Regular readers of this blog might know that I am interested in cryptocurrencies. I have finished a four year contract as CIO at Dulwich College and after 25 years I have my own start-up again.

Cryptostar.money will be the #1 Business Directory for UK Crypto

I am a huge fan of the Business Model Generation handbook and the Lean Start-up. These really emphasise the importance of building something that satisfies a market need and that people want to buy.

I am confident that when Cryptostar.money is up and running with 100s of entries and thousands of viewers it will perform a better job of matching customers and suppliers than typing search queries into Google.

To deliver greater value to my customers,  I want to build communities around crypto where paying members can share their business expertise with each other.

You will see the problem immediately – how do I start-up? No-one will want to advertise on or view an empty site or contribute to an empty community forum.

I found the solution to this by joining the Membership Site Academy (affiliate link) who provide a roadmap and support for those who want to launch and operate membership sites. They say that you must have a Launch Event and that to ensure that you have enough interest when the site opens for business you must pre-market extensively and build your own email list, “otherwise you will open to the sound of crickets and tumbleweeds”. This is really hard for techies like myself, it means that I must spend at least 50% of my time doing marketing that I am learning rather than tech that I enjoy.

The second big lesson I have learnt from the Membership Site Academy is that you only need 1000 True Fans (pretty version). This concept was popularised by Kevin Kelly and its says that if you can get 1000 customers to pay you $100 a year each by PayPal then you will have an annual income of $100k.  So a one-person business like mine does not need to try to take on Google, it just needs to find 1000 people to whom it can deliver excellent service.

Special Offer: I am giving away 5 FREE listings to readers of this blog who have crypto businesses. Click here to sign-up before they are gone.