We here at Earnscape just got CEO Steve Wood’s latest video dispatch from tropical Bali. The WiFi is strong, the coffee is stronger, and the entrepreneurial energy at Xfounders Bootcamp is absolutely electric. This week at Xfounders has been a masterclass in thinking differently. Come learn along with us as we look at building better business models from inside the XFounders Bootcamp
The Product vs. Business Model Distinction
In the most recent sessions, the founders have been hammering away at something crucial: the difference between a product and a business model. Too many founders, especially in the tech and blockchain spaces, conflate these concepts and end up building impressive technology that fails to generate sustainable revenue.
Great products solve an acute user need. A good business model extracts value from that solution in a way users are willing to pay for, consistently and with minimal friction. This distinction has helped evolve Earnscape from a play-to-earn gaming platform into a mobile-first game streaming accelerator.
Know Your Business Model Category
Each business category requires vastly different strategies. Social media networks like TikTok need massive viral coefficients and network effects to succeed. That’s why we’ve seen essentially one major new social platform in the past decade despite thousands of attempts.
On the flip side, some businesses only need access to something new and valuable. A payment rail innovation might only require a few thousand high-value users who desperately need that specific solution. You don’t need viral growth or sticky retention metrics if you’re solving a critical problem for the right audience.
This puts Earnscape into an exciting position. We’re not trying to directly compete with established social media, but we are building network effects through our easy-entry, immediate rewards, streamer-viewer ecosystem. Mobile gaming represents over 60% of the global gaming market, yet traditional streaming platforms have ignored these users due to technical barriers. Earnscape is targeting that massive underserved market with our ultra-easy streaming technology.
The Ship Early Philosophy
Perhaps the most challenging lesson for technical founders is embracing the “ship uncomfortably early” mentality. Many deep tech companies, especially in blockchain and AI, often wait until their product reaches perfection before launching. They audit everything, optimize every feature, and ship at version 11 out of 10.
This perfectionist approach misses the entire point of building user-centric products. You should ship at version 2 out of 10 and see if anyone actually cares about your core value proposition. If users won’t tolerate your rough-around-the-edges version 2, they probably won’t care about your polished version 10 either. Yes, it might get you some shaky ratings and a pile-up in your support queue but, even those are proof-of-concept. Users are engaged. They care. They’re giving you feedback on the good, the bad, and the ugly. Great founders listen to all of it.
This philosophy has guided our approach at Earnscape. Since launch, we’ve achieved 184% organic growth by launching our mobile streaming technology into the hands of aspiring streamers as quickly as we could to get gamers up and earning as quickly as they want.
Finding Your Sticky Core Users
One of the most valuable insights was about identifying truly sticky users early. If someone won’t engage with your basic version 1.5 product, they’re not your core audience. But if users embrace your rough initial offering, you’ve found people who genuinely love what you’re building. As you improve from version 2 to version 10, you’ll naturally expand to attract more casual users at the edges of your market. But don’t forget those early adopters.
For Earnscape, our core users are mobile gamers who dream of streaming careers but face bonkers barriers on traditional platforms. YouTube Gaming requires 1,000 subscribers plus 4,000 watch hours before meaningful monetization kicks in. Twitch demands months of consistent viewership. There is good and bad to becoming any kind of influencer but the ugly is that 90% won’t monetize at all.
Our early adopters don’t care that our interface isn’t as polished as Twitch or that we’re still releasing more advanced features. They care that they can start earning money from their love of games and dream of being a streamer on day one!
YouTube and Kick and Twitch are by all objective measures, hugely successful but they are literally leaving 90% of the potential audience out in the cold. That’s a great opportunity for not only Earnscape’s product but it’s business model. What are some opportunities that are a great fit for yours?
Applying These Lessons to Your Business Challenges
This framework presents some fundamental questions every founder should ask. What category does your business actually fall into? Are you building something that needs massive network effects, or are you solving a specific problem for a targeted audience who will pay immediately?
The “ship at version 2” philosophy particularly resonates when you’re dealing with technical complexity. It’s tempting to wait until your product handles every edge case, but that perfectionist mindset can kill momentum. The real question is whether your core value proposition works, not whether your user interface is polished.
Established platforms like Twitch and YouTube benefit from massive network effects but also face the challenge of serving everyone. That creates opportunities for focused solutions that serve underserved segments better than the generalist platforms.
One big key insight from these recent sessions: your earliest users will tolerate significant friction if you’re solving a real problem (like that 90% failure to monetize rate). But if they won’t engage with your rough version 2, no amount of UX polish, fancy branding, or features tweaks will create demand that doesn’t fundamentally exist.
Building Better Business Models for Global Impact
What excites us most about applying these business model lessons is our potential for global impact. Earnscape is looking closely at local market preferences across Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa where traditional streaming barriers are most pronounced.
We’re not just building another streaming platform. We’re democratizing content creation for the mobile-first generation while creating sustainable economic opportunities for digital creators in regions where traditional employment options remain limited.
The partnerships we’ve established with major technology providers (keep an eye out for exciting announcements in the very near future) position us to scale globally while maintaining low operational costs and high gamer experience quality.
What’s Next
The insights from Xfounders are already shaping our roadmap. We’re focused on proving our core value proposition with early adopters while building the infrastructure to scale to 50,000 concurrent streams and beyond.
The mentorship here has reinforced something Steve talks about a lot: successful companies iterate based on real user feedback rather than theoretical perfection. Every conversation with streamers using our platform teaches us something new about what they truly value.
As we continue building Earnscape, we’re keeping the Xfounders lessons front and center. Ship early, find your sticky core users, understand your specific business model requirements, and never stop iterating based on what people actually want rather than what you think they should want.
Stay tuned for more XFounder Insider reports as Steve continues sending insider reports from the mentorship sessions shaping the next generation of tech companies. The journey from startup to sustainable business is never straightforward, but having world-class guidance makes all the difference.
In the meantime, check out Matt Sorg, VP of Technology at Solana Foundation talking about these topics in the XFounders mentor video below.
Steve Wood is CEO and founder of Earnscape, the mobile-first gaming platform transforming apsiring streamers into successful content creators. Follow us on X @earnscape or LinkedIn.
About the XFounder Insider Series
These reports provide an inside peek at the world-class mentorship and workshops happening at Xfounders Bootcamp. For more information about Xfounders, visit x-founders.com.
