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Take the first step, keep learning and set clear goals with Michael Stroev
65 Plays10 months ago
In this episode, I spoke with Michael Stroev, CEO of Venga.
We had a brilliant conversation about Michael's career journey to becoming a CEO. the skills and mindset he has developed along the way which have helped him to reach his position and what a day in the life of the CEO of Venga looks like. Michael talked us through Venga and the challenge the business is solving, as well as sharing some great advice for anyone looking to build a career in Web3 and for anyone looking to build a career as a leader.
Behind the blockchain is a series of conversations with leaders who have built successful products, teams and careers in Web3. You will get a chance to discover how successful individuals were able to accomplish their career objectives, the skills they have acquired, the mistakes and difficulties they encountered, and the advice they can offer you to help you reach your own career aspirations.
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Transcript
Introduction and Venga's Mission
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Behind the Blockchain. My guest today is Michael Strev, CEO of Venga, a project that's merging the worlds of DeFi and traditional finance. Michael, welcome to the podcast. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me on the podcast. Good to hear it. Good to hear it. So Michael, for people who don't know who you are, could you introduce yourself, please?
00:00:23
Speaker
Yeah, of course. So I'm Michael Strive, and I'm the CEO at Venga. Essentially, just to give an introduction about Venga a little bit, Venga is an app that takes innovative products, services, and technologies from DeFi and Webtree, and makes them more easy to use and adapt to a traditional consumer while staying interesting for a cryptocurrency consumer, and bridges all of that to traditional finance, meaning I advanced debit cards, allowing people to transact using their cryptocurrencies.
00:00:53
Speaker
Ultimately, our goal is to seek out all innovations, all new, cool products, services, technologies, everything that's very interesting, innovative, produced in DeFi because all innovations come from DeFi and Web3 and are sometimes difficult to use, hard to find. We want to change that by making them easy to use
00:01:13
Speaker
easy to find within one centralized application. And our long term goal is to foster the adoption of blockchain technologies and just basically bring more people into the crypto space. Sounds cool. Sounds cool.
Challenges in DeFi Discovery
00:01:28
Speaker
I kind of think back to the amount of time that I've spent trying to look for new projects in and across DeFi really. And yeah, if there was one place to be able to view all of those projects. Sounds great.
00:01:40
Speaker
It's still a challenge. I mean, as I said, like today, everything is very, let's say, spread out across different blockchains, across the whole space in general, so to speak. There's no go-to cryptocurrency app today where in Europe or in the States or anywhere in the world, if you say like, hey, where is your go-to crypto app for doing ABC?
00:02:02
Speaker
You can probably give the answer of where you go and what you use depending on your need. So if you say like exchange, you're going to like point to finance or Coinbase. If you say another need, you might point to something else and also very siloed by geography. All right. So.
00:02:18
Speaker
And there's no, let's say, and if you go, and that's on CIFI applications, if you go into DIFI applications, that's even worse because that you basically need, it's a full-time job to try and find everything that's being developed to actually understand how to use all those things. And you need to really become a crypto expert, so to speak, to be able to, let's say, adopt all those new technologies and innovations that are currently just now being developed or are in process of being developed or are just like new to the market.
00:02:46
Speaker
So for someone like me, for example,
00:02:50
Speaker
I have a very limited amount of time to do all this. And I think a lot of people are the same. So what you require of me, if I'm someone who's new to the space, is you require me to, first of all, learn about and educate myself about blockchain and crypto, then start researching, then go potentially on crypto Twitter, start discovering the things that are happening, then find some additional podcasts that will maybe point me in the direction of what I need to go and see what I need to do.
00:03:17
Speaker
et
Venga's Role in Crypto Onboarding
00:03:18
Speaker
cetera, et cetera. So anyways, the path from, let's say, getting from just understanding the basic knowledge of cryptocurrencies to really going deep into DeFi can be very, very lengthy and involves a lot of steps of self-education, education, discovery, et cetera, et cetera.
00:03:38
Speaker
Sounds like you guys can play a really key part in bringing more people into the space, making it a lot easier. That's the goal. That's the goal, right? I mean, in my career, I grew into becoming someone who
00:03:55
Speaker
really is on a mission to onboard more and more people to the crypto space. I am a true believer that decentralization and ownership in terms of, let's say, NFTs and all of that is the future. And I really want to help foster that technology from a technology perspective. And I want to help people understand what that technology is and onboard more and more people to crypto.
00:04:20
Speaker
Sounds great. So could you talk us through your career journey so far?
Michael's Career Journey
00:04:24
Speaker
What brought you up to this point?
00:04:27
Speaker
Well, so I already gave an introduction about Venga. If I go a step back before that, I was COO and head of product at NIBIS. NIBIS is a crypto app bridging cryptocurrencies and traditional finance. But when I joined NIBIS, we were actually one of the first companies in Europe to have successfully connected a full banking framework to a cryptocurrency ecosystem of products under one single application. Our core product at the time was crypto-backed lending.
00:04:52
Speaker
Before NIBIS and even going back to the very, very start of my career, I started my career as a business developer, but that didn't last too long. And I quickly grew into becoming a product manager. And I have a big Korean product management, essentially taking products from all the way from ideation, product development, all the way to user acquisition. And throughout my product management career, I also grew into several operational roles and operational leadership roles, which at the end of the day, all together led me to joining NIBIS and becoming COO at NIBIS.
