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The Pulse: Community Building with Zeneca and Luca - ZenAcademy
Recorded: Oct. 27, 2023 Duration: 1:01:10Space Recording
Full Transcription
See ya, see ya, see ya, be gone.
See ya, see ya, see ya, be gone.
See ya, see ya.
I don't need proof, I'm the proof, I be way up at the moon.
I'm looking down on you, hey, nigga, I'm proud of you, stack money a mile or two.
I might go forever, go for eons, run like you're on, you don't be on, pull off in the Tesla,
eon.
When I was a kid, I was a phenom, when I was a kid, I was a beast.
I pull up, then I be gone.
See ya, see ya, see ya, see ya, be gone.
See ya, see ya, see ya, be gone.
I'm on the run and you better know, I'm in the know and you better know, I'm here to stay
and you better know, I'm at the table, I never fall, I'm at the table, I'm up again, I'm at
the table, I'm here to win, don't cook a record, don't come again.
Please, I just need what I need, I collect for my seeds, woulda thought my name treat.
I pick up the night leave, in my pocket I be, I don't like to be seen.
I just get up and I zoom, I don't need proof, I'm no proof, I be way up at the moon.
I'm looking down on you, hey, nigga, I'm proud of you, stack money a mile or two.
I might go for ever, go for eons, friendly get on, you don't be on, pull up in the test
of eon.
When I was a kid, I was a phenom, when I was a kid, I was a beast, I pull up, then I be
gone.
See ya, see ya, see ya, be gone.
See ya, see ya, see ya, be gone.
See ya, see ya, see ya, be gone.
See ya, see ya, see ya, see ya.
See ya, see ya, see ya, see ya.
See ya, see ya, see ya.
See ya, see ya, see ya.
See ya, see ya, see ya.
See ya, see ya, see ya, see ya.
See ya, see ya, see ya, see ya.
See ya, see ya, see ya, see ya, see ya.
See ya, see ya, see ya, see ya, see ya, see ya, see ya.
See ya, see ya, see ya, see ya, see ya, see ya, see ya, see ya, see ya.
See ya, see ya, see ya, see ya, see ya, see ya, see ya, see ya, see ya, see ya, see ya, see ya, see ya, see ya, see ya, see ya.
Yeah, yeah, okay, okay, what's up, I've been on the paper cheese for months, I've been
on the marathon for months, all in all I can't just get enough, I ain't no, what's up, I've
been on the paper cheese for months, I've been on the marathon for months, all in all
I can't just get enough, I ain't no, you're a step to the money, that's a lay lay, take
advantage of my time to get a payday, I've been to myself, I've been out the way, if
I'm not with the kids, it's me and Tay-Tay, spend a bag, get a bag, that's the routine,
I go north, cross the border like some poutine, growing up I had old dreams, still be on the
old scene, but I turn old dreams and old dreams, and look we made it, still don't want numbers
than the ones who got famous, hear what I'm saying, I could take a cookie, cut a system,
make a fuss, sit down and bake, okay, okay, what's up, I've been on the paper cheese for
months, I've been on the marathon for months, all in all I can't just get enough, I ain't
not check west, but I'm getting really rich, not your favorite rapper, but I don't really
make it, soundtrack the world, god I'm asking who is this, soundtrack the world, this is
really just some biz, big, big business and I stand on it, I've been on myself, put some
bands on it, no days of, put your time in, who me, take a break, didn't plan on it,
take a loss and I'm not stressing it, the money works for me when I invested it, what
you stepping, now what I'm stepping in, I cannot be dressing up a mannequin, okay, okay,
what's up, I've been on the paper cheese for months, I've been on the marathon for months,
all in all I can't just get enough, I ain't no, I've been on the paper cheese for months,
good morning everyone, welcome to the pulse, this is a metropolis world production where
we explore the most important headlines and trends in web 3 and dive into the metropolis
world metaverse to understand how the next generation of art, commerce and culture is
incoming, we run this show for one hour on Tuesday and Friday, 11am eastern time, 4pm
BST, so you can insert those dates and times right into your calendars, I'm your host Bicek,
I'm a former teacher and lawyer in the UK, I'm the author of The Snapshot which goes out
daily on Twitter and one time per week in newsletter form and I host The Modern Market,
a daily show on crypto, NFTs and the creator economy which I run with Legendary, speaking
of Legendary, the OG NFT collector, the airdrop extraordinaire and the trusted web 3 advisor
of artists, brands and businesses, he joins today as co-host to bring to this conversation
his wealth of experience and knowledge of crypto and NFTs spanning back to 2016.
Today we are delighted to welcome to the stage with us Luca. Luca is the lead for all partnerships
and initiatives for both Zen Academy and the 333 Club. He's played a pivotal role at Zen Academy
for over two years. Beyond his professional commitments, Luca embraces a digital nomad lifestyle
and has lived in several countries, very in keeping with web 3 being super global.
Also we hope Zeneca will be able to join us, he's just having some connection issues at the moment,
we'd love to be able to introduce him in just a second if we can get those worked out.
And finally we are also delighted to be joined by Metropolis World founders Rashid and Rania.
Rashid is a producer, DJ and audio visual artist who's produced and released music
on labels like Ministry of Sound and Armada and Rania is just as creative with over 15 years
of world-building experience including the production and direction of several award-winning films
and the building of one of the leading immersive interactive experiences in Times Square.
And finally just as a reminder friends, nothing that any of us say here should be taken as financial advice.
This is all for education and entertainment purposes only.
With that out of the way, Legendary, how are you doing this Friday the 27th of October?
And GM, GM doing quite well. It seems like the internet problems that I had have been fixed.
It also seems that it's somehow contagious because we can't get Zeneca up on stage.
