By Kimberly Butler
From music festivals to DeFi conferences, Harry Horsfall is a force of nature. His energy levels are prestigious and much spoken of, his enthusiasm infectious and his clarion call of We are all going to make it or WAGMI – one of the genuine ones. Harry is Web3 personified.
His digital Web3 marketing company ZebuDigital is a mere toddler, less than a year old, and already boasts 50 plus employees across the seven continents.
“The growth has been amazing. For the past decade I’ve been running side hustles with one main day job. That has just flipped and it’s a challenge – we’re working on our management skills, our communication skills, working 24×7 and already we’ve completed more than 30 projects and launches.
“We are really getting into our groove now.”
Horsfall is excited that the market is starting to mature. He looks back at 2017 when he was basically marketing white papers – which is more like shilling than marketing.
“Our goal is to be one of the safe, trusted leaders in this space.”
To date, ZebuDigital has found much of his work through his network of friends, and friends of friends.
“It’s like laying tracks – in that cartoon as the character lays tracks just in time for the train – we are learning as we go but the beauty is that everyone is doing the same thing. This is Web3 after all.”
While music festivals may be in the past, the learning from growing a community from just 50 people to more than 5000 over a seven-year period has come in good stead, given how community is crucial to the Web3 world.
“I translated that community growth experience first with Luno, building meetups all over Europe. We all love our online platforms and different ways to communicate but nothing beats the in-real-life experience. It wasn’t just covid that taught us that.”
His first major conference, DeFi Live 2021 was planned on the back of a cigarette packet. But in just 45 days Horsfall and his team had pulled off the unbelievable. A fully blown two day conference, the first day virtual and the second in person, in London featuring some of the biggest names in the sector.
This year ZebuLive 2022 is a two-day event which will be hosted in London from September 22-23 and streamed globally. In addition, ZebuLive announced their partnership with James Bowater, Editor of CityAM’s CryptoAM; the prominent crypto news outlet has recently celebrated its 4th birthday, and will be the lead media partner for London Web3 week.
“But we were not just after the big names, we wanted the people who were working at the coal face, the real people, the future rising stars – we wanted to give them a platform,” says Horsfall.
His music background also comes to the fore when it comes to entertaining the delegates.
“We run serious conferences, but we also want to make it fun – so we got some sponsors to come in to provide entertainment. People often associate crypto with Ponzi and scams, but Web3 is different. Even the name is different and it’s giving traditional and often conservative brands the opportunity to take a real look. Brands like HSBC and Boston Consulting Group for example.”
Next on the horizon for this ball of energy, strobe light energy, is ZebuLive on September 22 and 23. It’s an all in-person event with more than 1000 people are expected. The venue is the refurbished NAME, one of the most established music venues in London.
Some of the bigger names speaking include Stephen Barlett, the youngest Dragons Den, MP Matt Hancock, a major crypto advocate, and Stani Kulechov, founder of Aave Protocol. There will be threads on DeFi, NFTs and the Metaverse. And lots of communities – including Bitcoin Pioneers, BBGA, The Bigger Pie and Mundo Crypto. Part of the festivities will include a prohibition dinner and a good old fashioned American speakeasy.
“We are building our own community. We are a collective of people who are helping generational change happen. The only limit is our imagination.”
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