Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Living on Blockchain. Today we are speaking to Ali from Blockchain Founders Fund. He is the managing partner there.
They invest heavily in early stage Web3 startups. He’s also a limited partner at Loyal BC and Draper Growers & Home. Ali consults organizations on emerging technologies as he’s also working with the UN in trying to build solutions which are at the intersection of technology and help out in elevating poverty.
He has served as a Senior Blockchain Fellow at INSEAD as well and he has been recognized as a global leader in the blockchain space. He is an acclaimed author as well as a columnist and he has worked basically extensively at both ends. He had a startup at some point and now he’s an investor.
This is a highly insightful conversation talking a lot about how Blockchain Founders Fund helps entrepreneurs reach and build on their vision and also his own thesis regarding where the market is heading, the kind of spaces that are doing well. So for all builders out there especially I think this would be a very insightful conversation. I can’t wait for you guys to hear this.
Let’s deep dive right in. Thank you so much for joining me today. How are you doing Ali? Fantastic, how are you? I’m doing wonderfully well.
I’m so glad that we could make the time to speak to each other finally. This comes after a bunch of reschedules, some from my end, some from your end. But I’m just really grateful that you could make the time.
Absolutely, my pleasure and thanks for having me on the show. So you have an impressive background with extensive experience in blockchain, you know venture capital and technology. Can you tell us a little bit more about your journey and how you got involved in the Web3 space? Yeah, absolutely.
I mean it’s been quite the journey, let’s call it that, lots of ups and downs. But I think it goes back even to the way I sort of grew up. And I think one of the big things when people saw Bitcoin fairly early on, I think a lot of people were turned off by it, didn’t understand it, didn’t understand the potential.
And I think what was maybe different in sort of my case specifically is I grew up in Vancouver, but my parents are actually refugees from East Africa. And I think that really shaped and helped me understand like instability in the world, instability in regions, understanding how things can sort of get taken away from just poor monetary systems, things like that. And Bitcoin really changed that narrative, right? And it sort of underscored what happens or what sort of could be the counter to governments that have poor sort of economic systems designs or just taking advantage of their central banks, etc.
And sort of after then getting involved sort of on Bitcoin, ended up launching a startup later on in the Web3 space. So that was in 2016. We started an exchange at the time, we raised a few runs of capital, grew our team to 40 people.
And after exiting that, ended up starting Blockchain Founders Fund. So since 2017, we’ve been running Blockchain Founders Fund, so it’s now seven years. We have got over 130 portfolio companies.
So if we fast forward, right, that’s a lot of companies that we’ve got, a lot of incredible founders that are reshaping the space and reshaping sort of the way that the industry and even the world works. That’s wonderful. And that’s quite an impressive portfolio, number of companies that you guys have invested in.
So let’s delve a little bit more into that, a little more into Blockchain Founders Fund. What kind of inspired you to create it? And how does it differentiate itself from other blockchain ventures that are that are actually, you know, exclusively investing in Web3? Yeah, so I mean, so just sort of to make sure I sort of got the question, you’re sort of asking about companies that sort of exclusively invest in Web3 and sort of why, is that accurate? So yeah, you can cover that. But what I do want to know is how did you sort of get inspired to launch this because you were working on your startup earlier, like you mentioned, and how do you differentiate yourself? Or is there a USP if the founder is sort of going with your fund when they’re looking for investment? Yeah, it’s a good question.
So I mean, there’s definitely a big differentiation, right? I think I think most founders that have raised capital before would know that, you know, a lot of a lot of VCs don’t necessarily, you know, add value, help open up doors. Yeah, it’s dumb money. I mean, it’s not necessarily I mean, I think there’s still different classifications, right.
But I think there’s still a big difference in the Web3 space where, you know, being able to have someone to open up doors, whether that’s like, you know, exchanges, market makers, a lot of like very strategic backers in the space, or leading funds in the space, etc, that, you know, you want that sort of support to open up those doors, or even when you think about like rolling up sleeves and figuring out go to market, etc. I think those are sort of very critical aspects. And so, you know, that those are the types of things we do with our companies, right.
