Creating the Community

Why: When I first started learning about web3, I often felt too inexperienced to ask questions in public spaces like crypto Twitter. The culture of crypto Twitter was dominated by white males, and finding community with people like me was difficult. I searched through many Discords to find a safe and fun space to ask my questions about web3, but often felt as though they were either too formal or too quiet. So I decided to create a space.

Method: I created an online funnel to the Discord space, and wanted to make sure that it felt like an immersive “baddie” experience every step of the way.

• I created a Discord server with very few channels, so that discussions can be focused and others can interact with one another

• I strived to create a fun brand under the name “Web3 Baddies”, making fun, casual channels like “Hot Girl Wins” and “Baddie Lounge”

• I also wanted it to feel carefree and femme while playing into the meme-y nature of the crypto space, so I made a website using a bright pink color with Comic Sans font

• I created an application that carried the brand’s essence, making the form a bright pink color, and including playful pop culture GIFs from Mean Girls to Beyonce

The application was to ensure that Baddie server stayed as a protected cove to avoid spam, control scalability, scale the culture, and most importantly, to make sure that it remained as a safe, vetted space.

Results:

• Created a Discord with few channels to start proved to be an effective way of focusing discussions and creating connections between members.

• Ensuring that channel names were fun and part of the brand made the “baddie” experience immersive and fostered a sense of belonging; I oftentimes received daily comments on how fun the channel names were, how it differentiated the space, and how it made people want to interact in the space longer

• Even with its simple, quirky design, the website attracted a lot of positive attention from baddie prospects, and the brand was able to transcend outside the walls of the Discord server

• The application proved to be a viable way to vet baddies and get a sense for who they are, their desire to join the community, etc. The immersive branding also created further buy-in to join the community, and signaled that this was a place for them

Fostering the Community Culture

Why: In the early days, it was crucial to create a sense of belonging and foster connections within the community. For me personally, it is discouraging to put myself out there (even in a private Discord server) and no one replies. It was important to me to create a culture where everyone felt included and felt like it was a safe space to ask “dumb” questions (there are no dumb questions!), so that everyone can maximize their web3 learning and make new friendships with one another.

Method: I made sure to reply to every single community member that joined, start up conversation with them, and made sure that they belonged.

• When a new baddie onboarded to the server, I promptly welcomed them to the community by shouting them out in our Intros channel, welcoming them into the space, and prompting them to share an intro. If they had any similarities with any of our other members, I made sure to tag those existing members and introduce them to each other.

• I would often ensure that I had prolonged conversations with each of our new members, and if they posted any messages in the server I would make sure to reply if no one else did.

• If I saw a discussion that included an interest from a new member, I would tag them into the thread so that they could join the conversation

Results:

• Welcoming new members and connecting them with others in the Intros channel was so successful, that community members caught on and started doing it themselves! We created a culture where 20+ baddies would welcome new members the moment that they onboarded into the community, and would connect them with other similar members inside the community.

• Ensuring that each member received a reply also caught on with other community members, and they started doing it as well! We have now created a welcoming, warm, friendly culture that ensured that no post was left behind.

• Tagging members in threads started to create friendships among community members, to the point where sub-groups would emerge from the community.

Growing the Community Brand

Why: The secret to growing the community brand was growing it from inside-out. In other words, word-of-mouth marketing was our strongest agent for growth.

I focused most of my efforts on cultivating the community culture, and it resulted in the members becoming passionate enthusiasts for the baddie community, mission, and brand. They had experienced the positive impacts of joining the community (finding like-minded friends within web3 and learning more about web3) and spread the word within their networks.

Method: By fostering a healthy, robust culture within, our community started to grow from the inside out:

• Community members shared their testimonials about the community with their followings, through tweets and Twitter spaces

• Community members shared their testimonials about the community through word-of-mouth

• Community members repped the baddie brand in their replies to crypto Twitter influencers with large followings

• Community members connected me and other community members to speak in high-profile Twitter spaces and other high-profile people within web3

In conjunction with the organic word-of-mouth marketing, I made sure to continuously update the official Twitter account to share our community brand.

• Creating relevant memes that tied the baddie culture with crypto Twitter trends

• Sharing Web3 Baddies accomplishments and celebrating our wins

• Shouting out various community members and their web3 projects on our Twitter

• Representing the brand in Twitter spaces and spotlighting our community members

Results:

• The Web3 Baddies gained around 6k+ followers within the first 6 weeks after launch

• We were invited to host an event in NFT NYC 2021

• We connected with web3 companies and projects that offered sponsorship, partnerships, and grants such as Gitcoin, FWB, and more

• We received 2k+ applications within the first 6 weeks after launch

Building Community With Community

Why: Now that the community was well established, it was time to take it to the next level by implementing ideas from the community. The community had lots of feedback and ideas for what they wanted to see, and I made sure to listen to them and make changes that would make the most beneficial impact for the community (while still trying to make it as low effort as possible).

Method:

• Moderated weekly townhalls where we discussed the direction of the Baddie community and where we could make improvement

• Created a Notion site where we could house those improvements

Results: I was able to make a number of improvements to the community that were community-driven, such as:

• Creating opportunities for them to gain web3 and leadership experience by implementing 8+ committees (NFT committee, web dev committee, D&I committee, etc)

• Creating opportunities for members to break into web3 by creating a job board channel/Notion page, recruitment workshops, and more

• Creating peer coding events where members could upskill together

• Creating educational workshops around web3 and DeFi to gain web3 financial literacy

• Creating randomized friend groups, so that new baddies could have intimate spaces to meet each other

Decentralizing Ownership

Why: With partnership and sponsorships offers coming our way, and with our community growing at an increasingly fast rate, it was becoming more challenging to manage all the responsibilities on my own. In the spirit of web3, I turned to community to discuss the possibilities of what a decentralized community could look like.

The main issue was that the community did not want to become and DAO or introduce token-gating. We did not want to become a DAO because we did not want to implement a financial barrier to access our community. It was against our mission as marginalized people to make us inaccessible for people that had different financial circumstances.

We decided to experiment a different way, by introducing decentralization slowly.

Method:

• Onboarded a team of passionate volunteers that would help manage the community and partnerships/treasury

• Introduced consensus decision-making, where any community member could propose a new change that would affect the entire community. The proposal would need 100% consensus to pass, and if there was minimum 1 no, the no-voter would provide an alternative solution

Results:

• The group of volunteers proved to be effective in managing the community, as long as we were all aligned on the mission and vision of the community

• Consensus proposals turned out to be an inefficient means to decision-making. There would be an extremely small ring of contributors that would actively read the proposals and vote on them, with some proposals having no votes. A more effective solution for decision-making would need to account for those various rings of contribution (there are some that are extremely passionate and will read and vote, there would some that would read but not decide, and the majority will not read).

At this point, I decided to take a break from Web3 baddies to prioritize my family and my health. It was an exciting time, and I made so many friends along the way that will forever be in my heart. Thank you to all the baddies that made this journey possible.