From scarcity & speculation To utility & community

Transcript

[Music] hello everyone thank you for joining me uh on this morning Saturday morning and hopefully you will have a good time because uh uh we have the more have the morning together hopefully you will enjoy it um today we're going to talk about scarcity and specul to utility and Community I know those words are a little bit vague so give you a little bit more context I'm going to tell you uh tell you my story a little bit I'm a software engineer who enjoys making music and naturally I built a startup in web Tree

Music domain with my co-founders it's called basker we named it after the musicians you hear on the streets and public spaces uh like this one it is an alternative music platform for independent musicians to earn earn uh more fair and sustainable income from their music uh we've been developing for over a year and a half now uh with a team of four uh but we officially got established in last November in UK and since our Inception we do have around 65 67 musicians from 14 different countries so we are learning uh a little bit about building a community and it's especially

hard because we all technical co-founders we a amazing designer uh so it needs work and today I'm going to um talk about what we learned and how we're trying to make a progress um from scarcity and speculation so what does scarcity mean scarcity basically means if there's a lot of demand for a product or a service uh the thing the resource becomes cars in music domain it means limited opportunities for uh musicians finding a stage to play in in Rec record deals um financial investments uh those kind of things are

scarce in musical domain so they're also get being affected from Market saturation their lack of financial investments and of course they cannot protect their uh intellectual property um in the Web Two Worlds and speculation uh so when we were starting out this project we were too excited and we were just knocking on the musicians doors and trying to explain them what a wallet is how can blockchain can revolutionize the their industry and they can make a profit from it uh it wasn't the case because the only thing that they heard uh before us was there was something called nfts um and you need to have a wallet and crypto and they really wallet

so they might lose their money overnight um so before we try before we explain to them our platform we need to uh make make uh make them sure that they're not going to lose all all their money if they're uh not just Solly Trust on the technology itself but themselves um so we had a rough patch as you all know um but we are trying to change it and change the change their biases um and convince them to use the platform like ours or at least uh digitize their music um so from scarcity and

speculation to utility and Comm Community that's where it comes from um so platforms like basers basker and other ones are not a story of written by a technology itself so it's not the platform for an NFD of course we are using the uh technical infrastructure for building the platform but it is a story of uh abajar from Germany story of barish or o as you can see it here or uh Alp so when we talking about basker we just talking about our musicians and what they do and how can uh deliver value create value in this in this space um so our favorite question that's

what I did here I promise that I'm going to keep it short it basar is an NFD Marketplace it is not just an NFD Marketplace that's the whole concept it is a um Community around musicians and a platform to help them grow and protect their music um so it why it's not just a Marketplace because um they're not just selling their nfts or the copy of of their song so there's a scar uh scar resource copies of their song as a collection and they might add uh perks to their songs to increase their collectional value for example one of our musicians

are offering um concert tickets I was in buches for few few weeks ago and I bought my ticket from um from basker basically so this way it is not just in a Marketplace but it can be a place to sell their tickets or some some of them offering digital signature of their uh sign of their um photograph so it can be a place to get an autograph digitally and of course it's going to be the same it's like um but it's digital and you can keep it forever so when you tell it like this musicians are become less hesitant and um can be convinced basically uh so they what we learned is what we we saw that they can either

choose to give out digital uh perks because they're publishing their music to a digital platform or they can choose to um offer time in person like em in here is offering to hang out after one of these concerts some of them offering backstage passes some of them offering um their stems to their songs um so this way we are connecting a digital collectible and combining with a uh fital experience um so one thing we also learned that not every musician is the same they have different

needs and it solely depends on what kind of place uh in within their care career because if it's they're just starting out they needs a little bit different they need to get to know a lot of people they need to find um industrial experts like Engineers sound Engineers they need photographers video videographers and they need to be involved in the community and that's where the Nano communities start so Nano communities are the smallest smallest group uh ex existing in a bigger community and I really like this sentence from Sam Alman he says find a small set of customer segments that

