Fundraising and Relationship Building in Web3

Transcript

[Music] [Applause] uh well I'm really excited to uh have this talk with Wy uh we'll go ahead and do introductions in a second but uh some very uh brief background on what we're going to be talking about and why we maybe are good people to talk about it uh so uh Ian raised almost $20,000 or maybe over uh from various online communities to help run the skate Jam uh yesterday as well as help directly support the event and myself uh in addition to Ian a core member of e Chicago who's been helping uh get the word out about the event over

the past six seven months and and coordinating So today we're going to talk about uh some of our Lessons Learned in uh relationship building and fundraising uh in the web3 ecosystem uh and hopefully provide some value to folks if you're trying to do the same in the future uh so why don't you give a little intro on yourself and then I'll go next cool cool take it we're live um cool well hey everybody yeah my name's uh Ian Hedrick uh the executive director of a 501c3 nonprofit called the city Farmers uh we're decentralizing agriculture by building vertical commercial green houses on vacant land in cities and then training people out to operate them uh as franchises um so that's what I do you know in the day um grew up in North Carolina real rural you

know um it's a place that was really heavily affected by NAFTA and free trade like we had tobacco um cotton right Furniture textile and then pigs that's like our economy right well in the 90s with NAFTA all the manufacturing and the the cotton got shipped out right uh and then tobacco was made illegal a little bit earlier so it was kind of a place with not a lot of opportunity right and you could see how especially after 08 which I know is really important for you in your journey in crypto um there was just a market shift where was obvious that perhaps the financial institutions don't always have the common persons uh best interest at heart right and what what could we do you know as we grow older and become more aware of the world and become an adult right born in 95 so

28 now um to have a positive impact you know and maybe maybe um sway some of that that influence so yeah that's what brought me here just growing up in that area and then you know crypto there was just an obvious um desire for Freedom right the the right to transact the right to associate these types of things are really key really important the freedom of speech right and having that be um you know immutable and and vcable was really key so those kind of tenants drew me to the arena and then fortunately as you go you start meeting really cool people you know like Andrew right yeah awesome uh make sure to keep that mic nice and close here yeah uh so yeah quick background on myself uh grew up in Michigan engineer by degree my full-time job is I represent the digital

asset exposure for a large single family office uh in the city uh through my company called chain Vision uh and what has felt a little bit like my full-time job as as well over the last 6 seven months uh has been as a core uh member of East Chicago helping get this event off the ground and just since you touched on it quickly as well kind of why I got into this space similar uh grew up in Detroit went to the University of Michigan and you know in 2008 hit what I like to tell folks is my high school would have won the uh state championship in basketball no doubt but then all of a sudden you know my starting center had to leave the state because his parents couldn't find work my starting point guard had to leave the state because uh his mom and dad got

fired from Ford um not to drop name brands to what it doesn't matter there's a lot of bad things that happened um and as I learned about why that situation came about right in retrospect um it was a lot of ultimately failures of centralized institutions of trust uh and so as I started to learn about Bitcoin extend beyond that down the rabbit hole as I'm sure many of you have uh saw kind of indirectly how this technology could help minimize the chance something like 2008 would happen again uh and actually create a more Equitable efficient substrate for us all to work off of uh so with e Chago and and the work that you know Ian does I think it's all very aligned uh to try to help create you

know a better world for us all so with those backgrounds uh let's dive into kind of the meat and bones of this talk which is to really work through we're going to start with how Ian went about and rais this money from an online community from a dow um and then we'll kind of transition and talk a little bit about the lessons learned more broadly with us just trying to get the word out to everyone and build relationships uh to grow the East Chicago community so to start why don't you give a little background on the organizations that uh you worked with uh and then maybe start to walk us through the process of how you went from very deep in a Discord to getting 10 e sent to our wallet yeah

yeah uh man it was a crazy Journey you know so web 3 obviously is very uh well let me start with with sharing about nouns and little nouns right um nouns. WTF they're the glasses you might see around um at one point in my journey just for the sake of the effect right I got nouns pilled right I got super nouns pilled and nouns pill essentially nouns is basically a uh an impact Marketing Group right um if you have a cool creative project that will have a positive impact in your community and you bring it to them and enough of their people like it they may just give you the money to do it and like Andrew said they gave us 10 which marked a market at the time it was sent over was about $188,000 you know and then through other relationships we brought in another what