I will try Zeneca to send you a speaker invite via DM.
Sometimes this seems to fix it. Let's see if that works out in a second.
Yes, we have dealt with this many times.
One of the things we do now that we've run probably more than a hundred,
probably a hundred of our own shows Legendary.
Every now and again we have to come up with some creative fixes.
The direct DM can sometimes be the correct way to troubleshoot.
So I think that might be one worth exploring.
Luca, welcome to the stage with us. How is your Friday going?
Hey, thank you so much for having me, having Zeneca and for having all of us.
Yeah, it's going great so far. I had a productive day.
And yeah, it's already night time where I'm at in Malaysia.
So it's quite late for me already.
But yeah, looking forward to the conversation.
Damn, how late is it in Malaysia right now?
It's 11 p.m.
Nice. It's so difficult to navigate all the various time zones.
Have you found being in that particular time zone that there's a,
either an area that you work really well with,
or there's an area which you've just basically written off?
Like, look, if you're living in a particular area of the world,
I just can't do business with you. You're too far.
That's a very good question. I feel like I'm pretty much flexible when it comes to working.
I try to do ET time and stay in sync with a lot of people in Eastern time and also Europe.
But what gets really difficult is Pacific time.
And we have a couple of people on the team who are in the Pacific time.
So that's sometimes difficult because there's not too much overlay.
And otherwise it gets very late or very early for the other person.
So, yeah, that's a bit tricky sometimes.
But other than that, yeah, you just have to be flexible, I think, in space especially.
Yeah, absolutely. You definitely do have to be super flexible.
And I agree with you, actually.
Eastern time is the one that I can get on board with.
Those people on the West Coast of the States, though, I'm very close.
I have one good friend who I work with on certain things out there,
but we very rarely are able to talk at a reasonable time for either of us.
So I've thought about cutting it off every now and again.
I'm not going to lie.
But the friendship has persisted, very fortunately.
Rashid, welcome to the stage.
How's your Friday?
What do you think of those West Coast people?
Their lives are kind of nice out there, aren't they?
So I don't know if they need us when they're so far away in an inconvenient time zone.
Absolutely.
I actually used to live on the West Coast for one year and it was really enjoyable.
But you definitely feel that you're just kind of in a different world as well.
I mean, I'd be waking up and my family here in the UK will be going to bed, basically.
So I actually have a West Coast call this evening.
So I'll be up late as well, Luca, if it's any consolation.
Very nice.
What were you doing out there, Rashid?
I just decided to have a change, to be honest, from London.
And it was very last minute.
I randomly booked a place there, near the beach, actually, in Marina del Rey.
And I went there and spent one year and it was really good.
Got myself a skateboard in Venice and lived the life and then realized I had to come back to London.
Everyone realizes at some point.
I was actually quite concerned the other day when, well, relatively recently,
Legendary decided to go and take an extended period out in the West Coast.
And I was like, I don't know.
Is he coming back?
Is he definitely coming back?
How is the business going to work if he doesn't come back?
So Legendary, any thoughts on that?
Yeah, I did love my time in San Diego, but also dropping almost 5K on a one-bedroom apartment
was a voice of reason that kind of called me coming back to Western Europe,
where housing is definitely more affordable than that.
Yeah, great news.
It wasn't the business.
It wasn't me.
It wasn't the fact that we were building something great.
It was just, damn, West Coast life was pretty damn expensive.
It's not good for a bear market.
It is a bear market destination, for sure.
Absolutely.
It looks like we have Zeneca with us.
I'm very pleased to have him up top with us on the stage.
Just to introduce him, in case you do not already know, Zeneca is a former professional
poker player and the founder of both Zen Academy and the 333 Club.
He's one of the most prominent thought leaders in our space and the author of Zeneca's letters,
which are weekly Web3 deep dives.
He focuses on creating educational content to help people learn about this wild world
of Web3.
Zeneca, welcome.
How are you doing?
I'm doing well now that we got the technical issues sorted.
You know what I think it was?
I had to turn my VPN on, which I've never had to do for Twitter spaces before, but I live
in Dubai at the moment and you need a VPN if you want to use like WhatsApp calls or something
like that.
They just don't allow you to do it.
And I think because X recently enabled X calls, maybe that's what was required in order
to chat.
Anyway, I turned it on and it worked.
There we go.
Happy to be here.
Magic is happening.
Good to have you with us, man.
It's going to be a great conversation.
Really looking forward to get into it in just a moment.
So just for the people in the audience, this is what you can expect from today.
We're going to talk a little bit about the collaborations that we have coming up and the
partnership drop with Zen Academy.
And then we're going to talk to Zeneca and Luca about some of the ways that they've been
going about building their community with Zen Academy.
So really interesting discussion to come.
Legendary, I believe you're going to take us away to start.
Yeah, absolutely.
Before we get into the main discussion, we do have a drop announcement to make.
It is the spooky season.
It is time for the Halloween collection.
And just in time for Halloween, it is a partnership with Zen Academy with items available for every
faction.
It's a magical collection offering a fantastical flair to all Web3 based or web based, which
is in Warlocks, I shall say.
And you can head over to metropolisx.io and check them out.
And I would really love to hear from both of you, Luca and Zeneca, a bit more on this
partnerships, on your thinking and reasoning for partnering up with Metropolis and how the
drop came to be.
Yeah, totally.
I think I can go into that.
So first of all, this has been a partnership and a collaboration that we've been planning
for a very long time, actually.
Me, Rashid and Rania.
And we have connected already last year on a couple of smaller initiatives.
And already there, I figured it was a really great community and a great team to just partner
with because there's so many things that you guys are doing.
And just the whole world that you created, the whole area where you had all these different
areas from different communities, the city, basically.
