Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Living on Blockchain. Today we are speaking to Matthias, he is the co-founder of Nexera. He has earlier worked with AllianceBlock as well and Nexera is at the forefront of financial innovation.
They are creating an infrastructure layer which seamlessly incorporates blockchain technology enabling both on-chain and off-chain operations. It essentially works as a layer for data processing and it is working on the This conversation was very interesting because just going to his experience I think he brings forward brilliant insights and Nexera Foundation is doing a bunch of really cool stuff which is going to increase the ambit of the ecosystem as a whole. So this was a very, very cool conversation and I can’t wait for you guys to hear this.
Let’s deep dive right in. Hi Matt, how are you doing today? Yeah great, thank you so much for having me, hope you’re doing fine as well. Thank you so much for asking earlier and yeah, I’m doing wonderfully well, thank you so much.
So for our listeners, can you tell us a little about your background and how you got into Web3? Yeah, absolutely. So I have a background in software development. Firstly, I’ve started software development when I was 11 years old but professionally when I was 15.
Yeah, I was quite young, I was always very interested in computers, started very, very young with tinkering with computers but when I was 11, I actually dabbled with software development and later also web development. 15 years old, I started to do it professionally so I started asking money for it for a laboratory and later on I took a job at a laboratory as well. I continued working in many different industries, many different technologies until I ended up at a very big company in the Netherlands which is called PostNL, one of the largest employees in the Netherlands and there I took a management position.
That’s where I started to lead a team of developers and then a department and several departments, then several departments over several locations in the country and I continued to grow but after nine years I realized like the enterprise life isn’t really for me so I joined a startup which was working on various projects but few of them had an AI component in it and I was massively interested in what they were doing so I was responsible there for many different things like you always have in startups like project management, product management, software development, business development, I was doing it all and I was loving it. I was like I need to be an entrepreneur myself like soon and one of the projects that we were working on had a web3 component in it like a client was asking like can we do something with web3. That was like 2016, Ethereum was still kind of new so I knew about Bitcoin but I wasn’t really aware of smart contracts and stuff like that so because of that client question I had to dive into the world of smart contracts.
I got interested in Ethereum because of it. That’s when I started to read more and more. I started to become part of community, started to invest a little myself and then suddenly you know one year in, one year in a bit and I saw myself in many different communities asking questions, learning, helping others, seeing you know projects fail, projects succeed, a lot of money raised, a lot of money misplaced and that’s when I met someone and we discussed like all the problems that we saw in the industry but we figured like early 2018 like we have to do something ourselves and that’s when we built our first web3 business together.
Wow, that’s quite a journey so you know it was pretty organic for you like you were working in tech already and you got introduced to web3 because of as you mentioned a query by your client. So can you can you tell us a little about your experiences of working at AllianceBlock and how that kind of shaped your perspective on potentially this technology? Absolutely, so to be clear AllianceBlock is the first web3 company that we founded which was in early 2018 and the first and foremost goal of AllianceBlock was to create an inclusive but completely decentralized economy or ecosystem where anyone can have access to investment deals and we wanted to create a platform where it’s easy to use, where it’s safe to use and very transparent to use to buy new tokens of very early stage projects but in a way that the projects cannot really misplace funds through milestone-based financing and stuff like that. So we built that platform that went really well we had a an NPV within like three four months then when the MVP was being tested the market went down that was like early 2019 I think like early 2019 was like one of the worst months one of the worst crypto winters we’ve ever experienced I think and so we had a platform which was technologically amazing but there was no demand because nobody was was gonna sell tokens and nobody was gonna buy tokens.
