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Helix Markets & Kong Swap Co-Founder, Gorazd Ocvirk - Persistence is key, don’t be afraid of the unknown
20 Plays1 month ago
In this episode I spoke with Gorazd Ocvirk, Co-Founder of Helix Markets and Kong Swap. We spoke about his journey from working in consulting to founding several successful Web3 projects. Gorazd shared great advice for anyone looking to launch a project or build a successful career in Web3.
If you're a founder or an aspiring entrepreneur, this episode is for you.
Recommended
Transcript
Meet Gorast Oswork, Co-founder of Helix Markets
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Behind the Blockchain podcast. My guest today is Gorast Oswork, co-founder of Helix Markets. Gorast, welcome to the show. How are you? Good, I'm good. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Looking forward to this. No problem. And Gorast, for people who don't know who you are, could you introduce yourself, please? Yeah, sure. So my name is Gorast. I've been working nonstop in blockchain now for The last seven years, my early career was actually not in in crypto or IT. I was working in consulting. So I worked for big four companies, for AT Kearney.
00:00:42
Speaker
But I was always sort of like a geeky tech guy, so I was naturally drawn to crypto and there was also one of my roles at Deloitte was to run a blockchain lab in Central Europe, so like around 2017-2018 I was working a lot with Gen 1 ICOs, that's where I got hooked on on blockchain and crypto.
From Consulting to Blockchain Entrepreneurship
00:01:10
Speaker
Later on, I switched from from consulting into banking. So I joined signal bank. I was I experienced also like from an industry perspective, but also from, you know, just being out of consulting for the first time in your life, because it's in consulting, it's always, you know, you're there, but you're not really there.
00:01:30
Speaker
um And then, then yeah, Insignoma was head of Fintech and blockchain services. And then around 2019, 2020, I got bitten by the DeFi bug. So I really just wanted to start my own company and build new financial primitives. So I kind of co-founded basically two companies. One was on the infrastructure side, so that provides like a node infrastructure to run blockchains and the second one was kind of a startup where we wanted to tokenize asset management so basically that you would you would be able to do what you know asset managers do today just in kind of tokenized portfolios and this would be very
00:02:19
Speaker
kind of composable so you can create portfolios out of portfolios out of portfolios. So you would kind of go with the infinite loop.
Building Helix Markets: A New Exchange Journey
00:02:26
Speaker
um And then about two and a half years ago, yeah, I had a coffee with my co-founder, John. So we were discussing and building a new type of exchange on the internet computer.
00:02:40
Speaker
And yeah, all of a sudden like we were super deep into the project and then two years later, yeah, here we are. We've launched the product about four months ago. Yeah, that's been kind of the journey so far. So a lot of, I'd say different types of careers, but always, you know, I guess I'm a curious person by nature. So it's always been like industries where, you know, my curiosity can really be picked.
00:03:08
Speaker
That sounds cool. It sounds super, super varied. Yeah. I always had to learn things from scratch, like completing a new set of skills that needed to be acquired. That's cool. Obviously, you're a co-founder of a project now, and as you mentioned, co-founder a couple of times before. Could you talk us through some of the roles that you held in your previous life? I'll say previous life, Web2.
00:03:33
Speaker
ah previous live, could you like talk us through some of those positions when you're in consulting? Like what do you actually kind of did within that space? Yeah, I mean, so I started consulting basically from a very junior position. And I think the last position I held was a director. So I mean, consulting is like a nice hierarchy. So you always sort of like go from partner, director, or principal. Then you have the manager level, and and there's a couple of junior levels. So I started yeah pretty much as a junior analyst. So what you do there is pretty much you draw slides 24-7, crunch numbers, work on presentations. So my my early part of the career was really becoming a PowerPoint guru and and Excel master.
00:04:23
Speaker
So yeah, after that, I transitioned into the role of kind of being more the project manager. So you you run smaller teams, you run part of a bigger project. oh And then, yeah, lastly, I was kind of director. So that was the position where you more or less do a lot of business development, but make sure everything runs smoothly, manage client relationships. You're not that hands-on anymore.
00:04:47
Speaker
um but yeah that was kind of the the natural evolution of all consultants i'd say that's because yeah i was going to ask you uh if you could answer the age-old question of what do consultants do at one of the big four yeah but you kind of answered it there really at the different levels and things so Yeah, it's it's very very different skill set again. like you know when i mean Initially, it's pretty straightforward. you you're You're really into crunching numbers and delivering presentations. So you just work on your precision and your speed at which you can kind of deliver and analyze stuff.
Skills from Consulting to Entrepreneurship
00:05:25
Speaker
And then it becomes more of a soft skills type of job where you need to manage different personalities, you need to manage the client, you need to manage expectations, timelines, budgets.
