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CEO of Magma Devs, Core contributor to Lava Network, Yair Cleper - Advice for Web3 builders
18 Plays20 days ago
This conversation with Yair explores his entrepreneurial journey, the role of mentors, and the importance of networking for career growth. He shares whether he always aspired to be an entrepreneur and gives insight into his daily life as a CEO at Magma and contributor to Lava, including how he manages context switching.
Yair emphasises that no one succeeds alone and discusses key considerations before launching a project, from building a strong founding team to understanding Web3 funding. He also offers industry insights for newcomers and shares his vision for the future of Magma, Lava, and his career.
Finally, he reflects on the advice he would give to his younger self.
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Transcript
Introduction and Entrepreneurial Journey
00:00:00
Speaker
Yeah, welcome to the show. How are you? I'm great. Happy to be here. Thank you, Jack, for hosting me. No problem. Thanks for taking the time to join me. um yeah Yeah, for people who don't know who you are, could you introduce yourself, please?
00:00:15
Speaker
um So, yeah, hopefully hopefully, by now, you know, we've been to so um to some podcasts so far. And in general, like I always like to start with my tech run background, techy background. um Obviously, I'm born and bone raised in Israel, currently in Portugal, and I study computer engineering. And yeah, I was starting my entrepreneurship career very early when I was 21. I built a few startups, different domains, different verticals from
00:00:55
Speaker
FinTech, supermarkets, business intelligence. And yeah, and three, three and a half years ago, I jumped into web three to find something new, some new passion that I can bring and leverage my knowledge so I can contribute to this amazing vertical, amazing revolution in finance. Sounds great.
00:01:18
Speaker
And ah we've we've spoken about it ah previously before. um You've had a a really interesting career journey. Could you talk us through, you mentioned there around you started your entrepreneurship journey fairly early, but could you go into a little bit more detail about you know what's kind of brought you to this point now?
Role of Mentors in Entrepreneurship
00:01:35
Speaker
Yeah, so I guess the first talk who brought me to the in general was me studying computer engineering.
00:01:47
Speaker
And I study you know in Israel, usually it's called the startup nation, right? So it's an amazing hub that you can easily get access to mentors, every second connection you can get to someone. And especially the Technion, it's kind of the MIT of Israel, was bombarded with ideas, with innovations, with the new startup that coming up in like more than 20 years ago when after the dot com boom. um And I think that, you know, that's really resonating me, this ah entrepreneurship bacteria, how you call it. and Very from a very early age, I wanted to develop something with a value to find gaps that I can pair using technology.
00:02:43
Speaker
And yeah, my first my first initiative was in um in kind of a competitor to Wix. Everyone I think today have bumped at least in weeks Wix dot.com. um I think my website's built in Wix. Exactly.
Networking in Israel's Tech Scene
00:03:06
Speaker
Very familiar for our conversation today. And yeah, I thought like after A few projects approached me and really asked me to build a website. Back then in 2009, we decided to build kind of a Wix competitor, when Wix was still not that big, obviously, based on flesh. And yeah, we started this business with a friend, actually with a close friend, and we ended up selling it after three years.
00:03:37
Speaker
That was my first dive into the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Israel, where I made my first networking, my first connection. And yeah, I think this is where everything started when I was 21. That's cool. And you mentioned ah You mentioned there about um mentors and and you're involved in in an area of the world that obviously is the the startup nation, as as you said. What part do mentors play when you're even going through the ideas to start a new business or maybe thinking about going into a new venture or even trying to build a career? um Could you maybe talk through that a little bit, like what part they play in your journey?
00:04:23
Speaker
So, you know, I realized that um in my early days, you cannot just build yourself without getting the vote of confidence of other people, without consulting. Many times mentors are just bringing you a way to shortcut, right? It really like telling you they're seeing something, they're in a similar tunnel that You are in a similar tunnel that they probably passed dozens of time and they say okay I the same light that I see right now I also see but maybe I can help you not get to the wrong light or maybe I can help you shape to get to another much more brighter light and I think this is the the power of experience right ah was telling a joke once that you know ah and
00:05:17
Speaker
a guy was coming in and then wanted to fix ah my piano, right? So he came in and he said, oh, there are a few problems there. And here, like, I need to fix it. And in, um you know, in a relatively short time, five minutes, you just solve the problem. And he charged for that $200 or something, right?