That was pretty much the point where I thought, wow, this team really got stuff done in this
space.
And we were really honored to have a cool Zen Academy castle in your world.
So that was the first touch point.
And from that on, I just always thought it would be great to partner long term and think
about ways we can collaboratively work on things together.
And yeah, I think with the Persona Parlour launch, that was the most recent initiative.
And I'm super happy that we did it.
And we created some amazing items that are inspired by the Zen Academy ecosystem and universe.
So I think they turned out pretty cool.
And yeah, I don't know if there's something else that Zen Academy wants, but yeah.
No, I think you summed it up pretty, pretty nicely.
It's been like sort of a long time coming.
A lot of positives coming out of it.
I'm excited for it and happy that it's finally here.
Awesome.
Rania, I would like to get you into the conversation and hear a bit more about the creative process
behind this collection.
Yeah, sure.
I mean, I have to say Zen Academy already has such a great brand.
You know, it's very visual.
It's kind of like, in some ways, like the Hogwarts of Web3, along with a bit of like that cyberpunk edge.
So it was not tricky at all.
You know, some brands you work with and you're sort of really having to pull from the air what the visuals will be.
But working with Luca, it was, you know, very easy.
And we had so much inspiration already from the brand.
Amazing.
Rashid, what's your perspective on the collaboration, on the drop?
Absolutely.
I mean, for me, I mean, I've been following Zen Academy from the beginning of my journey in Web3.
And it's a real honor to have you guys as partners.
And I really share the sentiment of Luca that it's a very, very professional and detailed oriented, like our team.
And, you know, it's all about quality and doing things right and having meaning behind what we do.
And I think also your community, it's got a very positive energy to it, which is what we strive for.
And our community as well.
So really, really excited about this drop.
That's amazing.
And I am also very, very excited to explore it myself on Metropolis, on Metropolis XIO.
So we heard a lot about, you know, Zen Academy, about the 333 Club.
I definitely want to get into the main part of the conversation, into the interview with the both of you, Luca and Zeneca.
And I kind of want to not start on purpose, not start at the beginning of it all, but kind of start at the end with questions around the denizens.
I'm obviously a holder myself, quite, quite, quite proud of the one denizen that I minted.
And you took deliberately, you took a substantial time with the Mint and focused on building the community first for such a long time before you had the PFP.
Why did you take this approach?
Can you walk us a bit to the thought process behind that?
And was it even clear from the beginning that there will be a PFP in the end once there is an established community?
Or did it just come up along the way?
Yeah, it definitely sort of came up along the way.
So Zen Academy, we had our first launch of membership NFTs back in November 2021 with the Discord opening a few months prior to that.
And at the time, I very intentionally did not want to do a PFP project because there were so many already at the time.
I said, you know, we, you know, the last thing that space needs is another PFP project, another 10K project that was like, it didn't make any sense whatsoever.
And so like the funny thing is like, why now after we've had about a million more projects that I think it made sense to launch on?
And basically what happened was that after maybe about a year, close to a year, I realized that, you know, we already had an incredible, amazing community.
And I think it's a different approach when you build a community first and then release a PFP versus releasing a PFP and trying to build a community off the back of it.
Now, I've long since been a big believer in the power of PFPs to, you know, socially identify and represent oneself as part of a group or a cohort to connect with others and like-minded people to, you know,
that there's a myriad of reasons for PFPs being powerful and PFPs are not a new thing.
You know, internet avatars have been around for decades.
I remember online forums in the 90s and early 2000s, bulletin boards, you choose an avatar and you stick with it.
And, you know, it'd be something that resonates with you and then going into virtual worlds like RuneScape or World of Warcraft, you, you know, come up with your own identity.
And I think that PFPs are a natural evolution of that where you sort of have this ownership layer that connects you to a community at like a deeper, more meaningful level.
And so it was really with that in mind where I said the point of doing a PFP is not to build a community, to not raise a bunch of money, to not do X, Y, or Z.
The main reason was to like sort of enhance the existing community that we had to strengthen it and basically just, I guess, do something fun and reward the holders with some beautiful art and do it with that sort of perspective in mind.
And it did take a long time.
And to be honest, it took a lot longer than I think any of us anticipated when we first set out on it.
But I think that's because we really wanted to ensure that what we put out was of high quality and that we were happy with and proud of.
And I'm very glad that we did because I'm very proud of what we did end up releasing with the denizens.
Absolutely.
And it's definitely the more unique approach to go community building first and have the PFP at the stage where there's already an established community that maybe even wants and demands to have that visual identification with the denizens.
And as you said, there's a million PFP projects to go the other way around first, mint, then we try to build a community.
Do you think that from your experience that there were any particular challenges that came from going the way around that you did it?
So community first, then the PFP mint?
I think when it comes to challenge, it sort of depends on what your goals are.
So like one of the challenges for us has been sort of revenue generation and how to sustain ourselves as a business.
And so like PFPs and like historically, if you look at most quote unquote PFP projects in the space, by far and away, by and large, the most significant revenue drivers have been initial mint selling NFTs, then royalty mint of royalty revenue, and then another follow-up collection selling more NFTs.
And generally speaking, projects have raised money by selling NFTs and using that as a revenue driving event.
And that was something that like I slash we struggled with a little bit with our collection.
We were trying to decide, do we want it to be a payment?
Do we want it to be a free claim?
Do we want it to be some hybrid solution where you can pay to increase royalty or add extra traits?
Or, you know, do we want it to be a burn?
You know, burn three of our chests to be a deflationary and get a PFP.
There are a ton of different options.
And I think that one of the difficulties was trying to figure out what was right for our community.
And, you know, what we ended up with was a free claim.
It was absolutely free for our holders that have been part of the community since day one.
