Tim Draper’s hack to spread Bitcoin. Everyone can be part of it.
Think of the last time you bought coffee. As the cashier inputted your order he/she probably asked you: “Will you pay with cash, debit, credit or Bitcoin?”
Bitcoin?!
Most likely you’ve never been asked this question. But, if you are like Tim Draper, you’ve probably wondered about alternatives to centralized banking systems. And, if you are like 60% of Americans, you’ve heard of Bitcoin.
Now, every time I ask a room full of people if they own Bitcoin, only around 15% of them raise their hands (that is probably inflated since I usually speak in front of founders in Silicon Valley). According to some surveys though, 60% of Americans have heard of Bitcoin, but only 5% of our population actually owns it.
The question we must ask ourselves is: are the 5% of people that own Bitcoin actually using the cryptocurrencies in their everyday lives? And if not, why might this be?
Besides some of the most talked about issues with Bitcoin such as volatility, user experience, and scalability (all which have very smart people developing innovative solutions), one of the biggest challenges is that the everyday person doesn’t really know what to do with their Bitcoin once they own some. The Bitcoin my friends own, for example, still sit in hard wallets and they have not used it for actual transactions. The 11% of Bitcoin owners that actually use Bitcoin for payments, see the value of this cryptocurrency in transforming the way the world works (As a Venezuelan myself with family living there I have heard of the cryptocurrency actually saving lives).
So what can we do as everyday people to help turn that 11% of the 5% of Americans into 100% of Americans using Bitcoin for payments? Into the whole world using Bitcoin as their currency? The next time you are out shopping, ask this simple question:
"Excuse me... Do you accept Bitcoin?"
👏 That 👏 Is 👏 It 👏 Very 👏 Simple 👏
Every time you are about to purchase your Pumpkin Spice Latte or your next pair of K-Swiss (I am one of the rare people that love K-Swiss shoes) ask the retailer if they accept Bitcoin. Most likely they don’t, but if they hear it from enough people it might spark interest in actually accepting the cryptocurrency as another method of payment. The more businesses that accept it, the more people will use Bitcoin for paying. This is a fantastic Guerilla Marketing technique that Tim Draper mentioned briefly in his keynote at the Digital Money Forum at CES in Las Vegas last month.
Tim Draper speaking at CES in January 2019
Tim’s growth hack to spread Bitcoin may actually work. It is a beautiful example of first identifying your distribution channel (the retailers accepting your payments), and creating demand for your technology (Bitcoin is our technology in this case). Similar strategies have been tried over the years. One of them, for example, when PayPal was in it’s infancy:
More importantly, it is also a testament to one of the greatest lessons Tim Draper has taught me while working with him over the past few years. Every time he talks to our founders at Draper University he emphasizes the importance of turning your customers into your salesforce. Imagine if every time you ate at your local restaurant where you are a loyal customer you asked the waiter if they’ve implemented a Bitcoin PoS yet.
I have seen this strategy work first hand. When I traveled to China last year to speak at a few events about product and growth, a startup asked me for help as they were struggling with getting businesses to sign up for their mobile app ordering system. I thought about it for a bit and the lightbulb in my head went off. I saw that the company had about 50 employees. They all ate at restaurants every day. So we turned their staff into a daily salesforce team. Every time they went to restaurants, they would sit down and wait for the food they “ordered” through the app. After not receiving their order, they would tell the waiter that they hadn’t received their order. The waiter would then be startled and tell the manager that people seem to be ordering from this new food app. The manager would then call the startup and gladly get integrated.
Asking the retailer if they accept Bitcoin is not the first marketing technique that Tim has preached about when it comes to spreading new technologies. As cited by a few sources and also written in his latest book, Tim came up with the first “viral marketing” campaign when he told the Hotmail founders to include one line at the bottom of every Hotmail e-mail:
“P.S I love you. Get your free e-mail at Hotmail.”
Hotmail basically turned all of its users into their salesforce.
So if you are part of the 5% of Bitcoin owners and want to see the technology spread, join the movement by adding a simple question to your day: do you accept Bitcoin?
You can read more of Tim Draper’s interesting stories about startups and the heroes behind them here.