00:05:40
Speaker
and he said but the piece that you change was like two dollars or something like how what's the how does it make sense and he said ah the piece yeah really it's one dollar the experience is one 199 and uh you know the this is kind of it's It's an example telling you, yeah, if you can see some patterns and you see formation of of templates in your path, so why not using someone that has them in order for you to get further, in order for you to jump and bypass hurdles that in every innovation, in every entrepreneurship um um route you have. And I think I was lucky
00:06:27
Speaker
the two from a very early age, like I went to all the kind of meetups, um, incubation program in my university. I was in the student council. I was putting a lot of emphasize about networking. I think I even celebrated just now, uh, 20 or even 90 years in LinkedIn, which, which is great, which is crazy because back at the time, like,
00:06:57
Speaker
Why should I open even LinkedIn? you know like I'm a student. i like LinkedIn was at the beginning. Social network was not so strong in Israel. It came much later to Israel after the US, Facebook, and stuff. um But I think I put a lot of emphasis on, OK, I talked to this person. Let's see if he's on LinkedIn. I'm going to send him a request that maybe one time in the future I will need to to reach out again. And I think this, again, it's specifically for every every entrepreneur, but I think this was really helping me to get exposure, awareness to what I'm doing, and really really took this this concept of networking, mentoring a step further to help me achieve goals in my career.
00:07:53
Speaker
I think networking is such a key skill that people need to try and master, whether you're trying to be an entrepreneur and and launch projects or or startups, or even just to really kick on in your career in general. I think people quite underestimate the power of being able to build a good ah good network, really. um It's definite yeah definitely it. Maybe if I can add another another thought, you know, it's I remember a friend that always also wanted to be entrepreneur.
00:08:23
Speaker
And he was you were thinking when is the time to stop going to meetups all day and start building something, right? And it's a very, especially in Web3, like I think the power to have a successful and career or project or whatever in Web3 is even 10 times more important, the focus.
00:08:46
Speaker
right because you have so much context switch during the day. I was just meeting some friends from two years just now in the weekend here in Nisbon and we mentioned like Web3 job, it's 24 seven. You literally can work in every minute, can respond. Some people from other side of the world going to answer. You have um ongoing, constantly news and it's never stopping, right? So if you want, you just, it's a week, it's seven days. You didn't take any weekend and you're going to continue coming to the next week.
00:09:23
Speaker
So you need to put yourself the boundaries and to serve the goal that is one of the most and principles of entrepreneurship, focus. If you are spread your focus too thin, you not you don't have the resources, especially at the beginning, to get to your next goal. So I think this is a key factor for every entrepreneur, especially in web3. Yeah, you're right. and And this might be quite a difficult question to answer.
00:09:51
Speaker
To ask you maybe be a similar thing to to what your friend was saying, when is the right time? When you're a founder or you know you're thinking about launching a project, but you're talking through an idea and and you start to network. At what point do you go, right, enough is enough. I built my network enough. I need to now start building. Do you ever get to that point? Do you always need to be networking? What's your thoughts?
Balancing Networking and Project Building in Web3
00:10:16
Speaker
m Yeah, I think i think like in everything in life, it's not its you should balance. right It's not black or white. You should not stop going to meetups, but indeed, you need to take the next one, two, three months in building and shaping the vision. Web3 events at the beginning was really helping us to build the right narrative. A narrative is something very flaky in Web3.
00:10:43
Speaker
ah like How many times you're able to go to an event with at least 500 people and really test your new narrative on couple that you know top VCs, founders, reputable founders, angels, mentors, OGs, just across a few meters from each other, right? So I think this kind of speed dating with your idea And bringing it to the crowd is something that really helped us shape what we want to build in Lava, what we started developing, how we design it, that people were, oh, yeah, that's a problem that I know. and know that This is how we started with Uber 4 nodes, for example. Yeah. that That's cool. it's ah Yeah, it's a good it's a good way to look at it.
00:11:30
Speaker
um yeah To have that, ah well I suppose Web3 is quite a quite a unique industry, but there's so many conferences that you have the ability to always be testing these ideas right and always speaking to peers in in other projects and and this kind of stuff. you know It seems like every every month there's another conference somewhere in some part of the world that you could go to and and get in a room with ah people on similar journeys and that kind of stuff. It's quite a good industry in that and that sort of regard, I guess.