So even with the vast majority of our companies, we’ll end up driving and supporting this in terms of like helping to bring in a lot of co investors helping to, you know, bring in customers on the product and driving up revenues, and sort of key partnerships. So those are sort of all of the areas that we get involved in, for the most part, right? Absolutely, I think, you know, I concur there. So that is that is perhaps your major USP when it comes to attracting great founders.
Absolutely. Yeah, so those would be the key things. I mean, you know, also, there’s always going to be areas where like, you know, companies need support on, you know, key hires, stuff like that, which we get involved in.
I mean, one of the things we pride ourselves on is we want to be the first place where founders come to when they have a challenge as well, right. So if you like what you oftentimes see is, you know, founders are sometimes like nervous to go to their investors, let them know what challenges but you know, we just we don’t want our founders to think of us as their investors, we want them to think of us as their partners. And like, we just roll up our sleeves with you and figure out a solvent and move forward, right? Yeah, absolutely.
So you know, you guys have a venture building approach, right? Can you elaborate on how your go to market focuses more on the venture program that supports entrepreneurs, especially those navigating the complex landscape of emerging technologies, like blockchain, web3, and metaverse. These are all newer sectors that have, you know, relatively newer sectors that are there. And how do you kind of stay ahead of the curve? And how do you make sure that you know, you’re able to help these founders with their product market fit and their go to market? Yeah, so so the venture probe sort of applies in in some cases, on investments for us, right.
So when a founders are like very early on in their journey, you know, if they sort of we see still a lot of gaps where we can support them, but we see a lot of very strong strengths on the company where you know, they already have certain parts covered really, really well, like those are sort of aspects where it makes sense on the venture firm side. I mean, we do also invest in in a lot of startups that aren’t part of our venture firm, if we think they’re, you know, extremely strong. And, you know, there’s just, you know, smaller things that we can support them on to sort of help supercharge, right.
So there’s sort of both aspects, in terms of, you know, where, where we sort of see founders fitting that, you know, we got a lot of really great founders that, you know, bring incredible credibility from traditional industries, but that, you know, really like the Web3 space have been involved a little bit in the Web3 space. And then we can sort of help to supercharge that, help them navigate this space, help them sort of like, get this off the ground or sort of, you know, super, supercharge in that way. And so that’s kind of where the venture firm really falls in.
I mean, in addition to that, we’ve got about 150 corporate partners that support our companies, we’ve got 350 experts that support our companies. And so that’s where, you know, we see sort of the big impact there. Wonderful.
So it’s a very hands on approach that you guys basically undertake to help the entrepreneurs get things off the ground. Exactly. Brilliant.
So you know, your fund emphasizes basically, it focuses a little on early stage investments, right? Could you share some insights perhaps into the key areas or sectors within the blockchain space that you find very promising and where you see significant growth potential? Yeah, so those areas, you know, change a fair bit, right? So, you know, if we go back to 2017, some of the areas that we’re focused on are no longer sort of as relevant or as much opportunity anymore as there was before, right? And so, you know, we do have a pretty fluid set of thesis, we have a 25 open thesis right now, or sub thesis that we think there’s major problems, no Web3 space, no market leader, big opportunities. And so the areas that we’re looking for companies in as well does change over time, and depends on sort of what that market landscape looks like at that point. Right.
But, you know, I would nevertheless question ask you, what particular sector do you feel is doing well, and is going to do well in the coming months with this bull market? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can share some of the recent sort of sub thesis that we’ve been interested in, right. So, I mean, we still see, you know, some gaps on layer one infrastructure, if you take, say, like, decentralized physical infrastructure, or you take, you know, you could even take things like intense, which I can talk about, where we see sort of opportunities around even like real world assets in a layer one related to that, or things like this, there’s definitely a number of different areas around that from a layer one infrastructure perspective, we do still really like tooling, we think that there’s huge opportunities right now, and still solving some of the challenges around, you know, things like how do you develop more effectively, or multi chain layer, zero protocol, stuff like this, you know, that we see opportunities on.
And then some of the more recent sort of investments have been around the themes of like real world assets, or how do you fix problems of on chain yields and bring sort of more, more stable, more, more, you know, exciting, I think, yield opportunities on, on, on web three or on blockchain. You know, we’ve been investing in things around like decentralized physical infrastructure. So, you know, that sort of allows people to then contribute to these networks more effectively that already have those resources.
