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[00:00:00] Donny Dvorin: The world is waking up to the power of crypto. And we are seeing this with new NFT and token launches every day, all using blockchain technologies. We’re also seeing huge marketing spends by crypto exchanges and platforms. And so this season, we are speaking to the marketing leaders of those crypto companies posted.

[00:00:19] I brave software in me, Dani to Warren Winston. Welcome to the brave marketer podcast. How you doing?

[00:00:28] Winston Zhang: I’m good. How are you?

[00:00:30] Donny Dvorin: Good. Good. All right. So why don’t we just start for those who don’t know Sega, can you please give a general

[00:00:36] Winston Zhang: over. Yeah, of course say is a crypto finance company. And specifically we’re building exotic options in crypto.

[00:00:43] So the way that it works for consumers and retail investors is that they would come to our web app, connect their wallet and deposit money into different Sega volts, which are executing different exotic options, strategies for the user. And so depending on the user’s [00:01:00] different risk to reward appetite, they can choose the different exotic options products to invest in.

[00:01:06] Donny Dvorin: So, can you just go into detail? I can explain what exotic.

[00:01:11] Winston Zhang: So the broad difference between an exotic options and vanilla options is that they’re a more advanced type of options products. And they’re a multi-trillion dollar asset class in the traditional finance. Got it.

[00:01:24] Donny Dvorin: And you know, so we’re in a bear market right now, probably when you’re listening to this, we may still be in a bear market.

[00:01:30] And so can you talk about like how they’re different or better enough in a bear market and, how users can benefit from.

[00:01:38] Winston Zhang: Yeah. So within exotic options, there’s a number of different types of products that exist. And the specific product that we’re launching first would say good is called the fixed coupon notes.

[00:01:49] And what’s really exciting about the fixed coupon note is that it actually offers protection for the retail investors from. Significant price drops in the underlying [00:02:00] assets, which means that for the investors there no risk to their invested capital, unless the prices of the underlying assets decrease significantly by 50% or more.

[00:02:10] So that safety element, that principal protection element is really important, especially given the bear market and given some of the volatility that we’ve been seeing. So we actually think that this fixed coupon note product that we’re building will be even more appealing to retail investors given this current market.

[00:02:28] Donny Dvorin: Got it. What’s the most exciting thing you’re working

[00:02:30] Winston Zhang: on right now? I mean, the most exciting thing that we’re working on is just literally building Sega and getting ready for may net launch. So may net launch, it’s like a buzzword in crypto, but you have what’s called dev net and main net. And the difference is that dev net is kind of like the beta product that you release for user testing and user feedback.

[00:02:50] And then once you’ve taken all the feedback from users and you feel ready to release the process, Live for the first time that’s called releasing some main net. And so we’re planning to launch to main [00:03:00] net in about three to four weeks. So that’s definitely the most exciting thing we’re working on.

[00:03:04] Donny Dvorin: So once you launched the main ed or kind of getting ready for may net, what are the key strategies for growth in marketing to have a successful may at launch?

[00:03:14] Winston Zhang: I think there’s a number of things that we’re doing to prepare for a net launch. I would say broadly, there’s probably three main. Buckets the first bucket is we’re actually launching and NFT. And what’s really exciting about the NFC is that it’s fairly unusual for crypto finance projects to have an NMT, but what’s really great about the NFC is that it’s able to create, this really exciting marketing and user acquisition moment for us.

[00:03:43] But then on top of that, Creating embedded utility within the NFC. So retreating the NFT kind of like a membership pass. And so for users who are avid fans and supporters of our project, holding the NMT, we’ll give them a number of benefits, both in-person and digital. So that’s like [00:04:00] one big bucket for us.

[00:04:01] The second big bucket in terms of. Marketing growth strategies is typically focused on the community. So we want to make sure that our users understand what we do. They understand the products that they’re investing in, and they understand how to use our products. So in anticipation of may net, for someone who might not even have a wallet, you know, how does this user actually create a wallet and actually interact with Sega?

