Web3 Talks: Stories & Tips from the Builders

Blog post version: https://kanfa.macbudkowski.com/crypto-gtm***If your crypto product is solid but growth feels slow, this episode gives you the clarity you need. It breaks down how teams like Aave, Uniswap, Polymarket and others actually unlocked their early traction and what you can learn from their playbooks. You will hear the patterns behind channels that work, how to pick a segment that gives you an edge, and why even great products do not spread on their own.If you are building in crypto and want practical guidance instead of vague advice, this is a focused walkthrough of what moves the needle. Listen and make your crypto GTM sharper.

Good to be back and happy to chat with you. Learn more and book a slot here: https://kanfa.macbudkowski.com/lets-chat

Henri is an ex-research scientist at Protocol Labs. He Co-Founded Privy, which provides web3 projects such as Friend.tech, t2 & Shibuya with seamless onboarding & embedded wallets. In this episode, we dive into the early MVPs of Privy, learn how it works under the hood, how they managed to design such as smooth UX & more. *** If you like high-quality crypto content, check out the project I co-founded: kiwinews.xyz *** TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 A few words of intro 01:56: Why Henri started working on Privy 06:02 The early days of Privy 11:37 How have they built their MVP 13:15 Why did they make a pivot despite having an interest in their product 15:41 Which features helped them to tip the scales 22:34 How Privy works under the hood 34:04 Most wallets were built with L1s in mind 37:23 How do embedded wallets work 48:24 What would happen with wallets if Privy went out of business 50:36 How do they acquire their users 53:24 What kind of metrics do they follow 57:59 How does the world look like if Privy fulfilled its mission 1:04:25 Where people can learn more about Privy

Collab.Land is a tool for managing web3 communities and bridging them to Discord and Telegram. It has already been used by 50k+ communities and 8M+ wallets. Today we’re talking with Anjali Young, Co-Founder & CCO of Collab.Land, who shares their project’s story. *** Follow Web3 Talks on Twitter: https://twitter.com/web3talks/ Check kiwinews - a portal with news & content for web3 builders co-founded by Mac: https://kiwinews.xyz/ Reach out to Mac if you want to reach European devs: mac at web3talks.xyz *** TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Teaser about Collab.Land's app marketplace 00:56 Intro 02:41 Abridge's first product, pivots & Collab.Land as a hackathon idea 06:48 Early days of Collab.Land during the COVID pandemic 12:07 How did they "sell" Collab.Land to communities 15:50 Cooperation with Axie Infinity 17:54 How they transitioned from a crypto-native tool to a mass-market tool 28:27 How they designed the marketplace and what kind of Collab.Land apps are already out there 35:51 What's their plan if Farcaster or Lens get more popular 40:07 Why they created their token, how they designed its airdrop and what's the utility 49:47 Biggest surprises when building Collab.Land 57:27 Where people can learn more about Collab.Land

Mailchain is basically a web3 email. It provides a web app that lets you send your emails as if you used Gmail or Hotmail. But you send your emails via your wallet, ENS, Lens profile, and other identities you may use. Thanks to that and end-to-end encryption, your emails are 100% private. Today we’re talking with Tim Boeckmann, Co-Founder & CEO of Mailchain, who shares their project’s story. *** Follow Web3 Talks on Twitter:https://twitter.com/web3talks/ Get 15% off your EpicWeb3 conference tickets by using the WEB3TALKS code:https://www.epicweb3.com/ *** TIMESTAMPS: 1:46 Origins of Mailchain 6:01 Why they didn’t decide to put emails on chain 7:56 How Mailchain works 11:51 How the first versions of Mailchain looked like 14:56 How they acquired their first users across NFT artists and collectors? 19:09 How is Mailchain different from XMTP? 25:20 How do they decide which protocols to integrate 28:14 How do they acquire new users now? 30:16 What’s the process for integrating a new partner? 31:59 How do they want to prevent SPAM? 36:02 What’s enclave computing? 38:07 How do they plan to prepare for a scale of billions of users? 41:39 How do they plan to monetize Mailchain? 44:25 What metrics do they follow? 48:28 Why it might be hard to connect your Mailchain email to Gmail 51:08 How would the world of communications look if Mailchain became a household name 56:05 What would Tim build if he wasn’t building Mailchain 1:00:00 Guests ideas