So we wanted to pivot into security token offerings instead of initial coin offerings and well then we realized we need to go very hard on regulations because security token offerings is a whole nother beast you need to KYC people do AML and all these different rules between different jurisdictions so we started to go very hard on this and then we realized like this is so hard to solve and this is going to be more common problem in the future for others that we have to come up with a solution for this. So that’s when we still wanted to create kind of this inclusive ecosystem but with with a really strong compliant component attached to it and to attack the traditional finance industry with it to help them on board into decentralized finance and in general Web3 and that’s when tokenization of real world assets came into play and organically also we grew into the data and AI kind of vertical which may seem outlandish but yeah everything has an organic growth from our story. So again so you know I think I have used Alliance Block initially as well like I had signed up and as you mentioned it was a fairly robust product but you know you didn’t find traction so at that point like you must have been very disheartened right that you’ve made something that actually works but probably not the right time.
That’s actually a very nice question. It’s disheartening in a way but also multi-fades in some weird way to keep going and find that way to make it work and I have a couple of times that we built something that in the end we couldn’t use because it wasn’t the right product market fit or maybe we were too late or it just didn’t make that much sense as we initially thought and that’s okay you know. I think it’s not about that you 100% will be able to do what you initially envisioned because no one will be able to do that but it’s that you’re able to pivot from this and find the energy to keep going and see like kind of the failures and maybe the failures is kind of a harsh word but see the failures as kind of a stepping stone to reach what you eventually want to reach or to find what you need and that kind of mindset has always helped us get going and to get more successful every time.
Right, I think that’s a beautiful perspective to have because as a fellow entrepreneur I feel that at times as you said this you know failure might be a very harsh word because you just find out what is not working and you use that knowledge and experience to perhaps build on something that would work eventually and help you build your vision. Exactly and and there is a reason why many VCs, many investors would like someone to have failed before with something because failure is like the best kind of teacher, that’s kind of training and learning that you can have, right? Yeah, absolutely you know failure teaches you many things among them you know just pure resilience I think is also important like for an entrepreneur. Absolutely, I 100% agree.
So from Alliance Block you know you ventured into, you started a platform called Nuclei and Nuant, right? And how did these ventures lead to the creation of Nexera? Can you tell us a little about that? Yeah, so Nexera is actually simply a name change of Alliance Block. So Nexera Alliance Block ecosystem with a more fresher name like even though Alliance Block as a name will always be a baby to me because we had it since early 2018, right? So you get kind of attached to it, but let’s face it, Alliance Block is kind of a 2017-2018 web tree name with block in it and you know it’s not really from this time anymore. Nexera, it was a fitting name in a transitional phase that we were in because Nexera stands for the next era, it’s our next era of DeFi and tokenization real world assets, the next era of the space that we want to contribute to.
But yeah, back to Nuclei, we started actually a project within Nexera which was focused more around data and it was meant as an internal project to optimize some of the technologies and process that we were working on around financial data and we wanted to create something generic. And then while we were building this, we accidentally discovered some potential beyond that initial internal use case. So we started to test that thesis with some external companies that had a lot of data and had some issues in leveraging this data for innovation or chatbot integration, stuff like that.
And it actually worked, we actually solved the problem with a large automotive company that we were walking around with for over a year and we solved it in a matter of one week. So we thought this has merit, we’re doing something good, so let’s work on it. So we started to build the product kind of on the sidelines, we didn’t put a lot of budget on it right from the start because it wasn’t really our main focus, our main focus was DeFi and real world assets and not necessarily data.
But we kept on building regardless and then last year, we finalized the full vision of what we want to achieve, that’s when we realized it’s so much bigger and it deserves to be its own branding, have its own go-to-market strategy. And that’s when we took it out of Nexera as Nuclei because previously it was known as Data Tunnel and then continue and it helps because it helps us give a lot of traction right now. Okay, wow, wonderful.
So now that is a separate arm currently, which deals with data and you have another venture as well, right, that is more DeFi focused? Yeah, so I’m also one of the founders of Nuwant and Nuwant is more of a traditional place. So it’s all about on-chain data, but making this data available in ways that it can be easily leveraged by, for example, crypto funds managers. Those kind of organizations, more threat-fied organizations that need to act on specific patterns, the kind of quantities that they work on, but they need reliable streams of data and be able to act on it as soon as possible.
