How to build something that has never been built before by Jordan Lyall

why should you listen to me I've been building on the blockchain since 2014 I built on this uh this blockchain called stellar and uh kind of tinkering with blockchain development since then uh since 2018 I've been full-time building in the ethereum ecosystem I just did five years uh I was formerly at consensus I was the D5 product lead I launched an early nft project back in 2020 called called meme don't by meme also launched nifties.com and I'm also an avid nft collector investor and serial Builder so last year I launched my company called called Venture Punk the whole idea is that we're gonna we're gonna explore web3 we're going to experiment with these unique tools uh several shots on gold the idea is that we're building new and Innovative technology try to launch something every other month so if anyone knows anything about going from zero to one in web 3 I think I think I'm on that list um today we're going to be talking about going from zero to one going from your idea does not exist to now we have passionate users so this talk is broken up into two sections how to find passionate users for your product it could be product it could be Dao it could be community uh it could I could be a content creator it's it's similar similar steps whether you're building a product or Community or uh you're an influencer and then number two how to develop web three spidey sense that's kind of what I call this balance between knowing what's coming uh how to jump at trending metas how to know what to build next so we'll get into that so I hope this talk is very practical and informational and helpful for a lot of you who are going to be going through you know no no amazing visuals it's really just a practical playbook for how to find practical how to find passionate users for your project and it's simple you go from Insight find your audience how do you hook them and then reach so step one it's pretty obvious come up with your idea for a while there people were saying your idea doesn't matter right as long as you have enough enthusiasm and and and talent you'll be able to make something work I'm not buying it I think the idea the what is very important it's not the end of the world if you have a bad idea but you need the why you need the what what are you building what are you doing here and there are several reasons to come up with an idea uh number one the first strategy of finding an idea is to solve your own problems I think if you you're deep into this space and you're an avid user collector Builder Trader you you very quickly you're going to see some problems that exist you know this this this tool didn't work right or this was too frictiony you know the ux wasn't quite right you're going to run into a lot of problems even even now in web 3. so it's if it's something that you experience a problem you experience chances are someone else experiences those problems too number two follow your cure your curiosity and Tinker by being deep in this space you'll start to identify things that interest you kind of double click on those double down on those things and explore we're all building things that didn't exist uh no one is an expert here we're all making this up as we go let's but please don't be afraid to try something new to try something different we're all kind of figuring this out together I think openc and coinbase are good examples of these huge massive players in this space but it all started by the founder just having an interest in Bitcoin or having an interest in the ERC 721 technology and doubling down on that becoming an expert overnight and double down on what works find something that that generates some sort of interest from somebody and figure out why and then and then put more resources into that specific thing you can also work backwards from Paradigm shifts we're all here because we believe in kind of most of us believe in that crypto ideal so start to think what the future looks like in a couple decades and then work backwards work backwards it might be that you think nfts are going to proliferate the idea of owning any media 10 years from now the base technology is going to be an nft okay what do we need to do so we get there what are the building blocks what are the Milestones that need to exist to get to that spot and then lastly holding all those first four things in mind uh start to brainstorm with friends you'd be surprised when you put several people together in the same room with different perspective but same level of enthusiasm uh just shooting ideas back and forth it's a really great way to kind of crystallize on an idea one project that we've launched at our Venture studio called Venture Punk is called raccoons it's a CCO project with this this universe of cartoon raccoon characters from idea to launch it was two weeks it was an open Edition for 24 hours it was like six dollars to Mint one baby raccoon and uh we pulled in 200 eth just in 24-hour open Edition uh because we capitalized on a couple things some of the things that we talked about in the last in the last slide which is paying attention to what people are doing becoming fascinated solving your own problems I was a collector and I was buying nfts different Collections and there was a meta for a while the open Edition meta and the burn kind of this burn mechanic and I said what if you could start with one character and almost like Pokemon evolve your characters into different phases I thought we'd sell a few thousand of them we end up selling forty six thousand uh baby raccoon characters and uh now we're starting to build out this ecosystem of fun storytelling on the blockchain with CCO IP once you have that idea I recommend quickly prototyping it anybody can come up with with an idea but it really makes a difference once you put it to code or to visuals get a wireframe up once you're able to kind of make it real it could just be a fake website once you actually put it out into the world you'd be surprised at how much of a boost that is for you and once you do kind of make it publicly whether it's a website or a uh a wireframe or a figma file start showing it to people start talking to people as soon as possible when you think you have something you need to figure out what you're building and not only what you're building but who you're building it for so that's step two the audience identify your super specific who I'm intentional about saying super specific it needs to be narrow it's okay if it could be comically narrow like extremely narrow if you're solving a problem or delighting a handful of users that's great you're on to something when you've identified a handful of people that you've solved their problem or you've provided a positive experience and you you have several of these types of users find what's common about these users there's usually some some key characteristics some specific attributes that all these users share figure out what it is are they from the same Community the same part of the world do they have some of the same goals or or other kind of characteristics and don't be afraid to start small and move quickly quickly another project that we launch uh this was last summer we launched Skylab Skylab is a web three Builder community that we've launched we've got several hundred people in our Discord and the whole idea is that we are providing