ORO Beats Ep. 18 | Seven (CoConnect)

500 spaces, historically AMAs, project analysis, project critiques. And I became, I guess known for the guy that gave projects hard time in a respectful way. You know, so I didn't just throw flowers at them. I would ask the questions that the audience in front of me would probably want me to ask. And then the guys at AlphaBot, I got to know them and I ended up becoming the head of BD over there for three years, very enjoyed it. There's still very close to my heart, good family, good people, and obviously a legacy and an OG platform. And then I found very quickly that growth and marketing was an area that I wanted to specialize in. And I worked with a couple of the agencies. And I learned a lot from them. And then, but I realized also it's not too different from what I was running very successfully in Web2. And we set up CoConnect with our co-founders. I don't even like to call it a marketing agency. I like to call it a growth accelerator. And the key difference is we don't just focus on vanity metrics. We don't focus on one billion views and no conversion. You know, we like to focus on creating strategies that allow you or allow the project to materially benefit. And that could be more wallet connects, more users, more liquidity. Whatever the key metrics is, that's how we run our campaigns. That's a very top-line information. Yeah, well, I mean, quite deep already, for a top-line. But I wanted to ask you actually to dial back a little bit. If you remember that moment because as you mentioned, you've been quite successful in Web2 space before joining Web3. So what kind of was the moment? And so was there any moment that you thought you looked at Web3 and thought essentially that something needs to be changed there or you have a solution for some sort of a problem that you saw over there. And you felt that you can come with your skillset from Web2 companies and excelling there to do something that was not existent at Web3 at that point. I would say there are a lot of... I would say Web3 is a great leveler. So in the traditional format, experience, having a decent portfolio gives you that kind of credibility. In Web3, that's not necessarily the case. There are guys that were say early 20s, early 30s, who have an incredible amount of... What's an incredible amount of experience in Web3? Where I guess I became bankable or an asset was having that... So we say professionalism, which I acquired during Web2. For me, it was never a side hustle. It was never a... Let's just do it and see how it works. It was all right. If we're ever going to do anything, let's do it properly or let's not do it. And the professional nature... And the fact that I'm probably... Well, I am over my 50s... A loud project, which I would say younger founders who were able to take it from zero to one, but weren't sure how to sustain the longevity or grow it further from that. And it's not a detriment to these guys, because they were fantastically talented. I would say a lot of them are visionaries, and they created a winning product or products. It was just how do we take it seriously? How do we take it to the next level if that makes sense? Completely. In a way, how do we take what they already have that is innate to them and excel and scale it and bring it to the larger, maybe, in public, right? Because you are specifically working on the growth, helping with marketing rights scalability and talking about your framework. So as I understand, you voiced out at attention to users adoption liquidity, right? So that's deceptively simple. Can you unpack that? Why those three specifically and why in that order? Yeah, so, okay. We are very proud of the three pillars that we work with. And I don't necessarily want this to be a shell of co-connect. This is more a... This is how we, as in me and our co-founders, Rick and Baja, decided that this is the way we want to run it. And it's not a detriment to the fantastic agencies out there. It's just our preference on how we wanted to run our company. And we felt a lot of what I was out there would focus... They'll tweet about... We got a billion views or we got X amount of mind share. And for us, it was never the thing that really moved the needle. If you look under the... Using a different analogy, if you look under the bonnet, you get to see actually what transitioned. Yes, you got a billion views, but how many people sign onto the wallet? How many people traded on the platform? How many people are currently on the platform? So we almost took it back to where we felt was important and have a three-pillar approach. A lot of focuses on one pillar, which is the attention. And the mind share, which, let's be honest, it's very, very important. But not converting that is having a bucket with a hole at the bottom and you're pouring water in it, or in where, in case you're putting a lot of money in it. It's just going to go straight through. So when we work on any strategy, and I'll be brutally honest, we've lost or we've not taken clients because we felt that they weren't aligned to the way we wanted to help them. We want to make sure the strategy, when you have the mind share, when you have that exposure at its maximum, actually converts into... I think you guys are having a TG. So you want to get the maximum exposure, but you want people to be aware of the token. Purchase the token or use the platform. But what happens after that? What happens after the growth agency or the marketing company goes? We also have a third pillar, and again, it's not necessarily part of the remit, but we really want our clients to do well. We talk to them about the retention layer. What happens when... So we say that the mind share isn't as impactful because there's no agency supporting it. Or you're in between. You just have the TG. You're taking a breather before you have the next... or the next activation to do. How do we... How do you focus on the retention? So we talk about the gamification. How do you get them to keep coming back? Because we know retention is important, but the other two will ultimately decide if I want to use a rose as an example, whether a rose survives beyond the TG, beyond the next stage. And that's what we try to focus on. All three layers are equally important. Yeah, and they all