New tools are for new people
Probably the new ones and empower them to TAKE OVER the established ones.
Why? That's a historical observation of all platform businesses from Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, and TikTok to Amazon and Alibaba.
Let's go through business platforms that have defined the Internet for the last 20 years (examples are given based on my 15 years of experience building platform businesses in ed-tech and e-commerce).
Look at that platform and ask yourself whether they can thrive serving old ones.
Build a new generation of influencers
The forever-lasting need of this business is: As a human being, we always need someone to follow, to set an example for what choices we should make in life. The traditional business of this trench is Religion. The Ten Commandments is not very far fetch from KOL's reel list.
With the difference in medium, we have a few different businesses:
- Short text: Facebook, Twitter
- Long-form article: Medium, Substack
- Image: Instagram
- Long video: Youtube
- Short video: TikTok
Build a new generation of retailers
The forever-lasting need of this business is that humans need physical care to survive. The traditional businesses are brick-and-mortar shops, corner store chains and supermarkets.
With the difference in the logistics & sales model, we have a few different businesses:
- Stock and sell: Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Aliexpress.com, Taobao, Tmall
- Drop shipping: Wish, Shopify
Build a new generation of educators
The forever-lasting need of this business is that humans constantly learn new skills for work and life. The traditional businesses are apprentice systems (pre-industry era) and schools (from the 17th century).
With the difference in medium, we have a few different businesses:
- Life-long learning (self-study without a focus on certificate): Udemy, Skillshare
- Certificate-based study:
- Higher education: EdX, Coursera
- K12: BYJU'S, 17zuoye
So, what is SyncVote mission and who will be my customer?
Build a new generation of leaders
The forever-lasting need of this business is that humans intuitively know we need to work with each other. This need is inscribed in the West by Babel Tower or the East by Yu The Great control floods Traditional businesses are business schools, university societies, political systems and social movements.
With the difference in medium and technology, we have a few businesses:
- Workflow tooling: Trello and Jira.
- DAO tooling: Snapshot, Tally, Gnosis Safe, Realms and Squads
- Alternative examples are Meme coins and NFT projects. It is not apparent yet but many communities are gathering around some missions and messages. For example, MonkeyDAO was originally a group of people running validators in Solana, LxDAO is a group of Chinese-speaking developers in Web3, SuperteamDAO was a group of Indian devs hosting a hackathon on Solana. These examples include a collection of tools like Discourse, Discord and Telegram.
However, they have yet to become a platform, and I found it harder to consolidate them into groups like other established markets.
What is the car vs horse example of SyncVote? Or, why does it matter?
Let's use the example of educators. Before Udemy, Skillshare and Coursera, knowledge was a pricey black box for everyone. Also, many people with a talent for teaching can not monetise their knowledge.
When I built Edumall, the clone of Udemy in the SEA market, the biggest question was why people pay for something they seemingly can find freely on YouTube. It turned out that YouTube (influencer model) is all about popularity, while education is about individual mind-changing, requiring a very different product. Before Udemy, open-source software like Blackboard enabled anyone to build MOOCs. However, more than open-source software is needed to encourage people to start; too many running pieces and no successful use cases to motivate people to start!
With SyncVote, I do not want to disrupt the productivity / collaboration app market but build a platform so anyone can find an organisation that fits his needs or his stage of life. For a teenager, it can be a game guild, but for a professional, it can be a freelancer group to find and finish jobs. It is easy (even for me) to think of SyncVote as merely a tool to run digital organisations, but SyncVote should be the one that makes digital organisations popular.
What is the go-to-market strategy for a platform business?
This is my 3rd attempt to build a platform business; the previous was Edumall and Upinus (a platform for Vietnamese drop shippers to connect to Chinese suppliers; at its peak, it reached $60M GMV annually). My apparent success is targeting the platform business's supplier side.
Identifying who wants to build organisations and help them thrive is my playbook.
However, the challenges I face are unprecedented since the KPI for a successful organisation is unclear.
In Edumall and Upinus, it was the GMV of the educators and retailers. Hypothetically, the KPI for a leader can be the treasury size and the quantity and quality of members.
That may be why working with established DAOs is not helping since I am helping them with none of the KPIs!
Follow this train of thought, Build tool for meme builder might be a good idea