Original author: PANews, Zen
Reprinted: Mars Finance, Daisy
On the first day of TOKEN2049, the hot prediction market Polymarket became one of the key projects of the participants. The founder and CEO of the platform, Shayne Coplan, also appeared at the main venue today and participated in the roundtable discussion on the theme of "Going Mainstream: Building Web3 Consumer Apps".
In addition to Shayne Coplan, guests including Founders Fund partner Joey Krug, AllianceDAO founding contributor Qiao Wang, and ETHGlobal co-founder Kartik Talwar also discussed the future development direction and challenges of Web3 consumer applications. PANews sorted out and summarized the core content of this roundtable meeting.
How to market and promote encryption products
"You need to build a core user group first. These people have similar user profiles and really like to use your product." Shayne Coplan believes that if the project party does not start marketing before actually building a useful product, then they are not really promoting it. He added: "You need to take the time to figure out how to focus on building a useful product. Ultimately, I think once you develop a product, you need to understand the positioning of your product in the market: how does it compare to your competitors, and what unmet needs are there in the market?"
"Once you know your target users and the groups you need to target, you need to find the right distribution channels to reach them." Shayne revealed that Polymarket usually chooses a specific vertical market first. He also said that developers need to focus on creating some products with practical value, understand its positioning in the market, and whether it can meet some potential or unmet needs compared to competitors and alternatives. "Once you know this, you will know how to find the right distribution channels to promote it."
When it comes to attracting a wider audience, Shayne believes that being able to iterate on product development quickly is crucial. "Getting into the details and really obsessing over how to get early customers to use your product, what is the feedback from early customers? What do they like and don't like? What do you want to highlight and what do you want to remove? If you can't get that feedback, feedback, iteration, and evaluation, you're at a disadvantage in building a consumer product that can ultimately scale."
Does the product need to enhance the user's perception of "encryption technology"?
"I think it's very subtle." Shayne said that the more complex the product is, the longer it takes for people to feel the product's 'magic' moment, and the more difficult the experience will be. He believes that there is still a lot of room for improvement in the part involving encryption elements. If users want to deal with these elements, developers should make it convenient for them to use and deal with them responsibly.
From another perspective, if the project is only willing to build products for the "echo chamber" in the crypto field and put the responsibility on the users, such as letting them figure out the on-chain operations themselves or access them through different tools. There is actually nothing wrong with this approach, after all, the crypto field and market are also expanding, but this will only build a niche product. "Although there is nothing wrong with it, and you can make a lot of great things. But in the end you still have to weigh various factors," Shayne said.
How VCs Can Discover High-Quality Crypto Applications
In May this year, Polymarket announced the completion of a $45 million Series B financing round, led by Founders Fund. "Many people think that we invested because of the market enthusiasm brought by the election. In fact, before we really decided to invest, their enthusiasm was not that great." Joey Krug, partner of Founders Fund, said that in the eyes of many people, Polymarket, which suddenly became popular this year, is a typical case of overnight fame. He said that Shayne actually sent him an email as early as 2016 or 2017 and talked about predicting the market. Over the years, the two have maintained at least one or two exchanges every year.
"In the consumer space, especially when the product is already online, you can look at the early market feedback." Joey said that one of his main criteria is sustainable market fit. "If you ask me what is the most attractive in the consumer field, I would say that having a product with such a real virtuous cycle is the most positive signal. This makes us feel that it is worth investing. On the other hand, if you don't have such a cycle, or you have to invest $5 million or even more in rewards or incentives to retain users, it is basically not feasible. At the end of the day, the core of the product is demand."
What qualities should crypto founders have?
Joey Krug also mentioned several key factors in evaluating founders. He said that the best founders can always act quickly and iterate quickly. "They are usually very determined in their vision, do not give up easily, and have the perseverance and indomitable spirit to break the rules." He also said that people often think that choosing a founder is a "tick-box" process, hoping to tick as many advantages as possible. But in fact, the best founders have very outstanding abilities in certain aspects. They may perform very well in some aspects and may be slightly worse in other aspects, but this does not hinder their success. Finally, he also mentioned that the fit between the founder and the market is also a key factor for success.
Qiao Wang of Alliance DAO expressed a similar view, saying that the most successful investment cases in the consumer goods sector in the past few years have almost all undergone two or three major transformations. "Because it is almost certain that your first product is unlikely to succeed, you need to make adjustments." He believes that infrastructure projects have clear goals and are often quantifiable engineering problems. The consumer sector is very uncertain, and entrepreneurs don't know whether they are really solving the right problems, so they need to be able to make adjustments very quickly.