Note to reader: This is part of my 19-day sprint, here. If you collect this article, you may get to skip the line for checkout at launch.
Done is better than perfect.
Bink's purpose is to make shopping fun again by making the checkout experience social, not a choir.
It's hard to believe today.
At one stage, going shopping was a fun experience. It brought an excitement to many friends and family. The act of gifting was transposed from, I make or bake something, to, I make, bake, or buy something.
Never dreading the checkout process. Did we even realize it was a different thing? (Of course the bank account knew, but only after 2 weeks, when the check cleared)
It helped us learn about new products, new experiences, and feel things IRL.
Over time, these finer things have been lost.
Now, 70% of us refuse to checkout after picking out things we like, enjoy, or feel good about.
70% of us never checkout.
This trend has increased over the last decade. It's really become an abysmal stat.
Removing the idea of money. 70% of you take the time visit a website, swipe around, add something to your cart, some leave, others try to checkout, quitting. Like we quit our grade school homework.
If you measure your drive to work, let's measure our time driving aimlessly online, "shopping".
Introduce the idea of money, this is a massive leaky bucket - for us all. The brands and the users.
How we spend our time in society is highly correlated to money, on all sides.
Here are some stats of the problem.
How does Bink plan to attack?
By helping users take more control of their time and mental health with the behavior of shopping. Reducing the anxiety of checking out every time something interesting comes up.
Instead, send it to your sufficiently decentralized cart, and have your wish list shared with your social graph. Engage with each others IRL objects, learning about about the more intimate things in our life, with the people we care about. Discussing them at checkout. Reviewing them at checkout.
Claiming, buying, gifting on our terms.
Want to buy something for someone else, you can do that, from their wish list.
Fractionalize a community purchase, yes please.
Chip into to someone else's life changing purchases.
No need to go through 5 different apps, 5 different billing addresses, 5 different shipping addresses, text someone to get their address.
No, all that exist in one place.
Yes ambitious, I'd be bored if it wasn't.
What may this look like today?
Let's pretend a user takes frame actions, mints something, or would love to buy something without breaking their flow of the current app experience. Introducing friction in one area, to relieve the current friction elsewhere, at a later date.
Today users are already sharing, collecting, minting, their likes and dislikes. And anyone building a following could very quickly convert a URL experience into an IRL experience by allowing users to claim a drop-shipped shirt on Bink.
You might ask why a user would care to do this.
My answer would be, because there isn't a person in this world that wants to intentionally waste their own time. And 70% of people are increasingly wasting their time with a reduced experience.
We can only go up, or down, depending on your perspective.
Either way let's say that's not enough.
Let's pretend, you could update your address for all shipping and billing in one place with all the brands that you enjoy. That your PII is fully-encrypted, local, and/or backed-up as you wish. That your digital social behavior helps you claim or purchase the things you connect with more deeply IRL.
How about if you can gift things without having to ask for an address because your social graph has public and private features that can communicate with your friends and family.
I can go on and on but that's what an amateur founder would do. This is my second idea. Not my first. Actually, this is like the 104th this past week. I think it's a great one.
A "pro" would do this, I think, like this.
Phase 1: Invite some close friends and family to connect their Farcaster account, make sure the onboarding feels nice, I would want them to feel at home, because shopping is a comfort thing. Maybe even assign tiered memberships, like Costco. Sorry family, no skipping the line, it will be based on fid number.
Kind like this. Powered by Neynar.
Once everyone complains about there not being anything to do on the app, I'll bring the big guns.
Phase 2: Go to each persons door, knocking, saying, "hey remember you complained, there was nothing to do". Well you have some activities I need you to complete. Thank you.
Setup your user profile, if you wish, and are in the US, I can PREFILL all your information with just a phone number and last 4. If not you can manually add it. It can all be securely stored for you, or by you, with Privy.
Once everyone complains they've already done this with all 100 different shopping apps, I listen very empathetically. I help them set everything up and let them know that I'm grateful for their time and that all of this will pay off over time. Making sure they feel that I have their best interest at heart.
Phase 3: Over the course of a week. Send my friends and family curated links allowing them to take a set of actions leading to consumer behavior. These behaviors will populate in Bink for IRL purchases.
Kinda like this.
I'm assuming after this stage some will have forgotten what they did.
Phase 4: It's a Tuesday, or Thursday. I host a URL community event allowing new users to try the old sign-in flow. Requesting old users to claim or buy the items they have pending decisioning. Also to check out what their friends are trying to shop. Maybe even buying stuff for them.
Some might come back to be surprised by their taste and style. Or surprised a friend bought them something.
Phase 5: Repeat steps 1-4. I would likely repeat this step a couple times to make sure we are optimizing the right things that make the behavior more native and that the community is receiving their intended desires.
Conclusion
I think I'll stop for now.
The idea seems somewhat cohesive in my head. The tech stack can get complicated quickly but in the end this can be a category defining moment for consumer social, not because I am that, but because we definitely need better digital behaviors that augment physical behaviors.
Designing web3 and/or crypto in this mindset can create many category defining moments for our future.
Today is day 4 of 19 days in this product sprint. When I get a chance I will post the daily metrics.
For now, this is the product we will aim to ship live in 15 days.
If you made it this far, thank you, collect so you can be the first in line when we go live.
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Below are random thoughts that may fit somewhere in the future. Hold them lightly when comparing to the rest of the reading.
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The fullfillment process hasn't entered the conversation but i'll address that in a future date.
We have created this shame culture of phone behavior. We need to get over ourselves. They aren't going anywhere. They are already everywhere. Let's make sure we do the right thing with them.
Let's build products that accept these as truths. Helping society adopt the better behavior.
This is what web3 can enable, I believe.
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We have to put billing here, shipping there, email there, etc.
We’ve added all these new payment options but they all get funneled into the same funnel, to be provided more options at the end.
That’s not enough.
We need to deconstruct the funnel entirely and recompose old behaviors, in a familiar way, with a new order. I'm here to help build this.
I can break this into funnels or columns that show options at each stage of the checkout funnel, how that is deconstructed and reconstructed in a new way with a new stack to create better adoption of the web3 stack.
