VCs & Institutional Insights : Building Web3 Ecosystems and Startups
Join Jason Fernandes, Co-Founder, AdLunam as he hosts a session exploring the intersection of traditional finance and decentralized technology with guests Brian Mac Mahon, Founder, Expert DOJO), Matthias Mende, Founder & CEO of Bonuz and Jack Kuveke, Founder of Jabroni Capital. Discover insights on institutional investment trends, community engagement in crypto ventures, and strategies for building sustainable Web3 ecosystems.
DIVIC goes live every Thursday on the AdLunam Twitter page(https://x.com/AdLunamInc).
Transcript
VCs & Institutional Insights: Building Web3 Ecosystems and Startups
SPEAKERS
Jason, AdLunam Inc Co-Founder
Brian Mac Mahon, Founder of Expert DOJO
Matthias Mende, Visionary Founder & CEO of Bonuz
Jack Kuveke, Founder of Jabroni Capital
Jason:
Yeah, hey, everybody Sure, we've fixed the problem. Now let's just wait the two guests to jump in and we'll continue. Sorry about that terrible technical difficulties Right now with Twitter, You okay, I guess let's just get started with everybody over here already. So Brian, why don't you tell us a bit about sort of the work that you do over at Expert DOJO. I know you mentioned 300 investments. Let's get started.
Brian:
Yeah, of course, yeah. So nice to be on always, always good to be on one crypto space. We started about 10 years or so ago in the web2 space, but also with web3 as well. I'm based over in Santa Monica, so right in the hub of where a lot of the original things in web 3 started with EOS and everything else. Can you guys hear me? Okay, yeah, perfect. Okay, good. And then, so yeah, we kind of came up with a thesis which was very much based on the fact that the only investment that really matters is customer investment, and then that just relates as much to web3 as it does to web2, which means that I don't really have any interest in BS projects or companies that are just pumping up even in web2, or whether in web3, I Want to build great projects which the world really needs. And when you do that, you need the whole focus and foundation of that is building this great emotional resonance between the end consumer that's going to use the project and why that transformative impact is really tethered to strong purpose. And then when we can find that, then we really. Happy to put an investment in so that we've done looks at lots of $50,000 checks. We have people all over the world looking for some of the best projects out there, but our best work is definitely when we dig into those projects and then help them scale really quickly using, you know, currency that shows that the consumer really loves what the company is building.
Jason:
No, that's awesome. I mean, how do you guys evaluate, you know, token utility and things like that. You guys invest on a token basis or equity, and how do you all structure that?
Brian:
Usually, we do both. And look, you know, crypto is like any other nascent industry, what happens at the beginning is that the rhetoric of what's supposed to happen is generally very different from what actually happens. So the beauty of tokenization or fractionalization is that it really is maybe one of the greatest revolutions of our time. You know, it allows for folks who could never buy a house to be able to buy a piece of a sink and then another piece of a sink, and then a piece of a chair, and then a piece of a room and then a piece of a house, and suddenly you don't need mortgages anymore. So I think everybody here, like, understands the beauty of it. And then when you take the tokenization, like, add that on top of the fractionalization, now we have this ability to be able to create liquidity and projects. And technically, if we look at it the way it was supposed to be created, which was that it was like airline miles, and we reward people for doing really good things, and then distribute based on a decentralized system that really creates this wonderful community. That's a beautiful story. But what actually happened is a bunch of KOLs just came in and pump and dumped tokens for personal profit, and a bunch of investors pumped and dumped tokens for personal profit. So do we do tokens? Uh huh, we do. We've got plenty of token I'll use in inverted commas investments, and we'll also take equity on projects as well. And but I'm just super aware of the fact that probably 90% of the projects are just bullshit, and there are people pumping tokens so that they can inflate value for personal gain. So I'm very careful to only focus on stuff where there actually is a token need, and that's a tiny percentage of the projects out there.
Jason:
Yeah, you know, it's very easy to sort of say, hey, you know, I want to set up a token. It's almost trivial to create a token from a technological perspective, but imbuing it with value and ensuring that, not only that, the value that's generating the company, it gets accrued to the token, but then also that that is sufficient value to represent, you know, an investment that's worth making, that there's so many levels to that that, you know, you really have to take all the boxes in order for it to really make sense. So, yeah,
Brian:
I don't blame people like folks, will always go for personal gain when they can, like, That's just human nature. But I just don't think people realize that this is maybe one of the greatest decentralized movements that there's ever been. And actually a lot of the tokenization that's happening is kind of destroying the movement from the inside. But, yeah, but it's a super interesting time with all of that being said.
Jack:
Yeah, what's interesting from my perspective. Also, Jack here, I'm back. Everyone.
Jason:
Welcome Jack.
Jack: on cryptocurrency Ico back in:
Jason:
yeah, no. I mean, I thank you for that perspective. Jack, by the way, everybody Jack, he's just the legend of the serial entrepreneur, founders, startup newsletter, Jabroni capital. You know, got you start building Minecraft service, and then went on to do the $35,000,000, $3 million ICO. So, I mean, tell us a bit about sort of your your newsletter, and how that's come about. Because I know, you know, Everybody loves satire, and it's particularly when it comes to the startup scene. I don't think that's even a niche. Everybody's even thought about it.