00:05:37
Speaker
So it's more like, you know, it is in a sense also very entrepreneurial, because you do have to do a lot of acquisition all the time. So you're always in some mode, but you always need to make sure to deliver as well. So you're always wearing a lot of hats. So it is not very just straightforward to do one thing or one project, but within the organization, there's like so many things that you have to do and and there's know all the stuff that you have to do around it. So it's sort of like always, it it keeps you busy. I mean, it's not just the client, the team, but then you know you also have the organization and then you have multiple roles within the organization, which you also need to do all the time or perform tasks. So like, you know do educations, perform trainings and stuff like that. so
00:06:25
Speaker
I think it's it's quite a dynamic job and you do travel a lot so if if you like traveling that's a perfect job for a person who likes to see the world. Yeah it sounds quite sounds really entrepreneurial to be honest. I can imagine a lot of the skills that you learn in all those various different jobs there have like really really helped you when it's come to like co-founding your own businesses right? I mean doing all the yeah the number crunching, financial side, project management, the Business development, client relationships, all that kind of stuff. It's great skills to learn. That's the nice part about it. is like you really you know you You really learn the end-to-end of how business runs. you know so like not Not only the consulting business, but also client businesses, so you see you know how kind of
00:07:12
Speaker
let's say, look at the working level, middle management, and top management thing, what's important, and then you know how these relationships are managed between the different layers. So yeah, it does help a lot. It's like a good good platform for for for being a founder. And like what it lacks a bit is is sort of like the detailed knowledge. So as a consultant, you're never the biggest expert in the world in anything. You're very like a generalist.
00:07:40
Speaker
But, you know, I mean, lots of times being a generalist also helps. It's not always that you don't have to be the specialist in everything. Yeah, 100%, 100%.
Blockchain at Deloitte and Industry Insights
00:07:51
Speaker
So then how did that then turn from um you being a consultant to then you launching needs, you said there was a a blockchain ah group that you started within? Is that within Deloitte? Yeah, it was like, basically, we had some 2017, there was a lot of companies kept coming to us, hey, can you, you know, we're a blockchain business, we need, you know, like a proof of reserves, or can you
00:08:16
Speaker
Can you do some at the station etc or can you help us with our token economic model or something like you know, very new stuff like looking at like, wow, these guys are things pretty cool. You know, I mean, I was following Bitcoin for a while, but it was always just like Bitcoin. So you never kind of had the impression that there's anything else happening but Bitcoin.
00:08:36
Speaker
And we started working with all these projects and we saw like, wow, what they're doing is super interesting. And then you know this technology that that they're using to to power their business is crazy. And then at some point, yeah, you know you saw like this 2017, 2018 boom where everything just exploded. you know Bitcoin went to, I think, like 17,000 from 800 or something, you know, it just became crazy. At that that some point it was like really, you know, you're going to conferences and stuff. You were, you know, you were thinking, wow, you know, people are just burning money here. Nobody's being rational anymore. And then it all imploded for a couple of years and and everybody kind of became bearish. But I was still like, you know, this industry is so interesting that technology is
00:09:21
Speaker
crazy. you know I just want to stay in this and keep doing this. So and consulting was not and of offering the opportunities anymore because most of the client base got really wiped out and you know the new new kind of generation was not that into consulting, they had different needs. So perhaps not the ones, the one same ones that the gen ones had. So yeah, I decided to jump in and yeah, that's, that's when I joined SIGM. So I that still wanted to work in the industry, but more hands-on than I would as a consultant. So that was kind of the transition. That's cool. and And was there a,
00:10:03
Speaker
do you remember like a particular moment when you thought you know what I want to start my own project this is it like I'm i'm done with with working with someone else I've got these ideas I need to launch something like is there a moment that stands out or was it more of a ah thing that just kind of happened over time no you see so I mean, yeah, how how can I say it? Like when you work in a bank, a bank is a regulated business, right? So you can be very experimental. It's it's very confined to, you know, it's slow changing. So you you cannot, you know, have new ideas and these ideas will be like in two months implemented. It's more like, you know, they will be implemented, but maybe in 18 months, right?
00:10:45
Speaker
So um at my time at the bank was like, you know, and I met a lot of other founders, foundations, protocols, you know, they were building all this stuff. And I really felt like I was on top of the game. So I knew what was going on. I could i could see like the things that will be coming up. So, you know, what, where kind of the industry is going.
00:11:07
Speaker
And initially, you know, try to kind of do this within the bank, but then, you know, you really see, okay, this is going to be hard because, you know, in the regulated world, what you're trying to do takes, you know, two, three weeks, three months. But in a banking environment, this would take, you know, tons of money, a lot of back and forth with regulators and, you know, two years down the line, it's not going to be in anymore.
