TL;DR Everything in the world depends on how people talked to each other. Politics, science, technology, products, families, parties, everything, absolutely everything is just an outcome of hundreds, thousands, or maybe millions of conversations. If you want to propagate something through the world, a product, a piece of art, an idea, you need to understand how human works and how the information flows through the human network.

Web3 is a very unique industry: it talks about ‘community’ 24/7 but then almost no one has a community. How so?

If we think about products and we see community as a tool for product propagation into the world, we take community as a very clear mechanism of idea transportation.

Putting aside community for a moment, if we have a product and we want to sell it to our target user, the process is very straightforward:

• Understand who is the target user

• Tell them about the product. Deal

It will work, but if and only if the problem the product is solving is an emergency problem. Most of the products, especially in web3, are not solving emergency problems. So their adoption process is quite longer and somehow different.

The idea of the product should be slowly propagated through the bubble around the target user so that the target user doesn’t feel that there is a company behind the product that is trying to manipulate them so that they buy the product. The target user should feel that it just happens to them. Starting using something new or changing one thing for another thing just happens to them. Not forced, not recommended, not pitched, just happens on its own.

Most people go with the flow. We do not have strong opinions (even though we think we do) and we hang out with people similar to us. So it is the target user’s friends who sell them the product in a way that they adopt it and do not feel forced.

But it’s obviously not about ambassador program. When a company hire an ambassador (any type of official representative) – for the target user it doesn’t matter if the company is selling on its own or there is some ambassador selling on behalf of it. It feels forced. It triggers resistance.

The community is not people on the discord server or in the telegram group. Furthermore, you can’t even count your community. Because your community are people talking about your product when you can’t hear them.

Most products do not have any community because no one really cares. These products will die sooner or later. Because it’s not enough to be able to build a great product one also should know how to make people care about it. How to make people talk about it behind the closed doors, at parties, in the small 10 people friends chats, on the forums, in little blogs, in the queues, in the club toilettes, everywhere where the target user lives – three people around them should care about the product.

If there is at least one person who cares about the product it already has chance to survive. The first person who cares is the person who created the product.

Caring about the product doesn’t mean blindly pitching left and right. Even though this is exactly what most web3 founders do. They show up at the builder events, looking at them upside down and saying: hi you stupid builder use my product because it’s the best. And then the builder answers ‘fuck off’. Well in fact builders do not answer fuck off, they take free dinner and say ‘yes of course i will’ and then they never use it because they do not care.

Caring about the product means putting some time and attention into trying to use it and have some relationships with it. Do I feel like it is something that fits my life, helps in my goals, feels good, makes me happier. Does it have any meaningful positive impact on my life so that i will give up on something i have to use this another thing.

All our life is giving up on one thing on order to adopt another thing. But why would I even want to put efforts into trying to use the product and have some relationships with it? Because someone i trust, hang out with, like and belong to told me this is a cool thing.

Can i buy a lipgloss or a sex toy because Kim Kardashyan told it is cool? Yes, if it is a one time purchase that doesn’t require sticking to it.

If it is something where the target user and the product are expected to have long term relationships – these relationships should be real. Kim Kardashyan is not my friend. I do not expect her to tell on media what she thinks. But when I am at the five friend home party – I expect my friends there to tell what they think. Because this is what we want behind the closed doors with close people – we want to be real because holding the face all the time is exhausting.

Whatever our friends told us behind the closed doors at the five people home party is what we blindly trust. And this is exactly the place where the target user should meet the idea of the product for the first time. Then if the target user is target for real (i.e. the audience was defined properly) the sparkle will happen.

Build for people you know. Build for people who hang out at the five people home party you are organizing. So that you do not really have to sell the product you will just share it with people to whom it is relevant.

Look I built this thing you can use it for this and that what do you think? And then SHUT UP AND LISTEN. When people are relaxed, chilling and vibing at the friend’s house – they probably will tell you what they think. And you just SHUT UP AND LISTEN. And see what happens. Maybe the product already fits good enough and those are your users and they will take the thing and propagate it further towards other closed doors. Maybe the product doesn’t really fit and they will tell you… mhm i do not really think i need it. Then maybe the target audience is wrong. Maybe the product wrapping of the initial idea is wrong. But this is something to continue working with.

If you are real, honest, and respectful with your potential target audience – they will help you, they will believe in you, and they will stick to you. Whatever we do – building products, solving geopolitical crises or making love – it is just a human talking to a human. And then based on the outcome of this convo things happen one way or another, or do not happen.

How your product moves through the world (unless your product is the worm virus) is the result of how people talked about your product with each other. People do not believe companies and c level, people do not want to hear about the product from them, people want to hear about the products from their friends and people hanging out at the same places.

So many cool things were built in web3, from the most cypherpunk to the most degen stuff. But most of them died in github repos or surrounded themselves by synthetic communities of bots. Without finding people who will care for real. Because we think that community is any people and the more the better. While for community to work as a mechanism of propagating the product it should consist of people who care for real and the numbers do not really matter.

Stop normalizing bots and calling them community. Stop hunting 100k on discord. Stop taking number of the tweet views as a real KPI. Attention is nothing if next action doesn’t happen. And it doesn’t happen if one doesn’t care. Learn how to make people care, how to respect people, listen to people, how to be invited to the five friends home party behind the closed doors, how to organize your own party everyone wants to be invited to. Learn to be real because this is what sells your product. People feel the real sentiment behind the words and products we build. If we care – they care. But if we do not – no one will ever care.