Marcelo Cavazzoli, Lemon Cash | Go-to-Market and Customer Discovery for Mass Crypto Adoption [Ep. 61]

The audio and video are in Spanish. These notes are a translation.

Until now, taking part in the crypto economy has been almost a luxury, since it takes time and money to understand how cryptocurrencies work and to transact on an exchange platform. However, more and more founders are creating digital products to boost the everyday use of cryptocurrencies, and Marcelo Cavazzoli, CEO of Lemon Cash, is one of them.

Lemon Cash is a card and a mobile app (in the style of a digital bank) that lets you save your money in cryptocurrencies and use it at any merchant that accepts a Visa card.

Marcelo told us what his go to market and product strategy was for generating mass adoption of cryptocurrencies and getting more people to use them in their day to day. He also told us how they do customer discovery and pilots at Lemon Cash to discover the possible uses of crypto.

To date, Lemon Cash has raised more than 17 million dollars from venture capital funds such as Kingsway Capital, Coinbase Ventures, and Draper Cygnus.

Thanks to Daniel Salvucci of Draper Cygnus, and to Borja Martel and Franco Bianchi of Lemon for the excellent question suggestions.

What You Can Learn Today

Crypto adoption in Latin America
Customer Discovery strategies
How to build products based on a community

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Youtube Timestamps*

About Marcelo and Lemon Cash

[1:32] - How did Marcelo get into the world of startups?
- He learned to code at 12
- At 16 he built his first website and monetized it
- He realized it was the path he wanted to follow
[3:11] - What is Lemon Cash?
- Lemon was born with the goal of moving people toward crypto
- It is a platform for users to start using crypto
- It consists of a digital wallet in local currency and in crypto
- With Lemon Cash you can make purchases with a Visa card

Go to Market Toward the Mainstream and Crypto Adoption

[5:42] - What is happening with crypto in Argentina?
- Argentina is becoming the crypto capital of the world
- There is a strong culture and adoption of crypto
- A large part of society is joining this industry
- Market timing has played a big role in Lemon’s success
[9:12] - Barriers to starting to use crypto
- The uses of crypto have been communicated poorly
- Lemon Cash focuses on serving the everyday person
- Lemon has changed the way crypto is communicated
[12:55] - Lemon Cash’s go-to-market strategy
- Lemon’s customers can pay with their cryptocurrencies
- With the Lemon card, any merchant now also accepts crypto
- The Visa card reduces distrust, since it is something tangible
- By paying with the card, customers receive cashback in Bitcoin
- Empowerment of the Lemon community at a social level
[17:13] - Metrics for measuring users’ crypto adoption
- Around 150 million people in the world interact with crypto
- Lemon measures the adoption of its product through “cohorts” of its users
- Over the last year, the cohorts have used the Lemon app more and more
- 10% of users collect their salary, deposit it in Lemon, and buy cryptocurrencies
- Before launching a product, the Lemon team evaluates its potential adoption
[21:41] - Crypto adoption in Latin America
- Because of Argentina’s situation, the population is financially educated
- The store of value for many Argentines is Bitcoin or Ethereum
- Products for the new generation will focus on offering opportunities
[26:49] - Lemon Cash’s go-to-market outside Argentina
- A focus on communicating from an opportunity
- The Lemon card represents familiarity
- Adaptation of the communication to each culture

Customer Discovery at Lemon Cash

[30:13] - Thinking about Lemon’s product from the customer’s shoes
- Iteration and testing of different ideas
- Implementation of login with Facebook
- Validation of the brand and the visual identity
- Leverage from the community
[34:04] - Pilot in San Martín de los Andes
- The city is now the “crypto valley”
- People and merchants pay with Lemon
- The team went to live in San Martín to test the product
- The challenge was to reduce the technological barriers, and they succeeded
[37:44] - Validation of features with the community
- In the future, products will be offered to specific communities
- When launching a product, the team evaluates how it will add value to the community
[40:12] - How do you scale customer discovery processes?
- Today Lemon Cash has the largest crypto community in LatAm
- In February, Lemon was the most downloaded app on the App Store in Argentina
- Lemon’s employees have shares in the company
- At Lemon they do not have investors, they have strategic partners
- At Lemon they do not have users, they have a community
[42:29] - Lemon Cash’s World Domination Plan
- It was a manifesto written by the founding team
- A principle of empowering a community
- An ambitious approach that later served to create what Lemon is today

Tweet Round

[44:43] -
- Recommended books: Contagious: Why Things Catch On, by Jonah Berger
- Changes in the Latin American startup ecosystem: that LatAm receive attention as a global focus for startups
- Founders to interview: Benjamín and Pablo, of Qi Dao Protocol