00:11:30
Speaker
so that's where i saw like okay if you really want to be in the game you have to jump out of this kind of regulated world and then just kind of do your own project and then those it was good like you know but but then you realize hey working in a corporation has its pros as well so once you start your own business there is you know no fallback you are the fallback Previously, you're always you know used to having a corporation behind you. There's HR. there's like Just things get taken care of, which you don't notice that much one while you're working in a bigger system. But once you're part of a small team, you realize, oh, man, it was nice having all this stuff. you know
00:12:14
Speaker
100% yeah I felt the same even completely different ah levels and and scale obviously but when um yeah when I launched Unveil a couple of years ago going from a recruitment business where you just turned up at work and you had everything and it just worked and all you needed to do was build relationships with people and actually focus on recruitment so then launching a recruitment company and you go on day one, you go, right, oh, no, wait, I haven't got a CRM system. I need to go and source one of those. And then, yeah, okay, cool, I also need a LinkedIn recruiter license. And then you think, actually, I need some form of like headset and calling stuff. And then you need to get a number. And then all this stuff that you just take for granted, emails and things like this, you just take for granted, right? And then when you launch something or start something, I mean, you're your own IT support, you're your own marketing, finance guy, all that sort of stuff.
00:13:05
Speaker
And before you know it, you have like, you know, 50 SaaS licenses, each have to figure what which ones are worth it, which ones are not. Yeah, yeah, 100%.
The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Persistence and Fear
00:13:18
Speaker
So so you've you've had quite a, ah I guess, quite a fortunate background in terms of the skills that you've learned along the way that have really helped you now as a founder across all those different areas. If someone hasn't had that background. Are there any like really key skills that you think someone needs to learn or needs to ah be aware of if they want to found their own company?
00:13:45
Speaker
I don't know. i mean that's ah That's a tough question. I think primary skill that you need to have as a founder is that you know want to run your own business. so basically i mean It's not actually a skill, it's more of a wish, but the primary skill, I don't know. You're you're never ready for this. so I could say anything, but pretty much once once you start doing it, just most of the stuff you learn by doing,
00:14:13
Speaker
I think the biggest skill is actually its persistence and that you're not afraid of you know the unknown and afraid of failure. I think that's that's like the two biggest skills that you can have as a founder is just whenever things are uncertain or they look gloomy. Somehow in the end they always work out and you just have to go over that fear threshold that you know before everything would get taken care of by other people and now you know you need to take care of the the stuff that it's maybe looks scary or you know you think oh no company's gonna end tomorrow or we messed up or whatever but you know you just have to keep chugging along i guess that's the the main skill you have to have so i suppose it's more of the mindset like yeah mindset as opposed to like this skill i mean you will you know like
00:15:00
Speaker
There's there's no coaching out there to prepare you as a founder so honestly like you know you will be good in one thing but then you know you need to learn all the legal regulatory running the company become an expert in taxes in boys and you know it's like just stop that you know even if if you have a formal accounting background there's there's always gonna be something that that's gonna give you like you know some new things and legal contracting, all this stuff, you know, you spend a lot of time working on contracts, which, you know, you as an interpreter, you don't want to, but yeah, legal is a big part. Accounting is always a big part. Then, you know, all the admin work. Yeah, a lot of stuff that you just have to take care of. I think it's kind of you have to be comfortable wearing many hats. And then, you know, there's also the business part.
00:15:52
Speaker
like usually you will do also a lot of marketing you have to be the marketeer for the project as well so Yeah, and then you just pick up stuff whenever you see something's lagging, you you basically, you pick it up and you do it. So that's kind of the skill to know where you need to pitch in and where don't. So usually, you know, the one thing that you would like to do, you have, you know, the team that does it. So, and then and all the stuff that's kind of crappy usually lands at your table. So you have to take care of it. So yeah.
00:16:24
Speaker
you ah Do you think that everyone can be a founder? No, definitely not. I don't think it's it's it's not for everyone. like you know you always Sometimes you would even question yourself like, man, I just could have taken the easy word out. It's still maybe arriving at the same destination. But I think at the end of the day, it's just Like, if you like building things and and, you know, you kind of see the fruits of your labor and, you know, it's cool, right? But it's not for somebody that's kind of completely risk averse and doesn't like to take any risks in life because it is a big risk. You don't know what tomorrow brings and you just have to somehow kind of get comfortable with this feeling that, you know, you never know what's going to happen like in a few months time or, you know, you you come into a situation where you run out of money, the project runs out of money and then you have to somehow
00:17:16
Speaker
you know, still salvage, make it happen, you know, survive, persevere. So I think that that's kind of the situations where, you know, not not everybody can can go through this or or even wants to go through this. I think some people just like say, OK, cool, I'll have like a nice normal job, you know, the're not not too stressful because the stress levels can become like really, really crazy. Yeah.
