Hunting Alpha Media: Bringing Quality DeFi Content to the Masses!

TL;DR

• Established in 2021, Hunting Alpha (HA) has organically grown to a vibrant community of over 700 members, comprising ambitious founders, alpha hunters, builders, traders, and investors.
• In 2023 we launched Hunting Alpha Media, HA's dedicated media arm. To date, we have produced over 40 podcast episodes and a dozen newsletters, garnering overwhelmingly positive feedback from our community. Hunting Alpha Media is the specific focus of this grant proposal.
• In the present crypto media landscape, content tends to skew towards the extremes - low quality content farms, or high quality but full of jargon. We believe that there is room - and a need - for more coordinated, large scale efforts to bring high quality information to a wider audience, beyond those who are already initiated into the crypto world. Our big vision is to evolve into a trusted, top-tier media powerhouse that delivers Web3 to the masses.
• To help us realize this vision, we are seeking funding to scale HA Media. This will enable us to hire a writer, video editor, an SEO expert, a legal advisor, and administrative support. With this additional support, our two founders can focus more intently on business development and executing the overarching Hunting Alpha roadmap.

Introducing Hunting Alpha (& Why We Created It)

Introducing Hunting Alpha

Hunting Alpha was born from a simple frustration - we wanted to find our tribe. People who were ambitious, curious, idealistic, and above all, passionate about crypto. We struggled to meet people on the same wavelength in our physical environments, and so we made a home for them on the internet. In late 2021, Hunting Alpha was born.

We've remained bootstrapped and independent, allowing us the freedom to grow at a deliberate and thoughtful pace. Selectivity is key—we invite members who resonate with our ‘give-first’ values and are committed to contributing positively. We didn’t race to expand; instead, we focus on deepening the relationships within our community and preserving the integrity of our culture.

Today, Hunting Alpha is a dynamic ecosystem. It acts as an incubator for emerging projects, a fertile ground for cultivating meaningful personal and peer relationships, and a global community for wayward nomads to connect and collaborate. Beyond its community, Hunting Alpha has developed impactful products and projects, as well as its media arm— to share alpha, support builders and engage both members and the wider crypto audience. With the support of public funding from the Gitcoin community, we hope to spread these values even further, encouraging more people to join the crypto community and providing them with the education needed to climb the learning curve.

How Hunting Alpha benefits Web3 and Gitcoin community

Hunting Alpha is a talent magnet, pulling in sharp minds who are keen to contribute, research and build in Web3.

Hunting Alpha nurtures these talents, facilitating connections and creating a fertile space where builders can find collaborators, gain exposure for their projects, or validate their ideas through genuine, insightful feedback. It’s a breeding ground for the builders of tomorrow.

At the beating heart of Hunting Alpha, it's all about community. With 700 members strong and counting in our Discord, we’re actively hosting events to facilitate opportunities for learning, connection, and collaboration. Here are just a few examples:

• Community Strengthening Through Weekly Gatherings: Every week, our members engage in insightful discussions about the market, exchange innovative project ideas, and build a sense of community camaraderie.
• Pioneering Early Access with Alpha Bot: Our community enjoys exclusive access to Alpha Bot, an innovative tool developed by our resident bot expert, Panda. By swiftly identifying emerging projects, this bot provides our members with a head start. This resource has been accessible free of charge to our community for over a year and a half.
• Collaborative Research Generating Valuable Insights: We've organized our members into four teams, each consisting of six individuals. These teams collaboratively conduct deep dives into various projects and present their findings. This process benefits both our dedicated analysts and the broader community.
• Unveiling Investment Prospects Through Founder Network: Our founder network plays a pivotal role in sourcing seed-round investment opportunities for all members. This opens doors for individual angel investments, emphasizing that we do not pool funds – a service we offer freely to our community.
• Cultivating Successful Projects and Talent: Our community takes pride in being a nurturing ground for successful endeavors. For instance, Blacksmith - Vulcan, an original member of our newsletter team, raised an impressive 250 ETH for his creation, Blacksmith (when $BS?). This underlies our commitment to fostering talent and innovation.
• Empowering Careers and Networks: Countless members have not only found job opportunities through our vibrant job board channel but have also accessed valuable referrals within our extensive network.
• Demystifying and Educating Through Learning Labs: Our 'Solidity School' for aspiring developers and 'Crypto Classrooms' aimed at making blockchain fundamentals accessible, illustrate our dedication to education and demystification.
• Energizing Experiences with Live Events: Our exciting debut at ethCC 2023, as showcased in the electrifying Rave Cave video (see Twitter!), highlights our commitment to bringing vibrant, memorable experiences to our community.

Hunting Alpha Media isn’t just adding to the noise—it’s a curator of wisdom. It breaks down the best of Web3 into digestible, fun-to-read morsels that are both enlightening and guiding the curious and experts alike.

Hunting Alpha Media

We want to emphasise that the focus of this grant application is specifically for supporting Hunting Alpha’s media component. We see this media component as a powerful tool for supporting widespread impact through both education and content creation, as well as amplifying the reach and impact of ideas and projects incubated within the community.

