Neal Gorevic Web3 Commercialization Building Brand, Products & Experiences

[Music] Hello. Hello. Welcome everybody to web 3 commercialization building brand products and experiences. We're here with Neil Gorovic CMO of Consensus, Simon Jones, the chief commercial officer at Cryptolife and Banks, and Robbie Young, CEO of Anamoka Brands. So guys, tell me, what does building a brand, product, or experience in web 3 mean to you?

Oh boy, I have got the I have the mic, so I'll kick it off. Well, I think the the biggest distinction is you have a fundamentally different relationship between your user and the product. So in a web two business or any traditional business built on the legacy economy, your consumer is a consumer, right? It's a transactional relationship. In web 3, the starting point of your relationship with your user is they are part of your ecosystem.

They're a stakeholder in your project. They're an investor in what you're doing. And so they have uh different they play a different role. They play an advocate role. They play a part of the community.

They play an amplifying voice in your marketing strategy. And so when you're thinking about building a brand, I think there's a couple of key points that are important for any builder in the space to keep in mind. One is you don't really control your message. So because we live in a mimemetic world and your audience is really part of creating and amplifying your story, they're going to take what you put out in the world. They're going to remix it.

They're going to put their own spin on top of it. And you need to be open to that kind of porousness in how you're designing your narrative. And then the second is you have to invest in building your ecosystem. So whether it's getting your uh feedback directly from your users on an ongoing basis or ensuring that you're incorporating an open developer ecosystem into the product you're building. You're going to be really surprised where the where where you are building goes because you don't control it end to end.

I think Neil's answered the question for all of us. Um, but yeah, I think just to to echo what Neil said, I mean, to me, I think building a brand in web 3 and building a, you know, a sustainable product in web 3 is really about how you start to look at the different concepts of product that have been existing and refine those in a way that you can actually reach a more global audience. Because one of the traditional issues with kind of core technologies and if we're looking at my world which is financial services they've always been a very regionalized or localized activity and obviously within this world we're looking at a global audience which I think from a from a branding perspective actually poses a lot more issues than you traditionally get because one of the classic things that you hear people talk about is you know what's your audience and well you know it's crypto users. It's like well you know that that doesn't really answer a question because that could be anybody right and I think that building a brand in web 3 is about building a brand that people feel that they have a level of ownership in or engagement in because when you look at the traditional kind of modeling that we see you know for example take something like open AI right everyone in this room potentially uses open AI none of you really have a stake in that platform obviously Robin Hood announced yesterday that they're going to try and incentivize people to do that. I think the difference in this world is that when you start from the outset, you have to think about how you bring people with you and how you incentivize people because ultimately this is about the distribution of wealth, programmability, composability and at the end of the day creating a generation of products that when people come along and they start using them, they realize why they should be using them as opposed to something traditional like a bank account.

So if you look at things like programmable yield, you look at things like the incentivization that you can build when you make a peer-to-peer relationship and then you've got to try and message that in a way where you're not talking about technology. You're not talking about utility. You're actually just talking about value prop. And it's a really, you know, interesting subject here because I think people like Robbie and Neil have done a really good job of that with your respective portfolios. But you're actually able to kind of go to the consumer and say this is what the product does for you.

And in this area, I think that we spend a lot of time talking about technology and then realize that fundamentally very very few people in this world actually know what we're talking about when we go and we test out on the street. So to me, you know, web 3 branding, web 3, you know, product is about how do you build something that not just connects to the user but actually to to use a very old fashioned phrase build by default because you're actually converting someone from being a user to being a champion. Very cool. And what about you, Robbie? Do you have something to add?

And so I think they've pretty much said it all. I think the main thing is that as Neil said, there's a big, let's call it fungeibility, to use a web 3 term, between your audiences because there's really no such clear delineation as B2B and B TOC because everybody's a stakeholder. And so, you know, you could run a staking protocol and then all of a sudden you find that you have individuals and institutions of similar scale um and value. Um so I think you have to treat everybody like a stakeholder. That's very important.

And also when you think about building a brand um it's not just your brand um because everybody's a stakeholder, it's their brand too. And so you have to be cognizant of that as you go about the process. Very cool. It's that ownership concept. So, what do you think it takes to be a market leader?

Robbie, why don't you start? I'll start. Okay. This assumes I have experience in this area, so I'm going to tread lightly. Um, so I think it's about bringing that community along with you because the cool thing about giving everybody a sense of ownership is that they're much more highly engaged.

So one of the things that we observe in any kind of product we've created where we've created sort of the web 3 version let's say like a video game or something like that we see much higher levels of engagement because that is that comes along with ownership. Um and so I think that part of it is is really key to leverage to see how you can um harness people's interest and engagement and retention um in order to build your community. it it's a slower burn I find because you don't bring in hundreds of millions of people through the door at once but you retain the users for much longer periods and you can help um and you get a lot more verality out of them helping you to market your product so I think what does it take to be a market leader I mean fundamentally you've got to build a product that people like right and I think that you know in this area I think as we see it evolve I think you know when we look at the earlier you years some of those products were really great but you needed a kind of engineering degree to make them work and I think now it's about building out you absolute simplicity but also very very clear kind of value prop as to why you know customer would want to want to work on that so one of the big things that we really are working towards is this idea that you know fundamentally we believe you should be able to connect any store of value to the real world and whilst we start with a fairly basic set of criteria and product you know the overall plan is to say that if you can price it, you should be able to spend that. So if you think about tokenization in theory, you know, if you got a million AIOS points, a million air miles, why shouldn't you be able to spend those to buy some shopping if you want to? It's not a product that exists today.