And then, you know, intense is sort of more, more around, you know, if x and y happen, I want to execute zed. So it’s kind of like based on certain actions that happen in the market, or certain factors, then like I’d want to do some some other action. And we think that’s quite interesting.
We think this has the potential to sort of start consuming OTC markets and other aspects of the web three space. We just invest in really cool companies doing, for example, liquidation protection. And so crypto trading is still a big use case for crypto as a whole, it’s probably the biggest use case.
And so we think that’s an interesting one. But then there’s all sorts of other ones that I’d say are more, more sort of like, how do you bring sort of the traditional enterprises into web three more effectively. And so, you know, we’ve invested, for example, in a company called Potastic, that’s putting pets on chain, they put about a million pets on chain now, and building pet IDs.
And there’s always a number of challenges around sort of paper based vaccine certificates and things like that. So there’s a lot of really exciting things, I think, in all of these different areas. And so, you know, that’s, that’s partially why, you know, we’ve been, we’ve been so focused on on a number of these areas.
Well, nice, wonderful. So the, you know, I completely agree. I think the kind of use cases that we are seeing currently, they’re very exciting, because initially, I think the technology itself is exciting for the builders and for perhaps people who are hearing it from the outside.
But now with these relevant use cases that actually are adding value to the user’s life, and they become, you know, sticky in nature. That is, I think that is like, we are paving the path for mass adoption via this. And that is what makes this space so exciting at this time.
Absolutely. Can you tell us a little about some success stories of the startups that you know, you, you guys have supported? And if you could highlight, like the growth of the startup, that’d be wonderful, and very, very motivating as well for the other entrepreneurs who are listening in? Yeah, I would be happy to. So, you know, we, for example, in 2019, we were one of the first investors at the intersection of blockchain, AI and gaming.
And at the time, people thought this was a little bit crazy, right? And, and, you know, there wasn’t really much investment into say, like AI at the time, it wasn’t like what it is right now, right? And especially when you start blending that with gaming and, and web three, you know, there was a lot of concern from a lot of people and we backed a startup called alternate state machine, alternate state machine had a lot of really, really cool things that they were doing. But, you know, in particular, one of those was like, how do you bring uniqueness, if you think about uniqueness in the way that say, like human DNA works, and how humans are unique from one another? And how do you bring that uniqueness into gaming, people just didn’t get it, right. And, and we thought this was fascinating.
And so we actually back this right at the start, we’re on the founding cap table. So we’re literally there from the day zero. And, you know, a alternate state machine ended up getting acquired, you know, for a pretty, pretty, pretty strong amount, about six months or so by Futureverse.
And, and that’s done really, really well for us. But it’s been, you know, quite quite the journey, I think it took a couple of years till people really started to figure out the potential here. And then it really sort of blew up, I think, over the last couple of years, we ended up launching the first AI football league with FIFA and a number of other really incredible partners.
So that was, you know, pretty, pretty exciting one. Some other recent ones that I think are doing really well. And that, you know, again, I think people didn’t necessarily believe in the vision of the founder at the start.
For example, one is Brushna. And Brushna is a superstar female founder who’s out of Washington, DC. And she’s, her goal is basically to build a platform where anyone can build a video game in under 10 to 15 minutes.
And, you know, at the start, when we backed it, wasn’t really many games made. But fast forward now, she’s gotten about more than 150,000 games created, they’ve got about 2 million users that have played these games. And, you know, you see how far it’s come is sort of, you know, night and day.
But she’s ended up with a lot of really incredible backers from Paris Hilton to Randy Zuckerberg, a number of other sort of heavyweights on her cap table as well now. So, you know, when you back a company that early, and then you start seeing sort of the journey, and, you know, you actually see the things that were sort of in that vision come to fruition, and some of it, you know, even a lot faster, a lot bigger than than originally expected. It’s, you know, it’s quite nice to see in sort of a fairly short timeline.
Absolutely. I think that is the payoff, right? And it is very, very exciting to be able to support a startup that is doing great things. Obviously, initially, when they do, you know, it’s a bit of an educated gamble that any investor or even a founder takes.
But when it does well, and, you know, all the blood, sweat and tears, basically adds up to some credible value that is being added to the end user’s life. It’s wonderful to see. I agree.
