When a new technology appears, people usually think it will grow because it is better, faster, cheaper, or more efficient. But in practice, that is rarely what makes something spread around the world.

What makes new things spread is trust.

Airbnb didn’t grow just because it was cheaper than hotels. In the beginning, the idea of sleeping in a stranger’s house sounded absurd. What made Airbnb grow was a reputation system: reviews, profiles, photos, history. Before trusting the company, people started trusting the other people inside the platform.

Uber didn’t grow just because calling a car through your phone was more convenient. At first, getting into a stranger’s car also felt strange. What made Uber grow was seeing other people using it, seeing friends using it, seeing ratings, and seeing that it worked in real life.

Technology solves problems.
But trust is what allows technology to spread.

And trust rarely comes from an advertisement.
Trust comes from seeing real people using something in real life.

This is where an interesting point appears when we think about sports, communities, and athletes.

For a long time, athletes were seen by brands mainly as visibility space: a logo on a surfboard, on a jersey, on a cap, at an event. It was basically media. But the role of athletes can be much more interesting than that.

Athletes are usually part of very strong communities. Surfers, skaters, runners, cyclists, fighters, climbers, all of these sports have communities, places, events, trips, and their own culture. It’s not just the sport; it’s a lifestyle and a group of people who know each other, meet, travel, and spend time together.

Inside these communities, trust works differently than on the internet in general. Trust comes from seeing someone train, compete, travel, participate in events, help other athletes, show up consistently over the years. Reputation in sports is not built quickly.

And this is very important in today’s world. Today, it’s very easy for someone to appear on the internet, gain followers, talk about anything, and disappear a few months later. In sports, that doesn’t happen so easily. Sports careers are built over many years.

An athlete builds reputation training when no one is watching, competing, losing, winning, traveling with little money, sleeping on friends’ couches, getting injured, coming back, improving little by little. There is a long trajectory. And the people who follow this trajectory build a much deeper level of trust than the relationship people have with an advertisement or with someone who appeared on the internet six months ago.

This gives athletes something very rare today: credibility inside real communities.

And this is very relevant when we think about how new technologies, new financial products, new platforms, or new companies grow. Because the adoption of something new almost never happens at mass scale in the beginning. It starts in niches, in specific communities, with people who test first, use first, and talk about it first.

Almost every innovation follows this path:
first a small group uses it,
then the surrounding community starts using it,
then it becomes normal,
and only after that does it become mass adoption.

What’s interesting is that many of these early communities are not technology communities. They are communities of people with shared interests: sports, music, travel, gaming, universities, specific professions, specific cities.

Technology enters these communities through people, not through ads.

That’s why the role of athletes today may not be just to represent brands, but to act as bridges between innovation and real-world communities. They travel, participate in events, meet people in many places, and are part of both local and global communities at the same time.

A surfer, for example, might spend the year between Brazil, Portugal, Hawaii, Indonesia, California, Chile, and Mexico. In each place, they meet people, participate in competitions, events, surf sessions, trips, and gatherings. This creates a very organic network of people and communities, very different from a purely digital audience.

This may be an important point about how the world is changing: for a long time, marketing was about interrupting people with advertising. Today, it increasingly seems to be about participating in communities and building trust within them.

This takes more time.
But it creates much stronger relationships.
And in the long run, it probably builds much stronger brands and projects.

Because in the end, technology spreads through people.
Ideas spread through people.
Brands grow through people.
Communities are built by people.

And trust, which may be the most valuable asset in the digital economy, has always been built by people as well.

Maybe that’s why the relationship between athletes and brands is changing.
It’s no longer just about visibility, but about trust, community, and presence in the real world.

Maybe the question brands should be asking today is no longer “which athlete has more followers?”, but “in which communities do we want to build trust and who already has that trust built?”

This article complements Episode 4 of Café, Cripto e Surf, which explores how people start in Web3 and the different ways work, monetization, and opportunities actually emerge beyond traditional job models.

The series is supported by NounsBR, and the community is open to anyone who wants to join discussions, propose ideas, or participate in future projects.

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