What is Web3 Academy? | 1st Birthday Special Edition

GM Doers!

It’s our birthday and we’ll cry if we want to!

Kidding, we won't cry…

BUT, we will teach you the top things we’ve learned about building and investing in web3 in the last year.

How does that sound?

We’ve spent the last 365 days studying just about every new business, protocol or event that has happened in this space.

We’ve networked at conferences, on Twitter and on the Web3 Academy Podcast.

We’ve written 3 articles every week on Web3 for the last year.

And we’ve built a Discord community, launched NFTs, POAPs, social tokens and more.

What a year it has been.

Below, Jay and I are going to answer the following 4 questions:

1. Why did we choose to build in web3?

2. How have our thoughts changed about web3 in the last year?

3. What is our advice for other web3 builders and investors?

4. What’s next for Web3 Academy?

But first, who the hell are Kyle and Jay?

Jay 

A Canadian snowboarder who lives in the mountains with a passion for meditation, breathwork and anything else that helps him maintain his extremely chill demeanour.

Jay is heavily involved in multiple NFT communities and might even own the rights to the saying “ownership is fun!”.

Co-Founder: Web3 Academy & Impact Digital Marketing 🔥

Kyle

A nomadic Canadian chasing surf and sunsets all over the globe. When the waves are flat or he’s landlocked in Canada you’ll find him at the gym, in the sauna or having a beer with a good buddy.

Kyle has a deep addiction to learning everything there is to know about how web3 and AI will affect the future of business and everyday people alike.

Co-Founder: Web3 Academy & Impact Digital Marketing 🔥

👉 Brought to You by Lens Protocol: The Future of Social Networking

Why did we Choose to Build in Web3?

Jay: To be honest, Kyle pitched me on going all in on Web3 back in 2021. At the time I didn’t know too much about it. But Kyle was very passionate about it and told a compelling story.

We were already running a growth marketing agency together and things were going well, but I’m all for moving out of my comfort zone and trying new things that scare me (which this did).

I’ll let Kyle explain his pitch to me to answer this question, but for a while Kyle and I wanted to start our own media agency, rather than only run an agency that helped other media platforms. Web3 seemed like the perfect opportunity.

Kyle: I had been going heavily down the crypto rabbit hole since 2019, but everything changed when I finally learned what Ethereum was. I realized that this was about so much more than revolutionizing money, it was about revolutionizing the entire internet.

Ethereum and smart contract platforms were going to change everything, similar to how the internet changed everything starting back in the 90s. I immediately reached out to Ryan at Bankless and brought them on as a client for our marketing agency in early 2021 and followed that with other media platforms in crypto.

My main concern after understanding what was happening in this space was: “how is this going to disrupt our marketing agency and our clients' businesses?”. I didn’t know the answer, but I knew that I was about to go down a long rabbit hole to figure it out.

So I figured, if we’re going to spend all this time learning, we might as well share our learnings and build a business around it. Afterall, growing media companies was what we specialized in.

I pitched the Impact3 team in the summer of 2021 on the idea of Web3 and said we should start a business in this space. By early 2022 we launched Web3 Academy and haven’t looked back since!

Editor’s note: Kyle can really persuade anyone into doing anything. And I’m about to share his secret… It’s the ‘How to win friends and influence people’ book written by Dale Carnegie. He can’t stop recommending it. But don’t tell him I shared this top secret with you! 👀

How have our Web3 Thoughts Evolved in the Last Year?

Jay: I first thought that web3 was all about investing, trading and making money.

I lost a lot on my investments. Bought the top on ETH, on a bunch of NFTs and even on the Coinbase IPO. Like many others, I got caught up in the hype.

Thankfully, I didn’t just invest and hope for the best. I went about as deep as one can go down the web3 rabbit hole. I came to understand that web3 is not all about investing, it’s about a brand new internet and technologies.

It’s about providing ownership and governance within communities you enjoy being a part of or protocols you use. Sure, there is money to be made from that, but it’s not a get rich quick thing. It’s an ownership thing.

I’m still down on a lot of these investments, but we’ve found ways to generate cash flows in this space, rather than rely on “number go up”. It’s about thinking bigger and extending your view to be more long-term, understanding we are part of massive change to the internet over the next decade.

