Catherine Daly: 0:00

When I think of good communities in the world, and ones I want to emulate. I rarely think about crypto communities, like I think about Taylor Swift fans or people who go to Burning man or Buffalo Bills fans or, if you're an American football fan.

Joeri Billast: 0:16

Hello everyone and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories podcast. My name is Joeri Billast and I'm your podcast host, and today I'm excited to be joined by Catherine. Hey, Catherine, how are you doing?

Catherine Daly: 0:29

Hey Joeri, thanks so much for having me Excited to be here.

Joeri Billast: 0:32

Great to have you, catherine Guys, if you don't know Catherine, Catherine Daly, she's a CMO at Space and Time, the blockchain for ZK, proven data, and you can, of course, tell us more about that, Catherine. You worked across traditional and emerging tech.

Catherine Daly: 0:53

Yeah.

Joeri Billast: 0:55

So what actually sparked your interest in marketing and something as complex and foundational as ZK? Proven Data.

Catherine Daly: 1:04

Yeah, great question.

Catherine Daly: 1:05

I started my career in marketing in the semiconductor industry working at a marketing agency that service popular semiconductor companies, and so I've always been really entrenched in very technical messaging and marketing and communications so it's nothing new to me.

Catherine Daly: 1:20

But during my time there I bumped elbows with a lot of the big tech companies and you know, the future like started to feel a little bit bleak when you start to think about how much control these guys have over our data now, over AI, over the systems of the world, and to see centralized into these big buckets controlled by a few big companies started to feel bleak and I wanted to be part of the solution rather than the problem, and so when the opportunity to come lead marketing at Space and Time came up, I had been lightly into crypto myself, just through Bitcoin and other investments for a couple of years at that point, and so I was really excited for the opportunity to work on tech in that space Blockchain for ZK, proven Data, like you said, very technical, very developer facing and so I saw it as a really interesting new challenge and a way to stretch these muscles that I had built in the semiconductor industry of taking something really complex and not necessarily digestible in itself and making it consumable to a broader audience.

Catherine Daly: 2:23

And that's what I've spent the last three years working on at Space and Time and what I'll hopefully spend several more years doing.

Joeri Billast: 2:31

Yeah, you sound really passionate about this. Was there actually a certain aha moment, if I can call it like that, when you realized this is a really special company? It's not another infra company, but it's about infrastructure for trust.

Catherine Daly: 2:49

Yeah, I've had several of those moments over the years, for sure, but I think, like what really made it click for me and really drove it home was seeing space and time integrated by non-crypto giants like Google, bigquery, microsoft, fabric, major financial institutions like US Bank and Fidelity, and that signaled to me what I'd known all along, just like proof of it, that there is demand for this across the whole world and it's not just something looking to make money in crypto, like a lot of projects are. It's actually fundamentally changing the way the world thinks about data and operates databases, and that's really powerful and exciting to be a part of, because, of course, we are very passionate about the crypto space and that is always going to be our main target as crypto developers. But to see this technology adopted beyond that as well shows that the technology is a fundamental new primitive that's going to change everything, not just this space that we all love so much amazing.

Joeri Billast: 3:52

And then you know I'm a content creator, you know I have also brands with their visibility. When you're translating something like proof of sql into content that resonates for developers, for enterprise clients, I'm curious what worked best in terms of storytelling visibility. And yeah, that's one of my personal, I would say interests.

Catherine Daly: 4:17

It's definitely difficult, for sure, and I think it takes somebody who really is going to be passionate about understanding the technology themselves, like I am by no means a developer or a technical person, but I have spent a lot of time with our technical team and with our developers trying to really thoroughly understand the product and what it does and what it solves, and I would say that there's two key things to do in approaching this issue. One is to segment your audience in your channels right. Two of the examples you just mentioned, for example, developers and enterprises like. The value proposition for those two segments is very different different even still for, like, retail crypto consumers, and so understanding what the value proposition is for these different audiences and then making sure you're reaching them on the correct channels, I think is like 90% of the battle. For example, when we're reaching crypto developers, we're primarily communicating on Twitter or in our developer Discord or one-on-one on Telegram, whereas when we're, you know, doing a big partnership with Microsoft and targeting enterprises, we're most likely using more traditional media outlets and LinkedIn and other channels. That wouldn't necessarily be what we choose for a more crypto native campaign, and so if you can break down the problem like that and split it up much, much easier.