But it did mean we weren't raising revenue.
And so it's now sort of forced us into a new position where now we're trying to figure out how to sustain ourselves as a business.
I don't sort of regret it at all.
I think it was the right decision for sure for us for a multitude of reasons.
But, you know, I think it's something a lot of projects are struggling with these days is revenue generation.
Yeah, I think that's one of the challenges that is across the board, right?
Almost for sure.
Kind of going back to the inception, one of the things I think about a lot, and we're talking about community building here,
but that kind of assumes that there's something to build on.
One of the things I think a lot about as a creator is like the type of community you want to incept and like create from scratch.
And I remember the time that you were minting your membership passes, you decided to do something which I think was quite novel at the time in the sense that it wasn't like a limited edition mint where it's going to be this price and you're kind of encouraging any FOMO because it's going to sell out in a quick time and trying to force people's hands.
What you did was you allowed this period of time to pass and it's like, look, if you want to buy it, it's going to be this price.
I think it was relatively inexpensive, if I remember correctly.
And you just allowed people like, look, if you really want to buy this, you can buy it.
You're probably not buying it because you're going to be speculating on it because there's this time that's making it potentially less kind of scarce and people are not going to be trading it as aggressively.
And I suspect as a consequence of that, you attracted a particular type of person who believed in the vision.
And I remember if people don't know, the original version of that NFT was like a letter to the community of like explaining what your vision was.
And so, you know, those people buying in would be people who actually believed in the vision as opposed to, you know, thinking, right, I've got to get this quickly is going to mint out tomorrow and then I'm going to sell it the next day.
So to what extent, like, did you think that that process through at the beginning and did you think that had a meaningful difference in the community that you started with before, you know, in comparison with the way other people were starting their communities?
Yeah, I definitely think it had a huge impact.
And so basically exactly what we did was I said, let's do an open edition.
So for two weeks in November 2021, the mint price is going to be 0.033 ETH, which at the time I think was $100 to $150.
ETH was very high.
And yeah, no allow list, no limit to supply.
It was just like however many get minted, get minted.
And this was at a time when, you know, projects were, you could have a 10K project and the allow list would get allocated in a second.
It would mint out in five minutes and then the second day you would go flying because there was massive FOMA going around.
I really just wanted to avoid that because I'd seen what had happened a million times with crazy expectations and a lot of people getting wrecked.
And so it was very, very thoughtful to take that approach.
Interestingly, as soon as the two weeks were up, the floor price just jumped, like it doubled.
And I learned a lot about just, you know, how many people, you know, I could tweet about it and talk about it everywhere.
But like there's still people that are just not going to see it and then they might come across it later and want to buy in.
But yeah, it did sort of seed the community with people that were there for, I think, the right reasons in my view and the right expectations and the right understanding and the right mentality,
which is very few people were there to just totally speculate and try and flip these things.
In the letter that I wrote and like the quote unquote no roadmap element is that I basically straight up said there's no expectations.
I don't know what I'm doing here.
This is an experiment.
I've never done anything like this before.
It's, you know, it's risky.
There's, I can't promise anything.
You know, we've got a Discord server.
We're, we'll try and do some cool stuff, but, you know, who knows what's going to happen in this space or in the world.
But if you want to sign on to be part of this journey and see what kind of community forms out of it, then I'd love to have you.
But no promises.
And with that, and this was at a time when everyone was promising a DAO, a token, a game, metaverse, you know, everything under the sun.
And so I think that approach, I'm, every day I'm so grateful that we, that's the path I chose because it, it has really made things, you know,
I see so many other projects just get, they drown in FUD and, and so many unhappy holders.
And it's such a toxic environment for the team and for the community.
And it's, it's hard to get out of.
And, um, we've just never had to deal with that, uh, thankfully.
Sure.
Yeah.
It's so interesting.
You said, you know, that no roadmap element to begin things.
At what point then did you start to think, well, I've got these group of people, I've got this community now.
I kind of actually want to insert a bit of a roadmap.
I want to take a little bit more responsibility and what inspired that change.
Yeah, I, I actually honestly think this was one of the biggest mistakes I'm, I have made over the last two years, which was, it sounds so, uh, bad and counterintuitive, but like trying to quote unquote do things.
And to, to put it more specifically, I think is, is forced things.
Um, you know, uh, so we, we minted in November and then probably like January, February, you know, the market was still kind of going crazy.
There were a lot of people doing collabs and partnerships and, um, you know, all sorts of new things and ideas and like events and, and IRL events and online events.
And, um, I thought, all right, let's, it seems cool.
We've got a community, we have an NFT, let's do all this stuff as well.
Let's, um, you know, work on securing collabs and let's hire a cloud manager.
And then, and then basically things just accelerated really fast.
The team size grew quite significantly in a short amount of time.
Uh, we, we ended up doing a whole lot of different initiatives.
We tried, you know, newsletters and Twitter spaces and YouTube and other podcasts and, you know, IRL events and, um, you know, uh, partner, partnerships, uh, on top of partnerships.
And there was, there was a, it was just like a confused mess.
And I think that, um, it, to the credit to the community, I think that like there's, there's always been this core current of wonderful humans that have always decided and, and, um,
um, chosen Zen Academy is one of their homes in, in web three.
And so we've always had this wonderful home base, but on the, like the business side of things and the roadmap side of things, I think basically, yeah, I tried way too many things.
And probably hindsight is 2020 and you can never know for sure.
But I think that, um, things might've perhaps worked out.
Um, well, we might be in a better position if I just said, you know what, we're just, it's just a discord server.
And, you know, let's kind of take it a lot slower and not sort of chase shiny objects, which I'd actually, um, cautioned against other people doing it, uh, after, you know, maybe like mid to late 2022, I reflected on earlier in the year and like, yeah, that was a bad idea.
