Web3 Talks is a web3 podcast where founders of top crypto projects share the backstage perspective of their work and the lessons they learned along the way.
Join 1,500+ web3 founders, devs & operators who subscribe to Web3 Talks.
Hosted by Mac Budkowski.
#48: Henri Stern, Co-Founder & CEO @ Privy | How they built a tool that brings web2-caliber UX to web3 products
Henri is an ex-research scientist at Protocol Labs. He Co-Founded Privy, which provides web3 projects such as Friend.tech, t2 & Shibuya with seamless onboarding & embedded wallets. In this episode, we dive into the early MVPs of Privy, learn how it works under the hood, how they managed to design such as smooth UX & more.
#47: Anjali Young, Co-Founder & CCO @ Collab.Land | How they built a community management tool used by over 50,000 communities
Collab.Land is a tool for managing web3 communities and bridging them to Discord and Telegram. It has already been used by 50k+ communities and 8M+ wallets. Today we’re talking with Anjali Young, Co-Founder & CCO of Collab.Land, who shares their project’s story. *** Follow Web3 Talks on Twitter: https://twitter.com/web3talks/ Check kiwinews - a portal with news & content for web3 builders co-founded by Mac: https://kiwinews.xyz/ Reach out to Mac if you want to reach European devs: mac at web3talks.xyz *** TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Teaser about Collab.Land's app marketplace 00:56 Intro 02:41 Abridge's first product, pivots & Collab.Land as a hackathon idea 06:48 Early days of Collab.Land during the COVID pandemic 12:07 How did they "sell" Collab.Land to communities 15:50 Cooperation with Axie Infinity 17:54 How they transitioned from a crypto-native tool to a mass-market tool 28:27 How they designed the marketplace and what kind of Collab.Land apps are already out there 35:51 What's their plan if Farcaster or Lens get more popular 40:07 Why they created their token, how they designed its airdrop and what's the utility 49:47 Biggest surprises when building Collab.Land 57:27 Where people can learn more about Collab.Land
Support Web3 Talks via Gitcoin grant + info about the new episode
Our Gitcoin Grants page: https://explorer.gitcoin.co/#/round/10/0x2871742b184633f8dc8546c6301cbc209945033e/0x2871742b184633f8dc8546c6301cbc209945033e-322
We are back (+ why there were no episodes for some time)
Web3 Talks is back! Links I mentioned: Library of web3 startup lessons: https://goldmine3.xyz/ Web3 startup I'm building with my Co-Founder Tim: https://kiwinews.xyz/
#46: Tim Boeckmann, Co-Founder & CEO @ Mailchain | How they built a privacy-first web3 e-mail protocol that lets you communicate between different blockchains
Mailchain is basically a web3 email. It provides a web app that lets you send your emails as if you used Gmail or Hotmail. But you send your emails via your wallet, ENS, Lens profile, and other identities you may use. Thanks to that and end-to-end encryption, your emails are 100% private. Today we’re talking with Tim Boeckmann, Co-Founder & CEO of Mailchain, who shares their project’s story. *** Follow Web3 Talks on Twitter:https://twitter.com/web3talks/ Get 15% off your EpicWeb3 conference tickets by using the WEB3TALKS code:https://www.epicweb3.com/ *** TIMESTAMPS: 1:46 Origins of Mailchain 6:01 Why they didn’t decide to put emails on chain 7:56 How Mailchain works 11:51 How the first versions of Mailchain looked like 14:56 How they acquired their first users across NFT artists and collectors? 19:09 How is Mailchain different from XMTP? 25:20 How do they decide which protocols to integrate 28:14 How do they acquire new users now? 30:16 What’s the process for integrating a new partner? 31:59 How do they want to prevent SPAM? 36:02 What’s enclave computing? 38:07 How do they plan to prepare for a scale of billions of users? 41:39 How do they plan to monetize Mailchain? 44:25 What metrics do they follow? 48:28 Why it might be hard to connect your Mailchain email to Gmail 51:08 How would the world of communications look if Mailchain became a household name 56:05 What would Tim build if he wasn’t building Mailchain 1:00:00 Guests ideas
#45: Dee Goens, Co-Founder & COO @ Zora | How they built one of the top NFT platforms used by Coinbase, Gucci, Grimes & thousands of creators
Zora is one of the most popular web3 tools, used by the biggest creators in the NFT space. What were its early days? How they acquired their first users? How have they organized the Base campaign that generated 700,000+ mints? This and much more in our conversation with Dee Goens, Co-Founder & COO @ Zora. *** Follow Web3 Talks on Twitter:https://twitter.com/web3talks/ Get 15% off your EpicWeb3 conference tickets by using the WEB3TALKS code:https://www.epicweb3.com/ Mint free episode NFT (pls share your e-mail address so we can let you know when it gets utility!): https://web3talks.xyz/nfts/ *** TIMESTAMPS: 0:58 Who is Dee Goens, why they started building Zora with Jacob and Tyson and what was the first Zora MVP 05:50 What were the hardest trade-offs at an early stage? 7:18 How they solved their dilemma between staying 100% on-chain and taking care of good UX? 10:46 How Zora acquired their first users? 14:42 How many people work at Zora now? 16:10 How they organized their teams? 18:26 Why they decided to work on a marketplace, NounsDAO builder & API? 20:48 How did they set up a Base campaign that generated 700,000+ mints? 26:01 How does their cooperation with brands look? 33:19 Are they planning Zora Academy for NFT creators? 34:27 Why they invested in Zine, which is a pretty old school content tactic? 40:42 How does Zora acquire new collectors and artists? 47:51 How they want the creator’s life to look in 2030? 54:07 Why they changed their fee structure from 5% for primary sales to a flat fee? 56:58 Mint market share, number of collectors, and other metrics Zora follows 58:32 What would Dee build if he wasn’t building Zora? 1:00:00 What would he fix with his web3 magic wand? 1:02:15 Where can people learn more about Zora?
#44: Matt Galligan, Co-Founder & President @ XMTP | Building a web3 native messaging protocol that lets apps integrate DMs, alerts, and announcements
XMTP is one of the leading web3 messaging protocols. What were the early days of this project? What web3 native features they developed How they built a developer community around their protocol? How did they start handling DMs on Lens? This and much more in our conversation with Matt Galligan, Co-Founder & President @ XMTP. *** Follow Web3 Talks on Twitter: https://twitter.com/web3talks/ Get 15% off your EpicWeb3 conference tickets by using the WEB3TALKS code:https://www.epicweb3.com/ Mint free episode NFT (pls share your e-mail address so we can let you know when it gets utility!): https://web3talks.xyz/nfts/ *** TIMESTAMPS: 01:48 Why they built XMTP 07:45 What were the early days of XMTP? 10:11 How they acquired their first users? 15:00 How XMTP built a partnership with Lenster? 17:07 How does XMTP work? 20:08 What were the hardest tradeoffs in the early days? 25:57 What web3-native features does XMTP have? 32:29 What’s conditional deliverability? 35:29 What are the most interesting apps built on top of XMTP? 40:03 Why most wallets still haven’t integrated DMs? 43:17 Let’s say it’s 2030 - how does web3 messaging look? 48:47 Most important metrics and factors for XMTP? 50:15 How do they track developers’ happiness? 50:52 Biggest surprises when building XMTP? 52:57 What would Matt fix about web3 with his magic wand? 54:24 What would Matt build if he wasn’t building XMTP? 57:07 Where you can learn more about XMTP
#43: Julien Genestoux, Founder & CEO @ Unlock Protocol | From the first NFT memberships tool in 2018 to a protocol that’s being used by hundreds of projects for ticketing, token-gating & subscription
Julien has been building tools for membership NFTs since 2018, long before the NFT boom. What were the early days of the NFT market? How dogfooding helped them to acquire their first users? How they organized ticketing with Unlock for EthCC? What they've learned from running a DAO program? This and more in our conversation with Julien Genestoux, Founder & CEO @ Unlock Protocol. *** Follow Web3 Talks on Twitter: https://twitter.com/web3talks/ Get 15% off your EpicWeb3 conference tickets by using the WEB3TALKS code:https://www.epicweb3.com/ Mint free episode NFT (pls share your e-mail address so we can let you know when it gets utility!): https://web3talks.xyz/nfts/ *** TIMESTAMPS 0:59 Who is Julien Genestoux and what does Unlock Protocol do 3:21 Julien's experience with RSS & Medium 5:42 Early Unlock MVPs 7:56 How does NFT expiration work? 9:13 How they've been educating people about NFTs since 2018 14:37 How Unlock acquired their first users? 16:32 How they came up with the idea of rebranding NFTs 17:48 What's their process of coming up with UX-friendly solutions like wallet-less airdrops 21:56 Message from OrangeDAO 23:17 How their ticketing partnership with EthCC worked 27:55 Why crypto subscriptions aren't widely adopted yet 32:34 How they transformed part of their operations into a DAO 38:24 What have they learned from running a Grants program 43:02 How they managed their token's value dropping during the bear market 45:58 What kind of metrics do they follow 47:49 How they world of memberships would look like if Unlock succeeded 49:49 Biggest surprises when building Unlock 52:12 What would he build if he wasn't building Unlock 53:42 Where you can learn more about Unlock 53:56 Guests ideas
#42: Stefan George, Co-Founder & CTO @ Gnosis | The OG team, which created Safe & CowSwap and has been building on Ethereum since 2014, working on the #2 most decentralized chain in the space
Stefan George is one of the most OG builders in the space. How was it building on Ethereum in 2014? Why they pivoted from their initial idea? How an ICO inspired them to build Safe? Why it later transformed into a DAO? How Gnosis Chain became the #2 most decentralized chain in the space? And why you used it without even knowing it? This and more in our conversation with Stefan George, Co-Founder & CTO of Gnosis. *** Follow Web3 Talks on Twitter: https://twitter.com/web3talks/ Meet Stefan at the EpicWeb3 conference and get 15% off your tickets by using the WEB3TALKS code:https://www.epicweb3.com/ Mint free episode NFT (pls share your e-mail address so we can let you know when it gets utility!): https://web3talks.xyz/nfts/ *** TIMESTAMPS 0:38 What’s Gnosis and how Stefan started working on it 3:28 Why it was hard to build on Ethereum in 2014 and how sharing the office with Ethereum Foundation helped them to keep up with the chain's development 5:18 Why they pivoted from building prediction markets and how multi-sig got designed to help with managing funds from ICOs 9:40 What was Safe’s MVP, and how have they been taking care of the UX to make it usable for as many people as possible 12:55 First users who haven’t even contacted the Gnosis team before they started their product 14:25 Why have they spun off such a popular product as Safe to a SafeDAO and how did it look 19:51 Why have they decided to bet on their own chain, and how does Gnosis Chain work 25:08 How Gnosis Chain got to 140k validators and became the #2 most decentralized chain in the space 28:00 What’s the geographical mix of the Gnosis Chain ecosystem 29:04 Three great apps DeFi that have been built on Gnosis Chain 36:00 Which of these apps can you use today 40:01 What are the most important metrics for the Gnosis Chain project 42:38 What zk & privacy capabilities they’re working on 47:06 What surprised Stefan the most during these 10+ years of building in crypto? 50:33 What would Stefan George build if the wasn’t building Gnosis 53:20 What would Stefan fix with his web3 magic wand? 57:48 What are Stefan’s favorite web3 projects? 1:00:00 Where can you learn more about Gnosis? 1:01:38 Stefan’s guests' ideas
#41: Nat Emodi, Co-Founder & CEO @ Highlight | Building a tool that lets creators easily launch NFT collections and design token-gated experiences on their websites
ANNOUNCEMENTS: # 1: Episode's free NFT mint (just add your e-mail address there so I can reach you with info about NFT's utility :)): https://mint.highlight.xyz/641213a0d86b3081aa51c5b7 # 2: EpicWeb3 conference ticket giveaway: https://twitter.com/epicweb3/status/1635215372180770816 # 3: Web3 Talks Smoothie page (upvotes much appreciated!): https://smoothie.so/project/21e8v93z TIMESTAMPS: 0:44 Info about the EpicWeb3 conference 1:50 3 small announcements 3:18 Nat's lessons from working at Square & DoorDash and why he started working on Highlight 7:23 Why Square in 2015 was doing a lot of explorations and what Nat learned from Jack Dorsey 10:00 What was the Highlight MVP and why targeting non-crypto natives was a mistake 15:45 How they acquired their first users and how Product Hunt was surprisingly effective 16:58 Why token-gating was a hard problem for established creators and how they decided to solve it 25:00 Why is Nat not bothered about competing with Zora & Manifold 27:27 Favorite Nat's NFT use cases 30:00 Most interesting token-gating examples & bookclub 2.0 33:15 What kind of help can bigger creators expect from the Highlight team 35:57 What kind of partners are they looking for 38:00 Most important metrics they follow 39:35 What assumptions they had were proven wrong and why educating people about digital ownership is so important 42:25 Why new wallets might help to teach people about NFT ownership 44:35 What would Nat build if he wasn't building Highlight 45:10 Why would he make people focus more on use cases than tech 47:07 Where people can learn more about Highlight 48:34 Nat's guests' ideas
Genesis Talk - Open Edition
Mint "Genesis Talk" here: https://zora.co/collections/0xf66f4e9667edb65fd7306c0711cb8fe66450419e
#40: Alex Salnikov, Co-Founder & CSO @ Rarible | From a napkin MVP in 2019 to one of the leading community-centric NFT marketplaces & protocols
Alex has been building Rarible since 2019, when most people haven't even heard about NFTs. What were the industry's early days? Why slick design helped them to acquire the first users? How did issuing a token change how they operate (and why they weren't ready for that)? How do they plan to compete in a market dominated by OpenSea, Blur & LooksRare? Relax and listen to our in-depth conversation. *** If you want to buy tickets for the EpicWeb3 conference in Lisbon, check out: https://www.epicweb3.com/ and use the WEB3TALKS promo code to get a 15% discount. *** Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/web3talks Follow Alex & Mac: https://twitter.com/insider0x https://twitter.com/MacBudkowski *** 0:40 EpicWeb3 promo code 1:48 What's Rarible and what role they plan in the NFT space 2:46 How trading experiences & building exchange products inspired Alex to start Rarible with his Co-Founders in 2019 7:47 What were the early days of Rarible & how being specific helped them to design the first MVP - NFT form 10:42 How having a slick website & curating the best content helped them to acquire their first users back when NFTs were much less popular 14:00 Why from November 2019 to Summer 2020, growing Rarible was a smooth sailing 16:10 How NFT & DeFi summer resulted in 30X volume growth in 3 months 17:50 How issuing a $RARI token opened the company to a community and why they were not ready to operate that way 20:14 How they reorganized their community-centric operations in 3 iterations to focus and work more efficiently 23:34 How they plan to compete in an NFT market dominated by OpenSea, LooksRare & Blur 28:47 How Rarible acquires NFT marketplace users 29:47 Why Rarible is a strong promoter of creators' royalties 33:42 What metrics do they follow in trading & protocol businesses 34:55 How communities provide liquidity to their own NFT marketplaces 36:33 What are Alex’s favorite NFT collections 38:24 Why the web3 UX might be a feature, not a bug 41:57 Why having to learn something new can be fun! 42:52 Why would Alex build social apps if he wasn’t buildwasn'trible 46:33 Why Alex would fix coordination 47:20 Where to learn more about Rarible 48:05 Guests ideas from Alex
#39: Ayush Ranjan, Co-Founder & CEO @ Huddle01 | From a hackathon idea to the leading web3 audio & video communication toolkit
Huddle01 quickly became the leading web3 audio/video communication toolkit. How it all started? What helped them acquire 16k+ users? Why they're so excited about Stage 3 of their development plans? Ayush Ranjan, Co-Founder & CEO of Huddle01, shares a deep backstage perspective of their company. *** If you want to buy tickets for the EpicWeb3 conference in Lisbon, check out: https://www.epicweb3.com/ and use the WEB3TALKS promo code to get a 15% discount. *** Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/web3talks Follow Ayush & Mac: https://twitter.com/ranjan3118 https://twitter.com/MacBudkowski TIMESTAMPS: 00:38 Special announcement & promo code 2:13 What is Huddle01, what problems does it solve, and how it started thanks to a hackathon 6:58 Why the name "Huddle01"? 7:40 Why they wanted to target the education market, and why they pivoted to a crypto-native audience 9:28 How login via MetaMask & NFT avatars helped them to acquire their first users 12:50 How token-gated meetings helped them to accelerate growth 14:10 How Pudgy Penguins use Huddle01 15:29 What was the process for developing Android & iOS apps & why was the UX challenging 18:10 How long has it taken to build web & mobile apps, and what was the process 20:01 Why they started with a Huddle01 app and now expand to SDK that helps to integrate audio/video chat in other apps and the upcoming Real-Time Communications protocol 25:10 Why is documentation the cornerstone of DevRels, and what's their approach to hackathons, rewarding devs & building micro-communities 28:00 Why it's important to promote your own tech team among developers instead of giving the job to marketers 29:30 Why "minutes spent on meetings "is their most important metric, and what other things do they track 34:22 How Huddle01 Real-Time Communications Protocol can replace AWS & Google Cloud 39:05 Since Zoom is already facing strong competition from Google & Microsoft, how is Huddle01 planning to compete in the long run 42:40 What surprised Ayush the most during the development of Huddle01 45:45 What 4 layers of web3 projects would Ayush consider if he wasn't building Huddle01? 46:53 What are his favorite projects? 49:15 What would he fix with his web3 magic wand 49:48 Where people can learn more about Huddle01
#38: Colin Armstrong, Founder @ Paragraph | How they combined web2 & web3 features to create a Substack alternative that’s already used by over 5k creators
Colin Armstrong has been in crypto since 2011 and has spent years working at Coinbase and Google. He built Paragraph to create a more neutral and web3-friendly alternative to Substack. The project has already amassed 5k+ creators and 100k+ subscribers, and Colin shares how they made it happen. >>> Never miss an episode and check how Paragraph works in practice by subscribing to our newsletter: https://paragraph.xyz/@kanfa <<< TIMESTAMP: 0:38 How to make sure you get info about the new web3 talks episodes 1:27 Why Paragraph is a great example of web2.5 Substack 2:22 How Colin’s experience at mining Bitcoin in 2011, building decentralized Kickstarter in 2014, working at Coinbase with the founder of Litecoin, spending 5 years at Google, and being dissatisfied with Substack led him to build Paragraph 13:37 What were the most interesting Paragraph use cases Colin has seen so far 16:24 How do they manage to ship features so fast, and why waitlist doesn’t make sense in most products 19:40 How do they decide what to include on their roadmap 21:12 Why they’ve been integrating with web3 social and how it works in practice 23:17 How they acquired their first 10 users via cold outreach on Twitter, and why they didn’t implement any crypto functionalities in v1 25:16 What they’ve been doing to acquire 5k+ users and how they used the market situation to their advantage 28:40 How do they measure success in their product and why just looking at the number of writers or readers wouldn’t work 30:34 What do they do to protect newsletters from landing in the spam box 33:09 What are their plans for integrating wallets and why is infra not ready for it yet 36:43How does wallets x Paragraph x Farcaster integration work technically and why do they use Searchcaster 39:20 How a developer built a streaming payment with Superfluid on top of Paragraph without needing any permission 40:51 How getting developers to build on top of their APIs was easier than he thought 44:13 Why choosing the right feature set for their niche was so hard and why web3 UX & e-mail limitations led to design challenges 47:10 What would Colin build if he wasn’t building Paragraph 50:00 Why would he get rid of airdrop hunters and speculators with his web3 magic wand and add new useful dapps with great UX 52:33 Colin’s favorite web3 projects (spoiler alert: he mentions Farcaster) 56:00 Where can you learn more about Paragraph 57:01 What other builders would be a great fit for the podcast
#37: Olly Wilson, Co-Founder @ SimpleHash | Building a multichain NFT API that’s used by projects such as Phantom & Rainbow
SimpleHash is one of the most powerful NFT APIs in the space. It's being used by wallets, portfolio trackers & web3 games. Olly Wilson came to the pod to share the backstage perspective of their ultra fast growth. Timestamps: 0:38 What is SimpleHash 1:39 How their Co-Founder got tired of building back-end infra for an NFT project and decided to start SimpleHash 2:47 Why is indexing NFTs across many chains so hard? 5:25 How being in YC helped them to acquire first users 6:22 Why they ditched the idea of an NFT search tool 7:10 What's their process for supporting and integrating new chains 9:34 Why do they go very deep into NFT data and specialize to compete with other NFT APIs 11:40 How do they solve the corrupted media problems in NFTs 12:37 How they designed the NFT Spam Score to protect wallets from unsolicited and scammy airdrops 15:11 What are their most important metrics? 16:20 Why is everyone on their team involved in customer support, and how do they decide what features to implement? 19:20 Why Olly likes the OG NFT projects 20:50 Olly's thoughts on utility NFTs 21:55 Why joining YC was worth it 23:35 What growth & tech challenges do they see on the horizon? 24:49 How do they take care of their business's infra side, and why is 850M indexed NFTs still a small dataset? 26:00 What would he build if he weren't building SimpleHash? 26:20 Why removing the scams would be the target of his magic wand? 27:00 Why Ethereum Merge is the most mind-blowing project that Olly has seen 28:26 Why he likes the crypto twitter's dark humor 29:20 Where to find out more about SimpleHash
#36: Gilbert Leung, Co-Founder @ 0xFrens | From working in Google to building a tool that leverages the strengths of web3 to develop deeper connections in online communities
0xFrens is a matchmaking tool used by web3 communities such as: Developer DAO, Jericho & Skylab. Gilbert - Co-Founder of the project - spent almost a decade at Google, then started his social podcasting startup, and in 2022, he started working on 0xFrens with the rest of the AGMI team. 0:37 What’s 0xFrens, and how it helps communities to build relationships between members 1:40 How talking with communities & DAOs inspired them to start 0xFrens 4:30 What has Gilbert been doing at Google for almost ten years & what was his previous social podcasting startup about 5:25 How 0xFrens plays into web3 strengths, what was their MVP, and why they pivoted 7:17 What insights from users surprised them, and how they iterated based on this information 9:05 Why online coffee chats can be awkward and how 0xFrens addresses that 12:15 How they acquired their first users and how they do it (and why “web3 lunch club” wasn’t a good idea) 14:35 What metrics do they follow to track product engagement, and why does choosing the right community to work with matter the most 17:54 How Kudos might become important for building a reputation in a community 22:08 Which lessons from Google & previous startup are the most useful 25:30 Why the biggest growth & tech challenges on the horizon are related to web2 users 27:10 Why solving reputation-related challenges is omnipresent both in web2 and web3 28:08 Why it’s so hard to face market feedback and make decisions based on the data 31:45 Why would Gilbert build onboarding-related tools if he wasn’t building 0xFrens 33:08 Why would he fix seed phrases with his web3 magic wand 34:57 Why web3 ecosystem is so mind-blowing 38:24 What made him smile while using 0xFrens 39:33 Where you can learn more about 0xFrens 40:31 Guests ideas
#35: Josef, Co-Founder @ PWN | How a bank denying him a mortgage inspired them to build a P2P lending platform where you can use any token as collateral
PWN is a decentralized pawnshop where you can use any tokens as collateral. But it’s just the beginning. Their ultimate goal is to provide crypto loans for decades so that you will never need to sell your crypto. I spoke with Josef, PWN’s Co-Founder, who shared their story, challenges & growth strategies. TIMESTAMPS: 0:38 PWN as a decentralized pawnshop 1:35 How not being able to get a mortgage & risk of DeFi liquidations inspired Josef to start PWN 9:30 Why they decided to give more protection to borrowers by not baking up loan liquidations from the start 13:43 How do they plan to implement filtering to protect the tool from SPAM offers while still keeping the platform open 17:31 How they designed their smart contract to support ERC20, ERC721 & ERC1155 tokens 19:16 Why it’s so hard to develop everything in a crypto-native manner, and they decided to make some shortcuts at this stage 21:10 How they acquired their first users and how they expanded from the friends & family stage by breaking the “stay focused” rule and cooperating with other communities 25:30 How will their tech let GameFi players borrow money on their in-game assets and still use them in the game 27:08 How they let you borrow money to buy NFT assets in a mortgage-like manner 29:19 Most interesting collaterals on PWN - Nation3 DAO, Aavegotchis & Beeple’s $250k art piece 31:40 Trade-offs: openness vs. niche, utilizing third parties vs. decentralized operations 32:50 Why would Josef stay at EF if he wasn’t building PWN 33:30 Why MakerDAO blew his mind 35:20 Why would he make all grifters disappear with his web3 magic wand 37:55 Where should people go to learn more about PWN 39:00 Guests ideas
#34: Evgeny Yurtaev, Co-Founder & CEO @ Zerion | How building in DeFi since 2016 led to launching a wallet that generated 80k+ active users in less than 6 months
Zerion is one of the OG crypto companies, operating since 2016. It started as a tool to do fundraising through token sales. Then it transformed into a DeFi exploration tool where you could track & invest in different assets. Then it expanded into NFTs & other web3 assets. And a few months ago, they also joined the wallet space and already got 80k+ users. What inspired them to start? Why they made so many pivots? And why they're confident that they can compete in a hard wallet space? I spoke with Evgeny, Zerion's Co-Founder, who shared the backstage perspective of the last 6 years of running Zerion. TIMESTAMPS: 0:38 What’s Zerion and why they pivoted a lot since 2016 2:20 Evgeny experience at Google, with chatbots and with a crypto trading app that got 1M+ downloads 3:59 Why meeting Vitalik inspired them to start Zerion 6:10 How they started as a smart contract developers’ team 7:10 Why the 2019 bear market prompted them to pivot to build a token tracking aggregator 8:30 How a blog post about fundraising inspired them to go to San Francisco to earn funding and get the first users 10:33 Why they entered the aggregators & wallets space, and why are these markets less crowded than Mac thinks 14:05 Why there are so few wallets on the market and why the timing is so important 16:45 Which use cases do they cover with their wallet 19:05 How they designed the wallet so it’s useful both for beginners and more advanced users (Web3 Citizens) 20:52 What was the hardest part about making the wallet multi-chain 21:47 How they want to battle MetaMask and why web3 helps them to do it 25:22 What web3-native marketing tactics such as NFT collections and community-building let them acquire tens of thousands of users 28:32 How does their NFT collection that changes based on your wallet activity work 30:45 Why on-chain information can be a goldmine for marketers 33:42 The vision behind their API, why it’s been used by Rainbow Wallet and StakeDAO, and why having it centralized might be okay 36:05 Why wallet can become an e-mail on steroids 38:19 Why open architecture of web3 makes it better for users 39:35 Why building the wallet was the hardest decision Evgeny had to make while running Zerion 40:45 What would Evgeny build if he wasn’t building Zerion 41:25 Why would he fix privacy with his magic web3 wand 42:25 Which web3 projects he found interesting 45:40 Where to learn more about Zerion 46:30 Ideas for other web3 builders
#33: Ivan Liljeqvist, Co-Founder @ Moralis | From 0 to 90+ employees in less than 2 years - how they've grown web3 infra business
Moralis joined a pretty crowded web3 infra market in 2020, and it's already become an important player serving projects such as MetaMask and Polygon. How did they do it? I talk with Ivan, Moralis Co-Founder, who shares the backstage perspective of their last 2 years. If you don't want to miss our episodes, subscribe to our Substack and get an e-mail whenever the new episode comes out: https://web3talks.substack.com/ TIMESTAMPS: 0:38 Who is Ivan & Moralis, and what got him interested in blockchain 3:52 How their web2 experience inspired them to start Moralis 4:40 Why they entered a crowded infrastructure space with many already established players such as Alchemy, Infura & QuickNode 7:25 Why it’s hard to bootstrap infrastructure business and how they leveraged their online education platform to grow it 9:29 How not thinking too much helped them to start and grow 11:29 How their SDK & APIs help developers to better understand on-chain events 14:51 Why their onboarding process has quite a lot of friction 17:50 How they build strong relations with developers via free education, hackathons & Discord 20:27 How their YouTube channel & hackathon helped to acquire their first users 21:30 How they managed to grow the 100% remote company from 0 to 90+ people in 2 years 24:44 How being upfront about their way of working helped them to recruit the right people 27:08 Why cutting down features was hard and what they learned on the way 28:44 How do they decide what to include in their SDKs 29:48 What does he think about centralization risks by using centralized infrastructure 34:03 Why team building was the biggest lesson he learned from running Moralis 37:45 What would he fix about web3 with the magic wand 39:40 What has been the most interesting project he has seen 42:26 Why craziness of the crypto industry makes Ivan laugh 44:14 Where to learn more about Moralis 44:32 Guest ideas
![Mac Budkowski, Host @ Web3 Talks | How to explain what your web3 product does and convince users to try it [Builder’s Guide]](https://d3t3ozftmdmh3i.cloudfront.net/production/podcast_uploaded_episode400/19271842/19271842-1668367863325-59d3d1420c198.jpg)
Mac Budkowski, Host @ Web3 Talks | How to explain what your web3 product does and convince users to try it [Builder’s Guide]
Hey everyone, today I got the info about something I've been working on for a long time. Twitter link (all Likes & RTs much appreciated!): https://twitter.com/MacBudkowski/status/1587525519398129665?s=20&t=6erYSQKMxrLJMJGD6POfXg Website link: https://macbudkowski.com/how-to-explain-web3-products/ Web3 Talks Substack: https://web3talks.substack.com/
こちらもおすすめ
@narumi のつぶやき
声低おじさんの独り言 お便り募集中 https://forms.gle/mFNwFusdE6eszbMU6
jkondoの声日記
ポッドキャストプラットフォーム「LISTEN」や、GPSトラッキングサービス「IBUKI」、物件メディア「物件ファン」、京都の宿とコワーキング施設「UNKNOWN KYOTO」を運営する近藤淳也（jkondo）が、朝の散歩をしたりしながら、日々の出来事や考えたことを語ります。
楽しいラジオ「ドングリFM」
ブロガーとして人気の2人が話すポッドキャスト番組です。最近話題のニュース、日常に役立つ面白ネタなどを話します。国内・海外のIT事情に興味ある人にオススメの内容になっています。 ・お便りは https://goo.gl/p38JVb まで ・詳しいリンクはこちら https://linktr.ee/dongurifm ・リスナーコミュニティ「裏ドングリ」は以下からどうぞ https://community.camp-fire.jp/projects/view/206637 https://donguri.fm/membership/join BGMと最後の締めの曲はフリーBGM・音楽素材「 http://musmus.main.jp 」より。
LISTEN NEWS
LISTENからの最新情報をお届けする公式ポッドキャストです。
近藤淳也のアンノウンラジオ
株式会社はてな創業者であり現在もITの第一線で働く近藤淳也が、京都の宿UNKNOWN KYOTOにやって来る「好きなことを仕事にしている人」を深堀りすることで、世の中の多様な仕事やキャリア、生き方・働き方を「リアルな実例」として紐解いていきます。 . 【ホスト：近藤淳也】 株式会社OND代表取締役社長、株式会社はてな取締役、UNKNOWN KYOTO支配人、NPO法人滋賀一周トレイル代表理事、トレイルランナー。 2001年に「はてなブログ」「はてなブックマーク」などを運営する株式会社はてなを創業、2011年にマザーズにて上場。その後2017年に株式会社ONDを設立し、現在もITの第一線で働く。 株式会社OND: https://ond-inc.com/ . 【UNKNOWN KYOTO】 築100年を超える元遊郭建築を改装し、仕事もできて暮らせる宿に。コワーキングやオフィスを併設することで、宿泊として来られる方と京都を拠点に働く方が交わる場所になっています。 1泊の観光目的の利用だけではなく、中長期滞在される方にも好評いただいています。 web: https://unknown.kyoto/ . こちらから本文を読んだりコメントが書けます！ https://listen.style/p/unknownradio
一日一配
声の日記。自分の声で日記を書く、LISTENならではのポッドキャスト。