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Communities that gather people with a specific topic or interest are evolving into new kinds of businesses that meet the trend of self-employment (solopreneurs).
By bringing together community members through newsletters, YouTube, etc., it adds value through educational services, networking, etc. and expands into advertising and membership businesses. Along with the rise of content SaaS and artificial intelligence, the community business ecosystem is thriving.
Nowadays, "community" has become such a popular keyword that the title of community manager or builder is no longer unusual. However, community business is still challenging. The business aspect can make communities less appealing. Yet, the resources required to run a community can be overwhelming. At this point, entrepreneurs need a little wisdom.
That's why Erica Kang, founder of KryptoSeoul, a community builder since 2017, has invaluable experience.
Kang has been in the business of organizing community events and gathering people in the Web3 market since the days when solo businesses and community businesses were not very common. Now in her fifth year of entrepreneurship, Kang has gone through various trials and errors that community businesses go through.
KryptoSeoul is about to be rebranded as KryptoPlanet. Kang is now a community builder and entrepreneur who has been traveling the world, not only in Seoul, but also in Vietnam, Hong Kong, India, Silicon Valley, New York, Paris, Lisbon, and the UK. Here's how she started her own community business, and how she's expanded it across the globe.
I'm Erica Kang, CEO of KryptoSeoul. KryptoSeoul is a company that has been building community in the Web3 field since 2017. It is a business that mainly organizes various events such as developer workshops, conferences, hackathons, and leader gatherings around the world and receives sponsorships.
I've been doing this for five years already. I started with KryptoSeoul, and now the brand is somewhat known in the market. This year, to further expand globally, we're expanding the business under the brand KryptoPlanet. This year, I'm planning to expand globally, not only in Asia, but also in Europe and the United States.
Yes, I was indeed a person who did very different things. First of all, going back to my college days, I graduated from Ewha Womans University with a bachelor's degree in international relations. Since the major of international relations teaches a lot of things comprehensively, I personally decided to pursue a more specific career, which is why I joined Hana Financial Group as an IB and M&A analyst.
At Hana Financial Group, I learned a lot about the financial industry, from the corporate valuation to report writing and financial consulting, which gave me professional hands-on experience. Due to the nature of the business, there were many opportunities to use English, which was great, and I was proud to be in the center of Korea's financial mecca.
On the other hand, it felt skeptical. I found myself judging the world in terms of numbers and money, and I had a feeling that I would be swept away by the atmosphere. Also, the traditional financial system did not inspire me to continue my career, and I had the impression that it would not be easy for me to continue working in an industry where there are not many women.
I decided to go to graduate school because I was still at the age to try something new, to broaden my horizons, so I did a master's in international policy at Stanford University in the U.S. Within international policy, I focused on finance. My studies focused on the IMF, the UN, and the World Bank, as well as getting to know a lot of people in the industry.
Thankfully, I was able to learn a lot about the global financial system through my master's degree. But I was worried about starting a six-year Ph.D. degree because it was a bit too much for me, so I restarted my career. This time, at KT, one of Korea's top three telecommunications companies, I started a new job in the strategic planning department.
After staying in the U.S. for so long, I recognized that my chances of experiencing Korean corporate culture first-hand were limited, and worried that not knowing it might undermine my foundation. So before it got too late, I took the opportunity to return to Korea and work in the strategy office of a well-known major corporation. Fortunately, they took great care of me internally, and allowed me to explore various activities.
Then I went on maternity leave (I'm raising two kids). As I was about to return to work at the end of my maternity leave, I had one more turning point: Should I go back to work after having kids and stay in this company for a long time? It was a crossroads of figuring out what I really wanted to do, in the long term, and what I felt passionate about.
So I decided to really dig into my third option before going back to work. Through my acquaintances in the startup world, I started looking for job openings. My interest in education had always been there, so I explored JD at an edtech startup. While looking for new possibilities, another friend of mine made a very random and casual suggestion.
"Hey, Erica. I'm going to a seminar next week. Do you want to come? There's this really weird trend emerging, and I think you could benefit from learning about it."
Yes, I think it was March 2017 (when the seminar took place).
Unfortunately, I don't remember the content clearly, but at that time, the leading players who were doing Web3 business at home and overseas were all gathered in one place, and I met all the representatives of the industry.