Jack:
Yeah, so basically, about a year ago, I just was writing serious things on LinkedIn for a consulting business I have on the side, and like most people who post on LinkedIn, I wanted to jump off the roof of a WeWork. I was like, This is fucking terrible. And so I just wrote, like a silly shit post saying that I had a fund called Jabroni capital and made fun of VCs, and it immediately went viral. And so I basically just doubled down writing like as obnoxious and silly things as I could think of from the making fun of venture capitalists, tech founders myself, mostly myself, and started a newsletter that was just kind of making observation about the industry. And what I'm my focus is just like, try and be like the union for tech in VC. So just make fun of everyone like South Park, make fun of both sides, and have fun along the way. There's a lot of great stuff being built in this industry, but there's also just, like, a layer of self seriousness that's kind of laughable. When there's like 20, 23 year old starting companies that make no money but raise a million, raised $20 million which is just, like, objectively hilarious. So I like to just poke fun of the industry. So, so that's just a high level what I do.
Jason: , I bumped into over at Token:
Matthias:
Hello, everyone. I hope the space doesn't crash. Yeah, Jason, I saw you also before in Dubai, and we had a call actually in the start of Bonuz, when you was working with Mario at IBC and you were showing me your growth hacking services back in the day, right? So basically, yeah, long time. So I've been building for a while, and we are now going live on the 15th So basically, what we've been building is a whole ecosystem. So it's not just an app or anything, or anything whatever seen in crypto. It's something really full of purpose and value for the users. Most users, sorry, most founders, they always say this type of things, but with us, when people test it, they actually see it. And we never made a strong marketing because we believe it's better to make the product talk for itself. It's a bigger truth, because, you know, in crypto, I see 99.9% as a failure. And the people are nice. They have nice ideas. But as you guys said earlier, there are 20 old people. They raise money. They have no clue how to build a company, how to run a business. They see first time money, they spend it. They don't know about sustainability. They don't know anything. So it's really a gamble on humans. But yes, what are we doing? So basically, as I said, we are an entire ecosystem, but everything starts with a wallet. So in our core, we are a wallet, but we're not just a wallet. We are a self custodial wallet. We are smart wallet. We run on ERC 437, and we con like we have all the EVM chains, and we have also few more smart contracts which are developed by us and which are going for EIP proposals right now. So these two smart contracts are our USPS, and one of them, we call it on chain social ID. And on chain social ID, it's basically connected directly with the wallet and connected with the dynamic NFT protocol, which is another one. So the on chain ID, it aggregates all the socials, everything of a user and everything. It's optional to put nothing. It's mandatory. Users can put their privacy in our wallet, in our app. Let's call it an app. There is no gas fees for our use cases. So it's a total web two experience. It has a social login. And why we did all of this? What's the outcome, the functionality, the purpose of it? It's to innovate existing products and gamify the real world, meaning, you go to a restaurant, you check in, you take a story of the food. Now you receive a voucher after six hours later from the restaurant, which will give you 10 to 30% discount, depending on maybe your following. And it's not just for influencers. It's for every human, because every human has a value and an influence. And innovation wasn't really used in a way that it upgrades things, because everything, there are agencies, this and that, but everything could be automatic, working. And for this, it needs the power of blockchain and in a frictionless ecosystem where there are no gas fees, even no new users who are new to blockchain and crypto, they won't even see that there's blockchain involved, and I think this was the biggest challenge for us, and it took over two years to build. So that's bonus, in a nutshell, and we're going live on the 15th and very exciting times about to come. Yeah.
Jason:
I mean, you're so right about, that's exciting. I mean, good luck for that launch. I think that you're so right about, you know, a lot of funders, startup founders, rather, managed to raise funds, but they think that, like, that's the most that's the most difficult thing that they have to do, but really the most difficult thing is, is essentially shepherding those funds and essentially being able to actually run the company over a significant amount of time and build it up. And that's sort of the thing that hits you right after you raise the money. It's like, how do you how do you go off and do this? And also, the other part you mentioned about sort of the UI being an issue with blockchain and and how having a wallet and things, it's just so complicated. That's actually something I think even Jack Dorsey was talking about quite a bit with over a square about how crypto really has to be much, much easier to use in order for, you know, people to not worry about getting scammed, you know, and things like that. But let's, let's talk about investments a bit. Brian, let's, let's jump over to you. I mean, I'm curious. Do you have a thought on, you know, what's driving increased interest in office, traditional investors in blockchain or, I mean, that sort of presupposes that there is increased interest. Do you see that happening? Or what do you think it could be attributed to?
