Defining your brand story, other tips and trends
Editor’s note: This post originally appeared in our web3 newsletter — a guide to trending topics in crypto with insights and resources from engineers, researchers, and others on the a16z crypto team. Subscribe to see it in your inbox every other week.
🛠️▶️ Feature: Company building resources for early-stage startups
As learners of all ages went “back to school” last week, we’re sharing some of our most popular talks and takeaways for early stage startups.
Originally presented at a16z Crypto Startup Accelerator (CSX), the curated presentations and conversations cover go-to-market models in web3, lessons from games builders and chain builders, and much more. You can also find more talks from our CSX program on our YouTube channel. While the real magic happens in person — the fall cohort was just announced and is starting in NYC this week! — these videos are a great place for anyone who wants to brush up on company building fundamentals.
Meanwhile:
Defining a brand story is critical for clarifying a startup’s purpose, refining its messaging, and smoothing the way for everything else the company does. So in this newly released talk, Steven Ebert delves into the essentials of brand building for early-stage startups, including tips specialized to web3.
watch here
How can founders show why their vision matters… and why they are the right team to bring that vision to market? In this newly released talk, a16z crypto General Partner Arianna Simpson shares learnings and frameworks from thousands of pitches. She covers the pitch process from start to finish — from crafting a narrative for one’s product and team to how to follow up.
watch here
As algorithms evolve, trendy platforms emerge, and new viral content types catch on, there will always be yet another social media account/ profile to set up and experiment with. So, how do resource-strapped startups and time-constrained founders figure out where to start? And once they do, how can they tell what’s working? This post from a16z crypto’s Ish Verduczo covers guidelines for taking a social presence from 0 to 1 — including setting goals, identifying a target audience, and measuring success; as well as knowing how, when, and what to post.
read here
Bonus: check out the reading list from CSX 2024
🎙️🎧 Trends: How tech advances thanks to blockchains spread to other industries
with Dan Boneh, Tim Roughgarden, and Sonal Chokshi
In this special 50th episode of the “web3 with a16z” podcast, we discuss how work in the blockchains/ crypto space has led to advances in several important technologies — which can be used by many other industries well beyond the crypto industry.
Tim Roughgarden (a16z crypto Head of Research and professor at Columbia University) and Dan Boneh (a16z crypto Senior Research Advisor and professor at Stanford University) discuss these advances, which were not possible before — and which range from automated market makers to credible auctions, DAO governance, fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) and (TEEs) trusted execution environments, to zero knowledge and much more. They also offer useful explanations along the way for anyone new to these technologies or seeking to understand the big picture.
It’s an innovation story we’ve seen over and over again, from the space program to other massive invention coordination efforts: Technologies developed for one purpose often lead to benefits for humanity overall.
📝 💼 PSA: On crypto financial reporting
Emily Westerhold
Current GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) have not allowed balance sheets to tell the full financial story for any company holding digital assets. In an ideal world, every company holding digital assets would follow a standard reporting practice — allowing operators and investors to intuitively and transparently understand the liquid value of their assets. But even with recent FASB (Financial Accounting Standards Board) changes for digital asset accounting, the guidance isn’t complete.
So, many of us in the industry put together thoughts on the Statement of Digital Assets or “SoDA” — a new financial statement that provides a bridge between current GAAP accounting and the value represented on-chain for all digital assets — based on seeing its impact on companies. Increasingly, many subledger tools out there are already adopting the SoDA and making it a standard report as well.
Crypto companies should implement this standard in their financial reporting and operations. The bottom line: More transparency in financial statements leads to better business decisions.
📰 📖 Around the web
A high-level technical overview of fully homomorphic encryption — Jeremy Kun
What does Bitcoin, and monetary economics more generally, have to do with price theory? — Josh Hendrickson, Economic Forces
I’ve spent the last several years studying NFTs, and have seen firsthand how much social value they create and the novel business models they enable — Scott Kominers
How the SEC’s attack on NFTs harms creators — Christian Catalini, Forbes
–a16z crypto editorial team
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