Ep. 1 - An Introduction to DRIP Rewards

In this inaugural episode of the DRIP podcast, Phil from DRIP Operations hosts Toli, CEO of DRIP, and Mike, Head of Partnerships, to explore what sets DRIP apart from traditional loyalty systems. Toli explains the vision behind DRIP, inspired by video game mechanics, to create engaging and interactive community experiences through gamification. They discuss DRIP's origin story, starting from Toli's childhood passion for game design to the creation of a loyalty system that employs multiple virtual currencies and incentivizes actions beyond mere purchases. Mike highlights the transformative effects DRIP has had on businesses, emphasizing its role in enhancing user retention and engagement. The team also delves into recent and upcoming features of DRIP 2.0, such as a robust quest builder, a developer kit, an app store, and premium currency options. They also touch on how DRIP can be applied across various industries, from Web3 enterprises to traditional brick-and-mortar businesses, to revolutionize the outdated loyalty systems.

00:00 Introduction to the DRIP Podcast
00:10 What Sets DRIP Apart
02:08 The Origin Story of DRIP
04:54 Drip's Impact on Communities
07:37 Gamification and Loyalty Systems
11:40 Creating Engaging Economies with DRIP
15:37 Advanced Implementations and Future Plans
24:11 Introduction to Sarasota Tech Meetup
24:17 Challenges with Event Check-ins
24:44 Incentivizing Check-ins with an App
25:50 Flexible Reward Systems
27:40 Multicurrency Innovations
29:15 Gamification and Crafting Systems
32:54 Retention and Acquisition Strategies
37:16 DRIP's Flexibility Across Industries
42:12 DRIP 2.0 Features and Future Plans
46:31 Getting Started with DRIP

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Transcript

Phil: 0:00

Welcome to the Drip podcast. My name is Phil, I help with operations at Drip. We're here with Toli, CEO of Drip, and Mike the head of partnerships. Today we're gonna be talking about Drip overall, and then we're gonna get what sets Drip apart from a traditional loyalty system or a point system that you might get at like your local coffee shop or something like that. let's start with Toli Toli. Could you give us a quick rundown on what is Drip and what do you think sets it apart?

Toli: 0:32

The big idea behind Drip is that it lets you turn everything into a game. That's our big idea. So people love games, obviously. and there's elements that make a game addicting, right? That make you kind of go back to it, tell your friends about it. and so we take a lot of those elements and we open it up so that any business or brand or community can use it to make the experience just much more engaging, right? So that's kind of the high level idea. the elements that make it a game are, like one of the core pieces is points, right? Or a currency system. Every game that you play, there's always some kind of points system, like whether you're collecting coins or you're collecting hearts for HP or you're collecting experience to gain a level, right? So there's always, there's always something that you're kind of uh, your points for, right? You're working for those points like collecting coins and hearts and experience, and you're exchanging it for something. Like you can buy an item with the coins, you get, HP if you get a heart, which allows you to play longer. and with the xp, you get levels which gives you, different access, right? And so all of these things can be applied to a brand or a business. We think that traditional loyalty programs are extremely boring, and so what we do is we flip that on its head and we, can turn brands and communities and businesses into actual games. So that's kind of the big idea.

Phil: 2:08

What was the initial idea or like what was the spark that led to drip in the first place? What kind of problem were you trying to solve there?

Toli: 2:17

The initial spark, you know, happened when I was just a kid. love playing video games, you know, legend of Zelda. A link to the Pass was my favorite game, you know, of all time. and I kind of decided at that point that I wanted to be a game designer. I didn't go down that path, but that's always been like in the back of my mind, just this idea of, designing a game. And I actually got the opportunity to do it. In my early twenties, I designed this browser-based game called Ant City, where you were an ant and you had a nest and you can upgrade that nest and you could go out and scavenge. And it was social, it was multiplayer, right? So people could actually, like either work together or fight each other, right? So you can create empires, which was a collection of ant colonies. And, you know, people loved it, right? You know, people paid for it too. We had micro transactions. People paid$5 to$50 to get a, bundle of sugar. The sugar was, the premium currency. They could buy a bunch of stuff with it, right? So that idea was, it was a very simple game. It was a browser based game, you know, nothing flashy, but still very addicting, right? And so, that was kind of the origination of it. forward to a couple years ago, I was running, an online community in a tick collection called Bad Bears. everything was going good until, the bear market started to hit. People were just leaving just because it was boring and not exciting anymore. so, I kind of thought about it. I was like, okay, how can we get people to stay? And I figured out, just make it fun. Like make it a place people wanna come back to. And so we built this little discord bot, that people could collect. we called it honey. people could collect honey, and people could tip each other with it. So it had this, like social multiplayer component, you know, eventually people could play games with it. we had like poker and blackjack and people can spend it on stuff. you know, discord, rolls, you know, actual physical items, you know, digital items too. And so that was kind of the inception of Drip. and then very soon people started to knock on my door and ask, Hey, this is really cool. Can I. you know, can I have this too? And I was like, well, it's not built for other people, but. Sure, let's go. and so that's, that's kind of where Drip really started was, you know, to solve, you know, my own problems as a, you know, as a community leader, you know, community manager. And so now it's at a point we, we have 1700 different brands and communities, using it to engage just, just over 7 million, people. Right. And so the platform itself has evolved a ton since. some of that, but that's, That's kind of the origin story.

