Collaborations are a bootstrapped founder’s friend. Partnerships and collaborations are a crucial part of Web3 marketing since Web3 marketing is all about community building.

Partnerships and collaborations, from Twitter Megaspaces, to Discord Stages to even cross posting of tweets and whitelist partnerships, help projects expose themselves to already existing communities. When exposed to already existing communities, projects in turn, are also able to absorb fans from said community who may also be interested in the partner project.

From an operations standpoint, activating a partnerships team that can execute campaigns that grow communities will also maximise the results of the growth, marketing, and community department.

I’ve worked with bootstrapped Web3 projects with little to none marketing power, but with the right collaborations with the right projects, I was able to build a healthy and engaged community.

At its core, Web3 collaborations and partnerships are essential since:

• Collaboration is the language of real builders in Web3
• Collaboration helps projects absorb community members from already existing communities, both of which are crucial to building the ecosystem of the project

Part one: Selecting community profiles

Similar in Web2, where the customer persona is first profiled before all marketing and advertising efforts are launched, Web3 founders also have to set up profiles. However, in Web3, founders have to think not in customers but in communities. Enter community profiles.

Also Read: The future of Web3 communities: What’s next after the NFT community craze?

First step, founders have to identify the community profiles that they will partner with for their projects. The following are the non-negotiable factors to be identified:

• Community volume: What’s the minimum community members for our partners? Will we accept partners no less than 10K community members? What is our non-negotiable volume?
• Activity ratio: How do we define a healthy community? How many engagements on a weekly basis on their social media trees and discord server do we define as an active audience?
• Project quality: Is the project doable? Do the founders have what it takes to build the project? Is the project investor backed? What momentum and traction does the project have?

The following metrics have to be set, and founders have to check these before executing partnerships as if their project’s life depended on it because it does. Founders do not want their projects to be affiliated with projects that rug or fool its community.

It’s also important to note that communities exist both in Web2 and in Web3, and its crucial for founders to reachout to Web2 communities as well.

For example, an NFT collection of skateboard art with skateboarding related utilities can also benefit from partnerships from Web2 skateboarding communities. It’s just a matter of engaging with the right community profiles.

Part two: Pitching the collab

Partnerships that bear fiat payments are rare in the space of Web3 since communities are all about facilitating and exchanging value. The standard trade in community partnerships are usually cross WL giveaways, NFT giveaways, perks access, or the like to both communities (though in the guild side of Web3, some ask for “AMA fees”).

For reference, projects that receive the pitch usually check three important metrics before accepting the collaboration:

• Community member/following count: Does the pitching project have an ample community count?
• Activity ratio: Does the pitching project have a healthy community? Are they composed of real people or bots?
• Project quality: Do the founders of the project have a real project on their hands? Do they have what it takes to build it?

Hence, founders have to prepare a pitch that showcases the following metrics:

• Community members
• Social media trees audience
• Brand/project engagements
• PR engagements
• Audit results (if applicable)

Bottom-line is founders have to prepare a pitch that showcases their presence, momentum, traction, and legitimacy to make prospect community partners say yes.

Part three: Finalising collaboration terms

Once both communities say yes to the collaboration, similar to Web 2 partnerships, the terms of the partnerships have to be finalised. At this point, its also important to note that MOUs and MOAs for community partnerships for Web 3 projects are rare (from our experience working with more than 100+ Web 3 projects all around the world).

MOUs, MOAs, and the need for other sorts of documents defeat the purpose of building a decentralised web (latency and centralisation), so the approval of the founders via chat is almost always enough. Of course, if you’re a brand in Web3 and not necessarily a community, the MOUs, MOAs, and other documents are essential. But strictly, Web3 communities and projects often don’t have those.

Usual collaboration terms in Web3 partnerships include but are not limited to:

• Collaborations/partnership announcement: How will we announce the collaboration? Will we announce only on Twitter? Discord?
• Cross WL/NFT/perks giveaway: What value will we provide both communities? How much WL’s will each project allocate each other? How much NFTs? If not those, what perks or benefits will the project grant the community?
• AMA/Twitter space/Discord stage event: How will we execute the cross-community AMA? What’s the event brief and objectives for the event? Where will the event take place?