And then I, I continued to do it, I think for, for a while longer after that.
So, um, I don't know, I've, I've learned a lot, first time founder, first time running a business and, um, would probably do things slightly differently in the future.
But I am still so, uh, I think, I think everyone on the team is very humbled by the community that has formed around Zen Academy because it's, uh, I'm obviously biased, but I think it's a very special, special place in community.
Absolutely.
That's very, very insightful.
Thank you for sharing those learnings.
Luca, I do have a question specifically for you.
You've been with, um, Zen Academy for well over two years, I think, and you, you know, started out crafting content.
And for the YouTube channel transitioned into that role, spearheading the partnerships of the company.
And in that function, I can imagine you have loads and loads of conversations with other founders, other projects about partnerships, about collabs.
Did anything change after, you know, the visual identity and form of the denizens came for, um, as an academy in how you have been perceived as, you know, someone holding those partnership conversations.
So did the PFP element add or change anything about that conversations or didn't play that massive of a role in that particular respect?
Hmm, that's a very good question.
Um, I think that it would have changed quite a lot if the PFP would have been launched in 2021 or early 2022.
But I think since now, the space is very different and it's a very different feeling overall.
Well, it didn't change too much, um, compared to 2021 when there was no PFP and there were no denizens.
Um, yeah.
Uh, thank you.
And then I got a follow-up question for you as well.
You know, you said is, um, a first time founder, first time running that kind of a community.
And again, we said you took the time to actually build out the community to put things a bit more into perspective for other, you know, new project founders.
And I know this is a very subjective question.
How long do you think that it takes to actually build a strong community when you start out with zero?
It is, it's really hard to give a clear answer to that because it will always depend.
But I think you can build, honestly, a really strong community in a matter of weeks, um, maybe a couple months, uh, to, to really solidify it.
Because a community is, you know, it doesn't have to be thousands and thousands of people.
You can get 50 to 100 people together, 20 to 30 people.
And if you're really aligned and passionate and invested and, um, not necessarily financially invested, but just like, you know, uh, pouring energy into and excitement into whatever the community is about, uh, that's, that's all it takes.
And like, then it can grow and grow and grow.
But I think the, the heart and soul of any community is always going to be, it's, you know, a hundred biggest fans and supporters and contributors.
Um, maybe as it grows, you know, you get a hundred to 200 or 300, but you start small.
And I think anyone that is, is that wants to build a community, uh, for whatever reason, there's, there's a lot of reasons to do it.
There's a lot of reasons not to do it as well.
But I think that if it's something that you want to do, um, you know, it starts with just finding one other person.
And then, you know, the two of you find one more person and then the three of you find one more person.
And then maybe the four of you all find one person each.
And then, you know, now you're up to eight and that's, you know, you really got something and it really can happen in, in, in a few weeks.
Um, and I, I've seen it happen in this space many times where, um, communities form very, very, very quickly over.
Um, and there's sometimes the best communities of all where it's a little more organic, where one person doesn't necessarily set out to create a community.
Um, they, a bunch of people come together cause they're all excited about one thing.
And then maybe, um, from there, the community continues to grow.
So perhaps one person decides to invest more in growing it, but yeah.
Yeah.
Also a big fan of this, you know, 100 super fans theory that this is really all you need to build out a strong core community.
However, as a content creator myself, and this is something I'm, um, quite frankly, struggling with sometimes is finding that balance with, you know, staying very connected with your early supporters, staying very connected with your core community.
On the one hand, those like dedicating enough time and resources to new people who are joining so that new people also feel welcome to the community, but your early supporters don't, um, feel left out.
How do you manage to find a good balance between those two elements?
Yeah, it is really important to, to, um, devote time to both.
And I think that, um, ultimately the best thing you can do here is have like some good systems and processes in place.
Um, so it sort of happens automatically.
And then anything you do on top of that is, is just like, um, uh, above and beyond.
So basically for us, uh, what we do is whenever someone new joins an academy, we try to make the sort of onboarding process really good.
And we're actually trying to even improve it more, uh, just in the last conversation we've had over the last week.
But basically someone joins the discord and we'll, you know, welcome them.
We'll set up a private thread and, um, one of our moderators, uh, Jija will, um, tell them, you know, welcome into the server and tell them a bit about Zen Academy and send them some links for like reading and adding our events to the Google calendar.
And just like giving them that personal onboarding experience so that a new member really feels welcome.
Um, um, and then we, we try to engage with them in chats and hopefully they join some of our events and, and, you know, feel like it's, it's always a little bit, um, odd joining an established community.
You know, I, I think a lot of people feel, um, I don't know if it's shy or, or, uh, just, just, it's hard to necessarily jump straight in.
And so we want to make sure that that process is, is good for people that do join.
Um, and then on the flip side, uh, you know, we have amazing community members that have been part of Zen Academy for a year, two years,
and are contributing in very meaningful, significant ways.
And I think that the, you know, that, that is something that you really, really want to, um, cultivate and you want to empower individuals, people who resonate with the community.
They like the community.
They want to help a lot of the time people want to help out and it's all about, um, working with them, um, seeing how you can help them.
So it's mutually beneficial, how they can contribute in, in a helpful manner, um, giving them the time,
listening to their ideas and feedback because they're the ones that, you know, will, will have their finger on the pulse a lot.
Um, and honestly, it's, it's a lot about empowerment and hopefully they, um, you know, if you can give people, uh, I mean, you listen to what they might want to do,
but sometimes people might want to like run an event or they might want to take ownership over this part and, and, and see how it works.
And, and, you know, I've always been of the mind that if someone wants to help out and contribute to Zen Academy,
then I'm over the moon and just humbled and thrilled by that.