In case, for example, when a Black Swan events happen again, they can click on one button and their portfolio is saved. This is the kind of tooling and data that we offer in order to accommodate that. Okay, so if you had to explain to a layperson what Nuwant does, like perhaps in one or two lines, how would you explain it? It’s providing on-chain data in the most reliable and quickest ways for any kind of use case that you can do on top of that.
Okay, and can you tell us a little, like give us an example perhaps of a use case? Yeah, use case is when a crypto fund manager has a lot of assets in custody for their clients and they interact with DeFi protocols with it in order to grow the funds for the clients, right? This is what they do. Then they need to be on top of their portfolio and assets to ensure that everything is going well and to be able to do the reporting well. Now, imagine that, for example, when we had the Terra Luna collapse, we saw that there’s one point when UST started to de-pack and then everything started to collapse.
Imagine that as a crypto fund manager, you have a big exposure in that ecosystem and you want to be aware of this kind of red flags and act on them. Act on them is like pull all the liquidity, take all your assets out of that ecosystem and convert them to stable coins or convert them to another ecosystem. So you need data in order to find those red flags and you need to be able to have the technology to act on the data and automatically do the actions in order to save your assets.
So that’s kind of the focus of what we do. Right. So would you say that your product is more B2B facing than B2C? 100% B2B.
Right. Because I think as a solution, it would make more sense, as you said, for portfolio managers and because this is dealing with large quantities of data and this entire infrastructure is basically data driven. And I understand now that all of these ventures that you’re working with, they are all interconnected in a way, right? It’s the same ecosystem.
It’s the ecosystem, exactly. They all play a role because Nexera has a a big Threadify focus on the tokenization part. But there is a point where they need data in order to fully fulfill their use case.
And that’s when they go to Nuant. And if they want to do the tokenization compliantly, we bring Nexera ID, which we have as well. And then, you know, in order to leverage that data, in order to use the data for collaboration, monetization or AI development, we bring a new client.
So we have that ecosystem where we can, in many use cases, collaborate together and do end-to-end use cases for clients. Right. Can you tell us a little more about the AI aspect in your product and how AI is helping you make it better? Yeah, now we’re getting to the exciting part.
So with Nuclei, we are building an infrastructure for everything around data. And why do we do that? Because if you look at AI, what’s the most important thing to make AI work? It’s data. Sometimes people say like data is the new oil, right? Because it’s so valuable.
But I want to contest that and say that data is really already the new oxygen, because without it, like we will not be able to live normally anymore. Because data, it’s everywhere. Like data is everywhere and it’s everything.
We as an individual, we generate data throughout the whole day by using our phone, by using social media. But also if we take public transport, we’re generating data somewhere, some IoT device. While driving a car, we are generating tons of data.
Most of that data gets lost somewhere in the car, but we are generating a lot of data and the data is used for something. So data is extremely important. Without a lot of data, AI cannot work well.
We already see that kind of limitations with LLMs like chat GPT. They still need a massive more amount of data in order to avoid the hallucinations that we so often still see with LLMs. They cannot be factual.
So there is a massive need for structured data. And you cannot simply say like, oh, I’m a company, I have a lot of data. So I will throw it into an AI and have something cool.
There are a lot of steps in order to get there. First, you need to make this data interoperable so you can make combinations of different data. And you also need to contextualize this data through labeling or annotating it so that the AI understands the context of that data and how to interpret the different kind of data that it will be fed.
So we created an end-to-end infrastructure that helps organizations that have data which is all over the place and to bring that together in a generic way very easily. Then to allow the tools to use to deeply contextualize the data. And then with the distributed network of different clusters like GPU power, but also the other services around data transformation, data ingestion, data pipeline execution, all these kind of different distributed services on the network that they can leverage in order to really from end-to-end from data to a functioning AI model to be able to do all those steps.