Kyle: Thankfully, I understood the key components of web3 pretty early on. That has helped me to stay clear of most fads and FOMO and see where this space was going. I wrote a report at the end of 2021 on my thesis of Web3 and turned it into a tweet thread explaining it in early 2022 and it’s held true through to today. I’ve been proud of that.

What I didn’t realize was web3 and the developments to the internet were much bigger than just blockchain technology. This just recently hit me after speaking with the President of Vayner3, Avery Akkineni, on the Web3 Academy Podcast.

Web3 is a whole new internet that includes a combination of technologies, including blockchain, but also metaverse/immersive experiences and advanced computing and AI.

The internet is changing in many ways and the need for blockchain technology to provide ownership and interoperability to the internet will become even more important. The tokenization of everything will become much less of a speculative thing and more of a necessity for the internet to function properly.

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What is our Advice for Other Web3 Builders & Investors?

Kyle: The greatest opportunity in this space right now is not investing in tokens, it’s investing in networking. This space is so small right now that you can network and reach almost anyone. This will not last much longer.

Your network is your most important asset. Right now you have the chance to build that in one of the fastest growing industries, one that will become as important as the internet itself. Don’t sleep on that!

My other suggestion is to just DO. Invest, consume, create. Whatever it is, just start learning everything you can about web3 and where it is going. I say invest because for most people, once you put your money down, that's when you start paying attention. Get involved and stop trying to trade your way to success, it’s not going to happen.

Jay: Create content. Whether that's tweeting, writing or filming video, creating content accomplishes so much. It helps you learn, it helps you network and it builds a presence. Whether you want to create a new business or get hired at a web3 company, creating content will help.

Even more, so many companies right now are not hiring, yet are trying to understand how to get into web3, which means they will hire web3 positions internally. If you create content and show you’re learning, you’ll have a great chance of getting that position! You can’t lose by creating content.

What’s Next For Web3 Academy?

Kyle: Web3 is turning the average internet user into more than just a creator/consumer. We are all now becoming a combination of owners, investors and creators/consumers. Whether you’re actually building a business or not, it doesn’t matter.

Users are now owners and with that brings a whole new understanding of how to navigate the internet.

My goal is to help you become a better owner, investor and user of the internet. I want to help you contribute and capitalize on the opportunities of web3. That’s why we created Web3 Academy PRO and why I personally write on-chain reports on a weekly basis.

I’m doing everything I can to download my brain and my learnings to you so you can navigate this space as best as possible. If you are not yet a PRO member, you need to become one. It’s worth the $18/month and my goal is to 10x the value that you pay for this membership.

Jay: We want to show the true power of moving on-chain. Our focus in 2023 and beyond is to move our customers, audience and community from online to on-chain.

We’re doing this because we can provide you better experiences and more value, while also teaching you where the internet is heading. We want to be a leader in the on-chain world and rely less on the current web2 platforms we use today.

PRO members are already beginning to see the benefits of going on-chain, as we airdrop all PRO members NFTs that unlock various perks across web3. Our focus is to build on this and create something really cool and valuable to our members.

Wrapping Up

When we were playing around with ChatGPT a while back, we asked it: What’s a good outro for a newsletter?

It responded: End the newsletter with a personal touch, such as thanking the readers for their attention or wishing them well.

And that’s what we’re going to do today! Because without you, there would be no Web3 Academy, and Jay & Kyle would still be growth marketers, selling other peoples product - not quite as fun!

You, yes you, the one reading this, are the one that gives us the opportunity to spend our time down the web3 rabbit hole.

By consuming our content, you push us further and further and motivate us to create the best and most relevant content, tailored for you!

And for that, we’re forever grateful. 💜

We’ll do our best to keep you on the right track, away from fads and passing trends, so you can thrive in web3.

On that note, we truly hope you enjoyed this rather atypical piece of content.

Since it’s our birthday, we took the liberty to mix it up a bit so please share any feedback with us by replying below.

Until next time, take care and 👀🔛⛓️

🟣 FOR THE DOERS

LEARN

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LISTEN

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There’s a war going on for NFT marketplace dominance, but who’s actually winning? Find out in our latest PRO Report: The Great NFT Marketplace War. Who's Winning And Why?