Part four: Hosting the space/stage

Hosting the Discord stage or the Twitter spaces is perhaps the most important part of the collaboration. Web3 marketing is all about community building, and as you know it, community building is never transactional — its always about relationships.

Also Read: Web3 marketing: Building a cult-like community

Hence, to build relationships between communities, the leaders (i.e., founders) of both projects have to show up on a platform to discuss to their communities the vision, roadmap, and collaboration plans of both projects moving forward.

Showing up to Twitter spaces or Discord stages is proof to the community of the project and the leaders that their leaders are engaged in the partnership. The event gives reason enough for the community members of both communities to checkout each other’s projects and communities. That’s when the growth happens.

Part five: Hiring a collab manager

Once founders find the right formula for their project’s collaborations and partnerships, I often recommend them to hire and outsource a collaborations manager to take the wheel so they can focus on building the project. The collab manager is one of the most important pieces of a Web3 marketing team ecosystem.

The collab manager is in charge of looking for other partner communities and projects with a vision, purpose, core values, and culture that matches the project being built. It is the duty of the collab manager to build a database of possible prospect partners, properly qualifying them with respect to community health, culture fitting, and value matching.

The collab manager should qualify the projects first and should not work with just any project that doesn’t match the community’s identity as it would mess with the work of the moderator.

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Nikhil Kapur and Siddharth Verma, who were previously part of Japanese early-stage venture firm STRIVE, have announced the formation of Grayscale Ventures.

The new fund is focused on SaaS and DevInfra companies in Southeast Asia and India. The team plans to focus primarily on the following themes:

DevInfra
In a statement, the firm said that with India being the second largest developer base in the world, it will soon to overtake the US. “Developers in India have built infrastructure for scaled-up products used by more than 100 million users, making it a unique skillset globally. Using these capabilities they are now building the next generation of infra companies focussed on other developers.”

AI applications
“In the past, SaaS systems were either systems of record or systems of engagement such as Salesforce or Slack respectively. The next generation of SaaS systems will be systems of intelligence and this is where we’ll invest our capital,” the company stated, commenting on the rising popularity of AI.

Vertical SaaS
With this sector, Grayscale Ventures aims to seize opportunities provided by the pandemic, when SMEs became more open to tech adoption and digitalisation.

Also Read: Ecosystem Roundup: Layoffs at Ruangguru, GoTo’s Q3 revenues triple, Better Bite forms new idea-stage alt-protein fund

The 10-year term fund plans to invest in 15 to 20 startups at their Pre-seed stage, essentially the first cheque into the company.

With a cheque size of US$200,000 to US$1 million, Grayscale Ventures targets around 10 per cent ownership in these companies, preferring to lead the rounds wherever possible or co-leading with other specialised funds. The team looks for founding teams that are product-led with strong developer capabilities.

Most of the LPs are operators and founders of companies such as Slack, Zendesk, Hasura, GlobalWay, Nexus, STRIVE, and Apollo Munich UOB.

“We come from Dev and Product backgrounds, so we tend to understand what technical founders are building better than most generalist investors. Our portfolio founders find value in working with us as we support them in figuring out their product-market-fit and opening up market access in the US and APAC. Our LPs are operators and founders from tech companies globally, and we leverage their support for our portfolio’s growth,” the company stated.

Grayscale has already invested in a few SaaS companies including Olvy, a product feedback lifecycle management SaaS, and Localwell, mobile SaaS for Indian pharma retailers.

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Echelon Asia Summit 2023 is bringing together APAC’s leading startups, corporates, policymakers, industry leaders, and investors to Singapore this June 14-15. Learn more and get tickets here. Echelon also features the TOP100 stage, where startups get the chance to pitch to 5000+ delegates, among other benefits like a chance to connect with investors, visibility through e27 platform, and other prizes. Join TOP100 here.

