We see a lot of founders turning to Web3 models, and a lot of established Web2 companies are already taking a step towards the upgrade. With companies like Nike, Adidas, Google, Facebook, Youtube, Tiktok, and Twitter we can say for sure that top leaders predict the future of the internet to be Web3 based. As more and more companies are joining the space and creating great companies, those people are heavily affected by the crypto market condition which is currently in a bear market. But, (and there is a big but), Web3 and Cryptocurrencies are not the same things, and sooner than later the Web3 market will de-attach the crypto space and join the startup economy which tends more toward users statistics valuation, than market cycles investors speculations.
That’s the wild west out there, some tokens went down 95% and the market is bearish. In return, we see a decrease in users who actually uses the apps themselves (look at Sandbox, Decentreland, Opensea …etc). That teaches us something about the space something that is very important to note,
The investors are the users, which leads to attention only when the market is bullish. Imagine a company whose entire user-base is made of people who actually use the app it provides for its utility and not for making a profit.
Too many people confuse Web3 with Cryptocurrency and think those are different names of the same thing. That’s not the case, although it can be very controversial, let’s try to create simple definitions the each.
To put it simply, Web3 companies are companies that follow specific principles in the architecture of their business. that means that by design they are utilizing the technology that crypto provides to create an app/service that brings real value to its users. Those can be token rewards with utility inside the app, or peer-to-peer interactions (taking out the third party). There are unlimited ways to build business models that will disrupt any industry with the Web3 mindset in place.
With that being said, the innovation that made this possible only recently is the blockchain technology and its recent use cases. The ability to create value and allow your users to interact is what defines a Web3 company, and the confusion of people with a cryptocurrency is obvious.
Building during a bear market is one of the best things you can do for your company, I mean you are right that getting ATH(all time high) in 2 weeks making your company a unicorn for a few days is very appealing and that desire has probably affected most of the founders to optimize their project to a bull situation filled with hype and fomo. While that can work perfectly for pyramid based projects and high-yield projects, for most of the Web3 space that is not the case.
I never saw a chart that goes only one direction, so neither bull or bear is defining the problem your solving. Its the consistency of building a community of people which your product solve problem for. That and only that will create a stream of revenue that is far less fluctuate with the market. Getting the right audience in front of your solution during a bear market will prove the market how resilient your project really is and will indicate how well it will do on bull market.
The Web3 space will lose its pegg to the crypto market very soon while every big sector will be led by a company that support or utilize tokens on their users advantage.
Getting ready for the future is much easier during times like now where getting positive attention for your company is hard on its own. The worse thing you can do is to stop your building and wait for the next bull. You may cought by the illusion that “every company in the bull is doing good”, but that’s not the case mostly. Its much harder to advertise and get real attention during those times with all of the noise going on.
So by now you’r probably asking yourself what should you do? and the answer is advertise, market your product to your audience. In the case which you already have a product that solves a problem, now your next job is to bring it in front of the right audience. that’s not an easy task, but establishing your brand now is the best thing you can do for your company.
The advertisement techniques who worked during a bull market like sponsoring a soccer team, or paying influencers will not have the same effect now. The key is to build different funnels for different segments of your audience and optimize until you can grow and scale your marketing, or in 2 words Personalized Ads
The biggest Ad networks like Facebook and Google are mostly rejecting Web3 companies as they classify them as crypto-companies and they are not very ad-friendly for those type of companies (for obvious reasons). But new companies come to play and solve the problem for founders want to promote their Web3 companies within the space. Take a look at Web3m(Web3 Marketing) which builds a sophisticated ad-network to support marketing operations like pixels and personalized ads in their platform.
To wrap it up it’s important to state, that there is not a single company that will not be affected by such a bear market, and Web3 companies still getting wrecked by the crypto market. But for those who will still bring utility during these strange times, focus on growing their user-base and build a brand, I suspect will drink tequila on the beach in the next bull market.