11min chapter

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GEN C: Live from Consensus: Building a Brand on Blockchain Without Talking About Blockchain with Ben Leventhal of Blackbird

CoinDesk Podcast Network

CHAPTER

Navigating Market Fluctuations in the Blockchain Space

The chapter discusses the challenges and strategies of building a brand on the blockchain amidst market fluctuations, emphasizing the importance of sticking with a crypto-forward approach, readiness for market shifts, and strategic guidance. It delves into the significance of maintaining faith in blockchain as future infrastructure, understanding the unique challenges of the DGen audience, and building brands intentionally in the crypto space.

00:00
Speaker 2
I
Speaker 1
wanna turn to the crypto market and a couple questions. As an entrepreneur, my guess is if it was, hey, Ben Leventhal is launching a new restaurant play with the success and the track record you've had, I can imagine people would line up to want to be involved. When you first got funded with Blackbird, I assume, especially the fact that you're building on chain, there was a lot of people who were interested in coming in. In that time that you then got funded, we went into a pretty deep bear market. And I guess as an entrepreneur, what was it like building a crypto forward, web three forward brand in a moment when maybe the sentiment, especially post FTX and all of that might have been much more negative? Like would it have been easier just to go traditional web two and why did you stick with it? I
Speaker 2
mean, I think as an entrepreneur in the early stages of building a business, it can always kind of feel like winter, you know, day in and day out. It's a grindy endeavor, you know. I made the analogy recently, you know, we're like a teething baby right now. There's days where it feels like we, you know, got a good night's sleep and there's days when everything doesn't sort of feel nothing seems to be clicking. But I think as it relates to the crypto winter, when I was at Amex, I was at Amex at the start of COVID, and the CEO of Amex, Steve Squery, who think is one of the great leaders in corporate America, he said something to us which has always kind of resonated with me, which is, you know, you got to take the downturns and the bear markets to prepare to accelerate out. markets and downturns and winter is for getting ready. So, you know, I think, and now obviously, you know, things are kind of starting to feel frothy. It feels like we're kind of on the other side of all that. And so I think the most we can do, the thing that is incumbent upon us as a startup is to be ready to accelerate out and to have taken advantage of the downturn where, you know, I mean, let's be honest, like there's no pressure, quarterly results in a downturn, you know, there's not as much pressure. When the markets are cranking, you know, you got to crank alongside them. So I think that's the thing to keep in mind and I think where we try to focus is just on, you know, are we getting ourselves ready now for these markets to run? And are we going to be in a position to run with them? And I think, you know, I think our team has done a great job of getting us ready. So
Speaker 1
there was never a moment in the bearish of the bear, you know, and Bitcoin was in the 30s or 18 or whatever it was, where you said, maybe I'll just pivot this. No, never. Not one moment. I mean, I think.
Speaker 2
So two things. One is because we always we have a very long term view on what crypto is going to deliver. And I think, I think the companies that got into some trouble are companies that were playing a slightly shorter game than it turned out they should be playing. also, I have to give a lot of credit to Fred Wilson, who is obviously is on our board, and one of the all -time greats. He was very, very deliberate with us at the start to say, look, evaluate, because we had, obviously, we talked about valuation, they co -led our seed round and he was very deliberate and insistent with me and with the business around valuation, around thinking on a longer -term basis. So I think we got lucky, we had the right people around us and we were thinking on a long -term basis.
Speaker 1
Just to follow up on that, when you say we're pretty bullish on our long -term opinion of crypto, what does that mean for you? Yeah, I mean, I think as
Speaker 2
we all do, I think we believe that, you know, crypto is going to be some of the fundamental infrastructure of the future world. I mean, I think the potential of the technologies that we're looking at and that we're building with right now are But, you know, they're not consumer grade yet. So we have to take the time
Speaker 1
to get them there. Right. So a question that I ask, we speak to a lot of brands, right? A question that I ask a lot of them is, how do you manage the realities of crypto Twitter? We have, know, folks who identify as DGen and all they want to see is that their prices go up, that the brands that they're involved with are making them money, that they're getting an airdrop, that they're doing something. Now, Blackboard I think was very well designed to not play in those terms, but I've had multiple brands say to me that we don't want the DGen audience. Crypto Twitter is toxic. All day long just wanting us to increase value and value and value is not how we can build a long -term brand. And I guess do you see, or maybe in the design of how you did it, do you see the DGen audience as one that you embrace? Is it not really aware of Blackboard? Are they not looking for their fly to become more valuable? How do you approach a