Image Credit: Grayscale

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Artificial intelligence has already started dominating our lives. From ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion to DALL-E-2, AI tools are now widely used to automate time-consuming and repetitive tasks.

Inmagine also makes the most of this tech to change how people create and access digital content. Malaysia-based Inmagine comprises three brands: 123RF (royalty-free digital stock agency), Pixlr (image editing tool), and Designs.ai (an all-in-one creative suite that creates videos, logos, audio, copy, and designs within two minutes using AI).

e27 recently talked with Inmagine Group CEO Warren Leow to learn how AI impacts the stock photography and graphic design industries and the ethical side of the technology.

Excerpts:

How does AI change how people create and access digital content? How does it impact traditional stock photography and graphic design industries?

Artificial intelligence automates time-consuming and repetitive tasks, allowing creatives to focus on more complex and creative aspects of their work. Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and DALL-E-2 permit users to create amazing work. ChatGPT revolutionises business productivity across language translation, prompt engineering, and voice-enabled interfaces.

Also Read: How Inmagine is Googlising its workplace to foster an inclusive and collaborative work culture

As a result, AI enables individuals and businesses to create and access digital content in new and more efficient ways.

It enables the creation of more personalised and relevant content, an important aspect of modern digital marketing. Furthermore, artificial intelligence-powered tools are increasing the efficiency and speed of content creation, reducing the time and cost required to create high-quality assets. Finally, it allows the stock photography and graphic design industries to evolve and adapt to changing customer and market demands.

How does Inmagine leverage AI to improve the user experience for customers on platforms such as 123RF, Pixlr, and Designs.ai?

Inmagine is leveraging AI technology to improve the user experience for our customers across our platforms. To provide more accurate and relevant search results within 123RF, we are implementing AI-powered search algorithms on 123RF.

Pixlr is utilising the tech to provide intelligent editing tools that can assist users in improving their images more efficiently. This includes adding new generative and game-changing features such as The AI Infill and AI text-to-image generator, empowering our users to create stunning visuals smarter, faster and easier.

While on Designs.ai, we use artificial intelligence to help our customers easily create professional-grade designs, logos, and branding materials. We are also investing in generative features and functionality to make design smarter, faster and easier.

These features help us create a more personalised user experience, making design smarter, faster, and easier.

Also Read: Instill AI can convert your unstructured data into meaningful data using low-code tools

123RF’s 200m content library is growing faster and larger and covers more representative topics with the help of generative content. For example, the industry lacked local content or content featuring non-white faces. This is important for inclusion, an essential theme across culture, gender and social classes.

What are some of the benefits of AI for businesses looking to create visual content?

Artificial intelligence-powered tools can significantly improve content creation efficiency, reducing the time and cost required to create high-quality visual assets. It can also improve the accuracy and relevance of search results, making it easier for businesses to find the required content.

Finally, AI can provide valuable insights and analytics to assist businesses in optimising their visual content strategy and marketing efforts.

In what ways does AI enable greater creativity in the digital content creation process?

Artificial intelligence has brought about significant advancements in the digital content creation process, opening up new possibilities for creativity and efficiency.

At Inmagine, we understand the power of AI and use it to enhance the capabilities of our three leading brands — 123RF, Pixlr, and Designs.ai. Through AI, we can automate repetitive tasks and simplify image editing tasks, such as object selection, background removal, and image enhancement. This frees up more time for our users to focus on the more creative aspects of their work, ultimately resulting in more original and compelling content.

Furthermore, AI can assist in generating ideas and suggestions, which is why our brand Designs.ai uses AI to offer customised design recommendations. By analysing user preferences, trends, and other data, we can suggest design templates, fonts, and other elements to enhance the final output. Designs.ai is now growing 200 per cent organically every month.

How do you see AI changing the way businesses approach marketing and advertising?

AI can help churn out more ideas and concepts faster and more efficiently. It is changing how businesses approach marketing and advertising by using data to understand target audiences better.

The technology can also optimise real-time campaigns, making them more efficient and effective. AI automation can also free up time for marketers to focus on more creative tasks.