Catherine Daly: 5:35

And then the second thing I would say is always start with the problem it solves.

Catherine Daly: 5:40

So easy, when you're working on a project natively, to get too caught up in the tech and what you've built and why you think it's exciting because you're in it, living in it every single day.

Catherine Daly: 5:51

But that doesn't necessarily resonate right away with audiences who are discovering you for the first time, or maybe just have a few light touches with your product a month or a week, and so when you understand what problem it's solving for them, it's so much easier to orient your content and communicate them into a way that's going to resonate.

Catherine Daly: 6:09

So, for example, for crypto developers, proof of SQL allows them to create more data-driven and sophisticated apps and smart contracts on-chain, which is a real problem that crypto developers feel in their day-to-day lives. If I'm a crypto developer, I hear that and I can automatically understand the value of proof of SQL without knowing anything else about what it is or how it works. For enterprises, that value might be like auditing and compliance for their existing databases. If I hear that proof of SQL can do that, my interest is automatically peaked, even though I have no idea how to integrate it. I don't know what the overhead's going to be, and so that's your best hook. If you can segment your audiences and channels and speak to them directly and then start with the problem that you're solving for each of those segments, you're going to get a lot further, a lot faster.

Joeri Billast: 6:56

Yeah, I love that, and there are sometimes also discussion I have with founders that you know they are happy about what they are building and also sometimes they have their favorite channels and sometimes they are not even active on LinkedIn, even if the audience is there. You've worked with giants like Microsoft, channik and Bidget. Is there something you know? Talk about how those audiences are different.

Catherine Daly: 7:21

Yeah, absolutely. I think it falls into the same two principles that I just mentioned. When you're doing it in partnership format, it is a little bit easier because you can always lean on the secondary team, who knows their audience better than you do. And so Chainlink's like an interesting case study for us, because they've been arguably our closest partner next to Microsoft since our inception and have been, you know, incredible partners for us, both on the development and engineering side and the marketing and go-to-market community side of things, and we've learned a lot from them.

Catherine Daly: 7:51

I mean, I personally, as a marketing leader, have learned a lot from their marketing team and the way that they talk to their audience and break down their products, and they're in a very similar boat to us in the sense that most of their suite is developer-facing.

Catherine Daly: 8:05

It's highly technical, it's not something that their entire audience is necessarily going to use, and so for projects like us, it's really important to do that kind of segmentation and understand which group of people is using the product and what is it solving for them, and which group of people maybe is never going to touch it but still believes in the power of what it can do and what kind of transformation it can bring about in the world and how do you talk about it, how do you inspire them to participate in the project in other ways, be it activity in Discord or staking token or whatever it is.

Catherine Daly: 8:36

So, yeah, it's an interesting challenge and I think like the cool thing about being a more senior marketing leader at CMO is that you get to be the one to sort of orient that strategy, orient your team around that strategy and help play those things out campaign by campaign. Because, if you're like me, you have a team of really amazing, very crypto native specialists in their field you know, community managers, content writers, etc. Growth specialists and getting to bring all of these really awesome people who are so good at their trade around a strategy that, like you've really thought through and maybe bounced off some other partners and advisors and done your research on. It's really cool to see it all come together.

Joeri Billast: 9:19

You said some great things and actually you probably won't know, but I mentioned, I announced it only yesterday, that I am writing a new book, which is the future CMO, and you said some things I would love to quote you actually.

Catherine Daly: 9:31

I don't know. Congratulations on that.

