Paper 20: 6 BCheque Chat Lessons
How Airdrop Szn is informed by my chats with Brenden Mulligan, OSF and Zeneca
GM team - hope you are all well!
We are overwhelmed by the responses received regarding Airdrop Szn. To the people who reached out - thank you! (Check out my previous paper introducing the project if you missed it.)
As my earliest subscribers and supporters, I’ll make sure you have priority access if you want it.
In today’s Paper I reveal a few more details of the project and reflect on how my thinking for the project has been influenced by my BCheque Chats with Brenden Mulligan (Founder of PREMINT), OSF (SuperRare Artist, and Co-Founder of Canary Labs and Degenz) and Zeneca (Founder of Zen Academy and the 333 Club).
Noone else was in the room where it happened, noone really knows how the game is played, the art of the trade, how the sausage gets made, we just assume that it happens, but noone else is in the room where it happens.
HAMILTON, The Room Where It Happens
Since we have covered most “NFT Fundamentals”, I will now begin to lean hard into the business side of launching a project: the strategies, tactics, successes, failures, opportunity costs, compromises, the ups and downs. Sort of like a live-look into the decision-making room.
Consider yourself in the room where it happens!
NB. The details revealed here are not final. We are in a draft/feedback/building in public phase. We welcome feedback.
1. Identify a real customer problem
Have you identified someone with an actual problem that you are solving?
Brenden Mulligan, Founder of PREMINT
Identifying a real customer problem was the starting point for me.
Knowing myself and my skillset of communication, I needed to find information (i) which was currently poorly communicated AND (ii) which people desperately want better communicated.
Legendary was speaking to me about the various opportunities on Layer 2 and his own technical and practical experience exploring various protocols - and together we turned that into the idea of Airdrop Szn.
I knew there was a real customer problem because I literally was the customer with a problem! I wished I understood everything that Legendary was explaining and wished there had been quality information out there previously that helped people like me who were less fluent in participating in various protocols.
Similar to these Papers, I believe Airdrop Szn is something people want because it is something which I want - and I believe many people have the same profile as me.
So I decided to define the problem specifically and methodically to see if it made sense.
Extract from Draft 32 Dreams Airdrop Szn One Pager
Although at first glance it may look like I’ve written the same or similar problem four times, these are four distinct (but related) problems.
I believe there are a number of people who have one or more of the problems above.
2. Keep it simple
Build something real and it doesn’t have to be that hard or that complicated, it doesn’t even have to take that much time.
OSF (SuperRare Artist, and Co-Founder of Canary Labs and Degenz)
This message ties in with the message from Brenden above.
It would be very tempting to do a million things with the NFT tech: stake the NFT for something; burn it for something else; collect a set of something and redeem for something else, which is a mintpass for something else.
However, as OSF says, the product does not need to be that hard or complicated, or even take that much time. (I believe Brenden built the PREMINT tech in a day or something like that!) The key is to address the customer problem.
For that reason, we intend to keep it very simple for now.
Extract from Draft 32 Dreams Airdrop Szn One Pager
Our thinking is to commit to delivering a very niche, tailored product for a specific period of time.
We believe we can evaluate potential future “Szns” at a later date without putting them on a definitive roadmap now.
3. The problem with roadmaps
When it comes to roadmaps, I think this space moves so incredibly fast that in general I’m not a huge fan of them… giving yourself the ability to pivot - go with the flow - is difficult to do if you have a roadmap, especially a specific roadmap.
Zeneca, Founder of Zen Academy and The 333 Club
This point on roadmaps is the natural extension of the previous point.
For example, we had drafted a “schedule” on how we expected things to play out next week for Szn 1. One day later, it was wrong, as there have been delays on the protocol side.
Extract from Draft 32 Dreams Airdrop Szn - Szn 1 - One Pager
This has made us reflect more on what precisely is possible to include in any “roadmap”.
We want our community to be as informed as possible - but we will need to caveat as necessary to provide for unforeseeable changes in direction.
4. Ask questions
A lot of the time… founders and builders have their heads down focussed on building… and they think “I’m going to build this” but… ask the community. Ask your target audience. Ask peers and colleagues. Ask questions: that’s the advice.
Zeneca, Founder of Zen Academy and The 333 Club
This is really important for us right now.
We knew we would have a “feedback” phase where we listened to people’s response to the project, but I think I am more inclined to go far deeper in that phase after this conversation.
We are welcoming feedback on all aspects of the project information released to date, and will continue to engage with those who have reached out to us.
We are also doing our own outreach to friends/colleagues/respected individuals in the space/strong communities to solicit feedback - we are actually having a lot of fun in this process, as we are finding some real enthusiasm in the community and even cool suggestions for the future!
We are all ears to try to build a product which caters very much to the specific need.
5. Process > Outcome
So much is outside of our control: focusing on what is in your control and what you can do to improve that I think is paramount to my way of thinking these days.
Zeneca, Founder of Zen Academy and The 333 Club
I have found it helpful to think about the process being more important than the outcome in the feedback process.
It’s funny how if you get one negative bit of feedback, your stomach turns inside out and brain fogs and your blood starts pumping in a complete emotional reaction that is nothing like when you receive good feedback. We are hardwired to react far more strongly to negative emotion.
I remind myself that finding out people’s legitimate or illegitimate pain points for our project is way more important than how I feel hearing them. (Also that the overwhelming majority response so far has been really positive.)
If the points are legitimate then I have to find a way to rectify it.
If they are illegitimate, then I have to find a way to communicate our project better so people do not arrive at the same misguided conclusions.
This truly is a learning process, where the process must be respected at all costs.
6. Sellout
I have a hard time arguing that selling out is not your ultimate goal. Unless you are doing some weird thing, in general, you want to sell the primary supply at the time of mint or very near it.
Brenden Mulligan, Founder of PREMINT
Nothing like a bit of contradiction in a list of learnings!
After hearing from Zeneca that the process is more important than the outcome and learning how he went about selling an open edition with a relatively long selling window, Brenden seems to suggest achieving a sellout - a very important outcome in and of itself - by selling a fixed supply fairly quickly is beneficial (depending on what your project is about).
So how am I thinking about this for Airdrop Szn?
Philosophically, I think education should not be “limited supply”. There’s no reason why you would cap the supply of a quality book - everyone in the world can access the best books - so I would have loved it for Airdrop Szn not to be capped either.
Practically, however, there are considerations. Operating in Web 3.0, community management is a real consideration and so if we want to try to foster an engaged and thriving community we should probably start with a lower number.
In addition, it is our first offering to the market, so we wouldn’t want to go too big too quickly even if the demand is there. We want to do this in a sustainable way. If expansion is demanded at a later date, we can consider it then.
On price, I thought about a few factors:
affordability
the service/product provided
the time it takes for us to create the service/product
the value of the community
how we tend not to value things which are free/too cheap
flippers
how long the service/product is valid
the value of this specific education
the recent price volatility of ETH
Taking all of this into account, we came up with the following:
Extract from Draft 32 Dreams Airdrop Szn One Pager
Stay tuned for more details and let us know what you think.
I hope this was an interesting look behind the curtain into the decision-making room!
One key learning from all of this: a lot of deals get done behind the curtain.
A still image of the 32 Dreams Genesis NFT - which will be animated
Have a great day,
B
Please do leave me any questions or thoughts here - I respond to every one!
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Disclaimer: The content covered in this newsletter is not to be considered as investment advice. It is for informational and educational purposes only.
I hold some of the NFTs mentioned in these newsletters.
being proactive takes people places, doesn't it :))
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