00:17:40
Speaker
Yeah, you're right. Because I speak to a lot of people, as you can imagine, especially in the web3 space, where it seems like everyone, for almost everyone I talk to wants to found a project of their own at some point. I don't chat to that many people that would say, you know what, no, I just want to do this particular job forever. that A lot of people go, you know what, i like I'd love to one day, or I'd love to be a co-founder one day, whatever it might be. It's just interesting to get your take on that, ah really. because it's Yeah, i think everyone I think everyone can be a founder, but I don't think everyone should really. I think you have to have the right approach, the right the right kind of thinking in behind it. But I think Web3 is also more entrepreneurial in general because there's there's like so many avenues to explore and there's so much untapped potential that there's still a lot of room where everybody you know can can put something together and do a good project. There's also
00:18:37
Speaker
Like a lot of I mean the VC industry is very developed. So be it like, you know, if you're raising tokens and stuff like that, it's pretty ah Pretty well developed how that runs So I think a lot of people, you know, the tokens may make kind of this all all this work, right? So if you launch or raise with the token, that's kind of the easier way to to get to capital is you know, sometimes you think you know, you might have a fitness business and you will run it for ten years you know and then you will come along and say ya hey here you know five hundred thousand is the valuation. and you have a crypto company that kind of has a prototype and is valued at 50 million, right? You know, it's always not not really connected with the real world, the crypto world. So it is a very fun and special in the industry. It's definitely more entrepreneurial than any industry I've ever recruited into. I think probably part of that is because a lot of the projects are still so small that, yeah, you might join as a
00:19:38
Speaker
head of business development, for example, an actual facts do you need to get involved in partnerships, marketing, community building, social media stuff, ah you might have to help the founders do a bit of product stuff as well. Or, you know, you have to end up just wearing loads of different hats. And I think that lends itself quite nicely to to more entrepreneurial types, people that don't necessarily need a, you know, a set description and want to be kind of set in a particular box, for example.
00:20:05
Speaker
Yeah, everybody's like a very self driven, right? So I mean, the people who don't work well in crypto, I mean, from from a fit perspective is the one that just kind of give me my instructions, they need to be very clear, you know, and then I'll follow them and execute on them. It's like, you know, there's a goal is like 300 meters away and just find a path to it. That's most of the crypto description of, ah you know, work to be done. Yeah, just find a way to the jungle. Yeah, exactly.
00:20:35
Speaker
For sure. could you um Could you talk us through what a day in the life of a founder at Helix Markets looked like?
A Day in the Life at Helix Markets
00:20:44
Speaker
Yeah, sure. So basically our day starts sort of, I mean, usually I would check all everything that happened on the platform, like between six and eight in the morning. So um just check like volumes, anything special that happened during the night. So um we have Like where we're based in in Central Europe but most of our business activities actually in the Asian market so kind of a lot of times something would happen during the Asian session so either you wake up during the night or where you just check everything in the morning.
00:21:21
Speaker
reply if there's any replies for the community you know just kind of talk to everybody make sure everything's running smoothly then we have our our daily meeting at around nine thirty so there we discuss what everybody's doing what we're releasing just planning out the day what everybody's going to be doing if we have any major releases.
00:21:40
Speaker
um And then pretty much for the rest of the day, there's like, you know, you you you plan what you would like to do. And then all just most of the time just like random stuff comes up that that you get stuck with. So be it on on the finance side or.
00:21:56
Speaker
You know some something with the product something goes wrong your firefighting somewhere you're preparing for a conference like just very random so there is. No after the daily the day the days completely random most of the time i wouldn't say it's it's very structured so you have calls etc but.
00:22:11
Speaker
um Very dynamic in in general. Not a lot of structure after the morning session. to That's good to know and I suppose as a founder I mean the work never stops, right? So I guess if you wanted to work 24 hours a day you probably could.
00:22:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's not a problem to find work. It's it's just kind of man managing the the energy. The biggest challenge is like not to burn out because it does happen way too fast because you you have to sometimes really go beyond, push it you know to get some stuff done, but you also need to you know where it's a bit time to wind out because otherwise you know you can't just go 200 all the time and and and think it's going to work out long term.
00:23:03
Speaker
how how do you um and It's probably quite a tricky question to answer, but how do you manage burnout, not just with not just for you, but also for the team? like When they're working in a small startup and and every role is so crucial within that ah that that team,
00:23:24
Speaker
How do you manage that, that burnout between the staff? Like, do you really encourage people to go away and take breaks or like is there a way or any advice you can offer that for anyone listening? i mean there There's no good advice in it. I mean, like, usually you feel it yourself when, you know, you burn out if you have like 10am in the morning, you're already feeling tired and you can go to sleep, right? That's when know you're in too deep. um I mean, from the team perspective, what you want to do is like, you know, you you I think the most important thing is that you don't push the team always like 200, 200% all the time because, you know, I mean, this will work for for for a while, but after a while, it's just kind of you you will decrease the productivity. So what what we found out for us that works best is that if we work towards larger milestones and the closer we are to milestone, the more we push. And then after we reach that milestone, so be it like, you know,
00:24:22
Speaker
beta or go live or something then we kind of take a couple of weeks where you know we just try to manage well usually what happens is like after a big release the couple of weeks after he just fixed up that goes wrong and then basically before you go on to the next thing you you kind of you know go at a lower pace or or reduce the workload of it for everyone so everybody can can catch their breath and then you go into the next thing and then push it again, 200% until the next. Yeah, I mean, sometimes you do have to, but you know, usually you don't want to, but sometimes, yeah, it's it's necessary that just everybody needs to, you know, put in extra work or get stuff done. So I mean, usually when, so the the fun thing is when everybody puts their mind to it, you can get a lot done. You you don't imagine how much you can get done, right? So usually if you just look at the average and then, you know, when everybody's like switched on, you just get a lot more done.