Joeri Billast: 9:35

Thank you and actually, catherine, one of the things I'm talking about is about, you know, building trust and in Web3, we know there is a lot of hype. You know people talk about hype, but you know what we really need is trust. And how can you build trust without over explaining or oversimplifying? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Catherine Daly: 9:59

That is like a core problem in Web3 for sure, because I think trust has been broken so many times, especially by big players. When you think about FTX and stuff like that, people are definitely more wary of what they hear and what they believe. I think the simplest solution is really just to tell the truth right Like market things that are real and are as they say they are, and it's really hard to get caught up when you're coming from a place of truth. I would also just avoid vaporware hype. It does more harm than good in the long run. People are really attuned to it in the space and if you create some kind of partnership where there's actually no fundamentals under the surface or you lie about one product that's come out, people see right through it and it's so easy to see right through it and it's so easy to see right through it.

Catherine Daly: 10:44

You and I know right Like I see stuff all the time on Twitter where I'm like that is complete BS and all it does is hurt your brand's reputation, hurt the trust you have with your community and damage it in the long run and it's just not worth the temporary views. At the end of the day, I would always ask yourself why you believe in the project that you're working on as a non-technical right, so like, why do I believe in space and time? I believe in space and time because I think our data is better in the hands of the community and a decentralized, untamperable, trustless network than it is in centralized databases operated by the Fortune 500, for example. And you know, when I stick to that narrative and I stick to my truth about why I believe in it, it becomes easier to reach other people with that as well. And if you don't believe in the project that you're working at, then maybe you shouldn't be there. I'm hiring at face and time if you want to come somewhere where you can't believe in it.

Joeri Billast: 11:43

Amazing, yeah, yeah, at face and time, if you want to come somewhere where you can't believe in it. Amazing, yeah, yeah. Yeah, actually that's right that people are sometimes just excited about web3, but then you know why or what do? They are just thinking about crypto, what is bitcoin doing, or now, what is also specific in web3 actually, it's it's everywhere, also in web2, but community is really a core pillar in Web 3. So I'm curious for you what does meaningful community marketing look like Today? There is a lot of AI, ai agents, bots, fragmented attention, yeah, and maybe do you see any role for formats like blog collabs with the spaces, panel discussions and so on.

Catherine Daly: 12:24

Curious yeah, I think community is not one size fits all, and that's a mistake. A lot of projects make especially early stage. I think it comes back to a lot of the segmentation strategy that I talked about before. Like your developer community, at least for a technical project like space and time, your developer community is going to look very different from your evangelist community and that's going to look different from your enterprise community, if you've got one. So I think it's important to understand what these people are contributing and why they're contributing, and all are equally valuable. Hopefully you have a good mix of them, but speaking to them individually, making sure their contributions are valued.

Catherine Daly: 13:04

Something that I think I've been thinking a lot about lately when it comes to community is when I think of good communities in the world and ones I want to emulate. I rarely think about crypto communities. I think about Taylor Swift fans or people who go to Burning man or Buffalo Bills fans, or, if you're an American football fan. These are what I think about when I think of community People who are sharing common goals and values and coming together to experience and promote those values together, and I think there's a lot that we, as crypto community builders, can take from that and learn from that in terms of community building. Crypto, I think, is often so blindly focused on like value generation and making money that sometimes we neglect what it, what really community means, which is just people coming together and experiencing life together because of some shared value or interest. And when you break it down to something that simple, it becomes a lot easier. What is the shared value, what is the shared interest for this segment of your community, and how do you foster that within it?

Joeri Billast: 14:08

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. People want to be in the community. They want to share stuff with other people in the community. That's the reason they are there. They are not there, you know, to be sold to or to be. You know they are there too because they have shared values. I love that Now talking about.

Catherine Daly: 14:26

I think there are like a lot of communities in crypto that do this really well. A lot of the NFT communities have really hit the nail on the head here. Chainlink, I think, is one that has really stood the test of time with the LinkBrainz community, and so that's not to say that it doesn't exist in crypto. I just think a lot of times, up and coming crypto projects are chasing the wrong thing when it comes to their community building strategy, and you know we should go back more to the fundamentals of what a real community means absolutely yeah, community.