00:05:22
Speaker
That being said, before NEBIS, I was also an entrepreneur and founder. I ran a small business in the digital marketing advertising space for two years, and I founded two startups, one called Viti and one called Deskmates. We were actually, technically speaking, it was one startup, but we made a pivot, so basically two in one, so to speak. So yeah, basically product management career, operational leadership roles, and entrepreneur, all mixed together. Sounds pretty varied.
00:05:51
Speaker
Why, uh, why did you take interest in products in the first place? Um, because I like building cool stuff. Like I really like for me, like when I'm, first of all, I like building cool products, right? I like building cool products. I like building cool startups. I like, I like, I want to build some like things, right? Let's, let's categorize them as things, right? Uh, that are useful for people and interesting to me. Right.
00:06:16
Speaker
And I like seeing ideas, like taking ideas all the way from, let's say, just having the concept and taking them through development and getting them to user acquisition right on the B2C side or on the B2B side, whatever, right? But basically getting them from ID stage to a real live
00:06:34
Speaker
whatever it is, right? Products, startup, et cetera. That path of setting all of that in place, whether it's from a business perspective or a product perspective is something that I'm always super interested in and have always been interested in. And I think that's what drove me my whole life and throughout my career. Okay. And is that the same thing that made you want to launch your own companies as
Entrepreneurship Lessons and Startup Experiences
00:06:56
Speaker
well? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, I've always like my own companies is because I was honestly like,
00:07:04
Speaker
Yeah, I'm just, I think there's no definition to why, you know, you launch your own businesses and you're an entrepreneur. I think like at the end of the day, you either are or aren't. I think everyone wants to do it at a certain point in my career. I just took a leap of faith and just started doing it. And actually I went through really a lot of ups and downs during that time. It was really like one of the most difficult things I've ever done in my life, even reflecting on it today.
00:07:32
Speaker
But ultimately, it's, I think, one of the best and most interesting learning experiences I've had in my life, because I had to dwell into so many different topics and environments that I was never in or involved in at the time. And yeah, it ultimately allowed me to just become who I am today, strengthening my background, strengthening my knowledge of products, marketing, finance, ops, everything, basically, all in one.
00:08:03
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely agree with you there. When I launched Unveiled, there was a bunch of things that I needed to do that I'd never had any exposure to before. When you're working for a company, just take for granted really that there's a finance team in place, a HR team in place, an IT team in place to go and source the right tools and technologies and things like this for you to actually do your job effectively.
00:08:25
Speaker
And then when you start on day one, you think, right, oh wait, yeah, I haven't got a CRM. I haven't got a calling system. I haven't got a website. I need to go and actually build all these things. So yeah, you do get checked into just a world that it's sink or swim, really get checked into a world where you have to learn how to do everything at that point.
00:08:44
Speaker
And there's another side of that story is when you do one thing, the other thing is on hold. Because if you're doing marketing, then product is on hold. If you're doing product marketing is on hold. If you're doing finance, then everything else is on hold. So you kind of have to juggle and learn how to prioritize tasks depending on what you need to achieve. So yeah, that's really one of the biggest challenges.
00:09:06
Speaker
Yeah, it's tricky. So what made you then want to kind of get back into working for someone else? Because I guess after working for yourself for all that time, it must be quite tricky to kind of go back to being then employed by a business and working for someone and this kind of stuff. Could you talk us through how you maybe made that transition and what that was like?
00:09:28
Speaker
Well, yes and no. I mean, it's tricky, but at the same time, it depends where you go and what you do. I'm still in startups, right? So like the environment that I'm in is still the same. And ultimately, like the role that I've always had, even when making that switch back to, let's say, being like an employee, right, is
00:09:48
Speaker
is essentially equal to being an entrepreneur or founder, because essentially I am representing the company. I am the face of the company. At NIBIS specifically, I was doing everything that a founder was doing. I was fundraising for the company. I was the face of the company. I built the company from zero to what it is today. I was representing NIBIS at conferences, podcasts, in front of media. I formed the whole team. So really, it's essentially
00:10:16
Speaker
If I want to put a label to it, it's basically like being on an entrepreneur, but with the price tag to it, with like a stable salary and benefits coming in, essentially. So making that switch is not that difficult versus if you would ask me or if I would say I was going into a huge corporate job, that's obviously different because the
00:10:38
Speaker
Dynamics is different. It's not a startup environment. You don't have the same amount of tasks and responsibilities. It's a totally different world. Corporate and startup is still today very different. And for example, when I'm talking to people, when I'm hiring people,
00:10:52
Speaker
Um, like one of the tick boxes that I have, uh, in all of my, let's say candidates that I need to take off essentially, right. Or, or understand, uh, is startup fit. Does that person have, is that person a fit for a startup? Because there's a huge difference between corporate world and startup world. And I see.
00:11:10
Speaker
I've hired people from corporate. I've hired people from startup. And the dynamic of those people and the way that they work is absolutely just tremendously different. It's incomparable. And I mean, not to say that it's not to criticize corporate people at all, right? I mean, it's just a different mindset and it's just a different career path. And that's it. So to answer your question, for me, really, it wasn't that big of a difference. For me, it was more of a leap forward, more than a change. That's it.
Leadership and Business Operations
00:11:40
Speaker
Do you mention that you've always wanted to build products and build cool stuff? To go along with that, did you always know that you wanted to be a CEO or be a leader within a business?
00:11:54
Speaker
CEO, no. Leader, that's also a big word. Probably no. As one of my old bosses actually once told me, and this is a really wise sentence, he said, you're not hired to be a leader, you grow into one, right? Or you don't set up a path, a career path to become a leader.