adapt to each other. So without one of them, the other one cannot thrive as much as it can, right? But speaking of the current plays that you have in your books or maybe we can even start with the bigger plays that you have right now, whether it's a league of traders or something more recent. So what were you actually doing differently? Speaking of moving the needle, that moved the needle in those... in those alleys? Yeah, I think one that we're particularly proud of was outcome. There was a first platform of its type on Hyperliquid, which in itself is a great marketing play. And we had a conversation with them about getting maximum exposure, getting more people in getting more... So we created a mechanic where you incentivize the more you trade... the more you are traded within the platform, the more you'd get rewarded. And we all know, yes, as good as a product is, in Web 3, it's not just the attention. It's, you know, what's in it for me. And it's a selfish narrative, but that's the reality. If a founder says... And I had two calls yesterday, where the founders had this amazing product, two separate founders, amazing products. And I asked them, look, why would I use this platform? And they would say something about... It's the fastest tech. It's the most cost-effective. And I said to them, yeah, all of that's great from a technical point of view, but from a user, they don't necessarily care about that. You care more about that. What they care about is, can I win? Is it beneficial? Is it worth my attention? Can I get benefits from this? And if you... Yeah, it's fun as it's usable as well, isn't it? Because just spend some time on selling platforms, it has to be... I mean, amicable to you, right? So you have to like it. Otherwise, you will jump off quite easily and quite fast. If you're there only for like small gain, maybe, right? So you're not going to be sticking around for long. And yeah, coming back to your thread. No, absolutely. Absolutely. It's valid point. And the opinions are mine, gain through experience and our teams and Catherine, you know, Catherine and my bad. You're actually in the... I'll project and you're going through this process yourself. And I'm going to, after I've finished my little monologue, I'm going to ask you what your experience is. Yes, the retention is so hard, but not enough emphasis is put on that. If they enjoy and if they like the team and if the product works. And I think what a lot of people forget is the communication side of things. Why wouldn't they? But the attention is such a premium because there's so many projects out there. And you're right, Catherine. There's a lot of people there in it for the $10, the $20, the $30. And that's fine. We need those people. But if you can get a core group that really value your product, then you have a chance. And I don't say guaranteed it, but you have a chance of success. So going back to outcome, everything aligned, like, so we say, the stars aligned for that project. It was during the World Cup, sports betting on games. They created a bad system unique for... Or we asked them to create a bad system unique for the activations that we do. And we know badges work. It's a tried and tested... So we say cost effective win. You do this, you get this, you do this, get this. And there's the premise or potential because you've collected all of this that you're going to get something big. So that's the gamification element. And apart from running with us, I think they did some socials. And at its peak, they did about $50 million on a single day or during the World Cup. Now, we are not going to take full credit for that. The stars aligned there on Hyperliquid and their first platform, the first one of its type. World Cup was going, sports betting was at its peak. The tension was at its peak. But at the same time, they were competing with all the big boys, the Gausses and those platforms. So to get that kind of volume was a great start to their campaign. And now they're continuing on doing other things, which is establishing the brand, as well as opening up new markets. And it was a great, great launch. I'd love to know from your point of view, from a from supporting from a founder perspective, how you're finding what you're doing, what sage you are. Are there any pain points that you encounter? They're like, we're actually struggling to this or we're not doing this as well as we could. I'd love to know that perspective. Well, to be frank, obviously, and since you work with so many founders and you've done so many use case already, I think, it's very similar, what founders are facing in the, when it first starts up, when you excel, when you get more users, and you need to retain them, right, so you need to offer them something new and exciting. And so they stick around and some initiatives. So it's always evolving. It's always, you have to have something new going on, something relevant as well, and constantly keep your hand on the pulse. That's very complex, obviously. And that's why I'm so curious to have you on today's well. I'm curious about the systems that you are designing and especially when it comes to the history of the projects that you work with already, you probably already kind of nailed the majority of the mistakes. I mean, you kind of have it in your notebook or how do you keep the projects, the storylines that some mistakes are quite repetitively happening in lots of teams. So I'd like to ask you, what's one mistake, actually, that you see the teams making the most often, like where do growth initiatives that you would try to plug in and help them, by the way, do they actually break apart? That's an excellent question. I am going to prefix this before I answer it with one thing. You could have the best product. You could have the right conditions. You could have the attention and the project could still not do as well as you think. There are so many points of failure in growth marketing in products, in core teams. And it could simply be nothing to do with anything that's been done there. It's just, it's not hitting the right, no, it's not getting the right audience, it's not hitting the right channel, distribution channels. So I always feel sometimes a lot of things can be fixed or should have been done differently, but in other cases.