Episode 4 – Choosing A Niche

Hello everybody and welcome to the RunningWeb3 podcast where we talk about running a web3 or crypto business. I’m your host, Paul Lambert, and today we’re going to talk about one of the most important parts of starting your web3 business: Deciding on a niche.

One of the first steps to building a business of any kind is deciding what that business is going to be. This is something that people often already have an idea of when they start. The process is often, well, I have this cool business idea, now let me research how to make that happen. But often that idea doesn’t work the way you wanted or you aren’t aware of other ideas that could work even better for you. So it’s important to look through your choices. There are a lot of options outside what people normally think of with web3. Most people think of crypto or software development and those are certainly popular, but there are a lot of other niches. So how do you choose? Well, you create a Venn Diagram. Look at all the options that interest you, all the options of things that you’re good at, and where those overlap.

You have a good starting point. I’ve already put together several areas that you can explore, so let’s take a look at each of these. We’ll go through them one by one and if any of these interest you make sure you check out the show notes for examples and for extra information on each of these little topics or sub niches that you can choose. They are in no particular order, but I have numbered them so that you can jump to any one that catches your interest.

First on the list, we have crypto. Now this is a massive topic and quite a few of these “sub niches” are really big topics, but we’re going to go through them and the idea is to just give you an overview of what it is and the possibilities for it, and then you can decide on the one that sounds interesting to you and do more research on your own or listen to one of the future episodes of RunningWeb3 where we dive in a little bit deeper on each individual topic.

So with crypto, I’m kind of breaking this down into two different sections. The first is a coin or a token, and the second is software development. So with the coin or the token, this is what you would stereotypically think of with cryptocurrency. This is your Bitcoin, this is your BNB, this is your um, Ethereum, anything like that. Any cryptocurrency itself, whether that is, uh, a coin or a token that’s built on a different cryptocurrency, what, what have you. All of these would fall under that umbrella. Uh, in the same area, I’m also putting software development that is targeted specifically at people who build their own cryptocurrency or token. Um, so examples of this would be anybody that builds software that’s made to go with it such as a staking platform or integrations. Um, oftentimes you’ll see third parties that develop, uh, individual apps that make it easier to buy.

So for instance, one that comes to mind is an app that allows users to purchase any cryptocurrency with a credit card. So I’m including that in here as well. But really this is a wide range that can cover a lot of different areas. Um, so all of these, exactly what you would think of with cryptocurrency and definitely a valid and very common option for people who are looking to get into web3.

Second on the list, we have education in web3. Now, education again is a very broad topic. Um, the main one that I’m thinking of here is educating people on how to use web3 or individual aspects of web3. So this could cover things like user guides for how to use a new wallet or how to stake. Um, this could cover how to invest in web3. This could cover education on upcoming news or upcoming events in web3 – different conferences, things like that.

It could be new uses of different blockchain technologies or different cryptocurrencies or expansions in how contracts can work. Anything like that would all fall under this education in web3 sector. One of the examples that comes to mind for this is Crypto Chicks Academy. Tess, who started this project, is focused on educating women on how to invest in cryptocurrencies in general, different investing strategies, different terminology, breakdowns, things like that.

Third is advertising. Now the ones that immediately come to mind often involve something to do with cryptocurrencies. So this would be pre-launch or post-launch, ICO marketing, things like this. However, it could cover other areas as well, such as press releases or social media relations, anything like that. There’s currently a massive gap in advertising in web3 and near the end of 2022, I wrote a LinkedIn post discussing some of the downfalls of the current advertising and marketing climate in web3 and there’s a definite need for a lot more people to join in.

Currently most of advertising on web3 is either done through web2 platforms, which has a host of problems with how the information is tracked and how it interacts with web3 or it’s done on web3 platforms, which we briefly discussed at the end of the last episode. Both of these methods have a long way to go before they catch up with where web3 is currently and certainly have a long way to go before they catch up with where web3 is going to be in five or 10 years. For anyone that enjoys creative problem solving, this is the avenue I would probably recommend if you want to break into web3.

Next on the list we have community management. Now this one falls a little bit under advertising because a lot of companies that do advertising and marketing also offer community management.

However, this is probably one of the easiest ways to get into web3 for somebody that is brand new to the industry. The most common path for this is for somebody to join a project that they are interested in. And this would be on their social media, whether it’s on their Discord or their Telegram, something like this, and become just engaged in the community. Asking questions, answering questions for people who are new, uh, daily discussions, all sorts of things like this. And over time building that relationship with the staff and with the leaders of that project and then joining in and helping manage the community. So as I said, answering questions for people who are new to the server and want to learn more about the project, giving suggestions, deleting comments on things that aren’t productive to the conversation, things like this. And so as I said, this is the most common method for people to break into a paid version of web3. They’ll join in and become a moderator for the chat and learn from the project that they are moderating for and also be entrenched in the community there. It’s a really great way to break in at an entry level and start building up your knowledge of how web3 works, especially for that particular project that you have become a part of.

