Season 3 of Binance Labs Incubation Program: Week 3 & 4 Recap

It has been a month since Season 3 of the Incubation Program by Binance Labs has commenced. The past two weeks have been an extremely exciting journey for the nine incubation projects, as they continue to learn and grow through dedicated mentorship from Binance CEO CZ, Binance CMO He Yi, and DoraHacks.

Main takeaway

• Season 3 of the Binance Labs Incubation Program has now reached the halfway mark, with the nine incubation projects benefiting from mentorship sessions

• In weeks 3 and 4, the incubation projects were mentored by the leaders of Binance and DoraHacks

Binance Labs, the venture capital arm and innovation incubator of Binance, is currently running Season 3 of its Incubation Program to support promising projects in the blockchain space. As week 4 comes to an end, it signifies that the nine incubation projects have reached the halfway mark of the eight-week Incubation Program by Binance Labs.

Mentorship is a core aspect of Binance Labs’ Incubation Program. In weeks 1 and 2, the incubation projects were able to learn about business fundamentals, marketing, and project security from the leaders of Polygon, DoraHacks, and Zokyo. The learning continues in weeks 3 and 4, as Binance Labs organized dedicated fireside chat sessions and workshops with the leaders of Binance and DoraHacks respectively.

Week 3: Creating a Strong Brand Presence with Binance Co-Founder & CMO He Yi

During Binance Labs’ 1-on-1 catch-up session with founders from the nine incubation projects, they shared their difficulties when it comes to marketing. That is why Binance Labs invited Binance Co-founder and CMO He Yi for week 3’s fireside chat session. 

Aside from boasting extensive leadership experience in the crypto space, Yi spearheaded the business, marketing, and branding strategy at Binance. Her astute strategies greatly contributed to Binance’s rapid growth to become the top crypto exchange within just 5 months. During her fireside chat session, Yi shared about the process behind creating a strong brand presence.

1. Appreciate the value of marketing to long-term growth

Marketing is a very important part of all projects, especially for B2C products. In fact, Yi emphasized that startups should view marketing as being equally important as the product and operations. Well-executed marketing campaigns are fundamental building blocks to creating a strong brand presence in the long run. Marketing is very broad and it includes branding, SEO, user operations and community growth. An understanding of this marketing framework is key to creating and revamping one’s marketing strategy.

2. Develop a unique & memorable brand identity

Coming up with a brand identity is not a simple task. From her experience and observations, Yi shared that a good branding strategy has three key elements: unique, memorable, and concrete to the brand. A good starting point for startups would be to ask: “what is unique about your project/service?” For Binance, the culture and branding have not changed much since it was created in 2017. Aside from having a name that is easy to remember, Binance has also portrayed itself as being user-focused and prioritizing user protection. This brand identity has been maintained in the long run because it aligns closely with Binance’s core values. 

3. Be adaptable and open-minded when developing marketing strategies

In the digital age, marketing has become much more complex. While it is true that one’s marketing efforts are now able to reach more people, there is a need to recognize that content creation has become decentralized. Similar to how Binance is able to easily share the latest announcements through its online platforms, the community members are able to do that too. Often, Yi noticed that the most viewed content is actually the memes that community members created themselves. This characteristic of marketing in the digital age calls for adaptability and open-mindedness. Within the community, there are many talented and creative individuals that companies can learn from. Being receptive to users’ feedback and welcoming community-generated content is highly beneficial. 

Week 4: Building Future-Proof Blockchain Projects with Binance CEO & Founder CZ

Binance Founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) led the fireside chat session for week 4. CZ has been a monumental figure contributing to Binance’s success thus far, creating the leading blockchain ecosystem that includes the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume. He is also one of the most followed and influential members within the crypto space. 

During CZ’s fireside chat session, he shared his vision for Binance and spent the majority of the time answering questions posed by the nine incubation projects. He wanted to help the projects be future-proof, and his advice can be encapsulated in three simple tips.

1. Manage your risk

CZ’s number one advice to startups: manage your risk. Within the startup space, there is always a high chance of failure. By being judicious with regard to finances, founders and entrepreneurs will have the chance to try again, even after encountering failures. It is also important to work hard, grab opportunities as they come, and find a product-market fit as quickly as possible. 

2. Listen and learn from the community

Being in sync with the community would be highly beneficial to any business operation. In the blockchain and crypto space, the market evolves extremely fast and it is possible that startups and their founders may not be keeping abreast of the latest developments. That is why every good business views their community as an indispensable asset, and the same goes for Binance. CZ shared that he depends on Twitter to receive customer feedback. On a broader scale, Binance has also made significant improvements to its customer support and recently employed AI to further facilitate the process. In the same way, CZ believes that other blockchain entrepreneurs and startups should actively engage with their community, learn what their interests are, and adapt where necessary to find the best product-market fit. 

