How to Build Real Revenue in Web3

Because what's more important than that after all?

TL;DR: While everyone's chasing airdrops and token incentives, the smartest crypto builders are going back to sales fundamentals. Focus on revenue.

Hot take: The best growth strategy in crypto right now is to stop doing crypto growth strategies.

I know, I know. Coming from a crypto marketer, that sounds like career suicide. But hear me out.

While everyone's optimising for vanity metrics and designing elaborate token mechanisms, there's a quiet group of builders who are... just building actual businesses. With real revenue. Revolutionary, right?

I caught this insight from my recent Growth Stories podcast episode with a CRO who's scaled multiple crypto projects to 9-figure TVLs. But instead of talking about community building or tokenomics, he spent the whole time discussing... sales books from the 1980s.

And it got me thinking: What if the future of crypto growth isn't about inventing new playbooks, but about applying old ones?

The Revenue Obsession Framework

Here's what this looks like in practice:

Stop optimising for TVL. Start optimising for profit.

Every metric you track should connect to actual money in the bank. Not hypothetical token value. Not "potential future revenue from fees." Real, sustainable profit margins.

The uncomfortable truth? Most DeFi protocols are just subsidised by VC money to give users risk-free returns. That's not a business model—that's an expensive marketing campaign with an expiration date.

The Revenue Gravity Principle (this one's mine): Projects with clear revenue models naturally attract better partnerships, investors, and talent. It's like gravity for smart money. VCs might fund your vision, but market makers will only work with your reality.

The Multi-Audience Design Challenge

Here's where it gets interesting: while retail crypto focuses on community and viral growth, institutions are quietly moving billions into practical blockchain applications. Cross-border payments. Onchain credit. Bitcoin-backed financial products.

But the smartest builders aren't choosing sides—they're designing for both audiences without accidentally excluding either.

This doesn't mean you need to launch with enterprise-grade everything from day one. Some of the most successful crypto projects started retail-first and evolved. But it does mean being intentional about your long-term scalability:

  • Consider compliance requirements early (even if you implement them later)

  • Design architecture that can handle institutional-sized volume

  • Build relationships across the spectrum, not just in your initial target market

  • Think about regulatory positioning before you need it

The trap most founders fall into? Building something that works great for early adopters but hits a wall when trying to scale to serious money. Or the opposite—building something so focused on institutions that it never gains traction with real users.

The Value Creation vs. Value Extraction Matrix

Most crypto projects operate on value extraction: take fees from user activity, sell tokens to fund operations, extract rent from network effects.

The sustainable ones focus on value creation: solve real problems, reduce friction in existing markets, create new economic possibilities.

Quick test: If your blockchain went away tomorrow, would users have to find a worse alternative, or would they barely notice? If it's the latter, you're probably extracting value, not creating it.

Want to be a guest on Growth Stories Minicast?

Cultural Intelligence in Global Crypto

One underrated insight: crypto is inherently global, but most Western founders still think locally. The builders succeeding internationally approach different markets with genuine curiosity, not just translated marketing materials.

This isn't about cultural stereotypes or surface-level localization. It's about understanding that someone in Singapore might have completely different motivations for using DeFi than someone in San Francisco. And both are probably different from someone in Lagos.

The authenticity advantage: When you genuinely care about solving problems for people in different markets, they can tell. And they'll choose to work with you over the guy who's clearly just trying to extract value from their region.

Strategic Capital > Dumb Money

Here's where traditional fundraising wisdom actually applies perfectly to crypto: The best investors aren't just writing checks—they're operationally valuable.

Instead of raising from generic VCs who'll dump your tokens at the first sign of volatility, raise from market makers who'll provide liquidity. From exchanges who'll list you. From institutions who'll actually use your product.

Your cap table should read like your go-to-market strategy.

The Boring Revolution

Look, I get it. Talking about sales fundamentals and profit margins isn't as exciting as discussing the next breakthrough in zero-knowledge proofs or the metaverse's economic models.

But while everyone else is building castles in the air, you could be building actual businesses on solid ground.

The crypto space is maturing whether we like it or not. The projects that survive the next cycle won't be the ones with the most creative tokenomics—they'll be the ones that actually make money.

Three things to try this week:

  1. Audit your metrics: How many actually connect to revenue?

  2. Research one institutional use case in your space

  3. Ask yourself: Are you creating value or just extracting it?

The future of crypto growth might just be... growing actual businesses. Wild concept, I know.