Interview with Alexander Pavlov – THE ULTIMATE GUIDEHow to Create a Successful Crypto Product?

Today, we’re joined by Alexander Pavlov, CPO and partner at BDC Consulting, who leads the product division on our team. Alexander is a seasoned expert with 15 years of experience in IT and Web3 analytics, and a co-founder of a media portal that now has over 1 million active users.

In this interview, we’re sharing cases from our work with analytics and providing a complete guide on launching a Web3 product.

Watch the video version on our YouTube channel.

Disclaimer: The podcast was recorded on December 3, 2024, and some information may be outdated.

— Alex, welcome! How did you get into product analytics?

— I’ve been into computers since I was a kid. My dad passed down his hobby, which eventually became a huge interest in programming. My first project was a women’s portal where we published SEO-optimized articles and earned through banner ads. Later, I joined iQeon, a decentralized PvP gaming platform, where I fully dove into product management. I was lucky to work with a highly experienced team that taught me a lot.

— We met during the ICO hype in 2017 when iQeon was raising funds.

— That’s right, we had a complex platform with 25+ integrated games. We raised $2.2M, but then the market went into a “bear” phase. Around 2015-2016, I had to stick with crypto or move into mobile gaming. I chose crypto, and at one point, my colleagues suggested I try my hand as a Product Manager.

— Why product management?

— The turning point was the GoPractice course. It’s like a simulator for real work, giving a complete understanding of a product manager’s responsibilities.

— What does a product manager’s job involve?

— It’s a mix of skills in business, marketing, development, and understanding customer needs. A product manager needs to grasp multiple aspects and be multitasking.

— How do you choose a niche and USP?

— There are two approaches. First, you identify a feature or insight you can implement. The second approach is to conduct a thorough competitor and market analysis, selecting 20-30 niches to explore.

— How do you identify the primary user needs?

— Through the Jobs-to-be-Done methodology. You determine what jobs users want done and then build the features to solve those. For instance, one of the apps in my portfolio tracks plant health. The USP here is AI-based plant health analysis through photos. Afterward, you survey and test with the target audience to confirm your hypothesis.

Source: https://jtbd.info/ 

— What happens after choosing a niche?

— You create the MVP with the core features, and test it with a small amount of traffic. After a month and a half, you get your first metrics, like subscriptions, retention, and payments. Then, you decide whether to scale or adjust.

— What percentage of products become successful?

— Out of 10–12 niches, it’s rare if even 1–2 projects genuinely succeed.

— How do you work with data?

— I always rely on analytics. We once tested an onboarding process and realized that an overlooked dropdown menu was causing us to lose 10% of users. A/B tests and data work like this help identify what needs to change.

— Among the 12 apps you’ve created, which one performed the best in revenue?

— It was a horoscope app with a subscription model. The highest monthly gross reached $700,000, with a positive ROMI* of 20–50%.

* – return on marketing investment

— How long do such apps stay afloat?
— Some last a few months, others can run for years. But we’re only talking about the marketing side here. Of course, $7–9 million a year sounds impressive, but that’s before accounting for operational costs.

— What’s different in Web3 product creation?
— In Web3, the approaches are totally different, and the market still hasn’t settled on stable models. Most Web3 products are infrastructure solutions, trading bots, or speculative gaming projects. Web3 is still in its infancy, and the business models will evolve a lot from what we’re seeing now.

— Give an example of something that requires a different approach.

— Thanks to liquidity in Web3, you can align incentives for every direction of the product and team. It’s not just a subscription system; it’s something entirely different. You need to realize that Web3 has two types of products: the product itself and the token, and you have to manage them separately.

— How does marketing analytics work in Web3?
— In Web3, marketing can’t be measured traditionally. Everything revolves around the community and building a core audience. It’s a slow, detailed process with traffic sources that are often hard to quantify.

— How do you manage that?
— If only someone knew! (laughs). But seriously, I think it’s crucial that a product generates value for the token and brings in revenue. Right now, Web3 mostly uses a commission-based model, except for Telegram. You must create value, tie it to the token, and work toward a dividend model. If the token lacks value, it just becomes another memecoin.

— How do you work with data?
— I had a great case once. We launched a product with three different dashboards for A/B testing. I had my favourite, the one I was 100% sure would win. Ultimately, the least favorite board turned out to be the winner. That’s when I decided to base everything only on data. I don’t create products I like or the founder likes; it’s all about the customer.

— How do you figure out what users don’t like about the product?
— We once tested an onboarding flow, and a dropdown window made 10% of users drop off. It turns out that users didn’t understand what to click or check. What seems obvious to you might be a barrier for users. A/B testing gives you clear insights into what to keep and remove.

