00:00:00
00:00:01
The PIPE gDAO podcast episode 0.5 - What is the European paradox?
16 Plays17 days ago
Welcome back to another episode of the new PIPE gDAO podcast with your host SleezySlimey and Co-host Noodle. In today's episode, we discuss the European paradox, what is it? and how we at the PIPE gDAO are looking to utilise it to our own strengths.
https://launchpad.thepipegdao.io/
Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Piped you down podcast. It is I sleazy slimy and this guy over here as well. I guess hello I'm back. They let me come back for another one. Yeah, very happy this guy. Yeah, so I mean this guy What I know. I know that guy. Oh, excuse. me I thought you sounded masculine. Oh Thank you. um No, my name's noodle. Come on. Come on. When will I own a title? For what noodle?
00:00:30
Speaker
but Is it better to be a wet noodle or a dry noodle? That's my question. Well, I guess a dry noodle's more firm. I don't know where I was going with this. A wet noodle's more... It can it can it can move more. it can and It absorbs. It absorbs just like I'm absorbing knowledge from you.
00:00:50
Speaker
Ah, yes. I'm not, I was only knowledge from me. That's a good idea. Yeah. um Well, I'm going to tell you about pipe guitar knowledge. So we've introduced ourselves last time. We also use like the pipe platform and. Yeah, we should probably introduce the company we work for. Yeah, that would be a good idea. Maybe. so you I don't know. We should probably mention them at some point. There's always the next episode, right? ah ah Yeah. should Should we just talk about football and instead? sorry Hey mate, Spain won.
00:01:21
Speaker
I'm from Spain. Yeah, but no, I know you're from Spain and that's what's annoying is I didn't know this until literally like, what is it, 30 seconds before we started filming? And I was just like, oh no, that's fine. As I said, I'm over it. Yeah, there's always time to make fun of you ah for that later. But for now, pipe jedao. I would do introduce what pipe jedao is. I would first like to introduce you to the core of where it all came from.
00:01:51
Speaker
Or at least that's what we're going to say when we sell the project. I don't know if people just got drunk and decided to think of it. That is also a possibility, I guess. But ah don't tell anyone I said that, okay? It's a secret. ah So we have a sprout where it all came from. The founding father for a reason for this. The raison d'être. That's French for reason for existing. For all of you ah British that only speak one language.
00:02:19
Speaker
Sorry. Best language in the world, mate. Come on. And that is the European paradox. Thy name is the European paradox and thou something, something i don't speak old English anyway. ah You probably have not heard over this unless you've been in this space. And yeah, I did not hear about it either before I started ah being involved here.
00:02:44
Speaker
It's a concept that just like any other concept has its own fair share of criticism. If you put it into the search engine, you would see that let's see, there is going to be a few authors from the U.S. saying actually, europe actually, European ah paradox is ah kind of fake because ah you see U.S. also produces a ton of papers and U.S. is a lot of better at making in it to startup levels and then into big companies levels. Okay, that's... Maybe it's true. Maybe it's not true. I don't know. Don't ask me. I'm not gonna give you any advanced knowledge, despite what Noodle would have you think. And thanks himself, maybe. I don't know. Or maybe he's just trying to flatter me or something. yeah I don't know why he would do that. I have no... I have absolutely ah no authority in this place. I've I'm never complimenting you again. wait it smarty yeah Every episode is just going to be an argument from now on. But we should we um go into what the European Paradox actually is? Oh, right. That one, yes.
00:03:56
Speaker
so yes Despite what ah some critics would have you think about that, that is not what we focus on. We focus on the concept that in European paradox, we have this thing where when a ah groundbreaking research makes it to a university project and then potentially to startup level, it actually fails as a startup. Now, why would that be? ah The blog about it, by the way, is on the 5GDA website.