With the rise of AI technology, do you see a potential shift in the job roles and responsibilities of designers and creative professionals shortly?

Artificial intelligence technology will not replace human creativity and design skills but rather complement them. While AI can handle repetitive tasks, human design expertise is still needed to create unique and compelling content.

AI technology can enhance the creative process but is not a replacement for human intuition and creativity. We focus on providing tools to help our customers and creative teams work more efficiently while improving the final product’s quality.

Are there any ethical concerns that arise when using AI in the creative industry? How does Inmagine address these issues?

Yes, ethical concerns will arise when using AI in the creative industry. We understand that AI has the potential to perpetuate harmful biases if not implemented carefully.

At Inmagine, we believe in using artificial intelligence responsibly and ethically. We also ensure that our AI tools are used in a way that benefits the industry and does not put our partners at a competitive disadvantage. We are investing considerable efforts in outlining terms and conditions, setting guidelines for contribution submissions, offering our consumers more choices and educating the general contributor community on how to grow with AI.

Also Read: Conversational AI in governance: Redefining citizen experiences

Our dedicated team of experts regularly reviews our AI algorithms to ensure they are aligned with our ethical standards. We also continuously monitor our AI systems to identify and address potential biases.

How do you see the future of AI technology in the creative industry, and what exciting developments can we expect from Inmagine in this space?

The future of artificial intelligence technology in the creative industry focuses on providing users with more personalised and efficient experiences. At Inmagine, we continue to innovate and provide easy-to-use, AI-powered tools that help our customers work more efficiently and create higher-quality content. We will continue to invest in artificial intelligence technology and explore new ways to use this technology to benefit our customers and the creative industry.

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Semaai, a startup providing agri-tech solutions for farmers and rural MSMEs in Indonesia, has closed a bridge funding round led by Accion Venture Lab and XA Network, with participation from existing investors Sequoia Surge and Beenext.

This brings the startup’s total funding raised since inception to US$2.9 million.

The new funds will be used to support Semaai’s product expansion, which includes building digital advisory services for agri-retailers and farmers, as well as a new app to enable farmers to access agricultural inputs that are affordable and located nearby.

Semaai’s solution encompasses three key services that address systemic issues within the country’s US$100 billion agriculture industry. It provides toko tanis and farmers with a B2B digital marketplace for agricultural inputs such as seed and fertilisers, access to better agricultural produce markets, and agronomy advisory services to improve their farming practices.

Since its launch in August 2021, Semaai has built a network of toko tanis and smallholder farmers in more than 2,980 villages in Central Java, with the number of active agri-retailer and MSME users on Semaai’s digital marketplace currently serving 2.6 million farmers in the region.

As per a press release, in 2022, monthly transactions on Semaai’s marketplace grew by 37 times, and monthly revenues for Semaai increased by 20 times. Semaai also purchases produce from its network of farmers and distributes it to large e-commerce companies in Indonesia. Profits from these sales are channelled back into the business, ensuring a sustainable cycle of growth.

“Agri-MSMEs play an important role as aggregators and are often much more tech-savvy than farmers, but they lack an all-in-one solution for agronomy, product knowledge and price transparency. We believe that empowering them will help these businesses better serve farmers,” said Muhammad Yoga Anindito, Co-Founder and CEO of Semaai.

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Echelon Asia Summit 2023 brings together APAC’s leading startups, corporates, policymakers, industry leaders, and investors to Singapore this June 14-15. Learn more and get tickets here. Echelon also features the TOP100 stage, where startups can pitch to 5000+ delegates, among other benefits like a chance to connect with investors, visibility through e27 platform, and other prizes. Join TOP100 here.

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In an interview with e27, Michael Sheren, President and Chief Strategy Officer of MVGX, explains that there are two actions that we need to take in order to transition to a more sustainable business model, as part of our effort to tackle the impact of climate change.