Joeri Billast: 14:56

You know I had also a few interesting people on my podcast talking about community. Mark shaver is a friend of mine. He spoke about that. It's in Web 2, not in Web 3, but how important community is. Now we are in marketing, so we also do campaigns. Is there maybe a recent campaign or maybe a moment that moved the needle for you? And yeah, why did you do you believe it worked?

Catherine Daly: 15:27

Yeah. So we had a lot of success recently around this campaign we did alongside Microsoft around space and time being integrated into Microsoft Fabric, and in terms of the actual mechanics of the campaign, it was nothing super out of the ordinary. You know, we didn't pull out some crazy girl and marketing stunt to make it happen. It was very by the book in terms of what we know works in campaigns. But I think the reason it was so successful and captured the attention of all the major media outlets, the Ethereum Foundation, a lot of voices, loud voices in the space was because it was space and time delivering on the promise that we said we set out to build over the last three years. And this kind of comes back to the arbitrary hype versus real value communication that we were talking about earlier. The way we communicated it was very straightforward Space and Time has been integrated into Microsoft Fabric. We had Microsoft's buy-in. They participated in the announcement.

Catherine Daly: 16:16

Of course, that helps with the clout of it as well, but it really resonated with the crypto community because it was an example of zero knowledge technology within space and time and data within space and time being integrated into a major non-crypto player, and that's really what all of us want to see right, like again we love this space, we love the people in it, we love the communities we've built in it, but ultimately, the goal is to onboard more people to it right and bring more of the masses to blockchain technology and crypto, which we all believe is the future, and these big enterprise partnerships get the community really excited because they're proof of that happening and there are essential steps in that. So, again, I think like focusing on what drives value for people, what gets them excited and what is real right and what is real applications of the way that your tech is being used, is the key to success in crypto marketing.

Joeri Billast: 17:12

Absolutely, and it's also working with these big brands. Of course this helps for visibility. Now it's also about a certain narrative. You know it's important in Web3 that you tell the right narrative and that it is also landing. How do you what is your compass actually for knowing when a narrative is landing versus when it needs to reset?

Catherine Daly: 17:32

Your community will tell you for sure. So I would say number one is just listen to your community and take their feedback. They are your number one. Source of the place to have the finger on the pulse is within your community for sure. Just be flexible and willing to adapt. Things, like you said, change so quickly in this space and meta is constantly shifting, narratives are constantly shifting, attention is shifting like hour by hour, so you have to be very nimble. You have to be willing to abandon what you thought was going to work when it's no longer working and pivot. And the more you're able to adapt, the longer you'll survive.

Joeri Billast: 18:09

Yeah, absolutely, and you mentioned it shifting so fast, certainly with AI these days, but also in Web3. How do you personally stay ahead of the curve because everything is changing so fast? Are there any maybe filters or sources that you trust?

Catherine Daly: 18:26

Yeah, I mean one thing is just to be chronically online.

Catherine Daly: 18:30

The number one place for communication and news and crypto is still Twitter today, and so the more you immerse yourself in that and the more you just have a finger on the pulse on what people are talking about and what they're saying, the easier it's going to be.

Catherine Daly: 18:43

And I found, like once I did get really entrenched into crypto, twitter and in my early days in the space, like it became actually really easy to follow these trends because you just get swept along with the waves.

Catherine Daly: 18:59

But the second thing I would say is surround yourself with people who are smarter than you in different capacities. So for me, like Scott Dykstra, our key technical officer at Face and Time, is like really good at predicting tech trends and understands them far better than I ever could, and so when I want to know what's coming next in the tech world, I rely on him and I trust him to tell me that We've got some really great investors on our cap table too, and so, like when I want to know what they think about the market, like I'm more inclined to listen to them because I know that they know better than I do Me our other co-founders just one of the best business people in the world. So when I need to know what's coming in the business world like, I rely on him, and I've got a lot of great marketing advisors as well who help me stay on trend with marketing stuff. So you know you don't have to do it alone. There are so many people out there.

