HandyCon 2025 | Day 1 - Web3 Growth Execution Strategies - YouTube

Transcript:
(00:01) [Music] [Applause] everybody's having fun we're we're off to a great start here and we have an speaker back again Alani very big uh supporter of decentralized and utility in blockchain and always got great stuff for us about web 3 growth marketing product Market it fit and inspiration there so thanks for joining us elani you're muted right now just maybe do a mic check first before I hand it over I know he's got the professionals set up hopefully it's all connected Can You Hear Me Now oh yeah
(00:48) now I hear you loud and clear loud and clear all right all right that's awesome all right everyone can hear me I'll hand it over I'll be in the back if you need me but take it away elani thank you so much right awesome it's really nice to be back here I do enjoy interacting with the the handshake community and it's great to see the evolution the growth and sometimes growth goes forward backwards thyroids up and down but that's just Market elasticity and there's not much we can do about that
(01:21) but our best for those who don't know me I'll just do a very quick production I've been in the tech space since the year 2000 late 99 actually I started as an engineer and I moved into more executive roles over time I was there for the transition from web one to web two and into web three going into web four where I manage Enterprise programs from pdsi where we built the first data center micro dat centers which we put into shipping containers and sold to the US government exited that that company was
(01:54) acquired by Hitachi Data Systems and then moved on to other roles managing Enterprise groups out in Western Europe for pra here and also in the United States and then moved on to ba systems in the Netherlands where we out of Amsterdam the Netherlands where I managed defense-based Erp systems for light communication calls after that I'm went into pharmaceutical basically did the same thing for four Supply supply chain and Logistics systems and then I co-founded another company flat bid which we buildt to about a 35,000
(02:29) Workforce system at some point were actually the the larger of goods from goods for Alibaba we had all the Shipping Lines Moving Goods through the Port of Charleston into the into the United States and that's found there's a video floating around on the internet that Alibaba did a special on us from that event and then about eight years ago I got into web 3 I was the first head of ecosystem and head of accelerator programs at a c network prior to that back in 2017 we integrated ski chain the very first blockchain
(03:01) integration into web 2 Enterprise so that was my introduction into blockchain then a few years later got involved in the go moved on from that went to Stellar headed up their wallet program through those times did a few Investments I've done quite a few of them quite frankly um just under 30 million direct and indirect advice a lot of teams helped a lot of teams get listed on exchanges raise private Equity did a bunch of things here I am I do I'm a real real decentralization Maxi so please if you have any questions drop
(03:34) them in chat feel free to follow me on Twitter as well now there are simple things I'd like to focus on during this talk and that is if you take nothing away from this conversation bear in mind it always comes back to the user experience for three main reasons one you can't scale what you can simplify in 25 years in this industry in Tech as a whole every successful platform and that that applies to product consumer products anything in life that's been successful is because it's been easy the key value prop obvious and it's scaled
(04:21) as a result of that love or hate Google the homepage is still the same over two decades later you can start your own Journey and then you can progress from Once you started it's that simple all this techn I was an engineer I get it but all the tech your Tech stack all this m no one cares what they care about is can I enter and exit conveniently without disrupting my day that's what keeps them coming back period if you can't solve for that you're not going to make it it's that simple and some of
(05:04) teams have advised you know we have PTO we have cloud mous and a few others that have gone to the got acquired the best devs I know and I know a lot of them they're actually philos philosophers first developers second for that one reason because they understand The Human Condition oh cognitive load is what accelerates adoption if you can Sol for that get go work somewhere else okay secondly growth is a function of Engagement and velocity what that means is how you engage porate to your velocity from a purely
(05:50) business perspective is where growth comes from and I'll give you an example projects get distracted by Vanity metrics okay you put something on X on Twitter and you got 10,000 likes did you get 10,000 new users nine times out of 10 the answer is no so where should the focus be okay vity if you if you put out a post and you get 10,000 reactions and you adjust for organic and inorganic and maybe 100 of those reactions are real and you're top business funnel starts with 10 and your conversion is at 1% multiply those
(06:35) that's your growth that's what you're solving for that's where your growth is scaling now becomes a function of how can you resource that growth number to attain your desired results if you're not solving for that again you're just pouring water in a basket hoping to fill it up finally as I started on this slide low cognitive load any given day right now right before this session started I counted the number of tabs I had opened I have opened there are 36 of them and by the end of tonight I end up with zero tabs
(07:14) open that's my typical day if I have to to if if using your system requires me to take time out of my day and ignore my 36 tabs for the next hour chance that's friction it's a net negative if I asked you right now would do you like pain or pleasure everybody likes pleasure so it's got to feel good so what's easy to use is what I'm going to keep using I don't like Google but I keep using it it's that simple same thing with Gmail as much as we all know that Google is crowling and crawling and
(07:58) and and then indexing and scanning your emails and photos and private conversations and all the juicy stuff in there guess what everybody still uses Gmail right even for work because it's easy same thing with a Tesla you get into the car you just drive you don't have 50 buttons which you never use and you never touch but it looks great right same thing low cognitive load is what leisu accelerated adoption and vice versa and on this particular slide I always say CLI sucks and it's crazy to say that as a firmer engineer in my
