How to shift your Web2 company to Web3: first steps and strategies
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Happy Cyber Monday, Web3 fren 🖖
This is Epic Web3 Newsletter — your weekly dose of actionable insights from the major Web3 experts.
Every Monday at 10 AM (WET) we take your products TO THE MOON 🚀
👀 You’re the only one missing at the Epic Web3 Summit!
Yes, building a product in the bear market can be too hard and expensive. But it’s not hopeless. And remember you’re not alone out there?
Brightest minds are gonna gather together at Epic Web3 Summit to share best practices and tell you how they grow Web3 products.
Just to give you extra details, we’re ready to unveil more of our agenda. Here’s what you gonna learn:
“Fundraising for Web3: How to choose the VCs for your startup,” — Valeriya Minaeva, Partnerships & Comms at 1inch.
“Frugal Marketing: how to grow without a budget,” Filipe Macedo, Co-founder & CMO at Talent Protocol.
“How to get your startup investment ready: Best practices,” — Miloš Rakčević, Co-founder & Head of business development at Renfter.
And more!
Look, here’s our hot line-up. We’re honored to have speakers from Ava Labs, Unstoppable Domains, 1inch, Balancer, Lens Protocol, Kryptomon, Talent Protocol, OneRare, Phaver, Superdao and other Web3 stars.
So yeah, you’re the only one missing. But if you’re ready to take your product to the moon and grow in Web3… Grab. That. Chance!
Come with us to learn from top experts — join the Epic Web3 Summit 👇
P.S. If you have the Epic Web3 membership, the Summit attendance is free for you.
🧞♂️ From Web2 to Web3? Community Insights on how to make the first steps when shifting into the Web3 ecosystem.
Epic Web3 Genie is here 👋 This time we’re exploring how to prepare the ground and build the bridge between Web2 and Web3 in your company.
This is a contributed article by Andrea Marchiotto, a corporate entrepreneur and digital product leader with 18+ years of experience in the digital world. He’s a Web3 advocate and enthusiast, and passionate about generative art with the AI project BlackCube.
Let’s dive in!
Target goal:
To implement Web3 strategies into a Web2 legacy company.
Possible problems:
Many Web2 companies are fragile. When they mature, they tend to be more risk-averse and focus on metrics such as achieving quarterly and yearly revenue targets and sustainable growth.
Legacy companies love brands and products that scale. For the product to scale, the company likely wants your product integrated into the core business: accounting, systems, processes, tax, legal, privacy, marketing and communication plans, etc. You need a comprehensive strategy.
You'll have to constantly re-adjust your strategies and tactics every quarter rather than yearly, as the pace of change in the Web3 industry is incredibly fast.
Possible solutions:
Andrea suggests two frameworks — even a combination of them:
— The 8-Step Change Model by John Kotter
— The 10-Steps Strategic and Tactical Approach
1️⃣ The 8-Step Change Model
🔥 The most important thing you can start with is to establish a sense of urgency. To increase your chances, show the stakeholders why it’s essential to act now, explain what they’re missing, and show what competitors are already doing in the Web3 space.
Hundreds of brands are already experimenting there, for instance:
Nike announced the "forge" of physical versions of digital sneakers through Rtfkt and recently launched a new Web3 platform '.Swoosh' to sell Polygon-based NFT products
Samsung announced an NFT TV platform, in partnership with Nifty Gateway, where creators can share their art and potential buyers can browse and preview NFTs, and where anyone can go to learn about an NFT's history and blockchain metadata
Argentinian label Àcheval is embarking on a years-long Web3 roadmap that includes a handful of products that will be sold as NFTs first, thanks to investment and mentorship from Arthur Madrid, co-founder and CEO of digital real estate platform The Sandbox
🔥 You’d also need to develop a vision and a (double!) strategy that you’ll communicate to the key decision-makers.
The first strategy should be broader and integrated within the company’s overarching strategy. The second one should be more narrow, product/service specific.
🔥 Use prioritization methods to decide which key business questions have priority and which critical experiment has precedence.
Some effective prioritization methods are:
MoSCoW: Must (requirements to be met), Should (top needs, not urgent), Could (to be done with sufficient resources and spare time available), Won't (to be postponed or killed)
(R)ICE: reach, impact, confidence, effort
The Eisenhower Decision Matrix (Urgent-Important Matrix)
BRASS and PIE (below)
P.S. These are just some of the steps described, but if you want to dive deeper into the model, you can find it here.
Okay, you’ve prepared the ground and built the infrastructure and frameworks. But how do you make it happen? Here is a 10-step guide tailored to the Web3 users' needs.
2️⃣ The 10-Steps Strategic and Tactical Approach
Strategic pillars:
1. Research: Find the right community to engage with.
2. Storytelling: Define your unique angle where consumers will feel welcome and speak to their feelings.
3. Listen to the community: Explore what your community members need and how you can bring that value.
4. Inclusion matters: How can you make it an easier user experience? How is your integration with FIAT currencies going to be? You could use an external partner like WYRE, which offers compliant solutions, or MoonPay, which provides a checkout solution for brands.
Tactical pillars:
5. Define pricing and utility: Take the use case of Coffee Baristas: they give exclusive discounts, voting power, and participation in their roadmap.
6. Set a roadmap: Map out goals and milestones, short and term long goals. Good to under-promise, then over-deliver.
7. Define communication and brand's tonality: Is it more honest and transparent, caring about each individual and community member? Or would you rather sound daring, embracing the most advanced forms of technology (NFT, Metaverse)?
8. Make the right partnerships: ask your consumers, research, and make things transparent for a win-win scenario. A good case study is Exclusible. If you follow them on LinkedIn, you will realize how good they are at creating partnerships and serving luxury brands.
9. Define which blockchain, smart contract, NFT minting tools, etc. to use.
10. Build a Go-to-Community Strategy. Usually, in Web2 projects, you would go about detailing Go-to-Market strategies. Here the market is potentially the entire world. Communities are at the center of many Web3 projects these days.
📍 Wanna dive deeper into examples and get the pitch structure? Read the full article by Andrea.
Closing remarks
Moving from a Web2 to a Web3-ready organization will take a lot of time and talks. It’d help if you anchored the shift and the successes to avoid the immune system returning to the previous situation. The temptation will be strong.
However, the Web3 industry opens terrific new possibilities to generate extra value and engage with shoppers, changing ownership and making consumers co-creator agents, effectively influencing many aspects of the business.
Eager to get practical Web2 strategies & tools that drive growth in Web3? Watch the keynote speech by Vahe Baghdasaryan, Sr. Growth Marketing Manager at CoinStats, who shared them with us.
And here’s your portion of bite-sized news from the Web3 world. The hottest ones are:
🧙 Buildspace raises $10M led by a16z to build Hogwarts for builders and dreamers.
🌎 Future Quest announces $1M grant pool for innovative climate projects. They partnered up with BMW Foundation, Polygon, Celo, Gitcoin & others to reword people who take action on climate change.
🎮 Magic Eden integrates with Polygon to grow blockchain gaming. It’ll allow them to onboard more global brands and new users into the NFT marketplace, while continuing to bring Web3 games to the masses.
Alright, that’s all for today! 👋 But wait…
Do you wanna join the community of Web3 builders? Fill in the form & we’ll get you there!
Wish you a killer week,
Epic Web3