And that’s, that’s why we do what we do. Exactly. Yeah.
So, you know, you’re actually involved as a mentor as well with several startups and Orbit Starts and Mobile Only Accelerators. How do you see mentorship playing a crucial role in the development of startups? And what advice do you often find yourself giving to emerging entrepreneurs in the blockchain space? And this would, again, help, you know, fellow builders in the space who are just starting off? Yeah. So, I mean, I do think that mentorship is very important.
I think it sort of goes both ways. Right. So, I mean, there’s one side of the mentor, but I think there’s also the side of, of, you know, the coachee or whether that’s the startup founder that, you know, also needs to be able to take, take this advice and like sift through it, filter it, figure out like what pieces to keep and what pieces to not keep.
Right. Because what you’re going to realize as a startup founder and any of the startup founders on here listening, I’m sure you’ll know, you know, you talk to three different investors or three different mentors and they give you three different pieces of advice that are completely different. Right.
And part of it is, you know, the coachability and like being able to take parts that make sense or even understand what doesn’t make sense and why they’re saying it. And maybe like once you understand it, then determine, you know, do you, do you keep that or discard that? But, you know, it’s important to be able to sift through it. If you listen to everyone, it’s a bad thing, right? Because, you know, you’re going to go in every direction and it’ll keep changing.
If you listen to no one, it’s a bad thing because that means you’re probably not flexible. That probably also translates to not listening to your customers, which also creates other issues. And there’s some, some balance in the middle that sort of makes a lot of sense.
In terms of, you know, certain pieces of advice. I mean, I think there’s, there’s all sorts of things, but if you’re a founder out there that’s, you know, raising, I think there’s generally, I find a lot of gaps for founders that are first-time founders that haven’t raised before. And I think there’s a few specific, you know, pieces of advice I can probably give you.
One, you know, when you’re, when you’re trying to get two investors, I think one is just making sure that you’ve got like a very concise approach, right? So, you know, one, you can explain your, your, what you guys do or what your company does. And we say in 11, 30 and 90 seconds, right? So those are the three sort of timeframes we think you should be able to explain your company in. If, if it takes you 20 minutes, like something’s wrong, right.
You need to be able to explain it in 90 seconds. That doesn’t mean you can’t do a 30 minute or 20 minute call with someone or a meeting with someone, but it’s essentially, those are your modular talking points if you think about it. Right.
So like, I think that’s a very important part. I think the second piece that I see is like with pitch decks, these like very lengthy pitch decks are probably like 10 words per slide or something like that. It doesn’t need to be crazy wordy.
You should be able to get across what you’re working on in a very concise manner. And, you know, one of the misconceptions people think is, Hey, you’re going to raise money off your pitch deck, right? That’s what it’s for, right? It’s, it’s actually for, for getting a meeting, right? Like no one’s invested by seeing a pitch deck and then invest, right. It’s, it’s like, that’s your sort of in to get on a call, get on a meeting.
I think it’s important to sort of keep that in mind. And if you want a really good tool that you can use as a, as a founder, there’s a website called pitchly.ai, and you can actually upload your pitch deck and you’ll get instant feedback from an AI tool that’ll that’s actually quite valuable. And so it’s a really good starting point as well to figure out.
So I wanted to really ask you about, I did have a little about how you are involved with the UN and you’ve been working on solutions to elevate poverty through emerging technologies. Can you share some insights into how blockchain and other related technologies can contribute to addressing this particular global challenge in terms of, you know, moving people out of poverty and towards perhaps some amounts of prosperity?
Yeah, I mean, I think this is a topic that’s, you know, extremely impactful. It’s amazing. You’re in my heart.
And, you know, you look at this technology, and you think about it in a number of ways, right? So all the way from one, like charitable aspects, and transparency within charities, and why, you know, I think there’s fatigue on things around charitable giving, is because oftentimes, like the money isn’t getting there, there’s a lack of transparency, getting back and forth of information. And you’re more likely to donate and donate more if you actually have, I think, a better data sort of transfer or communication between the donor and, you know, the cause or like what, you know, what’s actually happening, what’s the impact, maybe even like, in the future, in the longer run, we can be real time or close to real time, even on some of the impact, right? Depending on obviously, what what it is, but I think that’s like one aspect. But if you think about even probably the biggest tool for alleviating poverty in history, in reality, it’s probably fintech and building and prosperity, right? And, you know, if you take that as an example, right, it’s it’s like China’s renaissance and taking that 100 million people out of poverty, for example, in the last few decades.
