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013 Addressing The Phantom in The Room with David Wu
DOC 07-26-2024
Curiosity: What makes Phantom different? Category: Interview
In just three years, Phantom Wallet has averaged 12 million monthly impressions on Twitter and over 7 million monthly active users, representing the rich startup ecosystem on Solana.
“We may not be the most disruptive in the ecosystem, but we’re constantly looking at how to keep adding value as we keep our startup running,” said David Wu, Head of Growth at Phantom. If you’re active on Twitter, you’ve seen the Phantom Wallet team frequently engaging with users and the greater web3 ecosystem. Today, the brand page regularly pulls in tens of thousands of views on individual tweets and is as synonymous with Solana as startups are with Silicon Valley.
A huge part of Phantom’s strategy has been sticking to a series of core principles while gradually pursuing maturation as a brand. Just a few weeks ago, Wu talked to me about Phantom’s growth and what it’s like being a startup in web3.
Building in Web3
Because stories of millionaires being made in 48 hours dominate the ecosystem narrative, the rate of change to pursue success in web3 can make you feel like you’re in a different dimension; one day begins to feel like two weeks, and six months feels like a decade. But these are just feelings. “You can’t build in this space and not notice the pressure that comes with the pace of how quickly things evolve,” said Wu. “But as a team, we do a good job of keeping our long-term goals in sight so we can build rapidly in the short term without sacrificing the health of the business. We can’t just react quickly trying to keep up, and then the community suffers a worse experience.” Yet, the team isn’t blind to the benefits unique to building a startup in web3.
“Phantom as an account receives more engagement than most corporate accounts by far,” said Wu. “People are chronically online, sowe need to be chronically online. That’s the unique experience of crypto that can’t be overlooked and has to be harnessed. When we meet users where they are and are consistently responsive, we’re rewarded by their support.”
Branding and its Benefits
I wrote an article last month about Phantom’s timely brand refresh thanks to design studio Bakken & Bæck and F37 Foundry. The new visual identity also came with a slew of features that challenged the conventional view of what a crypto wallet is used for. The contrast it created against other wallet startups gave a glimpse into how the team sees Phantom’s role in a person’s experience on the blockchain. Simple features like a search bar to discover tokens, new token views to see charts and price history, and cross-chain swapping to make engaging with the entire web3 ecosystem available within a delightful-to-use web and mobile platform. “It’s not just about celebrity, but what about if you have ten friends that you just want to bring into Phantom? What’s that experience like? That’s where we want to be long-term and what we’re thinking through in real-time.”
Phantom’s enjoyable user experiences connect users to the products and services built by other founders causing a unique compounding value effect. “Solana is home to so many great builders that it keeps us sharp, Solana is so fortunate for that,” said Wu. “At the end of the day, Phantom has to be reliable, stable, and responsible, for everyone using it, that’s job number one. If you do that job, you earn the right to create other exciting and fun features.”
A16z General Partner and startup blogger Andrew Chen says, “I find myself most captivated by new startups where connecting people lay at the heart of the product, whether for communication, socializing, work, or commerce,” at the beginning of his book “The Cold Start Problem.” The intentions that captivate someone who’s invested more than $400 million into more than two dozen startups are the same that make up the foundation of Phantom Wallet.
“There are no playbooks in web3, you know? We’ve only been around for three years, though, and we’re just getting started on maturing and finding our footing and scaling in the right ways.”