00:12:02
Speaker
yeah If I can compare it to the previous industry, I was in retail, right? Retail tech. I think I'm one of the pioneers in ri retail tech in Israel. It was not a name. You ask me, which category are you building a super smart more previous startup? They say, is it IOT? Is it FinTech? I said, no, it's retail. And they say, oh, sorry, we don't have this category retail. I i think we were the only startup a super smart that was in both accelerator, both for Mastercard and Visa, which were really rivals accelerator. They said, we're not going to take same startup for both, but they took us. And I think like really when I was doing the submission early in 2015, like they didn't leave this the category retail.
00:12:48
Speaker
And I think it's a great analogy to what we see in Web3. If you think about new terms that coming up, it's like narrative that always evolving. I think three and a half years ago, when I when i started, when I said multi-chain, some people were even telling me, no, there's going to be a consolidation of L1s. When afterwards you start and you say, no, there's going to be only one stablecoin, I said, look,
00:13:17
Speaker
We know DoCoN personally, right? But I think there's gonna be some others even sophisticated, like you see it today, right? It's the pluralization of different chain. Everyone with its own unique preferences, everyone with their own, um they serving a specific goal. And I don't think it's gonna go away, right? We we are in the no return point and this is why I jumped personally to web3.
Entrepreneurial Spirit vs. Traditional Background
00:13:47
Speaker
That's cool. And did you did you always know that you wanted to be an entrepreneur? Was that always the the path for you? Look, if you think about my family, like a very traditional conservative family, we are like for three or even four generations that I know, always a couple of engineer and a doctor. And ah like they were always you should study good, you should have great grades, you should get accepted to a big company, to an institute. And I was like, no, I'm not gonna do that. Sorry. ah So I was kind of, I'm always like to present myself, I'm the black sheep, right? My sister study to become a psychiatrist. And again, i I'm an engineer, right? So I knew I wanted to do something with computer, I knew I wanted to be an engineer.
00:14:45
Speaker
But if you think about kind of my first invention, I will never forget that that I was, I think, in the seventh or eighth grade. And ah i since then, I wanted to cut lines, or I didn't like to use, or I liked it to get from one place to another much faster. So I was doing a sketch of a roller blades built in the shoe.
00:15:11
Speaker
So basically like you have a zipper you opening and then you can just roll the wheels and that's it turning to a roller blades and again turning into a shoe when you get back home. And I made this catch obviously I didn't know anything. And I remember after five years we started having in Israel.
00:15:28
Speaker
the first kind of rollerblades plus shoes. that So anyway, long story short, I think I always like to find gaps. I like to find problems to solve. And I always like to quote one of my mentor, Uri Levine, that founded Waze. He always told me, fall in love,
00:15:55
Speaker
in the problem. Don't fall in love in the solution. It's good. It's a good quote. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Something things have changed a few quite a lot since you were, you know, seven and eight and during the sketch of of new ideas and new inventions and stuff. Could you talk us through what a day in the life of the CEO of Magra devs and contributor to lava network looks like?
00:16:25
Speaker
Yeah, I think very varied, I would imagine, but yeah, it it depends, you know, and which point of time is it today? Is it like a few months ago? I think in general, we, we as a contributor to, to lava and you know, we try to get guidance from the community, get guidance of what's what actually the foundation needs.
00:16:54
Speaker
helping them in BD, making sure that the infrastructure is bulletproof, and kind of like to coordinate between the different you know stakeholders of the of the of the network. um I like to engage with the community, right? I'm speaking daily with our amazing actors in the community, whether they be non-techie, techie, obviously validators. There's a lot of activity that people don't even realize there.
00:17:24
Speaker
um And at the end of the day, what Lava building is kind of an infrastructure that connecting the dApps to the different blockchains. So today we support 30 more blockchains and ah in more than dozens of them, Lava has real partnership going on. They have something that's called a pool.
00:17:49
Speaker
of incentives that's serving this ecosystem. So it means that during this time, um you know talking with the with the actors, with the dApps, with the providers on those specific chains. I'm speaking with the founders of the chains to see what kind of need there. um Maybe there is a big air job coming up. We should prepare but better the infrastructure to to support that.
00:18:14
Speaker
and I think in in general, you know i'm um I'm super passionate about what we build and try to balance this work-life balance of understanding the new technical developments overall in Web3 with the real understanding of what's going on on those specific ecosystems.