Phil: 4:53

That's awesome. And Mike, I wanted to hear some of your input at this point with your head of partnerships. You've been going out, chatting with people, seeing how Drip can help out their business. What are some main takeaways that you've gotten from people who implement Drip into their community or into their, you know, broader business what effect that has had for them and for their community?

Mike: 5:22

Yeah. Um, actually even earlier today I had a call with someone who, uh, implemented Drip into their discord, and it has become the central piece of their strategy, and that's something that Drip can really do. Drip allows them to create a holistic system around what they've built, where they can have the gamification, the ability to have this economy, this thriving just world. that happened just from the creation of points. it's almost like creating money out of nothing where you're able to do this and then all of a sudden people are interacting and they value things and they have commerce and they want to participate. to the point where I heard that people were saying, I felt bad asking people to go out and tweet before, you know, to amplify our message, but now I'm giving them points in return so I feel good and they feel good and everyone wants to do this more. And just the activity that we've seen has been explosive. So because of those sorts of interactions, we have our own evangelists and we have super fans, that have helped, go out and you see Drip in a server. You interact with it and they go, this is the way, life should be. I don't know why we would not have this. And then they install it. And then what I really come in is being able to help people go from the, I've installed and I've used it to, I become a power user, and I want to go to the paid and the pro versions of Drip, where there's so much more, the ability to run infinite quests at a time and all these other interactions. I've also seen that a lot of these larger brands really want to use Drip because what it can do is go beyond, and this is a whole other side of Drip, is the questing and the gamification side outside of what it does as a discord bot but what it can do for a brand, who is looking to just amplify a message and being able to gamify and have fun with what they built. So we can go into that side as well of, what it can do to transform a brand from just being, a traditional loyalty system that's just based on a sheer number of, I purchased something, I get points to, I perform any action and I can earn rewards and I can spend them in a multitude of ways.

Phil: 7:37

Yeah. And that was something I actually wanted to ask, Toli about exactly that question is how is this, how is Drip different just a regular, know, I give you 10 bucks, I get 10 points, and then after a hundred points I get a free burrito or whatever. Right?

Toli: 7:53

Yeah.

Phil: 7:54

Is, how is Drip different than any kinda system like that that we see everywhere?

Toli: 7:58

Yeah. So I think people are, you know, depending on, on like who's watching this or listening to this, people are. people have different experiences of, you know, of different, types of point systems that exist out in the world. you've got the category of like, loyalty points in a coffee shop, for example. you've got the idea of more robust points and questing systems, like Ze e Galaxy, right? So if you go to ly.com, it's, it, it's like a community questing and points thing. you got those two examples. Obviously ze e's much more advanced. It's not built for retail, whatever. and so the loyalty aspect, you go to a coffee shop, you buy a coffee, know, and you get one point, know, after buying 10 coffees, you have enough points to get a free coffee. Cool. super boring. pretty lame. And, and yeah, so that's, that's basically the loop over here. with Zele, it's, you complete a quest and you get points, that's it. So much more interesting, right? These quests, you know, ask your, go to, to comment on a social media post or to do this, you know, on chain action or, whatever, right? And so people complete these tasks, these quests, and they receive points, but it stops there, right? So these points, typically, you climb a leaderboard you know, in Web3 and crypto, it's used for something like an airdrop, right? So, the more points you have, the more, money you get within Airdrop, But it stops there. So, where Drip comes in is that we pick up where Ze Lee leaves off, So we do the questing, we do the points, but a big part is that we. let you multiple different point systems, right? So just like in a game, you can have, coins and gems and again, stamina or HP and xp, So if you wanted to create, a robust, kind of point system like that, you can actually share these points with another brand or business, or community very easily. you could just say, like, hey, I want, customers from this other business or brand or community also be using this currency. Cool. And then the other thing is that we're about to release an app store gonna have, a bunch of apps that just plug and play into your point systems or your economies. Right. So what that means is say that you create coins for your, online discord community. People love it. They're earning coins with quests. They can tip each other so you have a social component. they can play some of the built-in games and they can spend it in the store on items. But, I think one of the challenges with running an economy is, is how do you keep up demand the supply that's being put out, right? The more points that are in your economy, the lower the demand goes. That's just natural, you know, supply and demand with economics. and so it is important to have, other ways for people to spend and enjoy their points, right? And so this app store is gonna, allow builders, developers, to create, apps and games that automatically plug into your point system. And so you'll be able to activate a game, a tournament style game and maybe it, you know, it's a pay to play, right? You have to pay five coins every time you play this, but it's a tournament. And so, the best player wins, right? And so, ultimately, that acts as a sync, right? and it's also fun, right? Just, keeps the community engaging. And so that's kind of the breakdown of the types of different point systems that exist out there and, how Drip is doing it differently.