Speaker 2
very vocal set of people? I mean, we love our D -Gens. We have a couple on our team and they are the heart and soul of what we're doing. But they're like a bunch of Rottweilers in a pit sometimes. Like, you know, they just are just going nuts. And I, you know, we're trying to sort of corral them in a way. And I think sometimes we're successful and sometimes we're not. But we are learning from them, which is important. And obviously in the early days, they are, in some ways kind of a tailwind to what we're doing. So I mean, I think ultimately the de -gens are a big part of our success. And I think it would be it would be foolish for companies to discount the power of them or to be dismissive. But, you know, they're, as said, some of our goals and some of our priorities are misaligned with the sort of hardcore -degenerate priorities. And so we have to find ways of either being okay with the misalignment or kind of help, you know, throttling them back a little bit. Or just kind of coexisting, you know, we, I would say, you know, we're kind of working this through in real time right now. We had a bunch of early users of Blackbird who, you know, went out and, of course, you'd expect this behavior. It started farming fly. Started getting as many points as they possibly could with the expectation that those points would turn into a valuable token. And we saw, you know, we saw crazy behaviors. We saw people with 10 phones walking into a restaurant, like six pockets, different phones tapping it, tapping it, and we saw people paying people to tap in. We saw a kind of gray market developed for trading of tokens. And I said we saw, I'm sure it's, it probably still exists. But, and so we had to shut a lot of that down. But we learned a lot through those behaviors about what we needed to do to essentially, harden the platform, both kind of from a technology perspective, but also just from a kind of business policy standpoint. And we'd certainly appreciate that enthusiasm. So we're now, as we speak, taking steps to essentially reinstate a lot of those early users who definitely went way too far. And most of them, I think, if you really ask them, would say, okay, we probably, you know, we abused the system a little bit. But now we're getting them back onto the platform. We're aligning on what's allowed and what's not allowed and what we need them to do. And I hope they're going to be, you know, humongously valuable to the community. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1
we love the DJs. All right. Two more questions and then we'll wrap it up. The first is for folks out here who are building brands, I mean, I always say the people I think are doing it right who are thinking big Are you guys I love what Nike's been doing? I think they're really intentional about what they build. So Are there others in the space that you think are also doing a good job on this building a brand level? Who do you look at and say like I see that that what they're doing has the thought process and intention? What do you like in the crypto space? Totally.
Speaker 2
I mean, obviously our partner, Base, you know, no small player there, obviously. But I think Base has a great perspective on how to build to the future. I think Jesse is an incredible builder and leader there. You know, our partners at Privy, I think, have an incredibly strong and cogent view of how identity should work. You know, I'm sorry, he couldn't make it, but I think what the Pudgy guys are doing is awesome. So yeah, I think there's some really good stuff out there. Yeah.
Speaker 1
For everyone who was hoping to see Lou Gannett's. I'm sorry. He did get sick yesterday and could not make it. We were gonna have a three -person conversation. And I guess just final, you know, you've now been building this for a little while, you have a great team, you're making headway in this. Is there advice for someone starting today who wants to build and think about how to build a web -free forward brand, but make it at the scale of what Eater, Resi, or Blackboard is going to be?
Speaker 2
I think as with anything crypto otherwise, I think first of all you've got to understand how stiff the competition is. I mean the bar on technology products today is as high as it's ever been and it's getting higher by the second. So I mean you've got to really come with something outstanding. I think you've got to know your lane is. You gotta know, as I say, as I like to say, you gotta understand what your superpowers are. And if you don't know what your superpowers are going in, that's a good moment to pause and figure out what they are. And I think in terms of the crypto piece, let's just be realistic. Let's just understand future is extraordinarily bright but the present is is not is a little choppy and This stuff is not consumer grade and if we try to force -feed it to people it's not going to work. So, you know, let's Let's build to words towards where we want to get to but but do it in a deliberate and thoughtful and, you know, kind of gentle way. So quickly, just following up, what was your superpower? Well, I really know restaurants. I really, somehow I've really figured them out, and I think, you know, brand development, storytelling,
Speaker 1
I think is where, you know, we can really shine. Ben, thank you for spending some time with us. Thank you guys for attending. We'll see you tomorrow back here at the Gen Z stage.

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