The Autobiography of a Web3 Entrepreneurial Loser

Phezzan Protocol, the earliest perpetual contract protocol in the zkSync ecosystem, fell one month after the mainnet was launched.

Written by: Azuma

About a month ago, the zkSync ecological decentralized perpetual contract protocol Phezzan Protocol notified the community of its decision to shut down the project.

As the first DeFi project to deploy perpetual contract products on the zkSync 2.0 test network, Phezzan Protocol has also iterated several versions of the product along with the technical upgrade of zkSync 2.0. However, it is embarrassing that the main network was officially launched and renamed on zkSync 2.0 Shortly after the zkSync Era, the Phezzan Protocol, which had high hopes, came to a premature end of failure.

On May 29th, Roland, the founder of Phezzan Protocol, posted an article on his personal Twitter, in which he reflected on his experience and lessons from the failure of Phezzan Protocol, covering financing, team building, community operation, etc. In this aspect, for entrepreneurs who are also working in the Web3 field, it may be able to play a certain role in enlightenment.

Due to the long content of the full text, we will extract some of the core content and compile and organize it before presenting it, hoping to be helpful to you.

About Products

Roland mentioned that Phezzan Protocol started in early 2022, but after 15 months of development, there is still no viable network product. The center of gravity has been shifted many times—for example, I wanted to adopt the AMM model at first, but later found that it was difficult for AMM to solve the problem of impermanent losses, and VCs were not interested in AMM, so they turned to the order book model, but found it difficult to contract with other order books Protocols make a difference.

The lesson Roland draws from this is that before choosing to start a business, you need to find the right direction. You must at least first clarify what you want to do.

About Financing

The financing of Phezzan Protocol lasted for more than a year, and also received support from some VC and angel investors, but overall it was not successful. Lessons Roland learned along the way include:

1 You need to have the ability to tell a good story. You need to communicate your vision clearly to VCs, and if they can't understand your idea, let alone users.

2 Relationship network is very important. Since there were no full-time Crypto practitioners in the Phezzan Protocol team before, the relationship network in the industry was not well developed, so the team had to contact potential investors through various public social media channels.

3 Find the right lead investment institution first. The Phezzan Protocol team spent a lot of time contacting various investment institutions, but finally realized that it is more important to find a leading investment institution first, and an excellent leading investment institution can greatly speed up the financing process.

4 Timing matters. Phezzan Protocol originally wanted to start financing when the testnet made important progress to prove its strength to VC, but after the Rinkeby testnet was launched, Terra crashed, and after the zkSync 2.0 testnet was launched, it encountered a FTX storm... So If you can't judge the market trend, then get financing as soon as possible, as time goes by, things will change.

5 Communicate more with VCs. If you are not sure about what you are doing (Of course you are convinced that what you are doing is another story), you can communicate with VCs. If no one likes it, change the mechanism. If no one likes it after two or three changes, Just try something completely different. VCs have seen many cases, and they may give you some advice beyond your own experience.

About the Community

Roland gave a metaphor that building a community before a product fits the market is like building a sand castle. You may have a lot of fun, but it doesn't necessarily lead to a good ending.

For any project, it is easy to build a "community" by using some growth techniques (such as airdrop previews) at the beginning of its launch, but such operations will only gather airdrop hunters, and their actual conversion rate may not be as high as Less than 1%.

So, you need to forget the community at the beginning of the launch, focus on the product, use those growth techniques after you have made something, and then filter out the really valuable users from the feedback, listen to their suggestions, and improve your product .

About BD

It's simple, sift through all the collaboration requests you receive, and be patient with the projects you want to collaborate on.

About the team

Phezzan Protocol assembled a great team and the engineers executed the team's ideas perfectly.

The only problem is that due to the remote office, the team members are too far away from each other, which will not only increase the cost of communication, but also cause inertia. Roland concluded that remote work requires good self-discipline and excellent management skills, and team members meet at least one week a month if possible.

about yourself

You need to be kind to yourself, which is especially important for all entrepreneurs.

Roland said: “In Phezzan Protocol’s entrepreneurial journey, we always think about the mistakes we made and how we can do better; we worry about the past, present and future; It’s not a good state of mind to be in charge of things. This stress consumes us, consumes us.”

So please be kind to yourself, take a break if you need it, and have a life outside of work, learn to enjoy the process of starting a business.

As for salary, don't use salary cuts to demand yourself. Roland cut his salary by 20% -30% in the process of building Phezzan Protocol, which also affected his daily life. Investors don't care how much money you make as a founder, as long as you don't make crazy money.