Founder Mode Comms Leading From the Front | Samantha Yap - YAP Global

[Music] [Music] thank you Victoria for that that was really useful well hi everyone my my name is Samantha Yap and I am the founder and CEO of Yap Global we are the oh hello de actually ice see you guys thre me off a little bit um yeah we're the peer partners of e Denver really happy to be speaking to you today about founder mode comms so this talk is for Founders CMOS marketers and any conss people that's supporting their founding teams hi welcome James hello I'm so happy anyway let me start but before I begin uh I just want to share that we have a copy of the Apper times uh we have our booth around the corner so do pick one up and you probably and You' probably seen this hat the aera hat but let me begin so just to begin uh what gives me the authority to tell you about Bounder mode coms let me tell you a little bit about myself so um while I've been the founder of Yap Global for the last 7 years I've helped multiple crypto Founders and teams tell tell their stories uh for yeah a good a good part of s plus years um I used to be a journalist before I started Yap Global I actually used to be a journalist and producer so I used to have to um coach and help CEOs ministers uh academics be comfortable in front of camera so that's where my skills come from we run a uh Weekly Newsletter that keeps on top of the narratives and Trends in the space and uh I host a a podcast called Yap cast and we do a series on um the future of the story of money because that's really what has interested me about crypto and web 3 now a little bit about more about my team this is my team uh we are now a global team of around 30 people based in New York London Singapore and uh in South Africa and essentially what we do is we tell stories and build trust and you'll probably see some of my amazing team running around in the media Lounge as well as uh standing in our booth uh just around the corner so do pop by say hello all right so let's set the stage for 2025 now I know currently as we speak the market is a bit bearish and you know volatility is guaranteed in our industry but the year started out really optimistic and really strong um what we saw is CP optimism with Trump coming into office and you know regulatory Clarity coming in for crypto uh we also are seeing the def5 Renaissance we're seeing institutions pay attention to to what's happening in in defi uh but we're also seeing Founders come back and step you know into the linelight and leading from the front uh I think late late 2024 we started to see Founders um they were they were coming back and not laying off out of a position of weakness but laying off stuff to to to refine their team and strengthen for growth in the next bull market so this is the stage right now and so my call today is for Founders to lead their vision from the front and I'm going to take my own advice and actually Victoria was on previously was talking about three key messages and so for this talk I have three key points that I think your founder should um should do and should should take note of when it comes to CS so firstly a Founders should be informing their Community about what they're doing now I have three examples here of Founders that are doing a great job of that so we've got Jesse poag from base and he's doing it in a creative way where he's doing he's got a social media team behind him posting Tik toks and Instagram wheels and that's really gaining attention for him and for base as well and you're seeing it's it's him it's him walking around trying to on board people on the street so that's one example of a Founder informing their Community about what they're doing uh you know you've got balic of course we we value and appreciate what balic has done for ethereum and he's continuing to drive it through his blogs and then I put a more mainstream example here but Elon Musk he is the example of a Founder really taking to X for his multiple companies anytime you hear about Tesla or about Gro AI he's he's he's pushing a a statement about it directly on his ex so that's an example of a Founder informing the community but let me give you more of a framework so this is a three-step framework of how Founders should inform so step one I encourage Founders to pick their news value depending on what they're announcing step two to build their narrative Arc and step three free to choose their medium uh that they're they're um making a an announcement on so let's go through the seven news vals this is journalism 101 but this is about going back to the basics so it's you know with a story you could use a combination of this or hone in on one but I like to refer our clients to you know thinking about what makes greater impact the timeliness of a story now this is really important in crypto because price price movements do change the sentiment very quickly and it's very timely um prominence so any um key influential figure whether they're celebrity or whether they're hiding with individual they make news conflict media love that Trend what's trending and I'll talk a little bit more about that later what's bizarre and human interest stories now then I then step two is to pick your narrative Arc and I pulled this up and this is data shout out to K AI um I pulled data on two charts first chart first pie chart is on narrative mind share and then the second is on token mind share so it's really important to strike the right balance between what narrative you want to ride and um you know what's gaining mind share in the industry so it's it's no surprised that AI is taking a lot of Mind share right now but if you're a scalable Solution on ethereum and you're you know doubling down on the tech if it doesn't make sense to talk about AI you might want to