Weekly: Lessons From A "Failed" Web3 Startup (Part 3/5)

Happy Sunday fellow wayfinder!

Last week, we discussed the first installment of my Lessons from a "failed" Web3 startup. This week, we'll look at the next installment: MARKETING lessons.

Had originally split this series into 3 parts, but looks like I have enough content to make it five 🤯. Last week's issue can be counted as parts 1 and 2.

Let's dive in.

☕️ Est. reading time: 4 minutes

Marketing Lessons from Honā

1. Grow an audience or community before you start building anything

In Web3, it’s become the norm to start growing a community before you have any product.

This is because it can help you with better launches and feedback (but can also lead to monumental failures if there's no good team or product to execute).

You can save time and money by understanding what people want before you create anything. I did this with other ventures but didn’t focus on it as intensely for Honā.

Why? The pre-seed investment (false sense of comfort).

Because Honā got set up so quickly, I pursued a product-led strategy, instead of leveraging my own strengths (community).

As of this writing, newsletters and TikTok seem to be quite popular. So consider whatever’s hot, yet relevant (to your audience), and grow from there.

You can also slot into other, already-existing communities. This is a great way to leverage off of groups that may already have what you need.

Some platforms that worked well for our Web3 market research included:

• Twitter (hashtags)

• Reddit (sub-reddits)

• Discord (communities)

Leverage them. 

2. Don't be afraid to niche harder

When I initially niched, I thought that was enough. But as time went on, and I got feedback from investors/mentors, I realized I needed to niche even further.

I ended up focusing Honā on founders specifically (e.g. “Web3 accountability platform for founders").

There was a lot of back and forth with this process, but founders became a good target since I was using Honā for my own startup purposes, and so too were others.

Of course, you could select habits that weren’t founder-focused, but it helped with targeted messaging.

I summed up my lessons in niching in a previous newsletter below:

3. Create more strategic partnerships

One of the most successful campaigns we ran was with another Web3 platform + community called BitPost. BitPost was like Medium but built using BitCoin.

They ran a 30-day blogging competition and decided to partner with us for it. They wanted to compare how users of Honā would fair against those without.

At the end of the competition, BitPost encountered an issue with distributing prize rewards.

Since it was being done manually, they asked participants to fill out a spreadsheet with details of their tracking over the 30 days.

Some people actually tried to lie about their results:

But participants who used Honā were able to simply show their commitment page, which had timestamped records on the blockchain.

A perfect use case for showing how a blockchain-based app can:

• Improve tracking capabilities

• Provide more accurate tracking & accountability

• Save time in collecting proof

• Reward honesty

People will always try to game systems, but leveraging blockchain allows you to reward those who actually want to stay honest and/or be held accountable for it. This will become a bigger deal in the future.

I wrote a separate piece about this in November 2021:

And there you have it! To sum up my Honā marketing lessons:

1. Grow an audience or community before you start building anything

2. Don't be afraid to niche harder

3. Create more strategic partnerships

If you have any questions, hit reply to this email or hit me up on socials. Next week, I'll be covering management lessons.

Remember: through patience & persistence, it will come.

GeorgeTwitter | LinkedIn | Blog | Tools

Last week's premium newsletters:

• Daily #146: Sun Stone, Useful Tools & Web3 Copywriting

• Daily #147: Instagram will onboard 100m+ into Web3 by 2040

• Daily #148: Decentralized Identity & History

• Daily #149: Happy Thanksgiving

• Daily #150: The Power of Consistency

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