Brian:
Yeah, definitely. And I think the last point is kind of important in that, you know, it's one of the biggest challenges in blockchain, crypto, web3, it's just onboarding off ramping, you know, trying to actually get engaged a lot of web2, VCs just don't know how to but the principle of, I mean, If you think about how institutional investors work with web2, they put money in a company, especially if it's pre seed or seed, and then they wait 10 years. And most funds are not billion dollar funds where they're earning a ton of management fees. Most funds are like 10, $20 million funds where the management fees are not going to pay for a Big Mac. So it's a, it's a kind of a shitty model, and then they come to crypto, and they can invest on Monday and get their money on Tuesday. So, so a lot of these things have moved over because they kind of, they kind of think this is insane, but insane in a really good way. I see it as a problem. I see, like, a lot of what's happening within VC and web3 is diametrically opposed to the to what the founder wants to happen. Like, if you think about it, the VCs job is to suck as much liquidity as they possibly can out of the token so they can give returns. The Founders job is to make sure that they have a token that actually creates an incredible ecosystem and is going to fuel that ecosystem, what everybody wants you to hold for as long as possible. So I don't think, I think, firstly, in answer to your question, a ton of VCs have moved are at least augmented web3 on top of web2, like a ton. And there's hardly any VCs in web3 who are saying, Oh, I would much rather move into web two because obviously the model is much shittier, but I think both are broken in their own ways, and what's going to happen is we're going to get to a place in the future where there'll be investments which are put into projects, and some of the investments will go into tokens, and some of the investments will continue, which will go into equity, depending. Depending on which is the better model for the founder and for the ecosystem for the project. And then what will happen is we will, there will be some kind of harmony reached, but we're going to go through a lot of hurricanes before we get to that moment.
Jason:
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think it's definitely like a symbiotic relationship. I mean, I've been on both sides of of both from the investor side and as a founder. And I think, like, I can definitely see where investors are coming from, from the perspective of, you know, managing to try to get liquidity, it's the job is sort of, from a from a founder perspective, is to basically align everybody's incentive and to ensure that So, for example, they assume, really, that any investor that can sell tokens that is possible downward pressure on the token, for example, if there's a TG, unlock, a founder should probably assume that the that the investor is going to send, sell, sell those tokens. I mean, I don't think that they can expect more than that, but they they should just sort of be, be pleased that they have that influx of of capital initially that's able to to give them that, that runway to build, you know, interesting, interesting technology. I mean, it's better, obviously, if they're if
Brian:
yes to no, like, look what happened to portal. Like, look at that project early, look at that project early in the year. Like, the problem is the people who really get hurt are the public investors, because they have no clue what they're doing. So look, I often say that web two is a glorified and pyramid scheme. Web3 is a glorified Ponzi scheme, again. So that was a beautiful project. Like what Portland was building was awesome, but it was really expensive.
Jason:
So I spoke at portal. They pitched us. I was over at NFT technologies. They pitched us and invested, I believe we were in talks to invest as much as a million dollars into them. I don't know what ended up coming off of those jobs.
Brian:
You would have made 20 million. But the problem is all the public holders lost hugely, and now the project is finding it impossible to create the liquidity that they need to go forward. Like all the investors made a ton of money, but all of the everybody in the public markets lost all of their money, and that's what I'm saying, is like, it's not aligned yet, like we're still in a place where I don't know I'm an investor, so I'm like, I put money in projects. I'm just saying that, like we have, we still have a major issue. Most of the problems that we have in projects are being caused by ourselves.
Jason:
But how do you say, how do you say that, though caused by ourselves, as in from an caused by investors are caused by founders that are short sighted.
Brian:
It's caused by the model. So the model says to investors, look, there's no investor, hardly any investors I know that will have a project and will have an unlock. And what like in Portal, every single investor took their unlock. Every single month, investors are still making money on the distributions that they're receiving while the public, while the folks in the public, are still losing money based on the fact that they came in at a higher price, of course. So the whole thing is just very slanted to favor investors. Anyway. I'm not saying tokenization is bad. I'm saying in its current format, it's not helping projects. And what's happening is you're now getting projects who are doing no unlock, and they're coming in on the opposite side of it. So we're moving towards the place where the tokenization is going to get better and it's going to be more favorable to the public who really want to support the projects and the founders who need to make sure that the liquidity is maintained inside the token for it to be successful. And I don't think the answer is, like, going back to my earlier comment, I don't think the answer is that an investor should wait 10 years for a pre seed, seed, web2 company to get to the other end, because that's too long. And I don't think the answer is that an investor should invest on a Monday and, you know, get all of their money back on the Friday and still have 90% of their money being left in a project. Because that's also not the real world, sure.
Jason:
Okay, well, said, Brian. Jack, what do you think about that? I mean, what do you, I mean you've helped a lot of companies raise funds. Sort what are your thoughts on whether the model is broken down?
