Club Network Journal 🌱 001
We finally answer the question, wen SC05? A quick chat with Boys Club, and notes from The Studio desk.
Welcome to the inaugural edition of the CLUB Network Journal, your biweekly check-in with the ever-growing Seed Club ecosystem 🌱
In this issue:
An update from the Accelerator Team. We finally answer the question, wen SC05?
A quick chat with Boys Club on their inaugural NFT mint.
Highlights from a few of our current Studio projects.
From the Accelerator Team
We took a breather at the end of SC04 to reflect on how we could integrate all of the learnings from four Accelerator cohorts. We’re excited to announce that applications for SC05 open on August 1st 🌱 and our working start date for SC05 is September 19! In the meantime…
…if you know great projects building impactful communities (or if this describes you), we want to meet! Interested projects should complete the SC05 interest form to access project reviews and info sessions: https://airtable.com/shr35dCkkt6Dxy7OY By the numbers:
91 projects (😅) have submitted the form, 62% have scheduled 1:1s.
We hosted our first SC05 AMA on Twitter spaces — give it a listen for some additional FAQs.
Projects that submit the SC05 interest form will be invited to additional touchpoints in June to meet with our Seed Club community of alumni, contributors and collaborators.
Boys Club Inaugural Mint
Boys Club, we love you too.
Congrats to Boys Club (SC04) on launching — and selling out 🥹 — their first NFT collection. Curious how Boys Club had such a successful launch? We caught co-founder Deana Burke on Monday night for a quick take:
Why did Boys Club go with two different mints?
It's extremely important for us to be always adding and not extracting value from the community. Our #1 north star is figuring out what we can give, not what we can get. So when it came down to figuring out the structure for the NFT, it didn't feel right for us to charge the community at the moment. But we were still needing a way to kickstart a treasury for the community work that we want to do, and that's where the Zaddy aka supporter tier was created - to give people a no-stakes, low-pressure way to contribute if they had the means and desire to do so. Main Character NFT is an emblem for being first. Zaddy is a badge that you're committed to the cause, but neither are needed to be in our community.
How did you engage the community ahead of your mints? What’s your best advice to projects on the cusp of launching?
90% of the work was in the pre-launch period. This work looked like talking with other communities, brands and firms we love and respect to invite them to be launch partners (shout out Seed Club!), which both allowed us to pre-sell some Zaddies and also create a co-marketing/mutual love opportunity. The honest, unglamorous truth is that we had a sell-out workback plan from day 1, which didn't include any virality or lightning in a bottle. I think that realism is important when approaching this work. Other marketing tactics that worked for us included email marketing and a referral program (but don't use mailchimp bc they'll rug your ass for talking about NFTs)
What lessons did you learn and how would you do it differently next time?
There are some geniuses on the Boys Club technical team that did some major gas optimization for us - that felt like a huge win and I think it was really appreciated by the community. Average gas price was $5!!!!! Also, this is small but we would have numbered each NFT.
Anything else you want to share?
Yes shout out to Mattie, Angela, Lexie, Marta, Helen, Alana and LJ from the Boys Club NFT Guild - and MAJOR love to Naama who worked with us on figuring out OpenSea's standards and protocol. Also smash the follow button on our new podcast - we're going to be talking through our many feelings about the NFT drop (and what's next) in an upcoming episode!
Boys Club is welcoming the next 1 million women and non-binary people into web3, with shared incentives and mutual upside at the heart of everything they do. Launch partners included FWB, Poolsuite, Bankless, Blockworks, Framework Ventures, DAOHaus, Wallet Connect and of course Seed Club.
From The Studio Desk
The Seed Club Studio provides bespoke support for some of the most exciting community-owned networks in web3. Below are highlights from a few of our current projects.
Serif Invites You to be a Founding Member
The Serif team invites the community to join as Founding Members of Serif, a decentralized members club for LGBTQ+ leaders, creators, and allies. Founding Membership minting kicks off June 8. Current Founding Partners include Seed Club, Passage Protocol, Rarible, and Uniswap.
Serif is building a network of community-owned flagship physical locations. That’s only the beginning: they envision a digital and physical world of queer spaces designed for meaningful connection, web3 education, and commerce.
To get on the list, use this special form: https://airtable.com/shraa1eLVomnDlq7O To read more about their vision, be sure to check out their Hello World post.
Early Majority is Fashion’s First Degrowth Brand
What does it mean to “dematerialize growth”? Early Majority is here to show us.
Early Majority is a community based clothing brand creating high-performance and versatile outerwear for all eventualities and genders. Founder Joy Howard, former vice president of global marketing at Patagonia, is has a vision for how fashion can meaningfully engage in degrowth.
In a recent spotlight in Vogue Business, Howard is quoted:
“Our membership model addresses the contradiction between scale and sustainability. What we need to do is address how we grow, to dematerialize growth and create businesses with less drawdown on natural capital. The pace of growth most VCs have come to expect is not sustainable for the planet or for the people in the business.”
At launch, membership benefits include a member badge, newsletter content, early access to products, member prices, and a voice in product creation. Over time, the vision is to expand benefits to include events such as self-defense and direct action training, as well as product swaps, pre-orders, group buys and made-to-measure garments.
Cult of Dog is Taking Web3 Mainstream
Cult of Dog is a drop studio utilizing web3 tech to create products, experiences, and memes that influence public conversations. Cult swaps technical jargon for popular themes to merge web3 into the mainstream. Stay tuned for more on this project’s journey 🎾