The Crypto Founders Maze
Reflecting on our journey so far as Tevaera’s founders to share our experiences & mantras with the community and fellow builders.
The Beginning
As we approach the much-awaited launch of Tevaera 2.0, we wanted to take a moment to reflect and share our challenging yet rewarding Tevaera journey with the crypto community. Robin & Gav, co-founders of Tevaera Labs, the team building Tevaera project, met each other 28 years ago in grade 6 & became best friends.
Our common interest was always GAMES, which has been an integral part of our life. A part that helped us draw an imaginary line between the real world and the game. The games offered us an escape to a new world, which was fun & engaging but not always fair & rewarding. This became our inspiration for building Tevaera. More on that in the next 3 days. For now, let's go back to our crypto journey.
It all started with a conversation about the democratic internet in 2017, which introduced us to cryptocurrencies. We were fascinated by this native payment layer system which was trustless and borderless. But, this was just the beginning of our discovery process as we started investing & interacting with the builders in the Ethereum community to understand & experience its varied characteristics and applications. At this point, we were convinced the internet will change again for the better, and we wanted to be part of it.
The Founder’s Maze
Like many of you, we both had full-time “Web 2” jobs that were stable and rewarding. We had done well in our respective fields: growing tech start-up to a $100M revenue and working as a Strategy Consultant advising executives in fortune 500 companies. When we took the leap to become “Web3” builders, we were confident in our success because of our 5 years of exposure to crypto & 15 + years of background in building global dynamic teams and user-centric products while focusing on go-to-market strategies and operational excellence. What could go wrong, eh?
BUT, little did we know about the “maze of twists and turns” waiting for us.
We want to be open about our key experiences and share learnings & mantras through this post to help potential/new/fellow founders. Right off the bat, we knew from our prior experience that building a startup is never easy, especially when you’re working in the fast-paced and innovative world of crypto. So, here we go…
5 Key lessons learned
1) RIGHT TEAM
We have been fortunate to have experience building an R&D organization ground-up, and it was still not easy. Countless resume scans; interviews; rejections from both sides, mismatched skills & “crypto” expectations, conflicts, the list of challenges we have faced goes on…right team is probably the single biggest make-or-break factor for a start-up.
Our mantra: we hire part-timers and work closely with them every day to see if they are a “good fit” for Tevaera labs. Only a few make it, but those who do truly believe in our mission and are the real gems of making Tevaera 2.0 a reality!
Spend the time building the right team; there are no shortcuts here, especially for a bootstrapped project.
2) FUNDING
Contrary to popular belief, raising money in crypto isn’t easy for many projects. Especially in a bear market and if you are looking for Tier A (value add) investors. Deadly combo : ) Don’t believe random posts on how “anyone” can raise millions through crypto VC funding.
Like many other crypto projects, we are a bootstrapped project with some funding from our friends at Cogitent Ventures. The founders haven’t drawn a salary for over a year; we just use our resources prudently while watching our burn rate to build our vision and team. We took a product- and community-first approach.
Our mantra: We haven’t cracked funding yet, but the low burn rate and building the right products have helped us stay motivated and focused on our mission. While it’s not been easy not to prioritize funding, we genuinely believe in building the right products with a self-sustaining economic model.
Let us know if you have any words of wisdom for us, and a checkbook would be great if you are a value add investor!
3) PRODUCT MARKET FIT
For those unfamiliar with the concept, product-market fit refers to the intersection between the needs of the market and the capabilities of the product. This hasn’t been a popular topic of conversation in crypto, generally speaking, but we have started to mature as an industry, and if you want to build commercially successful products, the market fit is non-negotiable.
We struggled with this big time! We got caught up in the buzzwords, tried for a forced fit to make our games a part of a “Metaverse” while having a limited understanding of the real Web3 gaming problems.
Our mantra: Building products and trying to find the market fit before raising capital is one of the best ways to learn in a dynamic industry. It drives you to find the right value proposition and solve real problems. We learned so much through our experiences over the last year, and you will hopefully see it reflected in Tevaera 2.0.
Stay fluid, and don’t be scared to pivot. There is a fine line between not knowing what you are doing vs. doing something different because you know what you are doing : )
4) DYNAMIC INDUSTRY
We are in a 24x7, evolving industry, regulations, and a market that changes sentiments and opinions every day, week, and month. We go through several cycles in a year. This takes a toll on your mental health as you constantly try to keep up with the change. Self-doubt creeps in, and you start questioning your strategy.
When we started the project, we were actively trying to trade and invest, like we did with our Web 2 jobs. In no time we couldn’t find any time to do it. All we could think and do was Tevaera. When Gav started working at EY, his partner told him 1 year at EY = 3years of industry experience. And, it was true. We guess 1 year as a crypto start-up founder is 2–3x that, lol.
Our mantra: Have a clear strategy in place and a support system. Be ready to fail fast. Don’t make rushed decisions and “sleep over it”. We can’t tell you how many better decisions we have made by just sleeping over it. A fresh mind and ideas can do wonders. Also, spend time setting up your legal structure for the long term. It has been one of our priority areas for us and helps with peace of mind for our community and us.
Prioritize self-care and take time to evaluate decisions. Crypto is an open community, don’t hesitate to reach out.
5) COMMUNITY
From a founder's perspective, we are blessed to have crypto communities that can help you test your assumptions and strategies. Where it gets tricky is that your community members have different motivations and expectations. Also, a lot of good work is being done by some projects on building engagement platforms such as Crew3.xyz.
In our humble opinion and experience, there is a fundamental difference between just growing the number of community members vs. harnessing the real potential of what a community can do for you. While we are still experimenting and learning every day, there have been a few things we have done successfully.
Our mantra: Build a strong & engaged community through Engage to Earn program. You can read more about it here: https://tevaera.medium.com/engage-to-earn-is-live-fd9f8cab82e3
More importantly, we have spent a considerable amount of time profiling our community members, also known as TEVANS, to understand their behavior and drivers. We have then built our engagement strategies to keep our users motivated. We understand these user segments will not be mutually exclusive and are still a work in progress.
Understand your community, make it engaging, and reward them fairly for their early support.
Conclusion
We believe that Tevaera 2.0 is a testament to the hard work and determination of Tevaera Labs team. It will introduce products that are designed to solve real problems with web3 gaming infrastructure and games. We are super proud of our accomplishments and excited to share our journey with the world.
In conclusion, building a startup is never easy, but the journey can be incredibly rewarding. Stay focused and make sure you believe in what you are building. Together, let's take our crypto industry to the next level. We will do our bit with our vision of empowering and onboarding the next 100 million web3 gamers with a simplified user experience and driving the future of on-chain multiplayer gaming infrastructure.
Tomorrow, we will talk about the problems we are solving with web3 gaming, followed by a reveal of our Tevaera 2.0 ecosystem post.
Onwards and as always, thank you for your continued support and patience.
To learn more, please visit https://tevaera.com and connect with us on Twitter | Discord | Telegram | Medium