00:18:43
Speaker
OK, cool. So sounds it sounds like a lot of context switching. Like you said at the start, um a lot of context switching between different topics. If someone is is stepping into you know a CEO role for the first time, for example, you know they'll have to context switch quite a bit and they'll talk to the community and talk to the engineers and really understand the new infrastructure that's coming out or new things that are being built in the industry.
00:19:10
Speaker
Where do you go to learn the skill to be able to context switch? Do you think? Is it a trial and error? You have to just just try it and and ah sink or swim type type kind of setup. Or are there certain skills that you think you can master to really help you do that? I'm not sure if you have any. It might be quite a difficult question to answer, but I don't know if you have any thoughts on um that.
00:19:35
Speaker
No, I think it's ah it's a great question because it makes a great entrepreneur entrepreneur who knows how to master that, right? I remember, and and I don't like to quote him, but on this I will take him. Jeff Bezos always saying, you should you should wash your own dishes. And the first time I read that stuff, I'm guessing you have a few, you know,
00:19:58
Speaker
ah few if a few people he hires that can do it for him. But he talks about that because you need sometimes to stop, to reflect and do a passive thing that you don't really think about. You're like a robot and then you can organize your multitasking, prioritize, right?
00:20:19
Speaker
um um So I think Steve Jobs said that he always trying to take the minimum amount of quality decision in the daytime, right? You see Steve Jobs, he was wearing always the same condition because he was not, he didn't want to take ah anything from the energy to take a quality decision He didn't want to take the the the the products of multiple choices to choose the shirt with the color out of his energy to to use that. So I think it's really amazing. um Back to the question that you asked, I think you should have a very good co-founder.
00:21:05
Speaker
i um go i I was lucky. I was unlucky in my previous journey to be a solo founder. It's something that I was six years a solo founder and I think it's the only position in the business world that everyone is against you and you have zero alignment of interest with anyone.
00:21:25
Speaker
Not obviously not your investors, not your employees, customers, like all this chain and nobody has the skin in the game with you. So it was really tough six years that you always need to see, Oh, what's the subtext? What do you actually really mean here? What does he actually want?
Co-founders and Aligning Interests
00:21:43
Speaker
And to find a co-founder, it's not an easy task. And I think what is an amazing balance between me and my co-founder that you know I like to hustle, to get new people networking, but he is more reserved and like to keep focused on a specific goal that he's making. And I think this kind of balance creating a lot of, okay, this week we're focusing on that. In one month, this is where we want to be. That's the goals. That's the roadmap.
00:22:13
Speaker
And yeah, it served us quite well so far. That's cool. It sounds like ah from from what you were saying, obviously you've had some really good mentors throughout your career. You've obviously ah been been lucky enough to find a really good co-founder for projects and stuff as as well.
00:22:30
Speaker
um It sounds like there's a theme there that is very difficult to to make it on your own. And I think there's quite a few people who maybe start that entrepreneurship journey and try and do it without taking any help and this kind of stuff. But it sounds like that's a super important part of being an entrepreneur and launching projects is understanding who to search for, what type of help you might need, and try and find people who complement your ah your skill set to to make the difficult times maybe a little bit easier and you can kind of lean on each other and that kind of stuff. Do you think that's fair to say? Yeah, I think that you know there is those these principles and it's like you need to sorry you need to make sure that you're adjusting those principles to yourself because there are some people that are great entrepreneurs and they don't like to go outside the to event all the time, right?
00:23:25
Speaker
they they build an amazing product even at home. um They are able to test it without the the networking skillset. So there are examples for here and there. um I think but one of the amazing ted TED Talks that I've seen in my early career, it was of Bill Gross. And he mentioned that there are five criteria for a successful startup. And the one that minds the most, it's timing. So it's 54% of the success is contributed to good timing. And obviously, it doesn't say anything. What is good timing? How do you and can you choose it? So it's not the product market fees. It's not the co-founder, the team, the experience. so that um yeah But if we can start from somewhere, I would really recommend
00:24:20
Speaker
find the right co-founder, see like you are able to, it's a marriage, right? It's a marriage for a certain amount of time or maybe all your life, you don't know. So see how you communicate, how you set expectations, that his life balance, sorry, that his life balance is is relevant to yours and obviously that your goals align. What what what if we hit the fence earlier? How we are we dealing with conflicts and so forth? It's one of the first steps to assemble a successful career together.
