Declaring something as ‘FREE’ does not explain Value Proposition.

September 24, 2023 | by John Mc Keown | 0

This month, 9ja Cosmos is one year old.

To mark the occasion. We decided to give away 5% of the business to supporters of our presence and community in online platforms.

We split this among 500 prospective respondents on a first come first served basis. The terms are following the 9ja Cosmos LinkedIn page, and joining our Discord Server. Further T&C apply. So each share equates to 0.01% of the business.

The celebration exercise has become somewhat of a learning experience. This is one of several lessons learned, and the second time we are writing about it.

I got this question – ‘What are the benefits?’

I have to admit, the question took me by surprise. My first thought was, well, why is someone asking me this? We are celebrating year 1. We are offering something far more valuable than a bit of merch or a worthless airdrop. There is no need to pay to attend an expensive in-person event to get it.

Business communities understand that to an entrepreneur, a bootstrapped start-up is like their baby. Asking what the benefits are, is a little bit like saying:

‘Well, before I agree to attend a party for your ‘one year old’, I will need a list of the egusi soup, pounded yam, fried chicken, jollof rice, Hero, 33, coke, and so on, that is at the party, because I have to send it over by my guy at KPMG to tell me what the value proposition is for attending!

But then, I took an emotional step back from it, and thought about it, and realized it is actually quite a reasonable question.

Nothing is ultimately free. When things are offered free, it often just means the path to monetization isn’t obvious.

We think about services like Canva, Remove BG, Gmail, or Zoom, as being ‘FREE’, but from my own side, I have always wanted to get to the bottom of how these companies are monetizing my free use of their product.

I don’t believe things are free, because when companies fail to monetize what they do, they go broke. I may still use the free services once I find out what the revenue strategy is, but even when it is free, I don’t want to use it without knowing that.

So, having now realized the question is reasonable – I now set out to answer it. This is how I answered the LinkedIn DM:

‘Firstly – 9ja Cosmos is a business.

To ascertain if the business is in alignment with what you believe in, or what aligns with your own business interests, you need to visit the site https://9jacosmos.com/home/ and familiarize yourself with the objectives, existing products and forward planning.

This will give you an idea of where we are

The Discord Server on the other hand, is a Community Channel.

A Community Channel is where people with interest in the mission, aspirations, services or products of 9ja Cosmos come together to discuss.

Most Community Channels in support of Web 3 products are not organic. Bots and paid contributors are brought in once a project has some significant funding. This is done to pump numbers and create momentum.

We are offering a small share in the business to grow the community organically and transparently from the gound up.

At the moment there isn’t sufficient critical mass in the Community to support a spontaneous discussion environment, which is where we want to be with it. When community is active enough, it justifies its benefits to its members organically – it doesn’t need product ownership to drive that

Though right now, due to the bear market, there are web 3 communities which are ghost towns today though they have thousands of active members. 18 months ago, they were flourishing

But when we look at a business somewhat similar to ours (although they started with a much narrower objective) – <name removed for legal reasons>

They were given a 68m injection by Pantera Capital for less than half percent of the business in February 2022. So in context, giving away 0.01% of the business to ‘Community Founders’ isn’t a small thing.

Its a more open and transparent way to encourage community growth than getting a team of paid community activists posing as regular members, and padding that out with bots.

And on the long term it’s more sustainable.’

This was the simplest and most transparent answer I felt I could give in the moment.

I then thanked the person for the question.

As bootstrapped entrepreneurs, we can’t always find ways to support communities, through jobs, contracts, or even merch.

When we find novel ways of offering value to communities which isn’t transactional, we need to understand, it isn’t obvious to everyone, that accepting is a no-brainer!

Update: The follower count on the 9ja Cosmos page https://lnkd.in/eKUYM-Nv is now 434, so there are just 66 potential anniversary shares left.
Follow-though to the Discord Server is low with only 37 of the 434 arrived. The server invitation is https://lnkd.in/evx_b6Pq
Shares limit to ‘First 500’ followers of the 9ja Cosmos page joining the Discord Server on or before November 1. Voids of ‘First 500’ followers not on Discord Server in time, will be retained by 9ja Cosmos, not made available to subsequent 9ja Cosmos page followers.

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