How to build a Web3 Community w/ Shondra Washington

Green Money. I'm gonna enter this. You to some of the biggest names, some of the brightest minds and brilliant ideas I feel black in building were simply using Texas Secure your back. This podcast is for you. Shanja Washington worked in financial services in New York to she learned corporate finance and financial modeling as a technology investment banker at one of the fastest growing investment banks in the World's teen She co found the TBC Capital and Education

first investment firm. Today, she's on the own demand CFO and strategist for early stage companies and its co founder at black at, which is building a token gated community of black creatives investors in entrepreneurs. I asked Chandra, who's deep in the throws of building a community on the blockchain, what is the fundamental difference between building a web three community versus building and I r L community. So, I actually don't think there's a difference between um web three

community and I r community. The only thing is the mechanism in which community is being delivered. So typically with I r L you may be doing text messages to find each other and then you're getting involved or you're getting together um and you're meeting I r O the Well, the one difference I would say, I guess, um, I'm going to backtrack a little bit, would be that we're like on all the time. So there is no all on um web three communities. So with black at were

literally texting. We're texting Sunday evening about like what movies we had seen as like children, so like there's always somebody talking about something. Uh. And so if I did have to choose a difference, it would definitely be that you're always on. You don't have to wait to schedule to see your friends. They're just always there. Somebody's always

there and they can be a lot bigger. I said there's no differences, and then here I am, they can be a lot bigger, right, Like you don't have to um coordinate schedules, you don't have to UM fly to see your friends like in digital in the digital world

and web three, your friends can be anywhere. We have people that are in London, we have people um that are on the other side of the world and on the other side of the country, and we're all up at different times um communicating and having fun with each other. So I think that points to an interesting thing I was gonna bring up later in this conversation, but it

makes sense to bring it up now. And when I think about platforms that I'm a part of, like Discord, for instance, I get that a discord can be very intimidating just for the amount of information coming through for people, especially people were trying to understand what the heck you know the blockchain is, what n f t s are, what you know dows are, And so when you think

about this thing is never really off. How do you manage the flood flurry of information coming at you when you're just trying to figure out, you know, where the bathroom is. Yeah, so that's actually really fun that you brought that up. So a couple of things. They're one. I think we did my team did research and we found that people were and it's a crazy number. I

think people were involved with about forty different communities. Whether you're checking all of them, whether you're talking and all of them, that's a different story because you're most likely a thousand percent not but being a part of forty communities, you are going to miss something UM and typically what we're seeing is that people are finding the communities in which they UM either are getting the most alpha, so where they're getting the most information that will make them money,

whether it's in Web three or investing or whatever UM or they're they're involved in the communities in which they are finding their friends and like they have some type of shared interest, so they could be social communities. But one of the things that we did at black at is we took on that problem head on. So our CTO, Audrey Taylor Quinnya started and we were in all three All three of the co founders of black at are part of CPT, which is another token gated Web three

community UM and the messages were moving very fast. It's about six people in there at one point, and messages were moving so fast. So Audrey took it upon herself

to create this UM this product. It was an m v P where she said, how do I get the best information to the people that aren't able to talk or aren't able to check all of these UM discords and all of these telegram messages is And so we created a product black ats first product product, which we launched in June called Gated to solve that exact problem.

So basically, what we're doing, we're going into these discords, We're going into these telegram groups, and we're finding either the penned messages, so a message that is penned is something that an administrator says, hey this is important, let me pin it to the top of the chat. Or we're looking at the engagement. So how many people, how many different unique emojis were did people give to this

one UM this one message because obviously it's important. So we're going into these group messages or these group chats, and then we're taking the most important information and sending it directly to your email. So we're making it easier for people UM to get that information because it's super super hard to catch up, especially if you're in forty communities. Yeah,

go in a little bit further there. Because you know, when you think about traditional social media, as we thought about community in Web two, UM they have evolved to um innovate on their algorithms to help you determine what you should see, things that you know you missed while you were offline, right, And so how do you imagine because you just kind of touched on this and go deeper, I'm asking, how do you imagine in Web three, things may be curated so that inside of that forty different channels,