consider whether you you want to work that into the narrative that you want to ride so you've got to strike the right balance and especially in crypto we need to think a lot about yeah just what even the the adoption of the chain that you're on um so I pulled these two charts because it's kind of a it's a balancing act between what narrative you ride and what is dominating mind share at the moment my advice to teams that are building in the space is to yeah consider um really choose be strategic in what narrative you want to ride and remember that Trends fade and so you want to be sustainable and you don't want to just jump on the next hype so think a lot about that when you're um positioning your founder and your team and then lastly the third step is to pick your medium so in media we we look at these four different mediums there's printed online so that's in the form of yeah doing an interview and and the the commentary comes verbatim and so sometimes this throws uh teams off because the tone of voice is not as doesn't come across on paper and so we in PR we talk a lot about media ready commentary so think a lot about how you respond in a printed online interview then there's TV and video um so if you get on CNBC or Bloomberg the segments are very short they're around 2 to 5 minutes so you really need to be concise and get your message across in a short amount of time so you got to consider that uh podcast podcast you get a little bit more Grace with them because they go for 45 minutes to an hour you have a little bit more time to explain what you want to do and then there's conferences which here we are at e them and I'm sure a few of your your spokespeople and maybe yourselves are speaking on stage too so thinking about how you come across on stage and then of course the social medium so for the marketers in the room and uh for people who are familiar each social medium has a different style and a different approach on X you can see that a lot of people spend time on X um and now they're pushing articles and threads so think about what message you want to get across on X LinkedIn a little bit more professional this is where if you're trying to grow a team and you're hiring you know people still go to LinkedIn to look for their jobs so think about how you want to come across the perspective uh hires that you want to make and also maybe more uh the traditional Financial world or institutions or Enterprises they still live on LinkedIn so think about how you want to be perceived on that platform and then Instagram I think more crypto companies should get on Instagram and or Tik Tok and think about the reals I know we're in the US right now but I think Tik tok's still around um for now um and then blog post so you know vitalic uses his blog to share more about what he's really thinking so blogs uh you can really own the the content on your blog and then think about how you distribute it now the second thing that I think Founders should do is to inspire so why should Founders Inspire well number one um it's a good way to articulate your vision it's a good way to Pioneer narratives I put Ilia from near there because he's pioneering the blockchain for AI narrative and I think they're doing a brilliant job doing that and then establish trust and you can see with vitalic still being clear leader for ethereum uh I think we all put a lot of trust in how he's leading um the entire you know ecosystem with his thinking and with his blog posts um you know of course ethereum is still decentralized but I think we appre appreciate that there's a clear leader setting the tone from the front so inspiring and uh I'd like to uh bring this um Communications model up because I think we don't think enough about it but actually um Dr Albert moravian's communication rule is very important 7% of your message actually comes from your spoken word 38% comes your from your tone of voice and 55% comes your body language so a quick example is if I'm smiling here and I'm telling you that I'm sad you won't believe that I'm sad because I'm smiling right so your body language matters especially when you're you know inspiring and communicating your message and then lastly influence um I've put CZ here because it's an example of how Founders really are the Cornerstone of the brand identity and also they should be the chief storytellers of of their company now CZ he has stepped back from Finance he had to do some time um he's now back but he's not involved with bance directly there's a new CEO however he's still so influential that whenever he tweets or posts something people associate that with bance and so this is just an example of a Founder that has been quite You Know instrumental and influential in our industry and we still link it to bance this is the power of a Founder a very um vocal founder and then lastly behind all these Founders you know on top of influencing from the top this is a structure where I know for most projects and startups that are raising this is a this is the goal I know you might not be there yet but this is the structure that I encourage for example if you were like a coinbase or you were a binance this is what you should have so you should have a head of PR and comms so that could be your Chief Communications officer uh and then a CMO which is your head of marketing and then beneath the PRM comms then you have your Regional PR leads so if you want to you know um tackle the the world I know I'm running out of time but you know think about your Regional needs and then you work with the pr agency and then likewise with marketing as event manager social media and then a marketing agency so just to summarize my three key points what's in this year as found mod coms you need to inform Inspire and influence thank you so much w