Many still don’t believe that consumer crypto presents big investable opportunities. We obviously disagree.
We’ve long held the belief that owning the relationship with and the attention of consumers will be an even greater point of leverage in a world of open data and protocols than it is in web2.
That of course is yet to be proven. Protocols and infrastructure have demonstrated their ability to create immense value, but consumer crypto products largely have not.
Luckily, we are surrounded by a growing group of builders who share an unwavering belief in consumer crypto. They are tirelessly navigating through uncertainty and widespread skepticism, pushing towards a vision of a dramatically more interesting internet.
At times this future has continued to feel far off, but technology has a sneaky way of arriving much faster than most predict.
After reviewing 300 applications and conducting over 50 interviews for SC07: Consumer Crypto, it's clear to us that we’re right at the edge of the inflection point.
The world is ready for consumer crypto products, and the products are almost ready for the world.
Today we’re excited to announce SC07, and introduce you to the eight companies building category-defining consumer crypto products.
Memecoins and Attention Networks
Let’s start with Bracket.Game. They’re building crypto-powered games that give sports fans novel ownership and participation opportunities in fanbases. The strong belief systems and social contexts that exists in fandom are a potent match for crypto assets. From memecoins that capture the attention and cultural value of teams and players to college fans pooling capital to help recruit players to their school, the possibilities are endless. John and Tim are building the defining economic social product for sports fans.
Sidequest is using computer vision to gamify, verify, and reward real world actions. At the surface it’s a fun game that collides the onchain and physical worlds, but a layer deeper it’s a novel token distribution (and potentially creation) mechanism. If every brand, celebrity, sports team, etc has associated memecoins, and they get their value from having broad awareness and distribution, countless real world actions suddenly become tangibly valuable and rewardable. Conway is building the product that will prove it.
A related trend is the growing role brands are playing in our lives. People are looking to them to provide belonging, identity, and community that was once the role of religion. This is a huge opportunity for brands that are able to step into the role of actually being culture and serving their participants in ways beyond just selling products.
Crypto has a huge role to play in this evolution, from tokens being used to coordinate and distribute ownership in these scenes to protocols being bundled into cohesive products tailor-made for a specific “type of person”. We’ve been calling these attention networks, and Winny is leveraging NFC-enabled consumer products to build one with Chipped.
Headless Social
We’ve long understood the power of having global money, assets, and identity in crypto, but we’ve only just recently been able to explore the implications of being able to inject those within social contexts where people are spending vast amounts of time. And the implications are proving to be profound.
Ponder is using these new distribution and contextual superpowers to build the customer and market research platform of the future. They enable brands and individuals to run surveys across decentralized social protocols, and seamlessly reward responders with tokens. Not only is the efficiency of these surveys absurdly high by being able to inject them directly in the feed, but because of the global identity that is connected to all participants they’re able to build holistic profiles and reputation. Colin and Ben are multi-time founders and their imagination has been blown open by the opportunities they’re seeing just down the road.
Unofficial is a composable social company, using the open social graphs and connected global identities to provide ephemeral social experiences. They think the emergent ways you can bring together previously disconnected or inaccessible data provides the foundations to create novel ways to interact with friends, family, and communities. Chris and Erica think these will prove to be more fun and valuable than what’s possible on the monolithic and closed platforms of web2.
Next-Gen Marketplaces
Fora is building a decentralized marketplace generator for the hyper niche, sensitive, valuable, or otherwise unusual communities that exist abundantly online. Think vintage fashion forums, music equipment discords, or luxury watch subreddits. Connor has been a deep participant in a number of these communities for decades, and is wildly excited about the social and economic potential that Fora can unlock for them.
LISA Foundation is building a product that seamlessly facilitates people collectively owning, trading, and socializing around physical art. They’re focused on making the novel experiences of participating in collector DAOs way more accessible and compelling by focusing on consumer experiences instead of governance. Ilya and Ivan are art and culture obsessed and are building the product they want to use.
And finally we have Xhibit, a style and self-discovery product. It allows anyone to endlessly explore their identity and style from the safety of their home using immersive try-ons, creator-trained agent stylists, label remixing, and more. Dov has been exploring these concepts for years, and with the rapid improvements in AI and the economic primitives of crypto the opportunity to bring the experience to everybody has arrived.
It’s hard to effectively convey the expansive visions of these founders in a post like this, but hopefully you’re intrigued enough to follow along. We’re insanely excited about these teams and the progress we’ll be able to make together over the next 3 months.
We’ll frequently share updates from the cohort in our weekly newsletter, and will be bringing a founder onto Internet Explorers every week to go deeper.
We also encourage you to check in on our SC06 projects, they’ve been absolutely cooking. Interface is hands-down best place to follow what’s happening onchain. Fini released the cutest messaging product you’ll ever use. Pods just keeps bringing new podcasts onchain. MintStars has seen explosive growth as their advocacy and creator-empowering product takes hold. Sofamon just released their tradable telegram sticker product this week into crazy demand. Slow Rodeo announced a racket club and apparel brand as their flagship venture. And Senspace, Revel, TWL, and Vessel have been heads down working towards big releases.
The future is interesting, fam.