00:12:16
Speaker
you eventually grow into one. That was the sentence, right? Which makes a lot of sense. So essentially, again, to answer your question of like, did I always want to be a leader? Maybe there was an idea that I had that, you know, obviously that's cool. Do I want to? Yes. But you don't have a career path to become a leader. You grow into one eventually as an eventuality and as a conclusion basically of all your past achievements and results.
00:12:45
Speaker
Same thing goes with CEO, but did I always foresee or forecast or want to be, let's say, managing high-level processes, meaning that, you know, from a high-level business perspective, right? So understanding the whole mechanisms and functionalities within every single department inside a business, yes. Really like that even goes back to my very, very first role as business development. I remember just sitting in the office and, you know,
00:13:14
Speaker
being curious and taking interest of other departments because for me, it was all alien. I'm working in business development. There's marketing here. There's finance here. Everyone's doing something, and I'm like, what are they doing? I need to know what they're doing because if I don't know what they're doing,
00:13:32
Speaker
then I won't be able to construct this basically Lego business myself. And ultimately, that's kind of always kind of like the idea that I had. And again, to grow into something bigger. But to grow into something bigger, whatever that is, I needed to understand those constructs and those mechanisms within those constructs. So long story short, yes. But there was never a specific title associated with that. I like that saying.
00:14:01
Speaker
Yeah, you're not hired to be a leader, you grow into one. That's a good saying, eh? Well, I mean, it depends, right? It depends that you're not hired to be a leader is also wrong, actually. That's not specifically what I said. You are hired to be a leader past a certain point, right? But there's no, let's say, career path that basically sets you up to be a leader, right? You become one eventually.
00:14:28
Speaker
But hiring, yes, of course. I was hired to be the CEO of Venga. So that's direct hiring, so to speak. That's fair enough. So just on that, in terms of growing into being a leader, are there certain attributes or certain skills that you've been able to develop throughout your career that really helped you achieve your current position or helped you grow into that leadership role?
00:14:58
Speaker
To be honest, for me, I can't give you specific examples of attributes or things like that. I think maybe one that comes to mind straight away is maybe perseverance and endurance. I think that's, for me as a person,
00:15:13
Speaker
One of my key, I think, strengths, like on a personal level is endurance. I'm also, let's say on a personal note, I'm like a pro skier, pro level skier. And I do a lot of, let's say, sports that require a lot of endurance, meaning skiing. I'm also an alpinist and I do a lot of mountaineering, high climb, high altitude mountains every single year. That requires a lot of endurance and that also, let's say, rolls out into my career.
00:15:41
Speaker
Meaning that it's perseverance, it's endurance. I can go like a long time and endure a lot of let's say processes and problems and solve those problems to basically come to successful outcomes. That's essentially I think the only thing that comes to mind in addition to going back to what I said previously is basically understanding the constructs of how businesses operate
00:16:03
Speaker
how businesses are formed, how departments function, what they are, and how basically to construct a business out of LEGO blocks. Essentially, for me, every single business is LEGO blocks built out of several departments, products, services, et cetera, et cetera. And you need to understand how to build a house using those, let's say, LEGO blocks. But you need to understand what those LEGO blocks are before so you can build that house. So it's basically a combination of two. That's cool.
00:16:32
Speaker
Well, I speak to a lot of people, as you can imagine, and talk to them about their career journeys and what their career goals or aspirations are. I speak to a lot of people who say they either want to be a founder of their own project or they want to be a leader within a project or they want to be a CEO or a CTO or whatever it might be. But could you talk us through, you've touched on it there about understanding the Lego blocks and plugging in different services and departments and things. Could you talk us through what a day in the life of a CEO looks like?
00:17:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of, again, going back to what we discussed about entrepreneurship, right? You're doing everything simultaneously at the same time, right? So really, I'm doing exactly the same tasks that I was doing when I was an entrepreneur. So really managing every single department, the whole business, representing the business, being at the front line of the business.
00:17:26
Speaker
But at the same time, it's adding leadership to that role right at the stage and it's actually forming a team and then also learning how to manage the team and delegate to the team and making sure actually that every single person on my team is
00:17:41
Speaker
not just doing what they're supposed to, because that's honestly like, yes, that's the base, right? But it's actually, they're doing what they like to do. And they're actually progressing from a career perspective, right? Something that will make them and their careers stronger, long term, right? I don't hire people just to like do tasks. I hire people to also, let's say, foster growth within those candidates and within all the people who are on my team. And I'm someone who really cherishes every single moment that I have with any single team member.
00:18:11
Speaker
and I try to dedicate as much time as I can to every single team member but that is the trickiest part actually I think in the life of CAO is that I can spend
00:18:21
Speaker
hours and hours of time with one person. I need to constantly be jumping between department, between people and who I'm talking to and how I'm talking to. I need to delegate, make sure that I'm saying enough and giving them enough help so that they can then, let's say, do the steps necessary to move forward at the same time as controlling all processes and doing my tasks simultaneously.