desperately want what you offer uh because uh this way you can really see the thing you are trying to work on and trying to achieve is working or not because they're really agile um they're highly interested they need to be involved they because they can dominate their own little nanoc community and they give you honest feedback brutally brutal feedback but an honest feedback um so they take it really really personal so after sometime they are becoming ambassadors of your product um and they're often informal so you can e more easily relatively more easily reach out to them and they probably most likely to answer your questions so in

music domain we do have sub genres of course you know all the mainstream musicians and genres uh we try to reach out uh more sub genres um funny enough yeah they're more easier to reach uh but they're a little bit more Niche than the other mainstream genres so you need to be really mindful about where you're going so they they hanging out places a little bit more different and to be able to to not bore them or keep up with their conversation you also actually um should care uh about and learn about their stuff so they can you can get an honest feedback and brutal brutal feedback um a little bit bigger

Community called micr communities uh micro communities are slightly larger than the nanoc communities uh they're still relatively small um but a little bit more formal so they do have a goto places is for hanging around so you can find them um more commonly in this commonly in the areas um and they do still have a strong engagement and participation so this way also you can get feedback but you need to work a little bit harder to get the real feedback behind their first first sentences um in music domain it's getting also more popular there is mainstream genres but um Niche genres

are also becoming more popular this is uh these articles are from the ifps global music report so we can see the trend for the sub genres are increasing every year uh so this is a nice thing diversity is always a good thing it's something we are trying to Advocate on wker too um because when you have different types of voices in a platform and you can um have a backlog of the things you will develop and it is a nice thing to have for the future of the product yeah so to sum up those two communities Nano and micro communities they do have

deep connections uh because they're more likely to know each other and if they like your product if or if they don't like the product they're going to tell their friends and you need to do something about it um so do do they do have to like they like to have likely to give you feedback for your product um they do have spefic specific needs so this is something you need to be a little bit careful about because so it's easy to distract with all the ideas they are giving giving you so you have to keep the massive trans transformation purpose you offer to them and try to make a backl of it but you need to

collect that backl before you take an action because you can hear a bunch of things that only some small group of people are going to use so you you need to prioritize um when listening to their needs and one thing it's also great uh you can experiment with it when you roll out a new feature um you can just do it and iterate based on their feedback I know this is a like a general advice that everyone giving it giving out to the startups um but in smaller grp groups it's faster because they're more agile and they know each other very well um they are like Clos nit relationships uh they do have the share

same values and they do have the visibility within their small community and one Community type that we had also called micro communities so we know probably all of these artists BTS Drake bed bu the weekend it's from the same report um so one thing is different than addressing to smaller communities and comparing to micro communities is they do have different needs and so you need acquisition methods are different and you engagement methods are different because smaller groups can probably be the um easy to interact they you need to talk with a three people and you can

just want you can reach the four people thanks to their commun if you're looking for something specific but micro communities or like for example Drake if I want to speak Drake tomorrow definitely I won't be able to I need to speak there speak his manager his uh booking agent and few few bunch of other people more uh to reach out to him and they all do have their micro communities but collectively they are becoming a micro Community uh so they do have a wide range of interests and topics um they do have a diverse membership with varying levels of Engagement which means means when you buy a ticket you see a bronze ticket or golden ticket or something so

this means everyone is willing to offer different kind of amounts and the super super fans probably on in front of stage yelling and um most committed to a person um I'm just imagining a concert concert venue so that's why I'm laughing um they do have a formal structure and organized activities if Drake hosting an event we all going to know it and we all going to know where it is going to to be and we can what we expect from that kind of event so uh you need you can be more prepared um to attend those kind of events and they do have a way larger effect to the both their Community but the other communities as well this is an example I really like to share because

you all know that person Taylor S is I think she's current around Europe right now and if you we were in Paris few few weeks ago we would pay much higher hotel prices because she's around town so that kind of effect is very real and um yeah it's very real and we need to be mindful about what a micro Community can achieve together because they also do have a smaller communities um within their micro Community um for so a few numbers her uh her economic impact is more than five billion dollars with with his with her tour this

