Common pitfalls for Web3 founders

But “go to market strategy” is the key word here. Again, most startups don’t even have a great product to go to the market with! If you use tokens as a user acquisition strategy without a great product, you are essentially wasting your marketing budget. And it’s a very expensive marketing strategy because the supply is limited and mistakes are irre... See more

I will argue that an engaged community is not what leads to a great product. An engaged community is the result of a great product.

If you feel overwhelmed, the best solution is not to hire more, but to do less. Prioritize, focus, ignore.

When you are finally ready to spend time on token design, it will seem like a daunting task. You wonder, “is there a playbook?”  The short answer is no, there is no playbook.  Tokens should absolutely be designed from first principles, according to the unique needs of your product.

team size is a vanity metric. It’s a useless metric to optimize for. In fact, more often than not a smaller team of A players can achieve more than a team 3 times larger of B players.

Don’t use an external PR/marketing agency. I now have a dozen data points from founders who have used one and shared their experience with me. There has not been a single success story. Do marketing in-house. Ask your investors to amplify your message and to connect you with the media.

Only after you’ve completely exhausted your personal network and your community should you consider using recruiting platforms like Alist, Triplebyte, Stackoverflow, coding schools, etc.

If an early-stage startup failed 5 years from now, it would not be because they sucked at marketing. It would be because they did not find product-market fit.

In short, prioritize your product over your token.