Yeah I think you need to go into debt and make a mainstream product to get sales over clearweb sources. Obviously that’s a terrible idea, But paying for ads on Facebook is definitely loosing money trying to make money. It is not a big deal if you don’t have a successful bitcoin company, It’s more important that you actually make a profit. Sounds lame, But I made more in bitcoin by working a FIAT job and stacking than anyone giving me bitcoin or liking my products. The “community” seems more like a giant grift than a group of people who care. From a venture capital perspective, You need a product that outperforms bitcoin. Something that generates bitcoin and an income in bitcoin. The “community” doesn’t give a fuck, It is a hyper competitive version of the antiquated banking system. The reason they present their products is because they need customers and users or they fail. The largest bitcoin holders are not walking around looking for people to give bitcoin to.
Discussion
Outperforming bitcoin is always the goal.
Also my goal is to own my own business which gives me more sovereignty over my life.
LightningSpore isn't exactly a bitcoin company... we sell lots of commodity products related to mushroom cultivation, grain bags, substrate, liquid culture.
Lots of people in the world grow mushrooms and buy this kind of stuff, therefore ads do work. I think I can compete in this market and do it better and cheaper.
I do a lot of bitcoin focused stuff, run our lightning node. Im trying to run a very approachable business to anyone, which also has a first-class experience for bitcoiners.
I want to run a profitable boring business (mushroom cultivation + supplies), and make good money and therefore good satoshis with it in the long term.
I understand your point, It is interesting. From my own perspective, My artwork and brand Is something I look at as my own creativity and selling in Bitcoin only drives exclusivity. Mushrooms are from nature and making your products exclusive doesn’t really have the same market effect. Instagram ads would probably do well also.
I worked in snowboarding for a long time and it is ripe with self promotion and massive selloutish attitudes. Just getting your products out to people at a loss is basically how you advertise. I also look at the high end market and this is about foreign production and cost margins. The reason a Louis Vuitton bag costs so much is because the company has to service the debt in the supply chain to manufacture high quality goods at such a large scale. Smaller scale high quality products can appeal to a similar customer but market reach becomes the issue.
I wish platforms like LNBITS had better self custody integration. The small business model in bitcoin is hugely underrepresented, I think because of this profit motive. LNBITS is basically one guy coding away integrating other clients in his platform, But I still see the rugabillity factor off the charts there. Very few bitcoin companies do little than incentivise people to pay into their product without any kind of return. Bitcoin is loosing the bottom up grassroots attitude it had as more institutional capital flows in.