After talking to me, they immediately offered me a job. I think they were impressed that I could communicate freely in English and got along well with people(outgoing). I remember that they first suggested to me, "I believe you are good at business pitching, why don't you work with us?".
Of course, I declined on the spot, but I was intrigued. I was just coming out of maternity leave and raising kids, and I didn't think there were many industries that would see me as a "talent" right away. It made me realize that this was definitely a blue ocean, and that I could work and communicate openly and flexibly.
More importantly, it felt like I could be of value in this field. It's no secret that when you return to work after paternity leave, it's still a struggle to get back on the promotion ladder at a traditional company, so it made sense to me to take on a new adventure that would allow me to stand out from the crowd, rather than be one of the many. So I decided to take on the risk of starting at the bottom and working my way up.
I started my new career at a consulting firm called Finector, where I got to meet a lot of big names in the industry, including Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum. The team was great, too.
However, working in this market, it seemed to me that it was crucial for me to have my 'own standards' and make decisions firmly in place, as it was such a young industry with many unknowns and variables. I felt that working independently with my own philosophy and criteria would give me more autonomy and stability in the long run.
Believing that it would be okay to start my own brand and try my hand at business, I transformed myself into a solo entrepreneur.
In fact, I was of the mindset that it was better to be as cautious as possible, and that if I got too greedy in such a dynamic industry, I could end up hurting myself.
So with my own brand, I've always emphasized "filtering" in terms of business, especially in my community building business, which is event planning and sponsorship management. I think this business model needs to be approached with a certain amount of caution, because there are many different stakeholders. And trust is essential, so even if I'm creative in the production, I'm conservative in the operation, seeking reliability.
At the beginning of 2018, I believe it was in March. Under the name 'BUIDL', we organized a large-scale event inviting domestic and international speakers. At first, it started as 'BUIDL SEOUL' and later broadened to the worldwide audience under the name 'BUIDL Asia'.
When I was working in KT's strategic planning office, I started working at the Institute of Economic Management, which organizes a monthly CEO breakfast seminar. I was part of the team that organized the event, where CEOs meet at 7 a.m. to have breakfast, listen to lectures, and participate in networking.
It was my responsibility to make a list of startup CEOs, contact and invite them one by one, and make sure the event was successful, so I had a general understanding of the structure and operational systems of the business of organizing events and bringing people together: how to contact hotels, how to arrange international VVIPs, etc.
When I was preparing for this interview, looking back at my past career, I found that there were connections between the past and the present, which is really cool.
Even before I started my own brand, event planning and organizing has always been my forte. When I was working at Finector, I ran monthly meetups. The need to organize events and bring amazing people together, both locally and abroad, was huge, but there were very few people who could do it well in Seoul.
So every month, I kept coming up with ideas on which teams and companies to collaborate with and what events to organize. From the concept to the venue to the details of the event, I handled it all. Through this, I connected with some of the biggest tech startups, and luckily, they trusted me, so my references built up.
This made it easier for me to secure sponsorships and partnership deals when I started out as a solopreneur. I was able to work on some big projects like Quantstamp and the Ethereum Meetup (ETH Seoul) from the very beginning of my business. By constantly doing community building in the industry, I was able to quickly gain trust and become a brand.
I believe that earning trust is like an investment, an investment for the future.
Of course, it can be tough at the beginning of the business, but it's worth reflecting on what assets you want to build as an entrepreneur. If I'm committed to working in this market for the long run, it's better to work hard for a long time and build a reputation. That way, I won't burn myself out, and the business will grow as I continue to cultivate quality experiences and relationships.
When people find out that I've been doing business in the Web3 industry for more than 5 years, they're surprised at how well I've survived (?!). I'm sure it's due to the fact that I still feel joy and pride in building community in this field.
Especially in a field that's just starting to grow, credibility is a scarce asset. If you want to build a steady business, why not pay attention to building credibility?
(As I mentioned earlier) Initially, we focused on Seoul because it was a little more accessible to find a location for the event, and Korea and Seoul are relatively well known in the Web3 market, so the brand KryptoSeoul was widely known. In the beginning of the business, I thought that there were enough chances with just one market.