And, um, we, we've had that happen a few times.
And I think that finding those community members, um, and I wouldn't even say actively go out and, and, and look for someone to empower,
but like they will make themselves known just by, um, being part of the community, being active and, and just sort of making sure that you,
you reach out to them and, and, you know, um, give them a little more, um, time and attention, I think is, is, is it can really go a long way.
And, uh, it's, it's such a mutually beneficial two-way street when you find people like that.
That's such a positive aspect, isn't it, Zeneca?
Because one of the big complaints half the time is sometimes when people have built communities,
then they find it really difficult to activate them.
And then, you know, maybe someone bought a token at one point in time.
And then, you know, months later they've become a bit more apathetic towards it.
Maybe they don't check in anymore.
So the fact that you have like this core group of people who are active and participating,
and like, that feels like half the battle at least is already won.
So I think that's super positive.
Um, I had a question kind of related to that for Luca.
Like when you do have these people who are passionate, are positive, want to be involved,
want to act to be active and activate maybe other, other things.
To what extent do you take their kind of thoughts and feedback into account when looking for
partnerships and, you know, or versus how much do you feel like you have your own vision
and you might have to stay true to that?
Or actually, you know, is it a bit of a combination process where you even elevate them to work on
some of those ideas with you?
That's a very good question.
And I think it also really aligns nicely to what Zeneca mentioned before that in the past
we've been doing too many things and too many things at the same time.
And also at that time, I think that we pretty much supported or empowered every idea, community
on the head, and we tried to fulfill every wish, do everything, what all the different
community members wanted to do, which was super cool and super empowering, obviously.
But if, for the sake of just running a business, it really gets difficult if you try to please
everyone, if you try to do every collaboration that one specific member of a community would
like to see with a specific artist or whatever.
Obviously, we always hear and listen and try to make it work if several community members
want to do a specific thing or have a specific request.
But I think it's tricky to find a good balance between that.
And I feel that we've been doing that in the past, maybe too much, by trying to please
every single community member.
So yeah.
Yeah, that makes sense.
So what do you think, for the people listening in, wondering what the strategy would be then
to try to make that balance, what would you say, what was the key thing that made you
realize, do you know what, maybe we've gone a bit too far this way, we have to rein it
Like, is there a particular strategy, a way of thinking about it that made you realize
what could people take away?
I guess just from a resource perspective, if you as a community member want to do something
in your community, and you want to approach a community manager or the partnerships manager
or the founder, I think it's always good to A, B test or basically test your idea with
other community members first.
And if you see that maybe five other people or two other people or maybe 10 other people
like the idea, and you collaboratively as a group talk to the founder or come up with
the idea and would also actively think about ways to implement that, that would save the
team a lot of time and a lot of resources.
And then I guess the likelihood of a team just incorporating that idea is much easier and
much more practical for the team as well.
So testing your idea with the community and with other members of the community, I think
is always a very good idea from the perspective of someone in the community who wants to do
something.
That's a really good suggestion, right?
So you kind of crowdfund the idea a little bit more to make sure that it reaches a certain
level.
I really like that idea.
I think that makes sense.
Kind of maybe flipping this around, thinking about it from the other perspective, what would
you guys like from the community sometimes when, say they are coming with these ideas
and maybe they want to partner and I'm sure you guys are inundated with options in that
respect.
But what are the signs for you or what should the signs be for others when they know that
you want to listen to them, you want to make sure they feel heard, but basically you are
unable to do what they are requesting.
What should they be looking out for to be like, do you know what, this isn't the right
idea.
I need to either pivot, I need to come up with an idea.
Are you guys quite direct and just say that?
Do you try to treat them quite softly?
What's your guys' approach to that?
I think we have been and we're still treating everyone quite softly and just being always
very, very nice and still very polite and friendly about any idea that we get.
I think from the perspective of which ideas resonate with us and make sense are ideas from
community members who maybe have been part of the community for a long time already and
have had great ideas in the past, but we could never really turn them into reality and they
have always been keeping and continuing thinking about cool ideas.
One really cool example of this would be, we have an amazing community member called Frank,
which was always very interested in doing more things on AI because it's such a big topic
in the space and everyone is so involved in it or a lot of people are.
So, he brought up the idea of having a weekly call in addition to the other weekly calls
that we have on AI.
So, we basically just ran a forum, ran a feedback forum and if a lot of people, as it was the
case right now, want something like this to happen in Zen Academy, then we can set it
And now this community member is basically being empowered to host a call with me or with someone
else from the team.
So, that would be a great example of initiative going through and like working together with
community members on new initiatives.
So, I think as long as there is value and there's feedback from other community members
as well to a specific idea, we and I think every other community should listen and should
be very open to that because your idea is small.
You have your vision, you have your roadmap or in our case, maybe from the beginning, not
such a clear roadmap, but you should always definitely listen to what the community wants.
I mean, that's essential for a community.
Sure.
That makes a lot of sense.
You mentioned this, Frank, coming up with the idea for a call.
One of the things that is kind of obvious, but maybe it gets lost on us when we're so focused
on what we're doing.
Every kind of community needs a home, right?
So, you've got Zen Academy, you've got the Discord server, but then we are also existing
across multiple other platforms where crypto Twitter and NFT Twitter exist very much on,
well, now called X.
And so, there's that home as well.
You maybe are on other platforms and you mentioned earlier trying a bit of YouTube, doing some
newsletters and doing various other things.
How do you think about the amount of time you spend with your community in different places?
And do you try to focus that in one place, keep them under one roof?
Or do you think, do you know what, maybe we need to be more present in other places?
Yeah, I can jump in here.
I think that it's a good question that everyone should be asking.