Phil: 11:40

Perfect. Mike, what has been your experience with, going to people and educating them about this and them realizing the difference that Drip can bring versus the traditional points type of system?

Mike: 11:55

Yeah, there's two different things to it. first of all, to paint a picture of what can be, if you look at McDonald's, You buy a burger. You got points you spend on a burger. But what if you could learn about the new burger that's coming out, answer a quiz, get a couple of points for that quiz that you use towards your purchase, and then you take a picture of yourself eating a Big Mac, and then you get points because you've tweeted about the picture of you eating that Big Mac. Now you have a full user journey and a full life cycle of what the user can do. So it's all of those additional aspects. Outside of it is where Drip comes in. what Drip really brings to the table is a lot of things are top of funnel. They're about user acquisition right now. There's a lot of user acquisition out there. Drip is retention and if you don't have retention in your funnel, what's the point of acquisition? People come in, you get a big hype, and then they just leave. Drip provides all these ways for it to consistently. Drip to people so that they stick around, they have fun, they enjoy themselves, and it gives them a reason to live in this world. the questing is a piece of it. The gamification is a piece of it. We've seen that people really enjoy this and the ability to spend is as much of, of an importance as the ability to earn. You know, and Drip provides many of these, it's called point sink in the industry, which is your way of spending sinking points because you want to exit them from the economy. So that's what we've really seen has been an important innovation and aspect is the earn for anything spend on anything.

Phil: 13:37

That's cool. I like that. one question I had on things that you could spend points on in different drip, situations and different businesses, what are some things that you've seen that people tend to like? Like as users, they want, they earn points by engaging with content, by doing whatever, then there's an option to spend on this, or this or this. Have you noticed any trends on like, oh, people, really like a giveaway for something with their points, or they like to spend it on a digital thing what kind of things have you guys seen?

Toli: 14:14

yeah. So really the sky's the limit, So the easiest to create an economy, right? the idea is that you're creating, an economy, That's one way to use, these points. And I think the most engaging people earn points and they spend it on stuff. and the easiest way to get started there, that we see is that people actually, add the drip discord bot, right? And in there, there's, command That you can create a store item or a raffle, right? And so, that store item or raffle, it could give the user a discord role, right? So you're purchasing either status or access to something. So maybe it's a premium area or maybe you get, your color changes or the, icon, exterior name changes, people value that, right? That status. so that's, that's the simplest way, know, more advanced is, you can do stuff like giveaway, discount codes for like a, you know, Shopify store, right? So spend, you know, 50 coins and get a 20% off the store. Great. Right? So the user gets something, you don't lose any money a little bit of margins, but that person like, may not have spent money in your store without that discount code, right? And so it's, it's fully a positive sum game. Everybody wins, you know, you as the brand or business and also the member themselves, the user, right? and so more advanced implementations, people, you know, I see people taking these points and extending it beyond Discord, into their own website, right? Or into their own store that has, you know, you know, robust, know, set of features, where people can, again, purchase stuff, enter raffles, do auctions with their points, right? People end up, valuing, these points as like real currency, right? Like, no, you can't exchange it for a dollar value, but it's got a perceived value to it, and it's just much more flexible, right? You don't have to wire up stripe. You can just, plug it into your website. And I think one of the more advanced ways I've seen it is to actually plug it into an existing game, right? So that's where it gets really interesting is when people start to create these, interoperable cross app point systems or economies where you can be playing a game on your phone you're earning coins, but these coins, you can use it inside of that game's discord server. That's very powerful. People will move between apps or platforms if that's the incentive, right? If there's something of value as an incentive, especially if they can like, you know, earn more coins and discord and bring it back to the game, right? those are kind of the more advanced, things that I see. And what I'd like to see is more apps and platforms connected into a full economy system.

