Each of our guests represent a community that, in many respects, could also be considered a movement — both to empower new artists and investors as well as educate and onboard people to crypto. In this way, community is a form of utility in Web3. But every Web3 founder must consider what values their communities uphold and embody, thereby knowing what kind of person is attracted to the community. Is community utility enough, or must founders continue adding value for members? And, most importantly, which comes first — the community members or the collective culture?
We spoke to three amazing guests who shared their insights from building thriving Web3 communities: Not Your Bro project manager Marcie Ward, HUG cofounder and chief growth officer Debbie Soon and Crypto Tutors cofounder and chief revenue officer, Lisa Francoeur.
Edited excerpts:
One of the biggest drivers to Not Your Bro as a project was the fact that the founders, Nat and Georgia — who are celebrating their wedding later this month, by the way — had joined the Web3 space and found that as women and as members of the LGBTQIA community there really wasn't a community they could assimilate with, that they felt welcomed by or even felt safe. And so for that particular entrepreneurial mindset, it represented not only an opportunity to to create your own table rather than invite people to be invited to someone's table, but it also gave them this this brilliant idea that if they were early than certain group were even earlier. So they created Not Your Bro with the vision that they wanted to be able to provide a space that they felt within themselves was lacking.
Necessity was the mother of invention in our case. The reason why we launched Crypto Tutors was because we couldn't find educational resources to guide us through the process of implementing a crypto investment strategy. And so what that led to and really opened up was a tremendous opportunity to literally contribute to the architecting and engineering of this this Web3 world. How we initially launched was e-learning. We had an e-learning course that we created that was designed to walk folks through every step of the process of setting up your account, what is the monetary system really providing and a next level of context as to why this technology is so revolutionary. We chose to build the company and we kind of subscribed to a 'if you build it, they will come' mentality.
Our story was that Randi Zuckerberg was advising a bunch of different Web3 or NFT projects. We were drawing inspiration from them, and we wanted to scale to something even bigger, which (when we roll it out) will soon be known as HUG studios, our Education Advisory Program. It was through interviewing and talking to a lot of creators through an application process, which was when we realized that so many creatives out there are all facing the same problems and challenges in terms of how they get themselves out there, how they break through the noise of the algorithm. We found that it was especially challenging for creators from marginalized communities to stand out. That was what pushed us to build a scalable platform that could allow the community to help each other. Right now, given the decentralization of Web3 and all these little communities that are sprouting up here and there, we all have this opportunity to be curious. We all have this opportunity to do more galleries and discover artists and push them up to the forefront, and recommend them to friends that. Web3 has really made it a lot easier. For us that was the lightbulb moment in terms of how can we leverage the community to really execute on this vision that we had from the beginning. Even though we made little pivots here and there, or adjustments and iterations along the way, our vision has never changed. It has always been about how to level the playing field for every single creatives to succeed in Web3.[Editor's note: Due to unexpected changes to Twitter Spaces, our transcription service is temporarily unable to deliver us full audio transcripts. Please bear with us.]For more insights, listen to the full conversation with Marcie, Debbie and Lisa.This is not financial advice. If you don't want to spend money investing in crypto or Web3 — you don’t have to. The intent of this article is to help others educate themselves and learn.
[Editor's note: Due to unexpected changes to Twitter Spaces, our transcription service is temporarily unable to deliver us full audio transcripts. Please bear with us.]
For more insights, listen to the full conversation with Lisa, Marcie and Debbie.
This is not financial advice. If you don't want to spend money investing in crypto or Web3 — you don’t have to. The intent of this article is to help others educate themselves and learn.