12 15 something like that for an Afterparty so um raised a ton of money um and I mean it started out just being like on Twitter right being interested in crypto and jumping in like Twitter spaces the beauty of social audio is you have the opportunity to actually talk to somebody right you don't quite get the body language like we do in this room the eye contact Etc but there's something about hearing the tone of voice and somebody 's conversational nature where you can really begin to make connections in a way that you can't when you're just typing in people or like oh yo Buddy's always liking my stuff or in my comments like cool you know what I mean but the voice matters you know so from the a you start getting deeper and deeper um I got introduced to now let me let me ask as you're going

through this so uh to put in perspective how many unique Twitter spaces or if you want to put it as like you know total hours do you think you devoted in building those relationships just through like Twitter as kind of the starting point before you really started to even kind of Leverage those relationships for the the ultimate proposal that we got yeah um I started going really hard on Twitter last November I had about 115 followers I check this morning got a little over 1,200 so in the past year like 10x the following by being in spaces like thank you sir being in spaces like every day number of unique spaces I don't know hundreds if you look at the screen time on my iPhone I'm spending 40 to 60 hours a week on Twitter

just is what it is you know what I mean but I run my mouth all day long I'm shooting off tweets I'm talking to people you know and then half the time it's Twitter's open here on my phone and discord's here on my iPad and I've got my laptop with two screens here working through a project talking to people on Discord seeing what's happening on Twitter right I mean it's all right so we're part of this talk is we're going to get into how currently you know the world of really building relationships and moving in crypto is a little bit disjointed you're getting some sense of that so we bu these relationships on Twitter uh and then what's the next step as far as kind of starting to formalize or at least ideate on the proposal uh with those communities yeah well the first thing is is Serendipity right so

Nar is the organization the extreme sports kind of arm of nouns right right here on my my pin Nars gnarly right also stands for Goodwill Network advocacy releases Serendipity right if you move throughout this web three space with Goodwill in your heart and build a strong network of people to advocate for the causes you care about you'll release Serendipity and the people who you need to make it happen will appear and the resources you need to make it happen will appear and that's just what happened like me and some friends I met on Twitter like I met him in literally a wake and bake space I was just wanted to like get high on a Saturday morning type you know just like kick it and then we start talking more and more and it's like okay like you know I mean cannabis sure it's what brought us together but

you guys are serious minded you really you know want to have positive impact on the world and have a vision for how to do it let's talk more let's talk more we're having spaces and building in public is very much you know the the method of of movement in web 3 right so we're on Twitter spaces and you can hear us typing in the background hey man will you send me that file du D du right all of a sudden um this DJ comes in he's like man you guys are really cool Vibe let me invite my friend Davin um who lives in Uganda right from Nars Pops in the space and he's talking to us and he invited us to come through really cool Vibe so then from there you know once you get invited in you're like oh there's a Discord okay cool let me get

in the disc Discord start talking to people da d da um you know I'm an artist first and foremost right I'm a metal worker a sculptor um I tried to learn how to skate when I was a kid but I'm just a little bit too old for YouTube to have been around and then I grew up in North Carolina where like we don't have skate parks it's like a little bit rural so I was like in my driveway like this you know what I mean but I've always loved and appreciate skate culture so I just was in the Discord all that these guys have a passion for it you know we have the the shared connection of of skateboarding and crypto I was like you guys have done like the classes is like a skate rail in like Brazil and Kenya like I could do

one in Chicago and find somewhere to put it like is there anybody else here who's from Chicago got introduced to my friend Zach who introduced me to my friend Vince who introduced me to our friend June bug right and then next thing we know me being like ah if you gave me like a, like I could make this thing and find somewhere to put it turned into hey we're going to give you $118,000 and you're going to have a skate Jam for like eight hours during the day and give out $1,500 in cash prizes and another like $2,500 in merch and you're going to make this thing and like make all the logistics of it happen like Serendipity yeah that's so um yeah that's a that's a good background so maybe just touch on that last little piece where we're in the Discord we're just kind of like tossing around ideas