Which is where normally other organizations, other Web3 projects are focusing more on the end thing, already assuming that data is already high quality and exists. And they just focus on, I don’t know, an LLM integration and have a nice chat interface and that’s it. We really focus on everything before, assuming that anyone can create an AI model on top of that high quality data.
Wow, that’s wonderful. So is this open source in any way? Because you mentioned that anybody can perhaps create on top of the data in front that you have. Yeah, so the technology is largely open source.
So we are building a layer one network that’s open source. The early test net of that is live right now. And the data itself, it depends.
We have, for example, we are putting some focus on what we call reference data. Reference data is just information of the universe. It’s everything around us.
It’s things that just are. It’s not data that’s owned by anyone. The colors of a flag, country codes, currencies of countries, all this kind of information that doesn’t really change a lot, the reference data that’s available for free and for anyone to use and to integrate with their business data, for example.
And when it comes to business data, it depends largely whether an organization wants to sell that data to others or make it available for free. That depends on a case by case basis, of course. Right.
OK, thank you so much for sharing that basic overview. This would give our listeners a very good idea of what you’re building. Now, what is perhaps the next big milestone for you guys? What are you looking forward to? Yeah, so I think two things.
Our most important milestone is to get our layer one network to mainnet. I think that’s for many layer one projects. That’s the case, of course, for us even more so because we are not just cloning an existing layer one and like an Ethereum chain and create another EVM network.
We really create something new. And that’s quite challenging, of course, because we have to do a lot of things ourselves. And we have to because we create a really unique layer one in that sense, because it’s for data infrastructure and AI purposes.
But beyond that, we are really looking for enterprise use cases to onboard and do cool things with them. So I think from a more business development perspective, our most important milestone will be onboarding the first enterprise. OK, and what are the kind of enterprises you’re looking at? Yeah, a cool question, actually.
Right now, we have focus in automobiles. OK. Automotive because we just know the industry quite well.
We have a good network there. But truth be told, automotive is not an easy industry. Yeah, I think it’s very, very niche, right? And they’re probably a little resistive to change.
Yeah, exactly. And it’s slow to innovate on car models, maybe, but internally, like not so much. And when it comes to data infrastructure, data solutions, we have a fierce automotive specific competitor, Cortina X, which is embedded really deeply in the automotive industry.
But our most promising focuses are in agriculture, like mainly IoT devices that collect data on a day-to-day basis by how far farmers do harvest and stuff like that, use the tractors. That data is actually very valuable. So we can help in a way that farmers are actually fairly rewarded for generating and making this data available.
And our second focus is government because more and more governments are working on open data initiatives where citizens download data from whatever. But that’s still very all over the place, very unorganized. And we can easily and cheaply provide the layer on top that doesn’t require big investment, doesn’t require any changes on their existing infrastructure, but will solve a lot of problems that will definitely help governments to work more efficiently and even to allow easily to integrate custom LLMs on their government data, which then allows, for example, a municipality or how do you call it, city that can use an LLM for day-to-day use on top of the data where they can avoid hallucinations.
So they can trust and verify that the right data was used in the answer of the LLM, which could lead to way more efficient work inside of governments, which I think we can all agree that many governments could work a little bit more efficient. Yeah, absolutely. I think and data is the backbone there if they want to like speed up or be more efficient.
So I can totally concur with you there. Can you tell us a little and shed a little more light on the kind of challenges you face so far while pushing your testnet out, because you came from perhaps a tech background and now moving into web 3 and this new way of doing things and you’re targeting niches that are perhaps resistant to change. You must have faced some challenges.
We could shed some light on those. It would be great. Yes and no.
I think we can layer this into different kinds of challenges in different kinds of contexts. So yeah, I come from a traditional tech background, worked in an enterprise. I had a job where I had to wear a suit and tie every day in the financial industry as well.
So when I entered web 3, you could say it was a culture shock for me, but actually I finally felt at home. I finally like now I understand everyone around me because the web 3 industry’s communities are very direct. They don’t hold back and I love that.
I’m also like this and I try from that. That makes things just so much easier. You can do things quicker.