Mike: 17:07

some of the most popular ones I've seen that are On the simple side are white lists, for upcoming mints or partner mints. NFT giveaways, especially in the Web3 side, those are popular. and a lot of physical merch and physical merch we see done a lot as a raffle item. And raffles are enormous because whilst, something might cost a thousand points, if you do a raffle for that object, you might get 15,000 points worth of points, from the whole community that is thrown towards it. So they're a great way to just empty the economy out and keep everything in balance, whilst giving whoever it is a deal on their eventual win.

Phil: 17:49

That's awesome. I was thinking about, when Toli was bringing up, you know, what, if it's a discount code and it's for 50 coins, such a big win for the business that's using Drip or NFT project or whatever it is, right? Because not only, is it maybe just a little bit less margin on that t-shirt or whatever it is that they got the discount code for. They also had to do all of the actions to get those 50 coins in the first place. if that means, engage with our content or go do this, or go do that. Something that's in the business's interest. You're getting all of this. nearly free engagement basically from your customers. you don't have to, pay them of dollars or like, you don't have to hire them as a contracted marketer for you. it's just a, a clean, simple way, and very inexpensive in the broader picture. Very inexpensive way to get more marketing, more engagement done. And also, keeping them engaged, which helps retention, which helps lifetime customer value. All those things like, there's so many ways that Drip can help businesses just retain and expand organically through their, through their community.

Toli: 19:09

Exactly. Yeah. I like to look at it as like you're creating, you know, a lowest common denominator of value point. Right. There's kind of value to that. One point could be fractions of a penny. but, but it's something, and like, you normally can't do that, right? you can't reward people with money. Like, yes you can, but it's just not as, I dunno, there's a big difference, you know, like when you play a video game, imagine if in that game, instead of you collecting gold coins, you're actually collecting real money. I mean, that's cool. but you're kind of, pulled out of that story you're kind of breaking the fourth wall a little bit, right? so having a branded currency, you can call it whatever you want, attach any kind of emoji or icon or symbol to it, as you want, right? And so, I think that's where it gets really interesting is like looking at, the currency component as a lowest common denominator of value that you can play with. one point, sure. maybe that's not very valuable, but make it 10 points, make it 50 points for completing a quest or for, doing X, Y, and Z. And so just lets you play with that a lot more.

Mike: 20:22

It's amazing how the perceived value of a point, if you told someone that you're gonna get 0.001 cents for an action, they wouldn't do it. But we told them that they're gonna earn five points, even if it has the same value. They don't do the math and they perceive it as something that's worthwhile. it's wild what people will do for these economies that are created versus what they would do, for the actual value of the object.

Phil: 20:45

I was thinking as both of you were talking, I was thinking a little bit of the gym that I go to. So I check in, I've just got an app, I check in and there's like streaks, you know, badges kind of things. And I just think like, it's cool. it's got some motivation. and I think what Drip could offer, even in the case of a gym is like, Hey, if you do that, or maybe you need a heart rate monitor to like measure perceived effort, way of giving you more rewards and just like, Hey, you showed up. You know, and then maybe, maybe I can spend those rewards. So I think the mindset. as, as I've been in Drip and I've been learning about Drip and thinking about all of the loyalty reward programs I have on my app, on my phone through different apps for different restaurants or whatever. like Drip. Drip can take that and just level it up by saying, oh, not just, Hey, good job you showed up. Or, Hey, you spent money here, but hey, you're doing this, this measurable thing that we value as the business, and because of that we're going to reward you points that you can then do something with. Instead of just like, Hey, look at my badge. that's my badge. I think that's been a cool 10 to 15 years of that maybe on the mobile phone app, reward systems for different things. And now it's, the time where. It evolves into something like Drip where there is this true economy of supply and demand. you as the business can create the supply and then drive the demand through different rewards that they can spend the points they earn on. That's kinda where my head went with that.

