a16z crypto marketing full guide: From the developer ecosystem to token issuance, how do founders avoid traps?

Reprinted from chaincatcher

05/31/2025·3D

Source: Marketing 101 for Startups: Token Launches, Memes, Reaching Devs & More

Organize & compile: lenaxin, ChainCatcher

Editor 's note:

This article is compiled from the "Web3 Frontier" program produced by a16z, focusing on the marketing differences between the encryption field and the traditional technology industry. The guests of the program include: Amanda Tyler, Claire Kart, Kim Milosevich. They will in-depth discussion on practical experiences such as reputation building, developer community operation, talent recruitment, token issuance, and founder image shaping, and share effective methods and common misunderstandings.

ChianCatcher organizes and compiles the content.

TL &DR

The biggest challenge in cryptocurrency marketing is the small target audience.
The special nature of the encryption circle lies in its small scale and low threshold.
The essence of cryptocurrency marketing is ecological coordination.
The core of the activity strategy in the cryptocurrency industry lies in precise positioning.
Crypto marketing needs to redefine the growth method, and the core of the developer community is precise value resonance.
Building an influential brand in the field of crypto must establish in-depth connections with the founders.
When evaluating the Layer2 strategy, resource endowment determines differentiation.
Developer relations (DevRel) should be deeply integrated into the marketing system.
The success of the developer ecosystem depends on building a closed loop of "product-economy-community".
The core of token issuance is to balance its dual attributes, which is not only a marketing activity, but also a financial product.
The core of community operation strategy is to clarify the type of objects that are invested in long-term resources.
Advice for founders: build an expert image in the field, not a product salesman.
For projects that require community co-construction, marketing intervention can be earlier.
The construction of marketing teams should follow the dual standards of "all-round foundation + vertical specialization".
Quality content creation requires ongoing content support and feedback from the founder or team.

(I) Go to the forefront ****: The brand leverage of

the founder of crypto****

Kim Milosevich : What role should we play as head of marketing and communications? Should we stand in front of the stage or hide more behind the scenes?

Claire Kart: Technology marketers often work behind the scenes. Although this method is effective, in the crypto industry, technology founders are mostly silent, causing the team to miss out on exposure opportunities. In this early industry, finding the right talent is like finding a needle in a haystack. Therefore, I chose to go to the forefront. The encryption field relies especially on marketing and community, and users want to hear executives speak out.

Recruiting is equally difficult. Despite the improvement, excellent crypto marketing talent is still scarce. Creating a personal IP can not only bring talent recommendations, but also attract active job seekers, significantly improving recruitment efficiency.

Amanda Tyler: Building a personal IP on Twitter has significantly improved my recruitment efficiency, and this direct trust-building method is especially suitable for early-stage startups. When a candidate agrees with your values and experiences, a saying "we can talk" comes naturally.

Claire Kart: People choose to work more than the company themselves. While the vision and work content of the company are important, the ultimate deciding factor is often the team. You may be indifferent to invitations from strange companies, but if it is recommended by an acquaintance, even a startup company will consider it seriously.

(II) The uniqueness and basic logic of crypto marketing

Kim Milosevich : Is this a phenomenon unique to the crypto industry, or is it a common law? What is the core difference between crypto marketing and traditional technology marketing?

Claire Kart: I think cryptocurrency is more of a cult of personality. For example, Mark Zuckerberg and Shirley Sandberg have indeed invested a lot of energy to build personal IP, write books, do publicity, etc. But the cult of personality in the cryptocurrency field seems to be even more serious, and I can't explain the reason.

Amanda Tyler: The special nature of the encryption circle is its small scale and low threshold. Take me as an example. I accumulated a large number of Instagram followers through maternal and child blogs in my twenties, but after switching to the crypto field, I immediately felt the "big fish in a small pond" effect, and it was much easier to build influence here.

This field consists of multiple well-defined subcultural circles, where newcomers can quickly target target communities and identify key figures. In contrast, traditional fields such as Zuckerberg's circle has a higher threshold and requires more professional endorsement. The crypto industry is still in its early stages providing unique opportunities for content creators.

Kim Milosevich : As a project party, how should we create differentiation and accurately attract target audiences?

Amanda Tyler : The biggest challenge in cryptocurrency marketing is the small target audience. There are only 23,000 crypto developers active monthly in 2023, and it is expected to increase to 30,000 in 2024. Among the 28 million developers around the world, less than 0.1% are involved in encryption. In such a highly vertical market, marketing must focus on the three core needs of developers:

Technology: Solve practical problems such as composability in the Rollup ecosystem
Economics: Exploring sustainable income models for public product development
Value: Create unique value propositions that are attractive to developers

Claire Kart: Crypto marketing needs to redefine growth methods, and the core of the developer community is precise value resonance. Economic incentives are just the starting point. What really drives growth is to build a technological ideal country that allows developers to find professional value and spiritual belonging. Once achieved, they will spontaneously promote ecological development.

