Building A "Community-First" Company

Now, as I talk to Founders, one of the first questions I ask is: “Have you set up a Discord group yet? Do you have anyone in your community?” I don’t think that there is a point that is too early, because you’re going to learn so much and maybe the product that you wanted to build isn’t what your customers wanted.

In web 3.0, we’re seeing this notion of bi-directional relationships between creators and consumers. It’s incredibly powerful and benefits both sides.

But many of the web 3.0 advantages are hard to adopt as a large, existing, web 2.0 company. The big ideas: ownership, collaboration, and community are new foundational principles.

Community building is going to be one of the most important, if not the most important, skill set for future Founders across industries. You need a community and you need it as early as possible for whatever product that you’re going to build.

One of the key metrics that’s changing is that it’s not just about eyeballs anymore, here in web 3.0, the real metrics are commerce. How many people purchase an NFT? How many people purchase a social token that gives you membership into a community? And then how many of them participate in that community and take some action in that community?

Now that the supply chain for creators is getting digitized, you can mint an NFT instead of having a factory produce a physical item. I think that enables participation in commerce and the ability to build global commerce businesses at a massive scale where the only real barrier is creativity and ideas.

the next evolution of companies will be created in public with early customers, partners, and supporters. They’ll be community-owned and operated, building upon the playbooks created by these early NFT and play-to-earn projects.