year and she became a brand not a of course she's a person but she more became a brand and we know her name and it's enough to increase the value of a collection or uh anything she owns um so micro communities obviously do have a wide audience so when you try to make an and your of course marketing strategy and acquisition strategies is Will differ because you cannot just um knock on the person you're trying to reach but you can interact start interacting with a smaller Community they are engaging with and build your way up from from there um this is both good or not and not that good because it

takes time but when you get it um you will have a more you will acquire more wide audience basically so they have influential networks so they not necessarily have to be part of your not using the your product or anything but even if they're um if they tell nice things about it or bad things again always go both ways um they will have a positive impact or negative impact to your product so uh yeah they have an influence over their Community do they do have share resources so if you want to engage with a big commun M micro Community they probably going to be using if you have common micro

communities or nanoc communities this is also a good way to interact with them if you're trying to build a brand or execute your marketing strategy they do get a way hell of a way more funding uh so it is again more harder to convince them to do something because they are not that in need comparing to the smaller companies and they do have a broader networking company so you can either choose engage with a 10 n n communities or n communities or you can just choose to invest your marketing budget qu marketing wget to a one micro community and see how it goes so you need to diversify your strategy on this

one and we can as a as uh in basker we can also see the effects of it you can just uh go to an event um and talk with people it is more effective they talk to ATT 10 people in a very very small groups um and they do have public visibility so when you try to try to try to acquire them as a as users um and when they going and when especially when they're using their product other users will see oh this person is in your platform so I might join the join the Von because uh you manag to convince them somehow and I might be missing out

something so I'm I don't and I'm going to use your product as well um so it's really helps the viral coefficient of the things um and they do have a powerful voice powerful voice in their Community um as as the leader of their big community so what are we doing uh in basker to make sure that we are interacting with the right communities we are di we have diversify marketing and acquisition strategies uh so we are trying trying to reach out um a big communities but as well as the smaller communities for the reasons that I mentioned uh previously it helps uh but strategies are definitely uh very

different and something we heard also in in in musical domain um people want to be able to interact with other communities they have um especially the musicians that just getting started or or even a little bit big they need to be able to talk and interact with the other experts in basker and basker connect is a a good example I'm going to say because it's based on the user feedback we had um a musician need just uh not making music so they need to be book venues they need to do their marketing they need to their mix mastering they need to find out um graph graphical

designers to design their cover Arts cover Arts so Bas connect is a feature that we we developed just for uh answering their their their needs um and it's collecting application so if you are a musician please sign up to basker if you're a listener go and listen something from it and if you are an ex expert in this um domain we can also um put you on this on this uh list and connect you with with other musicians um yeah so the power of communities is again in entertainment history is worth

trillions of dollars and it's host one of the biggest corporations in the world but as the smaller communities like the people in this room right now uh we buy their tickets we buy their merch we buy their collection pieces we buy them nfts of course and united we are the ones making this circle turn so um even the smallest Community is very important in because it's a part of bigger community and interacting with other communities um so thank you for listening to me uh if you have any questions I can take them or if you have you you might have it later on this is my LinkedIn and I'm always I always love

to hear feedback uh nice or bad ones uh so reach out to me and say hi if you want thank [Applause] you any questions yeah thank you thank you very much for the presentation so it's a nice yeah use case in the real world so how is it accepted by the artists and by the the normal people normal people great question um the first thing the first challenge

we had is making them understand what we are doing so when you uh interacting with a community you need to speak their language basically and it wasn't good at first uh so we chose different words for example we all know what an nft is in in this in this uh event but musicians don't so we are just say it's a digital copy of your of your music it's like a vinyl this way they understand um so when we get the musicians first we get the musicians first then we try to understand what they're how they're interacting with fans it was harder to reach out to fans first and then musicians because fans are not likely to speak with their

artists but artists are hearing their fans so once we get to write words and speak their languages it was a little bit easier but at first it was really hard yeah thank you no questions okay um thank you again uh if you have any other questions or just want to say hi this is my LinkedIn again and talk to you some other place in the world thanks [Music]