00:25:20
Speaker
And I think it really, really helps when you are building a startup and building teams and when you are trying to get the most out of people and when you are pushing towards those milestones and stuff like hiring people that have a similar sort of values or like really believing the mission and this kind of stuff, like it makes it a lot easier, right? I think if you're trying to really push people and they're not necessarily that bought in, they're going to get burnt out a lot quicker than if someone is super, super passionate about what it is that you want to build.
00:25:47
Speaker
Yeah, 100%. I think that's like the most important thing is just basically hiring the right people with the right chemistry. And think it's like, yeah, if you if you find a good team that clicks, that that's great, you know, and then like everybody clicks on a personality level. So you know Most of the Web3 space is remote anyways, so it's even more important to have you know good communication. People talk to each other. So you know what what we had as a problem was like we we were always not, I mean, we were not talking and this initially enough with each other. So it was like the daily was the time when we talk and then we would just chat, right? But you know sometimes it's just easier to jump on a call for 10 minutes and talk.
00:26:33
Speaker
and Get things done and if people don't talk and mostly you know Kind of in web 3 we are more on the introverted and extroverted side. I mean the extroverts are more like the marketing and and umd business bit Yeah on the product and dev side, it's mostly people who just like, yeah, let me write code, right? Don't bother with other stuff. ah So we need to kind of manage the communication flow and the right information we get, you know, processed. And then yeah, that that can always, I mean, that that can lead to a lot of problems for teams that there's not enough communication between them, regardless of how smart the individuals are.
00:27:15
Speaker
ah percent Could you introduce us to Helix Markets in a bit more detail?
What is Helix Markets? A Hybrid DEX Explained
00:27:20
Speaker
Sure, yeah. Helix Markets is is a hybrid DEX. Basically, we wanted to... So when we started building Helix, we had this vision that you know there was no good crypto exchange out there that would fit Kind of give you control over your crypto but also give you a great trading experience. So you always had either or you know, you would go to To a Binance or the time FDX and you know you don't control your crypto so somebody else controls your crypto and and kind of how the relationship between your crypto and and somebody else holding it in your behalf is very vague and you know, I'm also myself
00:28:04
Speaker
I lost the money or lost, yeah. I got some money stuck on FDX and then like you always in these processes where you you wait for funds and you see the Mt. Gox situation that happened like I think 2015-2016 where you know people should be getting back billions now but they'll be getting back Bitcoin at current prices and now you know the Japanese government has eight gazillion dollars that they need to kind of sell Bitcoin.
00:28:33
Speaker
So that was like the one part where, you know, but the training experience was great. You had an order book, you know, you can go on there, you sell, you buy, it's good liquidity, it's fast. you have an API, if you want to run your bot, it's great. night So the the whole experience part is is cool. And on the other hand, you have decentralized exchanges like Uniswap, where you know everything is ah sort of very non-custodial, you control your crypto at all times, but you know it's not sort of, it just works on one protocol, but right now we have about
00:29:08
Speaker
300 different blockchains out there, right? So you have one platform that kind of vertically integrates into, I don't know, maybe 1520 protocols, but then doesn't support the other 380, right? And we wanted to look how how can we bridge the the all of these things where a user would have a great user experience, very simple, wouldn't have to onboard in 300 ecosystems, you know, get 500 different browser plug-in wallet that wouldn't have to handle private keys but it would be still secure. And on the other hand side i like offer them a good trading experience like they're used to from a centralized exchange. So that was kind of the premises of Helix that you know we can bring together this you know multi-chain world on one platform with a great trading experience for both you know seasoned veteran traders but also very newbie users.
00:30:05
Speaker
Yeah, that's cool. And you launched on ICP, right? Yeah, we use the ICP as our core protocol layer, but the ICP has one really cool feature, which is that it can talk to other chains. So basically, we have integrationions direct integrations into Ethereum, into Arbitrum, Bitcoin.
00:30:24
Speaker
And in theory, like you don't you don't need any bridges to to move assets across these chains on Helix, you can just pretty much switch them and we have a wallet for everything and this wallet is run by our smart contract.