with folks right um and just for the folks who aren't as familiar with how kind of governance works on this stuff um can you talk about the draft proposal process to kind of just final vote at a high level just operationally what that looked like for them yeah 100% And it's the methodology of governance is a little bit differ across every Dow but basically it's you have a draft proposal you Workshop it with the community right the name of the game in web 3 is social capital can equal Financial Capital right and ultimately your reputation is your accountability so build up that Social Capital share ideas with people and they'll Workshop it with it too like our original uh budget was a bit higher we were trying to fly out spotty Wi-Fi if y'all are familiar and like a few

other people um we just couldn't get across the board though right uh part of why I gloss over the Discord part is because that's like the painful part once you actually get in there and start workshopping by the time we got this proposal across the line uh one Discord thread was like 252 messages I remember uh the other one was like 150 or something like that I was on weekly calls for at least an hour at a time with the team talking about things we did a live stream that ended up being like three hours or something like that like it and so this is a as he's going through this like I think you know this is talking a little bit about the East Chicago experience and just more broadly mind in crypto there are certain things you can

do to really differentiate yourself and it's a lot of loow hanging fruit honestly I mean the first I when I'm talking with anyone in crypto the first thing I'm trying to figure out is is this person you know trying to just scam everyone and get rich immediately right like do they understand kind of the uh more Broad broader benefits to society um and so just really understanding the The Good the technology can do and yeah everyone wants to make money right but uh really being able to think about your neighbor and kind of care about um the maturation of this technology they they say a rising tide lifts All Ships and you really have to move with that in your heart to be successful in this space I think yeah so I think it's that and then when you're talking about okay

we had a 3-hour you know uh live space you had to do all these messages in the Discord um there's the the pace of innovation in this space is moving so quickly that like you know no one has time very few people have time to consistently hold your hand right it's just a reality uh and with the open source nature of this industry you really can learn a lot of this on your own uh and so to to Parlay off of okay you know you people understand the broader benefit of this technology now if that person can also be a selfstarter who understands their component of things and like Ian he's not asking for permission to do this stuff right he went through his story and he's like

okay I was connected to Sono in Ghana who then connected me to uh someone else in Nars who's actually in Chicago right he he's he's very open to all of these potential doors in front of him uh and he's hand what what he didn't mention is he also without even you know anyone asking him he's going out creating a thousand-word proposals for for uh Nars he's creating he created a multiple websites as drafts that they could see right with graphics and stuff to show that this is a really legitimate idea he has um and so I think just those two components right understanding what the technology can do and and trying to put some effort in to yeah you you can make money but make the world a better place

with the use of this and then also being a bit of a self-starter that you understand we're all looking for teammates to play one big positive sum game here um that can alone really uh differentiate from a lot of other folks on that point like the team cuz like sure I could sit up here and take all the credit and like I guess I am like the mouth who brought the money in but I need like a graphic done up like for the skate Jam we gave out 1,500 in cash right not exactly safe in Chicago just to pass out, 1500 in cash right so you keep it locked up was like we need some type of something to represent the money where people can redeem it right so I just hit up one of my friends like hey we need like fake like Nar bucks like I

know you're good with design like you got anything thing bro an hour later he sends me these sick designs I send them straight to FedEx you know what I mean so in in being a selfstarter but also building these relationships you develop a network of people who you can lean into who can uh provide strength where you're weak or even maybe like I could do that but I just don't have time right now because I got to go get the U-Haul and the generator then we got to load up like bro could you just do this file real quick boom you know what I mean having that team is is everything it's the the the biggest thing in all this is like relationships matter relationship ships matter your reputation matters in this like I I I would say in the past seven years I've been in Chicago I've

made one enemy maybe two and like you know what I mean and maybe you shouldn't sleep with people's cousins but you know like that was that was my fault um you know but but but no but seriously right like it it's it's you have to you have to be authentically yourself you know and really build these relationship and find the people you sync up with along the way you know what I mean and in doing that you can make these beautiful mat things happen for the people around you yeah that's great so uh I think we already went through kind of how this process works uh at a high level it's it's a little disjointed and you kind of got to chew glass um there's a lot of opportunity there so I'm curious as you're forward looking yeah um let's assume you know some of these uh

internet native ecosystems with you know millions of dollars in their treasury continue to kind of mature figure out how to coordinate what are and I'm putting you a bit on the spot here here but you'll figure it out uh what are some I think the skate park was a great example of we had this Global Internet native community that you know directly helped support our local in Real Life Community through that event um what are some of the most exciting potential future uh uh Partnerships that whether it's you writing a proposal pushing one of these orgs to to work on it or or someone else uh that you think about and it is really exciting to yeah um man I think we're going to so n

