Meet the Zebulls - Talking [Community Building(Web3)] with [Cap] [Senior_NFT_Executive]

Meet the Zebulls - Talking [Community Building(Web3)] with [Cap] [Senior_NFT_Executive]

ere at Zebu Digital, we have a lot of disruptor and innovator personalities on the team, and that’s no truer than our NFT expert Stephen, or Cap, as most people know him.  As this month we’ve been exploring Web3 community building, there’s nobody better than Cap to talk about growing communities on different platforms and involving the use of DAOs and governance in that setup too.

Without further ado, we’ll let Cap tell you how he got into Web3, before we ask him some thought-provoking questions about Web3 community management. 

“I stumbled across Web3 after COVID struck. I’d never invested - no stocks, crypto, nothing. When COVID hit, I had time on my hands, so I started looking and exploring opportunities and stumbled across crypto and stocks and all of that. I chose to start with stocks, so I didn’t actually buy my first crypto coins until January 2021. I first bought BTC and ETH and then went down the rabbit hole. So I’m fairly new compared to many of the degens here at Zebu, but I’m a fast learner.”

“I then later bought my first NFTs in August 2021. I  went fully in, and that’s where I found a community, and I gravitated towards that. My title now is senior NFT executive.”

Thanks, Cap! Now, let’s move on to the topic at hand - Web3 Community Building. Could you give us a brief overview of what this means to you?

“It’s creating the environment for people to make friends. That’s the easiest and simplest way to put it.  Right now, Discord lets you do the most thanks to the power of bots, and the fact that it has an NFT-gating system. You can bring Web3 community-building factors into it and use NFTs as a key access tool, then when you add on the bots and gaming, it’s great. It’s got first-mover advantage too.” 

How did you learn so much about community management in the Web3 space?

“By being a part of communities in Web3! You live in the space, you have a keen eye, and you start to pick up what’s going on and you see opportunities to do things better. You notice what’s annoying and what you want to get rid of. You notice the small things, the details come together. I’m a fast learner because I notice those and can add them together.”

Can you share an example of a successful community initiative or campaign you have led or been a part of?

“I’ve got two. One is Near Future, the other is The Boo Monsters.”

“Near Future was the first project I took the main lead on here at Zebu. It was our internal NFT project and we sold just over 2,000 NFTs on the NEAR blockchain and built out the first way of updating your NFT through Discord. We built that and now the community plays the game we built, it’s a discord RPG and we are building up our player base and the community is self-managed because the fun of the game keeps bringing them back.”

“Boo Monsters is a boutique community of some of the most high-profile people in the NEAR NFT space, and now it’s moving into the Solana NFT space too. We’ve been building over the last couple of months, I became CEO, and we focused a lot on building vibrant communities. That’s the mission. We’ve also acquired a project for a Discord news stream to add to our conglomerate and we’ve also built out a Discord bot that centres around connecting and rewarding community members for engaging with things like raids and bounties. We’ve also been selling NFTs, with 3 auctions in the last 3 weeks, selling for $10k, $12k, and $17k.”

How do you handle and address conflicts or difficult situations within the community?

“Lead with empathy and think logically about the best path forward.”

How do you measure the success and impact of your community-building efforts?

“By how many tweets I see about my project. That’s the community-generated side of things. You can follow me and my projects on Twitter @0xheycap

Can you share any tips or advice for individuals or projects looking to build and grow a strong community in the Web3 space?

  1. Invite 3-5 of your closest friends to join the conversation and start the community there 
  2. Understand your ‘why’. Understand why those people are in your community
  3. If you can, gamify. But that’s an if, because you can’t always do it 
  4. Make it look pretty. It’s got to be a place people want to go to! 

Finally, let’s say that hypothetically, a massive project like Bored Ape Yacht Club came along and said “Stephen, we want you to take over our community-building efforts”. Where would you begin?

“The budget! How much money do I have to build a community? I’d look at the current numbers, how many people are in Discord and how many are active, how many moderators and community managers?. There’s going to be a hierarchy, so who are we working with? Who’s there? What’s the project’s mission and vision? What’s the inside alpha for 10, 50, or 100 years for BAYC to help understand the why of the community? Once I have that, I can play around and get people in, keep them there, and make it a place they want to go to and enjoy coming back to.”

Very insightful! A big thank you to Stephen AKA Cap for taking part in this “Meet the Zebulls” series, where we learn about the Zebu team, how they got into Web3, and ask them thought-provoking questions that provide more value than “what’s your favourite crypto”. The Zebu Team is full of talented creatives who are ready to get started making your Web3 project the next big thing. Book a consultation with us today to put the bull in our court.

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