Jack:
Yeah, I think, like, I couldn't agree more with what Brian said, because, like, the world runs on incentives, right? And when the incentives are set and human beings are just are, like, selfish in nature, all of us, to some degree, like a lot of us, like to pretend like we're Mother Teresa. It's not really realistic for most of us. And so if the system is allows for an investor who's on the inside, many of whom people like Brian, Jason, myself, we know a lot of these people who are sitting in positions where they just like happen to get a job as like an associate or or a partner four or five years ago in the crypto space, they're not exactly Nostradamus or Einstein. But they have insider tracked and they get favorable prices, and then so they are able, like, this was my biggest problem with NFTs, right? So, like, I was in the crypto space, you know, eight or so years ago, and I, you know, I had a big win, and then I saw the downfall, downfall of a cryptocurrency from the inside, from one that I started, launched it right to the bottom. And so I saw the problems firsthand. But then when the NFT craze came about, you had all of these fucking, you know, VCs and partners screaming about how amazing these JPEGs were, knowing firsthand that what they're doing is they're pumping up the price of their ape, then selling it on to retail investors when they know that the market's going to crash in the next 6 to 12 months, and they also are already rich, and they also get fat paychecks. And I do a lot of crypto VCs that are making millions of dollars trading NFT, saying it's going to be the future when these are things that are even more illiquid than tokens, which are already pretty fucking illiquid compared to most markets. And so then when the market crashed, now you have something that goes from being like, you know, at least in tokens, when I got rug pulled in the past, I could get like, 25-30% you know, my token, like, the value of my tokens out, you know, slowly selling day over day. But now we're talking about, like a JPEG that no one wants to buy, that no one cares about anymore, that a bunch of VCs said we're going to be, you know, worth millions upon millions of dollars in the future. But there's no holding these people accountable. And if they're allowed to do that, they're going to do that. And if the model of incentives allow them to get away with that kind of shit, they're going to do that. And so it's the same thing for, you know, with with crypto investments and the token model that Brian's talking about, it just comes down to, like, pure incentives. Like, if you let people do this kind of stuff, they're going to do it. Everyone really would, for the most part. And it just, we have to get better incentives, incentive alignment from top to bottom for everyone involved. To this point, people shouldn't have to wait 10 years to make money, if they make an investment and that profits over the next five like, you know, 10 years, every year over year, it's growing, and there should be some way to make dividends. But also you shouldn't just get to rug pull people immediately. Like, that's just a stupid model. And of course, people are going to abuse it, and they're probably going to abuse it again this morning. Like, I don't really think anything's changing crypto, which is my primary fear. I think we're going to see a lot of the same behavior inevitably in the next crypto Bull Run. It's just gonna happen again. So it's just, it's unfortunate, but we'll have more winners this time, thankfully. But I guarantee we're gonna see the same bullshit happen.
Brian:
You know the terrible thing as well, though, it's just, it's a lot of fun.
Jack:
I know it's so true.
Jason:
You know, speaking of fun guys, I'm curious what you guys think about, you know, I know that this is a topic that's comes up a lot, about meme coins, like, what do you guys thoughts on that? And, you know, people say that they're investing it because it's fun, which I think is really crazy, because it's just like, why do you invest in a meme because it's fun, like, it just, just baffles my mind. Maybe you guys have some thoughts on it.
Brian:
Uh, you go first.
Jack:
I was gonna say. I mean, what's hilarious is, like, out of the top 10 crypto currencies that are on the on coin market cap at any given time that are not meme coins, most of them aren't. Like meme coins, have about as much utility as like, Tron, right? Like, that's kind of the irony of this, like the thing I they have, like, all of these things for the most part, like Cardano, Tron, like a million other fucking top cryptos have they proclaimed utility. They're fighting to have utility. They're fighting to have applications. They had zero real world utility. No one uses them. They have as much utility as Dogecoin. So at a certain point, I'm like, yeah, why not Dogecoin? At least people like it, and there's, like, staking value because it's fun and, like, it's a meme, and people are going to keep pumping it again over again, like Cardano may go nowhere and accomplish nothing, but, you know? And so that the net outcome is the same of Dogecoin accomplishing nothing, but at least it's like money, and you can have a greater return over a shorter period of time, because people go buck wild with it. But, I mean, my opinion is like, why the hell not? None of these cryptos kind of do anything anyway.
Jason:
But yes, it's all almost like, nihilistic. It's almost like, Well, none of these things are gonna matter anyways, who cares? We'll just buy a really cool,
Brian:
you know, that's right, listen, I'm Irish. This is like a normal Saturday evening in an Irish house. This is how we roll. You know, I gotta view on the meme coins, I actually might be changed, like, totally on the meme coins. Like, at the start I was like, This is fucking stupid. Like, would you make any sense at all? But the more I started to think, because I've been around for like, forever, and, you know, I thought back to like, you know, Occupy Wall Street and cyber punks and everything else, and all the movements that came before this. Yes, and like, every single movement was decimated, like, just fucking destroyed by centralized everything and and the people in it were ostracized and killed and pushed out and, like, put in jail and all kinds of bad things done. So it's like, if you fight against the system, you will face horrible circumstances. It's like the Catholic Church talking about hell. You never been there, but, you know, it ain't a fun place to go to, like, that's what they play with. And so, you know, crypto decentralization is like the first movement I've ever seen in my lifetime that's actually winning. That's really the funny thing here, is that it is impossible to win against centralized power, and crypto is winning against centralized power. And the day that Blackrock did their ETF was like the greatest battle that was ever going to be won. And at the beginning, I just didn't fully understand meme coins like I and I've met, I've met shy and a bunch of the guys over it, you know, the Shiva coin, and a bunch of the other coins as well since then. And I kind of got to understand it a bit more, at least in my mind, which is that it's like the ultimate, the ultimate, fuck you. I kind of like that. A bunch of people are saying, You know what, it doesn't have to be a brand. We don't have to be manipulated with some kind of narrative as to why we should buy something. How about we just join a movement to fuck with people? And that movement may turn into something really nice, like that would be cool, but even if it doesn't, the fact that we're here and we're the ones who are directing the narrative, and we're not being manipulated, is a beautiful thing. And the weird thing is, I kind of got down with this over the years, and I thought to myself, actually, I'm okay with this, to the extent that I literally just put 100k into a meme coin, like an hour ago.