For number five on the list, we have operations. And realistically this falls more into just blockchain rather than web3. There’s not necessarily decentralization involved in this or spreading it out over multiple people, anything like that, but it is still related to blockchain and is a quickly growing sector. So I figured I would mention it here. So operations would be the use of blockchain for improving things like shipping and logistics, and this is mostly web2 companies that see the benefit of blockchain and want to incorporate it. So the example that you’ll see down in the show notes, I’ve linked an article to Walmart using blockchain to improve their operations side of things and uh, improve both the security and reliability of the information that they’re recording in that. This would definitely be a lot harder for somebody to break into if they’re just starting a web3 business, but I wanted to include it here because it is an interesting avenue that people could go and that we are seeing some of these more established companies starting to adopt.

Number six on the list is consulting and this requires a lot of knowledge beforehand, not necessarily web3 knowledge, but certainly more in depth knowledge than some of the others might require in order to get started. And for this I’d break it into two different parts. We have traditional consulting and web3 consulting. Traditional consulting would be using knowledge that you’ve gained from other different industries and bringing it over to web3. So for example, somebody who has decades of operations or growth experience might be able to take those same principles that they’ve learned from web2 and traditional companies and bring it into web3 to help a company grow in those areas. Obviously, not all parts of a web3 business are unique to web3 and a lot of the things that apply to a web3 business still apply to other businesses as well.

So it can be useful to have somebody who has gone through years and years of experience of this and can help save you time and headache by telling you what to avoid and things that tend to work more often. On the other side of things, you have people who are more familiar with web3, specifically with the different sub niches of web3 that are, that you’re looking to hire. So this could be somebody like a blockchain advisor who has worked with other blockchains in the past on the technical side or understood how blockchains are put together and they’re hired on to consult or to advise with a company that’s looking to create their own blockchain. Alternatively, this could be somebody like me who has gone through the process of building a business from scratch in web3 from the beginning and teaching others how to do it. Anybody in this traditional or new age version I would consider a consultant in this case.

Next, number seven, we have day trading. This one is fairly self-explanatory. This is somebody who purchases different stores of value, usually going to be cryptocurrencies or alt coins, and they’re going to trade them over a short period of time in order to make a profit. While this is definitely something I don’t personally participate in at all, I know there are people who have made quite a bit of money off of this. Also in this area, I would consider people who make the algorithms or make the software that assist day traders. I know there are a lot of different programs that they use in order to make the most informed choices that they can as to when to buy and sell and which tokens and coins to buy and sell.

For number eight on the list, we have copywriting, and this is another one that is really good for people who are a little bit worried about being overwhelmed with the newness of web3.

Um, they’re able to use this to their advantage. A lot of people need good writers. There are few people who are truly good at writing, and so that skill is very high in demand. And having somebody who’s able to do this copywriting for you can be invaluable. So if you’re looking to join in as a copywriter, you might be expected to help draft the white paper, or help with wording on the website, or help with marketing materials. Basically just presenting the project in the best possible way through good solid writing. This does require some knowledge of web3 and how everything works so that you can speak to it appropriately and with authority, but it doesn’t necessarily require the same level of expertise on the technical side of things, which can be really good if you’re just now getting started in web3 or if you only have a little bit of experience so far.

In a similar vein at number nine, we have UX and UI design. So this is user experience and user interface design. This is a growing area. As web3 has gotten more and more attention and momentum, more and more people are moving over and trying to assist with this. So somebody who’s doing UX and UI design might, for instance, help make sure that a new product like a wallet or a listing exchange is able to be navigated very easily by the user. Because if you have a product that is amazing and nobody understands how to use it, nobody’s going to use it and you don’t have a product anymore. Most UX and UI designers that I know have come from the web2 environment where they are very used to all the principles and necessary theories that go into UX and UI design, and they have instead now moved over to web3 to assist with all these up and coming companies.

For number 10 on the list, we have analytics. These are different pieces of software that help analyze various pieces of information available on the blockchain. So this will help people analyze markets – for instance, the day traders that we were talking about earlier – monitor compliance and track activity throughout the blockchain. This will require pretty deep knowledge on the technical side of things and a deep understanding of how the blockchain technology works, but it can be very lucrative and this is still a quickly growing industry as there aren’t that many people that are currently involved with it.

And lastly, we have funding. So this would be your venture capitalists and your investors, people who are looking to put a lot of money into a company in order to help it grow and become successful. This is an area in which I don’t have that much knowledge. I’ve not been in a venture capital company.

I’ve not done this sort of thing before, but I have included some resources down in the show notes for people who are interested in it to look at how these types of companies work and the types of things that they look for when investing in web3 companies.

And that’s it! This is by no means an exhaustive list. There are a ton more options and new areas are popping up every day, but this should give you a good idea of the types of niches that you can choose from. And so that’s it. Thank you so much for listening, and as always, I’ll have a quick summary in the description as well as additional resources on my website, including examples for each of the different sub niches that we talked about earlier and a transcript of this entire episode. You can find me on my website www.runningweb3.com, or on Twitter or Instagram @RunningWeb3. Thank you so much for listening, and I’ll see you next month.