My guest today is Zeneca (https://mobile.twitter.com/Zeneca_33). He is a web3 and NFT investor, advisor, content creator, and project founder. He writes a Newsletter on NFTs, host two podcasts, run a YouTube channel, and has ~300k followers on twitter. Zeneca manages two NFT communities: all with a focus on creating educational content to help people learn about this wild world of web3.

We discuss:

Zeneca’s Evolution to ZenAcademy

Pre-NFTs

Professional Poker Player and Poker/Travel Blogger

• Healthy Dissociation to Money (a balance between caring and not caring) - If you care too much, everytime you make a bet you think about what else you could be buying. If you don’t care enough then you blow your bankroll too quickly
• Fostering a lifelong practice of writing because it requires him to think analytically (research, write, explain to others)

NFTs

• Initially completely skeptical
• Started simple on content - floor price updates
• Response to content is that he is providing utility, moreso than trading NFTs
• It gave him energy, rewarding and fulfilling

ZenAcademy 1.0

• Looking at ways to monetize content in a truely Web3 way so he launched an NFT community
• Currently: Zen Academy Membership through Membership Token or 333 Club which is for founders, builders and others who want advice on their project

Insights from Membership Pass and 333

1. there is a wide disparity in talent and knowledge between people so how do you make a community valuable to people from every level
2. Social Identity - PFP - community have been demanding one to show their love

ZenAcademy 2.0

• Middle layer of PFP 
• Target Audience for PFP: people who are a little bit deeper, more risk tolerant, degens, developers, in the space
• ZenAcademy (free) NFT - students who want to learn the industry and NFTs who will get a soulbound NFT as their first NFT - sole goal is to onboard to millions to NFTs

ZenAcademy 2.5

• Future of Monetization if No Royalties
• Content
• Consulting
• Incubator programs

Insight about Community:

• Any two people that are part of community, have similar values and ethos
• Understanding that the dynamics of virtual location, shows even more intent on where time is spent
• Almost everyone is underestimating the rate of change over the coming
• Zeneca’s Why: He and Zen Academy are in a unique position to achieve scaled community goals that will do good in the world
• It is of primary importance to build a self sustaining community. One that can live on beyond the founder

ZenAcademy 3.0 - 1 billion+ people

How do we onboard billions of users? https://zeneca33.substack.com/p/how-we-onboard-billions-to-web3 

1. Education - new technology interactions in a safe way, how do we make it like email?
2. Infrastructure - abstract away technology, make it frictionless - take us from dial up to fiber
3. Mentality (Perception) Shift - early adopters are tech or finance minds, which most of the world is not - marketing mainly consists ways to make money, not everyone wants to commercial

Where does Zen Academy fall?

• Education and Mentality first
• Infrastructure possibly in the future

Which companies embody the characteristics necessary to go mainstream?

1. Reddit - 3,000,000 wallets with a conservative estimate of tens of thousands of new users; educated them through content; infrastructure was easy, buy with a credit card; mentality shift was positioning was not about making money but rather about identity and avatars which reddit community is familiar with 
2. Starbucks (future) - 25,000,000 loyalty rewards members, outcome not yet here
3. If a small percentage of Reddit and Starbucks users decide to dig deeper, what does that mean for the NFT community?

Flywheel of Ownership and Identity

Advice to Startup Founders

Product-Market Fit

Know your Why

Find one thing to do really well and focus on it

Role of Data 

1. ZenAcademy not yet leveraging but will start with emails
2. The tools are not there yet
3. Customizability of experience is not yet present because of a lack of use of data

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