The Builder Signal Episode 1

[Music] This is the summer signal where we cut through the noise and go straight to the bone. Each episode we bring you a group of founders from the onchain summer who are building the future. Three questions, zero fluff. Let's get into it. [Music] Hi Albert Alberto, how are you?

Thank you. Thank you so much for being here at the uh um summer signal and for participating of the uh onchain summer. Um so I know you're a um two-time founder and you've been working in the space for a while and now you're the co-founder of LID uh which basically empowers creators to uh to have a more direct relationship to their uh with their fans and uh with consumers. So I want to ask you like the first question regarding like high level about the creator economy. So creator economy promise more independence for artists and for creators but many are still struggling and I think we haven't really delivered on that promise yet.

So how can lead empower them via their mini app and what's coming next.

Yes, I think the creator economy failed and having too many tools an overload of tools. You have to bounce between a recorder between one type of video gumroad uh every time of things that you have to have to juggle a lot and there's a lot of feed data loss in the process and there's no still an independent movement so the creators can amplify their skills. What we're trying to do, our vision is to create the easiest way for creators to sell digital products in types of courses, PDF, recipes, uh, music, every type of creators because everybody's excited that you can do your own or own founder in this new economy because with the tools that we have with the web three of the NFTs, we don't call it NFDs of digital products and also a co-pilot that Selena is going to join you all on the way. I think we have the edge to empower the creators to become the founders that they deserve with the tools and with one tool not juggling between each other.

There have been like many apps in crypto, many platforms that have tried or have like tackled this same challenge, right? The direct relationship between the artist and the fan, direct relationship between the creator and the consumer. Uh but yet few have truly changed the game. So like what what is Lid's unique approach? Our unique approach is the storefront in the co-pilot part.

They I I agree with you. They everybody wants to have a taco, the creator and fan, but our unique approach is having a storefront that is fully controlled by the by the creator. how would they want to expose fully customize it and and how they want to expose the products and services but also the AI co-pilot is going to help you with the copies with the pricing everything that the creators doesn't have to be an expert but can be included in a storefront can be included in the process can be included in the products and services so they can a flow state when they uh know what they're doing so with this a musician can focus on be given good music a chef focus on good good recipes a yoga teacher should focus on giving good classes and everything rest handles in one storefront with our co-pilot. That's a unique approach that we have.

If lead uh achieves like your ultimate vision like what would that ultimate vision be?

That ultimate vision will be pretty straightforward that lit helps millions and creators to become founders of their own creators economy. Imagine teacher run courses without middle musicians sustains independent without a disco graph. Artist sells without knowing any what's a gas fee, what's seed phrase, what is crypto even. So web three becomes invisible and the mainstream gets it finally. So it focus on the creators, not on the web.

Focus on the usage and the real utility, not on the mechanics behind it. That's our main vision. That will be the final headline.

Awesome. Thank you. And like one last question if we go just a little little deeper like and abstract from like the market opportunity and all these things like why do you think it's important that we can transform this uh in you know the world today?

I think it's very important to return the creativity the empowerment the push that the creators need that they own the product they own their art they own their music to give it to the people again so they can have benefits monetize build and create we have to return to the people. Thank you so much uh Alberto for uh taking the time to uh uh coming over to the summer signal and I wish you the best of lucks during the onchain summer.

Thank you Se. I appreciate everything and let's go with the onchain summer. [Music] Hey Morgan, how are you? Uh thank you so much for being here at the summer signal and for participating in the onchain summer. Uh I know you have a lot of pre-work experience building and even selling an e-commerce business.

I think when you were in college that's pretty cool. And later on you discovered web 3 and now you're building tunnel which enables community marketing campaigns that reward creators. So I want to you know ask you a couple of questions that go like straight to the point. So we know that the attention economy is a little broken. So like from your perspective, what is what is the single biggest flaw in the current model that tunnel is uniquely positioned to solve?

