Well, it’s a wrap. ETHCC Brussels was a great week of networking, sampling Belgian Beer (one of the Best European Vintages by far), and catching up with new and old friends and partners in the space IRL. Faculty Group participated in a number of great events, and we were pleased to be selected as a Binance Incubation Alliance (BIA) Partner.

Faculty Group was represented by Yaroslav Writtle, Partner on Day 1 and Faculty Capital’s Head of Investment, Sebastian Cheek, on Day 2 of BIA. Both spent the week in Brussels at ETHCC, and here are their takeaways from the event. Each of them had a very different viewpoint of ETHCC.

Thoughts from a Bear: Yaroslav

Like many, I adore good Belgian beer and the opportunity to catch-up with builders and partners in person. The event was an insightful one but there was a sense of deja vu for our industry building solutions for problems with limited organic buyers on the other side.

Whilst I’m very excited about where the industry is going, there are some more critical observations that I’d like to share:

1. There is simply too much infrastructure for infrastructure’s sake. People are building in silos, trying to solve isolated problems without talking to customers. Infrastructure exists to service customers and applications. Full stop. 
2. TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS! Many of the projects and businesses we spoke with, when we asked who their audience was, what problem they were solving for, struggled to answer or provide data on their customers.  When we asked about who their customers are, where they live, and what they do, they simply didn’t know more often than not. For example, it is important to be able to answer using data, does your audience/customer hold Bitcoin (i.e. buy and hold it for ten years), are they active traders on Base or active DeGens trading on Solana? The point is that there is not enough speaking to your audience when building products with genuine product-market-fit, or to simply to identify metrics around their audience for targeting or marketing efforts.
3. TON Ecosystem Building: There is a lot of activity around Telegram’s TON ecosystem and its huge number of active users.  The focus was on broadening this out beyond clicker games into payments and beyond. The prize is large and a 700 million active user base who tend to be crypto-native by and large is a strong base from which to build new B2C applications.
4. There is a whole paradigm around intent-based architecture and on-chain abstraction, and a big theme around defragmentation. There are so many new chains, layers and ecosystems but with few doing anything with them. The focus on incentive programmes to get people into new chains is wearing thin. There is a dip in engagement with ‘Points’ programmes and other speculation- driven metas.  A significant amount of mindshare was made up for LRT projects - and the search for TVL for these projects and the wider Ethereum network.  It is ironic that LRTs started the whole points meta with Eigenlayer but many are struggling to engage with and keep users and TVL in their networks. 
5. Let’s focus on building stuff people care about - It’s time to be data-driven when it comes to GTM and marketing. For example there was a recent case study of BoredApe holders and ApeCoin holders. Although they tend to be one and same; they tend to do different things with each product.  BoredApe holders buy and hold, and tend to be status-driven people, celebrities etc. They are interested in buying and showing off their BoredApe but not interested in trading ApeCoin. ApeCoin Holders buy and trade, and are more focused on the trading because by and large, they are traders. We can see that their behaviours, wants and needs are very different from each other.  We need more data-driven, bottom-up GTM rather than top down strategies that KYC their target audience and those most likely to engage with the product.  We need to take the best-practices from data-driven web2 and apply this to web3.

We also attend a number of side events including Payy & Audit Wizard’s Poker Night. Because some people like building. Some people like investing. But everyone likes poker.  A truer slogan you will never find in Crypto.  

All in all I feel that ETHCC is still searching for its killer use case.  It’s time to level up the ETH Meta ready for the next cycle.

Thoughts from a Bull: Sebastian

Although I understand Yaroslav’s frustrations, I felt ETHCC was an excellent opportunity to catch up with great people, portfolio companies, and many old and new friends in IRL.  In summary, we had 34 specific sit-down meetings with venture capital funds, our portfolio companies and new, exciting projects looking for funding.

We met with many of the portfolio companies we are working with, many for the first time IRL, including Gasp, Synternet, YieldNest and w3.io, to name but a few.

Judging the BNB Incubation Alliance on the second day was a big highlight for me. It was amazing to be on stage with our venture friends: Gumi Cryptos, CoinFund, Pantera Capital, Outlier Ventures, Spartan Group, Zero Knowledge, BITKraft and Bain Capital Crypto.  

I was also invited to speak at a FileCoin panel on the Data Economy, hosted by one of our Incubation projects, Brainstems, and hosted by their CEO and Founder, Eric Hillerbrand. 

It was a fascinating discussion about how the intelligence economy differs from the data economy, focussing on collaborative AI and its potential use cases.

For me, the highlight of the week was being picked up by colleagues from Artis Systems, one of Faculty Group’s businesses, and driven to Rosendahl in Holland to watch the Euros game, where England played Holland. Although it was not meant to be England’s Euros this year, it was a night to remember full of great beers, much laughter, and great friends.

ETHCC was a great opportunity to break bread in person with many portfolio companies I had not had the pleasure of meeting before. Developing these relationships and getting updates from them on their plans for the rest of this year was hugely productive. I can’t wait for next year’s venue; hopefully,  Faculty Group’s posse will ride again to another fantastic European venue and have more adventures with our Dutch ‘Frens’.

At Faculty Group, we continuously explore new narratives and investment opportunities in our search for the best projects that align with our vision for 2024 and beyond. 

If you want to work with us or discuss deal flow opportunities, reach out to vc@faculty.group for more information.

CeAnn Simpson

An experienced editor & analyst, CeAnn has been writing in the blockchain/DeFi/web3 space for six years. She loves creative challenges, producing podcasts and gaining insights from clients and guests.

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