Joeri Billast: 19:43

If you're the smartest person in your circle, then you're doing it wrong, because one of the best weapons you can have in your arsenal are people that know more than you right and therefore I also love to do this podcast with Catherine, because I always learn stuff from other CMOs, other people coming on the show, also in the communities that I am in myself. You know you can help others, you know inspiring them, but you can also learn from others and that's why I also love to be in communities.

Catherine Daly: 20:11

Yeah, I would say as a marketing person in crypto. There's so many great marketing communities out there. Safari is like one of the top ones, which I'm a member of, and it's really nice to connect with other marketing professionals because you know, like all the people I just mentioned, you might have really great founders and investors and advisors in your pocket, but there's something about your peers that is even more valuable sometimes, especially when it comes to gut testing. Right, I have this idea. I don't know if it's going to work. What do you think about how this meta is shifting? And so having just like friends and community in the space that you're directly working with is also invaluable. So if you're getting started in the space, I highly recommend or even if you're established like, I highly recommend seeking out those communities, just like you said.

Joeri Billast: 20:58

Absolutely, and there's also a place where you can share stuff. Like you know, I like I'm now writing this new book. I do it publicly, so I let people decide on the cover with me. I've written, actually, a book before and you see it on the background. The 5k challenge that was it did really well, so now I'm trying to do the same approach, but building. You know, writing in public, so I have people asking people to give their advice. I also do this in the community so that they can vote on the cover. Now, something we talk a lot about in these communities and here on the podcast too, is ai, so like it is a tool now today for marketing, an important tool. So then I'm curious to hear from you, yeah, how do you use AI for your marketing strategy for the products, how it is helpful for you?

Catherine Daly: 21:46

Well, it's really helpful in general just for accelerating productivity, and since GBT kind of came into the forefront of things in 2022, countless productivity tools have been launched. I use ChatGPT in my day-to-day life just for speeding up things. It's great. But one thing I'm really excited about the future is this idea of, like anyone being able to generate any kind of app that they want or website with AI, because you know, historically, like building apps and building things that you can actually use and monetize if you think they're useful enough for other people has been really gated behind being able to code, and so that keeps the circle of people who are able to do it very small in comparison to the general population and extremely small. In crypto. There's only, by some reports, like 20,000 developers in all of crypto, which is insane to think about, and so tools that are kind of using AI to broaden access to that sort of thing are really exciting.

Catherine Daly: 22:42

We've got one that's been incubating in the space and time ecosystem called DreamSpace. It's a really creator-friendly vibe-coding AI canvas where you can just like prompt your way to an app, drag and drop components and like configure an entire full stack application and even generate a smart contract to monetize it on chain without knowing any code, and so I've been using that a lot just to build like things as simple as analytic dashboards around my marketing performance, to like more complex things on the side that I just have good ideas for, and so now a barrier to entry for building in crypto is lowering, and whatever you want to build, all you need is an idea and dream space and you can make it happen. So I'm really excited about that. I'm excited that they're building within the space and time ecosystem, because I think it's a perfect use case for space and time's data and database infrastructure to power all of these apps in a way that the community can trust and verify all of these apps in a way that the community can trust and verify.

Joeri Billast: 23:36

Yeah, this was actually also one of the questions I always ask you know what is next? You actually already answered it, a bit like web-tree marketing. Anything you wanted to add to that to?

Catherine Daly: 23:50

the yeah, what is going to be the next thing?

Catherine Daly: 23:51

I think the big thing right now here has been like InfoFi and this Kaido YAP concept, which is great, and I think the idea of democratizing marketing the same way we've democratized other sides of the community is really exciting. And, moving away from this, you work with a handful of big KOLs, you pay them to show your product and you call it a day to like, incentivizing and rewarding the community for doing so. I think it will need to evolve so it and rewarding the community for doing so. I think it will need to evolve so it doesn't get drowned out by noise. What we're seeing now is a lot of like farmers coming into the space who are really only there to reap rewards and exploiting that system for that, which is the same thing that happens across the board, same thing that happened with the points meta of last year, and so I think like it will be interesting to see how it evolves and how providers of it, like Cookie and Kaido and Blaze, and also consumers of it, like crypto projects, using them, evolve to combat that.