And to me, you know, when you think about how do you become the market leader? You have to be the product that people interact with in their everyday lives. You have to be a product that, you know, every time I leave my house, I'm interacting with it and it almost becomes subliminal, right? I'm not even thinking about the fact that I'm using it. It is just something that every time I want to go and do something, I've determined that this is the best way to do it.

And I think how do you stay true to it? I think you stay true to it by ultimately um keeping the brand values but also keeping the kind of you know stakeholder the consumer at the heart of it. So there's a lot of stuff you can do here for example in web 3 that you can't do in the traditional world for you if you think about rewards and loyalty. I can create a peer-to-peer relationship between a merchant and a consumer. So that's disint disagregating your metas and your Googles of this world who have fundamentally consumed that role.

But when I do that, I have to be true to the user of saying, well, actually, you're the one who gets the benefit. You know, you're no longer being consumed. We're just creating a peer-to-peer relationship because these platforms exist. And if you start to do things like that, you can really say to people, actually, you I got this benefit because I chose this product. I didn't have to think about it.

And to me, that's how you stay ahead. Yeah, I I echoing what what what uh my my peers here have said, uh the only thing that I would add to this is you have to go beyond technical innovation and you have to invest in trust. Trust is the foundation of succeeding as any market leader. If you lose the trust of your community, you lose all of the equity that you've built and all of the technical supremacy that you've invested time in. In a world of permissionless innovation, trust is a interesting commodity to talk about.

And in you know the the area of that where my company operates around self-custody wallets with MetaMask we've spent a significant amount of time investing in different types of security features and offerings to help ensure that when someone is using a wallet out on the frontier they know that everything that we're doing is in their best interest and trying to protect them. And so trust for us has been a real cornerstone foundation for how we've built the MetaMask brand. Um we colloquially say in in in the company like the fox has your back. You know, we can do everything that we can to help that you on this journey that you're on in web 3 it can travel as safely as possible. Well said.

So trust, we know that's very important. ownership also uh having something that's user friendly like you said and something that you don't even realize you're using on a day-to-day. So in your experiences and and all the products and and people and companies that you guys have worked with, tell me what's the most extraordinary uh product experience that you've experienced thus far. Extraordinary. Okay.

Um, well, I think I've been really excited by how all of this onchain world, which has been for so long this kind of nebulous place where we've all been hacking and and playing around with, is now coming into the real world. And uh, one of the exciting advances that we've been uh, working on this year is uh, a MetaMask card that connects directly to your wallet in partnership with banks and Mastercard. And we're really excited to see that aha moment when all of this, you know, interesting technology that we're developing that can build this new trust foundation for the world, uh, can actually practically go and buy you a cup of coffee. So for me, I think the most extraordinary thing that I've seen is actually the simplest interaction, which is that this can be a technology that's used in everyday life. Absolutely.

So, I'm going to say that I think thus far I haven't seen an extraordinary experience in web 3, but I think we're getting close to it. And I think, you know, unfortunately I'm going to replicate Neil's answer slightly here, but one example I saw was we have a colleague who's from Brazil and he was discussing the fact that, you know, he has a real issue when he's trying to send money back and forth to his family. Um, you know, it's slow, it's expensive. Traditionally, if you're using, you know, Western Union or someone like that, it's about a 5% charge, which if you're sending, you know, a reasonable amount of money, actually is a lot of money just to move money. It takes a day.

Um, and we we did a test. So, we got one of his family members to sign up for for a MetaMask card. And he wired USDC to MetaMask, and within 3 minutes, the user was able to be out there shopping and spending. And it didn't cost them, you know, a penny, right? It was just a gas fee to be able to move the funds.

And that to me was kind of like, wow, you know, here we're sat, you know, watching someone do something in office in London and 30 seconds later someone's in Rio de Janeiro buying a coffee. And and you think about that in the context of the world that we live in, it shows you that actually so much of what we're still dealing with in terms of legacy systems is very analog and actually as we move into the digital world, you've just got the ability to have that instant finality and instant outcome. Uh so to me, yeah, that that was a that was it. I think maybe um the example I'm going to pick is from games because uh that's where we started before we came to blockchain. Um and so we launched a game called The Sandbox a number of years ago.

And one of the things that we always wanted was for it to be a very interoperable space. And so I think for me the most exciting moment was the first time I saw people bring their own NFTts and their own PFPs into that environment because it's kind of a simple thing but it's actually something that you were never able to do in a game before. Um so that's my example. Thank you guys. Yeah, there's there's a lot of um really incredible stuff that's happening and I and I agree with everything that you guys said and and I think there's a lot more extraordinary things coming.

