# Ko

Crypto Social Network

- URL: https://oscarmairey.com/companies/ko-social-network
- Period: 2022-2023
- Role: Chief Marketing

During the summer vacations in highschool, I made it my mission to get into every crypto conference I could. But I did not have any cash.

The natural answer was to propose a free hand during the conference in the morning, to be able to walk through it on the afternoon. A surprising number of conferences allow for this system.

![One night my hotel was so far out in the city I slept on the beach. Cool experience. Would not do it again though.](https://oscarmairey.com/media/image-438b7944e5-1600x901.webp)

This is how, in the midst of August 2022, I met Tomy who was attending the SHAKA Festival (Biarritz, France). He presented his novel NFT Tokenization feature on his social network. And he needed a marketing guy.

We talked for a bit, liked each other's personalities, and then he proposed a half time employment contract to grow his user base and community from 0 to 1. I accepted, and started working in September.

## Why a Crypto Social Network?

The first use-case of crypto-currencies are micro transactions, and the second is actually owning what you create. The social network was built on these 2 premises.

You could, thanks to integrated micro-transactions, send some coins instead of a like. And every content you post belongs to you, even if your account is locked up or you get banned.

I know what you are thinking, and in hindsight, I agree with you. But Tomy still managed to raise about a million dollars for it. So we went ahead and worked on it.

![Tomy (CEO) and Adilie (Product) in the offices around December.](https://oscarmairey.com/media/image-c7b0a1fac7-1600x895.webp)

## Small Issue

I've never really done the job I was hired for. The team noticed it pretty quickly. But I had great ideas, notably in the crypto space that I'd known for two years by then. So they kept their patience while I was learning.

Slowly but surely, our social activity and user-base were ramping up. And I was learning hands-on, more than ever. I was in my final year of high school at the time, and was working during and between classes, and when I got home.

## Vegas, Baby

We were in negotiation for about a month on a special stand at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas to present our flagship feature, NFT Tokenization.

And on the 26th of December, we knew we got in. But we[^1] had to fly out on the 4th of January. Not a lot of time to prepare for Visa, presentations, book the hotel...

![On December 29th, working on the video pitch deck for our stand.](https://oscarmairey.com/media/image-0d132d4721-766x752.webp)

The big showoff was a live presentation on stage of the capture of a video. We invited the french foreign ministry delegation, along with other journalists, which covered the event.

![The French Ministry for Foreign Affairs delegation witnessing the world premiere tokenization event.](https://oscarmairey.com/media/image-76cde36525-1002x742.webp)

This event got us on the front page of the CES on the Spotlight: Tech for Good. Several journalists also reached out for comments, who we handled pretty well at the time.

And then, back to building!

## Prepare for Liftoff

Thanks to this campaign and a few other tricks, our user base and community rapidly grew to to several thousand users, although a majority of them were also non web3 natives.

This is why the application was also built with the spirit of blockchain abstraction. Everyone could use it, no specific knowledge required (which in 2023 was a big thing).

![Yes, even grandma could use the blockchain.](https://oscarmairey.com/media/image-919b38e22c-1600x833.webp)

Network effect made our goal really hard. As we were building the product, we had the challenge of user acquisition but also of retention... and it's hard to build the app with user feedback, when a core feature of the app is the network effect.

We tried to pivot around quite a few ideas, but it was out of reach. And we were soon reaching the point where my family pushed me toward university, which I didn't want.

## The Exit

My family wanted me to have a stable, above average salary if I wanted to escape University. The bet was 30k yearly gross, and I could not go to uni. And on September 2023, a headhunter reached out with the right offer.

I accelerated discussions with them, and at one point told Tomy. He was not very happy with the fact I accepted several interviews at other companies.

He was right to be. Tomy had bet on a 16-year-old with no track record and taught me more in 2 years than school ever did. Leaving badly was part of the tuition. It took me two more companies to learn how to leave well.

[^1]: I mean we, but at the beginning it was not accounted that I flew with the team. I had to earn my place.