Bear Market: Best Time to Accelerate Crypto Startup

Jonny Chiappetta is a Founder of Purple Fly, a marketplace with the mission of revolutionizing the music industry and fans-to-artist connections through Web3.

Being a true startup hustler, Jonny is always eager to seize maximum opportunities coming his way to accelerate Purple Fly’s development, go-to-market and eventually fundraising.

You might question: what founder does not do the same?

Well,  we’ve seen a lot of those, blindly copy pasting the same cold message and sending it across the list of thousands of random VCs trying luck and betting on quantity over quality. Knowing your weaknesses and taking steps for improvements is the sign of true founders’ strength and wizdom.

Back in September 2022 Jonny was the one focused on the quality aspect of the startup development and VC fundraising process for PurpleFly, and applied for InnMind Accelerate program in order to get noticed by the right investors and partners interested in his business’s potential rather than on making 20x without spending a single minute on post-deal advisory meetings.

“We decided to join InnMind to build the infrastructure behind our company. We needed help to launch our product, define our go-to-market strategy, and most importantly, accelerate the fundraising process.” - Jonny commented.

Despite the fact that Jonny felt quite confident in his approach and startup presentation prior to the program, the 3-months intense acceleration sprint proved the opposite. Gathering so much new information, opinions and real feedback (even critical 🤯) from Web 3 market experts, top advisors, VCs, mentors and industry specialists helped Purple Fly make a step forward and graduate from InnMind Accelerate not as an early stage venture but as a successfully growing business.

“You realize the real status you were at only once you finish the program. There are so many things that we learned during these 3 months which completely changed the status quo. Now we have gained the knowledge and the confidence to operate our web3 company in any market condition. We now feel completely ready to compete in the space! We have more awareness and knowledge than we did before.” - said Jonny when recalling the "before" and "after ".

Every bear market can be scary and opportunistic at the same time since so many unicorns actually launched and skyrocketed on extremely poor market conditions. But irrespective of how many opportunities are out there, how much knowledge and potential knocking the founder’s door - the key is the willingness to change, listen and work based on critical feedback, not being afraid of failure and actually executing stuff, rather than talking how good your startup the way it is now and wondering why VCs are not running after you.

By following this attitude, it is possible to achieve impossible things squeezed into 3 months, like it happened to Jonny:

“During those 3 months, we were able to raise funds from private investors, finish the development of our products, and make partnerships with tons of companies and Tier 1 exchanges and launchpads! We feel extremely proud of the work done!

We developed connections with the best companies in the space, such as Mastercard.

We got the opportunity to be taught by renowned professional figures from the finance, tech, and crypto world. The amount of insights on the market and connections that helped us develop our product is insane.

To mention a few, we got a chance to talk to Market Makers, Exchanges, Law Firms, expert Marketers and even receive a full scholarship to attend a 5-weeks Hero Training program by Draper University in Silicon Valley!”

It’s obvious that successful startups do not get born as a miracle as there is so much trial and error, dedication, commitment and the readiness to say goodbye to the last dollar from your pocket for the needs of the company.

InnMind Accelerate is not a magic program either that will turn your startup to a unicorn in a couple of days. It is committed to support such bright entrepreneurs as Jonny by opening the right doors, connecting with the right partners, investors and potential clients, polishing the pitch, building community, advising on the best strategy, tokenomics and other essential parts of the business and much more. But at the same time, we require the same amount of dedication from founders when it comes to execution.

“Following the entire program is not easy, especially if you are running your company at the same time and you are already on the market. It takes hours of commitment and hard work but it is all worth it! I would compare it to an MBA (or better). We loved bonding with the InnMind team and with all the other founders. We became all like a family and helped each other along the way.” - said Jonny.

How to Apply?

📍 InnMind Accelerate is now open for new applications from web 3, crypto and blockchain founders to join the Q2 2023 cohort. Follow this link to learn more about the program and apply to join: https://innmind.com/accelerator/