So we're we're all building and and there's a lot of uh products that are being put out there and revenue generation is obviously uh important I think for any company. So what do you see as the future for web 3 revenue generation? Okay, I'll start with this one. Um I think at the moment revenue generation tends to be focused on engaging uh interacting with highly engaged audiences because our products tend to be more niche and smaller by sheer number of users but they tend to be much higher paying at least that's in the our product experience. And so the question is how you um cater your product towards that kind of an audience and a customer base because it's not yet a mass market, you know, customer base where people are spending very little.

They're actually spending a lot. So it requires more engagement, more VIP service level. Um but I think that will change over time as the customer mix changes. I think for me it's about the ability to when we talk about smart money or programmable money we talk about you know programmable wallets right we talk about these different concepts to me it's about the evolution of that as a product set so if you look at for example you know if you match a wallet with a series of AI agents so you have you know set intents right there's no reason why I shouldn't be able to tell that wallet you know to do things whilst I'm not using it and that's to me how you start to create you know smart money that actually works for the consumer. And I think if you look at that within the overall construct, you have to say that for this space for really to be a success, the next killer app, you know, the Robin Hood killer has to be built on chain, right?

And what the model looks like to me really is that you have a high frequency but you have a lower price base than traditional finance because ultimately, you know, if you're going to go head-to-head against larger, you know, banks or whatever like that, you're never going to beat them when it comes to marketing spend. They will just obliterate you. But if you're looking at how do I actually connect with a customer and how do I build a brand, why not give them a product that's cheaper, faster, and better and actually does something for them. But at the back end say look you I'm just going to take a fraction on each transaction but there will be a lot of these transactions because your your product will be continually rebalancing or evolving based upon your intent and and and that that to me is how you kind of start to win in this space because I think going head-to-head against traditional players you start to lose a lot of the benefits very quickly in product design. Yeah, just echoing the the last uh point there.

I think to date we've had fairly limited revenue and commercial models that we can play around with in this space. You've typically had transactionbased businesses and SAS businesses and the underlying protocol updates that are happening in the space is really opening the aperture for a wide range of new opportunities through smart wallets and smart accounts. You know, if you think about just what's happened in the last several months with the PCRA upgrade, with the introduction of 7715 and 7702, you can now create, you know, essentially online subscription bit models around your DAPs. You can um, you know, move batch transactions in different ways that you couldn't do before. You c you can uh think about different types of loyalty and rewards programs where people can have these kind of like, you know, sharing effects monetized in different ways.

So I just think that the diversity of commercial opportunities right now we're at this kind of Cambrian moment of new things and I think every DAP builder that's starting out is really at the forefront of that and should really go into it with an open mind. Awesome. Do you guys have a recommendation to anyone who's looking to build in or jump into building into web 3? I guess as uh the marketing guy I'll give a marketing recommendation. Yeah.

Um, so this I don't know if this is a hot take or not, but I think you know kind of going back to what I said at the beginning of the talk, you know, we live in a mimemetic world and a lot of marketing in the age of algorithm is often converting a lot of brands into a sea of sameness. You know, if we're all kind of chasing the same clicks and likes, then uh we design brands that look quite similar and talk quite similarly to one another and we lose all differentiation. And I think that as you're thinking about building your brand in this space, um, don't go chasing the next thing. Don't make the next AI generated ad as your next move. You want to invest in things that are going to ensure that you are listening to your customer and bringing their values at the forefront of your brand.

And then the second thing is investing in a distinctive identity that allows you to stand out from everyone else. Absolutely. I I think to echo what Neil said, I mean my general thing would be be bold and have a very clear value prop, right? There are huge areas that potentially you can disrupt in this market. I mean, if you look at even for example payments, it's 2.

4 trillion a year, which is effectively abstracted from the real economy into the trady world. So, if you want to try and disrupt those industries, you've got to come up with a very clear value prop, a very clear brand, a very clear identity, and you've got to be consistent and you've got to be incredibly bold in your vision. And I think yeah, it's one thing that we see when we look at the question of why is San Francisco San Francisco? It's because you will find people who are prepared to spend $150 million to try and solve a problem. So just generally be bold, be consistent and you know be true to a vision that you start with and try and pick something that you want to be known for.

I would say I first I I agree with all of that and I I think um what something Neil said earlier resonated with me which is there's a big focus in our industry also on trust or lack of trust and so I think part of that key brand building exercise is how you're going to build that trust and that relationship because frankly we're still relatively early in web 3 and so the the tech we build and the products we build will be soon outdated you know and we'll do our best to innovate But ultimately the brands will survive and those brand relationships will survive. So figure out how to be communicative, how to be sincere and how to engender trust. Thank you guys so much. We are out of time. Uh thank you all for coming and listening to Neil Simon Robbie.

My name is Olga. Web 3 commercialization building brand products and experiences. and we all hope that you have an incredible ECC experience. Thank you. [Music]