We need to give up the thinking of pursuing scale in the Internet era and instead adhere to " deep priority" : understand the technical preferences of each core developer, and even the pet name, and maximize the experience of the top 10 users. Technical idealism itself is the best medium of communication. In this field, the power of 100 deep participants is far better than that of 10,000 shallow users, and the real growth comes from these seemingly unscalculable deep connections.

(III) Growing under the shadow of Ethereum ****:

Layer2 's positioning and strategy trade-offs****

Kim Milosevich : Does the Layer2 project require in-depth binding to the Ethereum community culture to achieve effective marketing?

Claire Kart: Amanda has more experience in Ethereum ecosystem operations. Before joining Aztec, I worked on another Layer1 project and have been thinking about this issue recently - the Ethereum community's sentiment fluctuates like a tide, sometimes full of beliefs to change the world, and sometimes I get into doubt because of foundation decisions. As a Layer2 project, we are still exploring the best balance point for borrowing the potential energy of the Ethereum community.

Amanda Tyler: The Rollup ecosystem is an extension of Ethereum culture, and its open characteristics have given birth to a unique "competitive and cooperative ecosystem" - all Layer2 are jointly expanding the Ethereum network. This requires marketing to balance the dual positioning : not only highlight business value, but also emphasize the core mission of expanding Ethereum. The most effective way to prove it is technical binding, such as using ETH to pay Gas fees by default, which can better highlight the symbiotic relationship with Ethereum than any slogan.

Kim Milosevich : Is the rise of the Layer2 ecosystem reconstructing developers’ perception of Ethereum’s value?

Claire Kart: When evaluating the Layer2 strategy, resource endowment determines differentiation. Projects with strong capital, such as BASE, a subsidiary of Coinbase, can independently build an ecological brand with the resources of listed companies; while Layer2, which has limited resources, needs to be deeply bound to Ethereum to take advantage of its industry credibility to achieve a cold start. This resource-oriented marketing strategy choice essentially reflects the "Matthew effect" of the crypto ecosystem - the strong will always be strong, while emerging projects must make good use of leverage.

(IV) DevRel × Marketing: a collaborative engine that

drives ecological growth

Kim Milosevich : How should community operations and developer relations (DevRel) form strategic synergy with marketing?

Claire Kart: I have practiced two team models: under the full funnel marketing model, DevRel focuses on mid-to-late conversions, serving developers who have already understood the project and are ready to deploy; and at Aztec, DevRel is directly embedded in the product team due to its high product complexity. Although the latter can be deeply coordinated, two major pain points need to be solved: ensuring consistent user positioning and avoiding disconnection between marketing customer acquisition and developer support.

Amanda Tyler: Developer Relations (DevRel) should be deeply integrated into the marketing system. As the primary contact point, developer documents need to uniformly control language style and conversion paths. Currently, DevRel is evolving into the role of content creators, solving the pain points of tool use through programming teaching videos and other forms. We have found that this type of content can effectively increase developer participation and prove that the industry needs to break information barriers to interact. This evolution requires DevRel to have stronger marketing thinking and execution capabilities.

Kim Milosevich : How should blockchain projects formulate effective on-chain developers support strategies?

Claire Kart: The success of the developer ecosystem depends on building a closed loop of "product-economy-community". Taking the privacy field as an example, its professionalism naturally screens out the target developers. The cold start period requires a two-pronged approach: it is necessary to explore business potential, but also track the progress of early developers, and provide high-value support such as media exposure and strategic consulting at critical moments. Although this kind of in-depth operation is difficult to scale, it is the key to building a project moat.

Amanda Tyler: The essence of cryptocurrency marketing is ecological coordination . We must not only discover the developer's stories, but also actively identify needs and promote product iteration. The core is to help developers succeed through in-depth support: actively intervene on platforms such as GitHub and Twitter, first solve the actual construction problems, and then disseminate them after the project is mature. This closed-loop model of " empowering first and then speaking out" is the truly effective path to ecological construction.

(V) ****Coordinate ecology and control noise: a systematic thinking

from token issuance to brand collaboration****

Kim Milosevich : How to accurately identify effective feedback in the encryption community with information overload?