Chicago is a thing now um n is stoked about it like some of the ners even are like in our post the people who founded the org you know like it's it's insane so we'll be touring the rail around we'll be doing more with that um You probably see us at House of ANS this winter let me not promise that yet but probably will see us uh some really cool places you know um around this year um I mean super excited to see what happens next year with East Chicago and what we're able to make happen right I think we managed to turn out the city in a way that we never really could have anticipated you know several months ago I remember like us linking up at the Jin Z and VC thing and you're like Yo East Chicago man like I know you have the

deck like what's the word like all right all right you know um and it's this has been insane so that I mean selfishly um I'm raising a $5 million endowment uh for my nonprofit and that's we're getting like amazing traction there you know so that's really cool um I don't know cuz we've made so many beautiful connections along the way in here too I mean there's so many of Chicago's like artists you know Goldie will Twan lead the homies like uh I'm not art like they're going to be going places like you're going to see some of the people in this room like who have been in this room uh at like the the Venice be all in a couple years you know like they're going to be around you know like so I'm just stoked to see how because you're super humble dog but

this would not have happened for you you got the initial you're the reason we have the space you know what I mean like you fundraised and made that happen so like I fundraised whatever but you too man and you were the person who just kept saying East Chicago till stuff happened so I'm excited to see everything that that's birthed from here and that grows from here and thank you bro for having made it happen yeah no for sure there was a lot of people that made it happen uh but that is so that's actually the last point that I will bring up and then we'll open it up if there are any questions um why want can I to say one other thing first Carl or you need to go yeah good uh oh it made me lose what I was going

to say go ahead I'll try to remember it well oh I remembered okay so this to me this is very important uh grew up in the midwest grew up in Michigan spent a couple years living in Los Angeles I love the Midwest but what I realized when I spent time on the coast is that there's a lot more people dreaming crazy ideas and really just going for it there just is uh they're they're they're much uh less risk averse and so what I hope you know looking at what Ian's accomplished looking what many of you accomplishing looking at the community that's here at this event uh I hope it serves as as a catalyst and reminder for us all to dream a little bit more have those crazy ideas because the community of folks here that can support you

really is world class like the Midwest people know how to work as a team really smart skilled folks and so you don't know how if you just put your idea out there what doors are going to open people in Internet native communities are going to find you and where these things can go yeah you never know it you have people in Brazil Uganda like Philippines like rooting for you I mean I met people here from who flew in international who were like to be honest man we weren't necessarily going to go but we saw what you were up to and like that was the push like hearing stuff like that like that's what we do it for you know what I mean like just turn out the city grow the pie for everybody you know so and with that I think that's the end of our kind of chat informal chat on

this topic uh we can open it up if anyone's got any uh questions for us at this time hello hello oh hey all right um my name is Carl and I started getting into this space through exactly the same process you were talking about I used to work for a DA known as Aragon Network Dow um and I was an ambassador coordinator and program um Community manager I guess to say at least and then we went through that same proposal process um and I recogn started to like look back and Rec how I got there so my question is what advice do you have for those people who are trying to find those hyper Niche communities um and how do they even get the confidence to actually put your space in these discours in these twitters when they're

already moving at that lightning speed like you already said yeah let me do I mean I think we both have thoughts on this so the F the first thing as far as like finding the opportunities uh there is no crypto is not perfectly in indexed right it's nowhere close to perfectly indexed uh and so again it is a bit of chewing glass but it's it's all about that that that social network You're Building as you start to understand you know who are the really smart creatives in certain verticals that you like who are the smart developers in certain areas that you like and you're following them whether it's on whatever Twitter farcast or whatever you're going to those those new opportunities new communities that

