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How Collab.Land Builds Communities and Innovates with No-Code Tooling in the World of Web3 – with Anjali Young

December 30, 2022

Anjali Young is a Web3 pioneer and co-founder of Collab.Land, a tool that helps project founders talk, get experiences, and build trusting relationships with their communities. Anjali is also the chief community officer of Abridged which is a no-code tooling solution.

Anjali started participating in online communities in 1993 when she was a teenager, dialing up to BBS, which were bulletin boards, dialing up with her modem and meeting people online, developing relationships online, and playing games. Over the years, she has always participated in online communities either as a creator or a moderator. Most recently, she was a moderator for a Facebook community with 60,000 members. This way, she became excited about joining Web3 because it’s another way for people to come together, meet, organize and coordinate. Through communities, Anjali found interest in NFTs and found a home for herself to contribute and participate in these communities in a meaningful way.

Talking about the history of Collab.Land, Anjali stated that in 2018, when the whole crypto market was new to people and people were losing their private keys of wallets, Collab Land decided to create a social recovery wallet so that the people that come into crypto, don't have to be so scared that they're going to lose their wallet because there'll be some opportunity for social recovery. At the beginning of 2020, they switched to no code tooling to get people to create wallets and join from the user perspective. They wanted developers to come to their application and build applications with no coding tool without learning crypto-specific languages like Solidity. In the spring of 2020, when COVID lockdowns started happening, Anjali’s company had its own Dow called the Club 19 Dow. They built Collab Land for their Dow. Their main goal was to attract people towards no coding tool to fulfill both their own needs and those in the crypto space.

When Anjali’s company started its business, the crypto market was a little bit deserted. Then COVID kicked in and it was impossible for them to physically meet with people in the crypto world but the market was gaining hype worldwide during that time. So, Collab.Land became an opportunity for online communities to get together in a time of national and international lockdowns. As Collab.Land started as a Dow tool, it instantly became an investment group. A lot of tokens that had been launched in 2017 and people that held those tokens and had a utility for them started joining the Collab Land community. With the wave of NFTs and digital art, Collab Land also became the choice of people who were interested in NFTs. People wanted to be a part of a token-gated-based community and Collab.Land provided them with exactly that.

Anjali believes in the future there are going to be a lot of token-gated communities but these communities will be different from Web2 platforms. She believes there are going to be Web3 platforms, but it’s not going to be here anytime soon as we will not be able to let go of Web2 platforms easily. There are platforms like Twitter, Discord, Reddit, and Telegram where there are Web3 communities and people talk about their interests. Collab.Land is a bridge between all these platforms so you can integrate it with all other chat platforms. Collab.Land allows you to start a community on your platform of choice, and then you can invite people interested in your particular sub-topic into that platform.

Anjali is optimistic concerning the scale of Web3. She shared that one thing that makes her more optimistic about the future is the possibilities. She tied it with the example of the internet, what it was some years ago and what it is now. The evolution of things gets her most excited. She thinks participating in the building of new technology, and being on the ground floor of innovative technologies inspires her more than anything.

Anjali advised people who are entering the Web3 space that they should be as much open-minded as possible. You can't expect from day one to attract all the people. There is a lot of trial and error at the beginning of how to create your community, how to find the people that are the most like-minded and have the same mission and incentives as you, it's difficult. So, the first thing companies entering the Web3 space should do is cast a very broad net and always keep an open channel in whatever community they make. The second most important thing as stated by Anjali is engaging with crypto and Web3 native admins and mods. Whoever is starting a tokenized project needs to do their best to engage. And the third important thing is joining communities. Join other communities, and get an idea of what works, what doesn't work, and what are different styles. Everyone's doing something a little bit different. Why waste all of that good knowledge? If you want to get in there, join communities.

According to Anjali, scams are everywhere and crypto and Web3 space are no different. Even if you know crypto very well and are well-informed about how phishing and scams work, you can still get scammed. You have to watch for everything. Crypto requires more attention because the learning curve is steeper, which is why she recommends people engage with crypto native and Web3 native mods and admins and also join a community, as a chance to learn. Moreover, Anjali believes we need to be pessimistic about crypto. She mentioned more and more banks are filing for patents for crypto wallets every day, so there are going to be better days for crypto and Web3. Everyone just needs to believe in it. Anjali tied the current bear market situation of crypto to the Dot Com Crash when everyone thought there will be no more internet but here it is in all its might.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS    (see clickable version on www.cmo-stories.com)

[00:00:27] Who is Anjali Young?  

[00:03:36]  What is Collab.Land?  

[00:07:43] What are your thoughts about the current state of communities on the web?  

[00:11:47] Do you see more and more token-gated communities?  

[00:15:13] What is the thing that you're most excited about working on Collab.Land?  

[00:18:22] What would be the advice you will give people that are interested in starting their own Web3 community?  

[00:25:40] What is the best place to send people to connect with you?  

NOTABLE QUOTES 

“When I talk to you, we share something. We share an interest; we share a passion, there's something within us that in this whole world of all these new projects that are coming out. You and I both are in this project together, because we found something interesting about that project.” 

“Internet has come far. And now we've gotten together, we've met each other, we're building relationships, and now the Internet has its own money, where now you and I are going to be able to coordinate financially in a way that was never possible before within minutes, most likely seconds.” 

“When you start a community, you're going to want to be as open as possible, because you don't know you can't expect from day one to attract all the people that are going to feel exactly the way you do.” 

“You have to keep an open place an opportunity for people who maybe can't participate financially immediately, but are still very interested in what you're doing.” 

“They're the people that are believers, learn from them and engage with them.” 

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