And, you know, you you see things like that. And, you know, I think blockchain really even amplifies that and actually makes it even easier, right? Because you you think about the instability around the world, we started off the conversation even about, you know, central banks, and you know, you see firsthand inflation around the world and some places in, you know, essentially hyperinflation, right? Right. And, you know, these are things where people are basically losing their livelihood daily from their their currencies.
And so being able to one, have a digital native currency that, you know, you can have as a store of value already is is, you know, life saving or life changing for you. But then, you know, you think about our existing system that we have around the world, and we’ve got a billion people that can’t access the banking system, right? And these are very big problems that, you know, aren’t being solved fast enough or effectively. And so, you know, when you think about what blockchain can bring, and just, you know, as some of these things get better from a UI UX perspective, we’ve already got tools that bring you borrowing, lending savings products, you know, you’re able to then interact much more effectively with the system without maybe even an identity, because your government doesn’t issue an identity or like an identity that’s recognized, or because you’re in a country that, you know, other countries don’t want to work with, and therefore, your banks aren’t able to work with international banks, and therefore becomes a more like a bigger and bigger problem, right? So like, there’s all of these different challenges when you think about like, you know, in the sort of global banking financial system.
And so there’s a lot of really, really exciting opportunities when you start putting in, you know, how blockchain can help achieve these US sustainable development goals and help alleviate poverty, you know, and then there’s even benefits on different aspects from education, you know, when you bring in AI, when you bring in blockchain, and some of these technologies really transform the way of learning really bring and level the playing field much more, you know, between the developing world and developed world. So I think there’s just a lot of really, really high impact aspects here of this technology, especially when you start pairing it at the intersection of other technologies, right? So we believe that real true values unlocked when you put, you know, technologies together at key inflection points. And that would be like, for example, AI and blockchain right now, as an example, you’ve got, you know, AI and even like, and IoT, it starts making a lot of sense when you want to start creating even like more access to internet and remote places or other things can start being quite effective.
So that would be just a couple of examples. Yeah, I do think that, you know, blockchain technology, as you mentioned that, you know, along with the putting it in the intersection of other technologies can really address these global challenges. Can you give us like a, you know, example or a use case, I know that there are many ventures and very many startups that are trying to resolve the, you know, banking, the unbanked problem statement in several continents.
But is there one particular example that you can give us that thoroughly shows how, you know, really, blockchain technology can help in addressing these problems? Yeah, so I mean, there’s definitely a number of different ones. I mean, I would say right now, like the biggest impact you’re seeing, and why you’re seeing it so much in all of these different developing regions is, you’re seeing Bitcoin really taking off and then USDT or USDC, but primarily USDT and emerging markets, some of them are like DAI and other stablecoins. But you know, that just inherently being able to have something that’s not eroding 2% a day or 1% a day is already lifesaving or game changing, right? And that’s like, in a very basic form.
What we’re seeing then is how that translates into things like credit and being able to access credit and loans based on like history and other things. But in a system where that infrastructure of lending or centralized lending records is not there, right? So credit bureaus, things like that. And, you know, being able to almost build alternative ways to oversee these things using, you know, AI and blockchain and able to really, I think, unlock lending and borrowing for people, which then allows them to find like a business and like sort of employ more people and sort of, you know, all of that starts to compound and make a difference.
Absolutely. This is wonderful, because this is, I think, it’s addressing such a real problem. And this kind of adds more merit to the technology itself, because there are a lot of naysayers, like at least there were a few years ago for this particular technology, because they were primarily viewing it from the scope of, you know, just these tokens and looking at it as a Ponzi scheme.
So when there are these real use cases and sticky use cases, might add, I think that perception also changes for the better. And only then can we really look at something which is anything close to mass adoption. Absolutely.
