Panel: Importance of communities in product building / Tina Haibodi, Eylon, Manu Alzuru

Transcript

good morning eth Prague yoga this morning was decentralized thanks for coming I know some of you are very warm now this is a panel on the importance of communication in product building importance of communities in product building communication could be is what we're going to do today Manu and Elon please take it from here there you go

um so yeah first of all uh welcome guys um this was supposed to be a panel um but we think that it might be much better if we can all contribute we can all express ourselves uh and talk a little bit about the importance of community in Building Products um you know usually the way that web 2 companies build products is not necessarily involved in the community um the way the way that is done is that you come with an idea maybe you sketch it out maybe you do some research and ask some people around um and then basically you publish it and after that you might do some AV testing

um and most of the decisions are not based on the community or how the community interacts with your product but rather based on uh data analysis as I said before like every testing and so on but can you really do that with your smart contract can you do can you really do a Navy testing um I personally don't think so when when you launch a protocol uh you don't really have the opportunity to launch it twice um once you set up the let's say the initial parameters or something you're basically determining how the future of the protocol is going to be like

um I see that area has some comments [Laughter] yeah yeah we'll pass to the microphone um I want to say that uh I think vitalik talked about this yesterday in his talk right he was like um sort of talking about like uh corporations or stuff like that they're like uh n or like 1 to n so like one too many and like in crypto like the goal of communities like uh end to end so like many people getting value uh putting value in and many people on the other side like getting that value and I think this is um this is like the really big

difference in web3 like if in web 2 right right like imanu said you build the product you release it you test and it's kind of like centralized and you know you give it to uh maybe sometimes you ask for feedback or you know you make a community forum for your web to thing like in what we're doing it's like you really have to use your community like from the beginning uh you really have to be with them there needs to be um sort of the feeling that everybody has I call it shared ownership into whatever that is and that's kind of like you know what we're talking about here a lot right it's like you know I can be an owner in the product that I helped build um and so like these type of things I think you know they're very important

and then now the question is like how do we actually involve the community like how do you get them to participate uh and they're like I guess many tools many practices many ways to do that um but yeah like we can maybe brainstorm some of the things yeah I think uh one of uh okay um another thing that I've I've been realizing is that you know a lot of people that are creating products in web3 they think that by air dropping a token people are gonna care about their product um meaning by giving some free money away um people are gonna come back and hopefully participate in governance or hopefully find some issues within the

community and contribute to the community but that's not really how things work uh people don't necessarily feel ownership over a protocol uh just by getting free money um they I I actually I will argue that a lot of people they they feel like uh they feel like um they feel like they have actually um the how would I say it the they receive some money and now they they have like the the opportunity to complain as much as they can just because now they got money and now they

feel that ownership um that's what I was looking for they feel entitled just now because they receive that uh those tokens and yeah essentially by receiving those tokens that doesn't really mean that they are contributing and that they are part of the community and so on but today like you have to understand like doing an airdrop is a massive way to get a community I'm I'm I'm biased between you know on one hand I've done a lot of air drops and the other hand I see the negative consequences of that so you know for some people getting six dollars worth of a token is enough for them to

spend a four dollar gastroenter like why are you selling six dollars worth of your airdrop every week every Monday save it up do it once a month but some people actually need this two dollars in their life that it's worn them wasting you know sixty percent of their airdrop to claim and so but precisely what do we do now to like the airdrops were a very successful Community Building tool you have communities with 20 000 people because of these air drops but are they really Community are they really you know are they really part of the community are they really contributing or are they just there expecting to receive and then extract from you and then basically just dump it on the

market uh and once the price goes down they just complain about it um are they really Community uh I don't think so I think that's definitely know what the community is that's the real question so how do we create communities that they you know they help us shape the products that we're building because right now the way that is done is like as I said dropping a token and then these people feel entitlement and they're like always complaining about oh token price go down blah blah blah right of course of course the question I have is like if you have a very strong community uh is a token inevitable like we're trying to put the token first and

hopefully it gets the community but if you have a really strong Community naturally we're going to build a product for us naturally we're going to have some incentives to to coordinate between us and eventually that system of accounting will become a token so I think we've approached it the wrong way we've said how about we just like give all of us a thousand tokens then we're going to be friends no no I think it's the other way around we build the community we get the you we work out how we work towards as a community then we work out what incentives and then we become a token I think that the main issues to identify what a Community member is um and to me taking