00:30:37
Speaker
Cool. Yeah. I was going to ask why, uh, why CV? But I guess that that answers that question. I presume that's why you guys chose. Yeah. that ecosystem in the first place It was that it was like, so basically it's called chain key technology. So basically that the protocol holds the private key. It's kind of a very new way of doing custody or self custodial mode. So we're the only thing that user has to.
00:31:02
Speaker
is his identity, with which he logs onto our system, but doesn't have to handle the key material. but you know neither we So we don't control the key as well. The key is basically secured by the blockchain itself.
00:31:14
Speaker
And then the other feature was the use of threshold ECDSA cryptography. That was one of the things where we saw a lot of potential where you know most of the blockchains out there use threshold, use ECDSA cryptography to generate addresses, generate transactional payload, et cetera, and we could do that directly from our smart contracts. So we can kind of have this interoperability between different protocols directly from our smart contracts.
00:31:43
Speaker
Cool. Yeah, I guess that that really expands the the market that you guys can can look into, right? Like expand the users that can come and use the platform, that'd be interested in it. And yeah, quite a yeah good way of of expanding, which is, ah yeah, it's cool. It's cool.
00:31:59
Speaker
um I think on the surface a lot of people would look at you know founding a web3 project and think that it's really glamorous and obviously you've touched on some of the things that are challenging. um When you first start something, like what's it really like when you're on the ground first day, come in and think, right, we need to get this thing built? Is it fun? Is it stressful? is it Yeah, what's it? What's it really, really? Well, I mean, the the initial part is like, it's, you know, it's super lightweight, because you don't have a big team, and everybody's working pretty much pro bono on the idea. So it's like, you're you're doing architecture, you're you're just looking at, you know, putting a team together, that's going to start writing a proof of concept or or like, you know, some sort of a rough demo.
00:32:49
Speaker
So that that part is actually not the most stressful one. It's really fun. So there's not a lot of pressure. you know Most people are like, you know hey, I might try this. My work might fail. you know You never know where it's going to lead to. So it's kind of very non-committal from all sides. So the when it becomes committal is after you at least raise like some angel checks or some seed money.
00:33:13
Speaker
That gives you enough to build sort of kind of the the alpha or the beta version of the product. So then it starts to become more serious. But initially it's always like very, oh, how do we do this? How do we do that? It's very high level. And when you're doing architecture, you're thinking about how you want to run this, what it's supposed to do. So.
00:33:32
Speaker
It is very, very nice. And yeah, I think that those spaces are like really cool. When you look back into it, you know, what kind of road you walk, it's like actually the first starting out part is the one of the most fun parts that you can have. And talk to us about the funding side of things.
Startup Funding and Building Trust
00:33:53
Speaker
I can imagine there's a bunch of people listening who think, right, how do I even go about it? Do I go Angel, VC, family and friends, door launcher token?
00:34:02
Speaker
ah Yeah, what what was your kind of thought process there? How did you go about it? Do you have any advice? I know there's about 15 questions in one there, but... Yeah, the raise is always, I mean, you know, it's like a startup, you're pretty much always in raising mode. So you you you're always running out of money. Because, I mean, the the nature of a startup is that, you know, it it takes time to build product. And, you know, it takes time to build adoption. So you you rely on on the investor funds to to get things done. um I think the yeah the most important thing about raising is pretty much like you know you really need to kind of follow the protocol of what is expected. So I mean initially it's probably going to be people that
00:34:51
Speaker
that know you and that trust your belief in you. So it's going to be friends and family. It's going to be maybe some angels that you know, they're going to help you out with checks. But they're so you're never going to get initially the money because you had the best idea in the world, but because people believe that, you know, you can deliver what you promise and then you're a trustworthy individual. So if you're like, you know,
00:35:15
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's basically it's an investment into you and and even later on when when he sees or you know, you get like the next round of, you know, series a or like a bigger seed round. It's always about investing and into the founder. So You know, what I mean, yeah, idea means a lot, but it means even more that, you know, people believe that you can, you know, you're not just going to burn the money like crazy, but you you are going to have some responsibility with it and that you will deliver this and then you, you know, you're a stable person that can kind of manage a team, know how to run the business and will, at the end, deliver some value on the investment.