[00:04:25] So really emphasizing the community engagement community education piece is important for us. and then. Big bucket that we’re focusing on to how the successful main that is to really concentrate on day one. So the day one marketing, we’re planning to do a number of exciting live streams and bring on special guests from other, well-known projects.

[00:04:42] And just to make the launch day, this really big and really exciting event to make sure that we’re attracting attention and getting the word out there about.

[00:04:52] Donny Dvorin: Got it. Got it. So this podcast is all about the brave marketing moment. What was your brave marketing moment that you want to share with our [00:05:00] audience?

[00:05:01] Winston Zhang: Yeah, I think it’s, it’s really interesting because when our team was sitting down and thinking about how we want to brand Sega and what the external, you know, like the aesthetic can, how we want to communicate the product and the brand to our users, we had to think a lot about. What that might look like.

[00:05:21] And I think our brave marketing moment was taking a risk on the brand for Sega and focusing on differentiation and really making sure that we stand out from the sea of other web three crypto finance projects out there. If you look at the market today in web three, Most projects go with this dark galaxy space theme.

[00:05:44] There’s probably some 3d effects, some retro like futuristic element to it. But then what ends up happening is everyone starts to look the same and everyone starts to look fairly undifferentiated. So what we wanted to focus on with. [00:06:00] How we might differentiate and make sure that users appreciate the novelty and the true innovation that we’re bringing with exotic options to the crypto market.

[00:06:10] And so. We also want it to make sure that the aesthetic of the brand differentiated and lived up to that differentiation. So we actually chose to go with a white theme. We chose to go with hand drawn doodly elements that showcased our playful, fun side, but still wasn’t overly playful and not serious for, you know, an actual financial product.

[00:06:30] And I think that was a huge risk for us, but it paid off. And all of the feedback we’ve gotten from users and different. even like institutional investors is that they’re, they’re loving the brand. I think it’s really exciting. And they really think that it’s different. So I think that was honestly a big risk for us in building Sega.

[00:06:46] And it’s been, I think it’s, it’s been like a really great leap of faith.

[00:06:50] Donny Dvorin: Got it. Got it. That’s great. So you were in door dash in late 2016, early 2017. What are the key lessons that you took away from your experience [00:07:00] during that time period?

[00:07:05] Winston Zhang: Foundational moment for me in terms of learning how to just being on the inside and observing literally like one of the fastest growing startups from late 2016 onwards. And I think some of the biggest lessons I learned at door dash were execution matters. So. DoorDash has a food delivery company. At the time, you also had grub Halep and Uber eats and Postmates and other companies launching in Texas.

[00:07:31] And if you look on the surface, it appears that everyone is doing fruit delivery, but while many people can have the idea to do fruits delivery, ultimately what separates the winners from the rest of the. Pack is a company’s ability to execute and to move fast and make decisions when you don’t have perfect information.

[00:07:50] And to really emphasize on, you know, giving people ownership to move quickly. If the decision doesn’t have [00:08:00] a irreversible consequence, then people should feel comfortable to make a decision. So I think the execution piece for door dash was a huge lesson that I learned that, you know, we’re continuing to build into the culture of Sega.

[00:08:12] And I think like in addition to the execution, one of the other big lessons too from door dash was that was, was actually this interesting notion of competition. So. Even though there were a number of competitors. And I think having a lot of competitors who are constantly launching things or doing things, might present a distraction.

[00:08:27] There was this overwhelming culture to be aware of competition, but not to focus on the competition because focusing on the competition meant that you were actually not focusing on the most important thing, which is your customers. So at the end of the day, It was most important for everyone at the company to focus on customers, to be thinking about the customer’s problems and how we can be creating more value for customers.

[00:08:48] And I think that customer focus, not competitor focused is really tough to do, but was this really important lesson that I learned?

[00:08:57] Donny Dvorin: Yeah. I mean, customer centric, [00:09:00] marketing and customer first approach is I feel like Amazon was like a really big company in that space. talking about that and then other people really latched

[00:09:08] Winston Zhang: on to it on that note actually, I mean, I think the COO for Jordache Christopher pain or CPS, he was known internally, a CP came from Amazon.

[00:09:17] And so I think there were a number of cultural values from Amazon that were also brought over to door dash and. I think culture building is really interesting because it’s such a noticeable, tangible thing despite how sort of like non-tangible it is. But I think internally at the company, there was this very tangible quality, the culture everyone knew.

[00:09:39] And I think, especially in terms of like that customer centricity, that Amazon is really, I think good at delivering on door dash also really cared about internally.

[00:09:49] Donny Dvorin: And you were at Y Combinator in 2020, and it help build that up. Can you talk about your experience there and any, any key learnings?

[00:09:57] Winston Zhang: Yeah, so I, my twin brother [00:10:00] and I, and another co-founder went through Y Combinator in January, 2020 and the winter 20 batch.

[00:10:06] And I mean like YC was an awesome experience. Interestingly enough, actually that was, that was the bachelor. Interrupted by COVID. So, we had about nine weeks of in-person by Combinator, before I transitioned to remote. And then on our demo day, two investors COVID basically hit that was like March of 2020, with demo day.

[00:10:24] So that was like, it was just like, it was crazy, crazy, crazy experience, but, but why C was such an incredible experience. And I think some of the most important things we learned, number one, to really focus on making, making something that people want. It’s funny because. Y C’s motto is, you know, make things people want.

[00:10:44] And when you look at that sentence as an outsider, like, it seems so obvious, right? It’s like, well, who would be spending time, making things that people don’t want. But I think after you start building a company and you really think back and you think hard on that sentence, like, it really [00:11:00] is challenging to make something that people want.

[00:11:03] And the only way to do that is you have to focus on talking to users and build. And just focusing on those two things and nothing else. And I think that’s something that like likes she really hammered home. Something else that I think we learned a lot about their YC was obviously fundraising and how to be effective.

[00:11:18] At selling yourself as a founder and selling your dreams and ideas for your startup, why she is very good at fundraising, they’re very good at helping their companies to fundraise. And part of that means, you know, creating demand and excitement and FOMO for your company in a short period of time. So I think that’s something that we learned as well.

[00:11:35] That was very valuable to building Sega today. How’d you build out the FOMO. So I think there’s a couple of ways to do it, tactically. I think you want to have a really compelling pitch that touches on the major points that you know, VCs are going to care about. So VCs wants to understand the team and why the team is best poised to solve the problem.

[00:11:54] They want to know if there’s a huge Tam and market opportunity for the problem. [00:12:00] They want to understand that you have technical expertise. So then you can actually build the solution that you’re pitching. And they want to know why now, like why, why is the current macro. Sort of evolution of markets or evolution of technologies making you guys well-poised to build this company.

[00:12:21] So I think understanding some of the things that VCs are looking for and being able to like touch on those points in a very sexy and compelling way, I think, as it makes fundraising creates fellow during fundraising and then tactically, the other thing to do with. To just have all of your investor conversations in a very short window of time, because that creates competition and that creates, you know, the need for investors to move quickly and to get back to you quickly, what you want to do is to have a ideally as a founder to have like a fast fundraising process to, to create that, you know, desire for VCs to give you a decision without necessarily pushing everything back for a long time.

[00:12:56] And so I think FOMO comes from both the storytelling, but [00:13:00] also just tactically, like having all of your conversations in a short term,

[00:13:04] Donny Dvorin: That makes sense. What’s the biggest opportunity for crypto marketers right now?

[00:13:10] Winston Zhang: I think there’s a, the thing is the number of opportunities for a couple of marketers. So one of the things we touched on earlier, which was differentiation, so, you know, it could be as simple as aesthetic visual differentiation to make sure.

[00:13:23] The crypto marketer is able to position their company and their products in a really unique way. Given how generally undifferentiated a lot of the crypto space is today. So I think differentiation is one big aspect. I think the second big opportunity for crypto marketers today is just to focus on simplicity and.

[00:13:44] Specifically the simplicity of the value proposition for the customer. So you, you know, you and Sam and Shas are probably aware of this, but a lot of crypto today can be very jargon, heavy, and, and it’s just full of all these crazy or [00:14:00] potentially scary sounding sentences that make people uncomfortable or make people confused.

[00:14:06] And I think to some extent, there is a certain element of this like ego in crypto or. It’s still so technical and cool, and it’s kind of like exclusive club, but I think that’s a huge challenge for broader adoption. And I think there’s a good opportunity for marketers to say, no, we don’t really care about all this jargon.

[00:14:27] We just care about making the products easier to channel for consumers. So how do we explain what we’re doing in simple terms? How do we explain the benefits and the impact that users will have from. Our product. And I think that’s something that all crypto marketers should be thinking about and probably could be doing a better job of, I mean, similarly for us, it’s also a thing that’s like top of line for us as well, given, you know, exotic options and options in general, isn’t the easiest concept to understand.

[00:14:55] So how might we position everything in like a really easy to understand way for the end [00:15:00] consumer? I think that second. And is

[00:15:02] Donny Dvorin: that like how you strategize to increase mainstream adoption by making it easy? Like what’s, what’s the strategy.

[00:15:09] Winston Zhang: I think there’s a number of ways to increase mainstream adoption.

[00:15:11] I think the first strategy is just thinking about our different user segments. So what’s interesting for us is actually we have both retail investors and institutional investors. So increasingly adoption and depending on which user segment. Focusing on, you actually would want to approach your marketing in a different way.

[00:15:33] The institutional investors will care about different things from regional busters and the base knowledge around options. And these financial products is also different. So in terms of strategies to increase the mainstream adoption, I think on the retail investor side, what we’re really focused on is yeah.

[00:15:51] Some of the stuff that’s touching on earlier, how do we really clearly articulate the value that retail Buster. Would have by investing their [00:16:00] time and investor investing their capital in our product, and then just creating awareness and creating, making that message really well-known I guess what’s interesting in crypto right now is that you can’t really do a lot of performance marketing for crypto.

[00:16:13] And so it still relies very heavily on word of mouth. And what that means is from a channel perspective, Twitter becomes an important acquisition channel and how. Other trustworthy credible members of the community basically share your project with other people also becomes an important channel. So those are some of the things that we’re thinking about in terms of increasing mainstream auction.

[00:16:36] And then on the institutional side, that’s sort of like, you know, a whole other ball game when it comes to driving growth for some of the institutional investors in our financial.

[00:16:45] Donny Dvorin: Got it, starting to transition back to a post COVID world. What are you guys doing as far as like real life marketing or experiential strategies

[00:16:54] Winston Zhang: we’ve already started to do like a number of these different real life strategies.

[00:16:57] So the first thing that we’re doing or [00:17:00] just to like share some of them, so we’re building Sega and we’re building on the salon of blockchain and salon as it has actually been running a number of different hackathons. And hacker houses in different major cities around the world. So we’ve had a chance to attend a number of them and to, sponsor different events at these hackathons.

[00:17:18] And it’s really cool because we actually get to watch the presentations from different, hackathon participants and keep an eye out for really great engineering talent and turn this real life event into both like a marketing opportunity, but also like a opportunity to hire and grow the team. We actually also ran a Cobra.

[00:17:36] happy hour with some of our other partners in person in Miami, just like a month ago. And that was really fun because I think, you know, crypto can be very digital and as much as you love seeing people on zoom, it’s always more fun to see them in person. So we actually got to meet face to face some of the other founders and like market-makers in person.

[00:17:55] And so I think that was really awesome in terms of transitioning to real life. I think like the last [00:18:00] strategy that we found to be really effective is actually call it. Crypto conference clubs. So for example, duke and Georgia tech and Stanford and Berkeley have crypto conference, astronautical club, they have like blockchain clubs.

[00:18:17] Those clubs have actually been like a really great source for recruiting and hiring. And they give you an opportunity to get your name out there early and to really plant the seeds with the up and coming future class of crypto influencers and crypto like engineers.

[00:18:33] Donny Dvorin: that’s great. What else would you like to share with the audience?

[00:18:37] Winston Zhang: I think the thing I’d love to share with the audiences that, so I touched on this a little bit earlier, but relaunching to main net in the middle of June. And this is a really exciting opportunity for us because Sega is building a truly innovative product in crypto. And we’d love for. As many users as possible to [00:19:00] come and try us out.

[00:19:01] So in the middle of June, when we launched to main net, there’s going to be a really good opportunity for users to finally get to experience. All of the hard work and all of the building that we put in to building this great product that offers better yields and this really important safety element for retail investors in crypto.

[00:19:19] So I think that’s something that we’d love to tell people. Yeah. I mean, something else that’s like really fun to tell people too, is, we’re actually launching an NFT. So I touched on this a little bit earlier, but typically NFCS, don’t have very much utility. Cool looking JPEGs with beautiful artwork, but for us, what it meant for us to launch a, an a T project is that we wanted to make sure there was utility.

[00:19:40] So for users who are holding the entity, when they come to our web application, there’s going to be exclusive strategies for them to deposit their money into there’s going to be exclusive access to certain faults. And, you know, as part of. A member of the sacred community, they’ll get access to really awesome swag.

[00:19:59] And we [00:20:00] want the NFC to actually create value for the holders. And so I think that’s something else that, you know, we want our community to look forward to.

[00:20:09] Donny Dvorin: Good. Yeah. How many NFTs are you launching? Like what, how many

[00:20:12] you

[00:20:12] Winston Zhang: mentioned there’s gonna be 5,000 entities.

[00:20:15] Donny Dvorin: That’s great. What does the artwork actually look like?

[00:20:17] Yeah,

[00:20:18] Winston Zhang: it’s a good question. if you go to our Twitter right now, so our Twitter is CGA underscore FYI. Which is where for finance. So, if you go to signify, we’ve actually started to tease some of the artwork for the NFTs. The broad concept is that it features the Sonic, which is a, it’s like a meme version of Sonic.

[00:20:41] And it’s this like really lovable meme that we’ve started to build with our sacred community and the sake of community, like really sort of, yeah. Like basically we have this like nickname for our community where all of our fans are called Sonics. And so we wanted the NFTs to be, you know, our artistic tick on that.

[00:20:59] CENIC

[00:20:59] Donny Dvorin: [00:21:00] cool. Anybody else that you would, or anyone that you would recommend that we interview for the podcast?

[00:21:04] Winston Zhang: Yeah, there’s a, there’s a number of names that come to mind, but I was going to say. let me think about that one a little bit more and get back to you guys. Sure.

[00:21:13] Donny Dvorin: How can our audience get in touch with you?

[00:21:16] Winston Zhang: So I think the best way to get in touch would be to just reach out on Twitter. It’s interesting. I think in crypto, Twitter is the, definitely like the number one channel for information and for communication. So yeah, it users can follow our Sega Twitter by going to CGA underscore FYI, or if they want the DME directly, that’s all.

[00:21:36] always available to chat and my Twitter is Z H a N G w I N S. That’s my Twitter handle.

[00:21:44] Donny Dvorin: Got it. Great. Well, thank you so much for coming on the brave marketer podcast. It was really great chatting with you today and we appreciate it.

[00:21:52] Winston Zhang: Yeah. Likewise, thank you so much for having me. This is like really fun and, love to getting to share more about some of my background experiences and also more about Sega.[00:22:00]

[00:22:00] Nice.