Partnered With:

CMO's selfie DAO, KOL's carnival?

Read this article in 14 Minutes

In Web3, whether it is an entrepreneur or a VC, the leverage brought by a super individual KOL will become more obvious and powerful

Original title: "WEB3 novelty story, the golden age of CMO/KOL"

Original source: Shenchao TechFlow

Recently, the selfie NFT issued by Irene Zhao, the first person in the concept of Crypto CMO, has become the hottest topic in the entire Crypto world.

The highest floor price reached 4.9 ETH, worth 15,000 US dollars (nearly 100,000 RMB), the three-day trading volume exceeded 5 million US dollars, and attracted many overseas bigwigs to watch or participate. Galaxy Gigit founder Mike Novogratz personally tweeted and called Call; Logan Paul, a well-known INS model with 6 million Twitter fans, spent $270,000 to buy 20 selfie NFTs.

Although when talking about this matter, in addition to marveling at WTF, the topic tends to be Steering in some weird direction, like the white male obsession with Asian Girls (commonly known as Asian fetish)...

Back to the topic, even if you think this Very "LOW", but this is also a form of creator economy in the WEB3 era.

Previously, I participated in the online AMA and asked a question, which track is the most optimistic about WEB3, and I said it is the creator economy.

The logic is that the Internet of WEB2 is not built to facilitate the flow of funds, but information, so its profit model is based on the attention of free products economy, and the essence of attention and traffic is deposited on the platform rather than the creators, so the platform often becomes very large, and the creators are more "squeezed".

WEB3 can turn the attention economy into an ownership economy. Authors can truly own their own content and use it as an asset to directly connect with users, and allow traditional Supporting creators (reward & subscription) has become an investment behavior, making it bigger and stronger to create greater glories and share content results.

NFT is the value carrier in the creator economy, canceling the rent-seeking intermediary, allowing users to become owners directly, and bringing granular price sharing Layer...NFT itself may not have "value", but it can encapsulate stories\culture\attention\emotions, and become a link between users and Influencer, with both consumption and investment attributes.

This is the glorious moment of CMO, the golden age of KOL.

The Golden Age of KOL

Some time ago and circle Chatting with friends in China, we talked about a topic, and agreed that in the world of WEB3 or Crypto, being super friendly to KOL is the golden age of super individuals.

In addition to directly sending NFT or Social Token, an obvious example is that some influential KOL or community , can get the amount of good projects, even many small and medium-sized VCs and exchanges can't get it.

This is something unimaginable in the traditional Internet field.

Not to mention a KOL or the community to get the equity quota of a good project, even the first venture capital media 36Kr, when it comes to making funds and investing , Compared with top and first-line VCs, there is almost no competitive advantage. After so many years of development, traditional venture capital has formed a set of strict hierarchy. The top resources are basically monopolized by Sequoia and IDG. Of course, there is the impact of changes in the historical process.

In the early days of the Internet, personal KOLs still had a bonus period, such as Liu Ren or Xue Manzi, who are known as "China's No. Relying on personal influence to participate in the angel investment of many projects. Secondly, the investment in WEB3 is also gradually becoming more powerful. Although it has been talking about "decentralization", it has never been ambiguous about getting quotas.

However, even so, KOL still has "living space".

There are differences in business models. The business model of the Internet is summarized as "building a platform, rent-seeking/tax collection", and the Crypto project, among them An economic logic lies in the monetization of attention/data...

The community is extremely important, and the acquisition and connection of sinking traffic is always a rigid need. Therefore, my friend is very puzzled by those WEB2 KOLs who attack WEB3. WEB3 is actually an opportunity for KOLs and other individuals to rise up. Why do they help to attack WEB3 while being "oppressed by WEB2"? He doesn't understand.

KOLization of Entrepreneurs/VCs

Encrypt Twitter in Chinese , you may feel a scene that everyone wants to be a KOL, and some people often post selfies and want to be a CMO.

Recently, I saw an interview in which Stanford University’s blockchain organization asked Richard Chen, a partner of the well-known encryption venture capital 1confirmation, “Are you worried about Will the encrypted type information of a lot of tweets be dominated by VC, and the views of developers may be buried?"