Amanda Tyler: To track early adoption of the new token standard, I took the following steps:

Analyze the code library cloning records and find a large number of new accounts
Filter out real developers and directly communicate usage needs through Twitter
Synchronously verify technical documents and directly send user feedback to the product team

The entire process reflects the working method of "developer needs to trace the source of the front line".

Kim Milosevich : How to build a complete full-cycle management system for token issuance?

Claire Kart: The core of token issuance is to balance its dual attributes . It is not only a marketing activity, but also a financial product. The design quality of the economic model directly determines the fate of the project, and explosive or incremental paths need to be selected based on the project characteristics. There are three key points to grasp at the implementation level:

Discuss the value positioning of tokens with economists to avoid copying and copying them;
In-depth research on practical application scenarios and usage habits in different markets;
Establish a complete post-listing management mechanism, including community sentiment management, team incentive mechanisms and information disclosure standards.

These challenges are essentially consistent with the governance requirements faced by listed companies.

Kim Milosevich : How to build a full-cycle operation system for token issuance to ensure a complete closed loop from economic model design to community governance?

Claire Kart: The core of community operation strategy is to clarify the type of objects that are invested in long-term resources . As you mentioned, now full of robots and AI accounts, it is difficult to tell whether the real users are actively speaking in the community. Therefore, the target population must be accurately targeted:

Highly fit early supporters should be cultivated during the testnet phase
For PoS networks, node operators and validators (both institutions and individual pledges) are key opinion leaders
Establish structured operation mechanisms, such as regular community conference calls

The key is to not only collect market feedback widely, but also learn to filter noise . If you try to respond to all online sounds, you will only fall into the quagmire of invalid information.

Kim Milosevich : What specific challenges does the structure of foundation and laboratory division in the encryption industry bring to the market team? How to achieve brand collaboration while maintaining organizational independence?

Amanda Tyler: In actual operation, I adopt a differentiated communication strategy to deal with this dual architecture:

Laboratory side: Cultivate technical leaders as a voice channel, such as opening a certified account for product managers, and publishing technical progress (such as custom Gas token upgrades), and then disseminating them again through the official account.
Foundation side: Focus on strategic communication at the brand level and shape industry cognition.

This method not only maintains the narrative independence of the two, but also forms a synergistic effect at the execution level.

Claire Kart: This dual-team architecture has mixed pros and cons in practice. The advantage lies in the ability to form strategic synergy with senior marketing talents in the ecosystem, such as discussing development goals through the marketing summit during DevCon, which not only maintains the technical team links but also shares management pressures. But the core pain point lies in the repeated allocation of resources and the market is sluggish. Maintaining two executive teams (GC/CFO/CMO) at the same time will cause significant financial burden.

(VI) Brand starts from people: the dual layout of

founder influence and marketing resources

Kim Milosevich : How should the founder professionally create his personal IP image?

Amanda Tyler: The core advice for founders is to shape the image of an expert in the field, not a product salesman. Specific methods:

Discuss industry pain points based on professional insights, rather than directly selling products
Building influence through the disclosure of professional knowledge
Make good use of personal channels to convey in-depth views

Taking the founder of Optimism as an example, the reason why his speech has attracted much attention is because of its scarcity and professionalism - they do not speak out often, but they can output insights from a professional perspective every time. This restrained and professional way of speaking is worth learning from.

Claire Kart: It is recommended that the founder choose the most natural way of expression : those who are good at dialogue work, those who are good at writing long articles, and those who are suitable for shooting videos. There is no need to force a form that is not good at, such as resisting public speeches, you can avoid large occasions. The key is to incorporate personal style into professional content - humor and a unique expression of creative design. Find an easy and professional output method, which works best with the communication strategy.

Kim Milosevich : How to help founders build personal IP in their comfort zone while planning a progressive growth path?

Claire Kart: For founders who are just starting to build personal influence, it is recommended to start with the easiest entry point: focus on doing one thing well, mobilize the company 's resource support, and create several iconic moments to accumulate potential energy. This is far more effective than forcing the founder to post 10 tweets a day. The key is that if you have something to say, you can tell it thoroughly, and you will naturally open up the situation.

Kim Milosevich : Should the founder completely hand over the core content of personal IP and company narratives (missions/values/positioning) to the marketing team ?

Claire Kart: My core positioning is to assist the founders in delivering their core vision. Founders must lead the expression of corporate DNA and technology routes, which is the key to gaining investment. We provide professional support - from ghostwriting services to strategic seminars, but always insist on the founder outputting original content, and the team is responsible for optimizing packaging. Because what really touches the market is always the founder’s real entrepreneurial intention, not the excessive marketing tactics.

