for growth in numbers or revenue and profitability. In addition, after any decentralization, founders must adapt to an environment where a hierarchical power structure does not exist, and they are one of many players advocating for the success of a particular project. Therefore, before decentralization, founders should ensure that their project can succeed in such an environment.

I saw some of this firsthand when I served as chief of staff to Tony Hsieh, the former CEO of Zappos.com, an e-commerce company now owned by Amazon. The company began experimenting with a more decentralized (by contrast, only top-down) governance structure in 2014, including a self-organizing management system known as “holacracy.” Holacracy involves a hierarchy of work rather than a hierarchy of people, with mixed results. But Hsieh offered a useful metaphor, comparing his role to that of a cultivator of plants in a greenhouse (in a holistic management model), rather than being the best plant. He needed to be the “architect of the greenhouse,” he said—setting the right conditions so that all the other plants can flourish and thrive.

Today, Alex Zhang, the “mayor” of Friends with Benefits (FWB), feels the same way, saying his job is “not to set a top-down vision,” but to facilitate the creation of “frameworks, permissions, and regulations for community members” to approve and build on. While web2’s leaders focus on updating product roadmaps and driving new product releases, Zhang sees himself as more of a gardener than a top-down builder. His role involves watching FWB’s “neighborhood” (in this case, Discord channels) and curating it by weeding out unattractive channels and helping to support and grow the ones that have momentum. By creating a framework for these channels — and a playbook for channel success (such as a mix of activities, clear leadership, and governance structures) — Zhang becomes more of an educator and communicator.

As far as the founders of NFT projects are concerned, their role is primarily that of the originator and interim manager of intellectual property (IP). Yuga Labs, creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, writes, "We see ourselves as interim managers of IP, which is in the process of becoming increasingly decentralized. Our ambition is for it to become a community-owned brand with tentacles extending into world-class gaming, events, and streetwear." Owning an NFT - whether it's an image, video or sound clip, or something else - passes all rights associated with the NFT to the owner. As NFTs are bought and sold, this ownership is transferred - and as the ecosystem around NFTs grows, those benefits will accrue to the NFT owners, not just the founding team of the NFT project.

NFT ownership can also be community-driven licensing and community-driven content (as distinct from traditional IP franchises). An example here is Jenkins The Valet, an NFT incarnation of an avatar from the BAYC series (specifically Ape No. 1798), signed with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) for representation across all forms of media. Jenkins was created by Tally Labs, who own Ape No. 1798. Tally Labs decided to infuse the ape with their own brand and backstory, and reversed the notion that the statistical rarity of an NFT was the primary determinant of its price and success. They then created a way for others to participate in the creation of content around Jenkins through “writer’s room” NFTs, where community members were able to vote on the genre of the first book, for example.

There’s a lot possible here; we have yet to see what else is possible as more people embrace cryptocurrencies and decentralized technologies and the web3 model. Traditional web2 GTM frameworks are a useful reference and offer some useful ways to play — but they are just a few of many frameworks for web3 organizations. The key difference to remember is that goals, growth, and success metrics for web2 and web3 are often not the same. Builders should start with a clear purpose, grow a community around that purpose, and match their development strategies and community incentives accordingly — and go-to-market incentives to go with that. We’ll see a variety of patterns emerge and look forward to observing and sharing more here.