Then I moved to Vietnam, which was in July 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. My whole family moved there in the summer after the 2019 event. I was physically in a new country. I saw it as a huge advantage, so even though I'm not Vietnamese, I tried to figure out what kind of business I could try here, and what kind of community building I could do in Vietnam through my global network.
So I launched a new brand called CryptoVietnam, and started organizing small events with local friends, and in 2022, a conference named "BUIDL Vietnam".
It was a smart move to expand to "BUIDL Asia," "BUIDL Vietnam," and "CryptoVietnam," because global speakers who come to in-person community meetups don't just come to one country. They usually visit all the neighboring countries.
Moreover, Southeast Asia is definitely a hot spot right now, known as a blue ocean with a growing pool of talented developers, so even though we may not have enough resources to host an event or run a business locally, we wanted to expand our options to Vietnam after Seoul. To give talent and entrepreneurs who are looking for community building and networking more options.
At the time, I was living in Ho Chi Minh City, which isn't a difficult city to get around in, but the public transportation wasn't easy to use. And since I didn't speak Vietnamese, it wasn't as simple for me to get into the area as a local partner. so having a local friend help me out was really powerful. I'd hand off the operations to them, and I'd collaborate with them on international touchpoints.
In addition to team-building, where each person had a clear role, I also spent my free time walking around Ho Chi Minh City looking for locations for community events. I believed that taking the temperature of the local community by visiting local universities and meeting with professors was fundamental to community building. I also tried to meet as many English-speaking friends as I could, so that I had a better understanding of the Vietnamese market.
The lockdown was particularly strict in Vietnam, so it wasn't quite easy to go offline, and obviously I couldn't go to Korea, so my business avenues were completely blocked.
Fortunately, I was working as a solopreneur and didn't rent an office, so I didn't have any fixed expenses. So I reoriented my activities to create online content for the brand. I planned to keep uploading videos to the YouTube channel to keep the brand alive.
While thinking about what kind of content I could create online, I came up with the idea of an interview series. I named it "The Erica Show" and began to record a series of virtual interviews. It was something that had never been done before. Once I did a one-hour video interview, the entire recording was uploaded to YouTube. I jumped into online content production with the mindset of "'Just go for it".
We did about 50 interviews during the pandemic, and gratefully, our community-building partners were willing to be interviewed. Vitalik came on the Erica show right at the beginning. Anatoly Yakovenko, founder of Solana, and Prof. Emin Gün Sirer, the founder of Ava Labs also joined us.
I was really impressed that people from the industry were so open to talking to me, even though I didn't pay them for the interviews. I could really feel their support for KryptoSeoul and BUIDL. Thanks to them, I learned that creating content and maintaining relationships online is definitely an investment for the future.
I have a strong 'just try it' mindset, which was especially applicable to the community business during the pandemic. Rather than sitting on the sidelines, I felt that I had to try something new. You as an entrepreneur need to turn a crisis into an opportunity.
Previously, due to the focus on offline community building, I didn't have the opportunity or resources to try online. Ironically, during the pandemic, I discovered the significance of online and was inspired to take on new challenges. As the saying goes, "if you can't avoid it, enjoy it", I believe that being small and nimble during this time, rather than overthinking the situation, really helped the business.
Agility, execution, and optimism. Although I don't consider myself to be a highly sophisticated and strategic entrepreneur, a traditional entrepreneur with an N-year plan, I've learned that it's essential for an entrepreneur to have a positive outlook on the future and an open mind to explore market opportunities.
I think that's what led me to build the brand I have today. I'm the kind of person who can make things "work." It's also the reason why I've been able to move around the world and do community building.
It was a bit scary, trying to regain my bearings on how to fill the long offline gap, how to resume community building. Still, I didn't change my "let's go for it" mindset. This time around, I had my own plan for how to manage risk and slowly surface.
Instead of trying to make a comeback with a big onsite conference, we chose to start our global events with a handful of smaller events while keeping an eye on COVID-19 and market conditions.
It was still not the easiest situation. When we held the event in Seoul in 2022, there was still a policy that all participants had to wear masks. It was tough for international participants to endure the restrictions from the airplane to the conference venue, so it was a challenge to host the community in Korea. It took a lot of persuading.
The direction of my business is pretty consistent. The world is my stage, and I saw that I didn't need to limit myself to Seoul anymore. (As the brand became more established,) there was more demand for me from overseas, so I guess it was the right time for me to try to do community building more globally.
