From app to infrastructure: rebranding Huddle01

Overview

Huddle01 is a decentralised cloud for real-time connectivity. I was the first marketing hire, so there was no brand, no channels and no audience to work with.

The pitch back then was 'Zoom for Web3'. The founders had already worked out that the real problem sat below the app, in the cloud infrastructure itself, so the product moved to solving routing cost and security at the network level. My job was to make the brand catch up, then market every launch that came after.

Brand Positioning

'Zoom for Web3' gets you understood in four words but caps you at being somebody else's alternative. It had also stopped being true. We rebranded to 'DePIN for real-time connectivity', and my job involved generating demand for a category the audience had never heard of.

The audience shifted too. Before, it was anyone hunting an onchain alternative to Zoom or Meet. After, it was those users plus node operators and institutional firms buying and running nodes to mine rewards. A user wanted the call to connect. An operator wanted unit economics. One brand couldn't sell both, so we decided to split: Huddle01 Meet and Huddle01 Network to avoid any confusion amongst the audience.

I set the tone of voice, the visual aesthetic and the community culture for both brands: a consumer app for everyday users pitching itself as their 'all-in-one communication hub', and 'a global network for communication' selling 'media nodes' to miners. Same parent brand solving for real-time connectivity, just split into two for better understanding.

Community and Culture

Infrastructure reads cold, and the network only works if users buy hardware and keep it running for months. A spec sheet won't hold them. So the brand got lore, memes, merch and a relatable pepe mascot. The community got the HUDL Army: a cast of characters fighting the CloudLords for control of real-time connectivity.

The lore also gave creators something to build on creatively. I enabled 200+ of them with guides, assets, shoutouts, workshops and lootboxes, and they took Huddle01 into rooms we had no account in. Discord went from 2K to 200K, Telegram from nothing to 90K+.

Campaigns

Each campaign was designed to scale the brand further, and grow its revenue and users.

HUDL Nexus turned the network testnet into a game: a multi-arena quest board across app usage, content creation, and social growth, with weekly leaderboards, partner badges and a points structure that rewarded depth over farming. I rebuilt Discord around it with gamified roles and events so the influx had somewhere to land, then ran the launch with pre-launch shitposting, a viral announcement video and a technical round table with industry leaders from Arbitrum. 10K+ users in the first 24 hours, 174K+ by the end, and 2.95M transactions.

Node Sales Phase 1 asked people to buy hardware, which meant making a new product attractive enough for buyers. I worked with design team on the Media Node visualisation, the landing page, an ELI5 comic and infographics that focused on rewards and purpose. I aligned partners like Arbitrum, Aethir, XAI and Caldera for the launch, hosted a global AMA series with Pukecast, and managed KOLs for further amplification. 2,200 nodes sold, and $1M+ generated in revenue.

Battle of Open Realm was Phase 2, and where the lore led the sales. I turned the Media Node keys into action figure cards built on five HUDL Army characters, each with its own rarity and operator rewards. Same product, different reason to buy. Another 392 nodes sold, priced at $340 each.

Feature launches carried the Meet side. Important ones include audio spaces, the infrastructure upgrade to 10K+ participants, and a personal dashboard with customizable themes. Then came Farhouse, another spaces and livestream mini app built on the network, specifically for Farcaster users, and powered by $HOUSE. Meet attracted 160K+ users, 80K+ app downloads, and 250+ paying users.

Content Creation

Daily social across X, Discord and Telegram in both brand voices, long-form blogs, threads and guides written with the engineering and protocol teams, and website copy for Meet and the Network.

The long-form existed so the memes had somewhere to lead. Anyone who arrived through a HUDL Army post could find a piece that explained node rewards or how the routing actually worked.

Events and Press

FIL Bangalore was our flagship yearly conference in partnership with Filecoin. I ran branding, marketing and live event coverage for it for three years, running at 1,300+ attendees an event and 1M+ social impressions, and used it to reach developers who don't follow us on socials, yet.

I also worked with Serotonin and Energent to get Huddle01 placed in CoinDesk, The Defiant and Decrypt to amplify the brand's purpose and build thought leadership for founders.

Results

• 300K+community members
• 4K → 175KX followers
• 2K → 200KDiscord members
• 0 → 90K+Telegram members
• 2.95Mtestnet transactions across 174K+ users
• 2,592nodes sold across two phases
• $2M+in node sales
• 160K+users on Meet
• 1,300+attendees per FIL Bangalore
• 20+media mentions
• 5M+impressions a year