BBW24 - Day 1 - Startup Pitch: Despark

all right thank you Ian uh and thanks to the whole cubic group for putting on such great events uh normally I'd be standing but blockchain can't yet fix uh broken caves so we're going to sit this time so my name is Greg husen i'm the CEO of despark and we are the user research platform for web 3 so what's that mean uh what is user research why do it what problem can we help folks solve oh that's a very big font uh so web 3 products struggle to acquire retain and monetize users it's a big problem everywhere not just in web 3 but throughout the broader uh Tech World um but particularly painful in web 3 so what does that mean that means that Builders out there are always asking themselves questions how big is my audience what features will help me grow faster what do I need to do to Capt this markets to make more money to be successful company and they're struggling with limited time resources to actually accomplish this and so these questions basic questions everyone's asking themselves everywhere are life or death in six 12 months if you don't answer these questions or you answer them wrong you're going to end up with a product that's failed product that has no users a product that might look cool but doesn't actually succeed in the market so what we do is is help solve that we've built the web 3 Insight engine two-part platform First Direct user feedback we're a Marketplace between companies and end users so company says I need to talk to Unis swap users in Europe or per users or whatever it might be and we can connect them to that target audience in order to run interviews talk about uh run them through the current figma prototypes talk their current marketing strategy whatever it needs to be in order for them to uh successfully get that feedback and make a big impact on their strategy second audience sizing analytics once you define that platform sorry once you define that audience then you can come on our platform and you can see how big it is how it's growing adjacent audiences it's about coming up with a really strong goto Market plan across all of marketing and product and so that's why our vision really is to become that uh essential uh platform for all of marketing and and product development okay so we can connect you to audiences what does that mean how do you define an audience uh well it's every kind of audience so we users sign up our platform and they give us some demographics about themselves they give us uh wallets that they connect and sign to verify that they're real uh which is in Innovation that's not possible in web 2 user research and so they come in and they tell us what country they're from they can option tell us demographics like how old they are uh you know education levels things like that and connect to as many Walts they want that we can then use to help companies get in touch so they might want to talk to uh like I said earlier per users in Europe they might want to talk to folks who are just starting out in their blockchain Journey or they might want to talk to folks who are power users in evm uh ecosystems or salana all these things make it really really uh powerful for getting that feedback that anyone building and who has built knows is so critical to just build the right thing uh all right so I've told you what we can do now I guess the question is well why would I do that how are you helping here's some here's some case studies and some Roi that we've had uh from some of our 20 plus customers we got a couple of unicorns on the platform at this point um first customer a anonymized uh they were wondering how do I gain market share in a competitive market Standard question tons of people W it every single day uh and so they went on gpark uh they've now run over eight different projects on despark uh exploring user preferences about competitor products they talks to competitor users surveying L2 usage and as a result they redid their feature road map so they've saved hundreds of engineering hours by not building things that they shouldn't build that users don't care about and building the things that they do care about uh customer B uh they are a uh Hardware wallet manufacturer they were wondering how much demand is there for a new product so they surveyed uh user wallet habits and Seed phrase habits and as a result they canceled their product because it turns out that no one actually wants to buy it uh probably the highest Roi decision you can make no I that's pretty good and uh ended up saving them just a boatload of money so they can focus their resources somewhere else last one here uh customer C was trying to understand how to reach more users I think a common problem many of us feel in our Industries blockchain or not and uh so they went out and gathered feedback on marketing uh their marketing uh collateral and Concepts through both surveys and interviews and as a result they increase their marketing oi and their signups again you can do better you can always make your products your marketing everything else better uh you should be doing user research with despark or without somehow uh so jumping over to the user side here uh so users sign up for a platform they love us so far we have thousand plus users giving feedback today uh and the reason that they join is uh really because we have a great earnings opportunities unlike most other places in blockchain and honestly the world you can be earning up to $150 an hour here if you're the Right audience at the at the right time and you can help give back to web 3 and improve it uh we all know that web 3 needs improving in in some areas so uh you can be the difference and third uh you can control your information so you can specify what you do want to include we only have a very few number of required Fields uh but you can specify what you do include add and remove wallets as you go we don't store things Beyond uh that's out of your control uh so uh just to to summarize here you should do user research I don't care if it's with despark or not I do care I hope it's with despark but you should do it regardless uh and you should always be looking out for uh how how to improve web 3 if you want to check us out as a company go to despark doio if you want to sign up as a user go to despark doio that's DP r k. uh and if you get to the website and you can't