I'm a part of the things I should see. It's still going to determine, Okay, Will needs to see this. So I think it's it's it's dependent on the cut type of community. Right. So there's a lot of these communities in which you guys are in this community because you own a certain n f T And if you own these n f t s, then there's typically some utility that you get from owning from having this shared experience of owning this NFC and that utility could be a party in New York or at a conference, or

it could be a discount with a retailer. There's all types of things it could be contract tickets. You just never know what these um what the utility is that that these n f T communities are bringing to their

members UM. But basically, you know, depending on the community, the type of community you're in, your administrator or the person that's kind of running the community, or the or even the community members, which is something we can talk about later about like decentralization and empowering the community members to decide what's most important. But it depends on the

type of community. Because if you're in uh an n f T community where their utility, you want to make sure and your administrators want to make sure that you're not missing any messages, right, that you're not missing any of that utility, any of that UM any of the perks for joining that community, because that's why you're there, right.

That's yes, you bought some beautiful art maybe UM, but part of the reason why you're there is because there's all of these different perks that you can get if you're in more of an alpha community, which is a community in which you're talking about different plays that you can UM invest in to get money or to UM join other communities. So an alpha community uh there there

there may be perks. There may be allowed lists and other ways that UM, you can benefit from being in that community, But the most important messages maybe those allow lists, maybe the opportunities for you to learn about other projects

in which you could potentially make money. So I think UM determining what who determines what the information UM that you need is is the manager and in other cases, which is what we're kind of playing with now and looking at the emoji reactions and the unique emoji reactions. So if you go into discord now there's messages that could have ten, twenty who knows, you know, unique a

different emoji so hard eyes, um, heart fire. There's all these different things that people are responding to messages with and so we're right now we're playing with an algorithm that will show us what's most important based on how the community quote unquote voted. So they didn't necessarily go in and put a poll in, but they voted by their engagement. UM. That's something we're trying to play with a little bit. We just started, and we're noticing that

each community is so different communities. Some communities are faster, some communities right really long messages. Some communities have thirty emojis like it's it's really interesting to see the difference. Um, but I think what we're talking about now about letting the community decide and looking at the unique reactions and how people are reacting, letting that be what's most important

is the next phase. I think that. So I'm a part of a community which hasn't been released publicly, but as part of building that community, it was built for a specific audience, particularly Black people. And um, your mission was to help black entrepreneurs, black creatives, you know, black musicians, what whatever type of creative you are a black entrepreneurs as well at Black at And one of the conversations we have earlier is how do you protect who this

community is for? Because the point of you know, cryptos like anybody effectively can get in. You can have the allow lists, you know, but at resale could potentially be to anybody. So how do you protect the community this mission ultimately? Or is that even like a fair question you know to be asking? So it's it's a fair question.

I mean, like if you're saying a community is for a certain type of person, then you would assume and and that is like the shared vision, then you would assume that that is what you're getting when you buy this community. So I think it's a fair question, and it's a question that I've gotten before UM. And you know, there's not to be honest, like to be frank and transparent. There's not a this technological way for us to figure out UM how to protect that right. There's in terms

of service. There are UM rules that you're expected to follow before joining this joining our group chat, but that's really other than like self governance. That's really all that we can do to make sure that we are protecting that space. We are bay very very alert though, and very much looking at our members and the new members. But a couple of things that we're seeing, uh is that so every UM large conference, I would say, or not even not even large, but there are different conferences.

Were Black at Travels and UM either we have experiences or we create content such as, UM, you know, a day of panels and maybe a closing party or whatever it is that we're doing at that conference. Uh so at Black Tech Week and Aren't Bossel and south By Southwest and Consensus, we created these group chats for black folks that were traveling to these different conferences. And it's

specifically for black That is why it's black AT. So a lot of people think I'm saying like black hat are black, app it is black and the AT sign UM meaning we are black at south By Southwest or

Black at Bossel. And so there's one time recently where we were at tech Week and there's somebody in there we were we were all like, I don't know, y'all, I am not bored, and so we had to like we just we went in, asked some questions and then we decided like, this is not UM a person that will be a part of our community, and so we let them know and and uh they were kicked out. So you know, we are vigilant UM and we're definitely making sure that we are checking to make sure that

this is a space for black folks. UM. The other thing that we're doing for people that want to support black AT without them being black themselves is we are partnering with different communities to UM purchase a black AT token and then allow them to give them to their community members. We've had a couple of communities UM do that,

and we're hoping to partner with more. UM. We think that's one of the best ways of getting your giving your community OUTPHA is giving them a place where they not only be a part of whatever community that you created, UM, that our partner has created, but also wait for them to get further into Web three. Right. That only increases the value of their of their token UM by allowing them to be part of other Web three communities UM.