The Problem with Crypto Media

Through our newsletter and podcast, HA Media was born to fill the glaring gaps we see within the crypto content landscape.

For written formats, content tends to skew towards the extremes**.** At one end of the spectrum there are low-quality content farms, cramming as much daily noise into the world as possible for maximum clicks. At the other-end there is super high-brow, ultra-technical content that’s simply too hard to digest without an IQ of over 150, and a half-decade experience in the industry.

There’s a distinct lack of content in DeFi that is simultaneously high quality and informative, whilst being understandable and entertaining - this is the focus of our Sending Alpha Newsletter. While individual threaders on Twitter do a good job at both, there’s a much larger goal here, and that’s for crypto adoption to reach mainstream awareness. KOLs in crypto twitter are already preaching to the converted, and let’s be real - sifting through the noise on Twitter is a full-time job in itself.

Among crypto podcasts, another huge gap exists for interviewing founders on the very cutting-edge, building new crypto primitives. This underserved niche contains perhaps the most valuable alpha for listeners, but is lacking because it requires a very rare combination of crypto experience and connections to execute.

Hunting Alpha’s Media Arm comprises two components:

Hunting for Alpha Podcast

Area of Focus: Interviewing founders on the very cutting-edge, building new crypto primitives.

Format: Live Twitter Space interview, recorded and uploaded to Spotify.

Bonus: We also do live “Alpha Drop” Spaces with our friends across the ecosystem where we share the hottest alpha - these episodes are unrecorded.

Stats:

• 41 episodes recorded
• 38 episodes uploaded to Spotify
• 2,207 Plays on Spotify
• 275 Spotify followers
• 651 followers on Twitter

Measuring Twitter Space Analytics is a manual process, but here are some relevant stats:

From the last 5 episodes…

• Good Entry - 98 listeners
• ZKitty DAO - 225 listeners
• leNFT - 184 listeners
• Revest Finance - 298 listeners
• Recorded Alpha Drop episode - 646 listeners

Top episode:

• DIGITS DAO - 23.4k listeners on Twitter Space, 670 listeners on Spotify
• Episode link: https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1vOxwMezNqVGB?s=20

Listen on Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/huntingforalpha Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/huntingforalpha

Sending Alpha Newsletter

Area of Focus:

Creating DeFi content that is simultaneously high quality and informative, whilst being understandable and entertaining.

Format:

• The Weekly Hunt: Market Movements, Weekly News, Top Stories, OnlyAlpha Gems, DeFi Raiders Weekly Raid, Hunting for Alpha Recap, Community Updates.
• Deep Dive Analyses: Long-form research pieces on individual protocols as well as different industry sectors and emerging investment theses.

Stats:

• 11 Articles Published
• 493 Subscribers
• 44.76% Life-Time Open Rate
• 1,777 Web Views
• Top Article
  • Your Guide to Web3 Gaming Ecosystems in 2023 - 518 Web Views, 1,712 Web Clicks
• 431 Twitter Followers

Check out our Articles: https://sendingalpha.beehiiv.com/

Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sendingalpha

Where we need your help!

We believe that there is room - and a need- for more coordinated, large scale efforts to bring high quality information to a wider audience, beyond those who are already initiated into the crypto world. Our big vision is to evolve into a trusted, top-tier media powerhouse that deliver Web3 to the masses.

We take great inspiration from outlets like Bankless, who we discovered grew from an initial Gitcoin Grant. But there aren’t enough Bankless’ in the world right now. To build something of that nature, you need a dedicated team of contributors, all pulling in the same direction.

We’ve been bootstrapping Hunting Alpha since the beginning, but now we are seeking grants from the Gitcoin community to optimise our operations and recruit help, enabling our founding team to focus on business development and growth strategies.

Our Ask & Expense Break-down (6 months)

• A Video editor
  • Assuming one reel/ visual content per week = $100 -$150 (real price I asked). for the next 6 months, (4.3 weeks/ month) 25.8 weeks = $2600 - $3900 AUD ~ $2500 USD. This could be $5000 USD for 2 visual content a week.
  • If podcast is added then it’s $100 USD per hour of audio. Assuming we release fortnightly (~13 weeks) = $1300USD
  • Total ~ $4000 USD
• A Writer
  • Depends on technical difficulty: $150 - $300 USD a piece.
  • 25.8 weeks = $7740
  • Let’s round this to $12,000 USD to you and I get paid too? $5k USD = We get a minimum of $96USD a week.
• Website build - webflow
  • $2,000 - $4,000 USD
• Legal doc
  • $5 - 7k USD
• SEO expert (https://www.safaridigital.com.au/blog/how-much-does-seo-cost/)
  • Average $500/ month
  • $3000 USD for 6 month. Once time set up.
• Twitter ads
  • Can do this for very cheap with genuine audience. Perhaps around $2k - 3k USD for 6 months. Can also split this towards beehiiv newsletter marketing.
• Domains
  • $600 USD for 6 - 12 months

Total: $33,600 for 6 months