"Why Web3 Matters | Future: The Pillars of International Growth"

Hatched by Kazuki
Jul 12, 2023
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"Why Web3 Matters | Future: The Pillars of International Growth"
We are now at the beginning of the web3 era, which combines the decentralized, community-governed ethos of web1 with the advanced, modern functionality of web2. Web3 is the internet owned by the builders and users, orchestrated with tokens. When they hit the top of the S-curve, their relationships with network participants change from positive-sum to zero-sum. To continue growing requires extracting data from users and competing with (former) partners.
In web3, ownership and control are decentralized. Users and builders can own pieces of internet services by owning tokens, both non-fungible (NFTs) and fungible. Tokens give users property rights: the ability to own a piece of the internet. Tokens align network participants to work together toward a common goal — the growth of the network and the appreciation of the token. This fixes the core problem of centralized networks, where the value is accumulated by one company, and the company ends up fighting its own users and partners.
Just as a company must establish product/market fit before it can grow efficiently at home, it must achieve product/culture fit before it can grow abroad. Customer Accessibility is crucial in this process. A company must make its product accessible to customers by adapting its performance, pricing, and payment methods to meet local needs. Universal Currencies such as cash, content, or connectors are also necessary to fuel its core growth loops across international borders.
It is a common mistake for companies to see early traction in a market and falsely conclude they have achieved product/culture fit, when in reality, they are being fooled by a small subset of users who do not represent the majority of the market. This is why emergent use cases can represent massive opportunities to gain traction in new markets, but many companies dismiss them as aberrant or unwanted behaviors and fail to capitalize.
A third mistake that U.S. companies, in particular, often make when expanding internationally is underestimating local competitors and failing to identify a strategic advantage that sufficiently differentiates their product offering. Each country has its own culture and habits, so it's crucial to understand the market better than local startups.
To effectively internationalize, companies may find the following 4-phase framework helpful:
- 1. Local Availability in English: Make the product available with no changes.
- 2. Language-Level Localization: Localize the language of the product.
- 3. Content-Level Localization: Invest in local content tailored to local users.
- 4. Feature-Level Localization: Invest in local features to meet market-specific needs.
The best ways to measure progress toward product/culture fit are to measure customer retention and look for accelerating organic growth. Additionally, companies must ensure that their product is broadly available to local customers to sustain growth in an international market.
Product performance is critical for ensuring that customers in markets with slower internet speeds can consistently and reliably use the product. Optimizing website and mobile app performance is crucial in these markets.
Understanding local market payment needs is also essential for achieving widespread customer adoption. Often, seemingly inferior products win out over more advanced alternatives in certain markets because they are more accessible to customers.
By reinvesting cash generated from mature markets into ad campaigns, companies can jumpstart nascent international markets critical for the next phase of their growth. Pinterest is one example of a company that relied heavily on content to scale internationally. They took advantage of their visual medium to expand rapidly into countries even before investing significant effort in localization.
The TripAdvisor team also realized early on that travelers from different countries were interested in the same popular destinations that already had many English-language reviews. To make these reviews available to international travelers, they manually translated the most popular reviews and integrated on-demand Google Translate translations for the rest.
In conclusion, the web3 era is ushering in a new paradigm of ownership and control in the online world. Companies must strive for product/culture fit and ensure their products are accessible to local customers to succeed in international markets. Optimizing product performance and understanding local payment needs are also crucial. By following a strategic framework for internationalization and learning from successful examples, companies can effectively grow and thrive globally.
Actionable advice:
- 1. Conduct thorough market research and understand local cultures and habits before expanding internationally.
- 2. Optimize product performance to cater to markets with slower internet speeds.
- 3. Adapt payment methods to meet local market needs and ensure accessibility to customers.
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