And then we're also having we have sponsor token. So we have some sponsors that have said, you know what, I got some black folks. If I'm not black, but I got some black folks in my network that I think would be great for this, And so they bought tokens and then gifted them to others. So that's kind of how we're we're maneuvering. But everybody knows this is

like a black black black space. Yeah. So I was thinking about this, UM because there's so many people who who get excited about the implications of what Web three can do, and some people just here all the time

and like, Okay, something cool is happening over here. And I think about this quote that Steve Jobs had put out, you know, several years ago obviously, and I'm on a paraphrase, but he talked about how how technology is nothing but what matters is you know humans, and that people are basically and smart and then if you know, if you give them the tools, will do incredible things with them.

And so I think about how the story that I read about how you and Harold and somebody else had had had thought about this idea for a black at and and I wonder how you would admnage people to build these communities, whether they're just interested in the technology and what it can do, um, you know, technologically, or that they see a larger mission that is more effectively

reached by employing Web three technology. So number one, how do you think about the Web three or is it was the technology is super cool and you was like I gotta do something here, or you're like, okay, I got my people and how can I best help them? How do you think about that when you're building these toctal technologies? So I think there are a lot of communities and companies whoever creators that are just like jumping into Web three because it's like the new thing, which

it happens whatever, um. But for us, we were thinking about a couple of things. One we were wondering, how do we token gate this so that the value isn't on us, right, We don't just own the value, but our community members owned the value. And so that was one of the reasons why we decided to have to make it token gated, right, Like, we wanted to create a token around this so that it wasn't just us

owning the value. So what I mean by that is like, if you are a member of Soho House or another community, I don't know, think of something. I'm sure you're part of something, and you decided to get a membership. Um, you buy the membership and you invite all your friends. Uh. And as your friends come and become members, then it becomes more valuable to you, right Like you're like, great, you know, I can go get launched, I can do my work whatever you're doing. But once you leave, that's it.

The value stays with Solo House. You no longer hold that value, you no longer get to interact in that way with your friends. Um, and you don't really get any um. Uh. You don't really get any um return on your investment once you leave. Obviously there may be

relationships and things that you've built there. Uh. And so because this is a token gated community, there's also a monetory monetary value to this, right, Um, as you bring in more friends, and I'll go into kind of the mechanism of how we priced our tokens in a second. But as you bring in more friends, and as the community gets larger, and as we build more products, and as more people hear about what we're doing at black at UM, the value of the community collectively goes up.

The value of the community goes up. But but the fact that you're part of it collectively, we're all bringing we're all raising the value of the community together. And in order to show that, UM and really UH used token omics to kind of highlight that point. We didn't reverse touch auction, which means the first d and twenty five tokens that were sold, we're at point one eight. So you got in early. It was point one eight. I think, I don't even know what it was at

that point. I don't know, maybe four thousand, maybe a little less, I don't know. Whatever. It wasn't in February. So you got in at point one first, the next fifty we're at point three, the next fifty we're at point five. The next fifty will be out I think point seven five, Uh and so every fifty, every um, every incremental of fifty, there's an increase in the value literally in the value of the coin based on the mechanism that we used. And so there are some people

when you leave right you can undercut the market. You right now, the only way to get our tokens is by going to our website and minting the token there UM. But if you have you bought the token for point one and you for some reason have to leave or whatever we decided to sell, if you can go to our if someone could go to our our website and buy it at point five and you could sell it for point four, then you've made you know, three times what you paid for it. UH. And so there's inherent value.