Amanda Tyler: To build an influential brand in the crypto field, it is necessary to establish in-depth connections with the founders. Only through one-on-one communication can we truly understand its core vision and entrepreneurial intentions, thereby injecting soul into the brand story. This is the basis of successful marketing and there is no shortcut to take.

Kim Milosevich : Key questions about the allocation of marketing resources: When should we recruit full-time marketing leaders? When should consultants or agencies be introduced?

Amanda Tyler: The particularity of cryptocurrency marketing is that when the product is not yet mature, it often starts marketing concepts and vision. This stage requires constant trial and error to find the most suitable way of communication.

Personal advice: The best time to start marketing is 6 months before the product goes online. Promoting products that do not exist too early will lead to market doubts, and missing opportunities too late. The key is to find the golden time point between storytellers and communicators based on understanding the product delivery cycle.

Claire Kart: For projects that require community co-construction, marketing intervention can be earlier. For example, when running a decentralized test network, even if there is no "official product" or main network, it is necessary to attract node operators to participate.

I usually help the founder clarify the core needs:

If the project needs to be continuously operated by the community (such as weekly review and progress synchronization), full-time personnel may be required to promote it.
If it is only a phased demand, consultants or agencies may be more suitable

The key is to distinguish between real needs and external stress, and recruitment is often not effective due to anxiety.

Amanda Tyler: In the crypto industry, working with marketing agencies faces unique challenges. Because the domain knowledge is too professional, a lot of time must be invested in training the other team to ensure they truly understand the characteristics of the product—or it will be difficult to produce effective results.

Claire Kart: The crypto industry marketing institutions are mainly divided into two categories: comprehensive large companies and vertical high-quality teams. Professional marketers are more suitable for working with high-quality teams, able to produce high-quality results for specific needs, especially studios with long-term cooperation with higher value. However, due to the lack of industry experience, the founder has decision-making risks no matter which category he chooses.

(7) ****Marketing start-up method for startup projects: from agency

collaboration to team building****

Kim Milosevich : How can a founder who lacks marketing experience effectively select and manage professional marketing agencies?

Claire Kart: Many founders have a cognitive misunderstanding: they believe that as long as they sign a marketing agency contract, all market problems can be solved.

Amanda Tyler: When working with small boutique institutions, I summarized the efficient working model: providing them with small campaign briefings with clear boundaries and clear narratives. This limited scope commissioning method can not only avoid internal narrative confusion, but also ensure the quality of execution, and has become my most respected paradigm of cooperation.

Kim Milosevich : As the first full-time marketing leader in a startup, how should we plan recruitment priorities when building a team? What core abilities do the marketing leader of a startup team need to have?

Claire Kart: When the startup team first recruited marketing leaders, my core principle was: only select all-round talents I had worked with. This type of candidate must meet three key conditions: a deep understanding of my work style, a seamless collaboration ability, and a willingness to do it yourself (even CMOs needed to operate social media in the early stages). Practice has proved that this kind of cooperation with a deep knowledge can quickly open up the situation - compared to taking risks to enable newcomers, tacit cooperation with familiar comrades can better withstand the pressure of entrepreneurship and avoid team rhythm disorders caused by improper employment.

Kim Milosevich : How to balance professional depth and functional flexibility in early recruitment of startup teams?

Amanda Tyler: Marketing team building should follow the dual standards of "all-round foundation + vertical specialization" : each member must be competent for basic work such as tweet writing, email layout, voice live broadcast, and must also have professional depth in specific vertical fields. This team structure, divided by domain rather than function, has been proven in our actual combat to maximize small team performance. There is no traditional job boundary, so that every member is both a versatile and a field expert.

Kim Milosevich : When hiring cryptocurrency talents, do we have to require an "industry-native" background?

Amanda Tyler: It depends on the specific project requirements. For communication positions (such as writing or public relations), you can learn from industry knowledge. We all start from scratch, and no one is born to understand cryptocurrencies. The key is to have a passion for continuous learning: like me, I still maintain the habit of reading all industry trends every day. If I can do it, our communications manager can do it too.

Kim Milosevich : How to balance the professional background of technical talents with the adaptability of the cryptocurrency industry? How should cryptocurrency projects plan the timing and functional positioning of editorial talents?

Claire Kart: Recruitment in the crypto industry should return to the essence of the business . SaaS projects for developers can completely introduce mature marketing talents from the traditional technology field, such as experts who are good at developing community operations. Instead of sticking to the hard indicator of "must encrypt background", it is better to focus on the candidate's professional ability transferability. The rich SaaS talent resources of technology centers such as San Francisco can quickly transmit proven marketing talents to crypto projects.