00:25:01
Speaker
Yeah, I was gonna ask you to be honest, because web web three is such an entrepreneurial industry. It seems that everyone I talked to wants to launch their own project, or eventually they have they don't know necessarily what the idea might be, but they, they know that they want to, you know, give it a try to to be a founder and launch a project and this kind of stuff. And I was gonna ask you title, right? Like,
00:25:24
Speaker
yeah Yeah, I mean, I was going to ask you if if you had any tips or anything that you think people need to be aware of before they launch a project of their own. Because it has this glamorous glamorous connotation to it, right? If you know you're a starter and ah founder in Web3 of a startup, you you know raise money from a VC fund, you get to build this amazing team remotely and grow these cool products and stuff.
00:25:50
Speaker
That's the the glamorous in side of it and the glamorous impression, but there must be another side that people need to be aware of before they launch. So I'd love to hear if you have any any tips or any advice that you could share if someone is thinking about doing it. I know that's quite a broad question, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. I think just to summarize, I think a few topics or points that we spoke earlier.
00:26:12
Speaker
um Definitely I have a couple of my personal takeaways after more than two years here in Magma Devs and building Lava. And in general, what I see about other journeys and stuff like that. So yeah, I can share. I think we the first point is definitely about the mentors, the advisors, first angels. They should be reputable ones, right? There there should be someone that they did something, built something, advice, OGs. They are the real door openers. And the late night call when you are
00:26:50
Speaker
Maybe if you lost, maybe you need to sharpen something. Maybe you need to practice to a pitch the other day. So find the the right ones. Second one, my takeaway is a very interesting thing in raising funds in web three. It's all about the momentum. I see a lot of founders that like, yeah, I'm still raising. I'm raising. I said, no, don't do it. Okay. Like usually should identify the stage.
00:27:17
Speaker
especially at the beginning, you know, precede seed, and don't don't ask too little, right? ah But immediately, as fast as you can, find the right lead. And we have a playbook for that. My co-founder and I, sometimes we help other startups.
00:27:36
Speaker
a go first to your inner circle, right? Try to see to to to test the pitch on themselves, right? and and in And make sure that those are actually the pitch, the narrative that you use in order to raise the funds.
00:27:53
Speaker
and But when you find a good lead investor, just close it immediately. I feel like because it's never never-ending building in Web3, so founders are struggling to understand this concept.
Fundraising and Hiring for Startup Growth
00:28:06
Speaker
It's not never-ending fundraising because there is a momentum. So once you find a lead investor, close it.
00:28:13
Speaker
take the follow up investors, whether it's an ecosystem, a chain, someone, and make sure this investment order is closed, you secure the funds for the next one and a half, two years, so you can build quietly. Anyone else who's coming after that, then yeah, I want to participate. Don't worry, you have you're going to have another option, another possibility to to enter the next ah the next time. Don't forget that FOMO with investor is an amazing thing. um You know, I think I have a couple more points, obviously, but and if you would like, I can continue. But did another point I think about is finding the right team, right? So with me and Gil, 80% of the team was no zero crypto background.
00:29:02
Speaker
But they are crazy ah techies. They're building frozen products from A to Z. um We knew that we're going to make sure how we design the right narrative. That is our goal. But we want to bring the builders that you knows how to take a a product from um sort of a sketch to really a production level. So we brought the best you know tech engineer engineers that love what they do and we told them this is a very unique opportunity. At the beginning, you know I think we were always kind of showing off that we have like employees that have their own they own startup before, right? They they even raise funds and might not super successful of selling it, but those kind of the first team
00:29:59
Speaker
that you want to rely on. And I will summarize this point by giving a good analogy to um a basketball match, right? who with What players are the players that you choose to start as your 5th opening lineup? Those are the best players in each position because you want to create the momentum. And this is exactly why it's um so much so important to pick the right team, especially at the first 10 employees. I think there's ah some really good really good points. I think momentum
00:30:38
Speaker
ah Momentum goes across all all of those by by the sound of it. um you know i think I think on the funding side of it, it'd be great if we could go into that in a little bit more detail in in a sec and and maybe get a bit of a snapshot of how funding actually works in Web3.