And one how we did the token onyx and to UM what happens when we all come together in the black at community UM UH is more known and UH is built out. And so you got me thinking about a couple of different things. And I am a firm believer. I think it was like Napoleon Hill or Dale Carnegie or somebody. And he said, you know, if I can help enough other people get what they want, I'm gonna

get everything I want. Right, And so I think about that and this is ongoing battle in my mind about that concept and competition, like I'm a competitor to and most business over the last particularly in tech over the last decade maybe two was like I want to own the whole thing. You've got this Peter Teal like competition is like for suckers or whatever, like they want to just own everything. And then you have what what you

talked about this shared value? And so how in in web three can you go into more deeply the philosophy of how value gets created when you're not talking about competition. You're not talking about the people at the top get the most. You're talking about all of us are going to win together. Yeah, I mean that that is That's that's the ethos, Like that's literally it right, like you here's the thing. And I think about this a lot because there's different projects that have PfP drops or a

thousand drops. We only chose five hundred UM and and I've talked a lot to our community. We just had one of our first local events in d C where I don't know how many of us were there, maybe eight UM and we talked about like what makes black at special to them? And a lot of them said because it was a it's a smaller community in which I know everybody. I feel like, um, I feel like it's a we're a family, And I think you have to understand that there's different places that you can play.

This is something that I've been really thinking about because those larger communities are not what we're doing, right, Like, there's so much uh specialization I think that can come from these really small communities that there I don't the ethos is shared like that's literally the ethos of like

Web three is shared ownership, shared value. And I don't know if there has to be competition because they're so many ways that we can go where my community can overlap with your community, right, Like, my community can provide something completely different. My community can be a community of

black builders, of black collectors. Your community could be folks that have never heard of Web three that are brand new to the space and need, like you know, complete education on what it is and there and we could we could both have people in all communities and that it's really interesting that you say that because a lot of these larger communities when we were building gated we're still building it obviously, but as we're building Gated, um,

we're going to these very large communities, so CpG pop um wow cool cats like all these larger communities um aku. And my question is like, well, wait a minute, guys, Like there's so much overlap here, how are we going to make money? Like we if somebody is only buying one token to get onto Gated and there's five of their communit, he's on this platform, we're losing out. But the but the thing about that is is that the more communities that are on that platform, the more value

the product becomes. Um. So what we're seeing is that like that overlap is actually bringing more value to the platform. Right, The more eyeballs is bringing more eyeballs to our platform. So I don't think that it's like, yes, it's a competition thing, but I think that there's so much specialization. And think about it, right, Like what n f T s are right now is art essentially, right, Like it's

collecting art. But if you think about like art in and of itself, it is very subjective, right, So I may like something for some completely different reason then my best friend over here, who may hate it, right, And so a community of a certain type of art maybe for me. And there's so many iterations to art in general that like there's not competition necessarily between artists. I don't know, like I'm not an artist, but like it is it is a creative endeavor in which it appeals

to your emotions. Where is there is there competition there or is it just like what is the emotion that's I'm that's being invoked evoked from me from buying this piece of art. And I think it's the same thing with these communities and buying these Yeah, but like a lot of artists are broke. This is a way for them not to be. This is this is another way for we're empowering the creator. Yes, artists are broke, but like I think that's a separate topic, right answer, complice.

But I also think that like this is a way to put if we're talking about shared ownership and ship and shared equity, like this is another way that we can empower creators to create community around their art so it's not just somebody consuming the art. Right, So we just had I'll give you an example, hopefully this is

an example. We just have the artist Nick Davis, he apparently was a star on Instagram, had never heard of him before, and one of our community members, he has an n f T collection with House of First dropped. One of our community members dropped his collection in our in our group chat. The collection is called Black is Beautile. It's like black is Beautiful, I need if you haven't seen it there there are pieces for sale on open Sea. They just sold out last Friday. Um, but she dropped

the pieces in there. The whole community, all of us in this subchat, the n f T subchat, were like, wait a minute, who is this man? Where can I buy his stuff? We all went, We all bought all of his all not all, but we bought all of these artworks were the single largest holder. And from there right I said, guys, we need to be celebrating more black artists. We need to be supporting more black artists. And let's talk to this man. I am so touched

by his work. I need to talk to him. So now we had a Twitter spaces and we got to hear about his story. He got to tell talk to us about um, why he made certain pieces, the feelings that he was having behind those pieces. He had been creating this collection for three years while he was going through some health stuff and it was kind of his way out, and so he was able to create community right by drawing these beautiful pieces of art and then dropping them as an n f T collection. And now