Jason:
So I mean, you think, yeah, do you think that that negatively affects, you know, projects with real utility?
Brian:
I mean, no, because you know what, no, like, a community is real utility? What the fuck is real utility? Real utility is when somebody emotionally resonates in a way that they didn't before with something that was introduced to them that they never saw before. Like, that's what it is. It doesn't need to be a rocket, right?
Jack:
I mean, a lot of these meme coins have a like this. You know, the transaction volume and like you the ability to send money, and like the transaction costs on the blockchain is cheaper than Bitcoin. I mean, what's the real utility of Bitcoin? In the end of the day, it's like, not really a store value, but it is something that is truly decentralized, and you can transfer $2 billion in your pocket across the board, without it, when anyone knowing, and it's a hedge against Central currencies. To some degree, it obviously is incredibly volatile, and like, saying it's a pure hedge, silly. But the point is, like, what's the difference between that and Dogecoin? Like, you know, it's like, it's not like Bitcoin. The second Bitcoin becomes really popular, again, transaction costs go through the roof, and people complain about it, like, Dogecoin would be effectively the same thing. It just has a, you know, supply of what, like, 9 trillion or 146 million. But like, what's the real difference between that and Dogecoin? I fail to see the difference in the end of the day, other than just, like, the pure decentralization and like the story of Bitcoin at this point.
Jason:
But isn't there? You know, there's no cap with a number of Dogecoin correct. It's just essentially a constant, like, constantly new tokens are being created.
Brian:
But like, is there a utility to a town? Is there a utility to a village? Is there a utility to a kibbutz? Is there a utility to a city or to a country? There's no fucking utility. There's just a bunch of people who get involved in a place, and they find common interests, and then those common interests turn into something else, and then, normally, it gets all dystopian and stuff.
Jack:
Well, kind of, there is a utility in the town in terms of, like, human beings are really weak, pudgy creatures that don't survive well on the island. So like, if we come together, we survive better.
Brian: hese guys are, like, from the:
Jason:
Yeah, there's a great movie called the gate, eat the rich, the Gamestop story, or something like that. It's on Netflix, and I think it's really, it really is educative. Is that even a word, I don't know. It's educational anyways, in terms of understanding, kind of like the the Phil, the philosoph, the philosophical leanings of the people that I really get into into meme coins. It's sort of where they're coming from. And I think it's almost like, hey, well, you know, if nothing, if all these tokens, as you said earlier, you know, if all these tokens are just, uh, have zero utility anyways, then, then, what difference does it make if I, if I jump into this, into this meme coin like polygon, frankly, has, has just gone from being one of the biggest, you know, chains in the world to almost nothing you mentioned EOS earlier. Yes, this is the same thing, right? Like you, you never hear about them anymore. They're not on it, on the list of any top, you know, developer events, or anything like that. But, yeah, I guess it's, I guess it all comes down to how it gets integrated, by the way. Matthias, what are your thoughts on meme coins?
Matthias: k in the roulette, and it's a:
Jason:
Yeah, and it's always that. That's the thing about, you know, it comes down to risk. But you know, they say these mean coins are mostly about community. And I'm curious whether you know jack or Brian, whether you guys have any thoughts on whether you know a community, whether, like, let's say, a real token with real utility can, sort of like hijack the meme coin community aspect of it, maybe by either their tokenomics structuring themselves such that, you know, maybe a large portion of them, maybe as a As high as like 30, 33% of their tokens go out, go out to community. Like, could you think that if, if a, if a legitimate company were to, you know, structure their token in such a way that that much was going towards community, would that make a difference to, you know, in terms of how successful they were, or maybe bridge that gap between meme coins and real idea?
Matthias:
I just like to say one thing more to this, please, if you guys don't mind. Only, yeah, okay, regarding the community part. So I think fundamentally, a community cannot be based on the on the on the on the purpose of making or generating money. Money. Money, it's the worst purpose for a community, because money itself, it's evil, in my opinion. So if it's based on money and profits, it will never be a healthy but when it comes to tokenomics and all those things which you asked, I believe it's very important, but it should be different, surely not about profits. So those meme coins, which promised profits and all those things, I think they are doomed from the beginning and with the buying pressure. But yeah, please give a better answer than me, but that was my last five cents. Thank you so much.