Zora is one of the most popular web3 tools, used by the biggest creators in the NFT space. What were its early days? How they acquired their first users? How have they organized the Base campaign that generated 700,000+ mints? This and much more in our conversation with Dee Goens, Co-Founder & COO @ Zora. *** Follow Web3 Talks on Twitter:https://twitter.com/web3talks/ Get 15% off your EpicWeb3 conference tickets by using the WEB3TALKS code:https://www.epicweb3.com/ Mint free episode NFT (pls share your e-mail address so we can let you know when it gets utility!): https://web3talks.xyz/nfts/ *** TIMESTAMPS: 0:58 Who is Dee Goens, why they started building Zora with Jacob and Tyson and what was the first Zora MVP 05:50 What were the hardest trade-offs at an early stage? 7:18 How they solved their dilemma between staying 100% on-chain and taking care of good UX? 10:46 How Zora acquired their first users? 14:42 How many people work at Zora now? 16:10 How they organized their teams? 18:26 Why they decided to work on a marketplace, NounsDAO builder & API? 20:48 How did they set up a Base campaign that generated 700,000+ mints? 26:01 How does their cooperation with brands look? 33:19 Are they planning Zora Academy for NFT creators? 34:27 Why they invested in Zine, which is a pretty old school content tactic? 40:42 How does Zora acquire new collectors and artists? 47:51 How they want the creator’s life to look in 2030? 54:07 Why they changed their fee structure from 5% for primary sales to a flat fee? 56:58 Mint market share, number of collectors, and other metrics Zora follows 58:32 What would Dee build if he wasn’t building Zora? 1:00:00 What would he fix with his web3 magic wand? 1:02:15 Where can people learn more about Zora?

XMTP is one of the leading web3 messaging protocols. What were the early days of this project? What web3 native features they developed How they built a developer community around their protocol? How did they start handling DMs on Lens? This and much more in our conversation with Matt Galligan, Co-Founder & President @ XMTP. *** Follow Web3 Talks on Twitter: https://twitter.com/web3talks/ Get 15% off your EpicWeb3 conference tickets by using the WEB3TALKS code:https://www.epicweb3.com/ Mint free episode NFT (pls share your e-mail address so we can let you know when it gets utility!): https://web3talks.xyz/nfts/ *** TIMESTAMPS: 01:48 Why they built XMTP 07:45 What were the early days of XMTP? 10:11 How they acquired their first users? 15:00 How XMTP built a partnership with Lenster? 17:07 How does XMTP work? 20:08 What were the hardest tradeoffs in the early days? 25:57 What web3-native features does XMTP have? 32:29 What’s conditional deliverability? 35:29 What are the most interesting apps built on top of XMTP? 40:03 Why most wallets still haven’t integrated DMs? 43:17 Let’s say it’s 2030 - how does web3 messaging look? 48:47 Most important metrics and factors for XMTP? 50:15 How do they track developers’ happiness? 50:52 Biggest surprises when building XMTP? 52:57 What would Matt fix about web3 with his magic wand? 54:24 What would Matt build if he wasn’t building XMTP? 57:07 Where you can learn more about XMTP

Julien has been building tools for membership NFTs since 2018, long before the NFT boom. What were the early days of the NFT market? How dogfooding helped them to acquire their first users? How they organized ticketing with Unlock for EthCC? What they've learned from running a DAO program? This and more in our conversation with Julien Genestoux, Founder & CEO @ Unlock Protocol. *** Follow Web3 Talks on Twitter: https://twitter.com/web3talks/ Get 15% off your EpicWeb3 conference tickets by using the WEB3TALKS code:https://www.epicweb3.com/ Mint free episode NFT (pls share your e-mail address so we can let you know when it gets utility!): https://web3talks.xyz/nfts/ *** TIMESTAMPS 0:59 Who is Julien Genestoux and what does Unlock Protocol do 3:21 Julien's experience with RSS & Medium 5:42 Early Unlock MVPs 7:56 How does NFT expiration work? 9:13 How they've been educating people about NFTs since 2018 14:37 How Unlock acquired their first users? 16:32 How they came up with the idea of rebranding NFTs 17:48 What's their process of coming up with UX-friendly solutions like wallet-less airdrops 21:56 Message from OrangeDAO 23:17 How their ticketing partnership with EthCC worked 27:55 Why crypto subscriptions aren't widely adopted yet 32:34 How they transformed part of their operations into a DAO 38:24 What have they learned from running a Grants program 43:02 How they managed their token's value dropping during the bear market 45:58 What kind of metrics do they follow 47:49 How they world of memberships would look like if Unlock succeeded 49:49 Biggest surprises when building Unlock 52:12 What would he build if he wasn't building Unlock 53:42 Where you can learn more about Unlock 53:56 Guests ideas

