One of my most insightful articles on acquiring new users through SEO/AEO

No matter what you build in Web3, the playbook has 5 rules ↓ 1. Revenue > Narrative

Web3 neobanks have reached the point where the card itself is no longer the moat. Most teams either already have a card or have access to the infrastructure needed to launch one quickly. The harder part is turning that card into something people trust, fund, and use more than once. That is where most products start to separate. A partner logo, a referral campaign, or a cashback headline might look strong from the outside, but they do not always translate into real usage. Many users sign up, test the product once, claim the reward, and then never build a habit around it. For a Web3 neobank to become part of someone’s daily money flow, the value needs to be clear from day one: → good cashback → yield on balances → easy stablecoin spending → fewer onboarding steps → visible proof that real people use it daily That last point matters a lot. In crypto, launch campaigns often make products look more active than they really are. Real UGC changes that because it gives people proof outside of a landing page or paid post. Screenshots of spending, receipts, cashback rewards, and daily card usage make the product feel more believable. Payment rails like @Visa or @Mastercard also help close that trust gap. For crypto-native users, stablecoins, wallets, off-ramps, and yield already make sense. For users outside the crypto bubble, familiar payment names make the product feel closer to something they already understand. That is the real GTM challenge for Web3 neobanks. The winners will not be the teams that only launch a card. They will be the ones that make the full user journey feel easy to trust, easy to start, and useful enough to become part of daily money habits. Full story ↓ research.greendots.agency/we…

If I had to bet $100K on raising $3M+ in pre-seed for my startup this year, here’s exactly what I’d do: 1. Start your X founder page. Yes, this is step 1. Yes, this is important. Founder persona = your main edge in 2026.

We did a deep GTM analysis of Web3 neobanks. The strongest teams are not winning through better cards alone. They are winning through payment trust, referral mechanics, creator-led distribution, public proof, and activation design. If you are building a Web3 consumer product, this is worth reading ↓ research.greendots.agency/we…

If you're building in crypto / fintech, this jpeg will save you a lot of money. Save it + read the full research ↓ research.greendots.agency/fi…

Since inception, @stacy_muur has always insisted that @GREEND0TS should rely on data and research. Data → Knowledge. And our knowledge is public. Sign up for Green Dots Research ↓ research.greendots.agency/#/…

In 2026, founder growth is becoming one of the clearest marketing advantages for companies that sell complex products, create new categories, or operate in low-trust markets. Not because every founder needs to become an influencer. Most should not. The real reason is simpler: people need a source of trust that feels harder to copy than a feature set. This is what founder persona gives.

Influencer marketing is here to stay. Here are 5 reasons why ↓ 1. It is now part of a broader marketing mix. 2. Strong KOLs still bring trust, attention, and mindshare that ads alone often do not. 3. A good KOL can deliver multiple times across a campaign, not only once. 4. Teams are pairing influencer campaigns with SEO, targeted ads, and PR. 5. Influencer marketing is shifting from short-term visibility to a repeatable growth layer. Influencer marketing still matters, but the strongest teams are no longer using it alone.

Some DeFi products are difficult to understand. Many teams still market them to broad retail audiences, which creates a product-audience mismatch from the start. That makes KOL campaigns underperform, not because creators are ineffective, but because the strategy is often too broad, too short-term, and poorly measured. The pattern usually looks like this: → 55% targeted broader retail → 60% only ran paid marketing around major events → 40% did not track acquisition costs That is why low KOL efficiency often says more about campaign design than creator marketing itself.

Here's some Web2 data showing what companies actually spend to acquire 1 customer ↓ eCommerce → $274 Education → $806 Fintech → $1,450 Legaltech → $299 Proptech → $518 Security → $805 Transportation & Logistics → $483 Meanwhile, crypto bros are still budgeting $10 per user, lol

Marketers are leaning toward long-term KOL relationships over short-term ones. Monthly retainers and ambassadorships are now among the most common ways teams work with creators. There’s so much information moving across X every day that single posts get forgotten fast. If you want to build attention, repeated exposure matters. Longer-term structures give projects: → consistent visibility → room to build familiarity → more repeat exposure

What do teams really look at when choosing KOLs? In our marketing study, 66% of projects said they focus on a KOL’s reputation, while 56.6% said they look closely at the quality of the content and research already posted on the profile. Reputation usually signals trust. Strong content shows that a creator has built an audience for the right reasons—not just by farming engagement. Smart followers matter too. 37.7% of teams said they look at this as well, because it helps show whether a creator resonates with real, relevant people—not bots, inactive followers, or parody accounts. We’ll share a separate list of crypto-focused tools for this soon.

Crypto projects that don’t track properly will most likely fail. Even if a team doesn’t track everything perfectly, they’re still ahead of teams that don’t track at all. Why? Because even partial tracking gives you a better read on your audience, user behavior, and what is—or isn’t—working. And in crypto, there’s a lot to track: multiple wallets, CEXs, DEXs, onchain actions, attribution gaps, and user movement across platforms. It gets messy fast. But if you don’t start somewhere, you’re already behind the teams that do.

53% of marketing teams spend only around key events. The problem is that this rarely builds real momentum. When you market only around a TGE or a mainnet launch, people see you once on the timeline, then move on. A short spike in attention isn’t the same as sustained awareness. And on CT, where people get hit with thousands of posts every day, one-time visibility disappears fast. Projects already think hard about repeat mechanics inside the product to keep users engaged daily or weekly. Marketing should work the same way. If you keep showing up, reinforcing the narrative, and giving people reasons to notice you over time, you have a much better shot at building familiarity, trust, and eventually conversion. A longer-running narrative usually does more for growth than a single burst ever will.

Having the best product doesn't guarantee success. Here's how to build a world-class sales team, based on @a16zcrypto theses ↓