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- [Web Summit 2022] What are the 2 Biggest Challenges for Web3 Startups and What Should They Focus On – with Rachel Pipan
[Web Summit 2022] What are the 2 Biggest Challenges for Web3 Startups and What Should They Focus On – with Rachel Pipan
Rachel Pipan is co-founder at Maneuvre, is a strategy and communications firm with a specialty in Web3 startups, helping them to scale their stories and impact. Before co-founding Maneuvre, Rachel led communications at European blockchain unicorn Bitfury.
Rachel was excited to speak at Web summit because compared to last year, it was more about crypto and Web3. She agrees that many people feel Web3 is a puzzle or that they have just heard about it and are still trying to figure out what it is.
Web3 is still early, and those making it happen now are visionary, as it will take a few years before it goes mainstream. Web3 can also be compared to when the internet just began. The smartphone came from a gsm mobile phone, and now everyone has it, so it's still early for Web3 technology.
Rachel finds it interesting to work with Web3 startups because they require proper guidance to avoid bad experiences. She generously teaches institutional knowledge, including how startups can build their departments, have a strategy, make a foundation stand, help them announce the news, and hire the right team.
The first challenge Web3 startups face is to embrace where they are on their own roadmap. Especially when they go into NFTs, Metaverse or any element of tech, there are bigger players who make a lot of headlines, have really nice websites, get really great speaking slots at Web Summit. The risk for the start-up is that the team gets carried away looking at what their competitors do, which is how they lose focus.
They need to start small. They’ll be on smaller podcasts and at smaller events. They’ll are not going to have those headlines yet. They need to keep hold of what makes them special versus getting a bit insecure about what other companies are doing
The second challenge that startups face is having a lot on their to do list. They should not do every marketing thing or communication thing at the beginning. Rachel says that they need to do 3 things really well: Twitter, Facebook and Discord.
Rachel thinks is so important for Web3 start-ups to have a Discord and to be active in it, understand it. And the CEO should also be in other communities that are relevant to them and show up there authentically.