VC insights: How to make a winning Web3 startup pitch

Welcome back to Web3 Creator!

Today, we’re diving deep into the best lessons from Web3 community building and sharing VC insights on how to make a Web3 startup winning pitch and what to avoid. 

~1157 words, a 3-4 minute read. 

You can reach us at [email protected] for any reader queries or feedback.

Let’s get into the headlines:

• Lessons from Web3 community building for founders

• VC insight: how to make a winning pitch

• Quick news & updates

• Charted insights

What founders can learn from Web3 community-building (and what they can’t)

If you’re an entrepreneur looking to build a community, you can learn a lot from the Web3 space. Despite scams and setbacks, Web3 shows how powerful aligned communities can be. 

Let’s dive into the lessons and watch-outs for founders.

• Word-of-mouth marketing: Web3 communities excel at word-of-mouth marketing. Community members rave about projects to their peers, creating a potent marketing strategy. Entrepreneurs can learn to harness the power of word-of-mouth by getting people invested in their business and mission and attending the multiple Web3 conferences that happen all year round.

• Parallel community-building: Web3 communities use a dual-platform approach: private spaces like Discord for internal organization and public platforms like Twitter for outreach. This diversification ensures resilience. Founders should also diversify their communication platforms and maintain direct access to their audience, such as through email lists. This way, they can easily switch platforms if needed.

• Peer-to-peer influencer marketing: In Web3, influencers activate their personal networks to spread the word about projects they are invested in. This results in high buy-in and trust. Founders can learn to align their goals with their audience’s interests, creating incentives for customers to promote their brand.

• Community voting mechanisms: Web3 communities often use democratic voting systems, making members feel represented and included. Founders can involve their community by allowing them to vote on features or providing feedback. This creates a sense of belonging and loyalty.

• Memes and humor: Memes play a crucial role in Web3 communities, building internal vocabulary and fostering a sense of belonging. Founders can use humor and wit to engage their audience, making their business more relatable and interesting.

The questionable stuff: While Web3 communities offer valuable lessons, they also have pitfalls. The intense focus and loyalty can sometimes resemble cult-like behavior which runs sometimes only on fumes of hope. It's important to maintain a balanced and skeptical approach, avoiding blind reverence for leaders or missions.

Why this matters: While some aspects of web3 communities can be overly zealous, the core strategies for building engaged, loyal communities are valuable for any business. By implementing these tactics, entrepreneurs can create stronger connections with their audience, leading to more effective marketing, product development, and long-term success.

VC INSIGHTS: How to make a winning Web3 startup pitch

Every year, 50 European early-stage startups will pitch their business ideas at the Startup Battle during the European Blockchain Convention. 

This event, attended by 5,000 participants, including VC investors, will feature startups covering topics from DeFi and crypto to gaming, NFTs, ReFi, and blockchain infrastructure.

Two experienced VC experts have shared invaluable insights on crafting a winning pitch.

Key criteria for evaluating Web3 startup pitches:

Jeddi highlights three crucial points for early-stage founders:

1. Founder-market fit: Founders should have deep expertise in their domain to offer unique insights into the problem they aim to solve.

2. Market potential: The problem should address a large and growing market.

3. Focus on metrics: Founders must focus on the right metrics and problems at each stage of their project’s evolution.

Crafting a compelling pitch:

When presenting a pitch, clearly articulate the problem and your team’s solution. Highlight the product’s value proposition with demos and testimonials. Keep the market discussion concise, focusing on the real target audience and the startup’s unique positioning.

Your pitch deck should also outline the business model and emphasize relevant KPIs. Share the company’s journey and the team’s accomplishments, outline the roadmap, and conclude with a well-structured business or cash plan and a vision statement.

Both Mahsa and Jeddi stress the importance of the team’s experience and reputation. Highlight each team member’s relevant achievements and roles. A team with expertise and experience can identify unique problems and develop innovative solutions.

Common mistakes to avoid…

Mahsa identified several common pitfalls:

• Lack of a catchy opening and coherent narrative

• Information overload

• Lack of vision and strategy

• Poor market understanding

• Bad business model

• Weak competition analysis

• Weak team presentation

• Pitching to the wrong investors

Moreover, stick to what investors want to see, not what you want to say. Keep the deck concise with a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 19 slides. Show that you have a vision and can summarize where you see yourself in five years.

Remember the main goal!!!

Create a story about why you started the company and why you decided to tackle this specific problem. The main goal is to secure a follow-up meeting, so focus on establishing a connection and being open to discussions. Conclude every meeting with clear next steps.

Where to look for successful startup pitch examples?

Jeddi recommends reviewing Brian Armstrong’s pitch during YCombinator demo day in 2012 for inspiration.

Between the lines: Mahsa from coinIX highlights blockchain infrastructure and Ethereum scalability solutions. Tokenization projects and the DePIN sector are also interesting. Jeddi from Fabric Ventures points to open loyalty and commerce graphs, collectively owned content, open finance, gaming, open payments, open-source/AI, open infrastructure, open work, and the contribution economy.

You can study these booming markets in crypto. 

Quick news & updates from the decentralized world 🗺️

• Bybit is now the world’s second-largest crypto exchange. [Link]

• German gov’t offloads 900 Bitcoin, 400 BTC sent to Coinbase and Kraken. [Link]

• VanEck submits form 8-A for spot ETH ETF. [Link]

• Bitcoiner contributes to Julian Assange’s freedom, pays $500,000 debt in BTC. [Link]

• Bitget crypto exchange is the latest firm to boost the record-breaking TON ecosystem with a new $20 million fund. [Link]

• President of Jump Crypto steps down. [Link]

• Spot Bitcoin ETFs reverse 7-day outflow streak. [Link]

• Cash or crypto? FTX creditors to vote on how they’re paid back.  [Link]

Charted Insights: ETH longest streak of continued inflation

Since The Merge in September 2022, the supply of new Ether ETH has been on its longest streak of continued inflation 

The recent inflationary pressure on Ethereum is largely due to the Dencun upgrade, which introduced several Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs)

The most notable of these is EIP-4844, which introduced "blobs" for temporarily storing transaction data, significantly reducing transaction fees on Ethereum layer 2 networks like Arbitrum and Optimism.

 Since The Merge, over 345,000 ETH, valued at more than $1.1 billion, has been burned.

Editor’s Note: A Bloomberg ETF analyst believes the market for spot Ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) is getting closer to launching in the United States.

That’s it for today! See you again for more B2B crypto insights for your business.

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