# Kiwi News Season 2

gm,

I'm back from a two-week vacation in Norway, and I'm ready for Kiwi News Season 2! But let me briefly recap what previously happened:

We launched Kiwi News on April 14, and it has been a hell of a ride. We dispersed a total of [62 NFTs](https://zora.co/collect/0xebb15487787cbf8ae2ffe1a6cca5a50e63003786), raising [0.375 ETH](https://etherscan.io/address/0xebb15487787cbf8ae2ffe1a6cca5a50e63003786). We had fresh content on the site daily and a total of 800 unique visitors. By manually onboarding new editors, we managed to reach up to [10 Daily Active Users](https://news.kiwistand.com/dau). We also built a [second frontend](https://github.com/freeatnet/kiwinews-webapp) and attracted full-time contributors to the project. Our Telegram channel of Kiwi NFT holders is bustling with activity and discussions, which makes the site feels alive and the content meaningful.

(Number of Google Analytics-tracked "Users" visiting Kiwi News per Day)

However, throughout this month of feverishly shipping product, talking to our users, and trying to make things work, we became aware of big problems plaguing the project. So here's an overview of those and how they are informing the path forward.

### 1. Our website is too janky!

It doesn't load fast; it doesn't look like a world-class product; it re-renders the entire content; it doesn't use modern web development best practices, and having no key delegation forces users to sign every payload. But to grow Daily Active Users (DAU), if we conceptualize each of those janky moments as a potential churn event, then we're not doing a good job of delighting our users and keeping them on the site. So we must remove the churn points to increase DAU.

### 2. We need to fix our architectural blunders!

Shipping a web app served us well for now, but re-engaging users regularly and competing with other social sites, means we'll have to ship a mobile app and gain real-estate on users' home screens.

It also means urgently implementing a [state machine](https://hackmd.io/egIZnDStR8-zUtQuTUrxyw) to improve the platform's scalability.
To turn up the user dial, we must have the social graph computed and deliverable when the users want it.

### 3. We lack critical features!

Kiwi News today lacks fundamental features that'll inevitably drive growth. We're learning that users love the social graph, and they're naturally curious to explore what others are doing. This is a great insight, but we need to make the experience more personal. For example, the site currently has no user-based notification system, so our activity feed cannot compete with Twitter and Warpcast, where you can open the app and read: "@macbudkowski liked your post!"

Similarly, we've not managed to ship comments yet. For HN, people often go there to read the comments not the news.
What we're attempting to prove is this: People aren't interested in: "What's going on" but rather in "what are others thinking about what's going on."

### 4. We're lacking capital!

We raised roughly 700 USD through NFT sales, but we're now two full-time founders and a few unpaid contributors working on the project. We're paying rent, and we can't do this forever. We'll have to figure out monetarization as fast as possible and in a way that is compatible with our goals of keeping the site credibly neutral.

But the issues here are not only about not getting paid personally; they also result in Mac and me being swamped with tasks and not being able to hire talent to help us.

Therefore, we think it has become necessary to adjust the trajectory and focus our work on key areas that will further improve earning money.

## Our plan for Kiwi News Season 2

(Number of Daily Active Users tracked by the protocol)

**TLDR: [Increase Daily Active Users (DAU)](https://news.kiwistand.com/dau)**.

Whatever we do, we must increase DAU as it's upstream of all other problems.

We'll have more capital with more DAU. A better website or a mobile app will increase DAU. We'll have more potential in attracting talent with more DAU.

Here are the immediate tasks that compose the KN Season 2 plan:

1. We want to implement the [Kiwi News State Machine](https://hackmd.io/ZB1_50ffSX-bCDdEbKFfiw) to deliver personalized information to our users and unlock building much faster and better client software.
2. We want to effectively transition to a mobile app, most importantly to get a spot on users' home screens. We want (push) notifications. We'll make sure to transition from web to mobile smoothly, e.g. by using expo and the website as a webview.
3. We want to work on new features that further personalize users' interaction with the site (e.g. "X liked your submission").

Finally, come a day in the next 2-3 months, we want to be confident in dialing up the NFT sales to significantly capitalize the project so that we feel safer about work full-time on it sustainability. And we'd love to be community-funded.

## The Final Countdown

Oh and one last thing! Before we just do all of that, we have to also
Initially, I created the "[Hyperkiwification](https://zora.co/collect/0xebb15487787cbf8ae2ffe1a6cca5a50e63003786)" meme NFT on Zora just to make fun of Balajis's Hyperbitcoinization take. Subsequently, I leaned into the meme and made it an integral part of Kiwi News as to allow users to submit and upvote posts.


As a spam filter the Kiwi NFT is crucial for the peer to peer network to function. As a minter of the NFT your messages are stored and all other addresses' messages are discarded. So it's a naive transaction pricing mechanism.

But the unit economics, in terms of a user's lifetime value, make no sense ($10 once isn't enough).

However, conveniently, similar to Balaji's 90 day Bitcoin bet, the Hyperkiwification countdown on Zora was set to roughly 90 days (currently at 60d).

And so to figure out monetization and being able to pay our bills, Mac and I have decided that we want to figure out a reasonable business model until when that countdown ends. So expect changes to the model, but note that the benefits received from buying the Hyperkiwification NFT will kept valid throughout.

## Conclusion

So, that's the deal. Our website needs sprucing up, we've got to get a mobile app out there, and we need to improve the app's usefulness. Plus, we need to find ways to better monetize our NFT sales.

But here's the plan: boosting our Daily Active Users (DAU) is at the top of our list. We know that with more users, everything else will fall into place. More users mean more capital, a better site, a bustling mobile app, and the capacity to attract more talent (and pay our bills).

So as we roll into Kiwi News Season 2, expect some changes. We're introducing a Kiwi News State Machine, and we're working hard to get a mobile app on your home screens. We're also developing new features to make your feed more personal and engaging.

We're building in public and so we're always eager to hear your feedback or implement your feature requests. For that sake, we're asking you to submit and upvote feature request [here](https://kiwinews.sleekplan.app/).

Our adventure with Kiwi News is just getting started, and we're pumped to have you with us. We're ready to work, grow, and build an even better Kiwi News for you. Let's make this journey together. Thanks for sticking with us!

_Tim and Mac_