Toli: 22:36

Yeah. and like cool is, is you can really very quickly incentivize any action easily. I think that's also important too. To underline there, because what are your options right now to incentivize people? You gotta pay them. You gotta pay them, basically, you can offer other rewards, status badges, whatever. Cool. But like, it's not very flexible, right? That's an option of course. But if you pay them with fiat now you gotta connect that to a whole system. It's not just as simple as plugging it into Stripe. There's a whole system, there's, taxes and all of that, right? Yeah. So you got fiat and you've got crypto, as options to incentivize people. They both work, but they're both incredibly complex. For example, like Minecraft, right? So if you want people to be playing in your Minecraft server, you cannot do crypto, I don't even know if, you can have a simple, like FIAs system there, but if it's points, if it's a virtual currency, yeah, of course you can, right? They got APIs and all that stuff go crazy. so like that's, example. and also it's real money, right? So you can't properly, leverage that because, you know, if you don't have leverage, it's just, it's real money, it's coming outta your pocket, you know, whereas points you could just do a lot more with, right? there's an interesting app that I'm building for the app store and I'm really excited to launch the app store because I'm gonna be building a bunch of stuff for it. I run a local, tech and meetup called Sarasota Tech. We get, between a hundred to 200 people that show up every month. we have issues with people checking in when they arrive with Luma. Right. So Luma's an event management app. It's great. but what incentive, what reason would, an attendee check in? Sure. I mean, we can gate that stuff. We can do a little wristbands, but it's a free event. so we don't want to do that. and we don't wanna have somebody, just kind of sitting at the door checking everybody in, the whole time. That's lame. The idea is to build an app that will reward people for checking in. Great. right. So people will get, a couple points, for checking in and these points. yes. Like we'll give them experience points, but also, you know, currency as well, a virtual currency that eventually they'll be able to spend in the store for a hat, right? or for, you know, for, I know stickers or something like that, right? And so it just makes it much more interesting. So, I'm really excited to launch the app store, the developer kit so that people can start to play with this stuff in a, you know, in a much more interesting way.

Phil: 25:22

Yeah, that sounds super useful. And yeah, I can tell why that, that situation where like, why, why check in, you know, I'm here. It's free.

Toli: 25:32

Yeah.

Phil: 25:33

Give them a reason and Drip, drip can power that, you know, through that app that you're building.

Toli: 25:38

Yeah. it's an incentive to get people to do what you want, basically. and it's, you know, it's not manipulative, it's not forceful, it's nothing like that. It's fun. a game and people love to play games.

Phil: 25:50

Yeah, and something that you brought up was that it's very flexible. and it made me think of it's a very flexible, system that you can experiment with that has very little risk. You know, whereas like if you were to say, Hey, you're gonna get paid dollars to do something, like there's a whole bunch of crap, and there's the legality side, there's the infrastructure side to do that. With Drip, you can just, what if we do this? You know, what if we say, you know, they show up, they get points, and, and what if we put this in the store that they could spend their points on that would help us with this part of our business or that part of our business? Or maybe it'd just be a cool thing. Like it's very, very flexible and because there's no actual dollars and cents involved that you're giving and receiving from people. You can just do it, you know, you can just, here, let's try this out for the next quarter or for the next month, or let's do a limited time event that we, you get this and you can spend it on that. one last thing I wanted to touch on was currency. we've been saying points, points, points, Yeah, you know, we could just have something called points and you can call it whatever you want as the, the business owner using drip. You can call thems or, or future coins or whatever the heck. Berries, you know, the bearish NFT project that Toli is the co-founder of uses berries, red berries and blueberries. And fish, that's a third one also. So what are some, mean this is open to both of you. What are some ways or reasons to use multiple currencies versus just like, here's my main points and we're just gonna use points.

Mike: 27:40

Multicurrency is one of the more interesting innovations that's really come out of this that I don't think I've seen anywhere else.'cause it enables you to have people perform actions that have different levels of value to the company without needing to value them Equally. So you can view it as actions that have, spend value and actions that don't so what I mean by that is what we talk about the traditional point system, you know, for traditional loyalty system. Those actions have an actual value, you know, 5% rebate. Essentially, every time I buy a coffee, it's a 5% rebate in points that, I can redeem for, you know, every 20 purchases is a cup. We know that value. if you were to mix in tweeting in there, it can muddle that a little bit. If you want to maintain an exact value of points, come in the multicurrency where you can have these other actions such as, nons spend actions that are tweeting, that are, taking social actions, that are playing games. and you have the ability to wrap them around, these separate currencies that can be redeemed at different rates, at different values that you can exchange in between them, so that you can take these nons spend action points and earn points, without having to fractionalize your current setup. There's. The ability to do so much more while allowing you to have value your points appropriately. that allows you to increase what your economy already can do while not wrecking economy that you have existing. it's also really interesting when you go into gamification, which is a place where toll's really taken this. Whereas a lot of these actions, can be used differently in games where, people are setting up games, in their discord or setting up games. outside discord that use these points. You can have an entire point system that's built around the gaming side where those points are more useful in a game. Either that they have actions that could be taken in a game, or they're used as a currency to play that game. in some instances you might not want that to be the same currency, that you have for your other actions. So the ability to have, multicurrency enables an infinite way that you can run, your loyalty systems, that you can run a point system, that you can have a loyalty system alongside a gamification system. Uh, that before it was there, but enabled you to have much more thoughtfulness into how you valued and how you placed these points. Um, Toli what else have you got on this one?