I don't know if he was broke before. I'm not saying he was, but like, I'm not saying that at all, guys, but I'm saying that, you know, allowing uh this new medium, uh is a different way of interacting with the art and the artist, which I don't know if that was there was a way to really do that before. I love that. Um there was a quote I read that you had said this the following, UM, I'm excited to be behind creating his space for us to learn about

the new frontier of Web three unquote. And that might be an odd place to unquote something, but there's a point there. And what I found interesting about that quote was it implies that I'm in the community to learn about how the community works. So I'm gonna read the chord again. It says, I'm excited to be creating behind creating a space for us to learn about the new frontier of Web three, and I gotta get in to be a part of this learning opportunity. Towards a lot

like college. You know, I gotta get in to get the education, and so so I guess is that correct? Is the implication that I gotta be in web three to figure out what the heck is going on over here? Or that I can learn from the outside and figure out what's going on? Or is it that I just gotta get in. What's the best way to learn here? Listen,

I said it for a reason. I think people think that they can just read up about this or watch a lot of YouTube videos, but like the best way talk to anybody, I'm serious, talk to anybody in web three. You know what they're gonna say. They're gonna say, jump in, h go to your spaces, follow your people on Twitter, buy some crypto by an n F T D y

o R, do your own research, and jump in. And the reason why I think that UM doing it within a community is because, especially a community like black at is because there are people that UM, I know nothing about literally will come in there and be like I am still learning, uh, But there are people that have that are like djents, like are really into it, and the conversation will fluctuate right between what did you mean by that? Here's a podcast to listen to. UM have

you heard about this? Read this Twitter thread to give you information about x y Z. It's much easier to do it with folks that are doing it than trying to do it on your own, and so like, yes, I think the way to learn is to jump in. You don't have to start with an n f T that's worth you know, two fifty or whatever the cost is. There are much uh, there're n f t s that are m worth you know, point zero five ether or lower.

There are ways that you can get in, but I think the best way to learn is to get in and jump in. These communities like black At and others can quickly turn into very rich prospects. And what I mean by that is, you know, it can start at very low ethan because of the value being created, shoot up quick. And so, because part of your mission is to educate but also create values, how do you balance the value increase in the tokens and still keep it

accessible for people. It won't always be as cheap as it is right now, and it shouldn't be. But how do you still balance the educational component and getting more of us in when there's only you said five hundred you know, p FPS five hundred tokens, and over time

those are going to be very rich prospects. Okay, so you know that is another question that I asked myself a lot, Like literally just had a conversation with our co founders with my co founders and said, guys and I need to think about this, like, how are we reaching past the five hundred people that we are going to bring into this community? Uh, you know, what are the ways that we can make this more accessible so that people don't think that this is an exclusive community.

There's a couple of things here. UM. One, we just started our series and we restarted our series about um we call them black at community chats where we bring in community members to come in and educate us about different things. So they may educate us on UM, they may educate us on security. On There's one community member that educated us and gave her gave us her I guess she created an n f T project and then turned that into an animated series. So she talked to

us about how she did that. UM. There's all these different ways that our community members have come in and so we're opening that up to a larger audience. UM. So that will be those those Twitter spaces where anybody can join UM, so you don't have to be a part of the black community to UM get those education

content at education content. UM. The other thing that we are doing is we're making sure with artists too, Like we're making sure that we're bringing them in so that we there are other people that can um that can UH support black artists. And so we're doing a whole initiative around UM, not just us supporting them, but let's have uh community and conversations with people that may not know this artist so that we can we can have our community support them, not the black out community, but

black folks in general. UM. And then the other thing is is that you know, and this I don't know, this maybe a little controversial, controversial, but like I think there are certain communities in which there will be a certain bit of like it's it's it's just a smaller community, right, And there's purpose behind that because we want, like I said earlier, we want our members to feel like there are family. We want them to be able to ask questions.