It can be difficult to know sometimes in this space because you're right, there's so many
different arenas.
You've got Twitter, you've got Twitter spaces, you've got newsletters and email, you've got
Discord, you've got Telegram, you've got Signal, you've got a website and other platforms.
I think that less is generally more and I think that this sort of comes back to another concept
that I've spoken about before, which is the difference between a community and an audience.
And I think that, like for instance, I have, you know, everyone has Twitter followers.
People that follow you are generally, that's generally not a community.
It's people that make up an audience that follow your content and maybe you have like a
bi-directional line of communications where they might comment, you comment back to them,
maybe you DM them, but it's still that bi-directional thing.
A community really forms when the people that follow you then start interacting with each
other and so you need to find a place for that to happen.
And I think that Discord is pretty much the best place that we have for that in this space.
You know, a few projects have experimented with other places and depending on the size
of the community, like maybe a Telegram group chat is going to be just fine for it,
but once you get a little larger and want to be a bit more comprehensive, then Discord
is great for that. And I think for all other purposes, I think it's, you know, it's still
useful to have a Twitter presence. It's still useful to engage with people on Twitter and
send out emails. We send out every two weeks a community newsletter that tells people what's
been happening with Zen Academy because we know not everyone checks Discord, especially
at this time in the market.
And it's another way to sort of engage, but it's not going to do that much in terms of
bolstering and building and being a home for the community. The home for our community is
not our email newsletter. It's not even our Twitter account or anything like that. It
is very clearly Discord. And I think that you need to pick one home and then you can use
other platforms to sort of enhance it and drive traffic to it and engage with people in
different ways. But everyone should have one main home base.
There are two main things that really did stand out for me. First of all, you know, you
guys said there's so many initiatives coming from the community. The community is active.
They want to participate. This is such a beautiful thing to see, especially because, Zeneca, you
mentioned earlier, you know, back in the bull run, everyone was building the AAA game, or at
least announced as part of the roadmap, announced the DAO to get the community to
participate. And it's just such a beautiful example to see that it doesn't take a DAO from
the get-go to actually get the community involved and to get them wanting to contribute to building
your community. I think Leon, who's also in the audience, recently did an interview with
the founder where that was the biggest learning that Leon has shared, that DAO is just not a
requirement from the get-go. And the other thing that you mentioned that I wanted to ask
you about is you made the very important distinction between building an audience and building a
community. Audience and community are definitely not the same. And you said a community starts
to form when basically someone's audience, they start to interact with one another, and
that needs a community home like a Discord. What other steps are there in this process? What
other things does it need for someone who wants, you know, who's maybe built an audience on X and
kind of wants to transition or evolve that into actually building a community around his audience
or around the niche that this person might be focusing on?
Yeah, so you sort of already started to hint at it with that last word, niche. I think that
any community has to be, there has to be a focal idea or point or concept or thing that attracts all
these people. And it's not as simple as, oh, they follow me on Twitter, so that's going to make,
you know, a great community. Let's just open a Discord and invite people into that. Generally,
that approach is not going to work super well. You can find some success, but I think you need
to sort of figure out, like, what is this community going to be about? There's this great book called
Get Together. And in it, they talk about all sorts of, like, community building is not a new thing.
That's the other thing. This has been around since as long as humans have been around. And you look at
some of the most successful communities in the world. And there's, like, the Harley Davidson
community, anyone who owns one of these, they come together and they engage because they have this
common interest in motorcycles. You find that thing that you can rally the people around. And yes,
I know we're all, like, into NFTs and into crypto and Web3, but I think that's not specific enough.
You need to find some other thing that gets people excited, that draws them in, that aligns them and
attracts, like, like-minded people. Like, a community really thrives, I think, when you get
people that get along well with each other. Like, to me, one of the best parts about having a PFP is
that if it is a community that you jive with and really enjoy being a part of and enjoy the other
members, it means that, like, for instance, if I see someone with a denizen PFP, I know that someone
that I would be able to have a great conversation with, I would get along with, I largely can guess
at their values and the type of person that they are and all these things because that's the kind
of community that we've cultivated and attracted because our core focus has been on sort of, like,
education and learning and anti-FOMO. And, you know, there's so many communities and projects
in this space that are chasing floor price and pumping it up and speculation. And, you know,
that's great for them. Like, there's nothing at all against that. And there's some great
communities out there that are focused around that. But that's just not us. And so I think
being clear about, like, to get back to your question, if, let's say, you have a bunch of
followers on Twitter and you want to turn that into a community, really be thoughtful about,
all right, what is this community going to be about? Why would people hang out here and not the
8 million other Discord servers there are out there in other communities? You have to give
people a reason to stay. Absolutely love that answer. One more follow-up question on the community
building side of things. And it's a topic that Bicek and I have discussed on so many shows and
also in private. We are in a very, very digital space, no matter if it's NFTs, crypto, AI, whatever
the focus is in. How important do you guys think is the physical aspect of it? So having in person,
in real life meetings for a community to be able to, you know, be very well connected to one another,
to be, to form strong relationships in the long run, are physical events something that you deem
very important? Or do you think that, you know, a healthy community can thrive purely digital?
Luca, I'll let you answer that. I'll jump in.
That's a very good question, actually. I think there are many online communities that can thrive
solely online and that's completely fine and it will, and they work great and there's a real sense
of connection. But I think for Zen Academy specifically, we always were of the idea and we were
always in, of like the perception of that doing real life events or like smaller meetups, even if
it's just going for a coffee with two other community members in your neighborhood or in the city where
you're at, really, really have a big impact on community. And I can just speak for all the events
that I was doing for Zen Academy that I was attending, if it was in, in Columbia or in Tokyo,
because I've been in quite a lot, that were just self-organized basically by community members and
myself and the team. And all of those have been amazing. And to those people, I have a very specific
connection. So even if it was just one person at a small coffee shop in Medellin in Columbia, like I
still text that person at least once a month, check in how they're doing. It's a very different sense of
connection, I think. And I would definitely say that we deem it very important. And yeah,
I'll add Zeneca, chime in on that as well.
