Sam DeGenn

here for web3, marketing, and pets | Member @Safaryclub @shefiorg @BoysClubWorld | 👷‍♀️ @ProtestTexasTax

[Andy C @Ajchatham]

.@DIMO_Network team has been cooking some of these D2 updates for YEARS and it's good to see users starting to eat.

Massive couple of months coming up for the project 👀

[Sam DeGenn @sjdegenn]

The switch from "I don't know Project 2025" to nominating every architect of it to the cabinet is quite the rug.

[Sam DeGenn @sjdegenn]

I was the first from my school since the 70s to go to Harvard. Went in super naive. This imbalance on the social side shocked me most. Thought we’d be a bunch of newbies with clean slates, but the cliques were formed way before we stepped on campus.

[James S Murphy @James_S_Murphy]

This is such good reporting from the @harvardcrimeson:

There are about 27,000 high schools in the U.S.

Over the past 15 years, 1 in 11 students at Harvard have come from just 21 high schools.

So 9.1% of Harvard students come from 0.07% of US schools. @nytdavidbrooks

[Sam DeGenn @sjdegenn]

I helped build a billion dollar startup that arbitraged inefficiencies in pharma pricing to make profit AND give customers 30-75% discounts without any membership fee or cost. Yes, our researchers (often publicly funded btw) are amazing, but the middle men and predatory pricing aren’t. Pharma skepticism is well deserved.

[Martin Shkreli @MartinShkreli]

if you're pro-america, you are pro-pharma. WE make the world's medicines. WE make the world's breakthroughs. pharma isnt perfect, but provides millions of high paying, scientific jobs. very few of the world's amazing drugs would exist without us. pharma hate has to stop. (1/2)

[Sam DeGenn @sjdegenn]

Facebook fixed their 2fa login screen, and instead of believing they actually shipped something I thought I'd clicked a scam link. Crypto makes you so paranoid.

[Sam DeGenn @sjdegenn]

Seeing lots of contacts joining telegram. They're either starting out with crypto or buying drugs. This week both are equally likely.

[Sam DeGenn @sjdegenn]

@rae_isla @gooddollarorg

[Axal @getaxal]

Axal is excited to announce $2.5 million in pre-seed funding led by CMT Digital to build a network for verifiable autonomous agents. More info in The Block

[kashvi @kashvi]

i may be cringe but you’re mean and that’s worse

[Sam DeGenn @sjdegenn]

@divine_economy @jokerace_io @getaxal

[Sam DeGenn @sjdegenn]

@camiinthisthang I'll never forget a tour guide in Cambodia who wanted to brainstorm marketing and learn ways to promote his side biz. Knowledge sharing and authentically connecting with locals is the best part of travel.

[Sam DeGenn @sjdegenn]

Bookmark this and reread it every time you're thinking about doing paid ads.

[Ramón Maceiras @0xRamonM]

On paid ads in web3, after having spent a couple of million on them for different brands (and several more millions back in my SaaS times)

TLDR: probably not the best move for you

To clarify, when I say paid ads, I’m speaking about advertising on platforms such as Google, Instagram, ad networks etc. Not KOLs or crypto research firms, just pure old school pay-per-click/impression advertising.

I find 4 reasons for a web3 project to run ads:

1. You have PMF: yes, that mythological creature of having a product that a significant market has proven to want to pay for. Exchanges, wallets, obv blockchains (which doesn’t mean it’s relevant for every blockchain), maybe 1-2 more products in crypto have PMF in large enough markets so ads can bring a marginal increment in users that isn’t negative ROI.

Ads are expensive. If you know for a fact you don’t have PMF, you should be testing things organically. Share with your friends, network, and ecosystem. This is not the way to find it, and it will be costly and a distraction.

2. Testing: if you don’t have too much reach, or you’d like to test the response to something specific, or ads as a whole, you could run a test. It should be limited in time and budget and with a very clear hypothesis to be proven right or wrong. People go into testing mode ad infinitum and can’t accept the defeat.

The best way is, “I’m going to test this hypothesis with $ x for a month and analyze results after”. Low investment, clear criteria, limited time frame. From experience, if it doesn’t work initially, unless external factors change (mostly product or offer), it won’t work if you “wait a bit more”.

