How a Billion-Dollar Founder Validated His New Web3 Project in Weeks, Not Years
An inside look at how Grove and Lever are rewriting the playbook on early-stage growth in crypto.
Arthur Sabinstev has seen what it takes to build at scale.
As the co-founder of Pocket Network, a decentralized infrastructure protocol that reached a valuation of over $1 billion, he has navigated the full lifecycle of a Web3 project: the thesis, the build, and the growth.
When he launched Grove, he made one thing clear from the start. He wasn't going to try to figure out marketing alone.
In a recent AMA, Arthur sat down with Art Malkov, co-founder of Lever, to talk about the partnership and what it has meant for Grove's development.
What followed was one of the more candid conversations you'll hear from a founder of his caliber.
"I've Been Around Long Enough to Know You Don't Do This Alone"
The most telling moment of the AMA came early. He explains, in plain terms, why he chose Lever.
He pointed to Art's background at Polymarket, one of the only crypto products to achieve genuine mass adoption, and made a simple case: when you're trying to find product-market fit, you want someone in your corner who has already found it for someone else.
"I've been around long enough to know that this is not something you do by yourself... I chose Lever because of the things that have product-market fit in crypto. [Art] was part of that happening. Who better to work with than someone who has been able to prove out something that works?"
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For a founder who has been in the space long enough to see dozens of agencies come and go, choosing Lever was a no-brainer.
A Month of Testing That Would Have Taken a Year Otherwise
Within a single month of working with Lever, Grove was able to test two fundamentally different product directions with real users.
One of them, a Chrome extension, showed too much friction to gain traction. The other, a giveaway and profiles platform, showed clear signal.
That insight allowed the team to stop building one thing and double down on another, without wasting a year of engineering time finding out the hard way.
"With Lever, we were able to in a month test two very different value propositions and realized that we don't need to spend our time building one piece of software because there's just never going to be a take-rate. Lever is able to help us leverage that feedback cycle."
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Art put a sharper point on it:
"Realistically, you could potentially save yourself months if not years... finding market fit very rapidly."
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In a space where development cycles are long and runway is finite, that is a huge advantage.
The ability to validate or kill a thesis in weeks rather than quarters can be the difference between a project that makes it and one that doesn't.
Arthur described the mechanism simply: there is nothing more valuable than real user feedback from your target demographic, and Lever makes that feedback available literally every day.
Watch: Rapid Feedback & Weekly Evolution
Don't go it alone. Launch your campaign with Lever today.
"It's Very White-Glove. We Have an Active Chat, Five Days a Week, 12 Hours a Day."
One of the operational realities of Web3 is that the market doesn't sleep.
Opportunities and risks move fast, and a marketing partner that checks in once a week simply isn't built for that environment.
Arthur was direct about what working with Lever actually feels like day-to-day:
"It's very white-glove service. We have an active chat... five days a week, like 12 hours a day, making sure that we get what we need. It's perfect."
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Watch: White-Glove Service & Operational Support
That level of service isn't common in crypto marketing.
Lever is structured around the needs of the project, including acting as an unbiased bridge between the brand and its creators, with transparent feedback flowing in both directions.
Why Influencer Marketing in Crypto Is a Minefield (And How Lever Navigates It)
For founders coming into crypto marketing for the first time, working with KOLs is overwhelming.
The space is filled with what Art calls "mercenaries," creators who will take a bag, post once, and disappear.
Bots inflate follower counts, and engagement rates have been gamed through InfoFi-style marketing. And reaching the creators who actually have real audiences is its own full-time job, because those creators are getting bombarded with offers constantly.
Lever was built to solve exactly this problem.
"It's a very noisy space... we are more of like a bridge. We filter out audience, we audit audience, we audit influencer engagement... we bring you analytics intelligence on how to make a better campaign."
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The platform maintains proprietary analytics on which creators are performing best right now, not last quarter, not six months ago.
That distinction matters more than it might seem.
The creator who drove results during the last bull cycle is not necessarily the one driving results today, and spending budget based on stale reputation is one of the most common and costly mistakes in crypto marketing.
"We have data where we actually watch which creator is performing the best this month, not last month, not six months ago... we are able to really zero in on high-value, high-performance creators."
Watch: Proprietary Analytics & Peace of Mind
If you want to understand what a meaningful campaign budget actually looks like, our breakdown of the $20k statistical minimum is required reading.
Build a Bonfire: How KOLs Build a Community in Web3
Arthur offered one of the more memorable analogies of the conversation when he described why influencers are essential to growth in this space.
The basic premise: Google Ads don't work for crypto. Traditional PR doesn't scale the way you need it to. If you want to build a large, engaged community, what Arthur calls a "big fire," you need fuel. And the people who bring that fuel are the influencers.
"Influencers are the lumberjacks of this world. They bring you the wood, and then you figure out how to build a larger community, a larger fire."
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The lumberjack framing is useful because it reframes what influencer marketing actually is.
Consistent, well-targeted creator distribution is what feeds the community, and Lever's network of 500+ vetted KOLs with 20M+ combined reach is what makes that distribution possible at scale.
Watch: The Lumberjack Scaling Strategy
The Takeaway
Arthur built a billion-dollar protocol, and he knows what it takes to succeed in Web3.
He knows what it costs to move slowly, to guess instead of test, and to work with partners who aren't built for the speed Web3 requires.
His decision to work with Lever, and his on-record endorsement of the partnership, reflects something specific: Lever isn't just another agency.
It's an operational partner with real data, real infrastructure, and a track record of helping founders find what works before they spend years building the wrong thing.
"In Web3 space, the most valuable thing is the speed of discovering, are you on the right track or not? And that's what Lever is bridging for."
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