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How to get multiple multi-million startup exits before hitting 25 ? With Vova Sadkov
119 Plays2 years ago
Vova is not your usual tech founder, and his age is just the starting point. At 26, he already has 2 very successful exits in the world of EduTech and MedTech, and he's now been building a web3 business and it's going to make waves too.
He went from idea to execution fast and has garnered support from very influential people in the space (Rarible, Binance, Polygon, OV, Chainlink, RZLT, ApeCoin DAO, etc)
His company, eesee.io is a tool that will onboard millions into the ecosystem and unlock value like non other before. It raised $1.1M seed from Daedalus and Alliance DAO and, at the time of writing, already has top commits for the Private Round.
There are currently already 75k+ users on waitlist and 30k+ verified users in the Discord server.
Vova is an inspiring figure, if you don't come out of watching this episode energized, you get your money back garanteed
- Partnership with Wasabi Protocol - #NFA #DYOR Use our referral to support the Podcast : https://app.wasabi.xyz/r/THEPOLYMATHEXPERIENCE
The Polymath Experience is a podcast owned by its listeners, join us on Discord to be rewarded : https://discord.gg/PwYt39W95k
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Transcript
Introduction of Successful Entrepreneur and EZ Platform
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Polymath Experience.
00:00:03
Speaker
I'm your host, Polymath.
00:00:04
Speaker
Today I have someone special.
00:00:05
Speaker
I know I say this every week, but this one's very extra special.
00:00:09
Speaker
I spent like, I don't know, 30 minutes with him last week and I came out of it energized and inspired and almost like rejuvenated.
00:00:17
Speaker
You know, like you have a conversation with someone and you're like, okay, I can take on the world now.
00:00:21
Speaker
This is the type of energy.
00:00:23
Speaker
Like I haven't seen this in anyone before.
00:00:27
Speaker
He's barely past his mid twenties and he's already got two successful startup exits, exits, sorry, under his belt, which is unheard of, I think.
00:00:37
Speaker
He's someone that for me, you can bet on to succeed and to become successful.
00:00:42
Speaker
He's now building a platform called EZ that's been making a lot of noise in the past few months.
00:00:49
Speaker
It's a Web3 native platform that allows people to raffle out their prize NFTs, but that's only like scratching the surface.
00:00:57
Speaker
Vova, welcome to the show.
00:00:58
Speaker
Thank you so much, man.
00:01:00
Speaker
You've introduced me, so a lot of people will be watching this.
00:01:04
Speaker
I think they'll be quite interested.
00:01:06
Speaker
Yeah, happy to be here, happy to talk.
00:01:07
Speaker
And same, same, totally same.
00:01:10
Speaker
Last week we had a call and I was inspired as well.
00:01:12
Speaker
So that's a cool stuff to have.
00:01:27
Speaker
Awesome, man.
00:01:28
Speaker
It's nice.
00:01:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's really... This space really has a way of putting great people together and putting misfits together and making them find their place.
00:01:40
Speaker
100%,
Journey in Web3 and Platform Launch Challenges
00:01:42
Speaker
100%.
00:01:42
Speaker
Throughout the journey in Web3, I think... I won't say that I'm an OG in the space, to be honest.
00:01:48
Speaker
I've started something like two and a half years ago only.
00:01:51
Speaker
But in this two and a half years ago journey, I just met a lot of cool people
00:01:55
Speaker
Some of those people I can even call real friends.
00:01:58
Speaker
Not friends, like it's called in the Web3, but real friends on whom I can just really rely and get advice, feedback on really anything.
00:02:09
Speaker
So yeah, it's a cool place to be.
00:02:11
Speaker
It really is.
00:02:12
Speaker
It's surprising when you scroll through Twitter, there's so much toxicity.
00:02:18
Speaker
And then you meet people in the background and there's so much empathy and so much understanding and people like extending all these branches and offering to help and support.
00:02:32
Speaker
It's really mind blowing.
00:02:34
Speaker
Sure.
00:02:34
Speaker
Totally aligned.
00:02:35
Speaker
Totally aligned.
00:02:36
Speaker
You know, actually, I even think that this toxicity is...
00:02:41
Speaker
by those people who are just there by alone, and they are not supported.
00:02:47
Speaker
And it's not only about this space, it's about every single outer space.
00:02:51
Speaker
If you're not supported, you'll try to compromise this as being, for being toxic and for just spreading a bad mood.
00:03:00
Speaker
maybe even negative vibes and stuff like this so yeah but I think that if you are supported if you have someone to support and I think that's one thing that is even more important than to be supported to have someone that you can support I think yeah that's amazing and there is a lot of people here like this
00:03:19
Speaker
Yeah, they really are.
00:03:20
Speaker
And it's, we, vulnerability is being more and more allowed.
00:03:26
Speaker
Zeneca, who I saw you know as well, is like one of the best voices for that.
00:03:33
Speaker
Sattvic, who I think we know in common as well.
00:03:36
Speaker
I mean, I don't know Zeneca, but I know Sattvic a little bit and he's been very vocal and very vulnerable.
00:03:42
Speaker
And I, like it's so necessary, especially with us men.
00:03:46
Speaker
And I think it's the only way
00:03:49
Speaker
beyond that toxicity.
00:03:50
Speaker
Of course.
00:03:51
Speaker
How's the, how's the last few weeks been weeks been for you?
00:03:54
Speaker
So to be honest, the last few weeks they've been super overbooked.
00:03:59
Speaker
We are just now preparing to launch the testnet.
00:04:02
Speaker
So like the whole team is full-time working, full-time developing, business developing.
00:04:07
Speaker
As you know, I've told it to you before, but yeah, I'm having something like 12 calls per day, 12, 14 calls per day, every day, trying to get to know people on the market, trying to know people in the community,
00:04:18
Speaker
trying to know as many DAOs community members as possible, and as well, VCs, founders, just developers, everybody.
00:04:27
Speaker
I just want to spread the word about what we are building and just want to make it so when we are when we are live, everybody would more or less know what we are about.
00:04:38
Speaker
So basically just this.
00:04:40
Speaker
I want to say even like two last weeks, it's something like half a year for me like this.
00:04:47
Speaker
So yeah, full-time developing, full-time business developing.
00:04:50
Speaker
That's crazy.
00:04:52
Speaker
And we'll go deeper into EZI and what you're doing.
00:04:55
Speaker
But I read about you.
00:04:57
Speaker
You sent me a few links and I explored and I went down like your timeline on Twitter and on LinkedIn.
00:05:02
Speaker
And I don't know, I was just impressed.
00:05:05
Speaker
And a lot of questions rose
Entrepreneurial Background and Early Ventures
00:05:07
Speaker
in me.
00:05:07
Speaker
Like, I'm really intrigued as to how you got started.
00:05:10
Speaker
Where'd you grow up?
00:05:11
Speaker
What was your childhood like?
00:05:12
Speaker
Because two things pop out for me.
00:05:14
Speaker
You have like genuine empathy that seeps out of you and you're also extremely driven.
00:05:21
Speaker
And those are two traits that are not usually very like common in everyone.
00:05:29
Speaker
Like a lot of people have one that's very strong or the other.
00:05:33
Speaker
But I know I know very few people who have both.
00:05:35
Speaker
How so how did that come to be for you?
00:05:38
Speaker
Oh man, that's a hard question.
00:05:39
Speaker
I don't know how it came to be to me, but just at the end of the course, thank you.
00:05:44
Speaker
Thank you because you have kind words and thank you.
00:05:46
Speaker
Really, really nice to hear it from you because I know that you know a lot of people and you've talked with a lot of people and you talk with a lot of people and you see that
00:05:54
Speaker
Basically, you see different kind of human character.
00:05:57
Speaker
So basically, I can tell you a bit about my background in terms of my childhood and all that.
00:06:04
Speaker
But to be honest, I don't know.
00:06:06
Speaker
There wasn't some key part of the story when I just thought that, look, I'm going to be this type of genuine entrepreneur and all that stuff.
00:06:18
Speaker
I think it went step by step.
00:06:20
Speaker
You really, really don't think that there was some like key part of this key point when this happened.
00:06:26
Speaker
Oh, that's, that's interesting.
00:06:28
Speaker
And so there's no, like, there was no moment you, because you started very young and you, you succeeded very young.
00:06:37
Speaker
Whereas some people have to have to take like,
00:06:42
Speaker
you know, back doors and have to struggle a lot before they succeed.
00:06:47
Speaker
And so for you, you think it just kind of happened naturally?
00:06:52
Speaker
I can't say that I didn't struggle.
00:06:54
Speaker
I can't say that it was just like straight success, to be honest.
00:06:57
Speaker
But I think that one of, like, let's say,
00:07:00
Speaker
We can call it key points.
00:07:02
Speaker
One thing, like one moment when I thought that, okay, I'm now going to be an entrepreneur.
00:07:07
Speaker
It was, basically, I finished the college in Marbella, Andalusia.
00:07:11
Speaker
It's in Spain.
00:07:12
Speaker
It's a small city, like a touristic city in Spain.
00:07:15
Speaker
And I studied there in the law college under Cambridge Foundation.
00:07:19
Speaker
And basically, we had a class that was called the business studies and economics.
00:07:24
Speaker
And my lecturer, teacher, he told me that, look, I'm
00:07:28
Speaker
basically he didn't tell it straight to me he told it to the whole class but he told look what business is some like uh substance where you have people who are building and you have people who are building for those people who are building and basically i was like wow that's deep if you think about it that's really deep because there are some people who are just have an idea and then you can touch this idea you can play with this idea
00:07:52
Speaker
Either it's a platform, app, hardware, any sort of stuff.
00:07:56
Speaker
And there are people who are making this idea come true.
00:07:59
Speaker
And I was like, wow, I think that I want to be that first person who is thinking about some crazy cool ideas and then those ideas come in life.
00:08:10
Speaker
And basically this was the key point.
00:08:11
Speaker
Just I didn't start with like with the IT.
00:08:14
Speaker
I didn't start with straight like
00:08:16
Speaker
now i'm going to be an it entrepreneur in my 18 years old i just i started like everybody with some quick hustles with i started i remember i started with the i've helped our different like low-key famous artists to arrange shows club shows night shows and stuff like this so this was how i made my first let's say uh 10k dollars
00:08:41
Speaker
And then the story begins.
00:08:43
Speaker
I can just, I can keep going if you want.
00:08:46
Speaker
Yeah, please, man.
00:08:47
Speaker
That's what I'm here for.
00:08:48
Speaker
I want to hear, I want to hear all of it.
00:08:50
Speaker
Amazing.
00:08:51
Speaker
Amazing.
00:08:51
Speaker
So basically just started doing those live shows, club shows and stuff like this.
00:08:57
Speaker
I was born in Kazakhstan.
00:08:59
Speaker
Then I moved to Russia, to Moscow.
00:09:01
Speaker
So basically it's the, like one of the biggest mega policies, biggest city, like one of the biggest cities probably.
00:09:08
Speaker
And there are a lot of different like live shows, light shows, night shows, and basically just got quite successful in this sphere.
00:09:17
Speaker
And this sphere is not that sphere where you will just extremely fast get hundreds, thousands of dollars.
00:09:25
Speaker
But for the teenager, for somebody who is like 17, 18, 19, it's quite a good way to start.
00:09:32
Speaker
And then the best part of it that you start acknowledging people.
00:09:36
Speaker
You start acknowledging people, you start making friends, you start just, everybody's your friend basically, because they're coming there to have fun, they're coming there to entertain themselves.
00:09:46
Speaker
And basically you just suddenly start to find that, of course they're not like friends, friends, I think that you know what I mean, but they're like some people that you know.
00:09:55
Speaker
And then I just, I thought that, wow, why not to just, basically there were a lot of bloggers, influencers, KOLs, like they're called now.
00:10:06
Speaker
And basically all those people.
00:10:07
Speaker
I just, I started working with them.
00:10:09
Speaker
I started working with them.
00:10:10
Speaker
I started selling the app,
00:10:13
Speaker
just postings.
00:10:14
Speaker
I started selling advertisement for brands on those pages and Instagram.
00:10:20
Speaker
I didn't know about Twitter.
00:10:21
Speaker
I didn't know about LinkedIn.
00:10:23
Speaker
It was Instagram.
00:10:23
Speaker
It was Instagram and the CIS social network.
00:10:27
Speaker
Probably it's called VK.
00:10:28
Speaker
Probably you haven't even heard about it.
00:10:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's like it's just a regional network.
00:10:34
Speaker
Let's call it like this.
00:10:35
Speaker
So started selling those advertisements and basically step by step, the money kept coming.
00:10:40
Speaker
So it was like it wasn't something extremely hard to do, to be honest with you.
00:10:45
Speaker
It was just like you have an influencer, you have the brand, you just merge them together and you sell the ads.
00:10:50
Speaker
It's like it's not a rocket science.
00:10:53
Speaker
Basically, step
Success in Creating and Selling Educational Courses
00:10:54
Speaker
by step.
00:10:54
Speaker
Then when I was something like I turned 19,
00:10:58
Speaker
I've heard that some people, they make educational courses.
00:11:03
Speaker
They make educational courses for educational platforms.
00:11:06
Speaker
So basically it's a, let's say, entrepreneur or an influencer who is good at something and he can teach this something to his audience.
00:11:16
Speaker
So I was like, wow, I have a big variety of those influencers.
00:11:20
Speaker
I know a lot of entrepreneurs.
00:11:22
Speaker
I know a lot of those just public figures.
00:11:25
Speaker
Why not to try to not sell the ads, but sell those educational courses?
00:11:30
Speaker
And then everything started just booming.
00:11:33
Speaker
Under two and a half years of doing those educational courses, selling the two educational platforms, we made something like $12 million.
00:11:42
Speaker
And this was like, of course, it was not all my money.
00:11:45
Speaker
We were three guys there.
00:11:47
Speaker
I was one of the founders.
00:11:49
Speaker
And basically we had only 40% of everything that we made, 60% got blogger, the influencer and the rest of the, like the 40%, we were divided between our three.
00:12:00
Speaker
And of course there were some expenses and stuff like this, but it was still a lot of money for myself.
00:12:06
Speaker
It was the first, like the first big amount of money that I've made.
00:12:11
Speaker
The best thing about it is that it was a good, uh,
00:12:15
Speaker
education not for not only for those people who were buying it it was a good education for myself because i just started being super educated in terms of marketing i started feeling what people think what people do just started understanding like really deeply the user-centric approach the consumer-centric approach and all of those like marketing stuff
00:12:37
Speaker
Can we stay on that for a second?
00:12:39
Speaker
Do you still have in mind like the step-by-step lessons of... Because marketing is everything.
00:12:46
Speaker
Because markets are driven by basically the meeting between offer and demand.
00:12:53
Speaker
And so how do you drive demand?
00:12:56
Speaker
It is through marketing, through getting a product or a service to market.
00:13:00
Speaker
So if you want to do business...
00:13:03
Speaker
You can't, that's something that I personally learned the hard way.
00:13:06
Speaker
You can't count on other people to do your marketing.
00:13:09
Speaker
You have to be a part of it.
00:13:12
Speaker
So how, like, if you were, if you wanted to go back to yourself at that age and like speed up that process of learning, how, how, how would it go?
00:13:22
Speaker
I'd hire more people.
00:13:24
Speaker
100%.
00:13:24
Speaker
I'd hire more people.
00:13:27
Speaker
I'd stop making 50% of the actions that I was doing myself.
00:13:31
Speaker
I'd given this 50% of actions to other people so I can scale it even faster.
00:13:36
Speaker
If I'd scale it even faster until the big competition came to the market, I'd make a lot more.
00:13:43
Speaker
It's like it's a common sense.
00:13:45
Speaker
It's just the amount of actions per time.
00:13:48
Speaker
Why do you think you didn't do it?
00:13:49
Speaker
The lack of experience, lack of experience.
00:13:52
Speaker
And basically when you have some amount of money that you think, wow, it's like it's the biggest amount of money that I've ever seen.
00:13:59
Speaker
And you still you think that, OK, this is enough.
00:14:02
Speaker
like for some part of the time you you think that okay this is enough let's stop on this let's just uh try to catch this momentum so basically and you don't think about uh scaling it to become even more this is what what's happening once you are like let's say a bit more experienced entrepreneur you just start thinking about how to put it to be automatically how to make it
00:14:28
Speaker
work for yourself and stuff like this.
00:14:30
Speaker
But then you are just, well, I was thinking about it as a hassle.
00:14:35
Speaker
I wasn't thinking about it as a business.
00:14:38
Speaker
As a business.
00:14:39
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:14:40
Speaker
I wasn't.
00:14:41
Speaker
I always liked this differentiation between businessman and entrepreneur.
00:14:46
Speaker
I was an entrepreneur.
00:14:47
Speaker
I didn't have a team.
00:14:48
Speaker
I didn't have, let's say, a big company.
00:14:50
Speaker
I wasn't paying a lot of salaries.
00:14:52
Speaker
So this is the key differentiation.
00:14:56
Speaker
The business is where you have people helping you to build your idea.
00:15:01
Speaker
And the entrepreneurship is when you are building your idea with your own hands.
00:15:05
Speaker
So basically I was an entrepreneur, but quite successful, quite successful entrepreneur still.
00:15:09
Speaker
I was like 20, I was doing this till I was 21.
00:15:14
Speaker
So from, I think even like, even from very early to while I was 22.
00:15:22
Speaker
So for two and a half years I was doing this and it was, it was quite, quite successful.
00:15:26
Speaker
You did well.
00:15:28
Speaker
Congrats, man.
00:15:29
Speaker
Hey there, it's me again.
00:15:31
Speaker
If you're enjoying the content, you're going to enjoy this because you're going to have the ability to support us.
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Speaker
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00:15:39
Speaker
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00:15:48
Speaker
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00:15:49
Speaker
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00:15:54
Speaker
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00:16:00
Speaker
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00:16:04
Speaker
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00:16:09
Speaker
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00:16:16
Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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00:16:54
Speaker
Wasabi.xyz slash r slash the polymath experience.
00:16:59
Speaker
Thank you so much for checking them out.
00:17:00
Speaker
And thank you so much for using that referral link.
00:17:03
Speaker
If you do, always do your research.
00:17:06
Speaker
Only use tools and amounts that you're comfortable with.
00:17:09
Speaker
Remember that all financial investments carry risk.
00:17:13
Speaker
And back to the episode now.
00:17:16
Speaker
And how about marketing?
00:17:17
Speaker
So how, like if you're talking to someone who's just getting started with business and you want to pass them on your like top lessons that you've learned on how to market yourself and your product, what would you tell them?
00:17:31
Speaker
I have one key lesson, one key, let's say, hint that I'm using even
Marketing Insights: Customer Development
00:17:39
Speaker
today.
00:17:39
Speaker
I'm using it every day with every single business that I'm doing, with every single idea.
00:17:45
Speaker
The key answer lies in the customer development.
00:17:49
Speaker
So let's say that it's a cool stuff that you've touched on this question.
00:17:54
Speaker
So I think that probably this will help somebody and probably a lot of people will find this interesting.
00:18:00
Speaker
So look, but let's say that you have a product.
00:18:02
Speaker
It can be any product.
00:18:03
Speaker
Your main necessity is to find at least two people who will buy your product.
00:18:09
Speaker
Let's say that it can be a platform you need to find at least two users for your platform.
00:18:14
Speaker
It may be any sort of a product you need to find at least two people.
00:18:18
Speaker
And then you ask those two people several questions.
00:18:22
Speaker
Why did you buy this product?
00:18:24
Speaker
What problem were you solving with this product?
00:18:27
Speaker
How likely you are going to recommend this product to like your closer circle?
00:18:33
Speaker
What can we make better?
00:18:34
Speaker
and you make a huge list of those questions trying to dig deeper and deeper and deeper into the behavior of your customer.
00:18:46
Speaker
And then,
00:18:47
Speaker
If let's say those two people bought it, they are not like, there is no, basically all people are unique, but in terms of the customer behavior, there are no like unique customer behavior.
00:19:01
Speaker
If you found two people who are buying your product, there are at least 2 million of people who are going to buy your product as well.
00:19:07
Speaker
You just need to find them.
00:19:09
Speaker
And those questions that you'll ask those two customers, I call it customer development.
00:19:16
Speaker
I think it's called customer development.
00:19:17
Speaker
like this.
00:19:18
Speaker
And this customer development will definitely help you to find those 2 million people that are going to fight to like your product and then to buy your product.
00:19:28
Speaker
This is what I'm doing always.
00:19:30
Speaker
Hope that it made sense.
00:19:31
Speaker
It makes so much sense.
00:19:33
Speaker
And it's incredibly important.
00:19:34
Speaker
And it just reminded me when you were talking, it made me think of the fact that
00:19:41
Speaker
that a lot of people, and I was in that category for a long time, get stuck on big ideas on like far in the future.
00:19:49
Speaker
And you're like, oh, I want to do this.
00:19:51
Speaker
And so you kind of try to reverse engineer your idea and think, oh, like this is a good place to start.
00:19:57
Speaker
But the place to start you found from the idea and not from the market and not from the customer.
00:20:04
Speaker
And that's something that I've personally struggled with because you also have this,
00:20:08
Speaker
Like the brain is not very good at prioritizing things.
00:20:11
Speaker
And so you have an idea.
00:20:13
Speaker
It's an awesome idea.
00:20:14
Speaker
You fall in love with it because you have an ego like all humans.
00:20:18
Speaker
And so, of course, your idea is going to be great and you're going to love it.
00:20:20
Speaker
And then you fall in love more and more with your idea.
00:20:23
Speaker
And sometimes when you're lucky enough, it kind of finds itself...
00:20:29
Speaker
like fitting with the market, most times it doesn't.
00:20:32
Speaker
And what I found really fascinating about everything that you've been saying for the past 20 minutes is that you're like very pragmatic, you're user focused and you're customer focused and you find a problem, you find a need and you build a solution for that need.
00:20:50
Speaker
And that's very impressive.
00:20:53
Speaker
Yeah, thank you, man.
00:20:53
Speaker
Thank you.
00:20:54
Speaker
So I think that really that moment when you have an idea and that moment when you find the product market fit for this idea, between those two points, there is a customer development.
00:21:04
Speaker
And that's the only thing that is between those two things.
00:21:07
Speaker
Because you can have an idea, you can pivot it, pivot it, pivot it.
00:21:11
Speaker
You will change your idea, you will change some minor parts of this idea, but the only thing how you're going to know that users like it is just customer development.
00:21:22
Speaker
And the customer development is basically, basically, it's a mixture of sales and psychology.
00:21:27
Speaker
This is how I identify the customer development.
00:21:30
Speaker
You need to find the road
00:21:34
Speaker
to know your client.
00:21:35
Speaker
Basically, this is how it is.
00:21:37
Speaker
And this is like, even we are doing this with our startup now.
00:21:40
Speaker
So basically we are trying to find the road of how our users will think, why they would use our product or like why they need to use the product.
00:21:48
Speaker
why they like our product.
00:21:49
Speaker
And if we will need to change something, when you think about it like this, it's not scary for you to change anything because you'll change it until that time when it will be suitable for your users, for your consumers, customers and stuff like this.
00:22:04
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:22:05
Speaker
And we jumped way ahead of the questions that I had in mind.
00:22:13
Speaker
This is perfect.
00:22:14
Speaker
This is awesome.
00:22:15
Speaker
We could cut this interview here and we already have a ton of value for anyone who's launching a business and listening.
00:22:21
Speaker
Because this is...
00:22:23
Speaker
You know, when you're an entrepreneur, I don't know if you went through that phase because it seems like you went straight into execution.
00:22:29
Speaker
But when I personally started a few years ago, it's funny because I'm a little bit older than you, like five years older than you, but we started at exactly the same time, like around 2017, I guess.
00:22:39
Speaker
27.
00:22:39
Speaker
Yeah, so we started at the same time, but we had vastly different paths.
00:22:46
Speaker
And for me, the first two years were filled with books and podcasts and all of those ideas of like, you need to do this and you need to do this.
00:22:55
Speaker
And I would try to latch on to every single one of them.
00:23:00
Speaker
I didn't really know where to start.
00:23:02
Speaker
Also, turns out, I wasn't very confident in myself either, subconsciously.
00:23:08
Speaker
And so when you do that, your head's in the clouds and it's not in the, I never paid this close attention to the customer.
00:23:20
Speaker
A lot of my approach was based on assumptions and that doesn't work.
00:23:27
Speaker
Well, it works sometimes when you're lucky enough.
00:23:30
Speaker
Lucky.
00:23:31
Speaker
Yeah, I know.
00:23:31
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:23:32
Speaker
Well, I wasn't and you can't count on luck.
00:23:35
Speaker
This is going to seem like we're going back in the conversation, but I really wanted to ask you the simple question of why are
Attributes of Success: Persistence and Collaboration
00:23:43
Speaker
you successful?
00:23:43
Speaker
If you try to dumb it down.
00:23:45
Speaker
I have an answer, actually.
00:23:46
Speaker
I have an answer.
00:23:47
Speaker
First of all, I won't say that I'm successful.
00:23:49
Speaker
I know a lot of people who are way more successful than I am.
00:23:54
Speaker
I just, I'm persistent.
00:23:56
Speaker
This is what I can tell about myself.
00:23:58
Speaker
I'm persistent always, always.
00:24:00
Speaker
Even sometimes it's a persistency that can just can be counted by different other people as negative aspect.
00:24:08
Speaker
I'm too persistent.
00:24:09
Speaker
This is like, I'm too persistent.
00:24:11
Speaker
I can't.
00:24:12
Speaker
don't know the word no.
00:24:14
Speaker
So if you will not answer me, I'll text you once again.
00:24:20
Speaker
I'll text you once again.
00:24:21
Speaker
And I'll text you until then, you have two solutions.
00:24:24
Speaker
You will answer me or you will block me.
00:24:26
Speaker
This is the type of, like, this is the maximum level of the persistency.
00:24:29
Speaker
And that's like,
00:24:30
Speaker
I'm not trying to make it as I want something negative or something like this.
00:24:36
Speaker
It's 100% with positive vibes, 100% with only the positive intent, but it's how I am.
00:24:42
Speaker
It's like I was just like too much time, this persistency turned out well, and I was counting on it.
00:24:51
Speaker
I'm always counting on persistency.
00:24:54
Speaker
And one more thing, why would, let's say, why would I tell that I have some successes in the past?
00:25:01
Speaker
A lot of people tell me that my superpower is to unite wise individuals around my own ideas.
00:25:09
Speaker
I think this is the key because I have amazing imagination.
00:25:16
Speaker
I'm very good at just creating some crazy ideas.
00:25:22
Speaker
That's why I'm basically good at marketing.
00:25:25
Speaker
I'm good at marketing.
00:25:26
Speaker
I'm good at making cool ideas.
00:25:28
Speaker
I'm good at making some uncommon ideas.
00:25:31
Speaker
But if there were no people who will be helping me, who will be working on these ideas, just there would be anything.
00:25:39
Speaker
I will be just one of those guys with just cool ideas who is known for his crazy cool ideas and nothing else.
00:25:48
Speaker
So basically, the key part here is to be able to unite wise individuals around your ideas.
00:25:56
Speaker
Maybe not even wise individuals, to just unite individuals around your ideas.
00:26:00
Speaker
I think this is the key part, like the most key part.
00:26:05
Speaker
I think that this will take a bit longer, but I want to tell this.
00:26:08
Speaker
I think this will be helpful as well to different people.
00:26:12
Speaker
Sometimes, I won't say that I'm too old.
00:26:15
Speaker
Basically, I'm 26, but sometimes I meet with some founders that are even a bit younger than myself, and they ask me, look,
00:26:23
Speaker
We have a cool idea, but we haven't got money.
00:26:26
Speaker
How to start without money?
00:26:28
Speaker
I'll tell that first thing that startup needs, that idea needs, is not money.
00:26:34
Speaker
It's a team.
00:26:36
Speaker
It's at least one person who is going to believe in your idea as much as you believe in your idea.
00:26:41
Speaker
So basically, and I always say that, look, if you have a cool idea and you think that it's cool, it's...
00:26:48
Speaker
any idea will have at least one fan.
00:26:51
Speaker
Try to find this fan.
00:26:53
Speaker
Try to find the one more human that is as fanatic about this idea as you are.
00:27:01
Speaker
If you're, let's say, good in marketing, try to find this fanatic in terms of technology.
00:27:06
Speaker
So he will be your first developer and you'll just be co-founders.
00:27:10
Speaker
This is how the co-founder and foundership is being built.
00:27:13
Speaker
So if you're like different side of things, if you're a good in technology, but you don't know how to sell, you don't know how to market, try to find that person who will find this idea interesting in terms of marketing, in terms of sales.
00:27:26
Speaker
And this is the key part because you don't need money.
00:27:29
Speaker
You don't need any money.
00:27:30
Speaker
to make a minimal product, you don't need any money.
00:27:33
Speaker
Basically, if you have these two hats, the first one who like I don't know, but a lot of people who are good at sales, marketing and technology, probably they're like,
00:27:46
Speaker
unique people, but I know that there are people who are good at sales and marketing.
00:27:49
Speaker
There are people who are good in technology.
00:27:51
Speaker
If you mix these two people, this is the perfect formula for any startup.
00:27:56
Speaker
You can, at least you can make the minimal valuable product.
00:27:59
Speaker
You can just build the MVP and you just can try it at least.
00:28:05
Speaker
And then if you found something good and then this MVP is being mixed with just the
00:28:11
Speaker
a sense, even the sense of the customer development and you have those early customers, then you can find any sort of money investment, anything, and then you can start like properly building.
00:28:24
Speaker
I don't know if you realize that this is actually the perfect business masterclass.
00:28:30
Speaker
Because it's true.
00:28:31
Speaker
You don't need any money.
00:28:32
Speaker
That's how I do it.
00:28:34
Speaker
Yeah, and it works.
00:28:37
Speaker
It seems to be working for you.
00:28:38
Speaker
And from experience, it does work as well.
00:28:41
Speaker
And I'll give, as a nuance, my own experience at the moment of...
00:28:47
Speaker
If you're because we're in the same category of people, I'm more the bringing people together than the executor as well.
00:28:56
Speaker
I found myself in a different type of position in the past few months, which is having brought on too many people and it not being like organized and not like moving forward too much and being too organic.
00:29:11
Speaker
And so it's I found that when you're the
00:29:15
Speaker
leader type, the inspirer type, it's good to be aware that you are and that it's not enough and you have to be mindful of the influence that you can have on people.
00:29:29
Speaker
That's like bringing people together, not needing any money and being focused on customer development.
00:29:36
Speaker
That's all you need.
00:29:37
Speaker
That's a mixture.
00:29:38
Speaker
That's a perfect business equation.
00:29:41
Speaker
Like I want to as well, like it depends on what you count as a business.
00:29:46
Speaker
This is like, I'll tell that this MVP equals bringing money together, bringing people together.
00:29:53
Speaker
That's, that was a big difference, big difference.
00:29:57
Speaker
So MVP is a business is when you bring money together.
00:30:01
Speaker
And the MVP is when you bring people together, idea and the customer development, that's it.
00:30:05
Speaker
This is like with this equation, you can build any MVP.
00:30:09
Speaker
That's so cool.
00:30:11
Speaker
When's the next round for EZ?
00:30:13
Speaker
Is there going to be one or is it going to be tokens?
00:30:17
Speaker
We are raising at the moment.
00:30:18
Speaker
We are raising.
00:30:19
Speaker
What's the minimum ticket?
00:30:22
Speaker
Angels 10K.
00:30:23
Speaker
The VC is 30.
00:30:25
Speaker
Okay, we'll talk.
00:30:28
Speaker
Yeah, I actually was, actually, it was in my questions.
00:30:32
Speaker
An obvious strength that you have is the ability to surround yourself and inspire others.
00:30:36
Speaker
And I kind of want to know, is it something that you always naturally had in you?
00:30:42
Speaker
Is it something that you developed?
00:30:44
Speaker
Is it something that someone aspiring to be that could learn, you think?
00:30:48
Speaker
I'll tell you, just to be honest, I didn't read any business books.
00:30:52
Speaker
I didn't, I like to read.
00:30:54
Speaker
I didn't just like,
00:30:57
Speaker
I wasn't that much into the, let's say, educating myself on business, except the college.
00:31:04
Speaker
Just I wasn't reading any like leadership literature and all that stuff.
00:31:08
Speaker
And I just, to be honest with you, actually, I just didn't even realize this stuff.
00:31:14
Speaker
This was like this quote, your superpower is to unite white individuals around yourself.
00:31:21
Speaker
is the quote that I've been told just like several times.
00:31:23
Speaker
If one time I hear this, okay, maybe that's just opinion.
00:31:28
Speaker
One time it's an opinion, two times it's an opinion, like probably closer to be the truth.
00:31:33
Speaker
But if you start, if you keep hearing this, then probably this is something that it is like this, but I didn't ever realize.
00:31:41
Speaker
And I think that, look, one more thing.
00:31:44
Speaker
if i did realize this i i don't think that it would work that good because if you realize this you start just paying too much attention to this and once you put some a lot of attention to something this tends to not work out and just i think if it comes naturally like really like like really naturally uh but i think this is the time when it workouts works out the best
00:32:09
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with you.
00:32:10
Speaker
We're social animals and there is a real power in that social network kind of feeding you these realizations.
00:32:18
Speaker
If you were to try to reverse engineer it on, because it doesn't come naturally to everyone and it is a soft skill to a certain extent.
00:32:29
Speaker
And so if you tried to reverse engineer it to figure out what are its components and how someone could learn it, would you be able to?
00:32:38
Speaker
Well, I don't think that I 100% would be able to, but I think that the one, like one step that you can truly do one action that you can truly implement in your lifestyle to get better at uniting people is probably to just
00:32:55
Speaker
This would sound too common, but really just talk and talk with like, really just really talk.
00:33:03
Speaker
Don't be shy to give your idea out loud.
00:33:07
Speaker
Don't be shy to just spread your
00:33:12
Speaker
ideas around.
00:33:14
Speaker
Look, I think that one big mistake that a lot of people do is that thinking that look who like they would
Handling Feedback and Delegation Challenges
00:33:20
Speaker
think that I'm not right.
00:33:21
Speaker
They would think that it's funny.
00:33:22
Speaker
They would think and this they would think part it kills it kills more is more startups than insufficient investments.
00:33:30
Speaker
And really, it's just how it is.
00:33:33
Speaker
Just talk, talk and announce your ideas.
00:33:36
Speaker
Talk with like-minded individuals, with some people who probably will not understand you.
00:33:40
Speaker
No worries.
00:33:41
Speaker
It's like, but it doesn't happen just always that people will understand you.
00:33:47
Speaker
Just talk.
00:33:48
Speaker
And even I think that, look,
00:33:50
Speaker
even one more thing, one more cool, like, let's say, action to do is that to try to just solve as many concerns that people will give you on your idea.
00:34:04
Speaker
So basically, when you are solving different concerns of different people that they give you on your idea, you will become the master in just pushing this idea to the head of...
00:34:14
Speaker
that, let's say, co-founder that you can potentially have, or first users, or even yourself to be more motivated on your idea.
00:34:24
Speaker
Because look, if you are successful in ruining concerns of just random people, you are just becoming the professional in your own idea.
00:34:35
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:34:36
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:34:37
Speaker
And it's so important to understand that everything you're being told when you're talking to the world is feedback and not all feedback is like equal.
00:34:47
Speaker
There are people whose feedback doesn't really matter.
00:34:50
Speaker
And it's your job as a founder to...
00:34:53
Speaker
realize it to be aware of it and see, okay, like this guy is projecting something that's ego, that's misalignment, we're just not aligned in values.
00:35:02
Speaker
And that other person who might not agree either, who might be giving criticism, but is relevant in doing so is giving you something that is valuable.
00:35:11
Speaker
And it's such a fine line.
00:35:14
Speaker
It's such a fine line to walk.
00:35:15
Speaker
You have a vision, you have an idea, there's feedback that you're going to get that you need to reject.
00:35:20
Speaker
And there's feedback that you're going to get that you need to integrate.
00:35:23
Speaker
And it's so freaking hard to do it efficiently.
00:35:26
Speaker
This is hard.
00:35:26
Speaker
This is really hard.
00:35:27
Speaker
This is the next level of those.
00:35:32
Speaker
I know I can say that it's like a third sense that you- It is.
00:35:37
Speaker
It is a third sense, basically, because even in my world, sometimes I hear the feedback, but it's hard to distinct yourself from the feedback that you hear.
00:35:50
Speaker
And somewhere deep inside, you understand that this feedback
00:35:54
Speaker
was not because of your ideas, because it was because of the opinion of that person.
00:36:01
Speaker
But sometimes the feedback is really, really hard to digest.
00:36:07
Speaker
I call it like this.
00:36:08
Speaker
It's hard to digest all types of feedback.
00:36:10
Speaker
And I think that the professionals
00:36:13
Speaker
Professionals like the major entrepreneurs, businessmen, and all those people, their superpower is to digest feedback and probably sometimes not even listen to some types of feedback, like you've told.
00:36:26
Speaker
Some feedback is just a projection of something.
00:36:29
Speaker
And you will never know of what exactly.
00:36:32
Speaker
So this is the hard part.
00:36:33
Speaker
Even I find it hard, to be honest with you.
00:36:35
Speaker
Sometimes I get the feedback and I was thinking like, wow, look, it's still a feedback, but something you need to do with this feedback.
00:36:41
Speaker
And then while you're trying to do something with the feedback, you may lose focus.
00:36:47
Speaker
And to lose focus, that's the worst thing to do.
00:36:52
Speaker
Whereas X say, like, when you're building, you can't suffer losing focus.
00:36:59
Speaker
Losing focus will kill as well.
00:37:02
Speaker
A lot of different startups, a lot of wise ideas and stuff like this.
00:37:07
Speaker
Amen.
00:37:09
Speaker
If I could add something to this and it's like, we have two computers in ourselves.
00:37:15
Speaker
We have the normal type of computer, of computing, which is the brain.
00:37:20
Speaker
It's analytical, it processes data.
00:37:23
Speaker
data that is limited, but rational, and it's easy to assess and understand.
00:37:29
Speaker
And we have our own quantum computer and it's our intuition.
00:37:34
Speaker
And it's the one thing that I think every entrepreneur should like work on and it's developing their intuition because
00:37:43
Speaker
When you learn how to differentiate, when is your brain talking?
00:37:48
Speaker
Your brain that's analytical, but it's struggling to prioritize things.
00:37:51
Speaker
Like every type of feedback is equal for the brain.
00:37:57
Speaker
And it doesn't know like where it ranks.
00:37:59
Speaker
but intuition will naturally tell you like, yes, this is for me.
00:38:03
Speaker
No, this is not for me.
00:38:04
Speaker
Yes, this is for me.
00:38:06
Speaker
And so starting to implement like meditation and loving kindness and, and even I found that experimenting with psychedelics has also, um, has also taken me in that, in that direction as well.
00:38:20
Speaker
But yeah, intuition is the most underrated, uh, superpower for, for business, I think.
00:38:26
Speaker
Sure.
00:38:26
Speaker
Totally agree.
00:38:27
Speaker
Totally.
00:38:27
Speaker
I think that
00:38:29
Speaker
To train intuition is just time and experience.
00:38:32
Speaker
Time, experience, listening to yourself, all those types of different actions that you've talked about.
00:38:37
Speaker
And as well, yeah, meditation.
00:38:40
Speaker
I just sometimes stay on the, like, I don't know how you call it, the board of satthu.
00:38:46
Speaker
Do you know that stuff?
00:38:47
Speaker
No.
00:38:48
Speaker
It's like, do you know what is needles?
00:38:50
Speaker
Like, it stays standing on needles.
00:38:52
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:38:53
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
00:38:54
Speaker
I know that.
00:38:55
Speaker
I've tried this several times.
00:38:57
Speaker
I try to at least once per month stay on those types of things.
00:39:02
Speaker
And a lot of people I've heard from, I've heard from a lot of people that this as well helps to train intuition.
00:39:09
Speaker
But as well, the intuition is, like, I think that's the hardest.
00:39:14
Speaker
It's the...
00:39:16
Speaker
additional level of everything.
00:39:19
Speaker
So yeah, this is know something like certain equation of how to train intuition.
00:39:27
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:39:28
Speaker
It's so powerful.
00:39:29
Speaker
Like, what does your usual day look like?
00:39:31
Speaker
Do you have a specific type of routine of things that you try to integrate?
00:39:34
Speaker
Because you're doing so much, like even following you on one social account shows like an intense life and all of them even more.
00:39:45
Speaker
What, how do you stay grounded?
00:39:46
Speaker
How do you stay efficient and focused?
00:39:49
Speaker
To be honest with you, I just have a week planned.
00:39:52
Speaker
This is the key difference from me and probably different other people with whom I was talking.
00:39:58
Speaker
All my week is planned.
00:39:59
Speaker
So all my week is packed with calls.
00:40:01
Speaker
I have like, I straightforward just booked those calls for the whole week.
00:40:06
Speaker
I have four days, like four work days of calls and one work day when I have just calls with the team, like let's say three to four calls with the team and then
00:40:19
Speaker
no additional like new people on calls, just to have some ideas implemented, some things tested, some new stuff as well told to the team and stuff like this.
00:40:32
Speaker
But to be honest with you, I don't have like, let's say, I can't say that I have like a common day or just...
00:40:41
Speaker
you waking up doing this, this, this, then going to the computer.
00:40:46
Speaker
I think it's just, it comes naturally.
00:40:48
Speaker
Yeah, it just comes naturally.
00:40:50
Speaker
I hope everyone realizes how much of an honor it is to have managed to be squeezed into your schedule.
00:40:58
Speaker
But what you're telling me says that you've become very good at delegation then.
00:41:04
Speaker
To be honest, I won't say this either.
00:41:06
Speaker
But I'm that type of person.
00:41:08
Speaker
I like to delegate.
00:41:09
Speaker
I like to, I'm probably, probably I am good at delegation, but then every time I delegate something, I'm very stressed if this is not going to work out as I thought.
00:41:19
Speaker
Maybe I had to do this all by myself because I'm the, like, I know how to do this probably better than others.
00:41:27
Speaker
Well, like all this, like regular, regular types of thoughts that you get.
00:41:32
Speaker
So sometimes even I think that, look, what I delegate, the outcome is clear.
00:41:39
Speaker
The outcome is the outcome.
00:41:41
Speaker
Let's say that something worked out, something didn't work out.
00:41:43
Speaker
And then I'm thinking, oh, look, but if I did this, probably it will work out in a better manner.
00:41:50
Speaker
Or if it didn't work out, this is the worst.
00:41:53
Speaker
Probably I'm starting thinking, look, if I was doing this, this would definitely work out.
00:41:59
Speaker
So delegation is as well.
00:42:00
Speaker
This delegation is the talent.
00:42:04
Speaker
I'll tell the delegation is talent.
00:42:06
Speaker
The right, the knowing how to delegate is a big talent.
00:42:12
Speaker
That it is.
00:42:12
Speaker
And so that does that mean that you're working on a little bit of everything at once that you have your that you're mindful of everything that is happening at the moment with the development of your of your company?
00:42:28
Speaker
I'll tell you on the idea, let's, I define it like business development, the product development and marketing.
00:42:34
Speaker
Three, let's say three cohorts.
00:42:36
Speaker
So in terms of the like product development, my part is just ideation.
00:42:42
Speaker
So it's idea, it's implementing different new features, looking how it looks and just, I call it in one word, fine tuning.
00:42:52
Speaker
Fine tuning and just a
00:42:56
Speaker
fine tuning and user experience.
00:42:57
Speaker
Let's go like this.
00:42:59
Speaker
This is why I have the CTO.
00:43:00
Speaker
He's my co-founder.
00:43:01
Speaker
He's a crazy wise individual in terms of the technique side.
00:43:04
Speaker
And basically, I know that he's the one who is doing this always fine.
00:43:08
Speaker
We worked with him on the previous startup.
00:43:10
Speaker
We are basically just, we're friends.
00:43:12
Speaker
And it's easier for you to make, like, I don't understand when people style that look, it's hard to make business with friends.
00:43:20
Speaker
Probably if it's hard for you to make business with your friend, probably you just need to think,
00:43:26
Speaker
If it's becoming more like a business relationship than a friendship.
00:43:30
Speaker
If it still stays the friendship, it's always, for me, it's always easy.
00:43:35
Speaker
Because if you keep everything as transparent as possible, if you keep yourself as transparent as possible, it's the key part as well.
00:43:41
Speaker
I'm always as transparent as possible.
00:43:44
Speaker
If I'm coming on the call with somebody and I want something really, I'll just tell it.
00:43:49
Speaker
If it's something that, look, only two things make, if you get a yes or if you get a no.
00:43:55
Speaker
If you get a no, that's not a problem.
00:43:56
Speaker
You just will try again.
00:43:57
Speaker
So it's like I'm always as transparent as possible.
00:44:00
Speaker
So on the part of the product,
00:44:03
Speaker
features and product development and stuff like this, my CTO is helping.
00:44:07
Speaker
My CTO with the team of developers and stuff like this.
00:44:10
Speaker
On the part of the marketing, I'm more involved.
00:44:12
Speaker
I'm more involved in the part of marketing in terms of like every single step except the manual work.
00:44:18
Speaker
Of course, for the manual work, we have team, we are working with two agencies and stuff like this.
00:44:23
Speaker
So basically in terms of the marketing, I'm more involved, but not the handwork.
00:44:28
Speaker
But in terms of the business development,
00:44:30
Speaker
I believe that this is where I have the lack of the delegation power and delegation talent.
00:44:36
Speaker
And I think that, look, nobody can tell about my product better than I can.
00:44:40
Speaker
Nobody can explain my idea better than I can.
00:44:44
Speaker
And nobody can ask for something more, let's say, more sincere than I can.
00:44:49
Speaker
So this is all the business development, all those calls, the investment relations, the founders with different founders, the angels, the partnerships and all that stuff.
00:45:00
Speaker
I'm doing all that full time.
00:45:02
Speaker
Full time.
00:45:02
Speaker
I don't have the CBD or I don't have the business managers, business development managers.
00:45:07
Speaker
I don't have any assistants, anyone.
00:45:09
Speaker
I just I always do this by myself.
00:45:11
Speaker
Better I'll have this done slowly but surely.
00:45:14
Speaker
It's always better slowly but surely than you just have a team of business development assistants that is doing 40 calls per day and only one of those 40 calls will work out.
00:45:27
Speaker
It's not my approach.
00:45:29
Speaker
That's really cool.
00:45:31
Speaker
That's really cool.
00:45:31
Speaker
Okay, at this point of the conversation, I'd like to introduce rapid fire questions.
00:45:36
Speaker
I'm going to ask you a few questions and you answer off the top of your head.
00:45:40
Speaker
If you could only buy one NFT to hold for the rest of your life, what would it be?
00:45:43
Speaker
Crypto packs.
00:45:45
Speaker
Of course.
00:45:45
Speaker
If you could only buy one crypto for the rest of your life, what would it be?
00:45:49
Speaker
Ethereum.
00:45:51
Speaker
Of course.
00:45:52
Speaker
Who are your top three favorite people you vibe with the most in this space at the moment?
00:45:58
Speaker
Oh, that's a tough one.
00:45:59
Speaker
But look, first, Josip, Josip Vlah.
00:46:02
Speaker
He's the head of innovation at Resolute.
00:46:04
Speaker
Resolute is the marketing agency.
00:46:06
Speaker
And he was the first guy who believed in me.
00:46:09
Speaker
This is like, probably Josip is going to watch this, but he's like my
00:46:13
Speaker
elder brother in crypto.
00:46:15
Speaker
We didn't have a project.
00:46:16
Speaker
We didn't have a like we didn't have a product.
00:46:18
Speaker
I mean, we pre-traction, pre-everything.
00:46:20
Speaker
He just he helped me basically.
00:46:22
Speaker
He helped me like he was my like really elder brother.
00:46:26
Speaker
So it's Josip always like
00:46:28
Speaker
I think that I can call him a friend and hopefully he can call me friend as well.
00:46:33
Speaker
So the first is Josip, 100%.
00:46:36
Speaker
But second, with whom I can vibe, that's Robin.
00:46:41
Speaker
Robin, look, look, look, I'll tell you, I always forget the surname.
00:46:45
Speaker
Yeah, I can't remember the surname.
00:46:47
Speaker
I hope that Robin will excuse me.
00:46:49
Speaker
He's the ex-head of NICTIA at Outlier Adventures.
00:46:53
Speaker
He is as well in Dubai here.
00:46:55
Speaker
He's way older than myself.
00:46:57
Speaker
I won't say way older, but he has kids.
00:47:01
Speaker
He is like he's the OG in the space.
00:47:03
Speaker
But as well, he is not only very super hands-on, but just a guy who can help, but as well, he's just like a friend.
00:47:10
Speaker
he can call and give some like, well, let's say life advice in terms not a crypto advice, like life advice.
00:47:18
Speaker
He probably he will see my he will come to my Calendly, he will see my schedule and he was like, man, just take yourself right now to the site spot here in Dubai outside there like on Marina.
00:47:32
Speaker
And just let's let's just casually talk without like mentioning the crypto stuff and everything like this.
00:47:38
Speaker
So this is like, this is, I can tell.
00:47:40
Speaker
That's amazing.
00:47:41
Speaker
Friendship as well.
00:47:42
Speaker
And third, third, third, third.
00:47:45
Speaker
On the third, like it's the last but not least, always like this.
00:47:48
Speaker
It's one of those three can become, like can always be on the first place.
00:47:53
Speaker
On the second, it's like all those people are equal.
00:47:56
Speaker
Of course.
00:47:57
Speaker
I can tell several people.
00:48:00
Speaker
Very helpful, Ruthie at Surgeons, super helpful.
00:48:03
Speaker
Julian, just super hands-on, super helpful as well.
00:48:06
Speaker
He's just like helping with everything.
00:48:08
Speaker
Even like, you may not ask something, but he's like helping without any thoughts, without anything.
00:48:15
Speaker
Then Zenia, Zenia Vazemska, she is the community leader at Raribull, Raribull Foundation, super hands-on as well.
00:48:21
Speaker
Just from the very first, actually two, Zenia and Masha, they are twins.
00:48:26
Speaker
and Amashi is the CMO at Rarible and Zeniya, she's a community leader at Rarible Foundation.
00:48:32
Speaker
So basically as well from the very first stages of the startup of EC, it didn't have anything, it didn't have investment attractor, didn't have users, didn't have anything, just straightforward started
00:48:45
Speaker
Just educating me, helping me without anything, without asking anything, basically.
00:48:50
Speaker
So this is the approach that I really value.
00:48:53
Speaker
And of course, human, of course.
00:48:55
Speaker
It's like if we say that vibing, I just don't usually have those meaningful speeches like this.
00:49:05
Speaker
So I definitely can say that we are vibing.
00:49:08
Speaker
I appreciate it, man.
00:49:09
Speaker
I genuinely do.
00:49:10
Speaker
Because I feel the same.
00:49:11
Speaker
I feel the same.
00:49:12
Speaker
You know, like there's times when you come out of a conversation, you're like, okay, like this is a friend there.
00:49:17
Speaker
There is a relationship for the future.
00:49:19
Speaker
And like I said, like I told you and I want to tell it to the world.
00:49:24
Speaker
I used to be very ego driven.
00:49:25
Speaker
And now I can say this with a little bit more confidence.
00:49:27
Speaker
You're five years younger than me and you inspire the fuck out of me.
00:49:31
Speaker
And I, and I like, this is, this is, this is really cool to see.
00:49:36
Speaker
And really like, you're, you're, you're a blessing.
00:49:39
Speaker
And I understand, I was almost going to ask you like, why did these guys help you?
00:49:44
Speaker
Why would they go out of their way?
00:49:46
Speaker
But it makes so much sense.
00:49:48
Speaker
Hearing you talk, hearing the way that you're driven and you know where you're going, but you're still very humble and you're listening and you're there and you're so approachable.
00:49:59
Speaker
I see why.
00:50:02
Speaker
I think I was reading, what was this guy's article from Neon?
00:50:06
Speaker
Oh, Ryan.
00:50:08
Speaker
Yeah, I forgot to mention him, Ryan, man.
00:50:12
Speaker
Ryan Oran as well, super, super helpful.
00:50:14
Speaker
Super helpful.
00:50:15
Speaker
And as well, this happened from the first call with him.
00:50:18
Speaker
He was like, man, we are going to be at least friends, but in the long run, let's work.
00:50:25
Speaker
So we just, yeah.
00:50:27
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome.
00:50:28
Speaker
And he called you, I think a future superstar or something.
00:50:32
Speaker
And I will bet some money on this right now.
00:50:36
Speaker
If there's a VOVA token, I'll buy the fuck out of it.
00:50:40
Speaker
I'll put my hands on like 2% of the supply because this bitch is blowing up.
00:50:46
Speaker
My pleasure, man.
00:50:48
Speaker
What's something about you people online don't know?
00:50:52
Speaker
I have a twin brother.
00:50:54
Speaker
I have a twin brother who looks, he looks nearly like me, of course.
00:50:59
Speaker
When we were younger, we were more lookalike, but I have a twin brother and he's as well doing a startup and he is well like very into crypto.
00:51:10
Speaker
He's not yet, like I won't say that I'm public now, but he's like, he's even less public.
00:51:16
Speaker
He's there cooking some very crazy cool stuff.
00:51:19
Speaker
And I think that, uh,
00:51:21
Speaker
we are going to unite the power one day.
00:51:24
Speaker
So yeah, this is like the first part that people probably didn't know because I didn't tell about it on Twitter, on LinkedIn.
00:51:31
Speaker
So yeah, and we really look not so much alike, but probably for a stranger, if he will look him after this podcast, he will think that he's me, basically.
00:51:44
Speaker
This is like the first thing from the top of my head.
00:51:48
Speaker
That's cool.
00:51:49
Speaker
What's something about you people think they know that they don't?
00:51:54
Speaker
Oh, man, that's so hard.
00:51:57
Speaker
This one's a bit of a mindfuck.
00:51:59
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:52:00
Speaker
Look, let me, let me think, let me think.
00:52:02
Speaker
I don't know if it really sounds like this, but sometimes people tell me that there are people who think that English is my native language.
00:52:10
Speaker
Like not native, but the one that I just started studying when I was like very, very young.
00:52:16
Speaker
But then just like I can tell you that I started studying English only in seventh grade when I moved to Marbella to Spain.
00:52:24
Speaker
So I just I was basically I was dropped there.
00:52:28
Speaker
not like not dropped, but I was offered to study there and I just I didn't know too much English.
00:52:35
Speaker
So I was like a teenager without being able to speak to other teenagers.
00:52:41
Speaker
You probably can imagine how struggling it was.
00:52:44
Speaker
And as well, I speak Spanish nearly perfectly.
00:52:48
Speaker
So I can speak Spanish as well because I've lived there for
Personal Story: Learning Spanish in Spain
00:52:52
Speaker
five years.
00:52:52
Speaker
You need to teach me because I'm moving to Barcelona in two months and I don't speak any Spanish.
00:53:01
Speaker
I understand it.
00:53:02
Speaker
But yeah, it's been a while.
00:53:03
Speaker
Actually, man, to be honest with you, I learned Spanish in half a year by playing football because, you know, when you play football and a lot of people will say that you play like shit, let's do this, let's do it, and you don't understand them, but you understand that there is talking some bullshit and you want to answer.
00:53:25
Speaker
You want to answer, but you can't.
00:53:27
Speaker
And this is...
00:53:28
Speaker
the best motivation that you have.
00:53:30
Speaker
You just really start studying Spanish with triple power.
00:53:39
Speaker
Well, in my case, it won't be football.
00:53:40
Speaker
It will be Muay Thai or kickboxing.
00:53:44
Speaker
And so the incentive is to not get kicked in the face too much if I don't understand what they're saying.
00:53:49
Speaker
So it's good enough motivation, I think.
00:53:53
Speaker
Or being able to ask him not to punch that hard.
00:53:56
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:53:58
Speaker
Oh, I should probably learn this early on before I go.
00:54:02
Speaker
Sure.
00:54:02
Speaker
How do you say don't punch me too hard?
00:54:04
Speaker
Probably not.
00:54:06
Speaker
Not a pega muy fuerte.
00:54:09
Speaker
Okay, thank you.
00:54:09
Speaker
No te pegas muy fuerte.
00:54:12
Speaker
Okay, I'm... Ben, you already have... There we go.
00:54:19
Speaker
I got the foundation now.
00:54:21
Speaker
I was listening to an interview that you made a little while back, and I always find interesting that it says a lot about people, what draws them into Web3 or what hugs them in.
00:54:33
Speaker
And for you, it was decentralized digital ownership.
00:54:38
Speaker
which is still very obscure, I think, to people.
00:54:41
Speaker
Like people are still here for price go up.
00:54:44
Speaker
Whereas in the world that we're living in, ownership of the digital realm is going to become more and more important.
00:54:52
Speaker
And I'd love to hear where you stand on that.
00:54:56
Speaker
The thing that made me say wow about crypto is understanding that, look, all your money in the bank, all your, let's say, cars, any of your real estate, anything is literally like if we go in too deep, very in too deep, that's not yours, basically.
00:55:15
Speaker
It's the governments where you live in and the government can always take it from you.
00:55:21
Speaker
It's like it's not the scary story or just like some strange stuff.
00:55:26
Speaker
It really is.
00:55:27
Speaker
If you have some like amount of money in your bank account, it's not your amount of money.
00:55:32
Speaker
Basically, you can buy, of course, something for it.
00:55:34
Speaker
You can own something.
00:55:36
Speaker
But it's not like really yours because it's in the system.
00:55:39
Speaker
And it's like it's...
00:55:42
Speaker
I don't think that it's bad.
00:55:43
Speaker
First of all, it's not bad.
00:55:45
Speaker
It's just how it is.
00:55:46
Speaker
So it's like it's normal, common stuff to have.
00:55:48
Speaker
But why the digital ownership and decentralized ownership aspect just made me say, wow, because it's the first time when really something can belong to the person.
00:56:01
Speaker
Really, when I say belong, it means that belong on that level that nobody can take it from you.
00:56:09
Speaker
And this is what I identify when something belongs to me.
00:56:14
Speaker
Because like, if someone can take something from me, does it really belong to me or am I just using it?
00:56:22
Speaker
This is the part.
00:56:23
Speaker
And basically I see a crypto as an instrument.
00:56:26
Speaker
For me, crypto is an instrument.
00:56:27
Speaker
That's why, to be honest with you, I've never traded
00:56:30
Speaker
I've never just I have three NFTs and just I bought those actually four I have four NFTs one was present from gossip the art box and like basically I have four NFTs at the moment and I've never traded NFTs I've just bought and I never sell I've just I've never sold NFTs I've never tried to make some money from crypto maybe that's bad maybe that's
00:56:55
Speaker
I love this.
00:56:56
Speaker
I've never used futures.
00:56:58
Speaker
I've never used spot trading.
00:57:00
Speaker
Of course, I bought some Bitcoin, Ethereum and some like key altcoins, but I never did this to get some kind of value.
00:57:10
Speaker
because I see this as an instrument.
00:57:12
Speaker
It's an instrument.
00:57:13
Speaker
It's a cool instrument that we have.
00:57:15
Speaker
This is why I think that hopefully more people will get familiar to this instrument because it's magic.
00:57:23
Speaker
It's cool that you can own something.
00:57:26
Speaker
You can really have something that belongs to you.
00:57:28
Speaker
And look, you want to move out to any country, you want to move out to any other city, you just take your ledger or just Tether or any other wallet or you just you don't even need to take anything from you because you can have those hot wallets.
00:57:44
Speaker
And basically, it's always with you.
00:57:47
Speaker
It's always with you.
00:57:47
Speaker
You can buy for it.
00:57:48
Speaker
You can pay for it.
00:57:49
Speaker
You can just sell for it, anything.
00:57:52
Speaker
And this is how I define the decentralized ownership aspect, digital ownership aspect.
00:57:58
Speaker
And this is why it drives me like really, really.
00:58:00
Speaker
Yeah, even I can say that I fell in love with this aspect when I just acknowledged it.
00:58:07
Speaker
So this is why I'm in crypto.
00:58:12
Speaker
I love this.
00:58:12
Speaker
This is so cool.
00:58:14
Speaker
It really feels sometimes like I'm talking with another version of me, a more successful one, but we're very aligned in ways.
00:58:24
Speaker
What are your three, because you have a mutant, you have a youth, I think.
00:58:28
Speaker
What are the other two NFTs?
00:58:30
Speaker
I have a mutant, I have a youth, I have a V1 Punk, the original one, but you know, and the art blocks gift from Josip.
00:58:38
Speaker
Nice.
00:58:39
Speaker
What collection art box is it?
00:58:41
Speaker
Oh man, I don't remember.
00:58:43
Speaker
I know that it's some kind of early generated artwork, but I don't remember the name of the collection.
00:58:50
Speaker
Nice.
00:58:51
Speaker
And so since you, because there are instruments, what do they each
00:58:56
Speaker
represent for you in the future and and even for the altcoins or the BTC and Ethereum that you they use, like how do you view them?
00:59:04
Speaker
When will they come into use if you're not trading them or spending them or selling them or anything for the tokens, let them
00:59:11
Speaker
be let them just be they are just like if I have some money in let's say USDC even in I have some money in like dollars not the stable coins but the cash money so I'm not just this doesn't make me go and trade just
00:59:29
Speaker
spend them.
00:59:30
Speaker
So just let them be, let them be.
00:59:32
Speaker
We'll see.
00:59:33
Speaker
We'll see what will happen with them.
00:59:34
Speaker
Bridges and for NFTs, why bought the Mutant?
00:59:38
Speaker
I just would like really wanted to get into the community.
00:59:41
Speaker
I just I really like what you guys doing.
00:59:43
Speaker
I really like I'm a big fan of the ApeCoin.
00:59:46
Speaker
I just I became I can't say that we became friends, but we
00:59:51
Speaker
At least I know a lot of the councils at ApeCoinDAO, they are super helpful, super hands-on guys.
00:59:58
Speaker
We just recently made a partnership with ApeCoinDAO and look, I see that those people, they're like, I'm a no-name for them.
01:00:07
Speaker
Like, really, I'm a no-name for them and they are like,
01:00:11
Speaker
Yeah, probably.
01:00:12
Speaker
But look, they didn't need to, like, they were not obligated to help me.
01:00:18
Speaker
They were not obligated to just take calls from me and to, let's say, if I was asking them for an advice, how to make this, how to make that, they could just leave it unread or something like this.
01:00:32
Speaker
But every single ApeCoin member, every ApeCoin DAO member,
01:00:36
Speaker
Always answer it, always arrange the call, always even like I see that there were people like Volkan, Chris, Amplify and different other guys.
01:00:46
Speaker
I see that they're older than me, basically.
01:00:49
Speaker
They are like way more experienced than I am.
01:00:51
Speaker
They are way more... Probably they heard like...
01:00:55
Speaker
thousands of ideas like I was telling them and they just still super helpful, super supportive.
01:01:02
Speaker
Like, and I really wanted to get into the community.
01:01:04
Speaker
So basically mutant was like my entrance to the Yuga, my entrance to the,
01:01:11
Speaker
let's say my entrance to the Apecoin community, the youth was the entrance to the Dash Labs community as well.
01:01:17
Speaker
We are probably like I'm talking to some guys into the Dash Labs.
01:01:22
Speaker
Probably if everything goes well, we are going to have a partnership with Dash Labs as well.
01:01:27
Speaker
And this is going to be a cool one.
01:01:29
Speaker
I'm not saying that we are going definitely to have one, but
01:01:34
Speaker
It will be cool to have one as we've been discussing it before.
01:01:38
Speaker
And the CryptoPunk BV1 for me, it's like an OG move.
01:01:43
Speaker
OG move in the market.
01:01:45
Speaker
Yeah, it was the advice that Josip as well gave me.
01:01:50
Speaker
He was like, man, this thing is going to age well.
01:01:54
Speaker
So basically...
01:01:55
Speaker
Now this was just like my, this is my, how people call it, collectibles.
01:01:58
Speaker
It's my collectible.
01:01:59
Speaker
It's my personal collectible that I'm going to have forever.
01:02:02
Speaker
And this is just, it's for like in some period of time, it will be just reminding me on my wall about those fun crypto Web3 times that I have.
01:02:12
Speaker
So basically this is something that I'm going to change my PFP to that crypto bank soon.
01:02:17
Speaker
So yeah, I just, I really, I took a nice clean one.
01:02:21
Speaker
So yeah.
01:02:21
Speaker
Which one is it?
01:02:22
Speaker
It's the one with the, with, I have it.
01:02:24
Speaker
I think I have it on discord.
01:02:26
Speaker
I have it on discord.
01:02:27
Speaker
Okay.
01:02:28
Speaker
I'll look at it.
01:02:29
Speaker
The orange hat is it's one with the orange hat and look, I'll just see what, what traits do I have there?
01:02:35
Speaker
I haven't tried.
01:02:36
Speaker
Send me the link in the chat so I can look and we'll try to, we'll try to post it.
01:02:40
Speaker
I'll put it in the footnotes.
01:02:41
Speaker
Let me do it after the podcast.
01:02:43
Speaker
Yeah, of course.
01:02:45
Speaker
Otherwise, I'll look it up.
01:02:46
Speaker
I saw that it's in your bio.
01:02:48
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:02:50
Speaker
It took us an hour and five minutes, but we're finally getting too easy.
01:02:54
Speaker
So I love the idea.
01:02:56
Speaker
The idea is awesome.
01:02:57
Speaker
It's super simple.
01:02:58
Speaker
It unlocks liquidity.
01:02:59
Speaker
It allows smaller players in, although in a way that is not...
01:03:07
Speaker
without uncertainty.
01:03:09
Speaker
How did the idea first come to be?
Origin and Functionality of EZ Platform
01:03:12
Speaker
What were the first steps in making it a reality?
01:03:15
Speaker
Although we kind of have the context now because we're starting to know you.
01:03:19
Speaker
But yeah, how did it all start?
01:03:20
Speaker
Very easy, came out very easy.
01:03:25
Speaker
And just three years ago, I just had an idea how to make, like I didn't know about tokens, crypto Web3 and all that stuff.
01:03:36
Speaker
I had an idea how to make, let's say,
01:03:39
Speaker
high valued assets like cars, phones, clothes and stuff like this, more accessible to normal users, to the mass audience.
01:03:48
Speaker
And I thought that, look, we can divide those assets into tickets.
01:03:52
Speaker
We can sell tickets to these assets.
01:03:55
Speaker
And one of those users will get the asset.
01:03:58
Speaker
It's like a crowdsourcing, basically.
01:04:00
Speaker
And then I just started thinking about this out loud with my friends, with my co-founder.
01:04:06
Speaker
And basically, then it turned out to be like a logic, but it's like a logical solution.
01:04:12
Speaker
But I didn't think about it.
01:04:13
Speaker
from the very beginning.
01:04:14
Speaker
The logical solution for that stuff without the blockchain and without everything is that we would need to have those entities around the planet where people can bring those assets so we can store them.
01:04:27
Speaker
And this is super expensive to make.
01:04:30
Speaker
And basically I started thinking out loud and then I was told that, look, if you have, let's say cars, you will need to have just enormously big spaces where you need to store those cars.
01:04:42
Speaker
And it will just give a lot of problems.
01:04:44
Speaker
It will need to be like a lot of money spent and stuff like this.
01:04:47
Speaker
Then I just left this idea in like the backlog of my head.
01:04:51
Speaker
Then when I found out about the blockchain, I came to my CTO guy and like we just, we,
01:04:59
Speaker
said it out loud to us, why not merge this idea with the blockchain?
01:05:05
Speaker
Because blockchain will be that entity where we are storing those assets.
01:05:09
Speaker
And basically we have all those assets like NFTs, tokens, smart contracts, collectibles, gaming assets and everything.
01:05:16
Speaker
So it's just like a different angle of looking at this idea.
01:05:20
Speaker
And basically this is how we just, it turned out that we decided to make it possible with blockchain.
01:05:26
Speaker
And basically, token lies very good into this approach because tokens can give you discounts.
01:05:33
Speaker
Tokens can make it possible for you to, if you're staking the token, you can be on always on the first pages.
01:05:40
Speaker
You can be the one who will be the primary lister of those assets.
01:05:45
Speaker
You can have the gas fees lowered and stuff like this.
01:05:49
Speaker
And we just straight, once we've found this idea about merging this, my idea,
01:05:56
Speaker
my four years old idea with this blockchain, we just started straightforward building.
01:06:02
Speaker
I didn't even think about looking for money or looking for anything.
01:06:07
Speaker
I just invested my first money, I invested my own first money and basically it wasn't even a single thought that, oh, I'm risking some money or something like this.
01:06:17
Speaker
You feel that it's your idea when you don't think about money.
01:06:20
Speaker
You don't think about money, you just think about how to make it come true, to play with it around, to just touch it and stuff like this.
01:06:26
Speaker
So this is how the idea was born.
01:06:30
Speaker
It's really cool.
01:06:32
Speaker
It's a very simple and elegant and there's some gambling components to it a little bit, which people love.
01:06:40
Speaker
So it's going into Tasnet now.
01:06:43
Speaker
How much time do you usually take to edit this podcast?
01:06:48
Speaker
If we are recording this today,
01:06:50
Speaker
This would be in December.
01:06:52
Speaker
Yeah, sorry, it took me a second.
01:06:54
Speaker
This will come out sometime in late November, early December.
01:06:58
Speaker
Yeah, the Tessnaut.
01:07:00
Speaker
This means the Tessnaut will be live.
01:07:02
Speaker
The Tessnaut will be live.
01:07:04
Speaker
So basically, we are
01:07:05
Speaker
But originally from that date where we are speaking with you, the testnet will be in something like 10 days.
01:07:11
Speaker
So we are launching the testnet in 10 days.
01:07:13
Speaker
It's very like, it's not far away.
01:07:15
Speaker
We can see that the audience is hyped.
01:07:17
Speaker
We see a lot of demand.
01:07:19
Speaker
We just like, we have the product ready right now.
01:07:21
Speaker
We could just launch it tomorrow, but we are just fine tuning everything.
01:07:25
Speaker
You know, I'm in these types of thing.
01:07:27
Speaker
I just, I'm a perfectionist.
01:07:28
Speaker
So I like perfection.
01:07:30
Speaker
I want to fine tune the platform.
01:07:31
Speaker
And of course the most like needed thing, I just want to make all the systems ready for the event because I don't know if I'm, I get this feeling, but, or if it's just not like this, but it looks for me like we see a big event.
01:07:47
Speaker
we see a big demand, we see a hype community, we see very active users.
01:07:52
Speaker
And I don't want to make it like we've launched it and then some amount of people came and it cried.
01:07:58
Speaker
It's the worst thing for me.
01:07:59
Speaker
So I want to make it all as fundamentally good as possible.
01:08:03
Speaker
That's, man, if anyone is listening right now who's a founder and they need to take away one thing from you, it's how much you care about the end user.
01:08:15
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:08:15
Speaker
That's it.
01:08:16
Speaker
Like, from, I'm getting to know you now, so it's, I'm only perceiving things.
01:08:20
Speaker
I might be
01:08:22
Speaker
off but I feel like I'm not on this it's not that you've done the customer development and now okay I know who they are I'm gonna go sell them things and I'm gonna go make money off them you know who they are and then you keep that in mind throughout and you're building the perfect thing for us and that's I yeah man I love this yeah I just like for me the best thing is that look it's the same same story that I'm telling you
01:08:51
Speaker
idea and then seeing people using this idea because like without the second part without you people using this idea it's still just an idea it's an idea in the form of a product but if nobody is using this product why did you need to do it and we are all spending time we're all spending money at this point of time we're on spending not my only time we're spending the time of the
01:09:14
Speaker
just team and all that stuff.
01:09:16
Speaker
So basically at the moment, the most needed part for us is to think about users as never before.
01:09:23
Speaker
That's why we are encouraging them to give the feedback, encouraging them to just give their opinions and stuff like this.
01:09:29
Speaker
Even the worst opinion is still better than without the opinion.
01:09:33
Speaker
The worst feedback is always better than without the feedback.
01:09:36
Speaker
And even like our investors that invested in the seed round, they always tell me that, Vava, the one thing that we like about you is that you're like very, very receptive to the feedback.
01:09:48
Speaker
I'm as receptive to the feedback as I possibly can be.
01:09:51
Speaker
My ideas are not ideal.
01:09:53
Speaker
I understand it and non-ideas are ideal.
01:09:57
Speaker
So just the feedback and opinions will make everything like as good as possible can be.
01:10:03
Speaker
That's awesome.
01:10:04
Speaker
How did it start?
01:10:07
Speaker
When did you start promoting it?
01:10:09
Speaker
When did you start doing the business development?
01:10:11
Speaker
What choices did you make?
01:10:13
Speaker
Who did you tell?
01:10:13
Speaker
How was that process like?
01:10:17
Speaker
So look, but it all started like the journey started in December, December 2022.
01:10:21
Speaker
We started like the first action towards making it a reality was taken in December 2022.
01:10:31
Speaker
The first code line was written in late January.
01:10:37
Speaker
So we just, we started, first of all, I started with, as I always start, I start with like customer development.
01:10:43
Speaker
We're talking with different people, what do they think about it?
01:10:46
Speaker
Will the blockchain really be capable of doing this?
01:10:50
Speaker
Whether we need to have an API, whether we need to have the custom indexing solution, all those like technical parts.
01:10:56
Speaker
Then we had all the architecture ready.
01:10:58
Speaker
We started building this and like we changed, we changed a lot of developers, to be honest.
01:11:04
Speaker
We changed, I'm not afraid to say that,
01:11:07
Speaker
If you feel that you need to reiterate your team, unless you will think that, okay, it's perfect now.
01:11:15
Speaker
Right now, they are the ones who will be capable of doing this.
01:11:19
Speaker
Because some people are too stuck with somebody who they hired.
01:11:23
Speaker
And it's a good stuff to have.
01:11:25
Speaker
But still, we are not doing charity here.
01:11:28
Speaker
It's not charity.
01:11:29
Speaker
It's a business.
01:11:30
Speaker
And if you think about it as a business,
01:11:32
Speaker
That may be hard and that maybe sometimes it may sound not really right.
01:11:38
Speaker
But I definitely think that if you feel that those people are not your people and maybe they don't believe in that idea as hard as you want them to believe, maybe it's better to say goodbye at the end.
01:11:52
Speaker
like earlier.
01:11:53
Speaker
So then we just, yeah, we started reiterating the team.
01:11:57
Speaker
We collected the full stack team that we have at the moment.
01:12:00
Speaker
And then I just, like, I think that I don't actually remember.
01:12:04
Speaker
We started, I don't remember when we started doing like first steps into marketing.
01:12:09
Speaker
I think it was something like five months ago or something like this, probably.
01:12:14
Speaker
So it was something like maybe four months, four to five months ago.
01:12:18
Speaker
And we started, like, I'm not a fan of,
01:12:21
Speaker
spending a huge amount of money straight away.
01:12:24
Speaker
We just, we started step by step.
01:12:26
Speaker
We started making the like early appearance.
01:12:29
Speaker
We started testing that audience, this audience.
01:12:31
Speaker
We started testing different regions.
01:12:33
Speaker
And then we touched on the audience that is with the higher crypto penetration and stuff like this.
01:12:39
Speaker
We are now targeting Asia, basically Indonesia, India, Turkey, China, Malaysia, and those like those,
01:12:50
Speaker
parts of the world with the bigger crypto penetration basically.
01:12:54
Speaker
And this is basically the approach is that we started marketing step by step, step by step, and then started basically scaling it.
01:13:03
Speaker
Started making those big partnerships, started having those ambassadors and all that stuff.
01:13:09
Speaker
But to be honest with you, this is like the
01:13:13
Speaker
full, the full podcast interview.
01:13:15
Speaker
This is the first time that I'm speaking with somebody in terms of this full one hour plus long stuff.
01:13:24
Speaker
It was one more, but it was a very short one.
01:13:26
Speaker
I think it was like 15 minutes or 20 minutes, something like this.
01:13:29
Speaker
Man, I have to say, and then we'll touch back on what you're saying, because again, full of value.
01:13:34
Speaker
I really appreciate that you took the time to do this because there's no objective reasons why you had to, because you actually went out of your way when 10.8 said it.
01:13:44
Speaker
You reached out to me and said, yeah, let's do it.
01:13:47
Speaker
Let's do it.
01:13:47
Speaker
You didn't even know me.
01:13:49
Speaker
And then you kept saying it and that...
01:13:53
Speaker
Like that was awesome because we're small, we're just growing, we're doing things well and we have a nice team and all of that, but it's like, that's not where you're going to get the bulk of your users or anything.
01:14:04
Speaker
Yeah, I really appreciate that you're doing this.
01:14:09
Speaker
Thank you very much.
01:14:09
Speaker
No, thank you.
01:14:10
Speaker
Thank you.
01:14:11
Speaker
And there is actually, to be honest with you, there was no objection.
01:14:14
Speaker
Why would I say no?
01:14:15
Speaker
Because look, as well, the 10.8 is super helpful, super hands-on.
01:14:20
Speaker
And just, yeah, he really, he's like, he's a real friend as well.
01:14:23
Speaker
And if he says, if he, Ruthie, and different people told me that, man, you have to do this, Paul Matta is just, he's a great guy and the whole podcast is super cool.
01:14:35
Speaker
Why wouldn't I do this, basically?
01:14:36
Speaker
That's awesome.
01:14:37
Speaker
Man, Ruthie and Vin and I, we've been trying to meet for like a month, but things keep falling apart.
01:14:44
Speaker
But I know that when it does happen, it's going to be awesome.
01:14:47
Speaker
But these guys at Surgeons, they're really doing something special.
01:14:53
Speaker
How exactly, like I'm a user, I'm logging on too easy.
01:14:57
Speaker
How exactly does it work?
01:14:58
Speaker
What do I get?
01:14:59
Speaker
What's the full experience like?
01:15:00
Speaker
Let's go with these two different ways.
01:15:02
Speaker
You either want to sell any of your assets for a higher value, the floor price, or you just want to sell something at a faster speed than you are selling it originally, or you're a user whose budget is not that big.
01:15:18
Speaker
to buy the full valuable asset.
01:15:20
Speaker
But you still want to become the part of the community.
01:15:22
Speaker
You still want to just enter the market with your money and stuff like this.
01:15:26
Speaker
So basically these two, like, let's say two users, two users, just two kinds of users.
01:15:32
Speaker
So basically you come to our platform, you connect your wallet basically.
01:15:35
Speaker
And with the scope of our smart contracts with custom edits and custom functions, we allow you to create this drop.
01:15:42
Speaker
We call it a drop.
01:15:43
Speaker
So Drop is a decentralized raffling ticketed sales system.
01:15:46
Speaker
So you come, you select three variables, you put your asset basically.
01:15:50
Speaker
When I say asset, I mean NFT, collectibles, digital asset, anything.
01:15:54
Speaker
Like we are not limiting ourselves to the NFT only.
01:15:57
Speaker
We're just starting with NFTs.
01:15:59
Speaker
But further down the line, you can sell even the bag of tokens.
01:16:02
Speaker
So let's say that you're a natural investor, you're a VC, you're a protocol developer.
01:16:06
Speaker
What unites all three of you is that you have some tokens that you want to sell.
01:16:09
Speaker
You want to sell those tokens, probably you have two problems.
01:16:12
Speaker
One of those two problems at least, that maybe you are satisfied with the price of the token, but you don't want to dump that price.
01:16:18
Speaker
Or maybe you're not satisfied with the price of the token.
01:16:21
Speaker
So basically what you are doing is that we are making it possible for you to make automated smart contract with sustainable vested schedule.
01:16:28
Speaker
You will come, you will raffle this bag of tokens for the higher price than you potentially could sell it.
01:16:34
Speaker
And it will be ruffled out to someone who will be just able to get these tokens, but with sustainable vested schedule.
01:16:43
Speaker
So it's not possible for him to dump the token at the price.
01:16:45
Speaker
So coming back, you just can create a drop.
01:16:48
Speaker
You can create a drop.
01:16:49
Speaker
with NFT tokens, gaming assets, collectibles, anything like this.
01:16:54
Speaker
But then you select three variables, the number of tickets, the cost per ticket, and the total amount that you want to get.
01:17:00
Speaker
If you want to get, let's say, $1,000, $1,000 USDC, basically you get 1,000 tickets to cost of $1 or even 100 tickets to cost of $10 or even, let's say, two tickets to cost of $500.
01:17:10
Speaker
Just anything.
01:17:11
Speaker
You can play around with this as you want.
01:17:13
Speaker
Then you select the duration.
01:17:14
Speaker
You submit a lot.
01:17:15
Speaker
We have the curated approach, of course, just not to spam, not to make some ridiculous amounts of money and stuff like this.
01:17:21
Speaker
After the curated approach, we place your drop on our display page.
01:17:26
Speaker
This is basically like a marketplace page.
01:17:28
Speaker
which is very like we've designed it and developed very gamified way, very attractive to attract those users who are in the space and to attract those ones who are just willing to get on boarded.
01:17:39
Speaker
And then the magic happens.
01:17:41
Speaker
We make those assets accessible for the users with the lower budget than the full price.
01:17:48
Speaker
We are making it possible for them to purchase one ticket, four tickets, 10 tickets, any amount of tickets.
01:17:53
Speaker
Then after the whole, like after the full amount of tickets is being sold, we have the Chainlink system operated and the Chainlink system selects the one who will become the new owner of the asset.
01:18:06
Speaker
The new owner of the asset will get to hold the full valuable asset.
01:18:10
Speaker
those ones who bought the ticket but they are not becoming the new owner of the asset, they get that exact amount of the money that they are spending on those tickets, they get this equivalent amount stake to get return investment in our native tokens.
01:18:24
Speaker
So it's basically we are just incentivizing them, we are rewarding them for the creation of the liquidity on our platform, for the creation of the trading volumes,
01:18:32
Speaker
And as well, we have a philosophy that those mass audience, those communities around, I call them, those communities around the tokens, those communities around the collection, they are the ones who are the most, like, let's say, supportive.
01:18:45
Speaker
They're the ones who are always creating all the hype.
01:18:47
Speaker
They're the ones who create all the news.
01:18:49
Speaker
So basically, we've seen one problem on the market.
01:18:52
Speaker
So basically, those ones, those communities around, those communities, let's say they are not into the collection, they are not into the token.
01:18:59
Speaker
They are the ones who always create news, create hype and support.
01:19:04
Speaker
And we've never seen any platform that will make it accessible for those users to join the community of like-minded individuals.
01:19:13
Speaker
So basically, what do I say?
01:19:14
Speaker
That those users are somewhere there, but for them to enter the community of like-minded individuals, the ones who like the same, let's say, collection, the ones who are fans of the same token,
01:19:27
Speaker
For them, they need to encounter themselves.
01:19:29
Speaker
They need to encounter themselves.
01:19:30
Speaker
They need to just form groups or somehow I don't even know how to make it.
01:19:34
Speaker
But what we are doing, once you've given us the evidence that you are a fan of, let's say, the Cloneax or a Bored Ape or just any of those collections, we are, and you've given us the evidence that you are a fan because you are buying at least one ticket.
01:19:49
Speaker
And after you bought one ticket, two tickets, five tickets, any amount of tickets, we are opening up a DAO for you.
01:19:55
Speaker
So now this asset is like a community, small community of those users who are like-minded, who are able to get support, who are able to communicate, who are able to just create.
01:20:07
Speaker
Once this asset gets sold, we are merging this assets community into the master DAO, into the master DAO of, let's say, collection, into the master DAO of token, into the master DAO of anything.
01:20:21
Speaker
And basically, we are granting them the DAO features, we are granting them the governance features, we are granting them those features to make it possible for those users to create, for those users to just communicate and trade.
01:20:35
Speaker
Dude, that's awesome.
01:20:37
Speaker
That's awesome.
01:20:39
Speaker
Where do you see this be in 10, 15 years?
01:20:41
Speaker
I think that we are going to be the fundamental social network with the feature of gamified marketplace.
01:20:47
Speaker
Step by step, we are implementing NFTs, tokens, Web3 assets, gamified assets.
01:20:55
Speaker
Further down the line, we are implementing digital assets, like normal digital assets.
01:21:00
Speaker
for rhythm codes, electronic tickets, gaming assets, let's say, blue chip skins for Fortnite, Counter-Strike, anything like this.
01:21:08
Speaker
And further down the line, once we are settled and established, we are going to be the first platform to gamify the trading of tokenized real-world assets.
01:21:20
Speaker
So potentially, you will have a chance to place your, let's say, car
01:21:24
Speaker
or become the owner of a one of a kind artwork or one of a kind, let's say, luxury watch or something like this.
01:21:31
Speaker
So basically, this is what we are planning to do.
Market Potential and Art Collaboration Plans
01:21:34
Speaker
And once this happens, we see that this is going to be huge.
01:21:37
Speaker
We see that we can like with our own token, with our infrastructure, with our ecosystem interface and all that stuff, we can become just one of the biggest players on the market.
01:21:49
Speaker
My man.
01:21:51
Speaker
That's exciting.
01:21:52
Speaker
Did you see the Picasso that sold for more than 300 million?
01:21:58
Speaker
The normal artwork, you mean?
01:21:59
Speaker
Yeah, the real Picasso.
01:22:01
Speaker
I've seen it.
01:22:03
Speaker
You should do that.
01:22:04
Speaker
When you start doing real world assets, you should buy like a crazy 50 million piece of art and raffle it out on the platform.
01:22:12
Speaker
That would be the craziest marketing move.
01:22:15
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:16
Speaker
We'll definitely, we'll definitely do this.
01:22:17
Speaker
Yeah, of course.
01:22:19
Speaker
We have some like some crazy cool ideas with different like a big art collectors with different protocols who are now already making some really cool stuff in terms of tokenization of real world assets and stuff, some stuff like this.
01:22:32
Speaker
So yeah, we're definitely going to make it.
01:22:34
Speaker
Man, that's really, really exciting.
01:22:37
Speaker
Thank you.
01:22:38
Speaker
Thank you so much, man.
01:22:39
Speaker
I really appreciate
Invitation for Collaboration and Closing Remarks
01:22:40
Speaker
you coming.
01:22:40
Speaker
For anyone who listened to this, do you have anything special that you want to open it up?
01:22:47
Speaker
Who should come talk to you?
01:22:48
Speaker
Where should they find you and who should reach out to you?
01:22:53
Speaker
Look, I'm always as open as I possibly can get to anybody.
01:22:57
Speaker
Founders who need some support, founders who need some help, founders who just want to get some advice.
01:23:02
Speaker
If you are looking at this now and you think that, okay, I need to come to speak to him, maybe he will get some help to me or maybe he can support me with something.
01:23:11
Speaker
Just I can always do this.
01:23:12
Speaker
You can reach out to me either in Twitter, LinkedIn, anything.
01:23:16
Speaker
All my DMs are always open.
01:23:17
Speaker
So, and as well, just, yeah, if you think that...
01:23:21
Speaker
what I'm telling is something interesting or what we are building is something interesting.
01:23:26
Speaker
Just always open to any sort of partnership, just brands, angels, founders, backing founders, VCs, just, yeah, all types of, just, I'm always open to any types of synergies, collaborations, communications, anything.
01:23:41
Speaker
That's awesome.
01:23:42
Speaker
Guys, how can you not love this guy when you've been listening to him for an hour and 30 minutes?
01:23:49
Speaker
You can see that his head is screwed very solidly on his shoulders.
01:23:54
Speaker
He knows what he's doing.
01:23:55
Speaker
He knows where he's going.
01:23:56
Speaker
And I honestly, like, obviously, this is not financial advice.
01:24:00
Speaker
You know the drill.
01:24:01
Speaker
But this is something that you need to check out at the time where we're
01:24:06
Speaker
when we're speaking, the market is getting active a little bit again as well.
01:24:10
Speaker
And I really recommend following him.
01:24:13
Speaker
I'm not the first one to say that guy on the LinkedIn post was, but he's going to be a superstar.
01:24:20
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening.
01:24:21
Speaker
Don't forget to drop a comment, to follow us on all the platforms.
01:24:25
Speaker
Share it with your friends.
01:24:26
Speaker
You know how big of an impact that has.
01:24:28
Speaker
Don't forget that this is a decentralized podcast.
01:24:31
Speaker
And if you vibed with this, join us on Discord.
01:24:33
Speaker
We have something for you to do and for you to gain.
01:24:37
Speaker
Thank you, everyone.
01:24:38
Speaker
And see you all again soon.
01:24:39
Speaker
Thank you, man.
01:24:40
Speaker
Thank you.
01:24:41
Speaker
It was amazing.
01:24:41
Speaker
My pleasure.
01:24:42
Speaker
My pleasure.