Awesome People - Ep 97
Content, UX, Messaging, Climate
Hi founders and fellow VC Friends!
Each week we deliver one awesome person to your inbox. These are the people you need to know—the marketers, sales gurus, engineers, ops wizzes—who give your startup superpowers 🚀. The best part is, everyone is hireable!
In addition to this newsletter, we also run a Web3 Pallet job board.
Know someone who wants to work in web3? Tell them to join our Pallet board.
Want to hire top talent? Join our Pallet Collective to view 125+ pre-vetted candidates ready for interviews. We’ll drop another 20 candidates this week 💃🏽.
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Please Meet P.J. Murphy, Your Content & Product Expert 🛠
P.J. is a rare creative who’s focused on content, product, and design. Most recently, he worked as the first product and content hire at SuperRare, an NFT marketplace backed by Mark Cuban, 1Confirmation, and Naval Ravikant. He also was a freelance designer on the blockchain team at Medal.tv, a game clipping company with millions of active users.
He’s charted his own path. Ten years ago, he started working with famous YouTubers. Eventually, he transitioned to working with livestreamers. He realized that the only way for influencers to make money was to make or sell products. One thing led to another, and P.J. became a product designer. He also founded his own video company, FrameNinja, which served over 100k+ unique live viewers. One little-known fact about P.J. is that he learned how to code when he was 7.
He's trusted across the NFT and crypto art communities. You can hire him to get help with product design, content marketing, and content strategy.
He wants to continue working in web3. Ideally, something related to art, NFTs, wallets, or consumer products.
Want an intro to P.J.? Respond to this email and I’ll connect you!
PJ was gracious enough to share 3 pro tips with us here ✨
Web3 companies have struggled to reach the mainstream consumer. Why? Web3 companies are shaped by tech innovations, instead of consumer experiences. Therefore, products often feel too complicated and brands too techie.
The average consumer is put off by web3 technical hurdles and risk. To attract users beyond crypto natives, startups need to get creative. Storytelling and narrative design are the keys to resonating with customers.
Here are 3 tips for producing content in Web3:
1. Focus on consumer UX and messaging
Web3 is currently positioned for creators and crypto-natives. To mature, crypto needs to focus on use cases for mainstream consumers. Imagine if Spotify positioned itself as a tool for creators to distribute their music, instead of as a place to listen to music with friends. They wouldn’t be nearly as successful. Unfortunately, that’s the state of web3 today.
Build your narrative around the customer UX. This narrative should be consistent across your product design, marketing, and content. As the Director of Product at SuperRare, I designed our new website homepage. I wanted to focus the narrative around our value proposition. I landed on “Collect Digital Art — Buy and sell NFTs from the world’s top artists” with an additional value proposition for customers to “browse and build their collections.” We also added a rotating carousel with new and curated art pieces so customers could understand the quality of our stock. This branding was straightforward and communicated to customers why they should use SuperRare. Besides the new homepage, we introduced a feed, similar to Twitter or TikTok. The change helped users explore art on the platform and led to an increase in clickthrough rate and engagement.
Alongside our website rebrand, we updated our marketing. We emphasized the new personalized features, like the ability for users to control their feeds and trending events.
Here’s a video we used to promote the new user experience. Notice how it speaks directly to the user and focuses on the value proposition. After the rebrand launched, the cumulative volume tripled over six months.
The takeaway? Focus on the consumer and meeting their needs.
2. Understand your content target market
At a startup, resources can be scarce. Don’t waste time producing content before you have content goals and know where you want to distribute your content. Start by understanding where your customers hang out online. For example, Kofi, a partner at 1Confirmation (a crypto VC fund), did some basic analysis to understand where NFT exchanges focus their social traffic.
At SuperRare, we conducted a similar (albeit deeper) analysis for our marketing campaigns. We realized that while Instagram and Twitter are the leading platforms, YouTube is on the rise. We used this information to shape our campaigns. Initially, we focused on short-form content. Then, we invested resources to explore longer content on YouTube like educational videos and artist profiles. With more effective communication we increased our traffic.
3. Make content an integral part of your business
Given the importance of social media, you need to stand out. The best content is educational, entertaining, or inspiring.
In the last cycle alone, projects like Bored Apes and Crypto Covens have built their brands almost entirely through Twitter.
You may argue that everyone posts so much on Twitter and that it’s overcrowded — but that’s a misconception.
Content is, and always was, the best way to build trust.
Trust is how you convert people into customers that pay.
So what’s the secret?
Content works best if you start early and build it alongside your main product. The biggest content mistake is to think of it as a byproduct, not a priority.
For example, at FrameNinja, I started a YouTube channel where we posted quick tutorials for livestreamers. They ranged from simple, “How to Create a Timer,” to more complex, “How to Make a Custom Transition” videos. The key to success for this project was to include keywords for viewers in the titles. Keywords are key for YouTube campaigns. Our videos blew up in our target market and kickstarted a sturdy user acquisition funnel.
Want an intro to P.J.? Respond to this email and I’ll connect you!
As always, please let me know if you have any questions and if you want an intro to P.J.!
Stay awesome,
Julia Lipton + Will Johnson (our amazing fellow who edited this newsletter)
Founder of Awesome People Ventures & Talent
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Awesome People Continued 🤩
Recent Features
Uneeb, Your First Engineering Hire — He’s worked across infrastructure, back-end, and front-end teams at Amazon, Microsoft, and Coinbase. He recently took Coinbase Pay from zero to one. He led technical implementations for multiple fiat-to-crypto integrations.
James, Your Head of Content and Brand — Head of Communication and VP of Brand at two successful startups. He has experience leading messaging, working with Fortune 500 companies, and even interviewing Presidential candidates.
James, Your NFT-Native Ops Leader — most recently, led OpenSea’s internalization product including everything from research to go-to-market. Prior to OpenSea, James was an executive at Ula, the hypergrowth Indonesian e-commerce startup backed by Sequoia, Tencent, and Jeff Bezos.
Feature Openings 💼
Arkive: Growth Manager
Syndicate: Fullstack Engineer
Kairos Art: Founding Engineer
3Box Labs: Head of Engineering
Mirror.xyz: Design Lead
P.S. Client Draft Launch 🌳
Looking for top talent for your climate startup or for your climate portfolio? Climatedraft.org runs monthly “drafts” to educate and activate top talent wanting to move into climate. Join Lowercarbon Capital, Coatue, Charm Industrial, Pachama, MCJ, and others in hiring from the network.
Looking to transition into climate? Apply now or send your friends to climatedraft.org.
Climate Draft is run by my friend Joel Wish who is a serial entrepreneur. I’m a fan. I’m long on web3 and very long on climate.
*Semi-related, Joel also put together this great presentation on investor updates. Founders, you should read it.