Joeri Billast: 24:46

Amazing. Thank you. Actually, we are coming towards the end of the podcast episode, but I would love to hear from you If you were to start your Web3 marketing journey today. Is there anything that you would do differently or maybe an advice that you would give to the new bold marketers or builders of today?

Catherine Daly: 25:06

Yeah, I mean honestly, there's countless things I would do differently, and I think that's part of the advice that I would give is that if you're not cringing at your past work, then you're probably not growing. And so I look back at things I did a year ago or even three months ago and be like, oh God, I would do that so differently now. But I think that's positive, right, and that's a sign that you're growing as a professional and your strategy is growing and your team is growing. Don't be afraid to look back and cringe, as long as you learn from it. I would say if you are aspiring to be a CMO, but coming in fairly junior which is my experience right, I came in fairly junior into space and time worked my way into the latter then be a generalist, right.

Catherine Daly: 25:47

Don't be afraid to get your hands dirty in a lot of different fields and try different things out. For example, I have zero creative background. I'm not a graphic designer at all, but one thing I really leaned into when I first started with Space and Time was learning from folks on the team that were more creative and learning to add that skill set to my back pocket. Same thing with SEO, growth marketing Not my specialty, but I've learned from people on the team that are really good at it, and that makes you a little bit more indispensable and just gives you a bit more flexibility to move into a leadership role.

Catherine Daly: 26:18

The last thing, and probably most important thing I would say is the number one thing you can do for your career coming in early, regardless of what field you're in is just be reliable and do what you're going to say you're going to do what you say you're going to do. If people know that they can hand you work and it's going to get done and it's going to get done well and in a timely manner, then you are proving your value long before you have any real hard skills on paper. And so, even if you're like fresh out of college starting your first job in crypto, you don't know anything about anything as long as you are somebody that people know that they can depend on, especially leadership and higher ups like that will take you far in itself. So take ownership of your work, be dependable and the rest will work itself out.

Joeri Billast: 27:04

I love that because you know it's sometimes frustrated with the same thing that I know from certain people if they say they are going to do it but they won't do it. Right, if they say they are going to do it but they won't do it right, then you need to follow up, and that's frustrating because when I say something, I really want you know to do this.

Joeri Billast: 27:20

So that's really a really good advice because this builds trust. People that I know that do what they say or give feedback, you know, it's much more I would say, easier and much more. Yeah, it's better, it's a nicer feeling to work with those people. Now, catherine, yeah, as I said, we are at the end of the podcast episode. If people want to connect with you or they want to know more about space and time, where would you like me to send them?

Catherine Daly: 27:50

You can follow at spaceandtimedb on X or join our Discord community discordgg slash spaceandtimedb on X. Or join our Discord community discordgg slash spaceandtimedb. And I am underscore KatDaily on X if you want to connect with me there.

Joeri Billast: 28:01

Amazing. As my listeners know, they are always shown. Oh, there is a blog article linked to this podcast episode. Your links will be in there for people that want to find them. Well, yeah, Katrin, it was really a pleasure to have you on the show.

Catherine Daly: 28:17

Yeah, thanks so much for having me here. It was great talking to you today.

Joeri Billast: 28:20

Guys, what an amazing conversation. I'm sure that you learned a lot, like I learned a lot, and there are people around you that could also benefit from listening to this episode, so be sure to share this episode with them. If you're not yet listening, or, sorry, if you're not yet subscribed to the Web3CMO Stories podcast, this is a really good moment to hit the subscribe button. If you haven't given me a review yet, if you give me these five stars, I can reach an even bigger audience and, of course, I would like to see you back next time. Take care.