00:35:58
Speaker
Yeah, and how do you start like a secondary, but I think it's really like, you know, ah people invest in people. So you have to get out there and network and and meet the right people and pretty similar as well. Yeah, it helps. Yeah, because I was gonna say that how say someone doesn't have a network, say safe,
00:36:18
Speaker
There's a lot of founders in Web3 who maybe don't have the background that you particularly do and maybe don't have the connections in this kind of stuff. How does someone even start? Do you just get on LinkedIn and just reach out to a bunch of... No, I think the best way in crypto, to be honest, is to go to conferences. So visit conferences, maybe do some research, find a conference that kind of um works for whatever you know you're your're yourre building or you're trying to do. There's like so many different themes right and conferences all over the world. So um yeah, you just need to no you know on on the conferencing circuit where you where you need to go, but you also don't overdo it because you know this can be like also a a catch-22. Some people then just travel to conferences and never have time to work again. again
00:37:10
Speaker
So yeah, I'll just say go there, you know, meet people, um network. And then out of that, you know, you build your, your kind of like, you know, little network that helps each other, usually, you know, in in crypto founders, help other founders. So if you know other founders, they will introduce you to their network, they will, they will help you out. So everybody's just because you know how hard it is to make it, right? You do your very plan to help other people out as well. So Just kind of go out there, meet with people, talk with people, you know, talk with projects that do something similar, talk with projects that have done something similar, get to know the people, then like a lot of online communities, you know, you can join them, discuss, become friends. But generally like people in crypto do,
00:38:02
Speaker
They are willing to help, but there's also something called like social capital. So nobody's just going to help you because you ping them on LinkedIn and say, hey, you know, I'm also a founder. It's like, you know, there there is sort of a trust core that people have. So they won't just recommend you to anybody because everybody has a reputation to keep.
00:38:23
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. For sure. I think we're at a ah very fortunate time in the crypto web3 industry that everyone's still trying to help each other out to grow the space in a couple of years time when things are a little bit bigger and there's more people in the industry and stuff, maybe them things will start to get a little bit more competitive and say if a founder reaches out to you looking to start a similar sort of project, maybe people will be less likely to try and help each other but we're at a very fortunate time actually. I hope we don't arrive at that point. I mean this is the nice part about crypto is really like people help each other out so that that's like one of the nicest parts that you can have it's like
00:39:04
Speaker
It's still very early, still a small community, but you know it's good that people do help each other out. The answer calls, they they go too bad for you. it That is the nice part.
00:39:17
Speaker
Yeah, it is. I think it i think it is. That's one the main one of the main things I like about the space, actually, know from recruiting into more traditional industries and stuff previously. And then over the last few years, going full time into Web3. Yeah, it's one of the the nicer things about the industry to see people being so collaborative and chatting on all sorts of different community groups on Telegram, Discord, all this kind of stuff. Yeah, it's a nice part of the industry.
00:39:43
Speaker
um So say if someone ah doesn't want to be a founder and they want to just build a successful career for themselves, I know it's quite vague because there's all sorts of different opportunities in WOAP3, there's room for every skill set to be honest. Do you have any advice for anyone looking to build a successful career, anything they should be aware of or any mindset they need to have or anything like this?
00:40:18
Speaker
what's work right now in terms of, you know, programming languages, etc. And that will get you hired like that. You shouldn't have a problem finding a team, finding a job, right? As long as you're you're good in like, you know, okay, right now, Rust is all the rage. So if you've got a good Rust skills, you know,
00:40:33
Speaker
you're probably off the market in like three weeks and then and for growth I guess you know your your network is your net worth so for growth and marketing yeah it's basically your network and and how many people you know who can you like you know kind of connect with the team so you you usually you also have a quite good career path I think for creative as well it's like Designers, good designers are always welcome so everybody's looking for good UI, UX because it's usually you know crypto or blockchain. UI, UX was very dev driven and now it's becoming more and more user friendly.
00:41:12
Speaker
So I think, yeah, there's there's something for everyone. And I think the the career process as you said it before, it's like you might come into a company, you know, work on on on marketing, then you become, you know, you start working on growth or on product, like it's it's really, it takes in so many ways. But, you know, I think in general, you just have to have some sort of a basic curiosity about yourself. And then you always need to like, you know, give into this curious impulses to learn more and that that will just drive you forward and in blockchain because there's like so many things, you know, once you you just peel the onion, basically, you find out, oh, that's how this works. And then there's like 3000 other things that you need to figure out. And then you realize, oh, that's just one protocol. There's like, you know, 300 of them. Oh, they they work differently. How do I and just like putting everything together? It's like an ever ending story.
00:42:06
Speaker
Yeah it is. There's stuff to keep up sometimes with the amount of development. Right now at this point it it's impossible. There's just too many different avenues. So you you just kind of stay in your lane pretty much. Do you think then if someone's joining the space for the first time they need to almost work out like particular things that really interest them and just try and become an expert in that particular area? Or do you think there's still space with people who have that like really broad knowledge across I mean, it depends on which part, like, you know, a lot of people now are just joining for the meme coins, right? They don't care about technology. I need a wallet, too much wallet can support my meme coins. But I mean, like, it really depends. Are you more on the cryptography protocol level? It's like a different skill set. Are you into building smart contracts and interactions? It's like a different different thing, right? So
00:42:59
Speaker
I still think there's a lot of things for everyone right so that there's not only like the builders but there's also like a service industry around it there's you know all the indexing information that you need to run this oracles code audits like that there's you know thousands and thousands of ah different avenues to explore and then like new things are coming up every day so I think You know, you you just need to start with one thing, like usually before, traditionally the path was like, you start with Bitcoin, you understand Bitcoin and you discover Ethereum. Once you discover Ethereum, right, and you understand Ethereum, then you're like, oh, shit, there's all these other outcoins, like, where do I go from now, right? So that's kind of like the usual kind of induction into crypto. So you you you become hooked with the the idea and vision of Bitcoin and then move on to Ethereum and then from Ethereum, the world is your oyster, pretty much.
