Building a Brand That Represents a Community with Steez Co-Founders

In this interview, I’m joined by Edmund Berkmann and Ravi Chandarana, Co-Founders of web3 social media platform Steez.

Steez’s mission is simple: to disrupt the music industry and put the power into the hands of artists and their fans. Steez enables musicians to build communities of dedicated supporters, who can invest directly into the artists through the purchase of tokens that unlock exclusive access to content, merchandise, and events.

At the time of this interview, Edmund and Ravi were working tirelessly to put the finishing touches on the alpha version of Steez (now available in the App Store and Google Play Store). I joined the duo in West London for a marketing strategy session to determine how to promote the launch of the alpha.

Like all startups, Steez has limited resources but they’ve managed to build a strong marketing foundation with a solid brand vision and visual identity.

Interview:

Can you guys talk to me a little bit about what Steez is and what inspired you to build it?

EB: Steez a token-gated social media platform that helps creators make a living. It also allows their fans to have a better experience that feels more intimate and is abstracted from all the noise that you find on other social media.

It is a space that is for the community, by the community.

RC: And I think a big inspiration for me and Ed is that we were in the space, Ed as a producer and me as an artist manager.

We understand the struggles of the smaller and the medium-sized creators who find it really hard to grow. There's not really a path where you can monetize your small audiences. So we're really trying to allow people to monetize their early fans or their biggest fans which will allow the whole space to thrive. We're really trying to redistribute all the income in the creator economy fairly.

And what about the name? Where does the name Steez come from?

EB: So the name came initially from my personal, huge inspiration, Capital Steez. He was a rapper in the US who passed in 2012 and was all about taking over the government with music. He was quite vocal about a revolution that is once again for the community, by the community, with art at the center of it. And he’s one of the first artists, especially when I got into hip hop, that helped me understand some of the impact music can have on people and communities, people’s mindsets, and by extension on politics and government and regulations.

RC: And also to add on to that… in UK slang Steez kind of means “aura.” So it's really about being true to yourself. So it kind of all just fit in perfectly.

At what point did you start thinking about marketing and how you were going to communicate the mission of Steez broadly?

EB:‍ ‍Early. We had some drafts, probably within the first three or four months of working together and they just kept improving over time.

RC: I really tried to start showing people the problem because I didn’t think a lot of people were aware of it. One thing that me and Ed really wanted to do was be vocal about the fact the somebody needs to solve this problem because it’s a big issue. A lot of artists and creators suffer through mental health issues. Financially. Social media-wise there is a lot of hate and a lot of trolls. Once we portrayed the problem it developed into what we are doing to fix the problem.

And how did you define Steez’s brand voice and personality?

RC: I did like this little course I found off YouTube.

EB: Virgil Abloh?

RC: Virgil was a big inspiration, actually, but it wasn't him. It was some other guy who talked about defining a business and relating it to a natural person. Like if Steez was embodied by an actual figure, who would they be? And why would they be that? And I think when you start to think about it like that, things start to align.

At the beginning we had a little bit of a rogue personality.

EB: Yeah, it had a lot of swearing.

RC: We wanted to be a rebellious figure and that was our personality at the start. I think we are a little bit rebellious still, but we’re calmer and want to show people that we want to help them.

How do you ensure that your message resonated with your audience?

RC:We want to be real. We're minorities. Down to earth. They understand us because the way we talk is the way they talk. We have slang, they have slang. We want to convey that we're one of them.

And where do you seek inspiration? Are there any brands or are there any creators that really inspire you guys?

RC:You know Corteiz, right? In the early days when they had about 10 to 15K followers, they'd keep their accounts private. It generated this sense of like… “I need to be a part of this.” I think that’s one thing that we want to do, especially when it comes to creator tokens.

I love the story of Corteiz because making the website private is totally counterintuitive. They were building exclusivity to the point where you couldn’t even see the product or try to buy it. But it worked in their favor.

To pivot slightly, what has been a challenge you’ve faced?

EB:Obviously the app is not fully finished and there's going to be an ongoing process. We will add more step by step. So that means a lot of the marketing effort brings people to kind of static experiences where they don't actually get to the app itself. And I think that's been probably one of the obstacles because we've struggled on very low resources and a very small team. The development has been slower than intended. And so it has, I think it has handicapped a little bit some of Ravi's effort on marketing because some of the people who come in really excited to test the app lose interest. But we’re fixing that in a week’s time.

RC:Adding onto that, at the start when I was doing a lot of promo, we were getting a lot of network effects. People reposting, people commenting. But then they see that the app’s not even out yet and the journey ends after they follow. If you take too long, sometimes people will think you’re not fulfilling your promise.

For my last question, do you have any advice for other disruptive brands who are just starting?

RC:Just don't be scared to put stuff out there.

EB:I would double down on that and say, don't be scared to drop your project even when it's early stage. Coming back to the earlier convo, having the app available for everyone in a harsher, earlier stage would have made the feedback loop a lot more efficient.

RC:I would also say try and learn as much as you can. I think a lot of people think that if they raise money they can pay someone else to do the work. I think you should wear as many hats as possible. There are people who will come to you selling products and really they’re selling you a story. They’re not selling you results. And when you start to fall into stories because of a knowledge gap, you will start wasting a lot of money.

EB:Especially if you have to end up managing people. For people managing developers or anyone doing something way more complex than your capacity, you need to understand how to manage them properly and understand the day-to-day work. Just knowing enough about the theory, knowing a little bit about the process I mean makes a huge difference. There are a lot of things that can go wrong and I think you need the skillset to be able to review people’s work and guide them properly. You have to be able to support them and also carry a little bit of the weight.

I think that's a great place to stop. And this aligns really nicely with the mission of Lopo to empower people to do the work themselves or at least be knowledgeable enough to support the people working with them. Thank you both for the time.

This interview was edited for clarity and brevity.