00:30:56
Speaker
But finding the right team, that's obviously ah something that's close to my heart ah being in in recruitment, obviously. um Would you say then that when you ah were first launching startups, when you were building you know founding teams and this kind of stuff, would you tend to look for people who had the right attitude over the skills? like Was that more important to you, the passion and the attitude and and that kind of thing? Or do you think when you're building yeah you know your first five to quote your ah Your basketball analogy when you're choosing you just starting five ah for the team Do you try and find the perfect person? Do you go for? as I said go for for attitude over skill like how do how do you do it like if you were advising a ah Founder who's going right? I've got this project. I need to build a founding team. How would you advise that they they do it? I think this is it takes a Master skill right to to say um To know from the get-go is it
00:31:53
Speaker
the right person or not. I will fast forward to your question and and say, you can find great people that are not evolving with the startup. Startup in Web3, project in Web3 is on steroids, okay? And we've seen a many times that people that were amazing, they don't know how to evolve and to grow up with the energy that you're growing up. They're growing to a different direction.
00:32:22
Speaker
And it's not, it doesn't mean they're not good. They were helping you in this era of time, sometimes only for six months, but then you growing up, the kids is know how to walk now. So it doesn't need a nanny or something else. Right. So, and this is, I think, um, to have the ability to let go people and to see like, okay, one chance. This is where you need to, uh, to work on setting expectation, feedback.
00:32:51
Speaker
And, you know, sometimes it just doesn't work. So it's also very, very important not only to hire very good people, but also to know very quickly. This is, it's past the stage that they can bring value to the startup. Again, not because they're bad, but because it doesn't grow in the right direction that you want to grow with your startup. For sure.
00:33:17
Speaker
yeah i think um Yeah, I think you're you're completely right. It's something I advise quite a lot. I know and speak to a lot of founders who go, right, I need to hire the best people. And I say, you don't necessarily need to hire the best, you need to hire the right people. So it's hiring the right people at the right time, which I think is super, super key to any startup growth. and The CTO that you might hire to go from zero to one and get the product's bill and to get something ah working isn't the person who would then Grow four or five teams for you of five ten people they may be but but you know You know, you maybe need someone with a slightly different background different experience. You can take that scale of approach, right? So I always advise it's having the right people not the best people They'll still be good, but they'll just be the right people at the right time again best is very um You know subjective Right. Yeah
00:34:08
Speaker
But now I think, ah yeah, I think you're completely right that hiring the ah the right people and obviously the best people is very subjective. um It would be really useful, I think, as as I mentioned a second ago, you started talking about the funding in Web3.
00:34:21
Speaker
I appreciate ah there's all sorts of different avenues that people could go through, right? and When it comes to funding and and that kind of thing. Could you give us a bit of a snapshot as to how that actually works in Web3 and maybe the different avenues that you can go down when you're thinking about trying to go for funding in a startup? You know, in as in everything in life, especially in Web3, you need a very good strategy. You need to create the form. You need to make sure that you capture the investor interest, but you know it's like it's like a meme coin. It goes like that, and you need to continue pump the formal until you get to your target. So um like the strategy means that, okay, I want to get to this VCs to create the list. Those are the leads that I have with warm introduction to those VCs. Warm introduction means
00:35:20
Speaker
When you do the intro, you you add your mentor, your mentorial you know advocate, don't miss this project. okay um And I think this one, you know aggregating, surrounding ourselves with, oh, geez, there have been tons of experience that say, look, maybe they are a bit new to Web3, but they have like amazing reputation. but This is was really helpful for us.
00:35:49
Speaker
to kind of jump in and choose the the best investor, finish also the round fairly quickly and concentrate on on the growth, concentrate on building rather than just speaking with the investor all the time. I guess that shows how important, as you you mentioned as well, like actually going to the events and networking and building your network because without the the network don't have the warm intro the trusted people who know you and know your reputation and this kind of stuff to be able to you know add their their recommendation on to the intro and stuff right so i guess that then makes it even more important to go out and network when you add the funding element into it as well it is but don't expect in a random event you will find the right investor usually
00:36:40
Speaker
um that's not the way it is. rights if If you go to an event to find an investor, I would just recommend you try to find the closest um mentor, the advisor that can be the o door opener, because in events with thousands and you know even more people, like it's not going to get there. For sure. So I guess if you if you go to to test what is the market appetite with the product itself? to
00:37:11
Speaker
you know yeah Fair So I guess if you if you go to the events with the mindset of trying to find ah people to feed back on your product and the actually the idea itself and then maybe from that you can you can try and find some good mentors through those events ah then and maybe speak to those mentors about who they know from like a funding and investment perspective. Is that kind of the route to to go down or a route to try? When you get to the event, ah and you know that the investor there, it's you also should know, rather than a cold call to approach him, that someone else can introduce you to him. And even before the introduction, ask him, and don't be afraid, ask him, how would you introduce me to him? And he said, yeah, it's a good project. and the Those are the one line
00:38:03
Speaker
one and the the liner run but the the one-liner pitch that you should use. And you should reiterate that. b Be ready with that, because you're going to have you know the elevator pitch. You're not going to have 30 seconds. When I started, i we were speaking, you have elevator pitch, 30 seconds. No, no. In crypto, it's two lines.