3. Clear, limited in scope CTA: if your CTA is “trade in my platform”, it might seem limited in scope, but the goal here is to acquire a USER. User means someone who will be retained and come back. It’s mostly mathematically impossible that one-time users in web3 converted from ads are profitable at scale because of the acquisition cost (CPA), and as explained above, it's hard to acquire users this way.

Yet, if your CTA is signing up for an event, or buying a specific thing, it might make sense. Then the issue is the quality of leads, which really depends on who you are and the CTA itself.

4. Vanity metrics: You don’t really want to do this as it’s the wrong way of looking at things, but sometimes you need some numbers to achieve a higher goal (fundraising, impressing a partner). If it comes to that, I guess you can run ads to gain X followers, post impressions, Youtube views, website visits, free NFT mints…

Why ads don’t work

1. Killing flies with cannonballs: Crypto is still a niche space. Speculation in its many forms has PMF and these are distracting (and lucrative) enough so nobody cares about anything else unless they really have to. Maybe there’s a pool of 50k people in the world that could be your power users. It’s highly unlikely your ads are reaching them, no matter how sophisticated you get with your targeting. Even if they are, conversion rates are always less than you think. Then there’s quality. It’s just not a scalable way to find the right people.

2. Against the culture: I do get targeted with crypto ads on X all the time. I’m probably their target audience. Yet I’ve developed the same disgust for them as some of the most important people in the space: devs. Devs hate ads in web2 as well, and the reason is they understand tech needs to gain attention because of its own merit, not shoving it on people’s faces with ads.

This isn’t entirely valid imo but it’s how they look at it. Top that with the many scams that run ads, and you have all of the negative connotations possible to them. This could actually be EV- for your brand overall.

3. Policy limitations: most major platforms don’t want to run crypto ads, or require licenses that you probably don’t have. You’ll always be fighting with ad reps, account and ad suspensions, not being able to advertise certain products or in certain regions. Crypto native ad networks exist but their inventory and reach are more limited and often only offer display ads (which are the worst-performing type of ads to run for niche products).

4. Tracking limitations: if you’re spending ks or 10ks in ads, you want to see what’s happening out of them. Outside of crypto, tracking has been getting increasingly restrictive due to privacy concerns. In crypto, this is even harder because the customer journey is extra random. People find out about you on Telegram, Discord, some KOL on CT, you show up in an aggregator, dexscreener, people connect different wallets to your platform… It’s a very untraceable journey (as it’s the point). So even if your ads were working, you’d struggle to attribute it to justify the spend.

---

We used to have a paid ads team at Hype, we don't anymore. We still run them occasionally when it makes sense in very specific niches (Telegram ads for user acquisition on Telegram mini apps are booming and currently work well), but we advise against it 95% of the time.

Big shoutout to @safaryclub @spindl_xyz @cookie3 and @addressableid for offering the best solution in the market to this for us marketers doing these tests and tracking a very convoluted user journey!

I think at some point, when at least in a part of this space products seek PMF vs rampant speculation and regulatory issues improve, ads will have their place, as advertising has existed since the dawn of public communications. Not very scalable right now unfortunately.

And please don't let anyone tell you to run ads for “brand awareness” (lol)

[Sam DeGenn @sjdegenn]

Left last night’s dinner feeling so bullish. Thank you @jkey_eth @IreneWu27 @iggy_gl for the invite!

[Irene @IreneWu27]

Founders in NYC! @jkey_eth and I are hosting an ~experimental event for 5 projects to live workshop company messaging with a curated group of storytellers, writers, and designers

— off-the-record and over dinner & drinks 🍣🍻
DM if interested

Private Residence
Wednesday, 6-9pm

[Sam DeGenn @sjdegenn]

Is Don't Die just a long con to start selling hair gummies and become Goop for men? If so, best example of founder-led marketing ever

[Bryan Johnson @bryan_johnson]

In December, I'll have a hair growth serum for you. I've been experimenting and refining the formulation for two years.

[Sam DeGenn @sjdegenn]

such mixed feelings on this

[Haje @Haje]

I think Wikipedia is about to have an important decision to make: Is it written by humans, or is it written by machines?

[Sam DeGenn @sjdegenn]

Surprised by how sparse crypto representation is on Wikipedia. Is there lore behind this?

[Sam DeGenn @sjdegenn]

Up only for George

[shefi 💫 @shefiorg]

always climbing

[Sam DeGenn @sjdegenn]

@clairekart lol blast from the past. had friends at Stern and Galloway made your score part of the grade in his branding class