Toli: 30:19

Yeah. I think it'll, it'll get really interesting when people start to create relationships between all these different points, systems. you know, something easy to understand is, uh, you have coins and you have gems, Coins are common. Gems are rare. maybe you have an exchange rate between the two, maybe you can buy a gem for hundred coins. gems let you do things that you can't do with coins. gems let you, uh, you know, certain raffles or buy some things from the store or maybe, in your game it's the premium currency there as well. And that lets you buy premium skins or or whatever, right? And so, you know, creating relationships between currencies in a point system I think is cool. very soon, you'll be able to do something like crafting where you can, create different, uh, we'll call them resources wood. Or, and whatever. Magic dust, right? So all of these three different point systems that you can collect in different ways. Wood, maybe you gotta go do this action over here every day and you get a random, you know, man, a wood every day. the magic dust, maybe you have to buy or you have to, obtain it in like special events or occasions. then like, you'll be able to craft things with this, right? So, you know, maybe with the wood you can craft a, I don't, I'm just making stuff up, but, uh, you know, a chair or something. And the chair, you know, it's a consumable item. And so the chair, when you use it, when you consume it, maybe it refills all your stamina. your energy that you've used throughout the day, in the context of like an online community, right. So you can have like stamina or energy kind of run out as you do stuff throughout the day and it kind of like comes back throughout the day, like a lot of games out there. but you know, maybe you wanna keep playing or participating in the community or something and, you're out of energy and, you consume the chair, you sit on the chair and that restores your energy, right? And so you can craft that chair or you can, do a combination of wood and magic dust and maybe you get, I dunno, magic wand or something, that has, certain actions, right? and so being able to create these game systems, in an easy way with Drip, I think is gonna be very powerful. and I'm excited to release, some of the features that we've been cooking here. So, people can have that freedom.

Phil: 32:52

Yeah, that sounds exciting.

Mike: 32:53

Yeah,

Phil: 32:53

Oh, go ahead, Mike.

Mike: 32:55

well, just the putting into the loyalty context, um, the, the retention tool that this allows, just the gamification of multicurrency is a retention tool that allows you to be able to have you perform the actions, playing the games that you want them to do, while also tweeting, while performing other social actions, while performing purchases, or, or in a defi system. locking TVL could earn one type of, of points system while performing trading can earn another. It, it enables you to have various types of leaderboards and various types of earn, various types of spend that otherwise were locked into a single system and you can't value all actions equally because they're not of equal value to the company. So being able to have something where you can say, okay, all defi actions are gonna earn, D points while all social actions are going to earn S points. and then those can combine in whatever formula you want for an airdrop, while also being spendable and not jeopardizing the airdrop that we've had, is something that doesn't exist right now. So that's something that's brand new. we've also seen people saying that, okay, I want to gamify the ability to have an airdrop, whereas before I'm only going up on a leaderboard. What if I force people to create a choice. I can spend those points for guaranteed, 50 airdrop coins, or I can just see what I'm gonna get in the leaderboard because I don't know how the formula's gonna work out there. And maybe I'll get 57, or maybe I'm gonna get 20, but I can let the dice fall as they are. I'm just gonna leaderboard or I can spend them ahead of time. Or other people are saying, well, it doesn't matter. I care about the total leaderboard and I'm gonna let people spend post, TG token generation event. All of these flexible ways, are something that drip enables that hasn't existed before. And that when you bring in multicurrency enables just a whole new level of. Retention of a customer. which I think is one of the really key aspects is going back to the concept of what good is acquisition without retention,

Phil: 35:10

Yeah. And I think that's the big question that, you know, especially among Web3 and crypto, I think is people are starting to ask themselves as we see, you know, TGE after TGE after of these big hype to things, and then they just die. You know? So drip drip is the answer for that. go ahead T.

