The truly Web3-native marketing strategy is tokens. And it's not just free token airdrops, but the mere fact of users owning your token. It's powerful beyond measure when used correctly.

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.

My knee-jerk reaction to most early-stage founders asking about PR/marketing is that “you are being too obsessed about marketing and not obsessed enough about your product.”

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.

I’m not sure where this obsession with marketing comes from. Most founders seem to think that they are excellent at product building and that they need help with marketing. In my experience it’s very much the opposite. Most founders simply aren’t obsessed enough with users. They don’t talk to users on a regular basis. They aren’t users of their own... See more

During DeFi summer 2020, many of the best products, such as Uniswap and Curve, found product-market fit before they even had a token. There were also a few great products that had a liquid token before product-market fit. But they did not use token incentives.

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.

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.