Underdog Jan. Update

What happened with Underdog in January? 🥳

Hey Carter 👋 - Let’s see how building Underdog Protocol. Lots of new customers, learnings, and ton of use cases. We’re just starting to test pricing as well which has been amazing! TLDR: We’ve seen an increase in developers using the platforms and building interesting use-cases. We’re onboarding partners and seeing inbound increase. We’re being noticed by Solana Foundation and other big players. 👇

What is Underdog Protocol?

Underdog Protocol is an API that empowers developers and communities to bridge their web2 data and workflows into web3 to build user centric experiences.

We’re building the modern data stack for web3 so we’re able to build experiences that unlock financial and social opportunity for billions.

🤝Asks

More Customers

Do you know any web2 companies who want to create Web3 Experiences?

Fundraising Help & Introductions

Do you know any angel investors or web3 funds who would like to chat? We want to test the market. Keep your inbox open for rough copies of a one-pager as well. I’d appreciate thoughts. 😉

👍 Highlights

Partnerships & Biz Dev👬

We’ve hosted a hackathon that has seen the following results: 11 submissions, 6 great use cases, 104 developers using our API, and an 3+ paying customers of our developer tier.

Inbound continuing to grow. We’ve received interest from Solana Foundation (to help on some projects they’re thinking about, GrapeDAO ( an OG solana DAO) , Renegades (NFT project), MtnDAO (hacker house), and Parcl - a real estate derivatives platform.

We’ve integrated and launched into a couple brands on Solana - Dispatch Forums, SuperteamDAO, and BluntDAO to bring their reputation systems on-chain through our API.

We’ve been able to create ecosystem wide initiatives to support builders continue their hackathon projects, community members to support eachother through mentorship, and to track contributions/reputation through our API. Yup - all of Solana.

Not a huge accomplishment but we’ve got a couple follows from big players like Anatoly Y. (Co-founder of Solana), Craig B (Partner at Reciprocal), Justin S. ( Partner at Solana Ventures). We’re on the radar ⭐

Product 📱

Launched Devnet API, Underdog Program, and our own Metadata Service

Pre-built integrations to Discord & Telegram. Bots for communities and builders to track user engagement.

Launched awesome product hacks like Mint an NFT with your iPhone via Shortcut, download

here⁠

We’ve been able to refresh our interface to better reflect the backend and fix minor bugs to improve user experience like updating nfts, revoking optionality, and updating image metadata.

Check out all the Use Cases that were built with Underdog in this twitter thread -

here⁠

👎 Low lights / Challenges

Growing Developer Pains 🌀

We’ve decided to create our own contract. This really pushes the narrative of decentralization but also makes editing and making changes very difficult. Simply put - when changes are made to NFT standards in Metaplex - we can’t just call their API - we have to code it…

Focusing on Sales Led vs. Product Led (for the time being) 🐶:

We’ve had to cut ties with 1-3 enterprise customers due to onboarding complexities and misalignment around offering. This has caused a decrease in our previous revenue and projected pipeline.

We’re confident this exploration of product led will help us narrow down packaging. Note we are actively doing outbound and marketing. Hybrid motion.

Dec to January

Dec to January

⁠

KPIs 👏

MRR (as of Jan.): $1556/MRR

Other Revenue from Enterprise deals in late ‘22: $10,500 (being paid via invoices not subscriptions)

Partners: 25 ( communities + university blockchain clubs including Superteam & Dispatch Forums)

Pipeline: 90 devs on free plans, 3 communities in deliver product, 1 community in offer/negotiation , 12 communities in meeting/ outbound

Check out all the Use Cases that were built with Underdog in this twitter thread -

here⁠

📰 News

⁠

King, Kevin, and Zoey (my pup) during one of our morning Standups

We’ve made a hire to help with development and the building of our own Program. King has spent a ton of time in the ecosystem with CapX as a Founding Engineer, Solana, and at Superteam (a partner) where he led all development efforts. He’s worked in blockchain, IoT, and AI. 100x engineer. Here’s his

twitter⁠

We’ve received some interesting use cases ranging from Loyalty & Rewards, On-chain Reputation, NFT Projects, DAOs & Governance, and Future of Work. Here are all the submissions from the

hackathon.⁠

⁠

🎯 February Priorities

Biz Dev 📊

Close yearly deal with Real Estate Derivatives companies -

Parcl.⁠

Outbound 20+ Web2 companies and Web2.5 companies to conduct customer interviews

Increase amount of users on API MRR by $1,000 (roughly 10-20 new devs on paid plan)

We will also be testing lower pricing to encompass more ‘hackers’ or solo developers.

Product 📱

Launch Programable NFTs within the API

Launch 6 Integrations to Bridge Web2 & Web3 ( Realms, Notion, Airtable, Google, Civic Identity, GitHub)

GTM 📈

Publish Case Studies as Marketing and Customer Resources from Solana Sandstorm

Public announcements of Superteam, Boo Monsters, and Takes Partnerships

Announce and Launch a. Universal Reputation Layer ft Superteam, Mtn. Dao, LamportDAO, and Solana Foundation OR b. Builders Program ft. Superteam, Solana Foundation, LamportDAO, and BonkDAO

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