We're in the process of building products and so like you know, the people that we want to help us

build we don't. We can't at this point, Like I don't even know if I'd be able to manage thousands of people as we're trying to build out these products, not right now, right UM and so just thinking about where black At is, it is a token gated community, but it's also a tech company, UM and so we're trying to be very pointed in how we are moving forward, not with our community members were not exclusive at all to like who we want to bring in, but more so like this is what we're trying to do, and

so we have a we have a different mission right Like our mission is we're creating products. We are creating I r L experiences, and those experiences are ways that you can learn more about UM web three. But like the community is small for a reason because we wanted we want our members to feel close to each other. Now, I'm not saying that there's not products or not products projects in the works that will allow us to reach more people. That's definitely something that we are definitely keen

on doing and on the roadmap UM. But right now, we're just trying to keep it small and create different entry point or not entry points, touch points where people can interact with us and interact with UM what we're teaching. So we have a Black Tech Week we Data three. We did three panels. One of the panels was wtf R n f T S and there are so many people that we partnered with Ledger for that, and there

are so many people that came up to us. You people learned how to get their first wallet downloaded, their first n f T and then the first fifty people got a Ledger right and so UM. There are all of these different touch points that don't necessarily mean that you have to be part of the community, UM, but we are helping to educate more and more people onto what web three is. And so one of the things I hear most often when people are creating communities is

the value of that token. And one of the first things you hear is like meetups and other than meetups, what are some innovative value propositions a token holder might find interesting when they join a community like this. UM, I think, what value have I found outside of the meetups? Which to be honest, like you know, being a thousand percent honest, I'm kind of over it. I'm kind of over the meetups. I think that that is something that we will always do because it is ingrained in us.

Will always be half digital half I r l UM. But I think there's a new frontier right UM. And I don't know what that is, and I've been racking my brain about around it because I think people are moving out of I think people are even moving out of just alpha chats. It's like I don't, I don't and I don't know what's next. Um. I can't even I can't even predict what's next. But it's something that I've been thinking about. UM. I don't think meetups are

going away. I think the word to use maybe experiences. I don't think meetups are going away because we all still have to live in the world. Like we also have to actually live in a world in which we are interacting with people person to person. I also think that there's so much value that you get from interacting with someone in real life and that energy exchange. UM. And so you know when you when you think about when.

So we just had our We've had all these different meetups and irrelevance, but we had our first local meet up last week. It was a completely different experience. And then when we got on the chat, we were closer, like it was a dip that that meeting people are

folks in person translated into a better community online. UM. And I think what's going to happen is that outside of just us meeting up UM and talking to each other and saying like oh your x y like, instead of doing that stuff, I think that there will be a way for us to have shared experiences in which that will be the genesis of the conversation and not UM just like where do you live, how are you feeling?

I love what you have to say, um, And then those will kind of be the through lines within the community to make the community closer. I don't think the community continues to grow at the rate that it does without those meetups, but I do think there's a next step to this. I just don't know what it is. One of the best definitions of a job description of a CEO I ever heard was set the direction and

make sure we don't run out of money, right. And so I wonder how in a in a web three community, when you think about there's so much shared value, they're shared governance in so many ways because you know, tokenholas can vote and all these different things. How would you define the job of a Web three CEO. Oh, that is a good question. Um, you're still setting the vision in some cases. Right. There are cases in which it is a doubt, in which um, it's shared governance. It's not.

You know, there's someone that's kind of leading the things and moving things in the right direction, but you know, the whole community is setting the direction. Uh. Then there are some cases in which, if you are not a doubt, it is still the role of the CEO to set the direction. I think the Web three CEO though, where and and I listen, I tell my folks this is that are the most important person to me. I don't care what you want, don't care what you want talking

to the leaders on my team. I only care about the community members. I don't care. I don't care about anything else. Literally, I do not care about anything else. If they are not being heard, UM, taken care of, UM, nurtured, like all of the things, then we're not doing our job as leaders of this community. And so I think that the difference of a Web three CEO is that it is the you, which is similar to a web

to CEO, except it's just like employees. But in this case it is our community members are the most important, and I have to open myself up to them as well as I have to open up myself up to the people that are on the team helping me build this life. Black Tech Green Money is and production to black of the Afro Tech When Black Effect podcast Network and Nightheart Media. Was produced by Morgan Dubon and me Will Lucas with the disital Productive supported by Love Beach

and Rose McLucas. Special thank you to Michael Davis. If that's a serranto. Learn more about my guests and other tech instructors and innovators at afro tech dot com. The video version of this episode, we'll drop the Black Tech Green Money on YouTube, So tap in, enjoy your Black Tech Green Money, share it with somebody. Go get your money. Piece of love.