Patrick Rivera

Most people building consumer products think their main competitor is the incumbent in their market. For example, if someone's building a short-form text-based social product, they'd say their main competitor is Twitter. Sure, there's some truth to that. But the reality is that their main competitor is people not giving a shit. In the world of consumer products, it's important to think in terms of a consumer’s time. How much free time do they have? What do they do during t...

One of the topics that VCs love to debate on Twitter and podcasts every few months is which element is most critical to a startup's success: product, team, or market. Most early-stage investors lean towards the team, arguing that a strong team will eventually find a great market. Take Slack as an example. Its journey from a gaming company to a multi-billion dollar messaging platform is often cited as an example of a great team pivoting from a tough market to one they could capitalize on....

As a startup founder, one of the first questions people ask you is “What problem are you solving?” The “right” answer usually has something to do with saving people time or helping them make money. It’s easy for people to dismiss products that don’t solve a rational problem. That’s why many social apps and NFT projects are dismissed as mere toys. But the reality is that most people are very bored and very lonely. This is one of the most important problems of our generation. For many of the mo...

It’s been 14 years since the Bitcoin whitepaper was released and most people still don’t understand the power of web3 tools like NFTs and smart contract platforms. To change the narrative, we need more killer apps. Many people, myself included, believe games are the most likely catalyst. But what exactly is a “game”? To many people, games are developed using an engine like Unity or Unreal and accessed via a console, PC, or mobile phone. However, the proliferation of mobile phones and new tech...

Most web3 builders and investors I’ve spoken to recently believe that mainstream adoption is still being held back by lack of infrastructure. The sentiment is that we need better wallets, alt L1s, rollups, rollups on rollups, multi-chain bridges, web3-native growth tools, etc. But the biggest problem most infrastructure teams face is that there aren’t enough consumer teams building great apps on top. Five years ago (!), Dani Grant and Nick Grossman of USV observed this phenomena in their post...

Hey everyone 👋 My name is Patrick Rivera and for the past few weeks I’ve been working on a new project. Ever since I was a teenager I’ve appreciated the power of the internet. I used to run a viral meme account on Facebook and learned to code primarily through online tutorials. These experiences taught me that the internet is an equalizing force for people with passion, determination, and creativity. Every product we love was created by a team of people that had a vision and executed on it r...

DAO tooling is all the rage these days. Jordi Hays @jordihays Pedal to the metal 49 9:36 PM • Mar 17, 2022 brian flynn @Flynnjamm everyone at ETHDenver is either an investor or working on DAO tooling no in between 389 6:48 PM • Feb 17, 2022 But there are definitely some challenges. Jess 🌱 @thattallguy We need more DAOs, not more DAO tools ... 675 2:00 PM • Mar 2, 2022 This post shares some thoughts on DAO tooling based on my experience as a member of multiple DAOs, building DAO tooling at Mi...

In crypto land, 2020 was all about DeFi. So far, 2021 has been about NFTs (hot jpeg summer anyone?) 2022 will be all about Community DAOs. Coop 💿 @Cooopahtroopa First it was DeFi. Then it was NFTs. Next is DAOs. Plan accordingly. 1,645 7:52 PM • Aug 25, 2021 Community DAOs = DeFi infrastructure + NFT business models + Creative HumansCrypto isn’t just a technology, it’s an internet-native economy. Revenue is tracked in ETH. Key decisions are made with community governance. Transactions are en...

Welcome 👋 My name is Patrick Rivera and I've spent the past few years building consumer apps in crypto / web3 as a growth engineer. I’m currently building a new type of NFT project and web3 brand that’s launching this summer. Previously, I was a growth engineer at Mirror, Instacart, and Dharma (before it was acquired by OpenSea). I also write about the intersection of crypto and culture. Here are some of my most popular posts:A Presentation on Crypto Fundamentals and NFTsCome for the Cr...

"Come for the tool, stay for the network" is a classic strategy for bootstrapping social networks. It aimed to solve a hard problem: how do you convince people to join your social network when there's nobody else to socialize with? One approach is to build a single-player tool that gets people to use the product. Over time, as more people use the single-player tool, you then add social features such as likes, comments, follows, etc. to plant the seeds for a defensible network. Today, wit...

One of the cool things about working at a startup is that you get to wear a lot hats.One of my favorite parts of the week is speaking with creators about how they can use crypto to build stronger communities. In the future, I think crypto will be a core part of every creator’s business. Kinda like how tech products rely on AI to remain competitive today. But we’re still really damn early. So, what is crypto actually good for, right now? In this post, we'll cover a framework I share with ...

Three months ago, I was catching up with one of my previous engineering managers. He told me about a new startup he joined called Mirror which was building a decentralized protocol for writers. Over the past year, I saw a few failed projects try to do something similar so I was immediately skeptical. But after speaking with the team and learning about recent developments in the space, I’m now convinced that a protocol for crypto-native newsletter businesses is a really interesting opportunity...