Token Relations is a communications startup from crypto entrepreneur Anthony Pompliano and former TechCrunch reporter Jacquelyn Melinek
The startup aims to deliver customized information to crypto business stakeholders and replace X, at least partially, in distributing information to the crypto community.
Crypto entrepreneur Anthony Pompliano and former TechCrunch reporter Jacquelyn Melinek are behind a new crypto communications startup, Token Relations.
Not quite a media brand or PR shop, Token Relations offers clients a direct way to talk to their “community” about metrics, milestones, product launches – the kind of things that don’t always fit neatly into a marketing plan, the two told CoinDesk in a recent interview.
Token Relations will attempt to partially replace X, formerly Twitter, the chaotic repository for almost every piece of content currently released by crypto companies. Crypto Twitter’s “one-to-many” distribution model prevents companies from getting their message to their core audience, Pompliano said.
“We are intervening as a committed effort to communicate with your existing stakeholders,” said the podcast host and investor. He called Token Relations a “third bucket,” separate from “marketing designed to acquire new users” and “PR designed to talk to the press.”
Token Relations enters an industry whose loudest voices may be well attuned to debating media theory and the value (or lack thereof) of press talk. Last week the much followed entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan denounced PR firms as a “sleeper cell” for what he described as journalists who hate technology, and instead advocated for founders to go “direct.”
Pompliano and Melinek aren’t exactly creating a PR shop for their clients, which include entities involved in blockchain projects Avalanche, Optimism, and Aptos. The startup is instead betting on direct channels, whether it’s the content of video interviews or newsletters distributed to crypto enthusiasts who want to be most informed.
The startup is trying to solve a decidedly crypto problem. No other sector has quite the same mix of stakeholders whose interests can be financialized (token holders), career-oriented (developers), and even cultural. They want to know what’s going on, straight from the source and unfiltered through the media, according to the founders of Token Relations.
Crypto’s communications landscape is also unruly: there is no crypto regulator pushing token-issuing startups to create streamlined portals for disseminating critical information to their stakeholders, as public companies and their investor relations websites do. is the case.
Instead, there is the black box of social media algorithms that Pompliano said suppress and lose information.
On Token Relations, “there is no algorithm that determines whether a communication is important,” he said.