You know what’s happening, right? So that actually made things easier for me and when it comes to technology adoption, I think that’s the most challenging. Most users right now are web 3 natives, right? They understand how to create a wallet, how to interact with smart contracts. They know how to swap on DAGs, stuff like that and it’s very hard to onboard non-web 3 natives that will need to create a wallet.
We need to accommodate them in different ways than we do now. We need to make things much easier and much more logical. There are still a lot of challenges there and we sometimes run into these challenges as well because we are very enterprise facing.
So we speak to large companies and you cannot ask these large companies to install MetaMask with every employee. It’s not going to happen. So we are not that naive, so we know what we’re dealing with and how to accommodate them, but it’s still very challenging.
So if you, for example, look also at our website, we have two websites, one with AI TOD and one with IO TOD. The AI one is more web 3 community focused, web 3 project focused and the IO TOD one is enterprise focused. And the main difference is that, for example, on the enterprise facing website, we don’t even mention that we are offering or leveraging blockchain technology because they’re just not interested in that.
It scares them. It’s only after a few conversations that they bring it up themselves like, ah, so this is true blockchain technology. That’s perfect.
But in the first conversation, if you mention blockchain, they’re like, ah, no, no, no, no. That’s not what we want. It needs to come organically.
And that’s challenging that we are not there yet with that kind of adoption. Yeah, that is true. At this point in time, I think entities and enterprise, especially a little wary of decentralized technologies, perhaps because they don’t understand it well enough.
And that might be a reason why they’re wary and intimidated by it. So I think your strategy is actually a good one. And a lot of B2B players, I think really should make note that they don’t really care.
Enterprises don’t care. They would like to have that as a conversation point perhaps later. But initially, it is something that they’ll be wary of.
They’ll be intimidated by. And honestly, Nobody really cares what is the technology, as long as it’s sort of solving their problem. Exactly, that’s exactly, you’re completely right. You need to solve a problem, or you need to save money, or you need to avoid risk.
But the problem with avoiding risk solutions, which are actually a lot of use cases, when we speak about leveraging blockchain technology, in the end, in the end, is to avoid risk, is to avoid risk that some man in the middle can walk away with funds, that someone can make a decision that is against the whole of the community, or the whole, or the collective of the users, you know what I mean? And blockchain technology doesn’t always immediately solve a problem, except in a couple of use cases. It avoids that something can go wrong. You can trust that all the rules will always be followed, because it’s on chain, and it’s immutable.
But that means that a lot of enterprises, it’s seen as kind of an insurance. Some enterprises wanna avoid risk, but they do it when they run into the risk first. So first they need to experience the problem, and that’s like, okay, we don’t want to happen that again, we apply blockchain technology from now on.
So this is kind of where we are right now. Right, yeah, that is absolutely correct. I think that is just where we are, we need to accept that, and accordingly, perhaps, create the narrative that will sell our particular product or solution that we are creating.
So this has been all wonderful. I would love to touch upon perhaps a little about your team and the kind of traction you’ve seen so far on your testnet. Yeah, absolutely.
So the testnet is still largely internal, in the sense that you need to build, you need to clone the repositories, you need to interact with it locally, because there is not a lot of public-facing tools available, like wallets and stuff like that, so it’s very developer-focused. But we have seen that developers already created their own Nuclei network locally, and yesterday or day before yesterday, we had someone created the first meme coin on Nuclei, which is pretty cool, it was Naidoja, and they won a hoodie. So the kind of traction you see, that developers are actually excited to get started and try something on testnet, because it’s so novel and unique, it’s really exciting.
And general interaction, I mean, we’ve started really growing out the brand and the ecosystem since, let’s say, December, and since then, we grow our ecosystem for essentially zero partners to 35 partners, all with a unique contribution to what we do, all an important role. Some of the notable ones are Crunchbase, which is a very traditional data provider globally, very, very large, but also Ionet, GPUnet, Peak. These are all exciting partners that we actively building use cases with in the Nuclei ecosystem.