For any sort of local community building, it's important to provide quality content and a great experience as well as trust. Therefore, I determined that it was strategically critical to not confine myself to Seoul, Korea. As for me, I was also quick to expand globally because it's much more inspiring to try out interesting ideas when you're free of local constraints.
In each international city I visited, I organized a small breakfast meetup, for example, called 'Builder Breakfast', which is a more casual and relaxed way for people to get together, have breakfast, and talk. It's mainly for founders and developers in the industry. In 2023, I organized these events in Paris, Lisbon, Austin, New York, and other cities. In 2023, I also introduced a meetup called BUIDL Hong Kong.
I guess everyone was waiting for this kind of in-person community building. It was a 'jackpot'. My confidence that I can do community building anywhere was boosted. I felt like I had another turning point.
Usually, when I develop an idea, I list the local startup teams and announce the event. If they are interested, I make a sponsorship proposal, or they make a sponsorship proposal, and things snowball.
This time around, it's actually the founders themselves who are reaching out and saying, "Hey, we want to do a community building event in our city".
So from 2024 onwards, in our business plan every year, I've made a big schedule for each city, setting up dates and locations for community events.
For example, for BUIDL, we're planning to hold one-day conferences in different cities, plus during the week of the big event such as ETH Denver, EthCC, Devcon, we'll hold offline gatherings in the city where the event is taking place. We have BUIDL Vietnam coming up, and later in the year, we hope to have BUIDL India! Each month, I'll be traveling around the world building communities in a variety of cities.
I suppose it's about finding someone with whom you can share a vision and feel comfortable talking to. In this market, it's often hard to know right away if you can trust someone 100%. This is why those exhausted souls come to KryptoPlanet or BUIDL events and share their insights with each other, finding inspiration and a sense of peace.
My selling point is the same. People expect to meet quality people through the community and hopefully connect with someone they can partner with, someone who is cool enough to have a discussion with, and maybe get some new ideas, maybe find someone to work with. That's what adds value to the community because it's a place of connectivity and opportunity.
The more I've learned about the magical moments that happen through my business, the more I want to do this really well and for a good long time. I'm also more intentional about finding and curating the people I invite into the community (which I've always been careful to do). At the end of the day, it's not just about growing the size of the business, it's about actually creating value.
Of course, it's really tricky to specify the criteria, but I meet people really frequently and a lot. While doing so, I try to look closely at the founder's mindset, the direction of the project, and even the technology base if possible. In addition, I look at whether the person's integrity and consistency have not changed over time, and how they treat me. Gradually, I tend to connect with them deeply as a part of community building.
I'm not an investor, so I sometimes suspect that community builders are looked down upon - I'm not the kind of person who's going to invest a billion dollars in their business.
But entrepreneurs who are globally recognized leaders tend to be consistent in seeing the value in others, and they don't lose their authenticity or kindness, even if their business is massive.
I've worked with the Solana team since they were a five-person team, and now it's hundreds of people, but they still treat me as the community building partner, as a human being with respect. Their attitude doesn't change.
The same goes for Illia Polosukhin at Near Protocol and Vitalik, who has supported me for a long time. There are definitely people who get arrogant as a company gets bigger. I believe that the way you treat the people around you consistently even after that is an indicator. In that context, I look at how they communicate with me. Authenticity is something you can't hide.
I think it's all about trust more than any other strategy or sophisticated tactics. Absolutely, trust is the most powerful asset.
To protect this value (trust), as a community builder, it is key for me to have a mindset that is unbiased and genuinely willing to help others. The nature of community business is such that if you focus on 'business', paradoxically, you won't be able to grow your business. People are looking for a 'good experience' through community, not a 'business-like experience'. So, without this in mind, community building cannot be done.
I think my 'let's just do it' attitude fits well with these community businesses. Community building is a business model that fits well with the mindset of creating opportunities in the long run by helping others without calculating. For example, when you meet someone, you don't put constraints on the conversation, but instead naturally chat and develop various ideas. I feel a lot of energy there, and that's the beauty of community.
Yes, it's defintly important to do things with a long-term mentality and to care about the people who are seeking out the community.
Right now, I need to connect nodes(organizers) who are doing community building in their respective regions.
