Blockchain Biz Dev: Why the Accelerator Model Is Crucial in Crypto

• What should we carry over from web2?

• What biz wisdom from the last couple decades of tech applies to crypto? What doesn’t?

• What biz dev strategies work best in crypto?

• What about crypto biz dev is entirely new, innovative?

One recurring theme that comes up in our team’s conversations, is how many repeat problems we see.

We know accelerators work in tech. Look at the top companies that have come out of Y Combinator alone. We see you Airbnb, Stripe, Instacart, Coinbase, DoorDash, Dropbox. The ample free-flowing capital in the investment landscape leads to increased competition.

To access the alpha, capital needs to find rockstar projects earlier and earlier. Not surprising. We are seeing prominent venture firms, like a16z, utilizing accelerators. Everyone needs more alpha and deal flow. The accelerator model that has shown it can lead to great companies and great value creation.

Known knowns.

Crypto accelerators need to look for strong teams and innovative projects. The next champion apps won’t simply show up.

But what’s new: in crypto, the accelerator approach has the potential to be way more powerful.

Two key reasons for this:

1. Accelerators are a solution to crypto’s decentralization problem. Decentralization is core to crypto. When it comes to building projects, centralized hubs have a lot of advantages. They make it possible to efficiently, effectively deliver education and support to teams. Centralization strengthen’s existing networks and relationships among stakeholders. Accelerators allow chains to outsource their need for centralization. Chains can remain decentralized, and reap the benefits centralization. Accelerators grow ecosystems.

1. Crypto accelerators can drive exponential value creation. This happens as projects bake strategic partnerships into their tokenomics and begin cross-pollinating. This is different from web2. Companies coming out of the same incubator may partner out from time to time, but it’s rare. To have intertwined business models or financial mechanisms, it’s even more rare. Thanks to tokenonmics, accelerators can help projects generate value across projects. Token optionality, token pairs, liquidity pools, rewards and incentives can increase with partnerships.

We help teams launch and grow. We have all the pieces that are crucial to chain ecosystem growth. Every chain asks the same questions.

How can I get the brightest minds, the strongest builders, and the biggest whales over to my chain?

You need to give projects a reason to be in your chain’s ecosystem. It’s a really simple thing to say. But many chains are struggling to get the biggest brains and best projects. The competition today is intense. To do this effectively, your team needs to source deals and projects. Sourcing is the utmost importance. An accelerator program is a specific way to source projects.

Your chain needs to act like an vc and accelerator for the people, projects. Continually invest and support your community and you will

When we look at accelerator-style strategies at work in crypto right now, we see the potential for exponential value creation as the flywheel mechanism kicks in and momentum builds. Here are three recent examples:

• Solana Hacker Houses: Solana’s in-person events. — typically timed alongside major conferences. They bring builders together to create, learn and get access to support from industry experts and investors.

• Near Hacker House: Launching in Miami in May. the first NEAR hacker house. bringing builders and key industry players together. Weeks of training, mentorship and acceleration. Plus, nightly community and social events.

• Terra x Jump Crypto Hack House: Terra, Jump Crypto, Galaxy Digital, Delphi Digital and Hashed are teaming up to host a month-long hack house. They will educate, train and connect builders in their ecosystems.

While each approach is a little different, these incubator-style hack houses have three notable things in common:

1. They make success possible. These incubators are educational tools that help strong teams learn and have the resources they need to build great projects. After all, no one has THE playbooks. Every team, every founder, every dev can feel lost while working in isolation. The incubator approach is the antidote to that.

2. They bring projects to chain. These days, capital as an incentive is cheap. An exclusive program with other hot startups, founders, investors and industry insiders is extremely enticing. Incubators like these give projects a reason to come to one chain over another.

3. They balance decentralization and centralization. Every crypto project wants to be decentralized. But building in a decentralized ecosystem lacks efficiency. Incubators provide a compelling solution to this problem as centralized hubs that make it possible to succeed with decentralization.

When chains incorporate incubator strategies to growth, here’s the natural outcome: they get the strong founders, crazy projects, innovative experiments and credibility through affiliation that they need to grow value, users and adoption.

At a high level, implementing an incubator model on your chain means creating white space for:

• Top of the funnel entry points for projects to interact with you team
• A vetting process to bring in the best
• Resources to help them create, build and grow
• Incentives for experts, gigabrains and whales to be stakeholders
• Reasons for all the creators, builders, experts, gigabrains and whales to connect, overlap and hang out together for mutual upside
• Fueling partnerships across the ecosystem among people and projects

Are you building with incubator thinking? We’re helping teams embed the incubator approach into their ecosystems every day. Reach out so we can help you.

If you’re interested in learning about more growth strategies for your project, we encourage you to connect on Twitter @bryancolligan. Join our Telegram for members-only alpha on projects we’re watching and DYOR resources for creating growth, credibility and engagement for your project.