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title: WB2 BA Nov 2025 Retro

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### **World Mentorship: WB2 BA 10th-15th Nov 2025 Retro**
Prepared for Leighton @ TFH 
Prepared by Maz mentor @ WB2 
Prog link https://worldbuild.fwb.help/ 
Internal DS I developed for WB2 cohort of 16 apps http://wb2ds.up.railway.app/ 

### **Quick note** 
The following retro doc is a mix of feedback on the program based on my one week experience as a mentor during the BA section of the program alongside observations to support further refinement of the program in terms of team and app selection for future cohorts. 

### **General feedback** 
The energy and culture was great! Having done 3 accelerators over my startup career including Entrepreneur First, Seed Club and Graph Paper Capital. This was one of the better ones when it came to overall energy of the cohort and it helped also that I knew some of the builders from being in the space. It also showed the genuine excitement builders have around World and their collective belief that World is onto something extremely impactful and differentiated. Having the TFH tech team there was a plus, Andy sharing the roadmap was super useful and getting real life users to attend the product feedback session was awesome! 

### **Areas of improvement**

**1. Team and app selection**
- I believe either we all are coming in at the same level or we are not. Having hackathon ideas might be beneficial for those very early idea stage apps to learn from later stage ones but may not be so beneficial for more later stage apps which have a different requirement, time urgency or need to get out of the program. 
- Those hackathon like projects should be allowed to exist and they can do so since this is open source tech but to be put in front of VCs during a demo day, I personally believe could dilute the signal for investors and may not be the best use of investor attention particularly when some teams aren't planning to raise.
- Having a more intentional selection of app builders so that it doesn't waste anyone's time if the expectation is to get them ready to fundraise could help the entire experience (granted I understand the hackathon at FWB Fest was used as part of the funnel to attract builders to WB2). 
- Proposed solution: separate out apps in different stages and if the north star is to back more 'Credit' like apps, then the program structure, team vetting etc should reflect that attitude. 

**2. Mentor guidance and selection** 
- A few times I had builders ask who I was and who some of the other mentors were. This could be that they are busy and so haven't read the docs provided or that the explainer of mentors and how we can support them was unclear. Personally as a builder in these type of events and environments, I want to know who is in the room before I enter so I know who to go to for what and reduce the time trying to find out.
- The recurring challenge I heard from builders was how to tell their story for an investor audience. Future cohorts might benefit from dedicated support here, someone who can help builders articulate their market and use case clearly before demo day.
- Picking mentors based on the type of markets/use cases apps are trying to serve would also be useful, speaking from a builder POV. I personally can only support some of the apps not all based on my experience and knowledge in certain markets. Although some workshops can be standardized (somewhat) for all like fundraising, distribution and UX but I think a wider range of ex-operators, builders and subject matter experts would accelerate the value builders can walk away with from a program like this (happy to recommend some if necessary).

**3. Expectations from the cohort and program structure** 
- To my knowledge and experience, there was not enough context on why Proof-of-Humanity/World ID implementation is a differentiator. It was unclear what the aim of the program was to a certain degree. It was somewhat scrappy which is expected but I think adding more structure to ensure World sets the right expectations is important.
- For example, I think there should be a real push for World ID use cases and why using this primitive will give these app builders the defensibility and competitive advantage that you simply can't get on Base etc. I think a good example of a program structure that pushes for quality builders to create apps with financial open source infra is the fellowship by Block https://block.xyz/builder-fellowship 

### **Thesis on the type of apps World should be targeting for quality output** 
To help with my point, I have shared a DS (https://wb2ds.up.railway.app/) with all the existing cohort apps and mapped them across an X and Y Axis table to show which apps are utilizing World ID and how does this push for retention of the apps vs apps with a higher dependency on reward incentives to drive engagement. 

Not sure how much of a guidance future programs will have to ensure quality apps apply but my assumption here is to showcase that apps with higher utilization of World ID will not only prove the need for human verification but in fact can accelerate the growth and need of the app and a uniqueness of building on World than competitor ecosystems or chains. 

![Screenshot 2025-11-25 at 13.23.50](https://hackmd.io/_uploads/SJ4J1j7ZWx.png)

If you navigate to tab [World ID Utility vs Rewards](https://wb2ds.up.railway.app/) and click on *'What does this mean?'* I have explained my thinking more. 

TLDR the question posed is 'Utility of World ID and how this can drive retention vs betting on high reward/financial incentive apps.'

Where we are seeing utility driving growth for mini app usage and World stack, what are those use cases that will continue to drive the adoption of this and the validity of World ID. Helpful resources that I have used to support this strategy are:
https://blog.variant.fund/the-world-network-opportunity-request-for-builders 
https://world.org/blog/world/the-need-for-proof-of-human-in-business 

### **In summary**
All of this feedback comes from a relatively short time with the program, but I hope it's useful. This is clearly the start of a potentially important program should World Ecosystem think it's useful to have say a spin out version of this with its own brand identity but deeply associated with World of course. A clearer objective and expectation from the program would help clarify the direction of this and make the progress metric much easier to track i.e. we need x number of apps with x amount of traction to fundraise by end of program. Anyhow, happy to discuss any of this further or support future cohorts in whatever capacity is useful 🙏

### **WB2 DS BA Nov 2025**
![Screenshot 2025-11-25 at 14.03.37](https://hackmd.io/_uploads/H1P5OsQWbx.png)
{%preview https://screen.studio/share/ggBEKxiK %}

For access see here https://wb2ds.up.railway.app/ 
If you would like to keep maintaining the DS to track progress of which teams make it to demo day in Jan 2026, feel free to clone repo and update https://github.com/mmazco/wb2ds 