00:43:53
Speaker
and then you get lost in the world of M3 and crypto and never come back out again. Exactly, and then it's too late. Is there anything that you'd love to make people aware of before they join the industry?
Staying Competitive in Crypto Industry
00:44:09
Speaker
Well, you know, it's very competitive.
00:44:15
Speaker
I mean, you know, it's not like we're at a stage where I still remember in 2017, you could just write a white paper and you would be raising you know millions. So we're way past that stage where, you know, just a good idea will we get you funded. You need to show product, right? Everybody right now can deliver product. So you need to be good. And, in you know, if you want to make it, you probably need to show product first and then, you know, kind of all the marketing stuff. Okay. Nice. Nice. And I always feel that the community side of Web3 is definitely something if if someone's stepping into
00:44:54
Speaker
Web3 for the first time. In Web2, you're not really used to to your ah to to having people who are so bought into the project that they're asking you questions about it like every day. like You don't necessarily have access to the customer, let's say, as much as you do in Web3. I think sometimes something to be aware of is is almost like the pressures that can come from the community sometimes. I mean, the community is a very Big part of crypto and especially like if you go on crypto Twitter, it's just the world in its own. So yeah, it's it's it's awesome. I mean, it's like so fun because everybody takes everything so likely but there's also a lot of pressure. So i mean the most important thing is always just
00:45:38
Speaker
you know deliver what you promise because usually most of the friction comes when you know either projects over promise and under deliver or you know you set the buyer an expectation too high or you just like you know you use you know every uh every phrase in the book of what you're building and basically you cannot deliver any of them and and and then that creates friction between you know the community and the project but mostly like and if you kind of stick to your roadmap, deliver, then you and the community, it will be a love story. I like that. I like that a lot. ah So guys, to finish up then, there's a question that I always ask everyone.
Career Reflections and Advice to Younger Self
00:46:23
Speaker
Knowing what you know now,
00:46:25
Speaker
about business, leadership, ah technology, Web3, everything you've learned over your career so far. If you could go back to the start, that junior consultant like stepping into that role for the first time, um what advice would you have for your younger self?
00:46:43
Speaker
It's just just by Bitcoin hold. Don't do anything else. Just retire, buy Bitcoin everywhere. No, I'm joking. I don't know. like It's hard. I think I wouldn't change anything, to be honest. I would just go the same route. It is hard and it's it's always a bit of a struggle, but like at the end of the day, it's like super rewarding because you're just building something. you know together with a team. So it is like, you know, a small unit of people that over time deliver product. And it's like the most amazing thing when you see your product being used by others, you know, you get good feedback, you get bad feedback. But at the end of the day, it's like, you know, for me, yeah, having, you know, the freedom to do what I love to do, and then, you know, just be experimental with it. It's just the greatest thing in the world, like, regardless of all the stress and then hassle it comes along with just, you know,
00:47:40
Speaker
kind of shipping and being a product maxi that that's the greatest thing you can ever have that's cool that's cool and if anyone's listening has got any extra questions they want to find out more about about helix or um ask you any questions and and maybe pick your brain about being a you know founder or raising funds or whatever it might be Are they able to reach out to you on on like Twitter or LinkedIn or anything like that? They can reach out to me on Twitter, so I think my course OV is the handle, or they can reach out to us through our Discord channel, Helix Markets. They can reach out to us on Open Chat, they can reach out to me via LinkedIn, Connect, or yeah, I think they can try out Helix Markets.
00:48:31
Speaker
helixmarkets.io so we we got a ton of channels and then we're usually very responsive on all of them and we we do have a telegram channel for for helix as well so yeah but and pick up everything so if somebody drops a question i'll pick it up That's cool. That's cool. but Well, Gus, thank you very much for taking the time to have a chat today. ah Yeah, it's brilliant to find out a little bit more about your journey and and do a deep dive into what it means to be a founder in Web3. And yeah, you're giving us really good insight ah into the ups and downs and ah yeah what it's what it's all about. So yeah, thank you very much for for sharing. Yeah, it's great for hosting. No probs. And yeah, ill I'll catch up with you soon. Perfect. Thanks, man. Take care.