What is the pre-launch phase actually for?
One job: ensure that on announcement day, a meaningful audience already understands and wants what's coming. Everything else — followers, members, impressions — is instrumental to that. The test worth running monthly: can a random community member explain the token's purpose in one sentence? The percentage who can is your real pre-launch KPI.
Mechanically, the phase compounds three assets: narrative diffusion (how many people can retell your story), owned audience (waitlist, community, founder following) and earned credibility (press, partnerships, visible building).
How should the budget be split?
A sane $12k/month allocation: ~35% community operations (management, events, moderation tooling), ~25% content and founder-brand machinery (ghost-drafting, design, video clips), ~20% narrative seeding (trade-press placements, podcast bookings), ~20% waitlist/ambassador incentives and tooling. Paid ads get little or nothing pre-launch — crypto ad restrictions make organic and earned channels better value until there's a live product to send traffic to.
- ~35% community ops
- ~25% content + founder brand
- ~20% narrative seeding (press, podcasts)
- ~20% waitlist/ambassador mechanics
Waitlists, points and ambassadors — what works?
Waitlists with referral mechanics still work when the reward is access or status rather than pure token expectation — pure-airdrop waitlists select for farmers who evaporate. Points systems work as engagement scaffolding if actions rewarded are actions you'd value anyway (content, testing, referrals with retention checks).
Ambassador programs are the sleeper asset: 20–50 genuine believers with early access, direct team contact and real recognition out-distribute most paid KOL waves — at a fraction of the cost, with none of the disclosure baggage.
Questions we hear about this
Announce the project loudly and early; confirm token specifics (date, tokenomics) only when locked. Ambiguity invites speculation you can ride, but changing announced token details burns trust at the worst possible moment. Build audience first, commit specifics once.
As engagement scaffolding, yes; as the entire strategy, no. Post-2024 airdrop fatigue means farmers discount points heavily and real users mostly ignore them. Reward durable actions (content, testing, retained referrals) and cap farming vectors aggressively.
Minimally. Crypto ad restrictions on Google and Meta, plus nothing-to-convert-to yet, make pre-launch paid spend inefficient. The exception: retargeting pools built from site traffic for launch week, which cost little to accumulate and pay off later.
Waitlist-to-community conversion (do signups join and stay?), narrative diffusion (can members explain you?), and week-over-week organic mention growth. Those three at healthy levels predict a strong TGE far better than total member or follower counts.