vingzas

At the beginning of 2024, I launched the first article in this series where we introduced the idea of Community-As-A-Brand entities. In that article, I wrote about the origins behind these entities and why they are tipped to be the next-gen unicorns. More importantly, I shared about how we had designed and built @arcthecommunity to be such an entity. Since then, much has happened. We closed our mint in March to focus on building. Then we shared with the community in April that we wanted to raise a round completely from within the community. The months after were filled with many 1-1 conversations with members as I shared more about the future plans for ARC. Those conversations also led me to write this next piece in the series. In my meetings with the team and community, I often speak about the idea of community-led growth and how that is key for ARC. It is also the reason why we always prioritise community health as an always-on OKR and in this piece, I have tried my best to outline how you go from designing community-as-a-brand entities to activating them. At ARC, we are creating an unprecedented kind of business model - a digital-first institution borne out of a highly-aligned community. I have always emphasised that we are not an NFT project, but an entity that is leveraging crypto and blockchain technologies to further our community and business goals. In that regard, our ambition does not sit merely within Web3. We strongly believe that by implementing the principles outlined in this article consistently, we will be able to build up revenue streams far beyond any traditional Web2 counterparts or similar community-centric entities in Web3. We hope you get to understand more of that ambition after reading this piece. With the publishing of this new chapter, we are humbled to share that thanks to the support and belief that members have placed in us, we have closed our fundraise with more than USD4.5mil raised. Beyond the amount, it is the fact that this was a round that was raised completely from within the community. It’s a genuine testament to the content I’ve covered here about our thinking behind ARC and what we have achieved thus far. They aren’t just theoretical principles about community-building but real-life executions we have implemented. As always, I hope you find this a provocative read that challenges and informs your perspectives on communities and how they can be run.