Having already experienced one marketing revolution in his early career, Reggie Tan remembers well the early days of social media, when platforms like Facebook and Twitter were just beginning to transform how businesses communicate with their audiences.
“Coming across that good intersection between my computer science background and being a marketer as well really helped frame my career. There was a really cool opportunity to explore these two together,’’ Reggie said about his excitement at the time.
Fast-forward to the present, Reggie finds himself at another game-changing crossroads of technology and human interaction. He’s just as excited about the possibilities, and this time he’s heading up marketing for Raiinmaker, the project that fuses AI and Web3 technologies with the aim of arming the public with the necessary tools to take part in shaping and profiting off the AI revolution with equity.
We sat down with Reggie to probe the inner workings behind his MO and how he’s transforming Raiinmaker communications to reach its audience, wherever in the world they might be.
Interviewer: Hi Reggie, good to see you. Thanks for joining us today. Let’s dive right in. You started your career in corporate marketing and gradually began integrating tech and Web3 into your work. Can you share with us how you transitioned from that to getting involved in the world of crypto? What sparked your interest and got you hooked on web3?
Reggie: So I got out of college and realized that digital marketing was just coming about. Social media marketing was all the rage. Coming from the corporate world where they were doing basic marketing and advertising, I found it cool to explore the growth of social media, email marketing, and blogging. I had trust in these new technologies, and I’m glad that I noticed social media is not just a running fad, but a thing worth noticing and developing professionally.
And as for crypto, let’s see… I think I went fully into crypto in 2017. I was working on startups in the payment space. Somewhere around ’21, I was already wrapped up in Web3 and NFTs. That wasn’t so far away from my usual personal interests — I like art, and the utility of NFTs fascinated me because they showed more utility than just payments.
Interviewer: Cool. And what about AI? When did you notice that crypto and AI were a match made in tech heaven?
Reggie: We can agree that AI is still an ongoing revolution. Even though the main surprise and “scare” have tapered off a bit, people now have an even better understanding of how AI works and what it can do for us.
I can say that I noticed the range of AI possibilities when I started using it for my workflows. It’s a big mistake to see AIs as like, an aid in writing or composing something. I think it’s beyond that. AI can help you with the process, research, and optimization of your operations.
That’s why we want to be a link in the chain of AI development. We want to make Raiinmaker a kind of a base for AI training, done by verified humans. There is a lot of room for democratization in the AI space, in a way, we want to allow users to be active participants in its development instead of just mere observers.
Interviewer: Your fascination with AI — does it come from watching sci-fi movies or is there more to the story?
Reggie: Some of my favorite movies are Terminator 2, and The Matrix. Maybe, in a way, I’ve ingrained the idea that bots running wild might be scary. But with the right mechanisms, a lot of good will come from it. The positives outweigh the potential negatives, in my opinion, if handled properly by the right kind of people. This is why it’s important to have decentralized AI.
Interviewer: It’s all about the community in Raiinmaker. In what ways do you think group spirit fits into AI and Web3? What’s your method?
Reggie: I suppose it’s a huge part of our marketing efforts and just focus in general. We want to present Raiinmaker as an ultimate human-powered network.
We all know a good product always has a good story. That’s why we decided to focus on creating value and making users feel part of something big and fun. Obviously, you can earn rewards and all that stuff. That’s kind of related to the platform, but also being able to be entertained in the process as well, too, to feel like you’re actually part of something that’s bigger, greater, and fun, right? You want to feel like there are a lot of people doing the same as you, and you want to be able to feel like you’re doing something that’s for the greater cause, and that is building a highly popular and extremely powerful and fully democratized AI platform.
Our idea is that each member should feel like a citizen in a larger ecosystem. For me, community is not just a buzzword we’re throwing around. We know the importance of human connections and a sense of belonging, so we aim to make community building our focal point.
Interviewer: Storytelling in tech — how do you keep it fresh and exciting for the in-the-know audience?