Toli: 35:31

yeah, and I wanna riff off of what Mike just said about, retention that's important, right? to, the people that you're attracting into your community or your brand. you want to make sure that they stick around, of course. but I'm seeing a lot of customers actually use it for. Attention, right. To actually get people the brand or the community, you know, for acquisition, with something like a questing website, you land on there and you see quests, oh great. If I follow, other Twitter account, great. I'm gonna get five points five coins. Okay, I have five coins. Now what can I do with this? maybe they can, browse around, they see a store, they see they can buy something for 50 coins, so they need, more coins. So they're gonna try to figure out, how to get more of that. And that's when they'll be pulled into, the discord or maybe into, a telegram or, to use their app or game to earn more. Right? And so, you know, it's a cool way to. You know, to get people to move further down the funnel on top of, you know, you having a great product or you know, a great service or community, you know, that will drive people, right? And so, like your copy on the website could like, kind of suck. Like your marketing, your messaging could like, kind of suck. But, if, if you're giving some, people something of perceived value, doesn't really matter as much, right? They'll just kind of, the incentive to get them to explore further, to learn more,

Phil: 37:01

Creating this give and take economy is like already way more engaging than just, know, whatever, whatever GPT copy you might have on your website. So

Toli: 37:14

right?

Phil: 37:14

I like that. So something I wanted to ask also was flexible is Drip across industries? I know right now we are heavily involved with Web3 ourselves and with other people when we're breaking out of Web3 into different situations. and I know Mike, maybe you can talk about this'cause you've actually talked with some people who are not related to Web3 at all. for Drip and what we can offer, what are some ways that like, totally, totally disconnected from Web3? Regular web two companies can use Drip.

Mike: 37:55

So. We we're seeing that, and this goes back to an earlier exam I spoke about with McDonald's. people that aren't in Web3 can use drip in, in all the ways we spoke about, but it's really interesting to them because loyalty in the traditional world has evolved, to be so solely focused on spend actions. Uh, and we're seeing something like 75% of, uh, millennials and and younger have no interest in this because they're, they've become immune to seeing the same type of marketing over and over and over, uh, and they wanna be rewarded for their actions. We're seeing this, especially on the social side, where social actions have true value now. It's not just a perceived value anymore. the right person tweeting about your company can. Change the fortunes of what your company can do. A viral post can make or break a brand. So we're seeing this branch out here where these tradit companies can really start to build a new marketing engine based around this retention marketing. and that is a side where Drip can really thrive and really help them. It's something that hasn't existed in that world. since it was formed in a new world in the Web3 generation, it can really help all these web two companies, come to life and bring them forward. I think it goes to the Web3 ethos more than even the blockchain side. Now, all this is done easily without use of blockchain, without use of that, but all on the Web3, ethos of Community, community, community, community versus the web two side, which is traditionally audience. The main difference there is a one-way conversation becomes a two-way conversation. Drip is actually almost more of a, it's definitely the wrong word to say, but a savior to those web two company programs because it can help, revitalize and bring them to the next level, versus Web3 where a lot of these are, they're table stakes. It just makes sense that we do this there. it becomes revolutionary when brought back to Web Two World.

Toli: 40:09

And I, think that's, you know, on the topic of who is this for? You know, we started in Web3, right? You know, Web3 Native company. but drip is not a Web3 app. yes, we have, integrations, they let you reward people for on chain actions, like holding NFTs or, buying, something or performing on chain actions. Great. the majority of the platform is actually, not specifically for crypto, it's designed to be very flexible, you can plug it into pretty much any app or game that allows you to, integrate with an API or maybe mods or something like that, we started here, in crypto, in Web3, you know, and a lot of our customer bases here, but we're starting to see a lot more, adopt this, crypto gets it, now because these ideas of having a currency that works across multiple apps, that's a default in crypto, Like you have Ethereum and you could spend Ethereum on 10,000 different apps. I can send you Ethereum, right? Like you understand that, some people in crypto. naturally they get it. but you know, everywhere else best example for them is in games, in gaming, specifically multiplayer games where, you can have, virtual economy or currency, that you share with other people. Yeah, it'll be interesting once we step, further into, streaming and gaming and, eventually, more traditional brands and mom and pop shops, to replace the, loyalty systems, that they're using now, that people just don't love.

Phil: 41:44

Yeah. the age of the stale, boring loyalty system is to an end. I think people, like Mike said, younger people, millennials, gen Z, it just doesn't work, just doesn't matter. it's everywhere. So it's, if it's everywhere, it's nowhere. It doesn't make any difference. So something like Drip coming along and really evolving it, I think is going to be really cool to see. I wanted to ask about Drip is at the moment with, you know, we've kind of gotten into Drip 2.0 recently. What are some recent features, some upcoming features that can, people can look forward to and that will make their lives easier?