value for a for a relatively small base of users I I said hey I'm in a bunch of telegram groups and Discord groups and the focus is about focus is about uh trading focus is about uh you know flipping or alpha or whatever I I was missing a community for Builders so I built it I found a small group of friends that agreed with me on that statement that there needs to exist a Discord where other Founders and Builders are pushing each other forward so that's when we launched Skylab we found our audience and now we're continuing to build and evolve what Skylab looks like and it's currently a home for hundreds of web three founders investors and Builders I encourage you to check out Skylab once you know what you're building once you know who you're building for now we need to craft our pitch also known as the hook how do you hook these people in how do you hook uh similar groups similar sets of people into your idea figure out what you do that's unique how do you compare to competitors talk to your existing Community how would they describe you something that was really beneficial for Skylab as we try to figure out our vision for the project as we try to figure out what next steps to take there was one thing what I where I thought we we should go but it was really helpful when I started talking to community members and members of the of the Discord like what what do you like most about this community where do you see it going and it was really beneficial to open up the the Discord the the conversation there to really how do you see us I know you've been hanging out for a few months in this Discord why why is that why do you keep coming back and there's a concept in product development called jobs to be done and it's really about what value you provide to the user what are they getting from you that they otherwise wouldn't get or what are they getting from you that they would be rather getting from a competitor uh the last the last strategy for crafting your hook is find ways to capture people's attention so a couple weeks ago we launched levels levels.art it's a on chain unchain nft gaming platform it's literally on chain this entire game that you're seeing here lives on chain it's uh the assets the game code the high scores everything lives on the blockchain and we've partnered with top artists in this case our first drop was Cloud poppers we partnered with amazing artist Brian Brinkman and it really started out as wow wouldn't it be cool if there was like a decentralized arcade where everything lived on chain and we partnered with the most amazing artists in the space and so from idea to finding the Right audience okay the audience aren't necessarily Gamers they're art enthusiasts they're nft art collectors wouldn't it be cool if instead of just looking at your nft you could actually engage in it wouldn't it be cool if instead of looking at your nft that you could actually jump in and start playing so we we used uh we worked with Brian Brinkman he was the 10th artist to drop on Art blocks and we launched levels really the hook there's there's so much and so much going on here right there's gaming there's art there's generative art there's uh on chain it's it's kind of difficult sometimes to communicate this so for the hook what I say is that it's a combination of you know Sotheby's and Chuck E cheese right it's a combination of like Fine Art and fun gameplay so check it out levels.art if you're interested uh step four is reach and that's finding these early adopters by doing things that don't scale a lot of times we hear about that and like in like uh startup land Airbnb is known for doing things early that didn't scale and especially in web 3 where things didn't exist before we have to be really good about doing things that may not scale it's okay to be spending a ton of time with your early users it's actually recommended to be spending a ton of time with the early community members and by doing that you really figure out what you're building why you're building what you should be building next of course it doesn't scale it doesn't scale if you intend to be you know tens of thousands of users down the road you're not going to be able to do that but with your batch of first users do things that don't scale so how do you do that I group it into three C's Community content and creativity you find these early adopters by tapping into your existing Community your friends and colleagues people that follow you on Twitter uh that's how I even now start my new projects is by tapping my existing Network hey what do you think about this hey would you try this out hey would you ever think about buying this nft it's a great way to just kick start your new projects and then content it's a way to kind of position yourself as an expert in the space by creating a bunch of valuable content and then create creativity think a speaking of ways that don't scale things that don't scale the more creative the better uh not all of us are going to create some viral content uh but it's helpful to do things um that show how passionate you are about what you're building uh so real quickly here we're going to talk about what I call web3 spidey sense and that's like knowing what to build next and it really comes down to enthusiasm for this space and knowing what's going on so I I Buck it into two characteristics uh what I call web3 spidey sense is like the overlap between empathy and creativity by building empathy you're able to know what the user is thinking what the user wants what they want to do next my trick has been beat like building things that I want to see exist um if if you're not the target market yourself another great way to build empathy is by obviously observing your your people your community your potential audience your potential batch of listeners by knowing what they think and knowing what they uh what they expect you can start to deconstruct what works okay so this project over here they onboarded a hundred different users how did they do that um it's something that certain people are better at but it's also something that is learned over time it's it's something that can be taught and that's building empathy for your audience the second thing is improving creativity and a couple of ways to do that are learning from other great Builders surround yourself with others that are building in this space that's why Skylab is a great resource for that we're putting hundreds of people together that are building in web3 and learning from each other uh the second strategy for improving creativity is to be curious about what is going on in your domain if I had to underline one thing it's that Curiosity like there's no replacement for curiosity getting someone to do something whether it's install your app or buy your nft or listen to your podcast or join your Dao it all comes down to a successful transition of enthusiasm from me to you and uh nothing really beats being so curious that you're willing to do those things that don't scale so in in summary um it comes down to you know we we first talked about the steps needed to go from idea to passionate user base and and really my my belief is that passionate Builders lead to passionate users and then knowing what to build next knowing what's coming up next uh is really a combination of empathy and creativity again I'm Jordan Lyle from Venture Punk and follow me at Jordan Lyle thanks everybody