3. Embrace a collaborative mindset 

Rather than viewing other companies or blockchain platforms as competitors, CZ shared that having a collaborative mindset is the best for the whole ecosystem. Currently, the blockchain industry is still at a very early stage. Only 5% of the world population is holding crypto, and considering the huge market size, it is likely that the blockchain space is only at 0.1% of its true market potential. Instead of fighting for the 0.1%, CZ believes that everyone should be encouraged to grow and prosper. This infinite mindset, where collaborations and partnerships are embraced wholeheartedly, is embodied within the Binance ecosystem, such as through Binance Labs and BNB Chain (former BSC). After all, when the ecosystem prospers, blockchain projects would naturally prosper as well.

As CZ aptly summarized at the end of his fireside chat session, “Let’s build this industry together!”

Week 4: Workshop with DoraHacks

In week 4, the nine incubation projects also attended a workshop conducted by DoraHack’s Partner Steve Ngok. During the workshop, Steve introduced the Dora Ecosystem (HackerLink), featured services, and how projects will be supported from being part of the Dora Ecosystem. 

Steve outlined four main types of support provided by the Dora Community:

• Gain access to grants, donations, and investment from different ecosystems to support multi-chain products;

• Connect with leading Web3 ecosystems by leveraging on the various communities (Polygon, Solana, etc.) in the Dora Ecosystem;

• Benefit from open-sourced marketing, vendors, partner resources in the form of excel sheets to users; 

• Receive great PR exposure through connecting with the core team, developers, and more.

Steve also shared very exciting news during the workshop. During this weekend, the Binance Labs Incubation Grant will be launched on HackerLink.io. Next week, grants would be opened and the incubation projects can expect to attract donations from community members from day one. This will help the founders and teams better engage with both the developer and investor community globally.

Incubation Project Updates

The nine incubation projects participating in the Incubation Program are continuously developing their products. Binance Labs and the incubation projects are excited to share some recent updates that have taken place over the past two weeks. 

Block Ape Scissors recently confirmed that the Beta version of their very first game will be going live from December 13th onwards, with the official launch expected to take place in early 2022. On top of that, Block Ape Scissors have continued to actively engage their community on Twitter and Discord by sharing updates, organizing AMA sessions, and holding exciting giveaways.

GAT Network has been hard at work building up their community. In the past two weeks, GAT Network has organized an AMA session, giveaways and an ongoing meme contest on their channels. The GAT Network also provides regular updates on their activities through their Medium page. Improving their products is also important to the GAT Network, with the team recently announcing a new feature, a one-stop source that allows users to see all of their Game Ace NFTs and their rarity scores.

Bird revealed that its very own aNFT (Analytic NFT) will be launched on the Solana network for the very first time on December 11. Bird has also begun the process of integrating their custom aNFT platform on the BNB Chain network. These efforts are part of the team’s commitment to the importance of interoperability.

Mint Club has demonstrated significant growth. Within just five months, 2000+ Smart Token projects have been created on the Mint Club platform. The TVL (Total Value Locked) of the Smart Tokens is over $10.2M. Mint Club has also added a liquidity-providing interface on their website which allows users to easily provide liquidity and earn trading fee rewards from it. 

Copycat Finance announced that ‘Copycat V.2’ is currently being audited by a world-class auditor. The ‘Copycat V.2’ would feature major upgrades and a changelog from the existing Copycat Platfrom. The incoming update features that users can expect include Copy Trading V.2 and Copy Farming. Copycat Finance also teased users with the promise of a new secret feature that, although undisclosed for now, is said to leverage NFTs and the gaming industry. 

Wombat Exchange launched their very first giveaway recently. They are giving away US$500 in BNB, to be shared amongst 10 winners. Within the span of a week, Wombat Exchange received hundreds of entries. 

Updates from Tranching Protocol, Raydius, and SkyArk Studio will be coming soon in the next few weeks! 

Preview of Week 5-6

Over the past four weeks, the nine incubation projects attended amazing speaker and mentoring sessions. The exciting journey continues on in the coming weeks!

Follow Binance Labs on Twitter to stay up-to-date with the Binance Labs Incubation Program and other initiatives. For those who are interested, application for Season 4 of the Incubation Program is now available here. 

Disclaimer: The incubation projects are in collaboration with Binance Labs only. Binance exchange currently bears no responsibility and is not connected to any of their future release of tokens (if any).