00:38:23
Speaker
Two lines, you understand that. And again, before he gets context switch, you say, ah, by the way, we also have one, two, three. That's the key differentiator that nobody has. Oh, by the way, I'm bringing a specific experience. My background is exactly in that. I know here the missing link. Otherwise, you have thousands like you. That's cool. Do you remember your two-liner?
00:38:53
Speaker
Uber for NOS. Actually, when we started, it was not Uber for NOS. When we started, it was a decentralized RPC. um And investors liked it because there is a real need for that. And we knew how to say, okay, those are the problems we're solving. um But thanks to Alliance, you know, then Accelerator, we joined the community, the the amazing founders. We were able to take it to the next level with Uber for Nodes. And this has really caused the the the the seed investment that really brought us to where we are.
Passion and Learning in Web3
00:39:33
Speaker
Nice, nice. Uber for nodes. I like it. um So when I think we've we've obviously touched on ah a lot of different different topics and and and in this call. Is there anything, if someone is either looking to um join the industry, you know, if they're thinking they may have an idea or even if they're thinking, look, I'd i'd love the the thought of Web3, I love the technology, I love the culture, I want to become part of the industry.
00:40:02
Speaker
Is there anything, and you may have already may have already said it, but is there any advice or anything you would like people to know about the industry before joining it? Yeah, I think that you know you need to like um be up to speed all the time because crypto is changing constantly. right there and The top 10 networks are changing on a monthly basis.
00:40:31
Speaker
um regulation, compliance can change you in daytime, really revert whole ecosystems. And you need to be passionate about um this revolution that I believe all of us are part of.
00:40:51
Speaker
But you need always to to ask yourself to think critically, right? It looks amazing, you know traveling all over the world um Ask the right question meet new people. It's easy to create like New circles of friends and have amazing experience but depends on your goal, right? um I think Nobody today could know the entire different aspects of Web3. There are so many different topics and domains that people cannot just process. You need to see what makes your heart sing.
00:41:31
Speaker
right You need to see what ah what kind of topics you really believe going to evolve. Is it real world assets? Is it you know a chain obstruction? What's exactly there is you know is motivating you and you feel passionate about. ah But it's going to take a lot of energies. And especially at the beginning, I was going through you know like unlimited number of YouTubes, of white papers, of podcasts, and it's never stopping because everyone is presenting his own approach, his own um skin in the game and wants you to believe to some specific agenda. Sure. that I think that ah continuous learning is is massive in the industry, right? um But I think you're you're definitely right with the
00:42:32
Speaker
with the comment of finding your passion, like finding what' what generally interests you. um I was having a conversation a few months back with with another guest on on the show. um and He's the VP of technology, a pretty very well-known ah project. And the way that he was actually offered that role of VP of technology is because he worked out that zero knowledge was the only ah area in web three that he wanted to work on. He hadn't worked in the industry before. He was the only area that he cared about working in. So he made a list of all of the projects that were working on Zero Knowledge Tech, reached out to the founders of every single one, and said, I'm super, super passionate about solving your problem. I don't care about anything else. I just want to focus on Zero Knowledge Tech. And that passion really came across in his message and in the conversations he was having. And they actually offered him a VP of technology role that had a big project um purely for showing that passion.
00:43:24
Speaker
So I think if youre ah it's good advice not just for people who are in the industry, but even yeah if you're looking to get into the space, you know if you're looking for a job, just having that passion or finding that passion, finding what interests you can have a massive impact on the roles you can get and and the conversations you can have and that kind of thing. um But I thought that was a pretty cool story when he he was telling me about it. and the I think passion in general, it's addictive.
