My First Idea Was Wrong. Here’s How The Pivot Saved Me.
Every startup starts with a simple idea. For Web3Connect, it was a simple solution to a messy problem: the B2B landscape in Web3 was a total mess. As a founder, I was tired of hunting through niche lists and conference spreadsheets to find partners. So, I decided to build a central directory.
The first week felt like huge progress. I scraped a list of service providers, loaded them into a database, and built a simple navigator. I thought I had a solution.
I was wrong.
That simple idea was deeply flawed. This is the story of how that first idea shattered and how the pivot that followed became the most important decision I’ve made.
The First Cracks in the Foundation
My neat, simple database idea hit three major roadblocks almost immediately. It turns out a "simple directory" is anything but simple in Web3.
Problem 1: Useless Data Structure. A flat list of companies is terrible for real comparison. How can you compare two smart contract auditors if you can't filter by the blockchains they specialize in? I realized I needed a much more complex, relational database from the start.
Problem 2: The Jurisdiction Nightmare. In crypto, where a company is based vs. where they can legally operate are two different things. A single "location" field was laughably inadequate and a genuine risk for users.
Problem 3: The Taxonomy Mess. This was the biggest headache. After scraping thousands of Web3 services, I was left with a raw, unstructured list of service categories. It took weeks of work—using AI for a first pass and then manually refining it based on my own experience—to build a coherent structure.
Building a useful list was hard, but building a trusted and scalable platform was an entirely different class of problem.
Learning from Web2's "Pay-to-Win" Sins
With a clearer technical picture, I started thinking about the business model. My first instinct was to copy the big Web2 B2B directories. That research turned into a huge warning sign.
I realized many successful B2B sites erode the very trust they were built on.
What I learned was that a simple directory that sells the top spot to the highest bidder was a strategic dead end. That model is fundamentally in conflict with the user's need for trusted, merit-based results.
My Approach: I'm committed to building a "merit-first" discovery engine. Our financial success has to be aligned with our users' success. No pay-to-play, ever.
The "Four-Pillar" Breakthrough
The biggest pivot came from a moment of pure frustration. I was trying to map partners from a conference list, and my neat "service provider" taxonomy was breaking. Where do VCs fit? What about Layer-1 foundations or SaaS tools?
I realized the Web3 founder's journey isn't a straight line of hiring service providers. It's a complex path that crosses the entire ecosystem. We weren't building a directory; we needed to build an ecosystem map.
This led to our Four-Pillar Model:
Product Providers: The SaaS/IaaS tools you build on.
Service Providers: The agencies and consultants you hire.
Ecosystem Enablers: The L1/L2 foundations and grant programs.
Capital Allocators: The VCs and DAOs who fund your growth.
This framework transformed everything. It directly solves the market's fragmentation, where a founder currently has to check a dozen different places to find partners across these four areas.
From a List to an Intelligence Engine
This four-pillar model unlocked our true long-term vision. The real, defensible value isn't just listing these partners, but understanding the relationships between them.
Right now, no one can answer the most critical strategic questions for a founder:
Which auditors are most used by projects that raise from top-tier VCs?
What treasury tools do successful gaming companies adopt after a grant?
By integrating the four pillars, we can start to surface these invaluable cross-ecosystem insights. The goal is to evolve from a simple discovery tool into an indispensable strategic intelligence engine for Web3.
The journey from that first flawed database has been a marathon. But those painful early lessons were necessary. They forced a pivot that led to a much stronger, more defensible, and ultimately more helpful vision for every builder in Web3.