You’re a columnist as well, right? You’ve written for a lot of publications, you’ve written several books, and you seem to have your finger on the pulse of the latest trends in the space. What are your thoughts on how the space has kind of evolved? You’ve been around for a while in this space? How do you see it shaping the future of the internet and beyond? Yeah, it’s been it’s been quite quite the journey, right? So if you go back to earlier in the in the sort of crypto, you know, phases where there was a lot of hype, even if you go to say 2017, right, there was a lot of promises, but a lot of hype on those promises, but it was very early days. And so a lot of the innovation was just, you know, people excited about being able to invest in a decentralized token, right.
And that created that whole sort of ICO boom really created, created, I think, a lot of ideas, right. And a lot of people had these visions and ideas, but not a lot was necessarily built in that, in that timeframe, in the sense that like, a lot of this is people promising it, and then, you know, they either sort of went under ran away or whatever, or they built then in sort of the 2018 2019. And that sort of those bear market sort of years, if they stuck around, and, you know, that I think lacked a lot of substance, even though it had sort of these great grand visions.
And then we saw sort of fast forward, we saw the launch of a number of interesting, say, layer ones, and, you know, other interesting companies launched over the bear market or sort of, you know, survived through that. And then, you know, then you saw in this last, previous bull market in 2021, 2021, you started seeing, I think, aspects around, you know, all sorts of different use case on these different chains. And then you saw, you saw like the NFT boom, and that just sort of Axie as well, sort of taking advantage of that.
And, you know, you saw something similar on the finance side with, you know, people getting strong yields and tools like Celsius, BlockFi, I mean, even FTX. And then that all sort of collapsed, right? And those players hurt a lot of people, especially those centralized finance players, which aren’t really true blockchain, right? So when you think about it, they’re not decentralized, you know, you do have that massive sort of single point of failure. So it’s not even really following the principles of Web3.
But in some ways, it was masquerading as like a Web3 company, and like a blockchain company. And while it was serving the blockchain industry, it wasn’t itself, like blockchain native, let’s call it. And, and I think a lot of people got confused or sort of mistaken with that, and, you know, obviously got hurt in that situation.
And then, you know, you had a lot of people leave the industry between, you know, 2022, or end of 21, and through 22. And, you know, and the people that stuck around had really strong belief and kept believing and building incredible products that people would use. And now we’re starting to see all sorts of really great sort of multi-chain products, we’re seeing a lot of the, you know, major problems in the space being solved, you’re seeing interesting, like real world problems being solved, and starting to be solved with blockchain as sort of the leading, you know, solution around this.
And so, you know, it’s still, I would say early, but right now, we’ve got a lot of incredible builders just, you know, solving, you know, some of the biggest problems in the space. And, you know, the challenge with this industry is because, you know, Bitcoin and crypto sort of lead the way, it creates a lot of hype at some point. So right now, we still, I think, have a pretty strong foundation, as Bitcoin keeps going up, it becomes more and more hype, more people come in to take advantage of people.
And then, you know, and then obviously, as people get hurt, you know, it starts to correct, right. And, and that’s like a challenge that I think we’ve got to go through in this space. But, you know, the more we can help people be educated and know what they’re doing, and understand the risks around that, I think that sort of helps and protects everyone as a whole.
And it helps our industry sort of, you know, mature and sort of advance, you know, compared to how it was working. Absolutely. I think the onus, to a large extent, does fall on the builders and the people who are working in this space to make sure that the narrative is being set right, so that the perception around the industry changes and changes for the better.
And that brings me to the books that you have written. You have authored around three books, and you have them to your name. Can you tell us a little about them? Where can, you know, folks order them from, if they’d like? Yeah, happy to.
So you’re indeed correct. I published three books as a little while ago. But the objective around these books was really to help people, right, to not make the same mistakes that I made.
And, and actually, the first book when I was graduating from the University of Toronto, the president and one of the other sort of governors of the university was like, hey, you’ve got a ton of experience, why don’t you, you know, consider writing something for University of Toronto students? And so I started writing something, and then ran it by them. And they said, hey, well, you know, this doesn’t really make sense just for University of Toronto students, why don’t you make it for Canadian students? And then I made some changes, updated, and then, and then when I went back, they were like, why is this for Canadian students? Why don’t you just, you know, publish this and open up to all students, because they would really benefit from this, and so that’s sort of how it evolved. So I never planned to be an author.
But that was sort of, you know, the way it sort of worked out. And, you know, the main thing was being able to create value and help people. And that’s in part even why, I mean, you can order them on Amazon.