And when it comes to team, we’re around 25 people now, mostly in Europe, where all of them actually have a background in Web3, some of them have transitioned from Nexera to Nuclei, so they already have experience working in our ecosystem, and most of like a fitting background in AI, big data in various industries. So very knowledgeable team, very proud also of the team, of what we’ve achieved in essentially kind of a short timeframe already. So that’s very promising for the time to come, right? Thank you, absolutely.
Only good things are coming your way with the kind of progress you guys are making. I would like to now touch upon a little about the foundation. There is a Nexera foundation as well, right? So how does that support the broader ecosystem and how does it enhance the utility of the token that you guys have as well? And so the Nexera foundation is essentially the issuer of the token.
So it’s the foundation of the ecosystem. And foundation is product, open source, and community focused. And from there, we have different more commercial entities that are taking care of the B2B place inside of the ecosystem.
So the Nexera foundation is really the pure Web3 entity that’s taking care of the token and everything around it. Okay, and can you tell us a little about the token itself and like the utility associated with it? Yeah, so for Nexera is the NXRA token, Nexera token. And the main utility is for community members who stake the token in the funders platform.
And the funders platform is central for everything around the token holders and the token buyers in the Nexera ecosystem. And I will explain you how this really works. While staking Nexera, you’re collecting ROBT.
ROBT is what we call a reputational, an indication of your reputation inside of the ecosystem. It’s a token on chain, but it’s not a token that you can transfer. You cannot transfer it to another wallet.
So it stays with you. Now, the interesting thing is that everything that we do where it generates revenue or projects that we help fund raise through our launch pad, it will go to one pool of funds, of tokens. And then once in a while, we will have burn events where you can burn your reputational token, this ROBT in exchange for a part of that funding.
So any commercial activity that we do around the Nexera protocol, around RWA tokenization, et cetera, Nexera stakers will get a piece of that pie. So I think it’s like the most straightforward and most sustainable utility because any yield that’s generated is sustainable because it comes from somewhere and doesn’t require an infinite supply of your token because you need to maintain an APY or something. All right, okay.
So you’ve created like a circular economy where the token is also burning at some point so that the demand and supply is kind of balanced. Yeah, so the burning of the reputation token and reputation token has absolutely no value except to exist. Like you cannot trade it because you cannot transfer it.
You can only earn it by staking Nexera or you can only burn it in exchange for funds from revenue and other projects. And the Nexera token itself, it’s pure utility. Like if you stake it forever, you will always generate reputation and you will always be able to participate in the revenue streams.
So there should be no reason to speculate on the price of it or to wait for a moment to sell that token perhaps because the whole utility of the token is to stake it forever so that you can participate in the economy forever. Oh, there’s a certain stickiness there. Good, yeah, so there’s a gamification there that ensures that the user, once he enters the ecosystem, Yoshi enters the ecosystem, they’re able to stick around because they’re incentivized to stick around.
Yeah, the whole idea is that it shouldn’t be economically viable to unstake and sell the token because you will miss out on so many great deals. Right, yeah. Okay, this is wonderful.
This is a very good strategy, I think, in play that you have here. Now, zooming out a little bit and just talking about the ecosystem in general, there are many exciting trends and I think there’s a trend today in Web3, but what are the kinds of trends or developments that you feel very excited about currently? I think there are a couple of exciting developments. I think the whole AI narrative, even though it’s not matured because there’s so much, and excuse me for using this word bullshit in the industry around AI, that there is a focus and a lot of innovation on AI is good.
There is a lot of saturation, a lot of projects doing AI, but it also means there’s a lot of experimenting and a lot of innovation, and maybe we cannot use all of it, but we can use some of it, and that’s already progress. And I’m very excited about that because the field of AI is just so exciting and promising, and we want to contribute to that with valuable data, which is still a very undervalued concept, right? So super excited about that. Tokenization of real-world assets, I’m super hyped about because, look, many of the challenges that we faced is around ecosystem collapses in the past, where because of unsustainable yield, like if you don’t know where the yield is coming from, you are the yield, right? Right, yeah.
Exactly. So then with tokenization of RWAs, you actually know where the yield is coming from because there is a physical asset, something that sometimes you can touch, or at least sometimes there is a twin of it somewhere off-chain. So you know that there is actual value, it’s kind of a collateral.
And that helps to mature the industry a little bit more because there’s more sustainability in the funds that go around between ecosystems. Right. Yeah, I think what you said about how, you know, AI and its advent is very exciting currently, and the way it’s sort of progressing, you know, you have to be able to cut through the BS and be able to really see, but there are a lot of interesting, there’s a lot of interesting progress that is being made.
Absolutely, absolutely. I think there’s way too much focus on large language models. Yeah.
And large language models, don’t get me wrong, they’re absolutely exciting. I was very hyped when OpenAI introduced ChatGPT. I’m sure many more people with me.
Yeah. But people treat it as that’s AI. AI is LLMs, and that’s it.
You know, it’s- Yeah, they don’t look beyond that. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
It’s generative AI. We have videos that we can create with prompts, images that we can create with prompts and music. So everything is generative AI.
But AI for businesses, it’s around supply chain optimization, working more efficiently, customer support, right? There’s so many more use cases for AI that sound a little bit more boring, but solve actual problems like immediately for organizations, but even individuals, governments, that also require the data and that also need to be looked into. So when I see a project that’s really focused on, in Web3, that really focuses on something, again, LLM, I’m like, ah, it’s such a shame, you know, because there is so much more opportunity out there. And that’s why we created something with Nuclei that really provides infrastructure for any type of AI.
We just make new AI development easier. And we don’t push our own AI or only push an LLM AI. And that makes it easier for newer, you know, generative AI or any type of AI development to exist in the future.
And this is, that’s what we want to contribute to. Thank you. Wonderful.
Now, you know, this has been a really wonderful conversation and I have learned quite a bit and leaned off you, but I would love to perhaps get your perspective on the kind of challenges that entrepreneurs face. Like, I think all of us have faced challenges, but what would be perhaps your advice for entrepreneurs who are struggling at the moment? Oh, well, that’s quite a question. Yeah.
I mean, kill your darlings, I think is a big one. And I mean, with that is if you have built something, you get attached to it. Like you said, it’s your being.
And we’ve touched upon this earlier in this conversation, right? Right. And I see this with some founders, they build something, it doesn’t work and they hang tight to it, you know? They really want to make it work and they polish it and they bring in some new tech or try something marketing and go. But when something doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.
You kill it and you move on. And yeah, it’s with many things. Like it’s also with people that sunk in a lot of money into something and just want to make it work because they already put so much money into it.
Yeah, the whole idea can’t be like, I invested so much money into it, so I have to make it work. So I invest even more money into it knowing deep inside it will never work. You will only lose more and more money.
So at some point you have to stop. And it’s the same with development of a product or a service. Like when you feel like I might need to pivot, you try something, you try quickly, you feel quickly, you move on.
Yeah, move quickly, break things and pivot fast if you think something is not working. Yeah. Right, you know what you said is actually something that I really understand and empathize with because a lot of entrepreneurs tend to fall in love with their own, like all of us are in love with our own ideas, but we kind of fall in love with what we’ve created so much and so hard that we lose perspective.
And you keep thinking that, okay, it’ll work and you waste a lot of time. You need to sort of just incorporate the feedback that you’re receiving and perhaps move in that direction. Exactly, and that’s why it’s also important to have trusted mentors or advisors around you.
And this is like a double-edged sword because I know how hard it is to find people that you can trust and that are also senior enough that they can actually provide you valuable advice. Because if you start as an entrepreneur, everyone around you is gonna tell you how to do it. And 99% of them are gonna be wrong because these are people that have a full-time, comfy job and they will tell you how to be an entrepreneur while they haven’t been an entrepreneur at all, you know? But there are people out there that will tell you advice that sounds and it’s safe and that you should listen to.