Reggie: You can’t build a community just on financial instruments. It’s just not a thing that has long-term sustainability. It’s about making it a social and community experience, breaking down complex concepts, and giving things purpose and entertainment value, making it more than just a transaction.
We try to come up with narratives that have an entertainment value to them that can drive people towards following along a much larger narrative that ties in all the stuff we’re going to do, not just for the next few months, but for the next few years.
For us, the main narrative is making humans the center of AI. To this day, people are either blaming AI for potentially taking their jobs and hoping for doomsday or are extremely optimistic about its future use cases. We want to instill a belief that humans created AI, humans trained and taught AI, and humans will continue to evolve alongside AI. That’s the future we see and hope for.
Interviewer: What’s the toughest challenge you face as a marketing maestro in the crypto world?
Reggie: Our main questions are ‘’What kind of feelings do we want an end user or Citiizen to be able to feel using Raiinmaker? How does that reflect not just loading into the app, but also being able to see all of our messaging and our content that we create as well? What kind of experience do we provide as a Raiinmaker platform to give them that sort of end feeling?’’
So I can say it’s extremely complex no matter how we skin it. We’re a small team building fast, and as we grow, it can slow down due to more people needing to sign off. Aligning product, tokenomics, and marketing efforts while staying flexible is key. The goal is to maintain agility in a fast-growing team, ensuring coordinated efforts across different areas to keep up the pace with innovation.
To sum things up, let’s just say that we have a rad product here. It’s all about aligning and synergizing a lot of what we’re doing together to be able to make sure we’re listening to the community, that we’re building the right features, that we’re activating the right partnerships, that we’re really making sure we’re hitting the right spot.
Interviewer: We all know that one of the main problems with Web3 onboarding is the lack of UI user-friendliness. When we talked to JD, he also mentioned that you are relying a lot on Web2 methods. How much of what’s going on behind the scenes does the average user need to know? How do you intend to balance that, because you’re aiming for massive adoption, right? How do you deal with that as a team?
Reggie: When you’re in Web3 for a long time there’s a whole lot of stuff that we get that most people don’t get, you know what I mean? It’s like any sort of early adoption, I guess, for any technology. So I think part of it is being able to think about how you simplify extremely complex things.
Like, if I went next door and I asked my neighbor if they wanted to run a DePIN validator node, you know, I mean, we’re just gonna sound like an alien, right?
So, we want to create a framework of making it as simple as possible for them to be able to understand the value of it without having to understand the intricacies behind it.
For example, part of the whole internet phenomenon was, like, my growing-up phase, the other half wasn’t, right? So when I heard about Hypertext Transfer Protocol, I didn’t need to actually know what HTTP stands for, right? I just needed to use it.
So yeah, we want to build for the world, not only for us, Web3 nerds, and obviously, being able to build for the world means being able to bridge Web2 seamlessly.
Interviewer: Moondrop sounds magical. What makes it special, and how do you plan to market it?
Reggie: About Moondrop… So, I think that’s a really strong, important branding thing that we need to emphasize. The idea behind the Moon-related symbolism is to ingrain the idea of Moondrop in a subtle way.
I’m thinking of it like when it’s nighttime, and someone looks up in the sky and sees the Moon, they think about their Moondrop coming. It’s kind of connecting tech with nature. That creates an out-of-the-ordinary experience.
And there’s something unique about being able to do that. I don’t think that’s been done before, at least from stuff that I’ve seen. Yeah, and that’s neat because it makes you look off your keyboard for once. I guess we wanted to inspire more people to ‘’touch grass’’. We should all be touching grass more often than we do, that’s for sure.
Interviewer: I agree. So, any juicy hints about upcoming partnerships or developments at Raiinmaker?
Reggie: We have some cool partnerships and marketing initiatives in the works! I can’t spoil it for everyone yet, they will be properly announced, but we did drop some hints in the previous Twitter Space, which excited the community.
I’ll say this much: being part of the ecosystem will pay off in the future.