I mean, you can also get them for free and on different sites as well. And, you know, the objective here is not not to make money on it, but really to help people to learn from my mistakes. And, you know, hopefully to not make all the same ones, right, and sort of, you know, as a whole, get better, faster, stronger as a society.
And so, you know, that was, you know, the sort of the way the first one went, the second two were basically, you know, similar idea. One was, you know, post graduation, sort of going out into the, you know, in the real world and sort of navigating the world and, you know, all the different challenges, you know, along the way there. And so that was part of the second one.
And then there was also one where I wrote it with four medical doctors and sort of covered, you know, certain aspects on more around leadership, etc. So I’m obviously not a medical doctor, but brought in and had a number of experts that cover cover all of that. And that was something that, you know, has done quite well for the medical, you know, community or doctor aspirants.
So that’s, those are sort of the three. You know, the big thing here, and I think what I hope others do is, you know, as you, you know, have challenges and, and mistakes that you make, try to help others, right, try to help others, you know, not make the same mistakes, try to, you know, pass it on, you know, however you can, because I think at the end of the day, like, these are the things that I really have a huge impact on, on people, right? And they’re going to remember and they’re going to know and you know, you, you know, you pass it forward, right? So Absolutely, I think, you know, I love what you said. And I think this is something that I, you know, say a lot of in my public speaking that I would like people to learn from my mistakes and not make them and go ahead and make their own because that is that is the only way that you move forward and move forward a little faster.
So it’s a wonderful space. Again, here in Web3, I feel everybody is open to, you know, lend a helping hand. And it’s a very collaborative community.
And even in the larger scheme of things, I think, if we are pulling someone up with, you know, just with the solutions to the struggles that we have seen, we are adding value. And that is wonderful in itself. So, you know, unfortunately, we are running out of time and come to the time mark that we had set for this particular recording.
But this has been such a wonderful conversation. I would love to know from you, like, do you have any advice for the builders where they’re starting off right now, or just users, even, you know, just general users who perhaps they have a certain perception of Web3 currently? And what would be your perhaps suggestions for these users as well as builders for them to truly start living on blockchain? Yeah, so I mean, at the end of the day, for the builders, I mean, you got to truly be passionate about something, right? And then, you know, we think that, you know, we usually recommend try to talk to 30 people as potential customers or around the space that can help you and guide you and figure out like, do you have something that will have product market fit before you fully build it, right? Or at least sort of expect to have product market fit and expect there to be a real need for this, right? In terms of the users, I think one of the things that, you know, sometimes surprises me is, you know, you go to all these conferences, you can learn a lot, but you oftentimes like, you know, leave a two day conference or three day conference, and you still have never, you know, maybe even used blockchain or use crypto or any of this stuff. And so the best thing you can do is like, test it out, right? Like, try a few different products, try a few different games.
Don’t go risk a bunch of money, but even with like $1, $2, you don’t need a big amount, but go like learn on some of the stuff firsthand, right? Like, you’re gonna learn a lot more, trying out a couple of these things, and sort of starting to make a decision for yourself and opinion for yourself on the technology and parts of the technology, rather than maybe going conference for three days and like not ever having tried it. Obviously, there’s both aspects, you still want like that knowledge base. But I think both go very well hand in hand.
And I find oftentimes that that part of actually trying stuff out, testing it out, experimenting is sometimes lost. Yeah, I think that is absolutely true. People have, at times they are very risk averse.
But like you said, you know, you need to get your hands dirty a little bit, get involved. And that is when you truly understand the technology and you can get involved in a way that is actually making your life a little better as well. Yes, absolutely.
So once again, thank you so much for making the time to speak to me today and to our listeners. I think this has been such an insightful conversation for builders and users alike. Any parting words before we wrap this up? Just keep it up and keep building.
And I think from some of the stories that I shared as well, I mean, even if people don’t necessarily see the vision, I think, you know, make sure that, you know, you continue to follow what you’re trying to do. Obviously, stay coachable, make sure that like there is a there is a big opportunity there. But, you know, keep building and let’s make the world a better place.
Absolutely. I couldn’t have said it better. Thank you so much, once again, for joining and speaking to us today.
This has been a great chat. Fantastic. Thank you so much.