Brian:
Thank you. Do you mind if I just say I just have a hard stop at seven? So if I can just do a quick little rant before, just because it's the only thing I know how to do. I'm a conscious capitalist, so I really, I don't think money is evil personally. I think people are, you know, we look around the world today, I think people are evil, and we have to work every single day to be less evil. That's kind of my feeling. And that's not a like a fatalistic view. It's actually a very optimistic view, because when I see people that, you know, do really good things and they make good things happen, then I really like it. And so I saw, I just saw, on the meme coin. I was chatting with one meme coin last week, and they created a well in Africa based on the community. And it involved people getting directly involved in it, and involved in it, and involved the community getting involved in and I just really liked that. And I liked the output that they were doing, and I liked the focus from the heads of the community, and I liked where they were. So I think that I'm I'm not as judgmental. I don't segment things down in web three in the same way I don't segment things down in web two. You know, how many bullshit projects there have been over the last, you know? I mean, everything, even Uber. I mean, I'm sorry, Lyft, like Lyft is worth whatever, $45 billion today. You know how much money they spend to get to $45 billion $45 billion so is that a good company open? AI, you know how much money they're gonna lose in the next, like two to three years, between 15 and $30 billion they're going to lose. I'm sorry, like most projects that are coming out today are highly manipulated, not by money, by people who have money to get to an outcome that every single pyramid or Ponzi scheme will get to, that is human nature and so to create really good projects, we have to do it. I sat when I was over at the DJ and conference in Singapore. I was with a Kol, one of the more mature, notorious Kol say, and he's like, hey, you know, I'm not investing now because the markets really shit. I'm like, Dude, you fucking made the market really shit. Like, all you did was you pump the shit out of shitty fucking coins that you didn't believe in or care about, and then the moment that you could steal your money out like the nasty little shit that you are, you took all that money and then you ran right? And so we once we acknowledge that that it was not perfect, right? But what we're coming from is even less perfect. It's controlled by a very centralized system where the greed is not as obvious, because it's done in such a beautiful, gorgeous way on golf courses and in private clubs and in other areas like that, that actually we're building something really nice. And there are some awesome people in the community, like the folks who are speaking here, who believe in building really amazing things. And so I choose to say, look, we got to walk through a lot of shit in the ground to make it across the road to get to the beach, but when we get to the beach, beach is a nicer place than the place that we came from. And I think there's awesome projects that are coming out. I think there are amazing people who are building stuff, I think decentralization and AI is going to change the world much more than anything in web two was able to do. And we're just going to keep on investing in projects that we really like and bits about them that we believe are true and authentic and real. Then we'll push out there, and if we need to wait a little bit longer to be able to get some money back, because the project needs to do really well. Awesome. We'll do that as well, and then we'll just see where the cards fall. You know, we have a an amazing Bull Run that's going to come up, and then to the point earlier, it's going to be insane, because everybody's going to go hard on it. And the only thing we can do is just make sure that the projects are as good as they can possibly be, adding as much utility, even if that utility is just making people happier and giving them a sense of community. That's all I got for you.
Jason:
No, that's amazing, Brian. Thank you so much for that. Sum up. Also a really huge fan of John Mackey and the conscious capitalist. So that was a really good, good one. Important. I think it's also very, a very hopeful sort of message to leave us with. So appreciate that. Thank you so much.
Brian:
Thank you, brother. I'll come back anytime. Great to speak to you.
Jason:
likewise, uh, hope to see you again sometime, for sure. Alrighty, thank you so much. Brian uh, moving on to Jack. Jack. Do you want to win that maybe? Do you think that there is, you know, a way to construct tokenomics whereby there's enough of a reward for community to where, you know, there's some sort of middle ground between the the meme coin madness and like, the ideal utility or lack of utility thereof.
Jack: s of:
Jason:
So I mean, I think that there's always sort of, there's sort of a percentage of people that's going to invest in any token based off of hype alone. And again, as you mentioned, you know, just just trying to, they think that it's a really good investment. And then there's obviously going to be some people that are going to use a token. I think regardless of that, that percentage, you know, that varies. Sometimes you have a huge hype, hype cycle. And so then you have, like, the speculative interest that's significantly, you know, maybe higher than the actual utility. But I think overall, you'll sort of have some sort of balancing out of those two, and then it comes out. I mean, that might be the solution, sort of realizing that there is some degree of that. There's always going to be some degree of sort of speculative people, but then also ensuring that those are not the people that are voting right. So you have these sort of governance tokens and things where, based off of how many people, how many tokens you own, you know, your vote, your vote counts. And maybe those people and other guys that are actually, you know, using the token, or, actually, they're not your users, they're your investors, right? And so having them vote on things, sort of like, you know, not super Democrat, right? But, yeah, Matthias, what do you think about something like that? Is there? Do you think, you know, okay, because you're all about incentives or Bonuz, right? So, I mean, how do you think you could craft incentives to where, you know, you could have a real token, real utility, but still have the same kind of hype and hype cycle that these, I don't know meme coins have. I don't even know if that's possible, or whether that's even something that you one would want. But I'm curious, you know, what your thoughts are?
Matthias:
Honestly, I feel it's all about incentives and value and purpose, but the incentives are not always money related, in my opinion, they can be also like some badges, some kind of certification, NFTs, which show how valuable a user is in his community, or what good DTC. Then, you know, to also rank up based on value. For people who always attend the events, hang out with others, come to the events, and it's like, truly marked that they've been there. It's like truly proven, but for a token, I think that what we've seen in the past, what the all these cardanos and all those big first infrastructure projects did, I think, to achieve such thing. Again, it's very, very hard, and I, I honestly don't know how that exactly can be possible, because even burning tokens and reducing the supply is little bit of a security. So it's really, really hard, also with the regulators, and there are a lot of details. But tokens can have a lot of purposes and can definitely add value, but the utilities, they really need to reflect a lot on the actions of the ecosystem and of the what's happening there. And you know, honestly with stable coins, I feel it's also very good to operate. And the most projects actually don't really need the token often, like I think that this, this norm of raising money, like in the past we are talking it's kinda fading slightly away, and it definitely changed. And you guys spoke also before, about a project, what was it called, again in the beginning, where the users, they suffer under the selling pressure.
Jason:
Ah, yeah, that would have been Portal.
Matthias:
Portal, yeah, exactly. So that's also one of these problems. And I see that even on big launch pads, some projects they raise, like, with crazy valuations, like hundreds of millions. So the selling pressure is so hard and and the best proof of this is also that celebrity tokens, who actually have huge communities and millions of fans, even they suffer crazy because also they don't really give any any special incentives other than the token mother from Iggy, I think it's not bad, but also it needs a proper platform to work. And for these type of projects and tokens, we also build bonus because we are token gating functionalities based on different smart contracts. And every token has a smart contract, we can give even old projects which did not have any use cases. We can actually give them use cases, gated communities and all these things. So that's one of the major purposes. So perhaps we can reactivate a little bit the whole entire crypto ecosystem a bit. But yeah, it's definitely not what it used to be.
Jason:
Yeah. In fact, I remember portal , I had a meeting with them a few years ago, and I remember the valuation seemed to be, like, really, really high. But I know that they were launching on Coinbase, and there was a whole bunch of, you know, hype around that. So, I mean, that's kind of why at the time we were interested, but it's sort of one of those things where you kind of never know how it's going to turn out, but, but Jack when it comes to rate, to sort of raising funds, you know, when you when you work with other companies, we also sort of connect a lot of the companies that are launching in the public in the lead up To the public sale, we'll connect them to like investors, institutional investors, advisors, etc. So I'm curious what kind of model you use for that, like for us, it makes sense to just do it for companies, because, you know, we have a long term relationship with them. But I'm curious kind of how you guys, you work normally?
Jack:
Yeah, I just work basically on a consulting basis. And most of, like, most of what I do is, like, there's a fundamental disconnect between first time founders and serial fundraisers in Silicon Valley. Like, as you may know, and your friends know, if you want to raise competitive money, you have to run a process. But this is, this is something that a lot of founders don't understand, right? Like, if, like most people, if, like, most times, if you're raising any sort of round, you need, like, I don't know, a minimum of 100 meetings to close a round. Most of the time for me, if I've when I've raised money in the past, it's been closer, like 150 to 200 so I just work with founders to help them go run a process. They basically drive FOMO amongst these investors and launch a fundraise where they have as many meetings as possible in a two to four week window, because that's how I would do it. If I'm starting another company, I'm not going to just start meeting with investors someday and have like five meetings a week for, you know, six months, I'm going to try and have as many. Any meetings as possible with as many investors as possible over a short time period, and that's going to maximize the chance that I can raise money. And so that's where I work with founders on it's it's not rocket science. It's just it's like most first time founders have no idea how to run a competitive process and how you actually incentivize investors to have to say yes or no quickly. And that's something that people that you know go to YC, have a lot of friends that have raised competitive fund raises in the past. They know how to do that because they have a lot of people around them. And so I work with people that you know don't have those that have great companies that are doing good revenue but but don't know how to run a process to get a lot of meetings in a short period of time. And then I just consult with them to do that. So it's not rocket science, but that's basically our model. But I'm doing less and less of that over time as the newsletter gets bigger.
Jason:
By the way, it sounds like, you know, you've obviously thought a bit about, you know, if you were raising funds for your own company, is that something you thought about doing with your newsletter? Or is that you have you thought about setting up another company. If you were to do something you know today, what would you do?
Jack:
Yeah, hell no. I never want to raise money again. If I can avoid it. Just build just make money. Just like fuck. VCs make money. I mean it V the VC. I think a lot of founders I meet with, I encourage them not to raise money. If you have a business that you need venture capital dollars to grow quickly, or it's something that's just really expensive to start up. It can make a lot of money in the long term. Sure, maybe it makes sense to raise money, but nine times out of 10 companies that come to me don't fall into that camp. They have bad businesses that need to be, you know, funded with venture capital money so they can figure out a new business that makes more sense, which, if you want to make a bet on that as a VC, but most VC backed companies are complete dog shit. When they get funding, they'll never be a real business. And it's they're just trying to get money so they can pay themselves enough money year over year until they find a model that works, or they go get another job after they start a different company. And that's fine if you want to participate in that system? But I personally, I'm I'm like, I'm like, Just go make money. I can, I know how to make money now. I can go do that. And I'd rather just do that. And you know, if I have something that I need to raise money for in the in the future, where I have, like, a real business, but I have, like, a big project that I want to fund out of that, and I want to take that investment for that, I'll do that, but only if I'm making, like, a lot of revenue already, where I can justify putting a little bit of lighter fluid on an already burning fire. I don't want to just spray lighter fluid on a bunch of unlit logs and, like, pray to God that lightning will strike, which is what most stars are doing.
