Are web3 conferences a waste of time?

jnicholls@newsletter.paragraph.com (James N) — Mon, 26 Jun 2023 12:26:06 GMT

With new funding drying up and making great connections more important than ever, can B2B projects do without spending thousands and flying the team half way round the world?

I was recently at the Proof of Talk conference and had a fantastic time. I met loads of interesting people (including my long-time friend and co-founder AK), listened to some thought-provoking talks and took part in some actionable workshops.

But I kept thinking the same thing. Is there a more efficient way to create connections than hoping to bump into the right person at a networking event? Looking for that right person can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. Perhaps it’s just the introvert in me who needs eight glasses of champagne to go up to people, but I feel like a web3 B2B networking tool is long overdue.

It’s a tough time to be in web3 - great projects are dying off every day and raising has become at least 10x more difficult compared with last year. Companies need to connect with lots of different kinds of people: investors, partners, prospects. Reliably, in large volumes, and in the right way – the one thing the space does not need more of is spam! What we need is great signal-to-noise introductions that foster mutually beneficial connection.

At 3RM, we’re committed to rebuilding the sales stack for web3, and this is a necessary part of that mission. If you feel like your company has this problem, I’d love to chat. Shoot me a DM or email me at james@3rm.co!

Solving Web3 Lead Generation

jnicholls@newsletter.paragraph.com (James N) — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 19:19:25 GMT

Web3 sales reps have it tough. Compared to their counterparts in traditional sales, they lack a suite of advanced tools that cover the entire customer lifecycle. As a result, they face two major challenges: reliably generating new leads and managing those leads to close more deals. At 3RM, we've spent the past year addressing the latter by building a web3-verticalized CRM (you can check it out here). However, the best approach to generating new leads remains a mystery.

There are already some decent Web3 lead lists available. However, they are often out of date and lack critical data that web2 tools like Apollo.io or Zoominfo provide.. This missing data includes who to contact at the company, why to contact them (such as a recent change in their software stack), and how to connect with them (preferred communication channel and contact details). Having this information is critical to successful outreach, which needs to be mutually beneficial and stand out from the noise.

So how do we facilitate successful outreach? The current best practice in the space is to manually seek a 'warm intro' (normally a mutual). For example, you might:

Scrape crunchbase for worthy leads
See if they have a mutual investor
Ask that mutual investor for an intro
Wait for mutual investor to intro

... Very time consuming! I think we can do better, so I’m spending the next few weeks working at a solution. If you have this problem and would like to work with me (and get early access to the product), please get in touch at james@3rm.co – I’d love to hear from you! Stay tuned 😎