Thread by @sereja_chan, Thread: What do crypto projects miss in their bizdev, community, and team [...]

Thread: What do crypto projects miss in their bizdev, community, and team building strategy? (spoiler: vodka+borsch)

0/ Pre-story: I was born in Ukraine, my parents are from Vietnam and I'm working for US company remotely. So I am in three worlds simultaneously.

1/ I spend 40/40/20 of my time in CIS(RU+UA)/West/Asia crypto-bubbles respectively. From what I can say community in this geos is divided into 3 main categories: "we are in it for technology" (tech-driven), "we are in it for the bucks"(speculators), "we are in it for both".

2/ For west: it's more tech-driven (but maybe that's because of my own bubble)

For asia: it's more speculators-driven, probably like 60/40

For CIS countries: it's mostly speculators-driven, closer to 80/20

3/ Ru-speaking market is huge. And it seems like few understand this. Especially DeFi projects. @cz_binance and @binance for sure know this. Their web analytics clearly indicates that with #1 country by traffic being Russia and #5 is Ukraine. @gleb_kostarev is leading CIS region

4/ I run telegram channel with 8k subs for ru-speaking community https://t.me/crypto_an and I started to get partner/influencer offers from @OKEx and @HuobiGlobal recently which indicates that they are catching up with Binance in this geo.

5/ But like any market segment ru-speaking community has its own specifics. There are a lot of telegram channels with a huge amount of subs (10-50k) which are get-rich-quick narrative first. And they are driving people's attitudes towards the crypto market.

6/ That's the reason why you see a huge amount of traffic on CEX'es from these countries but at the same time the median level of understanding of blockchain and DeFi primitives is really low compared to west/asia geo. But that also means that this market still has huge potential

7/ DeFi projects which are built around trading are the ones who can benefit the most like @bZxHQ @dydxprotocol @opyn_ @futureswapx @DDX_Official and others. I highly recommend these and other teams include CIS market in their strategies if they haven't done so already

8/ Amazing talent. Some prominent DeFi projects were founded by talented people from this region @CurveFinance's @newmichwill @1inchExchange's @k06a @deacix @zerion_io 's @evgeth_ @rockfridrich @akropolisio's @ana_andrianova. Also shoutout to @bantg from @iearnfinance

9/ A lot of new and old blockchain / crypto projects have engineers from UA/RU involved. Like @NEARProtocol @SkaleNetwork @thorchain_org and of course @wavesprotocol @sasha35625. And there are reasons for it. You are just getting the best quality/price ratio in the world here.

10/ That's due to 1) Extremely good math/engineering school from USSR times. 2) Cheap cost of living. CIS is exporting a lot of talent not only in crypto but in IT in general. Our market is flooded with work for engineers but that's mostly outsourcing jobs and not products.

11/ This causes some problems for projects that are trying to build teams of engineers in CIS region (ukraine+ru). Product-mindset is really different from the outsource-mindset. Product-mindset is about taking responsibility, iterating quickly, thinking about the product first.

12/ And outsource-mindset is quite the opposite. You just need to do this part of the code, don't ask questions about the product globally, work slower (because your outsourcing company is being paid hourly and so do you), etc.

13/ If your team end up filled with mostly outsource-minded engineers you will have to:

1. Fire some of them and hire more product-oriented engineers
2. Hire an exceptional product / techlead to lead your team

So consider this too before building your engineering team in UA/RU

14/ TL;DR:

1. Russian-speaking geo is huge in crypto in both market-share & talent. And if you are not including it into your strategy you are definitely missing out.

2. There are some specifics though. People are mostly speculative-driven, talent has outsource-mindset problem

15/ P.S. If you or your project need help or consider expanding your strategy to include ru/ua segment – my DM's are open and feel free to reach out.

16/ Also, I recently found out that some OG crypto trader's are also russian spies.

@edwardmorra_btc @CryptoGainz1 @CryptoCred

17/ Another factor which I forgot to mention and why there are so many retail traders in CIS region is poverty.

Earning 1k$/mo is a good amount of money for most of the people here and it’s not so easy to achieve that number. Trading and investing gives them such an opportunity.

18/ So for someone in western countries earning 1-3k$ on trading /investing is kinda like hobby, for Russian people it can become their main income stream and they can leave their job to pursue crypto trading.

19/ But this leads to drop in quality of people involved and median knowledge of the underlying tech and primitives in the space and gives ground for ponzi schemes (forsage) and other pure scams. This problem is solvable but it takes time and effort

20/ I currently see my mission in this area as following : “Bring knowledge to people and make them think with their own heads”. That’s the reason why I’m sharing my thoughts in my telegram channel.

21/ Friends and colleagues who share the same vision and generated high quality content for Russian speaking community: @CryptoLamer @zavodil_ru @z0rk11 @AndriiMakarov

Latest Threads Unrolled: