Q1 Growth Analysis & Q2 Growth Strategy

Growth Growth + Marketing
1

The goal of this post is to provide clarity on how the Index Coop plans to grow our products in Q2-2021.

To measure our success, we will use the 4 product growth goals offered in A vision for Q2-2021:

  • $500M AUM
  • 400,000+ DPI supply units
  • $9M FLI suite 7-day moving average volume for 2 consecutive weeks
  • 4 new products launched with $200M+ combined TVL. They are category leaders in terms of the most relevant measure (i.e. uTVL, volume, liquidity)

If we are successful, we will end Q2-2021 having solidified our lead as the #1 DeFi index manager.

2 housekeeping notes:

  • Community members have chosen these initiatives on their own and are already driving towards outcomes. This post is intended to make explicit our view of how it all fits together.
  • We are using a broad definition of “growth.” As such, you will notice “product” related initiatives in the mix. (Learn more: Growth vs Marketing vs Product)

Situation: Where are we today?

Today, Index Coop products have been adopted by less than 1% of DeFi wallets. This metric makes obvious our early success and, more importantly, how much room we have to grow. [Math as of 4/26/21: 15,313 / 2,033,489]

Q1-2021 Growth Tactics

The table below shows most of the growth tactics we tested as a community in Q1-2021 and the results. If you notice something you worked on was missed, please add the tactic & result as a reply.

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In summary, Q1 was a time for experimentation. These are two core learnings we’re taking away from those 3 months:

  1. We now have a good understanding of what works and we need to double down on our most promising acquisition channels (Twitter, Medium content) to establish a baseline that is higher than our Q1 numbers. In this quarter we will transition from low confidence experiments to executing on proven winning strategies.
  2. Price appreciation is a driver of adoption. We will ensure maximum product awareness and accessibility to amplify in upswings and protect in downturns.

Complication: Now what?

With those learnings downloaded, let’s look again to our Q2-2021 pursuit of 4 aggressive growth goals:

  1. $500M AUM
  2. 400,000+ DPI supply units
  3. $9M FLI suite 7-day moving average volume for 2 consecutive weeks
  4. 4 new products launched with $200M+ combined TVL. They are category leaders in terms of the most relevant measure (i.e. uTVL, volume, liquidity)

This begs the question, how are we going to achieve those goals?

Answer: Q2-2021 Growth Strategy

Given our learnings from Q1 and community-driven hypotheses, here is how the Coop believes we are going to achieve those 4 growth goals.

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edit: moved “retention” above “revenue” where it belongs; removed duplicate tactic

We can even go a layer deeper & look at some of the tactics in terms of their hypotheses and initiatives that are likely to be tested.

Some initiatives will not work and that is ok! In the face of such adversity we must remain committed to learning and growing together as a community.

If we learn, we win.

Acquisition

Twitter

  • Core Hypothesis: We expect meaningful (5-10x) increases in impressions to drive meaningful increases in bottom of funnel metrics – holders and unincentivized supply (e.g. some % of these impressions convert).
  • Initiative(s):
    • Impression Mining
    • Influencer Airdrops
    • Official Account Strategy

Expand Geographies

  • Core Hypothesis: The Coop is North America & Euro-centric; expanding our marketing to non-english crypto centers will lead to new adoption.
  • Initiative(s):
    • Focusing on China (Mandarin), South Korea
    • Localization of Twitter
    • Localization of Content

Expand Social Channels

  • Core Hypothesis: Content has more leverage when spread across platforms with unique audiences
  • Initiative(s): Experiment with activating Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Tik Tok as acquisition channels

Paid advertising (Banner/newsletter ads, ecosystem partnerships)

  • Core Hypothesis: Increased impressions on targeted platforms and publications will drive interest and activation
  • Initiative(s): Copy/Creative Testing (DPI, FLI), DPI: Trial with DeFiant Newsletter, Trial with DeFiant Podcast, Trial with Decrypt ‘DeFi’ Section, Trial with Coingecko DeFi Section

Content marketing

  • Core Hypothesis: High-quality content that provides value to high-retention audiences will increase product adoption
  • Initiative(s):
    • Launch content marketing function in Coop
    • Product 1x high-quality blog post per week
    • Guest blogging (DeFiant, Bankless, etc)

Launch+1 playbook defined & running

  • Core Hypothesis: Deliberate & sustained growth efforts following launch will increase product adoption and lead to PMF/No-PMF deliberation to inform the next stage of growth marketing.
  • Initiative(s): Create launch+1 playbook. Execute against it for all products (DPI onwards)

Activation

Tier 1/2 exchange listings (i.e. Coinbase, KuCoin)

  • Core Hypothesis: High quality exchange listings drive retail consumer adoption of our products
  • Initiative(s)
    • KuCoin Listing
    • New Tier 1 & Tier 2 listings

Custody Solutions (i.e. Fireblocks)

  • Core Hypothesis: Ready made custody solutions help on-board major institutional investors and drive AUM
  • Initiative(s):
    • On-boarding more custodial providers
    • Streamlining investor onboarding

Wallet Contingency Sales Programs

  • Core Hypothesis: Direct wallet sales programs could be cost-effective way of injecting AUM into Coop products
  • Initiative(s):
    • Zerion Promotion → Monitor retention
    • Ramp

Bluechip protocol integrations (i.e. Aave)

  • Core Hypothesis: Making DPI and other Coop products useable on bluechip protocols will increase # of buyers & retention rates
  • Initiative(s):
    • Aave listing
    • Rari Capital Fuse pool
    • SushiSwap launch
    • Badger integration

Investor relations

Website Overhaul

  • Core Hypothesis: Website touch up will increase conversion rate on-site.
  • Initiative(s): Redesign

L2 Solutions

  • Core Hypothesis: DPI availability and productivity on layer 2 will drive uSupply and holder growth
  • Initiative(s): TBD

Summary

We believe these tactics will lead to protocol growth, and that our community is more than capable of delivering on each. We can further ensure our success by

  1. Executing with focus
  2. Having a bias to maximizing learning
  3. Holding each other accountable for outcomes

If we hold each other to these standards, we win; the numbers will take care of themselves :owl:

@LemonadeAlpha, @BigSky7, @anon10525910

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Great post @anon10525910, @LemonadeAlpha and @BigSky7. Really exciting to see where Index Coop will go over the next quarter!

Just sharing some reflections I had from your post. If some of these points have been covered in other topics, I apologise.

100% back this approach; experiment, measure and validate strategies is exactly the way we should operate.

Keen to still be mindful of any new opportunities for growth if they are proposed.

Similarly, I’m keen to see data on the areas we have incentivised (i.e. Zerion promotion) in Q2 to determine the success of these approaches (this is mentioned below).

Once they are up and running, our weekly “Introducing Index Coop” call could be a great angle to create buzz on twitter. By leverage our twitter following and drawing them into live sessions we could reinforce engagement and increase awareness.

Once we are happy with the quality of the presentation, it could look something like: everyone on twitter share the following message “Don’t miss our live session at [this meeting link] to hear about Index Coop and our products”.

Keen to see how we do in this space. Definitely an opportunity. Do we know what other crypto projects have done to engage through these channels?

Not sure if we have the maturity for this yet, but have we thoughts about physical adds. In London we get lots of crypto ads in our tube station and, as one of the financial capitals of the world, Crypto Index products could really resonate with this group.

Agree with the “what” here. However, still think we need to establish the “how” given content is being produced across many different areas in the Coop. I still don’t think we have a good handle on this.

What does this look like? Our Gitbook? Or something very much more product specific (like a product investment guide). Guess the Investment Committee will input heavily into this, or is it a job for the methodologist?

Is it possible to build an agreements / contractual framework with key exchanges to enable us to easily release multiple Index products with them (i.e. DPI, MVI, Index) in future. A longer term relationship with exchanges to facilitate the listing of new product would increase our speed, efficiency and reduce cost of exchange listing - and help build traction more quickly behind our new products.

I appreciate steps of the process would need to be repeated (i.e.legal check), but I would hope every new product listing on an exchange wouldn’t require the process start from scratch.

May have missed discussion on this, but is any work being done to get DPI on Compound as collateral. Personal as a Compound users this seems an excellent type of collateral to have available.

Great work again team.

Cheers,

Pepperoni_Joe

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@LemonadeAlpha I spoke with @benji on Discord about resuming work on the referral program. Let me know when you guys want to get this back on the priority list. There’s still some dev work needed to make the mechanics work - the spreadsheet tracks UTM parameters, but we can’t see the referred wallet address directly in there, only the TX hash, so the manual operations will be painful. The landing page with the form connecting the referral codes with ETH addresses also needs to be tested properly and implemented on the index site. TL;DR I’m here to help push this over the line

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