22 Comments 5 Reposts 4 QuoteReposts 5 Reposts 41 Likes 59 Diamonds

Comments (work-in-progress)

@StarGeezer - Dec 22, 2023
Gotta say Maz: it's great to see some real-world talk and honesty here.

There's been a serious overkill of "hopium", pure hype, and lack of delivery here in the past - one might say exactly on point with "build it and they will come", coupled with an absence of some of your key principals... some (long in the tooth around here) could even say this was written with our past history here as the case study.

That said, I don't want to knock the team - we've all done that previously (constructively) and I know how much effort is involved and I'm sure they've learnt from past mistakes.

It's almost taking it back to the fundamental 5P's.

Great blog post, and together we can make this place supersonic 💥
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@Maz_Zaman - Dec 22, 2023
Thanks @StarGeezer I'm all about real-world talk. The perspectives I've mentioned are just my general observations and not related to DeSo's past. I'm new to the ecosystem so it's observations that can help us avoid the traps other ecosystems which have built amazing tech but have failed to gain adoption. A classic example are some chains on Cosmos. Other great chains which have done really well early on, lost the support of the community due to slow growth. These issues are very common in the blockchain space so it's not unique to DeSo. I believe that the responsibility to geow the ecosystem doesn't just sit with the foundation. Projects and supporters can help too. The main thing is that it needs to be a well concerted effort.
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@StarGeezer - Dec 22, 2023
Definitely - and the stalwart community here is *hugely* passionate... but not only that - innovative, supportive and skilled across a range of disciplines... 🍳👩‍🍳 ...we really do have the right ingredients 🔥 Biggest issues in the past were a lack of transparency and communication, but the foundation team have a sterling job in that regard: 🗺 Roadmap ✅ 🎯 Defined objectives ✅ 📢 More Regular Updates ✅ ...but my concern about being able to communicate with Jane Doe does remain (too many hype-words and crypto-jargon) 🔊 More volume, less noise 🤷‍♀️ "Hearts and minds" - simple, lay-person communication
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@Maz_Zaman - Dec 22, 2023
Excellent points @StarGeezer. Simplicity is absolutely key to winning hearts and minds. For us to create more 'volume' over noise, I think it needs to be a concerted effort. Imagine a stadium full of people cheering (noise) vs all singing the national anthem (volume) together. The latter is comprehensible and much louder.
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@jrburgoa - Dec 22, 2023
Great read! My biggest challenge of 2023 was transitioning my mind from being an engineer to a business engineer (to put it simple lol).

This is because I had some set backs due to my mind and explanations being centered in the technology and not in the end user outcome. I've also seen this a lot with other developers outside of DeSo. I think this would be a helpful read to anyone who may be struggling similarly!
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@Maz_Zaman - Dec 22, 2023
Thanks @jrburgoa. The best and most talented engineers I've worked with had exceptional coding/development skills AND also understood the commercial and customer aspect of what they were building. I remember when you mentioned this to me in our conversation and I loved hearing about how you pushed yourself to transition. This is a hard and difficult task.
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@jrburgoa - Dec 23, 2023
Thank you for your feedback Maz, it was a great pleasure speaking to you as well that moment. Looking forward to the next 🙂
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@DeSocialWorld - Dec 22, 2023
It's a great blog post. Thanks for writing it @MazScaler

The situation is likely to be even more complex than you write here. In the sense, that it's not only about building a company with PMF, sound business model, etc. It's about building an ecosystem of connected, but separate entities that as a whole needs to flourish as well. A term like user retention also has a different meaning. The big advantage for users to easily switch apps, depending on their needs and experience, means that apps can loose users in the blink of an eye. BUT, they may very well be retained for the ecosystem. AND, apps may win these users back if they fix the problem for which the user left the apps.

We'd love to hear your response to understand how you feel your lessons about building a company, apply to the challenge of building an ecosystem

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@Maz_Zaman - Dec 22, 2023
Thanks @DeSocialWorld and great observations. You're right that the situation is more complex for growing ecosystems vs growing projects, but the fundamrntals still hold true. The more users that each app/project can retain, the more users that the ecosystem retains. In this day and age of so much choice and distraction, if a product loses a user then its very hard to get that user back so the focus should be on getting the next user and not losing them.
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@NFTz - Dec 22, 2023
I think for us and DeSo this applies. We still had quite some usage during bear market. And now we see with more users active our numbers are improving. All we need to do is scale and improve retention. During bear market people would come and leave pretty soon since there is little to earn.
Now in bull market we hope we can reach sufficient scale and offering so people will stay and we really grow and people earn and share there finding creating a positive loop.
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@Maz_Zaman - Dec 22, 2023
You are absolutely right. There needs to be things that bring users back over and over. So it'll be about finding the gaps that makes users leave and plugging them quickly.
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@HappyRabbit - Dec 22, 2023
If you build a house, results will be a new house.
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@Maz_Zaman - Dec 22, 2023
LOL yes @HappyRabbit but will that house be a "home"?
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@HappyRabbit - Dec 23, 2023
Yes. If you stay in a house, it is your home. If you rent out, you are investor.
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@edokoevoet - Dec 22, 2023
Did you know that @dharmesh is on #deso as well?

He'll probably like it that you used some quality content from Hubspot in this blogpost.
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@Maz_Zaman - Dec 22, 2023
Haha yes I knew that actualy...something that swayed me to using HubSpot's retention image over a different one 😄
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@fizzler - Dec 22, 2023
Me @gaby @matthewrolnick @MyKeyStew have been saying this for awhile!

https://diamondapp.com/posts/8117f17b30d1f6bc110389eadfe8a530bae89909febe597cc3c6e62b77a70671
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@gaby - Dec 22, 2023
Maz’s blog is thorough! And wow that’s been two years ago. Great find. This concept can be applied to any business project. Requires effort for sure. ✅
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@NathanHeffelman - Dec 22, 2023
Thanks a lot for this. There is much here for me to internalize as I try to develop these new skills. One of the exciting things about Deso for me, is that for many products, the revenue is easier to build in.
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@Jaslfam - Dec 22, 2023
Maybe we just over built. In some rural parts, this idea of you building and they will come, still applies.
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@Maz_Zaman - Dec 22, 2023
There is in fact such a thing as over-building. It often happens when you're unsure what to build and what will solve a real problem or painpoint I've fallen into this trap none of my startups and it took about 2.5 years to realise we weren't focused on the very specific problem that needed to be solved. For example in your rural example, let's say you're thousands of miles away from the nearest ocean and imagine you built a brand new business that sold fishing boats. And there were many fishing boat sales businesses closer to the ocean. Would they come?
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@Mohsenn - Dec 22, 2023
Awesome...♾️

Everyone says that all the flowers in the world are beautiful
🌹🥀🌹
But I say that the " MazScaler " is more beautiful than all the flowers in the world
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@Maz_Zaman - Dec 22, 2023
That's very sweet of you @mohsenn . Thanks for your support ❤️
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@Mohsenn - Dec 23, 2023
🌹😍
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@Goldberry - Jan 01, 2024
@MazScaler what do you think about the Focus White paper?
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