Stefan George is one of the most OG builders in the space. How was it building on Ethereum in 2014? Why they pivoted from their initial idea? How an ICO inspired them to build Safe? Why it later transformed into a DAO? How Gnosis Chain became the #2 most decentralized chain in the space? And why you used it without even knowing it? This and more in our conversation with Stefan George, Co-Founder & CTO of Gnosis. *** Follow Web3 Talks on Twitter: https://twitter.com/web3talks/ Meet Stefan at the EpicWeb3 conference and get 15% off your tickets by using the WEB3TALKS code:https://www.epicweb3.com/ Mint free episode NFT (pls share your e-mail address so we can let you know when it gets utility!): https://web3talks.xyz/nfts/ *** TIMESTAMPS 0:38 What’s Gnosis and how Stefan started working on it 3:28 Why it was hard to build on Ethereum in 2014 and how sharing the office with Ethereum Foundation helped them to keep up with the chain's development 5:18 Why they pivoted from building prediction markets and how multi-sig got designed to help with managing funds from ICOs 9:40 What was Safe’s MVP, and how have they been taking care of the UX to make it usable for as many people as possible 12:55 First users who haven’t even contacted the Gnosis team before they started their product 14:25 Why have they spun off such a popular product as Safe to a SafeDAO and how did it look 19:51 Why have they decided to bet on their own chain, and how does Gnosis Chain work 25:08 How Gnosis Chain got to 140k validators and became the #2 most decentralized chain in the space 28:00 What’s the geographical mix of the Gnosis Chain ecosystem 29:04 Three great apps DeFi that have been built on Gnosis Chain 36:00 Which of these apps can you use today 40:01 What are the most important metrics for the Gnosis Chain project 42:38 What zk & privacy capabilities they’re working on 47:06 What surprised Stefan the most during these 10+ years of building in crypto? 50:33 What would Stefan George build if the wasn’t building Gnosis 53:20 What would Stefan fix with his web3 magic wand? 57:48 What are Stefan’s favorite web3 projects? 1:00:00 Where can you learn more about Gnosis? 1:01:38 Stefan’s guests' ideas

Alex has been building Rarible since 2019, when most people haven't even heard about NFTs. What were the industry's early days? Why slick design helped them to acquire the first users? How did issuing a token change how they operate (and why they weren't ready for that)? How do they plan to compete in a market dominated by OpenSea, Blur & LooksRare? Relax and listen to our in-depth conversation. *** If you want to buy tickets for the EpicWeb3 conference in Lisbon, check out: https://www.epicweb3.com/ and use the WEB3TALKS promo code to get a 15% discount. *** Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/web3talks Follow Alex & Mac: https://twitter.com/insider0x https://twitter.com/MacBudkowski *** 0:40 EpicWeb3 promo code 1:48 What's Rarible and what role they plan in the NFT space 2:46 How trading experiences & building exchange products inspired Alex to start Rarible with his Co-Founders in 2019 7:47 What were the early days of Rarible & how being specific helped them to design the first MVP - NFT form 10:42 How having a slick website & curating the best content helped them to acquire their first users back when NFTs were much less popular 14:00 Why from November 2019 to Summer 2020, growing Rarible was a smooth sailing 16:10 How NFT & DeFi summer resulted in 30X volume growth in 3 months 17:50 How issuing a $RARI token opened the company to a community and why they were not ready to operate that way 20:14 How they reorganized their community-centric operations in 3 iterations to focus and work more efficiently 23:34 How they plan to compete in an NFT market dominated by OpenSea, LooksRare & Blur 28:47 How Rarible acquires NFT marketplace users 29:47 Why Rarible is a strong promoter of creators' royalties 33:42 What metrics do they follow in trading & protocol businesses 34:55 How communities provide liquidity to their own NFT marketplaces 36:33 What are Alex’s favorite NFT collections 38:24 Why the web3 UX might be a feature, not a bug 41:57 Why having to learn something new can be fun! 42:52 Why would Alex build social apps if he wasn’t buildwasn'trible 46:33 Why Alex would fix coordination 47:20 Where to learn more about Rarible 48:05 Guests ideas from Alex