“The entire global economy needs to transition to a more sustainable business model. That means–at the very least–being able to produce every car, every toaster oven, everything we make, and every service we provide, without using carbon. As you might have known, most countries are still highly dependent on on coal, which is the single largest cause of carbon in the atmosphere. But what is interesting is that, [there are also] mangrove rainforests in the oceans that adsorbs carbon,” he says.

“So, the two biggest things that we need to do in helping move towards sustainable finance, is to find ways of financing substitutes for coal, be it solar, wind, tidal forms of energy, and secondly, provide financing to preserve and protect forests mangroves,” he continues.

But this might lead to an even bigger question: So, how are we going to finance these projects?

To answer that, Sheren gives an example of countries such as Mongolia. “I was talking to them the other day, trying to help them come up with some really interesting ways of financing their transition from coal and wood … they got a perfect topography for wind turbines down there. But where would the financing coming from?”

Also Read: SG Budget 2023: Greater push towards net zero provides opportunities for startups

Building up a wind turbine facility would certainly be costly, but Mongolia would be able to get support by setting up an arrangement that allows them to help other countries cutting down their carbon emission.

“What we were saying was that, maybe what you can do is build one turbine for your own energy use and build another one that you can run a line down to China and sell them the resulting electricity,” Sheren gives example.

As the former Senior Advisor to the Bank of England and Co-Chair of the G20 Sustainable Finance Study Group (SFSG), Sheren constantly looks for creative ways and structure to make green finance works. It begins by looking at the four areas that are essential to a country’s livelihood–energy, transportation, housing, and agriculture–and the ways we can transform them.

Continuing the discussion regarding financing decarbonisation efforts, Sheren stresses that there is actually a good news. For a start, the money to support the process is available–it is all about getting the coordination amongst countries to apply it in the right places.

“The other great news is that the technology to solve the problems is on the way; it is getting better every day. Imagine if we have COVID-19 with zero vaccines. Well, we got the vaccines for climate change. It does mean a change in the society, but the great news is that the technology is pretty darn good,” Sheren says.

Also Read: Understanding the role of fintech, blockchain in transitioning to net zero

The role of tech in transition

MVGX describes its services as providing full-service platform for the token economy, including issuance, trading, settlement, custody, connectivity, market data and ESG services.

During the interview, Sheren explains how technology can play a role in advancing the green agenda.

“Our goal has always been about transparency, being able to see what is happening,” he says.

“When I worked in corporate finance for years in the ’80s and ’90s, transparency was the opposite of what they looked for. They tried to keep information as concealed as possible, hoping that buyers would not ask too many questions. Nowadays, the more open you are to demonstrate how green you are, the better price you get. It’s almost like taking the whole concept of 1980s Wall Street and putting it on its head.”

In addition to transparency, speed, and accuracy, MVGX is also open to exploring new ways to do things.

“We’ve spent a lot of time understanding how AI and machine learning can work through large amounts of material; that’s another area that MVGX hopes to be exploiting in the future,” Sheren explains.

Also Read: “There’s a lack of urgency among companies in achieving net zero targets: Unravel Carbon’s Grace Sai

“So, if you’re trying to do a green bond, the amount of information attached that is massive–the due diligence, the data around that–if we were able to digitise that, put those onto smart contracts … we would have our ways of making finance not only more transparent, but also cheaper and faster.”

Recently, MVGX signed a partnership with Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) to establish a carbon trading platform in the country–a milestone that Sheren treats “with great pride.” The company is looking forward to do similar partnerships with other countries in the future.

“We’re pushing very hard to bring integrity and transparency into the market … And MVGX is not the only one doing this. Around the world, major organisations, banks, exchanges … we want to remain one of the voices pushing for that over the course of this year.”

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Echelon Asia Summit 2023 is bringing together APAC’s leading startups, corporates, policymakers, industry leaders, and investors to Singapore this June 14-15. Learn more and get tickets here. Echelon also features the TOP100 stage, where startups get the chance to pitch to 5000+ delegates, among other benefits like a chance to connect with investors, visibility through e27 platform, and other prizes. Join TOP100 here.

Image Credit: Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

 

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