00:18:43
Speaker
So, it's really a combination of all those things, but yeah, I think the whole, let's say, biggest difference between entrepreneurship and CEO level is that entrepreneurship, your
00:18:53
Speaker
At least until you've, let's say, raised the first tickets and got into a seed round, Series A, you're kind of, let's say, you and your founders, right? And the relationship is between you and the founding team, plus the few first hires that come in. But with CEO, it's different because it's essentially it's you plus the team that is around you that you've hired and that you're, let's say,
00:19:17
Speaker
growing so that the project grows and they grow career-wise and that the project grows in the direction that it needs to be growing. That's a really good insight into being a CEO. I think a lot of people think that being a CEO is going to meetings, being a face-to-company, signing a few documents, looking at things to a really high level. And based off what you said there, it's really
00:19:46
Speaker
making sure that you're there to kind of serve the business, right? And serve the people within the business and really trying to help them develop and grow and help the business grow and scale. There's quite a few plates that you have to be able to spin. Of course. And it's also a balance between that and also, let's say, achieving results and getting to where we need to go, essentially, right? Because we are a business.
00:20:08
Speaker
Like any business, we do have deadlines. We do have, let's say, goals that we need to achieve. We do have KPIs, and everyone needs to be on board with that and stay in line and basically get to those KPIs and goals on a personal level while at the same time helping the business achieve the goals and long-term targets. Nice.
Venga's Goals and Development Vision
00:20:31
Speaker
So you introduced Venga to us in a bit of detail at the start of the conversation.
00:20:37
Speaker
Are you able to give us a bit of a deep dive into Venga that you talked there about targets and goals and things like this? Are you able to talk a little bit about when you guys are going to be ready to launch? Have you already launched? Are you going through the seed rounds? Could you talk us through that a little bit? Sure, of course. So our brand new website went online last Thursday. So if you go on venga.com right now, you'll see
00:21:04
Speaker
all everything what we're about, essentially. As a long-term goal, well, first of all, as a goal, I already said what we're all about. We're about taking innovations from the space. But before I get into that, let me talk about the problems the space is facing right now, very briefly. Generally, the cryptocurrency space, DeFi, Web3, whatever, there are several problems. The first one is user experience. Sometimes it's hard to use difficult UX UI.
00:21:34
Speaker
Um, a lot of apps have second problem is tech problems, right? So they're not built on robust technology, right? Which makes basically the, their usability difficult. And the biggest problem, and this is kind of like the, like all encompassing problem is education right in the spaces. As I already mentioned, it's very difficult to understand what crypto is, what blockchain is for a lot of people. It takes time, right? So, and if you want to then go and
00:22:00
Speaker
that will dwell into and discover all of these new products and services. It's even more complicated and time consuming. So that is essentially what we hope to solve. We hope to take all of these innovations, make them more easy to discover, educate people about them, all for, let's say, growing the adoption of these technologies of blockchain and onboarding more people to crypto. That's essentially our long term goal.
00:22:26
Speaker
But generally speaking, as an even bigger target, the one that I have, the one that I set to my theme is that I want to be us to be the go-to crypto app in Europe. And I don't say that lightly. I say that because I do know the market. I do know the players. I was CEO and CPO at NetNet Neebius previously. And so I built a similar startup already. And I basically know what it takes to get from where we are today to actually being that go-to app. And today, there are no go-to apps, as I mentioned, right?
00:22:55
Speaker
Today, there are just these siloed apps left and right by geography, by context, et cetera, et cetera. I want to build the go-to app that people will go to for self-education, for discovering new technologies, while at the same time tapping into the traditional and, let's say, base functionalities and products and services that are needed to have on any single application within the crypto space. Sounds great. It's a great mission. It is. It is.
00:23:25
Speaker
It's not achieved in one second or in one day, but as one of my marketing managers just put in one of our LinkedIn posts, it's like running multiple races within a marathon. It's funny that he wrote that post, I think, without even talking to me, but that's actually a
00:23:45
Speaker
Sentence that I say often, right? So for me, like building any product startup project, it's it's running a race, but it's running a race within also a marathon, right? So it's running a race like micro races to achieve several things to get you to, you know,
00:24:04
Speaker
higher level, higher level, a little bit higher, a little bit higher. And ultimately all of those, let's say small achievements will end up getting you to the top three in Europe and being the go to crypto app for everyone on the European continent and maybe somewhere else. That's cool. How far along that journey are you guys at the moon? Well, that's we have not launched yet. So essentially right now it's all about, you know,
00:24:32
Speaker
marketing, starting up, and launching the first app. So the website, as I mentioned, has already been launched last Thursday. The app is meant to go live within the next month, approximately.
00:24:43
Speaker
And then we have a huge, huge product development pipeline of everything that we need to build. And we hope to, let's say, achieve that first iteration where the product will be unique and interesting by the end of this year. But for us, it's not about one thing that I pitch right now to my team and even to anyone who I speak to. It's not about the product that we're building. It's about where we're going, what we're doing. It's about our long-term vision. And it's about who's building it as well.
00:25:15
Speaker
Most people on my team are actually ex-crypto. All of them come from different crypto backgrounds and different crypto companies. Binance, Para wallets, I come from Nubius. I can't remember. You have a lot of other people from different companies. But basically, we're all crypto. We're all, let's say, firm and strong believers of decentralization of Web3. And we really are all aligned under that one goal of building this crypto super app, if you want to call it.
00:25:43
Speaker
but focused on blockchain innovations and innovative products and services and technologies. Sounds good. I'll be keeping an eye out over the next month for the launch. Please do. It's like one kind of analogy, but like I could say at Nike, you had the big sentence that they used to use. It's not about the shoe, it's about the player.
00:26:09
Speaker
So it's for us, it's the same thing that I kind of push to my team. It's not about the product, it's about our goal, it's about where we're heading, and it's about the team, it's about us, and it's about the users, right, for whom we're building this, right? So it's not about what we have now, it's where we're going, what we're building, it's over there. And I want people to, let's say, form around this idea and follow us, right, because essentially we know what we're doing and we will get to where I'm saying we will get to.
00:26:39
Speaker
Sounds good. Sounds good. I guess there'll be different iterations of the app as well. What you build now may be vastly different to how it looks in two, three, four years' time, right? I guess that's the evolution of products. Yeah, exactly. That's a normal product development process. I mean, you start off with something.
00:26:59
Speaker
and then you perfect it. So what we have right now is already quite cool. Really, the brand that we've developed is really amazing and it's super unique in the crypto space. It's really bespoke as well. We even went as far as develop our own 3D cryptocurrency coins that we're using within the application that have our, let's say, branding within the coins. So we've developed this that is already spot on amazing.
00:27:25
Speaker
We have the first version of the app that is going to be very clean and just, you know, it's going to speak to a more wider audience within the crypto space and people who are not from the crypto space. But this is V1, right? If V1 is this cool, imagine what V10 is going to be, right? We're going to blow through the roof. Look forward to it. Sounds good. So why did you take an interest in Web3 and blockchain in the first place?
00:27:54
Speaker
Well, I mean, first of all, let's put it this way. I was always... So for clarity, when the first crypto boom happened, I was actually not interested.
00:28:04
Speaker
So many people around me at the time were talking about Bitcoin that I just remember. And this was actually looking back now, it was pretty stupid of me. I was kind of like, this is a hype, you know, I'm not even going to follow this, but I think it was more associated to the people, the specific people who were talking to me about it, right? That kind of like pushed me away from wanting to get into it.
00:28:27
Speaker
But shortly after I actually started understanding it, started getting into it, read a few books on Bitcoin, started investing, and then essentially
00:28:36
Speaker
being, let's say, just a person who was in, you know, a casual investor within the cryptocurrency space, nothing more, nothing professionally, then I got offered the opportunity to join Nibis. And at that point, basically, I just like jumped completely into the space professionally, and basically immersed myself in everything that's happening. And at that point, of course, you know, my knowledge went from, you know, somewhere here, you know, like level three out of 10, four out of 10 to 10 out of 10, essentially.
00:29:04
Speaker
with time, but still with time because it's not a quick learning process. There's a lot to learn, right?
Keeping Up with Crypto Trends
00:29:12
Speaker
Loads, there's new stuff coming out all day, every day, pretty much. It can be quite difficult to keep up with new developments. Exactly, exactly, exactly. And again, as I already mentioned, even for me, someone who's from the space,
00:29:28
Speaker
Obviously, when I'm not working, I'm spending time researching, reading on crypto Twitter, listening to podcasts. So even though I say I don't have time to do it, I do do it. But it's still, in my opinion, that's the problem. It's still with the amount of time that I'm dedicated to finding all of these things and trying to stay on top of the industry trends, it's still not enough because
00:29:54
Speaker
Say, I'll give you an example. I find a cool new project that pops up. For example, I woke up this morning and I found a new project, a new coin that launched on Binance. I was like, okay, cool. I went into CoinMarketCap.
00:30:08
Speaker
Uh, looked at the coin, uh, looked at the website, jumped into the website, read about, you know, the project in a second. Um, but then it's, you know, there's a difference between reading about the project in a sec in a second and making, you know, a kind of like a split second conclusion. Okay. Interesting, not interesting. But then there's a difference of actually saying, okay. Um, doing more in-depth research to basically understand like, is this useful? Can this be adopted? Can we as a company use it? Can I on a personal level use it? Right. Should I buy the token?
00:30:38
Speaker
You know, all of these like questions associated with them. And now that multiply that by hundreds of, well, not hundreds of thousands, but by thousands, right? Of projects that basically appear and they're alive by incredible founders and incredible teams, right? That are building this thing. So it just takes a lot of time to get break through the barrier of doing something, you know, very, you know, high level.
00:30:58
Speaker
too very deep and basically analytical with the profound understanding of what that idea is, of the project, of the business, of what they're trying to achieve, the goals, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, it takes a lot of time. And again, going back to Venga, this is one of the things that I'm hoping to solve within our application, right, is to point people in the right direction and educate them specifically about these various different projects.
00:31:29
Speaker
to basically correct and maybe add to that point we're not gurus basically we won't be able to tackle the whole industry because essentially it's impossible as I said you know thousands of projects you know every single day right but we will basically be pointing into the big you know segments and sectors that you need to look into. That sounds cool and
00:31:52
Speaker
What's it really like working in a blockchain starter? Because I think people from outside the industry maybe think it's really glamorous, it's really disruptive, cool, cutting-edge industry, which it is. But what's it really like when you're on the ground in a starter working with blockchain? What's it really like? That's an interesting question because, I mean, for me, it's
00:32:18
Speaker
It feels normal for me, so I'm not sure how to answer that question specifically in comparison to other startups or other, let's say, projects. For me, the only difference is that it's really, it's me. It's something that I love, right? And every day I come into work, I'm the first one in, and I'm most of the time the last one out, right? And every time I'm in, I'm enjoying what I'm doing, right? But specifically, like, comparing to what the difference is between other projects, I won't be able to say it.
00:32:47
Speaker
One insight that I can definitely share, and this is something but not really related to, let's say, being on the ground, but it's basically being in the space, is that any time I speak to someone who is just from outside the space, friends or family or anyone that I meet, and I mentioned blockchain, I think there's a 50% chance that that person looks at me and says, the word scam used to be very high up on the lip. It no longer is.
00:33:17
Speaker
No longer is, but now people are, because adoption has increased, especially this year with the ETFs coming in and everything. But it's kind of like you still have this level of skepticism from people that just pops in. And people are like, wait, various different questions. What's the value of what you're building? But what about this? But why are you doing this, et cetera, et cetera? Again, going back to simply because they don't understand the space.
00:33:46
Speaker
They don't understand the tech because it's a difficult topic. And again, it's just going to take time for people to get into it and understand what it's all about and understand the benefits of decentralization.
00:34:03
Speaker
Yeah, I had similar, to be honest, when I said to my friends and family, I want to start a recruitment company, I want to focus full time in Web3. I got a few questions like, are you sure? Like, is that what you want to do? Are you really sure you want to do that? And I was like, absolutely. Yeah, I believe in it. I'm going for it and having a look back. But yeah, I think
00:34:25
Speaker
I think you're right, looking outside in when you don't really know that much about the space and don't understand the nuance within the space as well. Even how things work, even business development is different within the web3 space to how it is externally. In my eyes, anyway, more about partnerships and working together as opposed to sales, sales, sales, and things like this. Just understanding the difference. So yeah, people outside the space.
00:34:52
Speaker
At the same time, that question can be asked to any single other industry. For example, if you talk to me today about health tech, I have no clue about anything about health tech. If you mention health tech to me, I'm going to be like, okay, well, cool. I'm also going to have probably some skeptical questions or what exactly are you doing, although I understand the general benefits of it.
00:35:18
Speaker
Again, it's all a matter of, you know, perspective and what you know and what you don't know. So obviously, just crypto has this, you know, kind of shadow of past being very, let's say, dark, so to speak, cryptic and, you know, used for fraudulent reasons at the very, very start of cryptocurrencies and blockchains.
00:35:35
Speaker
But it doesn't have that anymore, right? So that's the only difference between, let's say, when you speak about blockchain technology sector, Web3, or any other one. But generally speaking, in my opinion, this is the same question and the same level of like, uncertainty, understanding and skepticism can be applied to any single industry if you're not from that industry. Yeah, you're right. You're right.
00:35:58
Speaker
I think another level of skepticism from people comes from not necessarily understanding bear markets, bull markets, how that then affects the industry.
Innovation in Bear Markets
00:36:08
Speaker
From someone who's been within in Web3 for a while, what's it like building through a bear market compared to building in a bull? Is there any difference? Is that anything that people need to understand or be aware of? Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, 2022 was a roller coaster for us. I mean, really just we went through
00:36:27
Speaker
The whole industry just dropped like a rock when Terra Luna crashed and then when FTX happened. So, I mean, us as a company at the time, it was extremely difficult. We needed to cut down on costs. We needed to rethink what we were doing. We just saw volumes on our platform drop like a rock.
00:36:44
Speaker
because people just ran away from the whole space. At the time at Nibis, our core product was crypto-backed lending. And essentially the biggest use case of crypto-backed lending was people got loans to buy more crypto because they were forecasting growth of cryptocurrencies. So it's kind of like leveraging more than getting loans for using them for payments.
00:37:05
Speaker
Um, and that just dropped like a rug because everything's dropping. So no one's getting loans. Um, no one's getting loans because you're going to basically liquidate your collateral. Um, so really it was a very difficult time, but at the same time for me, it was the, on a personal level is the perfect moment to start thinking about future ideas and new innovative products and looking at what is actually happening in the space, because that is essentially the point where.
00:37:33
Speaker
myself and I think many other people in the space went, OK, wait, there is something fundamentally wrong. Why all of this stuff happened? Let's now take these mistakes, learn from them, and build something better, avoiding this direction or basically going in the same path that the companies that did have issues went down. So really,
00:37:58
Speaker
building in a bear market is essentially where you need to be building, right? It's growth and innovation is fostered within bear markets, right? Because problems, you're learning from problems. As a product manager, I always look at problems as positive. So even like when I talk to people and give them feedback,
00:38:17
Speaker
or whatever, I always focus on problems and negative first, because in my opinion, people learn from mistakes, right? And this is the same thing in a bear market, right? Everything's crumbling down, especially in the crypto space, everything was falling, crumbling down, people were getting fired, companies were closing, liquidating.
00:38:34
Speaker
you know and at that point it was like stop, pause, how can we change this, how can we now make this industry better and stronger and to foster let's say a new bull run obviously because you have the price of cryptocurrencies attached to it to the market but honestly like foster something that will be really long term and will actually help the world move into let's say decentralization and adopt blockchain technologies. Sure, do you think that
00:39:04
Speaker
Now you've been building products through a bear market and you've worked within the space within that time. It now gives you a better edge to be able to build a product that will stand the next bear market, for example. Also, we don't really know what that will look like right at the time because it's maybe slightly different by then. But do you think that gives you a bit of an edge to build solid foundations to take you through that next stage? I'm going to say I hope.
00:39:33
Speaker
I'm going to say. It's a very difficult question. You can't predict what's going to happen and why, let's say, the market is going to turn, let's say, into a bear market again. There's going to be so many different factors. 2022, not only was the economy affecting the market, but it was also the situations of companies and bad actors within the space. Will that happen again? Again, that's something that is absolutely
00:40:04
Speaker
Unforecastable and unforeseeable. Are there still bad actors in the space? Probably, you know, probably. Hopefully they're not going to cause as much harm as they did before. But that again, again, this does not only and solely relate to crypto debts to every single industry in the world. Right. There are bad actors in every single industry. Traditional finance as well. All right. So really unforeseeable, unforecastable. Are we ready? Could we be ready? Probably yes.
00:40:31
Speaker
And I hope we will be, fingers crossed. And I mean, for us, like for me personally, it's, you know, I'm also like, I'm on the same boat and I'm on the same ship. So my goal was and is also to build, you know, from those mistakes, you know, that the industry had, right, and build a product that will be withstanding at least to everything, you know, to all the other, like the previous, the past negative scenarios that happened, right. So that that will never happen with us.
00:40:59
Speaker
If something happens in the future, which is unforeseeable and unforgastable, that's a different story. The best we can do is be as ready and as strong as a team in another company to withstand that in the future. Sure.
00:41:17
Speaker
Do you have any advice for someone? Say if someone's stepping into Web3 for the first time, you can probably share loads. And there's all sorts of things, I guess, understanding market cycles, understanding how that affects businesses, and understanding the technologies, and being able to analyze projects, these kind of things. Is there any advice that you would share if someone is looking to build a successful career in Web3? Anything that you'd say to them?
Career Advice and Networking
00:41:43
Speaker
Yeah, become a pro, become an expert in the space, really like dive in and understand everything like 360 degrees from zero to 100, really. Like if you want to build a career in web3,
00:41:57
Speaker
And not only in web three in any industry right you need to be you need to stop being a generalist in terms of let's say industry, you need to have industry specific focus. And you need to be involved in a space 100% right so it's not just even like you know understanding products and services and technologies, but it's also.
00:42:18
Speaker
knowing the players, talking to people so that you know people, so that people know you, right? It's building your network within the industry. It's really being a pro in the industry, hands down, you know, like knowing what you're talking about and so that people know you and that essentially even if you're making a switch from let's say one company to another company, it's, you know, you are bringing that value of
00:42:44
Speaker
knowledge, context, connections, understanding of the space. And you are ultimately going to help your future company that you join achieve their goals because of what you have and what you built. But again, this is like Web3, yes, but this applies to any single industry.
00:43:04
Speaker
Do you have anywhere that you would recommend that people could go to learn? Is it just a case of jumping on Google and understanding all the different terms and then starting to understand projects and things? Is there a particular way you might go about it if you were going to go about learning the space again? Anything like that? Well, I mean, my approach is always very, let's say,
00:43:26
Speaker
I have a process that I always follow. My process is simple. My first reference is always books, so I start diving into books.
00:43:34
Speaker
That's my stage one. And after stage one, then it's basically going online and finding resources online, whatever they may be, podcasts, Twitter, blog posts, news, et cetera, et cetera. There's another path that you can take is essentially right now there's a lot of actually Web 3 and blockchain courses available at universities.
00:44:00
Speaker
at let's say companies that offer certifications and things like that. So you can also go down that route if you don't want to read like specifically just start with the book process. So there's honestly like today, there's a lot of options available for you to get into this space. It just really depends on what you like to do in terms of learning, like what your learning process is. And I think that's very individual like as like per every single person.
00:44:30
Speaker
Yeah, there's so many. I think when I first started getting into the space, I just jumped on as many of the online free courses that you can find to understand how blockchain is actually put together with my trees and hash and learning what mining is and all this kind of stuff.
00:44:46
Speaker
which was very, very different to what I'd done before. Obviously, in previous industries, I was quite generous, I guess, like recruiting across all sorts of different industries. It was more about the particular skill sets and things I was recruiting for. So when it comes to Web3, it's like making a deep dive into the actual technology itself and the industry and stuff like this.
00:45:11
Speaker
Yeah, it was good fun actually to have a slightly different approach to learning about the technology and stuff. Yeah, it was good. I'll share some of the links afterwards as to where I went to learn. I'll put them in the comments on the podcast in case anyone's listening wants to check them out.
00:45:35
Speaker
I'll also check them out. Yeah, I'll send them to you. So that's if someone's stepping into Web3 then. So what about if someone is stepping into a leadership role for the first time? What advice could you share with them? That's a more difficult one.
00:45:57
Speaker
That's a more difficult one simply because, as I said, you kind of grow into becoming a leader. So it's really, if you are stepping into a leadership role, it kind of, in my opinion, you
00:46:14
Speaker
basically should already know how to lead. So essentially, you're growing into that role. And that is basically the eventuality or basically the conclusion or the results, basically, of your accomplishments and achievements.
00:46:31
Speaker
I think if I was to give, let's say, one advice on that topic, I would say just think of team first. Team is important and dedicate all of your time and resources, or at least as much as you can to your team because your team is basically the strongest. Your team is what makes you stronger. Your team is what makes the company stronger.
00:46:58
Speaker
And that's it, right? And have a team-first approach, whatever that is, in the context of every single person that might be listening to this. That's good advice. That's good advice. And knowing what you know now about leadership, product management, running businesses, if you could go back to the start of your career, any particular advice you'd share for your younger self?
Importance of Action and Goal Setting
00:47:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:29
Speaker
I think the only advice that I would share to my younger self is kind of, again, touching on what I said right now. Oh, well, just already started this podcast is kind of, let's say, trying becoming more industry-specific sooner, right? Being less of a generalist, identifying what you want to follow in terms of career, whatever industry, dreams, ideas.
00:47:57
Speaker
sooner and follow that. It's really difficult. It's not, you know, the reason why I basically, you know, kind of didn't, you know, achieve it earlier is because I was exploring different, you know, different industries, different jobs, right? And again, people go through these processes. Some people, you know, find end up in a spot where they're, you know, happy and then they identify like, okay, this is what I want to be doing, like,
00:48:22
Speaker
I am here. That's it. This is me. I've landed where I want to be. While unfortunately some people still don't, and they spend a lot of time still searching. But my advice would be to try and find it as soon as possible. Because the sooner you find it, the better you're going to be at what you do, the more pro you're going to be within your industry.
00:48:45
Speaker
And just you're going to have substantially more career growth sooner. That's pretty much it. But difficult task. Yeah, it is. This might be quite a difficult question to answer. Any advice for how someone might even go about trying to start to find what they want to do and where they need to be?
00:49:08
Speaker
Oh, that's simple. I have a very, let's say, well-established approach to that. Essentially, for me, it's take the step out the door. That's what I can call it. It's take the first step. Just go and do it. Spend less time thinking, contemplating, forecasting, analyzing. Just go and test. It's like product. You need to spit out the product.
00:49:38
Speaker
get it out, roll it out, and start gathering comments, learning, iterating, and perfecting. And it's the same thing about life. If you're just thinking too much or overthinking, you're going to waste a lot of time. You just need to basically start doing. But learn also at the same time to say no, to stop, and to change when necessary to iterate essentially. So if you start down a path and
00:50:07
Speaker
I don't know, X amount of months or years down the line, you figure out like, oh, wait, this is not what I want to be doing. You actually need to learn and know how to say, okay, wait, stop. Not me. I'm not doing this. Let me change.
00:50:23
Speaker
And don't be afraid to make that decision and make that change. Because as soon as you make a decision and take the first step is where stuff actually starts to happen. And basically, let's call it magic starts to happen, right? And you will end up where you want to be at the end of the day. Before you make that decision, make that step, that's never going to happen. I like that. That's good advice. Really good advice. Michael, to finish up then,
00:50:52
Speaker
If someone is looking to follow in your footsteps, they want to become an entrepreneur, CEO, head of product. You've shared tons of brilliant advice over the last hour or so. Any advice you'd give to people if they are really looking to follow in your footsteps and become the CEO of a Web3 starter.
00:51:12
Speaker
I would say listen to this podcast a couple of times, take notes on everything I've said, because I think I've given quite a lot of good tips and pointers throughout this whole session, this whole conversation. Yeah, it's basically doing everything that I just talked about, right? It's learning fundamentals, right? Taking the first step, start doing.
00:51:37
Speaker
Start testing, start iterating, start experimenting while at the same time learning and just climbing higher and higher and getting closer to your goal. But it's also having a clear goal and idea of what you want to do. That's actually very important. That's one thing I didn't say. It's having a goal. It's not just being okay.
00:52:00
Speaker
I am doing this because, yeah, why not? That's not a clear answer. I want to do this because I want to achieve... I'm doing A because I want to achieve B. It's really having those targets. Let's say you need to have them in qualitative and quantitative, if possible.
00:52:21
Speaker
and it's basically let's call them KPIs in business and when you have those in place you can analyze and make decisions faster and quicker and that's pretty much it.
00:52:34
Speaker
knowing what you want to do, or at least identifying it, stepping out the door, learning, iterating, saying no, or making change as quickly as possible, and basically getting to your target and changing your target if necessary along the way, but always having a target, not just doing stuff or doing stuff.
00:52:54
Speaker
It's great. Michael, brilliant advice. Thank you very much for joining me today. I've learned a lot from you in the last hour. I'm going to have to go back and listen to this over and over again as well and make a ton of notes. Thank you very, very much for your time.
00:53:11
Speaker
If anyone listening has any further questions or they'd like to reach out or like to network with you or they love the sound of the products that you guys are building at Venga, are they able to drop your message on Twitter or X?
Connecting on Social Media
00:53:24
Speaker
Is it LinkedIn? Can anyone reach out to you? Best place is probably going to be on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn. I do read every single message that is sent my way.
00:53:38
Speaker
At least I try to read every single message that I send my way. And I actually have times when I sit down and I look through my requests on LinkedIn of who's trying to send me stuff and contact me. Of course, just feel free to reach out. Just be direct of what your question is about. And that's pretty much it. I am also on Twitter on X, so feel free to follow me there. I am also on Warpcaster, Forecaster, which is basically a decentralized version of X, which is the new X. And most people
00:54:07
Speaker
are leaving X right now and going on Forecaster. So find me on Forecaster at Michael Strive same as at Twitter at Michael Strive. I might be switching more to Forecaster now just because it is more in let's say in the ethos of what we are building simply because it's a decentralized and attached to wallet and it's part of those you know that movements of social networks which are decentralized social networks and for the moment it's one of the winners.
00:54:33
Speaker
So yeah, long story short, feel free to reach out to me on any of those channels. And yeah, I'm always available essentially. And I'll reach out if there's a fit and if there's a conversation to be had, or if I can help anyone. Sounds great. Sounds brilliant. Yeah, Michael, thank you very much for your time. Thanks, Jack. Thanks for having me on board. This was a cool podcast. I look forward to actually also re-listening to it as soon as it's released.
00:55:03
Speaker
Sounds great. Thanks a lot.