— What do you think lies ahead for the market right now?

— I have a friend who got burned by Stepn, and I can’t get him back into crypto now. Models must change, maybe even the product approach, moving away from market speculation. Yes, it’ll cut margins for investors, but they’ll figure something out. Even venture funds are now talking about memes.

— Why do you think Telegram’s growth has been so explosive?
— Their goal was to attract a large chunk of the audience to the top of the funnel. TON and Telegram are tightly linked. Hamster Kombat was the training ground for getting users onboard with the wallet. They couldn’t just hand out free money but still retained about 5–10% of users even after the initial drop. This core group is still actively using the products, learning to swap tokens, sell, etc. They successfully onboarded millions of users.

— How do you see the future of TON and Telegram?
— Telegram is building its ecosystem: marketplace, mini-apps, wallets, tokens, etc. This opens up huge opportunities for product work. We’ll see lots of experiments with TMA soon. I think iGaming and Gaming will pick up, along with offline services like booking tickets or renting.

— What about T2E games?
— As products, they’ve reached their peak. However, future projects could keep some mechanics, like point systems. The key is that the product delivers value and earns users’ trust.

— How do you reward early users?

— There’s a referral system with cashback. This means KOLs* and early users don’t wait for the token listing; they’re already earning and helping your audience grow. 

* – Key Opinion Leaders

— It seems like Telegram is leading the way in the new business model. What do you think?

— Not entirely. There are other products where adoption is key, like TRON or Uniswap. We’ll see more solutions that meet the needs of niche audiences. It seems simple when you’ve been in the market for a while. But just a few months ago, I spent hours explaining Ethereum, TRON, and USDT to my wife. For an outsider, it’s all very confusing.

— What’s the current audience for Web3 products?

— The key difference between Web3 and Web2 is that you can’t think linearly in Web3. You must bring a user and “feed” them, and then, over time, you refine the unit economics. There will always be two user groups: those coming for money and fun.

— Is Catizen an exception to the rule?
— Yes, it’s a unique case. I looked at their approach: they launched with an addictive game, built an audience, dropped, and raised about $18 million in investments. The team knows that every game has its lifecycle. They focus on liquidity to bring players into the next product. Now, they’re launching Bombie and funneling the audience there.

— What’s their secret to success?
— They focus on attracting and retaining liquidity. The more players and liquidity, the better the next game does. For example, in Bombie, I bought a $40 subscription and ended up in the top 37k, even though I used to be around 20k. This shows growth in the paying audience.

— What about TVL*?

— Their MAU** in the bot is around 2 million. But what’s the point of 20-30 million subscribers if you’ve already seen how it works, like with Hamster Kombat? A game can lose millions of users daily.

* — Total Value Locked, the total amount of assets staked or locked in a particular DeFi protocol or platform. 

** — Monthly Active Users

— Where else do you see potential?

— Trading bots. 

— But isn’t this market red right now?

— Competition has never scared me. Product creation is always like this: the result will come if you do it right with the data.

— What do you think about the future of analytics?

— There are different types of analytics. If you just want to track user behavior inside product, you can use Google Analytics. It’s great for understanding user interaction with your product. However, you need to look at segmented audiences when it comes to systems where the user makes decisions. You can make management decisions from there, whether to scale traffic or reduce it.

In Telegram, we don’t even have this kind of analytics. Often, you have to wing it. We build funnels in Excel, use Amplitude, and calculate event costs. I won’t even get into financial analytics. Many are flying blind, relying only on MAU and DAU.

— What exactly does your job involve?
— My job is about solving problems. A product usually emerges from a need, and we focus on addressing that need. We work with dozens of products, but the issue is that there are still very few effective tools for analytics and financial forecasting, especially in the Web3 space. It’s crucial to anticipate, predict, and manage challenges effectively.

— How does analytics help a product?

— Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re integrating monetization and want to understand RPU across different cohorts and regions. Pulling data from something like Telegram will give you a 30-day cumulative report. You can calculate ARPU*, but that’s a cumulative figure, not cohort-based. That means you won’t have data for predicting or understanding profitability. You won’t be able to assess whether scaling is worth it, and you might miss key opportunities, leading to stagnation and financial losses.

* – Average Revenue Per User

— Alex, thanks for joining us. If you want to learn how to analyze data and truly understand what's going on with your product, reach out to us — we can help. 😉

Conclusion

Just a year ago, we weren’t aware of many business models that are now the foundation of the Web3 market, opening up endless possibilities for product experimentation. User behavior analysis and deep financial forecasting are now key to making informed decisions and driving results.

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