um or that they're contributing you know for the betterment of the group um and if you're acting on us on a very selfish way then I wouldn't necessarily consider you that you care about the community um and I think that most of these airdrop hunters or like all of these people that are complaining about the price of the token and so on uh they're not necessarily there for the best interests of the community but rather for the best interest of their pocket yeah I agree basically what was uh just said uh that it's important to start with a good product because uh a lot of people in web 3 has the idea that web

free will solve the problem with the token that we will first create a token and then was then we can avoid uh good values of the product or the product itself but that's basically not not the case it it's it's the nice example of it is probably arbit room they attract the community before they drop the token and it's nice to see that the people are kind of sticky and they stay with arbit's room even after the uh the airdrop and for example in Bank class we don't have any token and still we have very strong community and it's basically

about the values but I would argue that in web 3 you don't necessarily need to start with a product you can start also with the community you can start building uh basically values and start like Gathering people and explaining what your ideas are and start getting feedback from the community and starts implementing that feedback and actually that will help you uh that could potentially help you decide how you're going to release your product or what is it that you're actually building or for Who You're Building um you know we usually the way that we do it in web 3 is that we have this idea of um the of this product that is going to

be used by the community I just release it and then see what happens um I don't necessarily think that that's the best way of doing it um I think that in the future it's going to be way more valuable if you do the groundwork first meaning you create a community you work together with a community the community actually guides you in terms of what the parameters should be for your product what the percentage what percentage you should take in every transaction and so on the community my my you know guide you I might give you like the whole um the whole Direction so what is it that they want and what is it that

they're actually willing to pay for um so you know in the web 2 type of world we definitely have these these concept of building putting out there and you know uh break things fast um in web 3 we cannot break things fast like uh when we're talking about money when we're talking about identity when we're talking about social contracts we cannot do the same we cannot do it in the same way as we did in web 2 I believe the same as a real let's say mainnet application

it's I just don't think it's something that really is linked closely to web3 like I mean this works with everything it has always worked with everything it's worked with web 2 you know products as well so you have an idea and you start building the community around the idea you have some Network so you're starting from one and three five and you're kind of building the community about the ID and you start pushing the idea and then you know you start developing and the only difference is as you said is that you know like you can you know in web 2 projects you can secretly like build it and then let's just release it it's like you know

b2c or whatever you have a product you just you know wait for people to get it but even in web 2 nowadays it's more about the community it's more about you know building the the relationship with your customers only in web 3 you know it's it's a different terminology but essentially you know web to web3 it kind of goes the same direction I want to disagree I don't think what we have in web 2 what they call Community is an actual community in my mind a community is a place where everybody is equal right like that's why you know when people say community building to me like it's like uh there's an error in that in that

phrase Community Building because or I call it like I like to call it yeah I like I like to call it like a community facilitation rather than a community building because Community Building like the relationship is like inherently horizontal I'm building you are going to like work for me in a way and the only way for a community to actually work is when everybody is equal and I think like a very good example for this is like you know maybe the only the most successful online community which is Wikipedia right like anyone can join anyone can contribute and no one is really earning like money from this maybe you know a side of like the Wikimedia Foundation if you want like it's a rabbit hole and it's terrible and yeah they're making hundreds of millions

of dollars a year um and it's not really being used for good but it separates from Wikipedia the website anyway um like it has to be like what I call or I mean it's not me it's like Alfred Adler the psychologist the calls horizontal relationships where everybody feels equal uh the conversation is equal uh and people you know feel shares shared responsibility and shared ownership uh I want to talk about tokens but uh it's like a another big rabbit hole but yeah maybe later so um personally I'm not I don't think I entirely agree that a community necessitates everyone uh you know being equal and it's a good thing that you you know you mentioned the Wikipedia example I'm actually giving a talk tomorrow on you know the Wikipedia

example and what we can learn about communities there uh Wikipedia is very hierarchical actually even within that you know self-regulating uh Community but I think that fundamentally a community requires you know group of people to have an a shared identity that goes beyond products that go on goes beyond tokens you know some shared values and um you know principles that they they can rely on it's basically a group that people don't mind you know spending their time or money to join now the thing with web 3 communities or so-called communities are that you know they're basically Cults but Cults can be

strong communities right but there's different kinds of calls the kind of calls that web3 are they're more like those MLM scams you know pyramid schemes they're all singularly focused on collecting around you know making money that we are gonna We Are Gonna pump and dump this token we're all Gonna Get Rich which is fine but does the single-minded pursuit of money riches actually lead to community building I would argue no that because you know and I'm no Anthropologist or anything but people say that you know basically that money becomes necessary where reputation and kinship does not work so I'd say that you know

