Dialogue with Web3GO: an exclusive incubator for domestic Web3 applications

Original author: 0x137, Rhythm BlockBeats

After Stepn, we have seen various X2Earn applications. From the perspective of Rhythm BlockBeats, the popularity of Stepn fired the first shot of the rise of Web3 applications. In the 10 years of development, we have seen the continuous popularization of the blockchain along with technological innovation: the rise of Ethereum in 2016-17, the blockchain got rid of the narrative of "finding the next bitcoin", various forms of IC0 laid the foundation for the "encryption industry"; the rise of DeFi Summer in 2019-20 has found "application scenarios" for the blockchain, and blockchain technology has achieved breakthroughs at the protocol level such as DeFi, NFT, Layer 1, and Layer 2, " The concept of "Web3" was born and began to popularize; with Stepn's exit in 22 years, blockchain technology began to advance by leaps and bounds at the application level, out of the Internet's characteristics of the prosperous development stage of Facebook, Uber and other applications.

In this article, the author of Rhythm BlockBeats interviewed the Web3.0 application incubator project Web3GO team, from project introduction and positioning, development stage and work focus, development team and In-depth understanding of financing conditions and other aspects. In the future, Rhythm BlockBeats will continue to pay attention to the application development in the Web3 field, communicate closely with the founding team, and deeply track the new wave of Web3 development.

Project Introduction

Web3GO is a decentralized application incubator, designed to assist the landing and development of domestic web3.0 application teams. Different from established or traditional centralized incubators, Web3GO actively adapts to the decentralization trend of Web3 distributed office, and helps development teams connect high-quality resources and talents in various fields in a more convenient and economical way. Web3GO is still relatively early, and the team just started in May, but it is roughly divided into two modules.

Decentralized DAO organization

This module is the DAO community developed by the Web3GO team around Web3 entrepreneurship, and will build sub-communities of different tracks in it, including NFT, DeFi, GameFi, and The team values the Layer 2 infrastructure, etc. Entrepreneurs can choose track divisions according to their different backgrounds and visions. Similar to Seed Club, this DAO organization also adopts the 2B model, serving the entrepreneurial team of Web3. In general, this DAO is like a long-term hackathon, and the project team can find the ideal talents they need in each sub-DAO.

Web3 Incubator

The Web3GO team will open an application channel for the project to attract early application teams, and evaluate the project based on the current development progress and product structure of the project to decide whether the project suitable for entry into the incubator. Of course, Web3GO also needs to evaluate whether the incubator can meet the needs of the project and how well it matches. After the project enters the incubator, Web3GO will also carry out deep binding with the project team, and work together with the project team to solve the difficulties encountered.

The incubator module will be promoted in a decentralized manner in the early stage, and the selection of projects will be relatively cautious. The first batch of projects that Web3GO hopes to incubate will be Can make users shine.

The original intention of the team

Web3GO is a ten-person team, most of the members "escaped" from large domestic factories, including Lianchuang Elsa. Like many Chinese Web3.0 entrepreneurs, Elsa has enough confidence in the competitiveness of the Chinese team at the application layer: "From a rational perspective, Chinese people are very good at the mobile application layer, because their actions are high-quality and Efficient and understands the psychology of users very well.” After the success of StepN, the team has strengthened its idea.

After entering the encryption industry, the team has also developed some of their own projects. In the process of incubating these applications, the team found that many "big factory youths" actually saw the entrepreneurial opportunities of Web3.0, but they couldn't get started.

In the view of the Web3GO team, many Web2.0 entrepreneurs have stepped into the threshold of Web3.0, more because they don’t know the "playing method", that is, the operation logic . Different from the development ideas of traditional Internet, the early stage of Web3.0 application is small in scale, and there is no need to follow the "money burning model", but should "run in small steps" to try and make mistakes in a low-cost and high-efficiency way. It is very important to promote the rapid iteration of products, and at the same time, the operation and development of the community has become very important.