find what to do next come find me I clearly need to do some user research thank you all happy to answer questions but uh no pressure you are sir uh just curious did did you come from a background doing like more web to user research is that and then you just kind of extrapolated it to web 3 yeah absolutely you this is a this this pitch is heavy on the uh tactics uh but the the thinking here is really that I come from web uh web 2 use research background a lot of interviews a lot of surveys things like that uh and web 3 presents a really interesting opportunity because the uh wallet data provides objective reality in web to user research today it's effectively you're just taking them their word for it they're just doing a lot of survey questions I've used Alexa I like Amazon blah blah blah and in web 3 all of a sudden we have objective data on that they are using various Dees this their spend Etc and so I'm actually really excited about the future possibilities I think today it's really needed and everywhere we go people are like oh thank God I need to talk to folks like you um I need to use the platform but yeah we think that in the future there's just a ton of potential for objective data and as more things move on chain it'll be used kind of throughout the uh the broader industry one right here how do you balance and I guess some corners of web 3 just the desire for anonymity in in um you know the your client's desire to not see that right as probably a way to Market more directly to them um is that a big issue with your current client base as far is as far as penetrating this market and how do you deal with that Dynamic yeah absolutely uh a few different thoughts there I'd say one users they're kind of bcad into two big groups one really really doesn't care like they are a little wary about some of the wallets but they'll connect them and you know slowly add more as they realize we're trustworthy and then there's a small minority of users maybe 20 30% that probably won't ever connect wallets um and you know that's okay too we uh try really hard to let users uh stay Anonymous to end companies Etc they uh we don't share emails with anyone you can sign up with the pseudonym things like that um and uh we try to yeah make it very web three friendly and that is enough that attracts a good portion of users that are pretty representative of the broader poll even if you know 10 to 20% I think would never connect Walts just from they've been in the industry long enough that that's just habits that are ingrained are you guys currently or do you have any plans in the future of like just scraping data of wallets and going analyzing that information not necessarily for people that have signed up for your platform because I've seen other companies trying to do that um not totally successfully from what I've seen in terms of actually being able to monetize that information but is that something you guys have looked at yeah absolutely it's a great question uh yeah there are a lot of analytics companies out there uh it's you think blockchain it's one of the first things that comes to mind like oh I could do something with all that data right and you get started easily so a lot of people do it um yes absolutely but we're always coming from it from a you know what's additive to our user research platform here and so you know today you're already identifying an audience you're saying I want to do surveys interviews focus groups whatever it might want to be you say here are the criteria I want them to meet and so by defining that we can then look at the blockchain data at large and apply the demographic data that we have the proprietary information we have and scale that up and so when we say that we can help you with audience sizing and analytics and things like that yes that's absolutely where we're going but with the caveat of like uh we're never going to be a pure like token analysis platform or anything like that I think that's uh we're not differentiated there and I think there's enough platforms out there that do that already how long have you guys been doing this now um we launched a little almost 18 months maybe like 16 months ago we we launched the first project so yeah I don't go into the traction too much there but got like 20 customers most repeat customers a couple unicorns on the platform awesome what how many users have you like roughly had fill out their their demographic information yeah it's a little over a thousand now I think it's okay something like that but it's growing at a few hundred a month at this point cool so uh yeah it's we haven't prioritized it because this has been sufficient to reach all the research we need sure uh but as it grows and data becomes you know more valuable here I think we'll focus on growing that faster awesome man great stuff keep it up cheers thanks um just I think just with the evolution of AI and like how it's increased be becoming just a bigger part of all of our lives and I know just based upon the research I did on your website it's definitely a big part of what you do I'm just kind of wondering how the what do you see the future of AI and helping to understand your market research and how using those tools is going to help make the process better yeah great question you know there's so many moving pieces in the world right now between all AI agents as well as all of the you know where our blockchain wallets going as individuals are they going to be abstracted away well users not know about them and I think you know the reason we feel confident about our future is that moving forward what we have is user cooperation and so no matter where that goes whether it's agents representing users uh on their behalf or whether that's um uh wallets being abstracted to you know something that isn't individual wallets the users still ultimately control it and so by the fact that we have that partnership have this Marketplace uh we feel confident that we'll be able to evolve right alongside it if it moves to an agent future great we can do that if it moves to a future where there is no such thing as an individual wallet or everything's tied to your anonymized ID or whatever that is that's okay too and so yeah we we feel good I won't make a prediction of where it's going because I'm sure I'll look silly up here in five years but uh we feel good about it