money allows strangers to coordinate does it actually allow people you know who identify with each other to coordinate I'm not sure about that but what if it's a community that actually has the values and actually the let's say the intention of making money or sharing Alpha you couldn't you could argue that it is a community because they're sharing some as you say they have some kinship they have some um um let's say sort of identity because they're part of a cheat going down for example um that's not a product but it's a community we're specifically talking about making

a product and so we can't have um one of the questions that I one of the questions that I wanted to know is more that um you you in web 3 is a very specific example because we we have proposals and Dows and all that nonsense and in web 2 we have products and so as a Founder if your product is not successful you have two options raise more money or pivot and the question that I have in web 3 is that you know at what point when you're building a community with the first five people in the first hundred and then we get to a thousand and our product is not successful anymore when we pivot some of the community is not going to

agree and somebody is going to agree and so 60 do something and 60 how do we align ourselves as a community to build products and what happens when our products don't work and what happens when a community shifts and not everyone agrees with the original Vision I think that is something that is affecting web 3's ability to scale and it's a reason why we have all these dead [ __ ] coin projects from 2017 that are unable to iterate and refine their product and I have a question would you consider the talking a product uh because to me a token is a product I would say like the the example I'm most familiar with is sushi so the sushi

let's go back to the one that we were saying before like the one that we were saying uh he was saying that if it's about money it might not necessarily be a community so I came back with with the arguing and I like that I like what you say but I can I could potentially argue that a community can be let's say a group of people that are actually making money um I I can give you the example of the cheat code where people put 100 bucks in 2019 each of them put 100 bucks without having any form of identity without anything and then they didn't after the fact that they put money together um and then the crazy part is that you

might say that they don't have a product but I would say I would argue yes there is some form of product um so and that's why I was asking do you think that a token is a product I personally think that it's a product um you can use the token as an incentive mechanism or as a way of growing your community or as a way of integrating or bringing more people in so I definitely consider as a product myself so I I I think what you're saying makes sense and you know I could even like come up with another example let's assume we started church and we you know have a commercial Wing you know dedicated to making money so we can fund more infrastructure product projects and all so in that case you know we might be

we might have a community which is uh centered around making money for our other works but I think that you know there's one more fundamental sort of um issue at stake here and that's what exactly is the purpose of what we call web3 and all these decentralized mechanisms it's it's it's it's no no it's arguable and that's why it ties down back to it uh you know financialization the reason is that you know the point of these systems at least according to me is to ensure coordination in a trustless manner right trustless that's why the fine of the financialization aspect and tokenization aspect is Central to it but if something is trustless is it a community well

that's what I was going to argue I would disagree that in a place where there's no trust there's no Community um so okay that's a you know pretty uh yeah Google I'm sorry I'm just saying you know that's a controversial statement right there I mean if there's no share values as you said before there's no real Community um if everyone is just pushing for their side basically everyone is seeing every everyone else has certain adversary not as a someone to work with and collaborate and hopefully something bigger than themselves I want to say something it might be like a little sideways but a few weeks ago I was talking to someone it was like in a

group chat and someone was saying that he saw the term Legion right and he didn't know what it meant and then he researches and he was like oh it means the central generation and I was like what and it was like he has decentral generation you know this is we are the people who who invented have entered listen I've entered this space and we we understand that you know it's better to trust the centralized system rather than centralized entities and I'm like holy [ __ ] this is like the most wholesome thing I've seen in like the last year or two like in this entire space and I was like this is It's amazing And I think like you know it's easy I think like the space it has like this mask where you see all the tokens going up and

everybody's making money or losing money and it's like very easy to like get carried on to that but if you go beyond that there's like so many interesting things happening whether you know it's the technology or the belief that we'll be able to take the the systems of the uh of you know the old systems and bring them make them new here only better and more transparent than like with all the values that we believe in um and yeah like the making money is obviously in the Forefront of this but I think like if you're here you came because oh wow I could make money but then you're like oh wow like there's so much Beyond this just money there's so much Beyond there's like so much technology there's so many things that are happening and I don't know we the community of East Prague now uh are we a

part of this um how are we contributing to this um and yeah how how will we contribute to like ifrag to be able to exist even next year um so yeah well I you know I'm I'm just I think we have to start you you were citing out there earlier uh I have we have to accept that there's some kind of human nature and the human nature is inherently uh you know uh it's all about me I want I would disagree with you it's selfish it's sorry it's a it's pretty much we we are this but we have the potential as human beings to go beyond that but we have to try and and we have

to like exert energy to not be selfish but we this is a struggle of a human kind so yes we have this capability but finding a community within honestly thinking that people will not be selfish is a flaw that you build inside of the community on the very start but I think that uh first I will argue that humans are one of the most collaborative um let's say species on Earth and that's why we we want as a species right it's like the selfishness and how you know everything sort of like falls