Toli: 42:30

Sure. Yeah. So just, so people know, what Drip 2.0 is so, so 1.0 was basically what I described before, which is the Discord bot. Very powerful Discord bot. you know, like you could even set up your API, directly from the Discord bot. We didn't really have a web app. it was just a Discord bot, And we kind of designed it that way specifically. So everything's right there so you don't have to go back and forth. Drift 2.0 is Discord bot is one app of many that you can plug into, you know, into your, brand or your community, right? you know, other apps are gonna be Telegram. Oh, we've got some really Cool, gaming stuff that's coming out, right? So plug and play games, like full games, like with multiplayer and tournaments and all that stuff. so that's 2.0. So basically this idea where you could just do a lot more with it, right? So I. You know, a couple of examples of stuff that's coming is a public drip developer kit. we've been running this in private with a few, studios, dev studios. they've been using, the dev kit to create integrations, for the app store for you to use, right? So there's that. we recently kind of stealth launched multi-tenant and multicurrency concept where you can create, as many currencies as you want and share them with other brands or communities. we've got some cool dev stuff, coming out. An updated API, which includes blockchain, API, a really, really robust Quest builder, right? So right now you actually create quests inside of the Discord bot, and it's a great experience, right? Like you could create a quest literally in about five seconds. It's like three clicks. which is great, you know, and that's gonna stay there as a quick Quest option. we've got a much more robust, version for the app, where you can create flows, and multiple tasks that are linked together, under a bigger quest. and so now a quest, isn't just follow this account, it's follow this account, create a post with this hashtag and refer a friend. So much more advanced quest, systems coming. the ability for you as a brand or community manager to better understand your people, your customers, your members, whatever it is, right? So, people like your users will be connected with you somehow. whether it's. through an email or through Twitter, right? Like for them to use the drip system and the points and everything, they have to connect at least one account like Discord, right? and so we're gonna be providing information to brands, to better understand their people, right? So analytics, activity, kind of sentiment scores and all of that stuff. So that's gonna be a big level up, especially for enterprise stuff. a few of the other things that are coming is, premium currency, which will allow you to actually sell your points for money, right? So imagine you, like you're playing a game you can buy a, you know, a bundle of gems, for 5 99. Great. right? So you're gonna be able to monetize, your people, your community that way, right? And then a big focus on, on acquisition, right? So we nail retention for sure. The acquisition component, will be, so you can fire up something like a questing website very easily or integrate points into your existing website so people will be able to, to browse your site and as they read content, or they can collect points and you can kind of scatter this, you know, all throughout and just get people to, you know, spend more time on your website, you know, using, points or currency as, as the incentive, right? I think overall a big focus on supporting developers, and then supporting the marketing teams, behind, our customers and brands to give them a better picture, a snapshot of their community, and to help them to acquire, new users a lot easier.

Phil: 46:31

If people want to get started with Drip and they, let's say this is their first interaction with Drip right now, is listening to this podcast, watching this podcast, where should they go? What should they do?

Toli: 46:43

Yeah, so just visit the website, drip.re explains everything there depending on, when you, see this, you're gonna see an app store there as well, so you'll be able to browse and see what kinds of apps and games you can plug into your future, economy or your future point system. just check out the website, poke around. the website's very interactive. You can click on the currency, point system table and edit it. So yeah, just poke around, play with it and, if it makes sense for you start, it's free to start. especially the Discord bot is free. you know, that'll give you a good idea for how to, make your community a, you know, a really, really cool, basically multi-player game. once you're ready for more advanced stuff, you can upgrade to pro and that gives you access to more of the web app and, the advanced questing, et cetera, et cetera.

Phil: 47:28

Perfect. Mike, did you have anything to add?

Mike: 47:31

Yeah, you can also feel free to reach out to me. You can find me, anywhere. my telegram is fellows, that's ROFF, three LLOS. So hit me up on Telegram, find me on LinkedIn, find me on Discord at the same one, or Twitter, they're all the same. The ROFF three LLOS. So you find me pretty much any platform that way, and happy to chat.

Phil: 47:53

Alright, thanks again, Mike. And to, this has been a great first episode of our new podcast. We're gonna be talking a lot about, building communities, economies, the next evolution of Point systems. everything cool about really leveling up the business, the relationship between a business and a brand and their consumers taking that to the next level so that everyone's happy all the time, whether it's buying or whether it's interacting. of cool stuff we can do with Drip. Um, so yeah, thanks again and, we will just see you all in the next episode. Mike will be there and to will be crushing it, building out his wind of apps, all sorts of stuff for Drip. I.

Toli: 48:40

Cool.

Mike: 48:41

Thank

Toli: 48:41

See you. guys.

Mike: 48:41

you.

Phil: 48:42

See you. later.

Mike: 48:44

Cheers.