(08:40) experience back in the day if if we had a senior executive trying to bother us just put up the CLI and tell them you're busy they'll leave you alone right the reality here is it doesn't scale if I have to terminal somewhere sudo over there it doesn't scale the fact facts don't lie it limits your audience it decelerates adoption and it slows down growth people like point point click click when I changed the aash community community system into the aash accelerator and more importantly as head
(09:19) of the Akash EOS system the first thing we did was as a prerequisite for funding any teams W was number one our provider said within 30 days went from 11 to over 400 within 30 days okay it got to a point where our ecosystem Partners were making more money than aash itself that's why those two com prto and got acquired because people like browser point point click click period when your own partners are making more money than you you've hit you've hit the motherload and that's exactly where we were so from a strategy
(10:02) execution standpoint there's three there's really three things you do incentivize engage and retain esoterism doesn't scale now if you're building for just you and your friends so you can brag on Twitter have at it but if you're building for humans you need to tone down the technical speak simply because at some point people will get fatigued and they'll go to the next easiest today I mean and and just I've seen systems where I know it was a superior system but it was so hard to use I don't have
(10:41) the time okay I would rather pay the premium even though it cost me more for something that's easy to use and that's just not me the facts don't like that's how humans are period now as an intch analysis and decision making process when you scale ecosystems when you grow your from strategy execution standpoint you have to combine your program and business business development marketed and social channels and your Dev programs in a nutshell you build a business because you have bills to pay you got to keep the lights on and you
(11:19) have General expenses my my my my ex handle is just that Alani kuier first name last name that's my hand just Alani kuier you can find me there and you have to due diligence who's building on top of the platform because you're operating velocity has to yield enough data whereby your data literacy drives your decisions and the feedback loop is based on data integrity that's guiding future activities so by the time you on board there they're building for humans they're building qualitatively and they're building stuff
(12:02) you can sell because at the end of the day no matter how you spin it we're all selling something and the folks who win are the ones who can tell it's all storytelling if you can't tell the story without going into technical details you're not ready period and then theal business and risk management pillars is what ensures your desired results are clearly in Focus because then your key value prop is obvious which means you have to plan the work before you work the plan okay the technical and functional and business route and the
(12:37) financial roadmap on top of your technical specifications timelines and Milestones and then your business strategy has to be backed up by your Revenue model on your go-to market and marketing plan simply because you want to make sure your partners have a plan to stay business because no matter how you spin it everyone love the centralization right but it's not a check Char it it's a business and you have to treat it like a business it's that simple and your risk is not just technical it's operational and you have
(13:10) to report on it and in a decentralized ecosystem it's like one Vatican and 50 popes everyone has an opinion but few actually are going to execute because it's easy to sit behind the keyboard and throw daggers right but who's got the shield so these things unfortunately I always say in web 3 we need a adult in the room because for far too long we get into this technical debates that forgets the fact that when your fundamentals are sound your token price will reflect that because your storytelling becomes
(13:46) clear and believable if your key valy prop is obvious and the cognitive load is low and it's simple to use the story other people start telling the story for you it's like warm introduction and continue so I talk about cohorts right so cohort-based system it just makes it makes sure it make sure that capabilities are reflected in all of our efforts know decent because you could be decentralized but you still need some element of centralized because you you still need governance and it's not a zero something we saw what happened with
(14:23) Juno great technology great idea but completely incompetent team and anyone could argue it with me no one has challenged that those are just the facts okay I me you could be Maxes on that route and forget you have a business to run is not a charity because what all of this says is never ever ever risk your token being the product the minute the token becomes a product you are dead period and I've seen this happen many times so in that process process you still have to report you still have to have annual and
(15:03) biannual Workshop workshops okay sharing knowledge networking capacity building among different teams okay and then mentorship and support growth advisory those who have been there from the start should be mentoring incoming teams okay evaluate and adjust on a regular so that's the velocity okay and everyone coming in should have a business plan I see pictures all the time and nine times out of 10 my NOS have always consistently been great technology where's the business okay that's always the question
(15:46) I get the tech it's web free but where's the business oh we're going to launch a token I've heard that too many times and then beyond evaluation each cohort as part of our growth execution strategy should be should always have a clear path to financial Independence even if you're making one cent every transaction it gives you a basis for valuation okay because now that if you're making one cent a transaction what is it going to take for you to get to a million dollars okay then the business starts to emerge
(16:30) and it shows framework thinking it shows people are Thinking Beyond just writing a bunch of lines of code and hoping some way somehow it will all materialize now for teams that may not be a part of cohorts or the primary strategy execution process there are so many options out there I think projects should have in web 3 demo day there so many tools being built every day that not being shown off there's so many people working in the vacuum right they should have an ER program there should be test teams of for cohorts there
(17:06) should be execution and other growth related initiatives that are not just technical discussions that's where most web free projects lose the narrative okay it's not a measuring contest and I use that word very diplomatically right because at the end of the day no one cares it comes down to execution I've seen the best tech have the poorest execution and I've seen the poorest really terrible technology execute so well the story became so believable that everybody wonders how the hell are these guys still around and