apart is smaller right and I actually think and I gave like a like a yeah I mean a part of like you know some of the characteristics of molok and I think like Community is the antidote to that and you know it's kind of like there's this uh notion that entropy is happening all the time right it like you know the world goes from order to disorder and that's kind of like a notion that is people believe that it's true so how come we've built buildings and so like true nature like if there was like no human in humans in it at all it would be like entropy if things will fall apart like with no one constructing but the ability for us to collaborate to form communities to form groups to form you

know all these sort of like building structures that's what um yeah that's kind of like the battle against Morlock against entropy against all these things and it's and like I agree with you that you know we're inherently selfish that's kind of like you know like Ein Rand right um uh I would I want to maximize my own profit and stuff like that but in a setting of a community if the community is is good and successful then you know you give up on your own immediate returns for you know something greater for more return in the future yeah in an optimal world I will I will argue that um you'll do individually good but also collectively good um so it shouldn't be only about the community or only about yourself but

it's just trying to find that balance you know that balance that that is hard that is definitely hard but I don't think a community will do good if they're only focusing on the community and not in the individual a community for them to really do good and actually Prosper I think they definitely need to focus the individual first and then the community as well I I think it's actually true because a web 3 or crypto itself is basically a family on the on a purpose that you can take care of yourself you can be selfish but it's actually good for the community as a whole because if for example in

case of tokens if you dump all of your tokens you want like um you want again so much as you if as if you hold tokens I don't know for a year and uh uh the tokens would rise in price and uh the mechanism like that it's actually how the nature works I think that if uh the the the individual contribute to the community it's actually good for himself or themselves because they they can gain some some protection and stuff like that so I think that don't we don't really need prior to prioritize uh one of the things um I I want to bring it back to the

product as well because I think that's important I think there's a distinction between what makes a community and what makes a web 3 product so I I the the vampire attack is a perfect example you have one product and someone vampire attacked it and now it's two products because it's the same code it's nothing different coin and one at that point and people have aligned themselves over a different community and so when we do have two different products in that way we have to ask like this new community ignore the fact that there's a hundred thousand people in this Discord you know this community is supposed to be

innovating and developing and making differentiating products from the people and so as a community that we are now you know contributing the question is not necessarily about me or the community it's more about like how we uh adding value to the thing that we are trying to build like there's a there's a subtlety that comes from building a product as opposed to just having an investment down or making decisions I think when we are trying to build a product uh we all have to like like Manu said bring more than what we take and so if all we're taking is a financial extract or like the dividends

we're not actually contributing to the product and we're not actually building it yeah and and as I said before I think that it's important that we also recognize what a product is because sometimes we are also using products in order for us to create a community and we create funnels for bringing community and if those products also don't work then the community as a product doesn't work either um um and I'm saying this is because we're using type forms we're using these type of things which is using notion and we're using uh all of these different tools for assigning um tasks and so on

and these products are part of the community and they make the community and if they don't work we don't have any Community either um so first I think we need to recognize that there are products that help us create the community then there are other products like tokens that might help us grow the community or incentivize a community to participate and so on and there might be other products that the community also own and my the community might decide how um how those products let's say evolve how or how those products they say charge you a fee for example or so on I think um

I want to talk maybe like a little bit about we we kind of touched on this earlier and like you mentioned arbitrum and I think arbitrum has done something interesting right they've had like arguably product Market fit right you know people are using the chain it's working and now they've airdrop tokens uh I want to make the argument that I don't know maybe people at origin won't agree with me but I think it was a legal Arbitrage move basically they like they saw what's happening in the US and they had to do this immediately it's not because like they realize that oh wow we are good enough and we can decentralize and all of that stuff um and I think the the thing I want to get to is that we have standardized

these uh sort of like one year lock and for you invest for your vesting schedule for tokens which I think it's like one of the most destructive um uh standards or practices that we've had in this ecosystem and you know I spend most of my time like these days like working and investing in startups and like my take is to tell them I know other VCS are going to tell you you know I'm not going to take more than four years of vesting but I'm like do eight years and you see if you do eight years of vesting you'll see who are the VCS who are here for the short term and who are the VCS who are here for the long term um yeah I would say that lately I found out that a couple of VCS they don't even give a [ __ ] about the

