michaelcjoseph (@michaelcjoseph) • Hey
Sharing lessons from scaling products to 100M+ users and $10M+ in ARR. Helping crypto startups do the same.
Publications
- If anyone has been writing premium content (paid newsletter, token-gated blog, etc.), I'd love to onboard you onto a new platform the Unlock Protocol team has built.
You can continue to publish your content as you have been. This would just be another platform to get more distribution.
Reply below or message me if you're interested!
- Whose building a post scheduled for Lens?
- DAO voting is bad UX.
Voting takes a lot of cognitive load. Having everyone vote just increases the probability that people won't vote.
Good: Emphasize delegates for voting
Better: Use AI to learn member preference to help delegates vote
- Just published a new product deep dive on Coordinape!
Coordinape is building in the DAO tooling space, but there's a lot that can be learned from it for both consumer and B2B products.
Here are 3 takeaways to help you improve your product's UX and onboarding 👇.
- Why is proof of human important? This is something I've been mulling over the last few weeks. I've read a few threads on the topic that have been illuminating, but want to gather more.
Found this Twitter thread great to read through: https://twitter.com/DennisonBertram/status/1642333811345178627
And @worldcoin.lens might have some bias, but this is a helpful post: https://worldcoin.org/blog/worldcoin/proof-of-personhood-what-it-is-why-its-needed
Anything else worth reading?
- Health insurance in the USA feels so complicated, especially if you're self employed.
If anyone has experience navigating this, please message me! I would love to chat and learn more.
- Excited to share the first episode of my new podcast, Building Web3. This is an extension of my newsletter where I interview world-class product leaders and founders in crypto to uncover actionable and tactical advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own web3 products.
The first episode is with Yahya El Asmar, the head of product at @layer3.lens . In it, we discuss:
- Problem statements, target users, and aha moments for Layer3
- Big product changes, the motivations behind them, and measuring success
- Doing things that don't scale and how to start scaling
- Discord workflows for crypto products
- Building for a growing crypto market
- Building a product around the technical limitations of crypto
- Progressive decentralization
Thanks for listening and if you find it valuable, please share!
- Excited to share the first episode of my new podcast, Building Web3. This is an extension of my newsletter where I interview world-class product leaders and founders in crypto to uncover actionable and tactical advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own web3 products.
The first episode is with Yahya El Asmar, the head of product at @layer3.lens . In it, we discuss:
- Problem statements, target users, and aha moments for Layer3
- Big product changes, the motivations behind them, and measuring success
- Doing things that don't scale and how to start scaling
- Discord workflows for crypto products
- Building for a growing crypto market
- Building a product around the technical limitations of crypto
- Progressive decentralization
Thanks for listening and if you find it valuable, please share!
- For most crypto products, the first CTA users see says "Connect Wallet."
No one is thinking about using your product to connect their wallet. They want to know how your product will make their lives better. Tailor your CTAs and flows around that.
- The most popular use case for tokens over the last bull cycle has been governance votes and speculation, but the majority of users don't care about voting.
What crypto products are doing innovating things with tokens?
- Had an amazing first podcast interview with @yahya_ea from @layer3xyz on their product, target users, and the reasoning behind their most recent product updates, and where the product is headed next!
Excited to share it with everyone! Sign up for my newsletter https://blog.michaelcjoseph.xyz to find out when the podcast is released!
- My 2 cents: Crypto will only reach 1B (human) users via mobile.
Right now two things are preventing that:
1. Crypto UX on mobile
2. Mobile app store gatekeepers
What can we do?
- Hot take: If you don't have PMF, you don't need a product roadmap.
Your roadmap only has one thing on it. Find PMF.
All you need to do is keep experimenting till you find PMF. And your experiments should change based on what you learned from past experiments.
- Daily active users (DAUs) are an important metric for consumer product engagement.
What crypto products are being built that I want to use day in and day out?
Right now, @farcaster.lens and products on Lens seem like the best candidates. What else??
- `getting started` with #lens in 5 steps 🪴 [March 2023 update]
(0 a) maybe consider adding some information about yourself and a pfp to your profile before you start.
(0 b) "hello world" posts get quite some attention ... 😉 . (if you can post something related to what you are interested in ... 🎇 -> People you start following might take a look at your profile and follow if they are interested in the content you share.) Find one great example at the end of the post.
(1) https://lists.inlens.xyz/lists/818891525288558593 *updated* - list of great profiles to start your lens journey ... you will discover a ton, worth following profiles in the communities of people in this list. lists.inlens.xyz/ in general is a great starting point.
(2) find your twitter contacts on lens: inlens.xyz/ (not everyone with a lens profile, active on twitter, is very active on lens (yet ;-)). Maybe consider connecting with new people, sharing interesting content on lens.)
(3) probably you read this post on @lenster.lens . If you are interested in lens mobile apps, @orbapp.lens and @buttrfly.lens (iOS only) are at the moment - imo - the most advanced general purpose lens mobile apps. One of the beautiful things regarding lens is that it doesn't matter which lens app you use, every lens app has access to the same content and social graph.