00:43:52
Speaker
So obviously we've talked a lot today. You shared a lot of a lot of advice. and You've talked us through the past and and obviously what's going on ah right now. What does the future hold for you, Magma Devs, Lava Network? Can you share a little bit of of that, please? Definitely. i I think in the last few months, because it's kind of a bearish industry, I think it's a great time to build.
00:44:20
Speaker
And my trip just now to to Singapore, Korea, the Asian conferences, it showed me there is a lot of passion about building a something with utility, about making sure while you're speaking with the top sexist and the the usage of the exchanges wallets and you know so forth.
00:44:47
Speaker
everyone is looking at the adoption and the utility. There's a lot of buzzwords, but if at the end of the day, like there's no usage that's generating value, um that's that's goingnna not going to work on the long run for the project. So, I think what is very special with Lava and what we were lucky to start building and seeing now forming into and amazing community and amazing infrastructure is the fact that this is, um and Lava is the access layer and becoming the backbone for any decentralized info. When you think about connecting to the blockchain itself, read-write transactions, the real you know ah real need to get the data with Lava, you can implement one line of code and get access
00:45:43
Speaker
to all web3. When chains of bootstrapping, their own infra, they always need to go through the same hodles. They need to go and find RPC providers. They need API indexing, subgraph, Oracle, and so forth. But the like what is very unique about how Lava's form is kind of an incentivized an incentivized layer for any any data primitive.
00:46:12
Speaker
So you see that in the new partnership that Lava just formed with the layer one, layer two blockchains, um um you know, from NIR to StarkNet to Filecoin. Lava is going multi-chain. We spoke about this at the beginning. I think when a protocol is able to be flexible,
00:46:37
Speaker
and support the scalability of different chains, this is a key two that really brings the utility to the front. And just summarizing the last lava update that they shared two weeks ago, um you see that there are 2.5 million unique users using lava.
00:47:00
Speaker
They don't even know about that, right? It's 2 million unique users of wallets, exchanges, dApps that the backbone is lower. You see that over a million dollars that was handed back to the providers that are doing this service, that making sure that you know you have 100% uptime in a near ecosystem, that you can get information from any more more than 30 different blockchain at once. Those are the critical role that I personally believe for Web3 adoption ah to accelerate. This is what I see how Lava plays this critical role. Sounds cool. Yeah, 2.3 or 2.5 million.
00:47:49
Speaker
almost 2.5 unique users. I can share afterwards, after their podcast, our the stats, the start leader ball. And yeah, everyone can check it out. That's brilliant. Sounds cool. Well, yeah, there's one question that I always like to ask everyone ah before we finish up. um Knowing what you know now about technology, leadership, entrepreneurship, Web3, if you could go back to the very start,
00:48:19
Speaker
is there Do you have a piece of advice that you'd share with your younger self?
00:48:27
Speaker
Yeah, so I think that you know building first of all, decide where you're building the your project in. Creating the first ecosystem, it's super important. I see today that in different ecosystems, you get different push And um and and you know obviously, you need to find the right champion in the industry you're building on. um Our project is a bit unique because it touches multi-chain. So it can be EVM, non-EVM. But usually, a project decides to build something for a specific ecosystem and then take it from there and expand. So I think
00:49:08
Speaker
um
00:49:11
Speaker
most of the Most of my advice for for our new founders is really find a champion in an ecosystem that you really like and get attached to it and make the most of it. We didn't have this kind of person at the beginning in Cosmos but we decided to build on Cosmos and obviously um it would be much more helpful if we knew the people in the foundation, and the people that were initially building that, the OGs, and so forth. So we just did a nosedive to an ecosystem without knowing them. And I think it will make our life much easier if we knew the ecosystem before.
00:49:56
Speaker
Brilliant advice. Brilliant advice. Well, yeah, it's been great to have a conversation with you today. Thank you very much for taking the time ah to come on. And um yeah, you said some great advice. I'm definitely going to go back and listen to this episode again and make a bunch of notes on on a lot of things you said. So thank you very much for taking the time ah to come on. And um yeah, loved loved to having you on as a guest. Thank you so much, Jack. It was insightful for me. And yeah, hopefully we're going to see you soon.
00:50:26
Speaker
Sounds great. I'll speak to you soon. Take care.