vesting because um once the token is uh on perpetuos or options they can already start shorting and they actually it's so weird because they're investing in you but at the same time they're betting against you because they're going to make more money betting against you so the whole thing is already [ __ ] yeah you know it's important to say there there are like a lot of hedge funds in the space who are masquerading themselves as Venture funds yeah um a lot of them and like I think like generally the old professional VC like you would see some money coming back in like probably like the best outcome after seven years if there's like an exit or something like that in the in another good case 12 years but in

most cases you will never see any money um but we need to bring it back to this community and the product so how do the VCS fit in this community product building Loop so this is a such a difficult thing to sort of like figure out how VCS can participate and I think no I don't think I don't think they can't I think you know the I mean you I I can attest for myself but you probably have to ask the my portfolio companies that I work with like they'll say that I'm a part of the community and I hope that I'm a part of their Community I don't know if my partner is at the Venture fund you know act the same as I do I mean they have the different skill sets I come from the world of community and you know I want to be a part of this

um but your personhood is contributing the funds your your Capital isn't the thing that is contributing um I I don't know like I think I will argue that yes capital is necessary in a world where we need to pay for [ __ ] um so yeah they are contributing um but it's a different form of contribution it's a contribution with an expectation of extraction at a multiple acts while a Community member is contributing uh not necessarily even knowing what is it that they're going to receive in return um and not necessarily knowing okay I'm gonna receive a 10x or a 15x or what I contributed and the reason why we talk

about contributing capital is because uh to this gentleman's point it's money gets involved when we cannot incentivize based on trust and reputation I mean people need to eat right that's also a thing like you're building a product you you I don't know you have a family you have a house you wanna you know you wanna eat so money has to come from somewhere to pay for salaries and like it's a it's a very like I can tell you like yeah but the thing is do it like like we're getting deeper into like you know when you come to a community you should come with no expectation and you should be somewhat

self-sufficient to be able to contribute and add value if it's a charity down of course we're here I need to get some work please I need to feed myself but like when you're honestly generally contributing to a community that before there's a product we're just here to have a community um I think the money gets involved yeah I'm too early for this two points firstly good point because I'm in this discussion like uh this is all based on still you know parasitizing the like web to society because you are getting somewhere the money so you can be active in some Community yeah so so this all it just doesn't work as a whole but well the

main thing is that we're still in the in a in a system that is enslaving human beings and you know we need to work in order to put some food on the table and so on so because we are still in this trap you know in this trap of trying to put some food in the table um then we need to we need to take you know sorry I had another point I totally disagree with the foundation of your ideas I don't think working to create value is a trap I think it's a blessing but uh I'm sorry I didn't say that never said that but uh the other point was was the VCS like I'm part of a VC I also always also like

invest as an angel and I that's what I try I try to be part of the community before I do the investment and even if we invest as a VC like usually one of us one of the team is is part of the community because you kind of share somehow the the company the ideas the project so because they don't have unless we have a university ideas into that guys we have to be very strict

with the schedule so if we can wrap up in two three minutes then we have to prepare for the next one sorry yeah sorry so unless unless like I feel like in web 3 we are very blessed because we made some money with our passions but there are still like many other people who are who are not not as blessed as us or not where they were not so early as we were to the game and then they don't have the opportunity to to join us but they have Amazing Ideas they are so passionate about what they are doing but for example they are like working at the dry cleaners and then they are coding on the side or they are working as a I don't know shop assistant but they are

trying to you know like provide for their family and and do this stuff so but that's that's that's great I mean I mean you can you can draw these people into your team and just make them you know part of of the community and of actually the working team so I I think that's great right yeah if you have your leg sorry um we're gonna we're gonna in in this panel I'm sorry that this is a very interesting conversation we can keep going outside um but yeah in general like the the conclusion that I can take from this conversation that we we've been having

here is that we need to differentiate what is a Community member or what is a person that is there used to extract value from from it and not actually contribute and generate more for the benefit of the community um and also um that yeah there are many different type of products um it's a product it's on its own um and when we're creating products um definitely getting getting feedback from the community will benefit us and will help us um why um because basically the community is going to be giving you um on how or how they want to interact with product what is it that they want

to do with the product um and yeah essentially you will be will care about because they're part of it in the whole creation process I want to say another sort of like thing here is that I think we're talking about Community but we also talk about the money and then the way these you know interact with each other it's like I don't know it's like a tornado in a volcano like it's it's kind of like it's a mess right like huh yeah like it's but you know no but they're they're somehow separate but somehow like so intertwined like you're part of the community if someone else is there any money I should also earn money and it creates like weird

Dynamics and I think this is like yeah maybe in the root of the discussion how does money and Community play together uh and how does value that is being generated for a community flow back to its members um so yeah well thanks everyone for joining us thank you [Music]