Amanda Tyler: Content creators and technical document engineers must be based on a clear strategic roadmap to work effectively. Many companies only hire technical documenters to convert product roadmaps, but these talents often lack the ability to incorporate short-term goals into a six-month strategic vision.

Claire Kart: When considering recruiting content creators, you must think deeply about three levels: first, you must clarify the specific pain points that need to be solved through writing in the current business; second, you must define the scope of job responsibilities, and you cannot just stay in the vague expressions like "responsible for writing". The most important thing is to establish a supporting collaboration mechanism, because high-quality content creation requires the founder or team to provide continuous content support and feedback , and it is by no means a problem that can be solved automatically by hiring a writer.

Kim Milosevich : How to ensure that newly introduced content creators play an effective role in the decentralized team structure?

Claire Kart: When the founder considers recruiting full-time content creators, the first thing to do is to clarify the specific requirements for the first deliverable. In reality, many of these needs do not actually require the establishment of full-time positions. Founders often fall into two misunderstandings: one is to seek agency or full-time employment too early, and the other is to ignore the potential of existing resource networks. A more pragmatic approach is to prioritize project-based cooperation or temporary support programs, especially when demands only involve single content outputs, blind recruitment of full-time staff often leads to resource mismatch.

(8) ****Implementation and resonance: From local operations to

integrated communication of community culture****

Kim Milosevich : How to efficiently build global operation capabilities for cryptocurrency projects?

Claire Kart: The core of cryptocurrency global operation lies in the construction of local trust networks. When entering new markets, local partners must be introduced through reliable channels—there are significant differences in business habits among countries: some regions are more accepting long-term cooperation based on trust rather than American standardized contracts. Lack of local relations will lead to cultural misjudgment and communication failure. The optimal path is to rely on existing resource networks to obtain endorsements, rather than cold-start unfamiliar development.

Amanda Tyler: We have effectively identified and cultivated a group of high-activity community members by establishing a local Discord channel. The specific operation mode is: first systematically train local members to master project documents, and gradually build a decentralized cultural communication network. This localized operation based on daily collaboration tools is actually creating a new online relationship network and naturally cultivating the community ecology through high-frequency interaction.

Claire Kart: Community operations need to discover and develop core supporters. When the project enters an important stage of development, those actively involved contributors can become effective sources of talent. Incorporating it into the formal system through mechanisms such as technical ambassadors or local event organizations can not only maintain community participation, but also establish preliminary market resources. When it is necessary to introduce professional service providers, these basic relationship networks can provide reference suggestions to reduce the difficulty of starting from scratch. The value of the post-funding model lies in the fact-seeking evaluation method.

Kim Milosevich : What is the strategic positioning and execution methodology of activities in the cryptocurrency industry ?

Amanda Tyler: The core of the activity strategy in the cryptocurrency industry is precise positioning. Although large-scale events help brands to expose, the return on investment is difficult to measure; in contrast, small and high-end events can achieve business cooperation and key connections at a lower cost. Mature projects should focus on high-value participants, while emerging projects should avoid blindly participating in exhibitions and instead create high-quality activities in vertical fields. In essence, it is to pursue quality rather than scale.

Claire Kart: Three key points should be grasped in cryptocurrency activity strategies:

Plan synchronously with the product roadmap to enable major releases and important activities to cooperate;
Standardize budget use and avoid simply using activity funds for relationship maintenance. All sponsorships must comply with a clear ecological strategic direction;
Focus on efficient activities, contact core people through small closed-door meetings, and hold professional activities such as developer conferences.

Offline activities allow the team to directly observe developer feedback, identify potential users, and even discover regional communities, bringing opportunities for global expansion.

Kim Milosevich : How does cryptocurrency marketing balance technical professionalism with community entertainment expression?

Claire Kart: Cryptocurrency marketing needs to make good use of meme culture, a special narrative tool. Meme can cleverly transform complex concepts while strengthening the sense of belonging in the community. The key is to establish a balance mechanism: the core account maintains professional tone, but gives operators reasonable creative space, which can not only enhance work enthusiasm, but also produce high-quality content. Meme should be used as an organic part of the overall communication strategy, and those expressions that resonate with the industry should be screened through testing rather than using them in pieces.

Amanda Tyler: Our meme strategy maintains moderate participation: mainly supports the content dissemination of ecological projects, and is relatively restrained in its own creation. Three guidelines are followed during implementation: maintain a positive and positive communication tone and avoid any negative jokes; stick to brand tone in the industry entertainment atmosphere; and track industry trends through internal meme sharing. This balanced approach allows us to integrate into community culture and effectively control the risk of communication.

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