(17:43) we know a lot of those take pump. fun interface looked like the It walked out of 1989 okay but the key valy proper is obvious as questionable as a lot of things happening on pump and they did so well right it just tells you you don't need to take a gunship to a fist fight anyway now finally success metrics being in web 3 quite frankly should always come back to what are your growth projections and know if tvl applies of course in web 3 everyone at some point will have will generally look at liquidity factors and what's your
(18:19) current versus projected user growth a lot of feasibility analysis on legalities because there's things in different jurisdictions that might impact in flow of capital and any verifiable liquidity Innovations inherent in those projects need to be examined as well right and some of those got to have something that works no matter how minimally right and the active engagement plan has to be believable and how do you believe that again goes back to storytelling how easy it is to understand how clear is the value
(18:57) proposition and that has nothing to do with consultants and I tell teams all the time don't ever ever ever ever pay anyone or any consultant to teach you how to pitch your own project in my past experiences way way earlier in the back in the day you go to all these pitch contests half of them are Consultants lawyers and accountants trying to sell you their services okay I mean the first million dollars are raiseed back in I think 2008 my first investor still friend still he's now chairman of Moto security he
(19:31) didn't even sit down for the pitch he like I get the GS meet me in the lobby and we can hash out the details and he was the reason I was there I mean talk about pulling it back down to earth so the point I'm making here is the key value prop has to be obvious the cognitive load has to be low there has to be a basis for believing that story but the storytelling has to be simple simple scales if your VC your investor your customer your strategic partner they're all the same even your devs and and and in your ecosystem right
(20:07) the easier it is for them to build the more they're going to build it's that simple I just got a question in in the general chat apologies I'm just looking into that right now the question from Alex NATO was Alani what do you consider the key components that make a good business plan for web three first you need a product okay a usable product secondly you need a believable story it doesn't have to be a dissertation with an obvious key valy proposition those three elements it's what drives a good business plan because
(20:45) we haven't even talked about a token yet tokenomics are not a business plan a product that's easy so let me and I love using a cost because it was just easy okay Airbnb for compute you can be your own cloud provider handshake same thing okay the key value proposition is obvious it's undisputable everybody wins okay that's unbelievable business plan because if I told you today everyone here can plug your computer into your network you could become a host and instead of paying AWS $1,000 a month you can pay yourself a validator
(21:25) paying themselves instead of Jeff Bezos wait a minute now you have an increase in onchain transactions token spend is increased right people can go and talk about what they're making now they can build businesses on top of that and handshake is no exception entire Industries will emerge if execution follows that path and that means build the business the token will follow I have another question how do you leverage emerging Technologies to sustain a feasible scalable business growth strategy I believe I just answered that question
(22:03) which emerging technology always requires binding it to a real world use case simple we're not trying to find King Neptune or Poseidon we're trying to Sol for a ship at Sea Right Moving products that's a believable use case but saying we want to tokenize the the metrics of ocean no now you're getting into territory that requires too much brain matter to even understand so if we can't simplify our storytelling we're not ready yet so you have to be able to tell your own story in a way that's believable and simple
(22:44) and to all my devs please if you got nothing from this conversation right there is no greater sense of accomplishment than seeing a 9-year-old or 30 year old or a 90 year old using your software despite all the bragging rights on Twitter about your features and your text stack and all of that the happiest time I see devs is when they brag about oh my God grandma just did a swap with my digital wallet and it's like aha right so just think about that for a minute let it digest and growth strategy execution comes down to storytelling in
(23:25) a low cognitive load getting a 40 to 50 year old to use it that's a very good point as a matter of fact you will be surprised how many 40y old and 50 year actually embrace technology but we've done a terrible job I mean there's too much gaslighting in Tech generally and we can do a better job with that but that being said my time is up here happy to take all the questions as time goes on and this was wonderful always a pleasure and yes thank you all Shad much appreciate it nice Flamingo Mr yeah I got the shades
(24:02) forgot forgot it's a little bit dark here that's why but yeah thanks so much the L getting great feedback in the chats as you can see and I think this is much needed discussion for the handshake Community indeed I think there's a lot of technical Talent here you know and the domain Community has lots of ideas but I think it's about execution and simplicity right it's the is the main point that I got from this but yeah and we shared your Twitter and yeah you've been contributing here in the community
(24:33) at these events for the last couple of uh years so and yeah I love you did with the CAU and we're talking about lots of adoption mainstream so hopefully this is a year right 2025 is our year what do you think I think so I I strongly believe this is the year forj exactly all right yeah we we're let's just jump right into break and you aani you you'll be hanging out if if in tables if you're available and others this will be a table mode session so we're g to close the speaker session for about 15 minutes
(25:09) and people can connect with the other speakers or other attendees you can join a table or or make a table we try our best to do networking online I know it's not the same as the inperson but hopefully people can connect with each other and we'll come back to our next session we have a few more sessions today and then of course two more days as well so thanks Alani for sharing and we'll see you all in the networking tables you're right thank you thank you so much [Music] this event wouldn't be possible without
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