Although the Web3GO team has crossed the river by feeling the stones before, in many "zero to one" experiences, no matter on the technical or operational side, They have accumulated a lot of experience, which can help these entrepreneurs shorten the zero-to-one process and reduce their trial and error times. So since last spring, several founding members began to plan for Web3GO.

Of course, the talent accumulation of Web3.0 is not achieved overnight. During the conversation, Elsa mentioned the key node of "large factory layoffs". For a long period of time, many excellent developers are unwilling to leave the big factories. For them, staying and enjoying high-quality treatment is more secure than starting a business in the uncertain Web3.0. However, the situation has changed since the end of last year. Large factories are facing large-scale layoffs. A large number of product managers and full-site engineers are "forced to leave the factory" and start to start a Web3.0 business with their own project plans and demos. Such a big environment has also created a rare development opportunity for Web3GO.

Business model

When deciding to launch Web3GO, the team knew very well that it is impossible for an incubator to realize benefits quickly. Even in YC, which has many years of experience, only 10% of the projects can run out in the early stage. Elsa told us that the focus of Web3GO's work is to build its own incubation community, cooperate with more developers and product teams, and develop the field. In the part of commercial realization, the team will not think too much in the early stage. It has also received funding from some early domestic Internet founders, so funds are not particularly tight.

But in the long run, Web3GO will also refer to the traditional incubator and Seed Club's SaaS model, and combine it with the decentralized governance mechanism. But for Web3GO, the most important thing is to achieve long-term and stable interest binding with the incubation application, as Elsa said: "In the long run, we must advance and retreat with the project."

Competitive product analysis

When people think of Web3. Seed Club, endorsed by leaders in various fields of Web3.0, not only has a clear business model, but also can continue to incubate and accelerate high-quality DAO projects. (Beat note, in "From group chat to top agency $15 million Financing, Seed Club is not limited to Web3's YC" has a detailed introduction to Seed Club)

The main difference between Web3GO and Seed Club is in the business field. Seed Club is more inclined to be an incubator for DAO organizations, while Web3GO focuses on various tracks application layer. But in fact, in Elsa's view, Web3GO and Seed Club are a competition and cooperation relationship. The current Web3.0 iterative speed is fast, and the innovative applications that appear today may have a bunch of better forks tomorrow, but for the Web3GO team, this is a good phenomenon: "This actually optimizes for us The business model provides the possibility of learning and reference, we just need to know what we are good at and what resources we have.”

The advantage of Web3GO is its resources in the domestic Internet and Chinese entrepreneurial communities. China's Internet industry has cultivated a large number of high-quality talents in the past few years, but among the Web3.0 projects incubated last year, most of the Asian projects came from Southeast Asian and Indian teams, and there were very few Chinese teams. For various reasons, "domestic projects" have never been favored by capital and users. For Web3GO, this is a gap that can be filled. The team hopes to gather excellent domestic developers and let the Chinese circle in the entire Web3. 0 forms potential energy.

Development route

Since its launch last week, Web3GO has communicated with more than ten project teams. The team will complete the construction of the community Discord before the end of Q2 this year, and introduce one or two applications into the incubator. The team also hopes to complete cooperation with some public chain ecology and excellent developer communities in the near future to provide ecological support for subsequent application incubation.

When it comes to the generally pessimistic market expectations this year, Elsa also shared with us the attitude of the Web3GO team: "For many entrepreneurs who have just entered Web3.0 , we feel that this is a very good opportunity.” In this "big reshuffle", many projects will disappear, but there will also be some projects that can quickly find the next development direction. It is Web3GO's job to identify these projects and grow with them, for which the team established two "identification criteria":

The first type is a project team that has tried application incubation and has clear ideas. This type of team has inherent advantages. They know what they are good at and what kind of external support they need. The second is the high-quality developer team in the Web2.0 big factory. Their foundation is very good. They only need to understand the "playstyle and logic" of Web3.0. After this layer of transformation is done, the incubation of applications can be promoted quickly.

In the final analysis, the logic of Web3GO is the same as that of VC. It values the team or the core members of the team. If they have unique insights into their track And enough enthusiasm, then the Web3GO team is willing to take the time to help him complete this "zero to one" process.

Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:

Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia