Hello and welcome back!
Let me paint a vivid picture that might feel uncomfortably familiar: A founder proudly shows me their Twitter profile with 87,000 followers, beaming like they’ve just won the Super Bowl. Then I ask to see their Discord. It’s a digital tumbleweed rolling past messages that read “wen token” and “gm ser.”
This isn’t a community. It’s a house of cards waiting for the next crypto winter to blow it down.
Today we’re talking about something that actually matters: building your first 1,000 true fans. We’re taking Kevin Kelly’s classic “1,000 True Fans” idea, throwing it into the fiery arena of Web3, and forging something much stronger than surface-level hype.
Because here’s what I actually care about: How many people would file a detailed bug report at 3 a.m.? How many would add the first $500 of liquidity because they believe in the technology, not just the token flip? How many would call out your bullshit in a governance forum — constructively — because they’re emotionally invested in your success?
Those are your people.
What a “Fan” Actually Means in Crypto
Let’s be crystal clear from the start.
In our world, a true fan isn’t a follower. They’re a citizen of your ecosystem.
They’re the ones who treat your testnet like it’s their own product. They’ll spend hours writing thoughtful feedback, ship pull requests, and defend your project in other Discords when the trolls come out. They’re equal parts vocal evangelists and your harshest (but most valuable) critics.
Everyone else? They’re speculators. And speculators disappear the moment the price action gets boring.
I’ve watched projects with 40,000 Discord members completely fail to pass critical governance votes because 99% of their “community” were mercenaries waiting for an airdrop. The math is brutal but simple: a small, passionate platoon beats a large, apathetic army every single time.
Finding Your First Ten: The Ground Game
Here’s where most founders go wrong. They want to jump straight to “community building” tactics before they’ve done the unglamorous work of finding their first ten true believers.
My personal rule of thumb: Your first ten should feel like you’re recruiting co-founders, not users.
This isn’t about blasting marketing messages. It’s a ground game. It’s personal.
If you’re building a novel DeFi protocol, you shouldn’t be spending your time on generic crypto Twitter. You should be deep in the ethfinance subreddit, dropping genuinely insightful comments in MEV threads. You should be in developer Discords for new L2s, helping people debug contracts — and only then mentioning the tool you’ve been building that solves their exact pain.
This isn’t shilling. It’s demonstrating value first.
I once watched a founder building a new oracle spend an entire month in a niche Telegram group for on-chain game developers. He didn’t talk about his project. He just answered technical questions with ridiculous generosity. By the time he finally introduced what he was building, he already had seven partners lined up who were genuinely excited.
That’s how you find people who actually give a damn.
Building the Campfire: Your Inner Circle
Here’s the painfully common mistake I see constantly: Founders find these early believers and then leave them scattered across public channels where signal gets drowned out by noise.
My unbreakable rule: The moment you find your first ten, you immediately pull them into a private, invite-only space.
Call it your “Campfire.”
This isn’t elitist. It’s strategic. It’s where you, as the founder, show up every single day. You drop Figma links and say, “Tear this apart.” You ship a buggy testnet and tell them, “Go break this for me.”
You’re not broadcasting. You’re collaborating.
I advised a derivatives protocol that did this masterfully. Their core group of about 70 people had a direct line to the lead developer. They didn’t feel like users — they felt like partners. That group didn’t just give feedback; they literally helped shape the cultural DNA of the entire project.
This inner circle becomes your foundation. Protect it fiercely.
Handing Them the Megaphone (The Right Way)
Once your campfire is roaring with a hundred true believers, then you can start thinking about amplification.
But please — for the love of all that is holy — don’t launch one of those soul-crushing “ambassador programs” that rewards likes, retweets, and noise. Those programs don’t build communities. They breed mercenaries.
Instead, design systems that reward genuine value creation.
Tools like Zealy or Galxe are fine, but the structure is what matters. A detailed bug report with a screen recording should be worth serious points. A well-researched Twitter thread that actually explains your tokenomics correctly? Even more. Successfully onboarding a new user who then becomes active in governance? That’s gold.
One of my favorite examples was a project that made their top community prize an allocation for writing documentation. The documentation they received was better than what they could have paid professional writers to create — because only people who deeply understood the product bothered to compete for it.
That’s how you create an organic flywheel.
Content as a Dog Whistle, Not a Megaphone
The best content in Web3 doesn’t shout. It whispers to exactly the right people.
Forget the fluffy “The Future of Decentralization” blog posts. Instead, release a 3,000-word technical deep-dive on your novel MEV mitigation strategy. It won’t get a million views. But the thousand people who read it and understand it? They’re your exact audience.
One team I loved built and open-sourced a simple dashboard for tracking validator performance on a new testnet. It wasn’t even their main product. But it solved an immediate, painful problem for developers. Those developers became their most loyal power users.
This is the difference between a megaphone and a dog whistle. One attracts everyone. The other attracts your people.
Measuring What Actually Matters
If you’re still measuring success by total Discord members or Twitter followers, we need to talk.
Those are vanity metrics. They feel good but tell you nothing about the health of your project.
Instead, look at:
– Unique, high-quality GitHub pull requests
– On-chain testnet interactions (not just wallet connects, but actual multi-step usage)
– Governance participation rates
– The quality of discussions in your private channels
Create public recognition systems that reward the right behavior — weekly leaderboards for most helpful support answers, best bug reports, or clearest documentation contributions.
You get what you reward. So reward what matters.
The Only Real Moat You Have
Here’s the truth that might make you uncomfortable: Your technology can be copied. Your treasury can be drained. Smart contracts can be exploited.
But that core group of 1,000 true fans who feel genuine ownership over your project? That’s nearly impossible to replicate.
They become your culture. Your early warning system. Your distribution channel. Your most effective recruiting tool. And most importantly, they carry you through the brutal winters when hype dies and only belief remains.
The path isn’t complicated. It just requires real work:
- Get your hands dirty to find your spark (the first ten)
- Build your campfire and turn them into co-creators
- Hand them the megaphone only after the culture is set
Get this right, and you don’t just have a community.
You have a movement.
And that, my friends, changes everything.
Thanks for reading Episode 19.
Next week we’re diving into the messy, often misunderstood world of influencer marketing in Episode 20: The KOL Dilemma — How to Vet Influencers and Structure Win-Win Deals. You won’t want to miss it.
In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you. What’s been your experience building genuine community in Web3? Have you found your “campfire” yet, or are you still trying to light the match? Drop your thoughts in the comments.
Until next time — build like your project’s life depends on it.
Because it does.
— Your mentor in the trenches