When I first started doing community building in 2017, I've been attending other events and benchmarking, visiting a lot of events overseas. Along the way, I was able to get to know the organizers of those events, and get inspired by how they designed and ran their events. I learned a lot from them.
Over time, a loose network of community builders started to emerge, almost as if there were "nodes" in each local area. Whenever I hear of an event coming up, I'm the first one to reach out and help out. For instance, at my upcoming BUIDL ASIA & ETH Seoul in 2024, the organizers from EthCC, ETH Denver are coming to assist me, and vice versa, I volunteer at their events.
I do believe that if you're going to do business globally, it's vital that you are good at community building locally, so that's why it's crucial to establish trust and partnerships with the most trustworthy/talented people in the region, like I did with my amazing partner Nicole in Vietnam when we opened BUIDL Vietnam. (She still runs the events in Southeast Asia.)
I'm very lucky to have reliable partners that I can work with. That's the most important social capital. In Europe and the U.S., I have friends who are community builders that I can rely on and collaborate with. Connecting them and creating a picture of global community builders together is an ongoing mission for me.
This business model of helping each other and growing the size of the market is really unique and beautiful. Being able to run a lean business in your own backyard and still building community across the globe with infinite trust is a really exciting experience. I'm really enjoying this process of mutually supporting each other's community businesses and thriving together in the long run.
Assisting others when I can and vice versa is the foundation of this entrepreneurial ecosystem, and I consider it to be a circle of 'goodwill' as they turn to support me. After all, I get back what I pay forward, and I think this is possible because of the overall philosophy of the Web3 ecosystem that I am a part of, which is based on community.
The various trust relationships I've built over the years are really paying off when it comes to scaling globally. I'm looking forward to trying to connect global nodes in 2024 and beyond. In the meantime, it will be a year of reaping the fruits of my seeds and investing in trust by sowing more seeds.
(As of January 2024, the time of this interview) The most imminent plan is to successfully complete the BUIDL Asia event, which is scheduled for March 2024.
And then I'm going to attempt international expansion at the same time, which sounds like a lot of work. However, it's definitely a worthwhile endeavor if you get partners in each location and gradually scale up the event.
As I progressively increase my contribution, I'm looking to enrich the event by adding content that the community needs, such as education, acceleration, and consulting.
Also, the community will be expanded not only in geography but also in terms of topics.
The AI ecosystem is also a worldwide one. Here too, we want to build a community, so I can be helpful. This would be an interesting challenge. In order to achieve this kind of expansion, in addition, I'm interested in spending time on talent development. Hopefully, we'll be able to do team building at some point.
I want to build a sustainable and long-lasting business while maintaining balance. Of course, maintaining balance doesn't mean working less; I know that challenging work under pressure suits me better. However, in order to continue community building, which I am truly passionate about, I want to get my work-life balance so that I can grow and mature as an entrepreneur.
In that vein, I hope to become a more strategic entrepreneur in the future. Additionally, I tell myself not to lose my flexible mindset. I'm not that young, so I might fall into some mannerisms. By staying optimistic and open-minded enough to learn from new people, I hope to survive in this market for a long time. I wish to be an entrepreneur for a long time.
How can the business value of a community be measured? According to a survey, the most important measure of value is retention. Retention shows that once someone visits a community, they become a part of the community, not just a passerby. This is the number that most clearly indicates the business value of a community.
At KryptoPlanet, Erica Kang already understands the importance of retention. She emphasized that the most significant thing for a community builder is to have people who collaborated with you once coming back to you the next time, and to build trust through ongoing partnerships.
By helping and building relationships rather than counting, she focused on creating a "community experience that people want to come back to." That's how she's been steadily improving over the past five years.
The challenges remain.
While the community building has been centered on the Asian market, including Seoul, it's now about connecting ecosystem stakeholders around the world. People, especially entrepreneurs and brilliant minds, want to be inspired and learn from a "great community". To fulfill this need, this founder has a new mission to fuel global expansion.
In the early Web3 market, where sustainable communities were rare, Kang founded the community business with the mindset of pioneering in the wilderness. Her executional and trust-centered business philosophy of "just do it" will give her wings this time too.
As the community business is on the rise, she is shaping the next phase of the community. Let's see what's next for this global community builder.
Written by Jinny (underdogs)
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