Founder Spotlight: Joel Alexander From CrowdPad
The concept of the DAO is revolutionary: DAOs can help communities feel more connected, aid in decision-making processes for the community, and help everyone in the group profit from communal efforts. The big question is, how long will it take for mainstream audiences to adopt DAOs? Educating the masses on how DAOs work and how to participate in them could be a long, tough journey. The good news is that up-and-coming startup CrowdPad is working to shorten the trip.
All influencers seek to gain support from their fans and partners, and they also aim to build a community around themselves and their brands. A DAO can be the perfect answer for them, and CrowdPad aims to make the effort of creating a DAO as easy as uploading one’s next video to YouTube or TikTok. Via the CrowdPad app, creators can mint their own personalized tokens, set up different community tiers, and incentivize more tight-knit communities. CrowdPad’s app also helps audience members find great content and find exciting DAO-based communities via its search and filtering functionality.
The man behind the CrowdPad mission is CEO Joel Alexander, who’s having a very busy year. Hot on the heels of CrowdPad’s 2.5M seed round, led by IVC, he’s also in the midst of airdropping the first batch of CrowdPad’s very own CrowdCoin. IVC recently caught up with him to discuss what inspired him to start CrowdPad, the CrowdPad app’s upcoming Beta release, and where he plans to steer the CrowdPad ship in the near future.
In the beginning — what inspired you to start working on CrowdPad?
At my core, I personally have a background working actively in the impact and ed-tech space and have spent a couple of years, not too long ago, trying to ensure that students from socio-economically diverse backgrounds have access to the same higher education opportunities that I was afforded. And for the longest time, to ensure this, we had to rely on the good graces of the social responsibility quotas at large corporates to even get any form of monetary support across to young students who really needed it. We’re talking grants & soft-loans. The true roots of CrowdPad stem from this very powerful mission of empowering people everywhere in the world to have access to a global, incentivized & transparent capital and community network.
CrowdPad is centered around using “social tokens” to help creators grow their communities beyond just numbers. Can you explain in more detail about how that can benefit both the creator and their community?
On CrowdPad, with the click of a button, an individual can launch their own community that allows their earliest believers to buy into their social token - i.e. Joel coin, and allow it to accrue value whilst allowing the creator the financial ability to purchase that extra piece of equipment he may require to shoot his next big YouTube video or connect him to one of your buddies over at Marvel where he can land a gig for all his creative portfolio work. CrowdPad is where everyday creators who are consistent, hard working & talented meet a global capital and community network.
So what do you as the backer get in exchange for buying Joel coin in the simplest of terms? In exchange for buying my token, you can have exclusive access to events that I put together for all my supporters, early access to projects I’m dropping or unlisted videos that I make exclusively for a certain tier of token holders aka only for people who are staking (or locking in) Joel coin for 1 year for instance. You also get a fixed percentage return for simply adding more liquidity to the ecosystem — think of it how you earn interest on a deposit you place at a bank for instance — it’s not the same thing, but the easiest analogy.
So by buying Joel coin, you’re showing him that you’re putting your money where your mouth is (or as I like to call it, Belief Capital), you’re earning a certain % return depending on the amount that you decide to inject into his community (as illiquid rather than just trading his token and creating too much uncertainty for him), & you unlock several tiered benefits that he’s able to offer in exchange for your belief in him essentially.
What types of communities do you envision will want to be on CrowdPad the most? Who is your expected target audience?
You have platforms where freelancers and creators can make money even today, so what’s the issue? The problem here is that we’ve been building just for the top 1% of creators. Creators who have a distribution advantage are able to monetize their content by allowing ads to play in their videos, or have sponsored content and so on. Today, only the top 1% of YouTube creators make minimum wage, and only 3% of Patreon creators make minimum wage. So, at the moment, our target revolves around the everyday creator. All sorts of creators from gamers, to YouTubers, to designers, to musicians and what not.
How can current existing DAOs take advantage of CrowdPad?
The majority of DAOs use web2 platforms like Discord and Slack to coordinate themselves. DAO members’ participation has been steadily declining over time. As a result, the efficacy of accomplishing an unified purpose or vision vanishes. It’s time to start using Web3 to operate these DAOs for true democratization and decentralization. Consider someone who is a part of multiple DAOs. It becomes super hard and confusing to navigate through multiple discord servers and channels within those servers for different things. There is also absolutely no mechanism for DAO discovery. With CrowdPad, you can go from one DAO to another that you’re a part of, navigate through their posts, events and votes, and even discover new DAOs based on your interest. Now, consider someone setting up a DAO. With CrowdPad, a 7-step process is simplified to barely 3 steps starting from wallet creation to minting your token to launching your community.
Considering that the Web3 space currently has a very niche audience, and your target audience revolves around the everyday creator and their communities, how do you plan to work towards mainstream crypto adoption?
I personally think that mainstream adoption will take place when Web 3 works as seamlessly as Web 2. Right now, as I mentioned before, setting up a DAO is a tedious process. When things involve multiple steps and prior crypto knowledge, it becomes nearly impossible for the everyday user to understand a product. We’re focusing on building a product that looks and feels Web2-esque, but is essentially Web 3 based.
Lastly — what are Crowdpad’s plans for the near future? Any exciting roadmap or features you’d like to share?
Key product and community milestones are the priorities right now, but at the core, building the strongest team out there. Ensuring that we’re all moving the needle in our own little ways so that we can build a world where everyone, no matter what part of the world they’re from, what culture they originate from, no matter what they’re told they can and can’t do, are able to pursue their dreams without having to trade off paying bills, to the best of our ability.