00:04:26
Speaker
I'm going to read just a small fragment of it. ah what e What are the main reasons? There are four. I'm not going to be able to comment on all of them, but here's the gist. First, an absence of cooperation and knowledge transfer between academic institutions and industry. So, miscommunication between the business side of things and the academic side of things. Number two, finite access to finance and venture capital. So, financial problems.
00:04:55
Speaker
Number three, a fragmented market, which um I failed my economics, so don't tell don't ask me to tell you what it is, and regulatory barriers. Yeah, regular Tiberius, I can tell you even a personal story from Spain. ah Not dive too much into it, but let's just say it is about two to three times cheaper to buy a house than to build a house here. That's because of regulations. Well, that's the that's the main thing, isn't it? Especially within the making it more sort of current to what we're doing within the web free space. If you look at all the big it like the big cryptocurrency scams recently, a lot of them have come from America.
00:05:33
Speaker
because in America their regulations are a lot more I guess allows for a lot more very cheeky loopholes whereas in Europe there's arguably maybe too many regulations in place ah whereas yes it makes it safe but also it makes everything incredibly hard to work around and like mate i have a I have an uncle here who likes to fish and he actually has to go and get a license to fish in the lakes. There's nothing there. ah Nobody really cares about the lakes. It's just there just to exist.
00:06:13
Speaker
Yes, no, yeah because I live right next to a lake um and you have to be part of the angling society to even be able to get the key to go through the gate because they've fenced it all off and if you're not part of that this specific angling society you're not even allowed next to the lake.
00:06:35
Speaker
And so it's like how all all this all these rules and regulations are put in place just to, if anything, piss people off. It's very hard. so It's so hard living in Europe. How hard would that be to join that? ah what you What do you call it? Anglo society?
00:06:53
Speaker
Well, exactly. No one knows. There is no clear way to sort of get in as far as I'm concerned. In fairness, I'm not much of a fisherman myself, so I haven't investigated it as much as I should have, but maybe I can cover that in a later episode, the update of if I'm allowed to fish in the local lake or not.
00:07:12
Speaker
ah funny thing on our lakes it only costs like 10 euros for a year but it's just a giant waste of time like not yeah many people don't even want to fish but you force people to go and waste a lot of time to pay 10 euros and that only then they can fish so that's uh it's just it's just stupid whereas um i guess wrapping it around the whole way even back to the european paradox is the amount of regulations that are put on projects and businesses within Europe often crush a lot of what could potentially be amazing startup companies um and there's not really a defined platform where just regular people can come in and see and invest in these
00:07:59
Speaker
ah startup companies because a lot of them do rely on angel investors and again as i'm sure you may know angel investors only really pick like the top it's very rare that a startup company will get an angel investor which is why we have so many or so few sorry multi-million like international businesses coming from Europe whereas like in in America you got Tesla, Google, Amazon, the whole shebang all the big ones are in America because there's no regulations and you can essentially or how they'll have you believe sort of make money anywhere in America whereas here there's so many regulations it's really hard to get your projects off the ground
00:08:45
Speaker
And speaking of jumping just a bit ahead, if you're a project and you want to get ahead on the regulations, joining pipejdao is one way you could get ahead of it, because ah if you go into our Discord, there has been quite a few questions already about regulatory side of things, and we have awesome lawyers who do all of this, and I am sure would be glad to help you as well, because every time I... They are very cool.
00:09:16
Speaker
Oh, you're not all personal, do you? <unk> I've i've i' briefly spoken to one, and have you ever watched Suits? Oh yeah, the yeah Harvey dude. ah harvey Yeah, Harvey Den. i i Honestly, it might as well be him. They're very cool people. They're very lovely. Can they also read the entire document by glancing at once? Yeah, and remembering all the dots in decimal places, absolutely.
00:09:42
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's a superpower, man. you know If you want to become a lawyer, you have to have the superpower first. Otherwise, you cannot become a lawyer. That's just the rules. I'm not making them, okay? Just another one of the many European regulations, I'm afraid. You have to have superpowers. Yeah, that's why there are not ah the are so expensive. They have to be they have to have superpowers.
00:10:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's actually, um, I don't know if many people from around the world know this, but it's, it's, I think it's every third person in Europe actually has a superpower. We're just not allowed to talk about it. It's like a big secret, but it's like, you know, when people come over here and they're like, why are Europeans so different to the rest of the world? It was like, it's because a lot of us are superheroes, but we just, we just don't mention it. Yeah, we just is the keep a little profile, you know?
00:10:31
Speaker
Yeah, like I myself um have laser vision, whereas sleazy can actually turn into a puddle at command. Okay. Look, you actually got the other way around. I am a slime who has the power to transform myself into a human. Okay. That's my, oh of course some people think that I'm a human that transforms myself into a slime, but it's actually the other way around. like You know, it's a common misconception.
00:10:56
Speaker
um i'm ah I'm sorry for miss super powering you. I do apologize. Yeah, you should be. Kneel down, you're just a co-host. We've already established you've got no power here. We're borderline on the same level. Well... I'll kneel down though, fuck it. i'll I'm on the floor.
00:11:20
Speaker
And the fourth reason that I did not mention yet is risk averse culture and unwillingness to embrace entrepreneurship. So to be fair, in Europe, we are not as adventurous as Americans. They would go and make, ah they would go make, they would take a huge amount of loans and make a business at 20 years old. So yeah, that that happens a lot more than in Europe. So I guess that's a fair point.
00:11:49
Speaker
I mean, their their whole thing is freedom, you know? So I get financial and otherwise, so, you know, go then, I guess. Whereas we we unfortunately do not have that sort of pathway, i do we?
00:12:05
Speaker
And speaking of what we can do to solve the above listed problems, which I'm sure you don't even remember at this point, because we've gone on quite a tangent. But ah glad good for me, I got a list. So I don't need to remember anything.
00:12:22
Speaker
ah We obviously have the Web 2 aspect of it, and we have the Web 3 aspect of it. So what can we do to ah improve the situation? Obviously, we can't do anything about regulations, but as we said, we can connect you to lawyers who have extensive experience dealing with projects, not just yours, but also many others, and that help you get ahead of the regulations so you don't get screwed in court.
00:12:49
Speaker
Because ah as I remember, Rob Steele did ah tell us at one of the pipe AMAs his story with a bank when he nearly went bankrupt and had to do something with the house.
00:13:01
Speaker
Another one, obviously we cannot do anything about the spirit of entrepreneurship, but we do have now access to global audience. We are not limited to one country. We are in entire Europe. Then we are going also to Asia. And I believe I heard something about South America, but don't quote me on that.
00:13:22
Speaker
I believe we're... Sorry for interrupting, but I i think Brazil is one of... it Actually, Brazil is very interesting because it's it's one of the countries, especially in South America, that are actually leading in web-free development. i think as I think all of a lot of web-free businesses, especially in like Europe, are all looking a little bit at Brazil, like this potentially big money-making market.
00:13:50
Speaker
It's a good thing your body is so easy to speak Spanish. If we have enough sufficient Spanish audience, I might as well make this in Spanish as well. That's true. sure shall We should just learn different languages and produce like 10.
00:14:05
Speaker
Yeah, it might be difficult. Oh, for anyone listening to this, we are looking for more band ambassadors for Asia. I believe at least that we were looking for an Indian one as well as a few more. ah I think it was Indian, but yeah, if you speak some more languages or if you are also from Europe, ah do come in and apply. We would be happy to see you.
00:14:26
Speaker
As I said, we cannot do anything not to discover a sculpture, but if we're going with web3, web3 is not to discover us, as probably you know by our fluctuating prices. So that is it it it's a benefit. And the disconnect between scientific and commercial As we said, we are a platform. So we do have contacts with the potential entrepreneurs. We have a lot of contacts with other projects. So in in this sense, we can also help you a lot to overcome that barrier. And that is the European Paradox. Shall we talk about the um universities?
00:15:09
Speaker
ra ah Yeah, sure. Go ahead. Yeah, so with the universities, as you were mentioning, we we're in contact with a lot of up and coming projects is what we actually do is we bridge a pathway with universities. so um For instance, I visited um Cambridge with Rob.
00:15:29
Speaker
ah meeting with Cambridge, bringing them onto the platform potentially in the future. Whereas we find people who ah have these ideas, these projects in the lab, and they want to turn them into a profitable business venture. So we sort of bridge the gap. We're a kind of platform that will bridge a gap to try and bring projects onto the platform to get investing into that.
00:16:00
Speaker
Oh, before I forget, there was a thought just a few weeks ago. um Intellectual property, a lot of venture capitals, when they invest into something and they and their venture doesn't end up being super capitalist.
00:16:18
Speaker
here ah They have leftover intellectual property or IP, not IP as an internet ah address, but IP as intellectual property. I yeah made that mistake all the time. I still think of IP address instead of intellectual property. ah And then some entrepreneurs might be interested in actually using it and they can buy it. So in this way, any of you entrepreneurs, if you are looking for an idea, we maybe got some to sell or some to connect.
00:16:49
Speaker
I mean, as we both know, there's many, many different sorts of people in within the Discord. We've built quite a, right now, slightly small but still a bustling community. um I say small, currently it's got well over 350 members within our Discord.
00:17:09
Speaker
and So there's all sorts of people in there you can convene you can talk to and every single one of them has their own experience a lot of them are very interested in web free some of them may even be exactly like you listening now don't really know how to get started but The only thing I can really recommend right now is just come and ask because there's always someone online ready to help. There's a lot of conversations happening, a lot of interesting ideas get thrown around. And um another thing is it's not... There's no limits of what you can say. I've seen some absolutely ridiculous conversations happen in our Discord.
00:17:50
Speaker
Hey, it's not a web3 if we don't have some trolls here and there, okay? Exactly. if it If there aren't trolls, okay, look, the more trolls you have, it is as an indicator indicator of how successful you are, okay? The more successful you are, the more trolls you'll get. that's just That's just how it is. You should be proud of having trolls. Actually, I've just noticed something that could completely change our dynamic on this podcast.
00:18:17
Speaker
So I am in fact a senior mod in the pipeg'd our discord whereas you sleazy slimy are just a PGF launchpad member. So I think I might outrank you here. So I think... Well damn, all the All the drones have tabled. So um yeah, you know what? Shut it mate. I'll take over now. No, I'm sorry. yeah Carry on with what you say.
00:18:47
Speaker
And I was going to say before, I don't remember why I was going to say this, but anyway, ah we have Layer 1X, which comes from University of Western Australia.
00:18:59
Speaker
ah From there, we can perhaps ah source some projects from other projects from that university. It's a pretty big university. We have Vaynerchain, that they are pretty big guys in Philippines. And Philippines has quite a few ah interesting ideas developing there. So it's only the way up ah with all of that. And of course, we'll only have more. Every time we add a project, we add more people to our community.
00:19:28
Speaker
And we are currently 20 minutes in. So that probably will be enough for our introduction. We probably said a lot more than we needed to. but to um We just started rambling. so i I do apologize. just so We just went on so many tangents.
00:19:46
Speaker
we and for episode actually number one we will talk about the upcoming blog to do with electric vehicles so do look out for that if you have an i don't know if you are doing something mindless and you need something to listen to i guess you can listen to us if we really want you to listen to us please Yeah, please. We're desperate right here. We're desperate. Batsy said, Batsy said, if we don't get 100,000 concurrent listeners, he's actually going to make sure that we disappear. So yeah our lives are in your hands. Yeah, just like Joker is afraid of bats, Batman bats, we're afraid of Batsy. and We were terrified of Batsy.
00:20:35
Speaker
And we'll see you next time. See ya.