Richard gave a very simple and direct answer. Yes, of course. Developers are so busy building, they don't have time to tweet. I think the easiest way is to unfollow people who try too hard to be thought leaders. Developers should be proactively contacted to build interesting stuff. There's a lot to learn on the bleeding edge from talking to developers, rather than chasing whatever thought leaders say is the next big thing on Twitter. Also, behind the scenes of these thought leaders, there is a lot of unethical psychological warfare (inflating the price of your project to sell to your followers).

Then, Richard aimed at a16z:

When you Talking to them in person understands that what they say is flat because their thought leadership is just amplifying and repeating what others have already said, it's hard to find people who come up with original ideas on their own, Chris and Ali from a16z are my first people who can think of.

Whether it is Crypto or WEB3 VC, a16z is a topic that cannot be avoided, on the one hand because it has been trying to dominate the narrative of WEB3, on the other hand It has indeed achieved great success and gained a lot of support. The definition we gave him before is that a media company in the cloak of venture capital, each partner is a master of small essays, who can brainwash entrepreneurs and media Brainwash, brainwash other VCs.

I also agree with Richard's point of view, because when everyone is trying to become a KOL, it will actually increase the noise, and the explosion of information will bring more information Distortion; too much focus on macro narratives sometimes misses micro innovation and development; and the expression of each point of view may have some kind of interest binding behind it, such as a bunch of VC collectively for a project ecological platform, etc.

However, let me answer the question "Do entrepreneurs and VCs want to be KOLs?" I still choose to do it.

Two examples, Trump and Musk.

The former, with one mouth and one tweet, fought against the mainstream media in the United States, won a big position in the global pessimism, and once became the world's most powerful The powerful know the king.

The latter, one mouth, one tweet, one MEME expression, helped Tesla save billions of dollars in public relations and marketing costs.

A single tweet from both of them can set off waves in the financial market, let’s see what top stream is, this is top stream. For VCs, becoming a KOL not only allows you to be noticed by entrepreneurs, but of course it is best to be recognized or even admired (so, you must constantly brainwash entrepreneurs), and influence and traffic itself are a kind of Value Add. To put it more directly, all need milk (propaganda) projects to see who has a higher level. Higher level means preaching, and lower level means poisonous milk.

In WEB3, whether it is an entrepreneur or a VC, the leverage brought by a super individual KOL will become more obvious and powerful. There is an opinion leader on Twitter, MapleLeafCap, who I think is one of the few Chinese who are at the forefront of knowledge in the WEB3 field. On the one hand, it has been recognized by public opinion, and on the other hand, it has also been recognized by top capital, so I made a WEB3 FUND——Folius Ventures.

For entrepreneurs, becoming a KOL is also an endorsement and PR for their own products. trust. What is the way for entrepreneurs to quickly become KOLs?

Get stronger.

"Men are lustful, women (men too) are strong" is a memory engraved in human genes, people pay more attention to and recognize successful people What did you say. Therefore, Build and Influence should be a complementary and positive spiral thing, which will become stronger while outputting.

Vitalik, the founder of Ethereum, SBF, the founder of FTX, Arthur Hayes, the founder of BitMEX, CZ, the founder of Binance...they are not only successful builders, At the same time, he is also a KOL who is active on Twitter and major media platforms and keeps writing. This is also a kind of decentralization, the decentralization of the right to speak, so who will be deprived of power?

Centralized media, I personally think that the right to speak of the media will be gradually diluted by KOL, and most of them may be reduced to tools for content distribution. Therefore, the media itself also needs to evolve, whether it is the production and distribution of content or business models.

This is an irreversible transfer of discourse power, and it is no longer WSJ\NY TIMES\CNN... It can be won or brought down by a report It's a world of one person. When "Fake NEWS" becomes a MEME, the credibility will collapse, attention will be scattered, and everyone will fight for attention.

There is no doubt that there will be more Wang Wang and Musk in this world. Guys, roll up!