Yeah, I think one of the biggest things I'm seeing right now that we battle every day is fake metrics, bots, engagement farming, all these sort of things to falsely engage the actual influence that a particular creator has. This is actually a huge problem in the industry. uh well over a billion dollars in spend is allocated to creators who are using fraudulent metrics and that steals money directly from real creators that actually have true audiences that are worth, you know, actually engaging with content. So, I think the biggest thing that I'd really love to see is solving this problem of all of this money being funneled to creators that are just using fraudulent metrics and taking that money from the true creators who are pushing the industry forward. How important do you think it is for creators, you know, generally around the world to, you know, have like this like novel tools basically?

Yeah, I think giving creators the tools to empower them for what they promote is a huge gamecher. Currently, the model is you produce content on a platform and you have very little control over what ads are shown in and around your content. And so one of the things we really love to be able to do at Tunnel is give power back to creators where they can choose what they want to promote. We have campaigns that go live every single day. Uh sometimes as much as 5 10 plus per day.

And so creators can come on the platform and really pick and choose what resonates with them and what they actually think will do well with their audience. One of the metrics at at Tunnel is you're actually going to get paid for the true engagement and views you generate on a particular promotion. So, if you're doing a promotion that you don't think is going to resonate for your audience, that'll actually hurt your future payouts. So, you're directly incentivized to actually uh promote things that you believe in and that align with your personal brand as a creator. And so, that's something that I really like to see is actually giving the tools of choice because a lot of times creators do not have that in the current web two creator economy.

And uh moving to the second question like the current model often forces creators to like rent their audiences from large platforms. Uh how uh can you go a little deeper into how tunnel makes did this more like more of a direct relationship between the brands and the creators and how they can like better own that relationship?

Yeah, we actually just launched a new product 48 hours ago called Tunnel Boost. And what this product is, it's for ex Twitter uh where you can launch a campaign to promote a single post and then creators have to quote that post sharing their true thoughts, relevant details or information to amplify that original post. So this is an direct example of alignment where instead of a creator needing to, you know, say like repeat specific talking points, they can actually take content from a brand or from whoever wants to promote that content and share their true opinions on that. And I think that's an example of a creator organically engaging with a post, sharing true thoughts as opposed to like some sort of paid shill. and they can go through and look like, hey, what posts are actually something that would resonate with my audience, something that's actually worth sharing with them, something where I can actually add valuable input to the conversation.

And so, we encourage creators to come on, see those posts that resonate with them, and claim deals to promote them.

What is the power of being truthful?

Yeah, the real thing that we see in web 3 right now is there's a lot of paid shills, and I think the bottom sort of falling out of the market with those being adding value. you know, the jig is up. Everyone knows people are being paid for these shield posts. It used to be you could make a post look organic when you're promoting a token or something, but uh 2021 is over. That is not the case anymore.

And so authenticity is what goes really far. What we see now is that as long as a creator actually has a true authentic relationship with their audience, if they all of a sudden post something that is out of character for them, that's an obvious promotion, they're going to get a huge amount of backlash for that. So, as creators are given monetization tools, they need to actually have the power to only promote what aligns with their audience. And like look, I'm I don't have anything against, you know, memecoin people who are like just trading all day and they want to talk about some ticker that's fun to them and they want to do that with their community. That's great.

But you actually have to have a community that's aligned around that content. If you are doing content, maybe you're like a YouTuber and then all of a sudden you're doing some shill post for something completely unrelated, that damages your relationship with your audience and really hurts your ability to grow that audience going forward and that long-term hurts your monetization. So, I don't think creators think about it in a direct way of like how much money I can make, but I think still aligning that, hey, if you're being organic and authentic, you're actually going to grow that audience long term. And in the long run, that is how you actually build a business that is profitable over time.

I love this idea about like the true will set us free.

Exactly.

Cool. So, well, thank you so much for being here, Morgan, and uh good luck during the onchain summer.

Really appreciate it. Thank you very much for the time. Take care. [Music]