Regardless of elevating capital from Tier 1 VCs corresponding to Union Sq. Ventures, Andreessen Horozwitz, Atelier Ventures (now a part of Variant Fund) the platform appears to be dying a sluggish demise.
While Mirror bought off to an incredible begin with $WRITE RACE driving FOMO and onboarding among the most revered names in crypto together with Jarrod Dicker, Linda Xie, Coophatroppa and Chris Dixon their efficiency has struggled lately.
Since opening up the platform (October thirteenth, 2021), Mirror has seen disappointing development within the variety of writers of its platform – going from 380 to 607 writers. This represents ≈60% in 7.5 months or 6.45% MoM. Distinction this to Substack, Mirror’s web2 counterparty that has ‘lots of of 1000’s of paid newsletters on the platform’ in line with The Instances.
The scenario turns into bleaker when digging deeper on Dune and evaluating them to Juicebox.eth, a crypto fundraising platform. While Juicebox could also be much less well-known and have a much less various product line-up they’re considerably outperforming their competitors.
istoria-research.com
Given all this let’s take a look into Mirror’s market dimension & alternative to try to assess the issue.
Market Dimension & Alternative
Essentially I consider that is the place Mirror’s issues lie. Proper now Mirror positions itself as a publishing platform which is limiting. We’ve seen that corporations like Substack, regardless of far better adoption are producing disappointing income ($9m in 2021) and have struggled to lift a Sequence C.
So while the ‘Content material Creation’ market TAMs are extraordinarily enticing (projected to succeed in $38.2 billion by 2030) this comes with main caveats.
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This contains much more widespread means together with VOD (YouTube) and Reside Streaming (Twitch)
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We’ve seen that the media trade is a fairly horrible enterprise for enterprise capital
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Substack exhibits there’s not a large marketplace for supporting particular person writers
Nonetheless, Mirror could also be lacking a trick. I believe there’s a far better market alternative in the event that they have been to place themselves as a software to lift cash (for private initiatives or crypto companies).
The Crowdfunding Market
Over latest years we’ve seen the popularisation of personal market investing whether or not via the likes of Kickstarter, funding DAOs, angel investing or new start-ups like SeedInvest & EquityZen.
The crowdfunding market alone is estimated at $12.27 billion globally and is forecasted to double by 2027, rising at a CAGR of 11%. Crypto, in my view, will allow and speed up this (look to “Enterprise as a Sport” by Not Boring).
So, the place ought to Mirror go from right here? When you’re this is the total funding memo with data on the staff, product and suggestions on development: istoria-research.com
