Transcript
Speaker: Hello everyone and welcome back to the Polymath Experience.
Speaker: I'm your host, Polymath.
Speaker: Today I have someone special.
Speaker: I know I say this every week, but this one's very extra special.
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.
Speaker: You know, like you have a conversation with someone and you're like, okay, I can take on the world now.
Speaker: This is the type of energy.
Speaker: Like I haven't seen this in anyone before.
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.
Speaker: He's someone that for me, you can bet on to succeed and to become successful.
Speaker: He's now building a platform called EZ that's been making a lot of noise in the past few months.
Speaker: It's a Web3 native platform that allows people to raffle out their prize NFTs, but that's only like scratching the surface.
Speaker: Vova, welcome to the show.
Speaker: Thank you so much, man.
Speaker: You've introduced me, so a lot of people will be watching this.
Speaker: I think they'll be quite interested.
Speaker: Yeah, happy to be here, happy to talk.
Speaker: And same, same, totally same.
Speaker: Last week we had a call and I was inspired as well.
Speaker: So that's a cool stuff to have.
Speaker: Awesome, man.
Speaker: It's nice.
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.
Speaker: 100%, 100%.
Speaker: Throughout the journey in Web3, I think... I won't say that I'm an OG in the space, to be honest.
Speaker: I've started something like two and a half years ago only.
Speaker: But in this two and a half years ago journey, I just met a lot of cool people
Speaker: Some of those people I can even call real friends.
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.
Speaker: So yeah, it's a cool place to be.
Speaker: It really is.
Speaker: It's surprising when you scroll through Twitter, there's so much toxicity.
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.
Speaker: It's really mind blowing.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Totally aligned.
Speaker: Totally aligned.
Speaker: You know, actually, I even think that this toxicity is...
Speaker: by those people who are just there by alone, and they are not supported.
Speaker: And it's not only about this space, it's about every single outer space.
Speaker: If you're not supported, you'll try to compromise this as being, for being toxic and for just spreading a bad mood.
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
Speaker: Yeah, they really are.
Speaker: And it's, we, vulnerability is being more and more allowed.
Speaker: Zeneca, who I saw you know as well, is like one of the best voices for that.
Speaker: Sattvic, who I think we know in common as well.
Speaker: I mean, I don't know Zeneca, but I know Sattvic a little bit and he's been very vocal and very vulnerable.
Speaker: And I, like it's so necessary, especially with us men.
Speaker: And I think it's the only way
Speaker: beyond that toxicity.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: How's the, how's the last few weeks been weeks been for you?
Speaker: So to be honest, the last few weeks they've been super overbooked.
Speaker: We are just now preparing to launch the testnet.
Speaker: So like the whole team is full-time working, full-time developing, business developing.
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,
Speaker: trying to know as many DAOs community members as possible, and as well, VCs, founders, just developers, everybody.
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.
Speaker: So basically just this.
Speaker: I want to say even like two last weeks, it's something like half a year for me like this.
Speaker: So yeah, full-time developing, full-time business developing.
Speaker: That's crazy.
Speaker: And we'll go deeper into EZI and what you're doing.
Speaker: But I read about you.
Speaker: You sent me a few links and I explored and I went down like your timeline on Twitter and on LinkedIn.
Speaker: And I don't know, I was just impressed.
Speaker: And a lot of questions rose in me.
Speaker: Like, I'm really intrigued as to how you got started.
Speaker: Where'd you grow up?
Speaker: What was your childhood like?
Speaker: Because two things pop out for me.
Speaker: You have like genuine empathy that seeps out of you and you're also extremely driven.
Speaker: And those are two traits that are not usually very like common in everyone.
Speaker: Like a lot of people have one that's very strong or the other.
Speaker: But I know I know very few people who have both.
Speaker: How so how did that come to be for you?
Speaker: Oh man, that's a hard question.
Speaker: I don't know how it came to be to me, but just at the end of the course, thank you.
Speaker: Thank you because you have kind words and thank you.
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
Speaker: Basically, you see different kind of human character.
Speaker: So basically, I can tell you a bit about my background in terms of my childhood and all that.
Speaker: But to be honest, I don't know.
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.
Speaker: I think it went step by step.
Speaker: You really, really don't think that there was some like key part of this key point when this happened.
Speaker: Oh, that's, that's interesting.
Speaker: And so there's no, like, there was no moment you, because you started very young and you, you succeeded very young.
Speaker: Whereas some people have to have to take like,
Speaker: you know, back doors and have to struggle a lot before they succeed.
Speaker: And so for you, you think it just kind of happened naturally?
Speaker: I can't say that I didn't struggle.
Speaker: I can't say that it was just like straight success, to be honest.
Speaker: But I think that one of, like, let's say,
Speaker: We can call it key points.
Speaker: One thing, like one moment when I thought that, okay, I'm now going to be an entrepreneur.
Speaker: It was, basically, I finished the college in Marbella, Andalusia.
Speaker: It's in Spain.
Speaker: It's a small city, like a touristic city in Spain.
Speaker: And I studied there in the law college under Cambridge Foundation.
Speaker: And basically, we had a class that was called the business studies and economics.
Speaker: And my lecturer, teacher, he told me that, look, I'm
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
Speaker: Either it's a platform, app, hardware, any sort of stuff.
Speaker: And there are people who are making this idea come true.
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.
Speaker: And basically this was the key point.
Speaker: Just I didn't start with like with the IT.
Speaker: I didn't start with straight like
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
Speaker: And then the story begins.
Speaker: I can just, I can keep going if you want.
Speaker: Yeah, please, man.
Speaker: That's what I'm here for.
Speaker: I want to hear, I want to hear all of it.
Speaker: Amazing.
Speaker: Amazing.
Speaker: So basically just started doing those live shows, club shows and stuff like this.
Speaker: I was born in Kazakhstan.
Speaker: Then I moved to Russia, to Moscow.
Speaker: So basically it's the, like one of the biggest mega policies, biggest city, like one of the biggest cities probably.
Speaker: And there are a lot of different like live shows, light shows, night shows, and basically just got quite successful in this sphere.
Speaker: And this sphere is not that sphere where you will just extremely fast get hundreds, thousands of dollars.
Speaker: But for the teenager, for somebody who is like 17, 18, 19, it's quite a good way to start.
Speaker: And then the best part of it that you start acknowledging people.
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.
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.
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.
Speaker: And basically all those people.
Speaker: I just, I started working with them.
Speaker: I started working with them.
Speaker: I started selling the app,
Speaker: just postings.
Speaker: I started selling advertisement for brands on those pages and Instagram.
Speaker: I didn't know about Twitter.
Speaker: I didn't know about LinkedIn.
Speaker: It was Instagram.
Speaker: It was Instagram and the CIS social network.
Speaker: Probably it's called VK.
Speaker: Probably you haven't even heard about it.
Speaker: Yeah, it's like it's just a regional network.
Speaker: Let's call it like this.
Speaker: So started selling those advertisements and basically step by step, the money kept coming.
Speaker: So it was like it wasn't something extremely hard to do, to be honest with you.
Speaker: It was just like you have an influencer, you have the brand, you just merge them together and you sell the ads.
Speaker: It's like it's not a rocket science.
Speaker: Basically, step by step.
Speaker: Then when I was something like I turned 19,
Speaker: I've heard that some people, they make educational courses.
Speaker: They make educational courses for educational platforms.
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.
Speaker: So I was like, wow, I have a big variety of those influencers.
Speaker: I know a lot of entrepreneurs.
Speaker: I know a lot of those just public figures.
Speaker: Why not to try to not sell the ads, but sell those educational courses?
Speaker: And then everything started just booming.
Speaker: Under two and a half years of doing those educational courses, selling the two educational platforms, we made something like $12 million.
Speaker: And this was like, of course, it was not all my money.
Speaker: We were three guys there.
Speaker: I was one of the founders.
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.
Speaker: And of course there were some expenses and stuff like this, but it was still a lot of money for myself.
Speaker: It was the first, like the first big amount of money that I've made.
Speaker: The best thing about it is that it was a good, uh,
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
Speaker: Can we stay on that for a second?
Speaker: Do you still have in mind like the step-by-step lessons of... Because marketing is everything.
Speaker: Because markets are driven by basically the meeting between offer and demand.
Speaker: And so how do you drive demand?
Speaker: It is through marketing, through getting a product or a service to market.
Speaker: So if you want to do business...
Speaker: You can't, that's something that I personally learned the hard way.
Speaker: You can't count on other people to do your marketing.
Speaker: You have to be a part of it.
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?
Speaker: I'd hire more people.
Speaker: 100%.
Speaker: I'd hire more people.
Speaker: I'd stop making 50% of the actions that I was doing myself.
Speaker: I'd given this 50% of actions to other people so I can scale it even faster.
Speaker: If I'd scale it even faster until the big competition came to the market, I'd make a lot more.
Speaker: It's like it's a common sense.
Speaker: It's just the amount of actions per time.
Speaker: Why do you think you didn't do it?
Speaker: The lack of experience, lack of experience.
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.
Speaker: And you still you think that, OK, this is enough.
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
Speaker: work for yourself and stuff like this.
Speaker: But then you are just, well, I was thinking about it as a hassle.
Speaker: I wasn't thinking about it as a business.
Speaker: As a business.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I wasn't.
Speaker: I always liked this differentiation between businessman and entrepreneur.
Speaker: I was an entrepreneur.
Speaker: I didn't have a team.
Speaker: I didn't have, let's say, a big company.
Speaker: I wasn't paying a lot of salaries.
Speaker: So this is the key differentiation.
Speaker: The business is where you have people helping you to build your idea.
Speaker: And the entrepreneurship is when you are building your idea with your own hands.
Speaker: So basically I was an entrepreneur, but quite successful, quite successful entrepreneur still.
Speaker: I was like 20, I was doing this till I was 21.
Speaker: So from, I think even like, even from very early to while I was 22.
Speaker: So for two and a half years I was doing this and it was, it was quite, quite successful.
Speaker: You did well.
Speaker: Congrats, man.
Speaker: Hey there, it's me again.
Speaker: If you're enjoying the content, you're going to enjoy this because you're going to have the ability to support us.
Speaker: I want to tell you about our partner Wasabi Protocol.
Speaker: It's an option based protocol that allows people to make bets on certain NFT collections.
Speaker: But that's not all.
Speaker: Because what is right now NFTs could be anything in the future that is tokenized.
Speaker: They are on the brink of powering one of the most important layers of the future financial markets.
Speaker: I'll give you a couple examples of how you can use it right now.
Speaker: Imagine you have an NFT that's gained a lot of value because there's been a speculative
Speaker: hike and you want to keep that NFT because it's dear to you, but you also want to capture some of its value.
Speaker: After it's increased a lot, you could bet that the price will decrease by staking a little bit of capital and capture some of that value on the way down, which means that you get both of those aspects that are important to you.
Speaker: You get money, but you also get to participate.
Speaker: And the second one is if you're convinced that a collection is going to go up, you can bet on that by risking some capital and not the price of the whole asset.
Speaker: If you don't have it, go check it out.
Speaker: The links are in the description.
Speaker: Wasabi.xyz slash r slash the polymath experience.
Speaker: Thank you so much for checking them out.
Speaker: And thank you so much for using that referral link.
Speaker: If you do, always do your research.
Speaker: Only use tools and amounts that you're comfortable with.
Speaker: Remember that all financial investments carry risk.
Speaker: And back to the episode now.
Speaker: And how about marketing?
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?
Speaker: I have one key lesson, one key, let's say, hint that I'm using even today.
Speaker: I'm using it every day with every single business that I'm doing, with every single idea.
Speaker: The key answer lies in the customer development.
Speaker: So let's say that it's a cool stuff that you've touched on this question.
Speaker: So I think that probably this will help somebody and probably a lot of people will find this interesting.
Speaker: So look, but let's say that you have a product.
Speaker: It can be any product.
Speaker: Your main necessity is to find at least two people who will buy your product.
Speaker: Let's say that it can be a platform you need to find at least two users for your platform.
Speaker: It may be any sort of a product you need to find at least two people.
Speaker: And then you ask those two people several questions.
Speaker: Why did you buy this product?
Speaker: What problem were you solving with this product?
Speaker: How likely you are going to recommend this product to like your closer circle?
Speaker: What can we make better?
Speaker: and you make a huge list of those questions trying to dig deeper and deeper and deeper into the behavior of your customer.
Speaker: And then,
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.
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.
Speaker: You just need to find them.
Speaker: And those questions that you'll ask those two customers, I call it customer development.
Speaker: I think it's called customer development.
Speaker: like this.
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.
Speaker: This is what I'm doing always.
Speaker: Hope that it made sense.
Speaker: It makes so much sense.
Speaker: And it's incredibly important.
Speaker: And it just reminded me when you were talking, it made me think of the fact that
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.
Speaker: And you're like, oh, I want to do this.
Speaker: And so you kind of try to reverse engineer your idea and think, oh, like this is a good place to start.
Speaker: But the place to start you found from the idea and not from the market and not from the customer.
Speaker: And that's something that I've personally struggled with because you also have this,
Speaker: Like the brain is not very good at prioritizing things.
Speaker: And so you have an idea.
Speaker: It's an awesome idea.
Speaker: You fall in love with it because you have an ego like all humans.
Speaker: And so, of course, your idea is going to be great and you're going to love it.
Speaker: And then you fall in love more and more with your idea.
Speaker: And sometimes when you're lucky enough, it kind of finds itself...
Speaker: like fitting with the market, most times it doesn't.
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.
Speaker: And that's very impressive.
Speaker: Yeah, thank you, man.
Speaker: Thank you.
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.
Speaker: And that's the only thing that is between those two things.
Speaker: Because you can have an idea, you can pivot it, pivot it, pivot it.
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.
Speaker: And the customer development is basically, basically, it's a mixture of sales and psychology.
Speaker: This is how I identify the customer development.
Speaker: You need to find the road
Speaker: to know your client.
Speaker: Basically, this is how it is.
Speaker: And this is like, even we are doing this with our startup now.
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.
Speaker: why they like our product.
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.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And we jumped way ahead of the questions that I had in mind.
Speaker: This is perfect.
Speaker: This is awesome.
Speaker: We could cut this interview here and we already have a ton of value for anyone who's launching a business and listening.
Speaker: Because this is...
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.
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.
Speaker: 27.
Speaker: Yeah, so we started at the same time, but we had vastly different paths.
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.
Speaker: And I would try to latch on to every single one of them.
Speaker: I didn't really know where to start.
Speaker: Also, turns out, I wasn't very confident in myself either, subconsciously.
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.
Speaker: A lot of my approach was based on assumptions and that doesn't work.
Speaker: Well, it works sometimes when you're lucky enough.
Speaker: Lucky.
Speaker: Yeah, I know.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Well, I wasn't and you can't count on luck.
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 you successful?
Speaker: If you try to dumb it down.
Speaker: I have an answer, actually.
Speaker: I have an answer.
Speaker: First of all, I won't say that I'm successful.
Speaker: I know a lot of people who are way more successful than I am.
Speaker: I just, I'm persistent.
Speaker: This is what I can tell about myself.
Speaker: I'm persistent always, always.
Speaker: Even sometimes it's a persistency that can just can be counted by different other people as negative aspect.
Speaker: I'm too persistent.
Speaker: This is like, I'm too persistent.
Speaker: I can't.
Speaker: don't know the word no.
Speaker: So if you will not answer me, I'll text you once again.
Speaker: I'll text you once again.
Speaker: And I'll text you until then, you have two solutions.
Speaker: You will answer me or you will block me.
Speaker: This is the type of, like, this is the maximum level of the persistency.
Speaker: And that's like,
Speaker: I'm not trying to make it as I want something negative or something like this.
Speaker: It's 100% with positive vibes, 100% with only the positive intent, but it's how I am.
Speaker: It's like I was just like too much time, this persistency turned out well, and I was counting on it.
Speaker: I'm always counting on persistency.
Speaker: And one more thing, why would, let's say, why would I tell that I have some successes in the past?
Speaker: A lot of people tell me that my superpower is to unite wise individuals around my own ideas.
Speaker: I think this is the key because I have amazing imagination.
Speaker: I'm very good at just creating some crazy ideas.
Speaker: That's why I'm basically good at marketing.
Speaker: I'm good at marketing.
Speaker: I'm good at making cool ideas.
Speaker: I'm good at making some uncommon ideas.
Speaker: But if there were no people who will be helping me, who will be working on these ideas, just there would be anything.
Speaker: I will be just one of those guys with just cool ideas who is known for his crazy cool ideas and nothing else.
Speaker: So basically, the key part here is to be able to unite wise individuals around your ideas.
Speaker: Maybe not even wise individuals, to just unite individuals around your ideas.
Speaker: I think this is the key part, like the most key part.
Speaker: I think that this will take a bit longer, but I want to tell this.
Speaker: I think this will be helpful as well to different people.
Speaker: Sometimes, I won't say that I'm too old.
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,
Speaker: We have a cool idea, but we haven't got money.
Speaker: How to start without money?
Speaker: I'll tell that first thing that startup needs, that idea needs, is not money.
Speaker: It's a team.
Speaker: It's at least one person who is going to believe in your idea as much as you believe in your idea.
Speaker: So basically, and I always say that, look, if you have a cool idea and you think that it's cool, it's...
Speaker: any idea will have at least one fan.
Speaker: Try to find this fan.
Speaker: Try to find the one more human that is as fanatic about this idea as you are.
Speaker: If you're, let's say, good in marketing, try to find this fanatic in terms of technology.
Speaker: So he will be your first developer and you'll just be co-founders.
Speaker: This is how the co-founder and foundership is being built.
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.
Speaker: And this is the key part because you don't need money.
Speaker: You don't need any money.
Speaker: to make a minimal product, you don't need any money.
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,
Speaker: unique people, but I know that there are people who are good at sales and marketing.
Speaker: There are people who are good in technology.
Speaker: If you mix these two people, this is the perfect formula for any startup.
Speaker: You can, at least you can make the minimal valuable product.
Speaker: You can just build the MVP and you just can try it at least.
Speaker: And then if you found something good and then this MVP is being mixed with just the
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.
Speaker: I don't know if you realize that this is actually the perfect business masterclass.
Speaker: Because it's true.
Speaker: You don't need any money.
Speaker: That's how I do it.
Speaker: Yeah, and it works.
Speaker: It seems to be working for you.
Speaker: And from experience, it does work as well.
Speaker: And I'll give, as a nuance, my own experience at the moment of...
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.
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.
Speaker: And so it's I found that when you're the
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.
Speaker: That's like bringing people together, not needing any money and being focused on customer development.
Speaker: That's all you need.
Speaker: That's a mixture.
Speaker: That's a perfect business equation.
Speaker: Like I want to as well, like it depends on what you count as a business.
Speaker: This is like, I'll tell that this MVP equals bringing money together, bringing people together.
Speaker: That's, that was a big difference, big difference.
Speaker: So MVP is a business is when you bring money together.
Speaker: And the MVP is when you bring people together, idea and the customer development, that's it.
Speaker: This is like with this equation, you can build any MVP.
Speaker: That's so cool.
Speaker: When's the next round for EZ?
Speaker: Is there going to be one or is it going to be tokens?
Speaker: We are raising at the moment.
Speaker: We are raising.
Speaker: What's the minimum ticket?
Speaker: Angels 10K.
Speaker: The VC is 30.
Speaker: Okay, we'll talk.
Speaker: Yeah, I actually was, actually, it was in my questions.
Speaker: An obvious strength that you have is the ability to surround yourself and inspire others.
Speaker: And I kind of want to know, is it something that you always naturally had in you?
Speaker: Is it something that you developed?
Speaker: Is it something that someone aspiring to be that could learn, you think?
Speaker: I'll tell you, just to be honest, I didn't read any business books.
Speaker: I didn't, I like to read.
Speaker: I didn't just like,
Speaker: I wasn't that much into the, let's say, educating myself on business, except the college.
Speaker: Just I wasn't reading any like leadership literature and all that stuff.
Speaker: And I just, to be honest with you, actually, I just didn't even realize this stuff.
Speaker: This was like this quote, your superpower is to unite white individuals around yourself.
Speaker: is the quote that I've been told just like several times.
Speaker: If one time I hear this, okay, maybe that's just opinion.
Speaker: One time it's an opinion, two times it's an opinion, like probably closer to be the truth.
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.
Speaker: And I think that, look, one more thing.
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
Speaker: Yeah, I agree with you.
Speaker: We're social animals and there is a real power in that social network kind of feeding you these realizations.
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.
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?
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
Speaker: This would sound too common, but really just talk and talk with like, really just really talk.
Speaker: Don't be shy to give your idea out loud.
Speaker: Don't be shy to just spread your
Speaker: ideas around.
Speaker: Look, I think that one big mistake that a lot of people do is that thinking that look who like they would think that I'm not right.
Speaker: They would think that it's funny.
Speaker: They would think and this they would think part it kills it kills more is more startups than insufficient investments.
Speaker: And really, it's just how it is.
Speaker: Just talk, talk and announce your ideas.
Speaker: Talk with like-minded individuals, with some people who probably will not understand you.
Speaker: No worries.
Speaker: It's like, but it doesn't happen just always that people will understand you.
Speaker: Just talk.
Speaker: And even I think that, look,
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.
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...
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.
Speaker: Because look, if you are successful in ruining concerns of just random people, you are just becoming the professional in your own idea.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
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.
Speaker: There are people whose feedback doesn't really matter.
Speaker: And it's your job as a founder to...
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.
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.
Speaker: And it's such a fine line.
Speaker: It's such a fine line to walk.
Speaker: You have a vision, you have an idea, there's feedback that you're going to get that you need to reject.
Speaker: And there's feedback that you're going to get that you need to integrate.
Speaker: And it's so freaking hard to do it efficiently.
Speaker: This is hard.
Speaker: This is really hard.
Speaker: This is the next level of those.
Speaker: I know I can say that it's like a third sense that you- It is.
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.
Speaker: And somewhere deep inside, you understand that this feedback
Speaker: was not because of your ideas, because it was because of the opinion of that person.
Speaker: But sometimes the feedback is really, really hard to digest.
Speaker: I call it like this.
Speaker: It's hard to digest all types of feedback.
Speaker: And I think that the professionals
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.
Speaker: Some feedback is just a projection of something.
Speaker: And you will never know of what exactly.
Speaker: So this is the hard part.
Speaker: Even I find it hard, to be honest with you.
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.
Speaker: And then while you're trying to do something with the feedback, you may lose focus.
Speaker: And to lose focus, that's the worst thing to do.
Speaker: Whereas X say, like, when you're building, you can't suffer losing focus.
Speaker: Losing focus will kill as well.
Speaker: A lot of different startups, a lot of wise ideas and stuff like this.
Speaker: Amen.
Speaker: If I could add something to this and it's like, we have two computers in ourselves.
Speaker: We have the normal type of computer, of computing, which is the brain.
Speaker: It's analytical, it processes data.
Speaker: data that is limited, but rational, and it's easy to assess and understand.
Speaker: And we have our own quantum computer and it's our intuition.
Speaker: And it's the one thing that I think every entrepreneur should like work on and it's developing their intuition because
Speaker: When you learn how to differentiate, when is your brain talking?
Speaker: Your brain that's analytical, but it's struggling to prioritize things.
Speaker: Like every type of feedback is equal for the brain.
Speaker: And it doesn't know like where it ranks.
Speaker: but intuition will naturally tell you like, yes, this is for me.
Speaker: No, this is not for me.
Speaker: Yes, this is for me.
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.
Speaker: But yeah, intuition is the most underrated, uh, superpower for, for business, I think.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Totally agree.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: I think that
Speaker: To train intuition is just time and experience.
Speaker: Time, experience, listening to yourself, all those types of different actions that you've talked about.
Speaker: And as well, yeah, meditation.
Speaker: I just sometimes stay on the, like, I don't know how you call it, the board of satthu.
Speaker: Do you know that stuff?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: It's like, do you know what is needles?
Speaker: Like, it stays standing on needles.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: I know that.
Speaker: I've tried this several times.
Speaker: I try to at least once per month stay on those types of things.
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.
Speaker: But as well, the intuition is, like, I think that's the hardest.
Speaker: It's the...
Speaker: additional level of everything.
Speaker: So yeah, this is know something like certain equation of how to train intuition.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: It's so powerful.
Speaker: Like, what does your usual day look like?
Speaker: Do you have a specific type of routine of things that you try to integrate?
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.
Speaker: What, how do you stay grounded?
Speaker: How do you stay efficient and focused?
Speaker: To be honest with you, I just have a week planned.
Speaker: This is the key difference from me and probably different other people with whom I was talking.
Speaker: All my week is planned.
Speaker: So all my week is packed with calls.
Speaker: I have like, I straightforward just booked those calls for the whole week.
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
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.
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...
Speaker: you waking up doing this, this, this, then going to the computer.
Speaker: I think it's just, it comes naturally.
Speaker: Yeah, it just comes naturally.
Speaker: I hope everyone realizes how much of an honor it is to have managed to be squeezed into your schedule.
Speaker: But what you're telling me says that you've become very good at delegation then.
Speaker: To be honest, I won't say this either.
Speaker: But I'm that type of person.
Speaker: I like to delegate.
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.
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.
Speaker: Well, like all this, like regular, regular types of thoughts that you get.
Speaker: So sometimes even I think that, look, what I delegate, the outcome is clear.
Speaker: The outcome is the outcome.
Speaker: Let's say that something worked out, something didn't work out.
Speaker: And then I'm thinking, oh, look, but if I did this, probably it will work out in a better manner.
Speaker: Or if it didn't work out, this is the worst.
Speaker: Probably I'm starting thinking, look, if I was doing this, this would definitely work out.
Speaker: So delegation is as well.
Speaker: This delegation is the talent.
Speaker: I'll tell the delegation is talent.
Speaker: The right, the knowing how to delegate is a big talent.
Speaker: That it is.
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?
Speaker: I'll tell you on the idea, let's, I define it like business development, the product development and marketing.
Speaker: Three, let's say three cohorts.
Speaker: So in terms of the like product development, my part is just ideation.
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.
Speaker: Fine tuning and just a
Speaker: fine tuning and user experience.
Speaker: Let's go like this.
Speaker: This is why I have the CTO.
Speaker: He's my co-founder.
Speaker: He's a crazy wise individual in terms of the technique side.
Speaker: And basically, I know that he's the one who is doing this always fine.
Speaker: We worked with him on the previous startup.
Speaker: We are basically just, we're friends.
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.
Speaker: Probably if it's hard for you to make business with your friend, probably you just need to think,
Speaker: If it's becoming more like a business relationship than a friendship.
Speaker: If it still stays the friendship, it's always, for me, it's always easy.
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.
Speaker: I'm always as transparent as possible.
Speaker: If I'm coming on the call with somebody and I want something really, I'll just tell it.
Speaker: If it's something that, look, only two things make, if you get a yes or if you get a no.
Speaker: If you get a no, that's not a problem.
Speaker: You just will try again.
Speaker: So it's like I'm always as transparent as possible.
Speaker: So on the part of the product,
Speaker: features and product development and stuff like this, my CTO is helping.
Speaker: My CTO with the team of developers and stuff like this.
Speaker: On the part of the marketing, I'm more involved.
Speaker: I'm more involved in the part of marketing in terms of like every single step except the manual work.
Speaker: Of course, for the manual work, we have team, we are working with two agencies and stuff like this.
Speaker: So basically in terms of the marketing, I'm more involved, but not the handwork.
Speaker: But in terms of the business development,
Speaker: I believe that this is where I have the lack of the delegation power and delegation talent.
Speaker: And I think that, look, nobody can tell about my product better than I can.
Speaker: Nobody can explain my idea better than I can.
Speaker: And nobody can ask for something more, let's say, more sincere than I can.
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.
Speaker: I'm doing all that full time.
Speaker: Full time.
Speaker: I don't have the CBD or I don't have the business managers, business development managers.
Speaker: I don't have any assistants, anyone.
Speaker: I just I always do this by myself.
Speaker: Better I'll have this done slowly but surely.
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.
Speaker: It's not my approach.
Speaker: That's really cool.
Speaker: That's really cool.
Speaker: Okay, at this point of the conversation, I'd like to introduce rapid fire questions.
Speaker: I'm going to ask you a few questions and you answer off the top of your head.
Speaker: If you could only buy one NFT to hold for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Speaker: Crypto packs.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: If you could only buy one crypto for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Speaker: Ethereum.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: Who are your top three favorite people you vibe with the most in this space at the moment?
Speaker: Oh, that's a tough one.
Speaker: But look, first, Josip, Josip Vlah.
Speaker: He's the head of innovation at Resolute.
Speaker: Resolute is the marketing agency.
Speaker: And he was the first guy who believed in me.
Speaker: This is like, probably Josip is going to watch this, but he's like my
Speaker: elder brother in crypto.
Speaker: We didn't have a project.
Speaker: We didn't have a like we didn't have a product.
Speaker: I mean, we pre-traction, pre-everything.
Speaker: He just he helped me basically.
Speaker: He helped me like he was my like really elder brother.
Speaker: So it's Josip always like
Speaker: I think that I can call him a friend and hopefully he can call me friend as well.
Speaker: So the first is Josip, 100%.
Speaker: But second, with whom I can vibe, that's Robin.
Speaker: Robin, look, look, look, I'll tell you, I always forget the surname.
Speaker: Yeah, I can't remember the surname.
Speaker: I hope that Robin will excuse me.
Speaker: He's the ex-head of NICTIA at Outlier Adventures.
Speaker: He is as well in Dubai here.
Speaker: He's way older than myself.
Speaker: I won't say way older, but he has kids.
Speaker: He is like he's the OG in the space.
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.
Speaker: he can call and give some like, well, let's say life advice in terms not a crypto advice, like life advice.
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.
Speaker: And just let's let's just casually talk without like mentioning the crypto stuff and everything like this.
Speaker: So this is like, this is, I can tell.
Speaker: That's amazing.
Speaker: Friendship as well.
Speaker: And third, third, third, third.
Speaker: On the third, like it's the last but not least, always like this.
Speaker: It's one of those three can become, like can always be on the first place.
Speaker: On the second, it's like all those people are equal.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: I can tell several people.
Speaker: Very helpful, Ruthie at Surgeons, super helpful.
Speaker: Julian, just super hands-on, super helpful as well.
Speaker: He's just like helping with everything.
Speaker: Even like, you may not ask something, but he's like helping without any thoughts, without anything.
Speaker: Then Zenia, Zenia Vazemska, she is the community leader at Raribull, Raribull Foundation, super hands-on as well.
Speaker: Just from the very first, actually two, Zenia and Masha, they are twins.
Speaker: and Amashi is the CMO at Rarible and Zeniya, she's a community leader at Rarible Foundation.
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
Speaker: Just educating me, helping me without anything, without asking anything, basically.
Speaker: So this is the approach that I really value.
Speaker: And of course, human, of course.
Speaker: It's like if we say that vibing, I just don't usually have those meaningful speeches like this.
Speaker: So I definitely can say that we are vibing.
Speaker: I appreciate it, man.
Speaker: I genuinely do.
Speaker: Because I feel the same.
Speaker: I feel the same.
Speaker: You know, like there's times when you come out of a conversation, you're like, okay, like this is a friend there.
Speaker: There is a relationship for the future.
Speaker: And like I said, like I told you and I want to tell it to the world.
Speaker: I used to be very ego driven.
Speaker: And now I can say this with a little bit more confidence.
Speaker: You're five years younger than me and you inspire the fuck out of me.
Speaker: And I, and I like, this is, this is, this is really cool to see.
Speaker: And really like, you're, you're, you're a blessing.
Speaker: And I understand, I was almost going to ask you like, why did these guys help you?
Speaker: Why would they go out of their way?
Speaker: But it makes so much sense.
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.
Speaker: I see why.
Speaker: I think I was reading, what was this guy's article from Neon?
Speaker: Oh, Ryan.
Speaker: Yeah, I forgot to mention him, Ryan, man.
Speaker: Ryan Oran as well, super, super helpful.
Speaker: Super helpful.
Speaker: And as well, this happened from the first call with him.
Speaker: He was like, man, we are going to be at least friends, but in the long run, let's work.
Speaker: So we just, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker: And he called you, I think a future superstar or something.
Speaker: And I will bet some money on this right now.
Speaker: If there's a VOVA token, I'll buy the fuck out of it.
Speaker: I'll put my hands on like 2% of the supply because this bitch is blowing up.
Speaker: My pleasure, man.
Speaker: What's something about you people online don't know?
Speaker: I have a twin brother.
Speaker: I have a twin brother who looks, he looks nearly like me, of course.
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.
Speaker: He's not yet, like I won't say that I'm public now, but he's like, he's even less public.
Speaker: He's there cooking some very crazy cool stuff.
Speaker: And I think that, uh,
Speaker: we are going to unite the power one day.
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.
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.
Speaker: This is like the first thing from the top of my head.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: What's something about you people think they know that they don't?
Speaker: Oh, man, that's so hard.
Speaker: This one's a bit of a mindfuck.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Look, let me, let me think, let me think.
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.
Speaker: Like not native, but the one that I just started studying when I was like very, very young.
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.
Speaker: So I just I was basically I was dropped there.
Speaker: not like not dropped, but I was offered to study there and I just I didn't know too much English.
Speaker: So I was like a teenager without being able to speak to other teenagers.
Speaker: You probably can imagine how struggling it was.
Speaker: And as well, I speak Spanish nearly perfectly.
Speaker: So I can speak Spanish as well because I've lived there for five years.
Speaker: You need to teach me because I'm moving to Barcelona in two months and I don't speak any Spanish.
Speaker: I understand it.
Speaker: But yeah, it's been a while.
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.
Speaker: You want to answer, but you can't.
Speaker: And this is...
Speaker: the best motivation that you have.
Speaker: You just really start studying Spanish with triple power.
Speaker: Well, in my case, it won't be football.
Speaker: It will be Muay Thai or kickboxing.
Speaker: And so the incentive is to not get kicked in the face too much if I don't understand what they're saying.
Speaker: So it's good enough motivation, I think.
Speaker: Or being able to ask him not to punch that hard.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Oh, I should probably learn this early on before I go.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: How do you say don't punch me too hard?
Speaker: Probably not.
Speaker: Not a pega muy fuerte.
Speaker: Okay, thank you.
Speaker: No te pegas muy fuerte.
Speaker: Okay, I'm... Ben, you already have... There we go.
Speaker: I got the foundation now.
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.
Speaker: And for you, it was decentralized digital ownership.
Speaker: which is still very obscure, I think, to people.
Speaker: Like people are still here for price go up.
Speaker: Whereas in the world that we're living in, ownership of the digital realm is going to become more and more important.
Speaker: And I'd love to hear where you stand on that.
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.
Speaker: It's the governments where you live in and the government can always take it from you.
Speaker: It's like it's not the scary story or just like some strange stuff.
Speaker: It really is.
Speaker: If you have some like amount of money in your bank account, it's not your amount of money.
Speaker: Basically, you can buy, of course, something for it.
Speaker: You can own something.
Speaker: But it's not like really yours because it's in the system.
Speaker: And it's like it's...
Speaker: I don't think that it's bad.
Speaker: First of all, it's not bad.
Speaker: It's just how it is.
Speaker: So it's like it's normal, common stuff to have.
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.
Speaker: Really, when I say belong, it means that belong on that level that nobody can take it from you.
Speaker: And this is what I identify when something belongs to me.
Speaker: Because like, if someone can take something from me, does it really belong to me or am I just using it?
Speaker: This is the part.
Speaker: And basically I see a crypto as an instrument.
Speaker: For me, crypto is an instrument.
Speaker: That's why, to be honest with you, I've never traded
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
Speaker: I love this.
Speaker: I've never used futures.
Speaker: I've never used spot trading.
Speaker: Of course, I bought some Bitcoin, Ethereum and some like key altcoins, but I never did this to get some kind of value.
Speaker: because I see this as an instrument.
Speaker: It's an instrument.
Speaker: It's a cool instrument that we have.
Speaker: This is why I think that hopefully more people will get familiar to this instrument because it's magic.
Speaker: It's cool that you can own something.
Speaker: You can really have something that belongs to you.
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.
Speaker: And basically, it's always with you.
Speaker: It's always with you.
Speaker: You can buy for it.
Speaker: You can pay for it.
Speaker: You can just sell for it, anything.
Speaker: And this is how I define the decentralized ownership aspect, digital ownership aspect.
Speaker: And this is why it drives me like really, really.
Speaker: Yeah, even I can say that I fell in love with this aspect when I just acknowledged it.
Speaker: So this is why I'm in crypto.
Speaker: I love this.
Speaker: This is so cool.
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.
Speaker: What are your three, because you have a mutant, you have a youth, I think.
Speaker: What are the other two NFTs?
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.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: What collection art box is it?
Speaker: Oh man, I don't remember.
Speaker: I know that it's some kind of early generated artwork, but I don't remember the name of the collection.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: And so since you, because there are instruments, what do they each
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?
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
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
Speaker: spend them.
Speaker: So just let them be, let them be.
Speaker: We'll see.
Speaker: We'll see what will happen with them.
Speaker: Bridges and for NFTs, why bought the Mutant?
Speaker: I just would like really wanted to get into the community.
Speaker: I just I really like what you guys doing.
Speaker: I really like I'm a big fan of the ApeCoin.
Speaker: I just I became I can't say that we became friends, but we
Speaker: At least I know a lot of the councils at ApeCoinDAO, they are super helpful, super hands-on guys.
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.
Speaker: Like, really, I'm a no-name for them and they are like,
Speaker: Yeah, probably.
Speaker: But look, they didn't need to, like, they were not obligated to help me.
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.
Speaker: But every single ApeCoin member, every ApeCoin DAO member,
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.
Speaker: I see that they're older than me, basically.
Speaker: They are like way more experienced than I am.
Speaker: They are way more... Probably they heard like...
Speaker: thousands of ideas like I was telling them and they just still super helpful, super supportive.
Speaker: Like, and I really wanted to get into the community.
Speaker: So basically mutant was like my entrance to the Yuga, my entrance to the,
Speaker: let's say my entrance to the Apecoin community, the youth was the entrance to the Dash Labs community as well.
Speaker: We are probably like I'm talking to some guys into the Dash Labs.
Speaker: Probably if everything goes well, we are going to have a partnership with Dash Labs as well.
Speaker: And this is going to be a cool one.
Speaker: I'm not saying that we are going definitely to have one, but
Speaker: It will be cool to have one as we've been discussing it before.
Speaker: And the CryptoPunk BV1 for me, it's like an OG move.
Speaker: OG move in the market.
Speaker: Yeah, it was the advice that Josip as well gave me.
Speaker: He was like, man, this thing is going to age well.
Speaker: So basically...
Speaker: Now this was just like my, this is my, how people call it, collectibles.
Speaker: It's my collectible.
Speaker: It's my personal collectible that I'm going to have forever.
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.
Speaker: So basically this is something that I'm going to change my PFP to that crypto bank soon.
Speaker: So yeah, I just, I really, I took a nice clean one.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: Which one is it?
Speaker: It's the one with the, with, I have it.
Speaker: I think I have it on discord.
Speaker: I have it on discord.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I'll look at it.
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?
Speaker: I haven't tried.
Speaker: Send me the link in the chat so I can look and we'll try to, we'll try to post it.
Speaker: I'll put it in the footnotes.
Speaker: Let me do it after the podcast.
Speaker: Yeah, of course.
Speaker: Otherwise, I'll look it up.
Speaker: I saw that it's in your bio.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It took us an hour and five minutes, but we're finally getting too easy.
Speaker: So I love the idea.
Speaker: The idea is awesome.
Speaker: It's super simple.
Speaker: It unlocks liquidity.
Speaker: It allows smaller players in, although in a way that is not...
Speaker: without uncertainty.
Speaker: How did the idea first come to be?
Speaker: What were the first steps in making it a reality?
Speaker: Although we kind of have the context now because we're starting to know you.
Speaker: But yeah, how did it all start?
Speaker: Very easy, came out very easy.
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.
Speaker: I had an idea how to make, let's say,
Speaker: high valued assets like cars, phones, clothes and stuff like this, more accessible to normal users, to the mass audience.
Speaker: And I thought that, look, we can divide those assets into tickets.
Speaker: We can sell tickets to these assets.
Speaker: And one of those users will get the asset.
Speaker: It's like a crowdsourcing, basically.
Speaker: And then I just started thinking about this out loud with my friends, with my co-founder.
Speaker: And basically, then it turned out to be like a logic, but it's like a logical solution.
Speaker: But I didn't think about it.
Speaker: from the very beginning.
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.
Speaker: And this is super expensive to make.
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.
Speaker: And it will just give a lot of problems.
Speaker: It will need to be like a lot of money spent and stuff like this.
Speaker: Then I just left this idea in like the backlog of my head.
Speaker: Then when I found out about the blockchain, I came to my CTO guy and like we just, we,
Speaker: said it out loud to us, why not merge this idea with the blockchain?
Speaker: Because blockchain will be that entity where we are storing those assets.
Speaker: And basically we have all those assets like NFTs, tokens, smart contracts, collectibles, gaming assets and everything.
Speaker: So it's just like a different angle of looking at this idea.
Speaker: And basically this is how we just, it turned out that we decided to make it possible with blockchain.
Speaker: And basically, token lies very good into this approach because tokens can give you discounts.
Speaker: Tokens can make it possible for you to, if you're staking the token, you can be on always on the first pages.
Speaker: You can be the one who will be the primary lister of those assets.
Speaker: You can have the gas fees lowered and stuff like this.
Speaker: And we just straight, once we've found this idea about merging this, my idea,
Speaker: my four years old idea with this blockchain, we just started straightforward building.
Speaker: I didn't even think about looking for money or looking for anything.
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.
Speaker: You feel that it's your idea when you don't think about money.
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.
Speaker: So this is how the idea was born.
Speaker: It's really cool.
Speaker: It's a very simple and elegant and there's some gambling components to it a little bit, which people love.
Speaker: So it's going into Tasnet now.
Speaker: How much time do you usually take to edit this podcast?
Speaker: If we are recording this today,
Speaker: This would be in December.
Speaker: Yeah, sorry, it took me a second.
Speaker: This will come out sometime in late November, early December.
Speaker: Yeah, the Tessnaut.
Speaker: This means the Tessnaut will be live.
Speaker: The Tessnaut will be live.
Speaker: So basically, we are
Speaker: But originally from that date where we are speaking with you, the testnet will be in something like 10 days.
Speaker: So we are launching the testnet in 10 days.
Speaker: It's very like, it's not far away.
Speaker: We can see that the audience is hyped.
Speaker: We see a lot of demand.
Speaker: We just like, we have the product ready right now.
Speaker: We could just launch it tomorrow, but we are just fine tuning everything.
Speaker: You know, I'm in these types of thing.
Speaker: I just, I'm a perfectionist.
Speaker: So I like perfection.
Speaker: I want to fine tune the platform.
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.
Speaker: we see a big demand, we see a hype community, we see very active users.
Speaker: And I don't want to make it like we've launched it and then some amount of people came and it cried.
Speaker: It's the worst thing for me.
Speaker: So I want to make it all as fundamentally good as possible.
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.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: Like, from, I'm getting to know you now, so it's, I'm only perceiving things.
Speaker: I might be
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
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
Speaker: just team and all that stuff.
Speaker: So basically at the moment, the most needed part for us is to think about users as never before.
Speaker: That's why we are encouraging them to give the feedback, encouraging them to just give their opinions and stuff like this.
Speaker: Even the worst opinion is still better than without the opinion.
Speaker: The worst feedback is always better than without the feedback.
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.
Speaker: I'm as receptive to the feedback as I possibly can be.
Speaker: My ideas are not ideal.
Speaker: I understand it and non-ideas are ideal.
Speaker: So just the feedback and opinions will make everything like as good as possible can be.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: How did it start?
Speaker: When did you start promoting it?
Speaker: When did you start doing the business development?
Speaker: What choices did you make?
Speaker: Who did you tell?
Speaker: How was that process like?
Speaker: So look, but it all started like the journey started in December, December 2022.
Speaker: We started like the first action towards making it a reality was taken in December 2022.
Speaker: The first code line was written in late January.
Speaker: So we just, we started, first of all, I started with, as I always start, I start with like customer development.
Speaker: We're talking with different people, what do they think about it?
Speaker: Will the blockchain really be capable of doing this?
Speaker: Whether we need to have an API, whether we need to have the custom indexing solution, all those like technical parts.
Speaker: Then we had all the architecture ready.
Speaker: We started building this and like we changed, we changed a lot of developers, to be honest.
Speaker: We changed, I'm not afraid to say that,
Speaker: If you feel that you need to reiterate your team, unless you will think that, okay, it's perfect now.
Speaker: Right now, they are the ones who will be capable of doing this.
Speaker: Because some people are too stuck with somebody who they hired.
Speaker: And it's a good stuff to have.
Speaker: But still, we are not doing charity here.
Speaker: It's not charity.
Speaker: It's a business.
Speaker: And if you think about it as a business,
Speaker: That may be hard and that maybe sometimes it may sound not really right.
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.
Speaker: like earlier.
Speaker: So then we just, yeah, we started reiterating the team.
Speaker: We collected the full stack team that we have at the moment.
Speaker: And then I just, like, I think that I don't actually remember.
Speaker: We started, I don't remember when we started doing like first steps into marketing.
Speaker: I think it was something like five months ago or something like this, probably.
Speaker: So it was something like maybe four months, four to five months ago.
Speaker: And we started, like, I'm not a fan of,
Speaker: spending a huge amount of money straight away.
Speaker: We just, we started step by step.
Speaker: We started making the like early appearance.
Speaker: We started testing that audience, this audience.
Speaker: We started testing different regions.
Speaker: And then we touched on the audience that is with the higher crypto penetration and stuff like this.
Speaker: We are now targeting Asia, basically Indonesia, India, Turkey, China, Malaysia, and those like those,
Speaker: parts of the world with the bigger crypto penetration basically.
Speaker: And this is basically the approach is that we started marketing step by step, step by step, and then started basically scaling it.
Speaker: Started making those big partnerships, started having those ambassadors and all that stuff.
Speaker: But to be honest with you, this is like the
Speaker: full, the full podcast interview.
Speaker: This is the first time that I'm speaking with somebody in terms of this full one hour plus long stuff.
Speaker: It was one more, but it was a very short one.
Speaker: I think it was like 15 minutes or 20 minutes, something like this.
Speaker: Man, I have to say, and then we'll touch back on what you're saying, because again, full of value.
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.
Speaker: You reached out to me and said, yeah, let's do it.
Speaker: Let's do it.
Speaker: You didn't even know me.
Speaker: And then you kept saying it and that...
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.
Speaker: Yeah, I really appreciate that you're doing this.
Speaker: Thank you very much.
Speaker: No, thank you.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: And there is actually, to be honest with you, there was no objection.
Speaker: Why would I say no?
Speaker: Because look, as well, the 10.8 is super helpful, super hands-on.
Speaker: And just, yeah, he really, he's like, he's a real friend as well.
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.
Speaker: Why wouldn't I do this, basically?
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Man, Ruthie and Vin and I, we've been trying to meet for like a month, but things keep falling apart.
Speaker: But I know that when it does happen, it's going to be awesome.
Speaker: But these guys at Surgeons, they're really doing something special.
Speaker: How exactly, like I'm a user, I'm logging on too easy.
Speaker: How exactly does it work?
Speaker: What do I get?
Speaker: What's the full experience like?
Speaker: Let's go with these two different ways.
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.
Speaker: to buy the full valuable asset.
Speaker: But you still want to become the part of the community.
Speaker: You still want to just enter the market with your money and stuff like this.
Speaker: So basically these two, like, let's say two users, two users, just two kinds of users.
Speaker: So basically you come to our platform, you connect your wallet basically.
Speaker: And with the scope of our smart contracts with custom edits and custom functions, we allow you to create this drop.
Speaker: We call it a drop.
Speaker: So Drop is a decentralized raffling ticketed sales system.
Speaker: So you come, you select three variables, you put your asset basically.
Speaker: When I say asset, I mean NFT, collectibles, digital asset, anything.
Speaker: Like we are not limiting ourselves to the NFT only.
Speaker: We're just starting with NFTs.
Speaker: But further down the line, you can sell even the bag of tokens.
Speaker: So let's say that you're a natural investor, you're a VC, you're a protocol developer.
Speaker: What unites all three of you is that you have some tokens that you want to sell.
Speaker: You want to sell those tokens, probably you have two problems.
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.
Speaker: Or maybe you're not satisfied with the price of the token.
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.
Speaker: You will come, you will raffle this bag of tokens for the higher price than you potentially could sell it.
Speaker: And it will be ruffled out to someone who will be just able to get these tokens, but with sustainable vested schedule.
Speaker: So it's not possible for him to dump the token at the price.
Speaker: So coming back, you just can create a drop.
Speaker: You can create a drop.
Speaker: with NFT tokens, gaming assets, collectibles, anything like this.
Speaker: But then you select three variables, the number of tickets, the cost per ticket, and the total amount that you want to get.
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.
Speaker: Just anything.
Speaker: You can play around with this as you want.
Speaker: Then you select the duration.
Speaker: You submit a lot.
Speaker: We have the curated approach, of course, just not to spam, not to make some ridiculous amounts of money and stuff like this.
Speaker: After the curated approach, we place your drop on our display page.
Speaker: This is basically like a marketplace page.
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.
Speaker: And then the magic happens.
Speaker: We make those assets accessible for the users with the lower budget than the full price.
Speaker: We are making it possible for them to purchase one ticket, four tickets, 10 tickets, any amount of tickets.
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.
Speaker: The new owner of the asset will get to hold the full valuable asset.
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.
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,
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.
Speaker: They're the ones who are always creating all the hype.
Speaker: They're the ones who create all the news.
Speaker: So basically, we've seen one problem on the market.
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.
Speaker: They are the ones who always create news, create hype and support.
Speaker: And we've never seen any platform that will make it accessible for those users to join the community of like-minded individuals.
Speaker: So basically, what do I say?
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,
Speaker: For them, they need to encounter themselves.
Speaker: They need to encounter themselves.
Speaker: They need to just form groups or somehow I don't even know how to make it.
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.
Speaker: And after you bought one ticket, two tickets, five tickets, any amount of tickets, we are opening up a DAO for you.
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.
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.
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.
Speaker: Dude, that's awesome.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Where do you see this be in 10, 15 years?
Speaker: I think that we are going to be the fundamental social network with the feature of gamified marketplace.
Speaker: Step by step, we are implementing NFTs, tokens, Web3 assets, gamified assets.
Speaker: Further down the line, we are implementing digital assets, like normal digital assets.
Speaker: for rhythm codes, electronic tickets, gaming assets, let's say, blue chip skins for Fortnite, Counter-Strike, anything like this.
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.
Speaker: So potentially, you will have a chance to place your, let's say, car
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.
Speaker: So basically, this is what we are planning to do.
Speaker: And once this happens, we see that this is going to be huge.
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.
Speaker: My man.
Speaker: That's exciting.
Speaker: Did you see the Picasso that sold for more than 300 million?
Speaker: The normal artwork, you mean?
Speaker: Yeah, the real Picasso.
Speaker: I've seen it.
Speaker: You should do that.
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.
Speaker: That would be the craziest marketing move.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We'll definitely, we'll definitely do this.
Speaker: Yeah, of course.
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.
Speaker: So yeah, we're definitely going to make it.
Speaker: Man, that's really, really exciting.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Thank you so much, man.
Speaker: I really appreciate you coming.
Speaker: For anyone who listened to this, do you have anything special that you want to open it up?
Speaker: Who should come talk to you?
Speaker: Where should they find you and who should reach out to you?
Speaker: Look, I'm always as open as I possibly can get to anybody.
Speaker: Founders who need some support, founders who need some help, founders who just want to get some advice.
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.
Speaker: Just I can always do this.
Speaker: You can reach out to me either in Twitter, LinkedIn, anything.
Speaker: All my DMs are always open.
Speaker: So, and as well, just, yeah, if you think that...
Speaker: what I'm telling is something interesting or what we are building is something interesting.
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.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Guys, how can you not love this guy when you've been listening to him for an hour and 30 minutes?
Speaker: You can see that his head is screwed very solidly on his shoulders.
Speaker: He knows what he's doing.
Speaker: He knows where he's going.
Speaker: And I honestly, like, obviously, this is not financial advice.
Speaker: You know the drill.
Speaker: But this is something that you need to check out at the time where we're
Speaker: when we're speaking, the market is getting active a little bit again as well.
Speaker: And I really recommend following him.
Speaker: I'm not the first one to say that guy on the LinkedIn post was, but he's going to be a superstar.
Speaker: Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker: Don't forget to drop a comment, to follow us on all the platforms.
Speaker: Share it with your friends.
Speaker: You know how big of an impact that has.
Speaker: Don't forget that this is a decentralized podcast.
Speaker: And if you vibed with this, join us on Discord.
Speaker: We have something for you to do and for you to gain.
Speaker: Thank you, everyone.
Speaker: And see you all again soon.
Speaker: Thank you, man.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: It was amazing.
Speaker: My pleasure.
Speaker: My pleasure.