(4) what you share on lens is stored and publicly available for a very long time. Probably *forever*. You can hide posts, comments and mirrors. But that's a front-end feature, the data is still available and publicly accessible.
(5) "collects" are a very powerful concept, adding a NFT version of the post to your address (4th symbol below a post on @lenster.lens ). Collects can be monetised -> creators can use collect fees to earn money on lens.
`advanced topics`
other mobile apps: @lentilapp.lens (iOS native general purpose app), @converseapp.lens (iOS @xmtplabs.lens mobile messaging app pls contact @polmaire.lens if you are interested), @lenstaxyz.lens image focused lens mobile app.
other browser apps: @pinsta.lens pin lens content, create and publish pinsta boards. @beatsapp.lens music focused lens app . @focalize.lens browser extension for posting on lens. @youfolio.lens trading lens creator tokens. @dumpling.lens video platform on lens.
market place: @lensport . Buy and sell collects, create token gated posts.
fun: @thesmurfssociety.lens smurfs game, get early access with your lens profile. Mix recipes, find potions and crystals. Be careful highly addictive. @memester-xyz.lens create memes easily and publish directly on lens. lenstube.xyz/ videos on lens. www.lyrical.world (#LensAI) create ai generated images and publish on lens. @amnisiac.lens listen to music in your feed or other profile's feed (e.g. @mixtape.lens ). @truthordare.lens ;-).
tools: @chainjet.lens automate processes, like notifications ( @remindmebot.lens 👀). @lensdropxyz raffle tokens based on constraints (e.g. 1 of the profiles who collected post xyz will get a NFT). @wav3s.lens incentivise people to mirror or comment content. @madfinance.lens Lens Bounties, allowing creators to earn "by creating a Lens post using the creative direction of a brand". @theshr.lens decentralised publishing platform. @letsrally.lens lens spaces. @wagmifund.lens decentralised crowd funding platform. @ethpass.lens add your lens profile to Apple or google wallet.
data: profile.lenskit.xyz profile overview with a github like activity board. https://dune.com/xmc2/lens-profiler get an overview of your lens statistics.
coming soon: @onboardapp general purpose app. @ensocollective digital closet. @lensplayxyz.lens video browsing. #theDial by @emmajane1313.lens . @lenstags.lens content discovery and organisation . #LensGarden dynamic activity based NFTs and more ;-).
lens protocol stats - provided by @buttrfly.lens (weekly posts + comments):
@lenster.lens 58.9%
@phaver.lens 27.4%
@orbapp.lens 8.0%
#lenstube 1.3%
@lensport.lens 0.5%
@buttrfly.lens 0.4%
lens history: approx 5 months ago #lensBeats appeared promising $BEATS airdrops for following and interacting with (collecting) its content. A few weeks, lots of attention and a few K WMATIC later #lensBeats burned its lens profile.
If you are interested in content distribution and increasing your reach on lens, maybe the following post is a good starting point: https://lenster.xyz/posts/0x017566-0xdf (e.g. @bvdaniel.lens combined his introduction post with an eye catching visual (only follower can collect) and an incentivised mirror (+100 followers ). 120+ collects, 80+ mirrors, 40+ comments ...)
list of all lens apps: www.lens.xyz/apps
#gettingstarted #5steps #newonlens #howto #onboarding #0to1
- It's easy to point out all the cases of bad UX in the crypto space.
But there are still amazing products in the space. What are some of your favorite designs and product experiences in crypto?
Comment below!
- The best consumer products all personalize the user experience. And they do so to make the product experience better. Spotify is a great example of this.
Consumer crypto products fail to personalize, despite so much rich on-chain data.
Some potential ideas 👇
- Logging into an app with your wallet is scary because it's tied to what you own. For new products that haven't built trust yet, this can be a huge hurdle to overcome.
How can you disentangle the two so that fear isn't associated with logging in?
- Blockchain transactions are rich with data - not just if tokens were moved between two addresses.
Being able to visualize and search that data in a human readable way can be a huge unlock.
- Has anyone built any kind of scheduler for Lens? Would love to be able to batch some content.
- I've been working with the Unlock Protocol team over the last few weeks. In particular, I've been focusing on a new product for token-gated tweet style content that can be easily shared on a platform like @lensprotocol.
I'd love to do some user research with people that might be interested in using the product or just learning more! **If you'd be open to a 30 min call over the next week or two, reply to this comment or message me!**
And if you could mirror this post for more visibility, I'd appreciate it!
- Thank you @variantfund.lens & Farcaster for hosting two events at the same time in the same place and bringing so many great people together. If only all of ETH Denver could be as easy.
- Everyone at ETH Denver: Web3 needs better UX
Also everyone at ETH Denver: Developers
Where are the designers?
- I did a new deep dive on the consumer experience when claiming a @lensprotocol handle.
The growth of Lens demonstrates the power of a decentralized social graph. But its onboarding also demonstrates the issues a social protocol needs to handle.
3 main takeaways 👇 .
- One thing I’m trying to wrap my head around - what’s the value in collecting a post?
cc @stani.lens @nader.lens
- Who are the best people to follow on Lens?
The starting up problem is always hard.
- Gm! First post on Lens.