get birthed out of those people that you've met you're going to see those early because you're following those folks and so I I really do think it's important to just do a lot of D talked about all the time but like do your own research to just Define the social graph of people in projects that are interesting to you in this space and then it's going to start paying itself forward because it'll give you exposure to new things that are you know just outside the bubble of your current purview yeah yeah I mean that you really nailed it the only other thing I could add to that is just like run your mouth like you need to be consider of what you say say right like our mouth can get us in trouble but like the more you just are like the reason I'm on Twitter 60

hours a week is cuz I'm running my mouth all the time right but when you're constantly sharing what it is you're up to and people and you get skilled at sharing it in a way that Sparks people's interest then they are like oh I know this person you should talk to this person right so you find them by just constantly being in conversation about what it is that you care about you know and as far as having the confidence um I don't know I mean I honestly I'd recommend getting like a really awful telemarketing job for a little bit everyone has impostor syndrome like I think yeah yeah it's just something you got to get over yeah yeah it's something you got to get over and that's why I say get like a really awful ter telemarketing job for like six months or a year where you have to make like a

hundred calls a day you're lucky if you make seven connects you're lucky if you hear one yes a week when you're starting out you know because you suck but you kind of you kind of learn how to just eat dirt for a little while and then realize oh eating dirt isn't that bad cuz sometimes you get nuggets of gold in it you know so super recommend it honestly yeah there you go um so you talked a lot about the building networks and activating networks um I think both from like personal experience and uh both myself and helping educate others uh one of the things that isn't talked about nearly enough is managing

networks and you've mentioned Discord and the 200 152 messages and and so forth um and when I look at the crypto like the crypto sphere um they're typically three three villains villains in the room it's Twitter it's Telegram and it's Discord um and then depending on what flavor of the week it is it's either signal or whatever uh Blue Sky yeah anyway my point what I what I'm getting at is you guys have spent a lot of time in V various capacities on this could you share some of the tips or tricks of the trade um or just like mind shift changes that you guys have noticed in terms of managing your networks in

this space as it comes to building and doing this initiative and running East Chicago I think Andrew's better at this than me so I'm going to answer first to give you kind of like the disjointed version and then he can give you the more like better being organized version probably um I tweeted this the other day in all caps eyes open email open Discord open Twitter open telegram open like you know let's get it like it's just you know I mean for me I found that different people have different ways of communicating I'm sure in your life like you have people who like you just speak to a little you know like you don't talk to your grandma the same way you talk to like your homies the same way you talk to your boss your whatever right these just different you know so some people

are very heavy on X Twitter right you should probably DM them there some people are like always active on Discord it's probably good to Ping them there you know for me it's just about being like flexible you know and and just um and they're all kind of the same at the end of the day they're all just text based messaging you know so it's just just kind of having a catalog of of who is where and knowing like that's the place to reach them yeah yeah that I think that's good um I think so two things one try to keep things categorized as much as possible like when I discovered telegram folders that helped my life quite a bit um but it's it's still kind of chaotic um in that

regard and then and second this one's more important this whole concept of async work asynchronous work which is I think is very generational you know uh a lot of young folks it just means instead of having a meeting maybe there's 20 back and forth chat messages right um and so I've had this kind of transition in mindset where anyone that I'm like talking to on T Mo vast vast majority of people I'm talking to on telegram via crypto I I view that that conversation almost as like this never ending it's very like we're we're both just grinding at a computer with our backs to each other working really hard uh very informal and like we're both super busy and so I don't spend a lot of

time trying to like create these super formal email messages or long drawn out messages right um I don't like bug people a lot when I when when I don't really need them I check in you know say I appreciate them or whatever quickly but I think it's just that concept of once you're connected with someone just assume that if you need them at a minimum they're not going to be mad if you send them a message asking for whatever at any time of the day and so just having that async culture where it allows me to fit in all the different just like follow-ups or reach outs I need to do um and keeping it informal so it can be a pretty just like quick message that's been super helpful for me uh and I think it's pretty that's how a lot of crypto is like it's not this like

overly formal super long messages it's like everyone's busy just trying to you know connect dots and take steps forward so my two cents yeah and that's unfortunately all the time for questions we have but one more time big round of applause for Ian and Andrew thank you guys