Jason:
Yeah. So certainly spoken like a man of experience, right? But somebody has, like, been through the fire and a gun on the other side and says, Hey, I have no interest in walking back through that. But, uh, but let's say, for example, let's say you didn't have that experience. Let's say you were, like, a new developer. I'm just curious, but a lot of new developers come to me and they're like, Hey, what should I do if I wanted to get into blocks, like, what's the most exciting sort of area? And I'm just curious. I mean, no, I know you're a keen observer of markets, so yeah, I'm sure you have some thoughts on where you see this going.
Jack:
Like, what would I do if I was starting as a fresh young gun that wanted to raise money for my thing?
Jason:
Well, not just raising money, but from the perspective of what's the kind of most exciting technology that you see in blockchain today? Like, if you said, Hey, let me jump into something, and you're like a young buck with, like, another 10 years to, like, you know, really make a dent in something, what would be the area you would sort of focus on? Like, the ID wouldn't be, you know, let's say, you know, decentralized messaging, for example. I've heard a lot about privacy narrative.
Jack: g each other hundreds, if not:
Jason:
Yeah, there's actually not been, you know, a good solution to that, like, you pointed out this later on, people realize it wasn't fun to play the game, and then, you know, they changed the terminology, and now it's play and, or play with, or maybe, I don't even know, but the point being that, oh, maybe the earning is not the central thing. It's about the game, and you really love the game. But if the game sucks, then you know, where, where you gonna go from there? There's not anybody, really, that's managed to make a game this, you know. I mean, look at decentral land, if that, if you can call that again, you know, you have, okay, so let's say some metabolist, right? But you only have a certain number of people, very limited number of people there. And then, once you're there, you're not really sure what you're supposed to do with it, you know. So it's, nobody's really cracked that from a game perspective. By the way, we're close to the end now. So let's sort of cap it by sort of talking about a bit, but like what drives you as you know what drives you to sort of wake up in the morning and tackle the day and and work in this market. So let's start with you jack, and then let's just go to a task next.
Jack:
So the question is, why am I? What gets me passionate to work in this market? Exactly, personally, because most of my time is writing silly things. It's because it's very funny. I think there's just so many crazy motherfuckers out there. There's so much madness. There's so much money being made on things that are called like, I mean, the fact that there was a cryptocurrency called come rock and it seller made $3 million off of that is objectively hilarious. So purposely, I just continue to be involved, because I think it's chaotic and fun, and I just get really good material for the newsletter out of it. And there's just a lot of funniness that's out there. That's what drives me. It's just hilarious. Like, it's the stupidest industry of all time, and I love it, and I'm an active participant. I've had all my money in it for eight years, so, like, I'm as dumb as everyone else.
Jason:
That's awesome. No, I mean, I remember somebody asked Jon Stewart, we there was, like, a few election cycles ago, and they asked him, like, who he wanted to win. And he said, I don't know, whoever's funnier, you know, because he's a comedian after all, right, so it's just poke fun on both sides, for sure. But yeah,
Jack:
I gotta run. There's been a lot of fun, though. Thanks for having me. Likewise,
Jason:
it's been, it's been great. This has just been super Matthias, would you like
Matthias: from VCs. And in the time, in:
Jack:
Absolutely.
Jason:
All right, Matthias, would you want to maybe close and say a bit about kind of like, you know, what drives you in this industry, and how you got in and why you're interested in what is making you passionate about it?
Matthias:
Absolutely. So my main driver in this industry is actually not the money, it's actually the technology I find in general technology, it's like magic. And I feel blockchain is a technology which enables scaling and enables good things if it's built and used the right way, and of course, has the right user experience. So I feel that blockchain will just enable and allow many humans to come into the economy, to be a part of it, not like UBI, but. Perhaps by learning some actions digitally and doing like online business, like in Fiverr, doing small tasks, becoming AI operators. And I feel it's like a charity and doing something good. And I feel that's the purpose of life, and that drives me very much, and that's why we actually do bonus. But to make all our ideas happen, we need to be a wallet, and it's core, because then we are not restricted to any restrictions which we have to other complicated wallets.
Jason:
Yeah, that's well said. I think it all comes down to decentralization, and, you know, sort of central, decentralizing power, ultimately, right? But, yeah, I mean, thanks a lot, guys, everybody, for being on the on the show. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot for for attending all called all the listeners, and we'll catch you guys later. Thank thanks to Jack, who's a excellent guests, Brian as well. We'll catch you guys later on the next episode of Diving into Crypto.
Matthias:
Thank you guys. Thank you.
