🔮 web3 Stories: Discovering new passions and skills (TPan)

TPan comes from a performance marketing/growth background in web2 companies. Like many, he found himself at a turning point during COVID-19, and took this moment as a ‘happy accident’ by recognizing he had a passion for many different things than the ones he had been used to (analytical, scientific) such as art and writing.

From one day to the next, he found himself in the web3 rabbit-hole, signing up to dozens of DAOs/Discord Communities and spending even as close as 8 hours per day trying to figure out what was happening, and shaping his specific interests and path.

Fifteen months and many headaches later, he had eventually shaped up to be both a contributor and expert on many aspects about Web3 and NFT projects, eventually starting up his own Substack newsletter and making this transition to web3 full-time.

We had a fantastic conversation, and I thought it would be interesting to group the ideas we played around with:

🖌 Becoming an Artist

I think we all have an artist inside of us. I think that’s what makes us human, what makes us all so different, and what stimulates us most. Art requires creativity and creation. You can be an artist in problem solving, in financial modeling and in pretty much anything - it’s not just about making paintings (which is the first thing that usually comes to mind). Artists innovate, and most of all, bring their melting pot of experiences, personality and interests to the canvas.

We talked with Tpan about his shift to writing, which is another art form, and the interesting piece, I think, is to understand what sparked it: passion and need of learning. Never done it before, didn’t plan to make it a business: just pure need to document his learning curve (writing is proven to be a way to learn more efficiently, as you need to get things down and organize thoughts, memorize) about something he had seen a passion for. Initially, you could see it as a just an exercise. It then became an art form, because of the enjoyment he found in doing it, and need to perfect and improve it - also because others were listening in.

🛠 What hard skills do you need if you want to learn or work in web3?

Impossible question to answer, too broad. But TPan argues that number literacy and understanding is a good place to start. Anything nowadays is (mostly) measurable, so a) knowing where to get the data b) knowing how to play with it to make it ‘sing’ (my words, not his!) will help you in the way to get a read on what you should be doing, and if what you’re doing is going well or not (think about Open Rates for Newsletters, Return on Investment and Cost per Acquisition in marketing, or Community Engagement metrics if you’re trying to gage more qualitative interactions).

👲 Personalization in abundance

We all know we went from having all of the world’s knowledge in a CD-ROM called ‘Microsoft Encarta’ (this one is for the nostalgics out there, giving my age away I guess) to billions of web pages and duplications and slight variations on the same theme. Information abundance. So the first problem is of course searching, finding (thanks, Google - at least for now, but not for too long still) and the second one is choice. So the beautiful thing is that now, especially with the rise of the Creator Economy, that anyone with a good connection can become a publisher, a curator, a source of information. What TPan argues, is that giving a ‘personal touch’ to his writing is what he most enjoys, and what I argue, is what makes people at the end of the day choose him over someone else if they prefer a more informal, witty style versus some aseptic, flat style you can find on outlets like CoinTelegraph or whatnot.

People follow other people.

🏃 Four Minute Miles

Just recently read about the beautiful concept of Four Minute Miles (you can read more here). Basically: the first one to crash a record or set an example, will be paving the road for many more. This is exactly what we discussed is happening in web3, as also TPan says:

I also really liked his idea of how this leads to needing not just more ‘good’ accounts on one platform, i.e. Twitter, which is today’s web3 preferred platform, but also on others like Linkedin. There’s a tribal-like ‘us vs them’ in the space where the latter for example is not considered highly (and rightfully so, considered the amount of ‘cringe’, promotional, corporate-focused content and personalities that live on it) but making this clear-cut, black/white distinction will not pave the road for mass adoption. He rightfully points out that ‘there’s a lot of curious people in there too’, and that breaking this barrier can help people to be stimulated to participate, not to feel left-out.

🎚 Everyone’s on a Different Path and Level

Knowing where you are is always the first step to understanding which is going to be the next step. TPan makes a great point on choosing sources of information based on where you are, for example, with regards to web3. It’s a basic concept, but given the level of infancy of the topic, not easy to put into practice. There’s no list of ordered resources by level - there are fundamental courses out there, but you still need to figure out a lot on your own and the lines are blurry. That’s where human curation comes along.

🤝Human Connections

I reached out to TPan because I loved his work and resonated with his path (I am also a performance marketer at heart). The great thing about this space, is that people have an urge to connect, and are very willing to help others out. There’s a sense of greatness and collaboration towards revolutionary and empowering concepts like democratization.

First of all, it’s refreshing - walled gardens are boring.

Secondly, it’s enriching - the real value in any course I’ve taken so far in my life, has been the network, much more than the material. The connections, which can spark innovation, friendship and so much more.

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🍎 Mass Adoption = Reasonability

TPan is a fan of Cool Cats - he’s amazed (and rightfully so) at how something like a cartoon, can be meaningful to someone in his mid-30s as well as someone in their teens. I really like also how he speaks of the project as ‘wholesome’; brand values are clear and crisp and being respected by the community and the projects.

Hobbys, toys, investments, community - the sky’s the limit to what the speculation-driven craze of 2021 has sparked. But the next stage, needs to be mass adoption. He argues that it’s the only way it will happen, is through reasonable, simple use cases. Currently, it’s not a problem of technological barrier (setting up a wallet is easy, but not everyone knows/wants to) but of purpose.

Music, McDonalds, Disney, Starbucks, even ‘boring’ things - that’s where it will break out. Some brands are already onto it.

User experience will be key, as it has been for the birth of the internet.

🥕 Talent

Of course, we spoke about talent. How web3 needs a lot of talent, and how most likely, with time, requirements to join will be broader so that people who are not ‘native’ will be able to join by bringing in experiences from other industries and models.

Yet again, RabbitHole came up, and how it enables not just ‘show and tell’, but participation. Which is again the oxygen of the whole space.

But also how everyone learns in a different way, whether it’s through live classes, cohorts, and so on. This in particular, I think is one of the most important ones to crack for the future of education; personalized learning according to the cognitive, cultural differences (much like we do for athletic personalized fitness, nutrition plans..no such thing as one size fits all).

👯 Community

Last, but not least - building community. TPan initiated a collective of web3 writers (WriteWeb3), because at the end of the day, it all comes full-circle: people follow people, and want to share with those who have had similar paths. It’s the most important driver of human behavior or even better, of growth - something the internet has really unlocked, enabling so much creativity and collaboration.

Make sure you check out his profile and leave questions in the comments!

PS: Almost all art generated by AI (in case you were wondering why it looked weird).