So as an entrepreneur, like one of the most important things is to not do it alone. Because like you said, like once you get working on something and you get attached to it, you get tunnel vision. You cannot see around you anymore and you will not be able to find that sensory input to discover like, this is not gonna work.
You need someone that you trust around you that says like, hey, stop for a moment, this is not the way. And so that’s like, I would say that’s like the second most important thing like to kill your darling, have someone trusted around you. Yeah, that’s a wonderful way of putting it.
A tad morbid, but wonderful nevertheless, because it’s shocking enough to kind of remember. We can find a better way to phrase it, I’m sure. But no, but I think this is good, right? It’s shocking and something shocking kind of stays with you.
Exactly. Wonderful. So Amit, this has been a very, very wonderful conversation.
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed myself, but we are really out of time. I would love to ask you this one question that I ask everybody who comes on the show. You made a leap from Web 2 to Web 3 and there are several people who are perhaps looking to do the same and they are still a little wary, a little intimidated like a bigger enterprises.
What would be your suggestions, perhaps one or two suggestions for them for them to start living on blockchain? That’s a very cool question. And the truthful answer is that not everyone is cut out for industry. Like I mentioned before, when I joined Web 3, I felt at home.
But I also had employees that came from traditional backgrounds that entered the space and joined the company. And then after a couple of months realized, it’s like, wow, this is so not for me. And then they left.
Yeah. And I think you have to see it like when you immigrate into another country. If you feel like you wanna move to another country, you’re not going to go on a holiday for a couple of days and then be like, oh, that’s the country where I wanna live in, right? You need to experience it.
You need to live in it for a while, do day-to-day things and see if you like the food, the public transport, the people, the culture, et cetera. And I think it’s the same for Web 3 industry. Like if you’re unsure, you gotta find the way to experience it on a part-time basis or something without burning ships behind you, without leaving a job behind that you cannot get back to.
Because yeah, it’s just not for everyone. The industry, it’s a very free industry where everyone speaks their mind, it’s anonymous, it’s moved incredibly quickly. And you need to love that.
You need to love that pace and you need to love that culture. Yeah, you need to fall in love with being proven wrong, I think, and just moving fast. Yeah, those are like hallmarks perhaps of Web 3. And as you said, even I believe not every industry is for everyone.
So obviously even Web 3 is perhaps not for everyone. But if you are intrigued, then the suggestions Matt has given are wonderful. And I love the analogy that you gave that if you decide to move to another country, you’re just not gonna decide on the basis of a holiday that, okay, this is the place I’m gonna move to.
You’re gonna have to check out the nitty gritties. Exactly, and what I meant by that specifically is like buying a token and being part of a community, that’s a holiday. And taking a part-time job in whatever capacity, even for a few hours per week, you can start to feel the pace, like the culture, how things are really working.
Because I have employees that started as a community member then they joined the company and they were like, wow, it’s so vastly different than I expected. And they were part of the community for years, right? So that’s like they had a holiday and now they’re actually gonna live in the country. Yeah, right.
Wonderful, thank you so much, Matt, once again for taking all the time to speak to me today. This has been a wonderful conversation. Likewise, likewise.
Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it too, thank you so much, yeah. Any parting thoughts before we wrap this up? Yeah, just, I mean, okay, let me think about that.
Any parting words? Yeah, my parting words would be, keep an eye on what we’re doing. We’re moving very fast, many exciting things coming. And if anyone wants to discuss some of the things that I’ve said, find me on Twitter or on Telegram.
You can always tag me in one of the public groups and I will for sure answer you. Lovely, this is a wonderful way for our listeners to get involved in what you’re building. All the best for your vision, Matt, and I’m rooting for you, I’m rooting for the product.
What you’re building is already very pertinent, but I think even in the coming days, it’ll become even more important. Thank you so much.