Web3 startup teams should adopt a long-term approach

7 months ago

Introduction

Everything in life requires time and patience to succeed. This applies more to new businesses in the web3 space. Already, the traditional business environment is challenging enough. Many startups do not make it beyond the first year of existence. This is because economic pressures such as those from inflation might make it very difficult to cope with financing the business. Beyond any external factors that could make a new business struggle, web3 presents its own unique challenges.

If a new team wishes to enter the web3 market and succeed, a long-term vision could become invaluable. It might not be a rosy affair at the beginning, but things might really fall into place if there is a sticking around for a long time. Consider why every new entrant into the web3 market needs time to succeed.

Time is invaluable in Web3

As a time plans and strategizes how to accomplish their mission, A lot of factors would make long-term outlook very important. Consider the following:

Web3 is built around communities

The way a web3 project is run is quite different from web2 especially for kick-starters. The main nucleus of a web3 project is usually the community. The community produces various users that perform different roles in the course of project execution. For example, from the community comes your investors and early adopters. These group of people are so important for the initial phase of a project launch. They provide the funding and first market for that product.

Other elements of a web3 community perform various roles such as testing features of a new product, getting involved in marketing and promotion, participating in various events and recommending the project to new users. If they community plays these and many other roles for a web3 project, then they are important. The question is how long does it take to build a strong, vibrant and supportive web3 community? You probably know the answer right?

To build a web3 community takes time - a lot of time. It takes time and money to run promotional campaigns to attract users in the first place. It takes time to organize them into a well-structures group. They would have to look at the project and find it credible. They will have to listen to the team and try to understand the value that is being offered. As the community grows from just a handful of users to a bigger crowd, they start recommending the service to others in other to bring referrals. All the above activities will not happen in a month or two.

So in order to build a community strong enough to form a strong foundation for the new project, a web3 team would have to think in long term. They have to accept that natural progression in building a customer or userbase requires time. If everything is done and time is allowed to pass, eventually the community would be both large and vibrant to support the project into the future.

Making and sustaining a viable product

The product development circle in web3 requires for more time than in traditional systems. The main reason for this is that products are developed together with the community. A web2 project does not need to show its users features of their product stage by stage until the final product is launched. They might do the entire production process and release the product once to the market. It is a little different in Web3.

Remember that the community is usually at the center of product development in web3. So instead of making the entire product and all features once, a web3 team develops in stages and share the new features with the community for testing. The community puts the new features to use, and give feedback to the team. Based on that, the team then iterates the product, fine-tuning it based on the majority of opinions from the feedback.

If you have been around the digital space, you are likely familiar with Beta versions or releases of tech products. It happens more often in web3. The beta version is pushed out for testing and feedback before the final product is launched. This aspect of the product development in web3 requires time.

It is all too easy to run the entire production process at once just as its always done in web2. But in web3, that could be a risky strategy. If the community is not being allowed to test and provide feedback at each major stage of product development, the team might end up making a product that will struggle into an already very competitive web3 market.

So to implement an iterative product development system in web3 requires time.

Dispensing Product knowledge takes time

Another time-consuming part of web is letting users know how the product works. Web3 is not like any other mainstream technology that users could easily figure out by themselves. For example, many users easily head into appstore or Google Playstore to download and play games. Its easy because there are no special language or procedures required to do that. But for web3, its different.

Blockchain technology is technical. The masses do not understand what a smart contract is, or how to connect a web3 wallet to a DApp. Many still do not understand the concept of decentralized governance or tokenization. These are just examples to show that web3 could be a little technical for the average man on the street.

Therefore, a web3 team needs to give the uninformed members of their community time to learn the technology and the product. They need to understand how blockchain transactions are done and many other technical aspects. This might take considerable time. Without a long-term strategy, a team might miss out on important community members or potential users that need time to grow in knowledge about the project and underlying infrastructure.

Conclusion

The above 3 reasons and more are why web3 teams should always plan and implement goals in long-term. Giving a project the sufficient time it needs, has always yielded positive results for teams that understand the value of time in the web3 space.