EP26 - 21MAR24 - Michael Tiew at LongHash Ventures on the importance of developer ecosystems, how to build, influencers, price leading fundamentals, is ETH a security??

Longhash
Started 2018, one of first web3 accelerators - more Asia focused; Early stage founders
What’s unique - close partnership w/ ecosystems - Polkadot, Filecoin, Acela
Two funds - 2021 defi fund, 2022 infra/multichain fund
Small distributed team

Accelerator
-running since 2018, how has your approach to startups changed since then
-during bear cycles (2022-2023), hard to find capital - accelerator can really help during this phase
-normally it’s a team of 2 cofounders, we’re 3rd cofounder - first check
$100-200K co-invest
-2024 meta - more money and investment options, accelerator is still core element of helping early stage

What accelerator teams had most success and what was different about them?
-if VC is 99% failure, accelerator is even greater risk
-lot of teams just have idea
-bet on background, seasoned founders
-web3 / crypto native, what’s magic of web3
-“great founders pivot with the times”

Ecosystem report
https://www.longhash.vc/post/bootstrapping-developer-ecosystems-for-web3-protocols
-developers are always your first users - b2b2c
-0:1 phase (bootstrap) and 1:100 phase (flywheel)
-0:1 — need technology, need to market it well, core team must be very vocal + present
what is your positioning? Solana = onchain Nasdaq; Bitcoin = digital gold
Bittensor = incentivization platform for AI models
write a lot, be vocal on twitter and farcaster, produce a lot of content
meme season — attention is next currency
-1:100 phase — now u have developers, how do u get them to build interesting stuff
Ronin: focus on helping game devs build good games — dev tools, SDKs, marketplace
address different dev needs (eg, new devs v experienced ones)

How do builders choose between the ecosystems?
Many are mercenary
How do ecosystems retain devs?
- Case studies on Axelar, Berachain, Solana
- Devs wanna go where the users are — eg, narrative that users are migrating to Base

Flywheel
Get best devs to build a few pioneer apps / use cases — get good users — get more devs
Ronin — onboarded Pixels team one year ago, migrated from Polygon, Mavis Hub + Ronin name service, went from 10K to several hundred K DAU

Token price matters a lot in web3
-in bull, everyone wants to stay in ecosystem, get rewards
-in bear / when price crashes, how to retain? Need clear focus on what ecosystem is about, why devs should build there
-for bootstrapping, need well-designed tokenomics so early adopters are rewarded, yet sustainable (deflationary) in long-run

In-person / offline events — hosting events, panels, sponsoring conference tracks

“Everyone building an ecosystem”
L1s > L2s > L3s
L1s > EigenDA / Celestia
Big projects will become own appchains / rollups
Want to become a place where new ideas are built atop

Influencers / crypto Twitter
“Attention is next big world currency”
Everyone attention span getting shorter, TikTok
Crypto next meme coin, next narrative
Few types — investor type (actually invest), founder/builder type (know tech), token price type (appeal to retail, what’s next 10x)

Links shared:
https://x.com/mo_baioumy/status/1760296558539501698
@mo_baioumy AI x Crypto is a hot narrative right now.

https://www.workingtheorys.com/p/before-the-crowd

This is the same way people talk about the good ole days of the San Francisco tech scene (circa late 2000s to mid 2010s). The meetups were more meetup-y. The hackathons were more hack-y. The nerds were more nerdy. Everything in the tech scene felt more authentic, more egalitarian, and less sceney

follow Michael on X @brazenburrit0