Yeah, I basically echo all of that. I think you can absolutely have great communities formed
just online, but I think they are kind of like the rare exception. And even going back to
when I was a kid and growing up and like online forums and playing RuneScape and online games and
stuff with a lot of people, you know, I went years and years without meeting anyone from my online
communities. But then once I did, it was like such a special moment. And it's just where we are human
beings, we are social creatures, I think, where we are designed to want to engage and interact with
others. Even like I'm an introvert, I'm shy, I don't like going out and meeting lots of people and
doing it. But it's just, it's different. And I think that I first experienced it myself last year
in June when I went to my first IRL event was I met AMS in Amsterdam, which coincidentally is coming
up in like four days that I'm going to be there again. And I just came away from that event and
Luca will remember and the whole team basically, I came back and I was like, wow, the energy and the
connections and the feeling of just like meeting people IRL is, it's such a different experience.
And it was one of the highlights of the last few years for me was that specifically that event,
because we had a couple of meetups and met a lot of people. And from then on, we were like,
all right, how can we sort of encourage more of this? And we've done a bunch of different initiatives
over the last year and a bit. And I had tons of meetups, both like ones that we organize and put
on and plan and all that kind of stuff, but also just sort of encouraging community members to self
organize and have their own meetups and supporting them however we can. And beyond that, I think that
one of the things that continues to strengthen our community is sort of our weekly calls. At this
point, we have like four, soon to be five, I think, where for an hour, we'll hop on a Google meet
call. And we have two founders calls. We'll talk about things, you know, being a founder, a company,
running a company. We have one for brand school for people that are trying to build out the personal
brand or grow on social media. We have a book club that just started that once a month, we get
together and discuss a book. And then this AI call that Luca and Frank are starting, I believe next week,
it's going to be our fifth one. And it's just, you know, you get to see people's faces and have
conversations with them. And you see them over and over and over again. And you start to have inside
jokes and you start to remember their stories and just like form these connections that I think are
so much deeper than the generally surface level connections most people tend to have on just
Twitter or even just to a lesser extent Discord. But there's just something special about it.
And shout out to Frank. I see he's in the audience. Yeah, that's so awesome, man. Like it sounds like
it's such a thriving place where a variety of interests are catered for. And if you have that
particular niche interest, you know, it's welcomed and you can find other like-minded people and,
you know, really create something new. I love the idea of just having a book club is something that
I've been thinking about. I'm reading all these empire books alone at the moment, kind of,
I don't know, old style community building, which is basically empire building. That's
why the comparison I've made in my head. But it just sounds awesome. Rania, Rashid,
would love to hear your thoughts as to kind of how the journey that Zeneca and Luca have gone on
and kind of compare that to where you are. Just what are the kind of reflections,
learnings that you've taken away from this kind of conversation?
A hundred percent. I mean, I align with a lot, if not most of what Zeneca and Luca are saying.
I mean, for us, it's very true that we have in the 50 to 100 key members that are very
keen to contribute and be part of what we're doing, always show up. And, you know, for us,
I think when we launched Metropolis, the marketplace, the first thing we wanted to do is have this
community section where members can create their own fashion lines and be part of the collection.
Essentially, and monetize that and send that to their friends and so on. So I'm very big believer
in organic growth to create a community that's, you know, it's positive and nurturing versus a lot of
what you do see in the space, which is, you know, FOMO and, you know, kind of leads to this more of a
speculation type community. So very aligned of it all. And I think that's why naturally,
you know, the partnership makes a lot of sense. And it's really good to see this, you know,
the consistency as well in terms of building community through meetups, through these calls
that you mentioned, and just iteration, systematically iterating. I think as a founder,
that's one thing that things will always change. There will always be an adaption as you grow.
So to, you know, to have a community that support you along the way of that,
and help you empower you on that journey, it's really critical.
Absolutely makes a lot of sense. Guys, it's been a fantastic discussion where unfortunately,
drawing to the close, we have basically run out of time. Just want to give Luca Zeneca a huge thank
you. It's been a really interesting discussion. Super grateful to have you with us. Just before
you go, like for the people listening, and who may be encountering you for the first time,
or even if they haven't, if they've known about you, but just want to know more, what's the place
that they need to go to to find out a bit more? And how can they join your community?
Yeah, I mean, first of all, thanks for having us. It's been a real pleasure. And this hour just flew
by. I could talk for hours on this topic, on these topics. I think that the best place if anyone is
interested in joining Zen Academy, we'd absolutely love to have you. There's multiple ways. But I think
the easiest is go to our website, zenacademy.com. There's an enroll button. You can mint a free
student ID. So you get a free NFT that gets you into our Discord server. You'll get onboarded. You'll
get to know our ecosystem. And then the other option is just go to OpenSea and pick up a denizen
and then hop into our Discord. That way you get full access with a denizen. But yeah, the student
ID is the easiest way. And then hopefully you like what you see and want to pick up a paid token and be
a denizen. Sounds great, Zenica. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Luca, as well. Remember
guys, the Halloween collection is now live. You can get to it at metropolisx.io. Go and check it out
now. Otherwise, thank you so much for joining us. Legendary, thank you for co-hosting. Thank you to
Zenica and Luca. Thank you to Rashid and Rania. Have a wonderful weekend and we'll see you back on
The Pulse next Tuesday. Bye-bye. Take care.
You're a step to the...
