Cre8or • \krē-ˈā-tər \ • noun
A person or thing that brings (something) new into existence. 👋 Welcome to the 243 new Cre8ors who are reading this newsletter.

🧠 This weeks big idea is…

👏 Community 👏 Participation 👏 Rewards

Today we’re gonna look at the community framework of Apple, Bored Ape Yacht Club, and Friends with Benefits; then I’ll dive into how we’re thinking about designing the community framework for Cre8ors. 🧐

We want feedback on this topic! Go to the @cre8orsNFT Twitter page and comment on “General Chat" pinned tweet with all your thoughts. Let’s get started!

⏱️Time to read: 4 minutes

We just airdropped 126 NFTs to our most active community members → and we will continue to airdrop NFTs to the most active Cre8ors each week. Your objective is to stack em’ all.

Let me explain…

When I was in high school I worked at the Apple store as a genius (and taught the logic pro lessons) until I got fired for being late. 😢 Thanks Tim Cook.

I didn’t realize that job would teach me some valuable lessons about the way Apple thinks about community.

When I started my web3 journey years later, I was lucky enough to join FWB and BAYC early. Both are now considered to be the pinnacle of web3 communities.

What did I learn from Apple, BAYC, and FWB?

That there is a very specific framework that exists, which you will find in almost every successful community. Let’s call it the community funnel framework.

Think of a literal funnel → At the top is the widest point and at the bottom is the narrowest. This is how the community funnel operates. I made this terrible graphic to explain:

There are 6 stages of community participation. Each stage takes more commitment from members in order to move down the funnel. Let’s break it down.

General Public is everyone who is NOT in the community. This is where all members start, at the tippy top of the funnel. The general public doesn’t care about community.

It’s leaderships’ job to communicate the community mission, vision, and value proposition to the public - while only onboarding new members who align with the community culture.

Most communities get this part wrong. You see, 99% of communities start by trying to get as many followers as possible, regardless of whether or not the people care about the values that the community are built upon. This is a recipe for disaster (and very web2).

Look at Apple and BAYC. Both brands clearly communicate to the general public (through brand messaging) who they are, who they are for, and most importantly who they are NOT. Apple is a community of people who “think different”. They are NOT seeking the average consumer (which is reflected by their brand messaging and price points). Bored Ape Yacht Club is literally a community of bored (crypto rich) apes (degens). They wrapped their mission and values right into their name.

Here are some of the values I’ve noticed starting to form within’ the Cre8ors community:

• Cre8ors work together to create connection

• Cre8ors turn nothing into something 

• Cre8ors celebrate all mediums

• Cre8ors value intellectual property

• Cre8ors have gratitude and fun

• Cre8ors represent the world’s creators

(I’ll dedicate a whole post to the Cre8ors brand after we build it with the community on Twitter Spaces over the next couple weeks.)

This style of selective value onboarding takes way more time, effort, and energy - but in the long run is well worth the wait. Getting this right from the jump completely changes the way the public perceives the community, helps the community set expectations amongst members, and most importantly; reduces the rate of lurkers.

Lurkers are inactive members. Lurkers only observe and never engage. In general, Lurkers take up about 80-90% of the funnel. This is crazy to think about. Why would anyone join a community if they are not going to participate?

Because we are all humans who get really busy and have really important lives. That means that even if someone moves down the funnel, when the community is not solving a real problem or consistently educating / entertaining then most members will loose interest and convert back to Lurkers.

Engagers are the members who solo participate. They’re the lone wolves, always keeping social interactions to a minimum. I like to think of them as digital introverts. What’s interesting is that just like IRL, when an introvert gets comfortable enough around you, they’ll start to open up - and this is exactly what happens in the best communities. Once everyone gets comfortable being around each other, the engagers end up coming out of their shells and move to the next stage of the funnel - evangelists.

Evangelists are the lifeblood of a community. They are so passionate and connected to the community mission that they want to shout it from the rooftop (or at least write a thread about it). Evangelists think of the community as an extension of their identity. When I was at Apple they explained evangelists as “The customer who puts an apple sticker on their car and recommends apple products to their family and friends.” This is so powerful. When I think back, both BAYC and Crypto punks were around 80% evangelists before mint. A tight knit group of evangelists hyped around a mission and set of core values becomes a force of nature.

Builders go one step further by actively creating the products and service offerings of the community. They are technically not internal team members, but you wouldn’t know it. They are executors, organizers, and connectors. They take it upon themselves to shape the future of the brands they believe in and ask for forgiveness instead of permission. From hosting IRL meetups and spaces - to building products, leading sub-communities and much more. Builders literally build the community from the outside in.

Internal Team is obvious, although I would like to mention that our best team members started at the top of the funnel and worked their way down to being builders that were so effective they were impossible to ignore.

Throughout each stage of the funnel is a very distinct level of commitment stemming from the equation [value + belief - time / incentives].

Now that we know the community funnel framework, let’s talk about participation rewards, how they apply to Cre8ors, and why you should care.

🏆 How Do Participation Rewards Work?

To make Cre8ors the best community ever, we first need to identify:

A) Who is in the community?
B) What stage of the funnel are they in?
C) How often do they move up and down the funnel?

Participation rewards are the second step in a FIVE PART MASTER PLAN:

1) Curate members from the general public that we know will be engagers
2) Reward participation from engagers to become evangelists
3) Remove members who become lurkers
4) Empower evangelists with tools to become builders
5) Create the most influential network of web3 creators ever

This all sounds great but wtf is in it for me?!

I feeeels you and over the last couple of weeks we came up with the utility behind participation rewards - after discussing it on Twitter spaces with you.

Stack as many Participation Reward NFTs as possible to convert them into Builder Reward NFTs. Builder Rewards will give you badges and exclusive benefits within the Cre8ors community. We will reveal the benefits around the end of April. They will be fire AF.

Here are a few ways you can start collecting participation reward NFTs today:

• Subscribe to our newsletter

• Turn on @cre8orsNFT Twitter notifications

• Fill out Cre8or polls and surveys

• Make Cre8ors gifs, songs, art, or threads

• Help another Cre8ors community member

• Join our building workshops or brainstorming sessions

• Fly a plane and write Cre8ors in the sky

• Any other ways you can think of… get cre8tive

This Oprah gif sums up how I’m feeling rn -

🗞 In The News

Keep your head up, it’s been a tough week. Silicone Valley Bank went under. If you’re not familiar, SVB was the bank for 3000 big tech startups. Now all those startups cant pay payroll. Shits crazy but knowing wall street, they will get a bailout.

Market cycles come and go but real builders know that this is the time to push even harder. For everyone struggling on their journey right now, remember that bear cycles don’t end until 99% of people give up. Keep grinding.

📊 Quick Question

📌 Major milestones

We celebrated international women’s day and made a special Twitter post shoutout to all the wonderful women in our community. “Who runs the world? Girls.” -Beyonce

We’re taking Twitter Spaces to the next level. Starting today, there will be seven spaces every week! Make sure you set a reminder for at least one of our daily shows.

We created a tracking mechanism for all participation rewards.

👟 Next-steps

We need your crypto public wallet to start sending you participation rewards. If you haven’t already, click Here to add your wallet.

🤝 Favors/Asks

I want your feedback! Have an idea? Let us know!

1. Click here to go to the @cre8orsNFT Twitter page

2. Comment on the pinned tweet with your thoughts about how to build the best community in the world.

🗣 Shoutouts

@Trav_hube_shirt cre8ed this killer video. wtf. omg. I love this for us.

@YBergerGirl performed an original song on spaces and got me in my feels.

@nft_eitzi and @Angeliki_NFT tweeted about their rewards so we’re airdropping them more NFTs. #lifehack

Until next time,

@sidneyswift