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Tech building, Innovation, and the Realities of Startup Life | Alex Puig | WT3 010
12 Plays10 months ago
"Sometimes it's not the best technology that wins, but the biggest adoption." Join us for an enlightening conversation with Alex Puig, a seasoned developer and entrepreneur in the Web3 space. Alex shares his journey from coding at 16 to founding Context Protocol, offering invaluable insights for aspiring tech founders.
In this episode, we dive deep into:
- The challenges of building startups in different ecosystems
- The importance of modularity and simplicity in tech development
- How to evaluate blockchain technologies and make strategic decisions
- The intersection of Web3 and AI, and the future of the semantic web
- Essential advice for first-time founders and the concept of being a "punkpreneur"
Whether you're a seasoned developer or a curious newcomer to the Web3 space, this episode is packed with practical wisdom and inspiring ideas to fuel your entrepreneurial journey.
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Transcript
Introducing Alex and His Ventures
00:00:01
Speaker
oh Welcome to one to three, the podcast that brings founders from zero to one. Today, we're having Alex huge with us. Liam, maybe you want to introduce Alex properly. Yeah, looking forward to it. Alex, it's great to have you here. ah For anyone who's not met Alex before. Alex is the founder of Context Protocol, co-founder of Data Ventures, see was the CTO of Calum Labs, started two venture studios. He's known as a public figure in the Spanish blockchain space and acted in the space since early 2013. He founded Context Protocol and it revolutionizes data storage and structure. Alex has a long background in emerging technology and brings valuable insights to the industry. We are very lucky to have you, Alex. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you a lot for having me.
00:00:46
Speaker
Um, no,
Challenges of Doing Business in Spain
00:00:47
Speaker
you're welcome. And I say, just saying before the podcast started, I'm very jealous. You're my favorite city in the world ah in Barcelona. I love the Catalonia sort of space. Um, so Saying that, like being in Spain, um how did you get into the industry and has it been different to sort of being in other Western countries? I know sort of Portugal is deemed as one of the hubs of k crypto for a lot of people um and obviously that's just right next door to you. so um I think Barcelona is an amazing city to live.
00:01:22
Speaker
That's it. so Business-wise, I would not recommend it. It's not the place to be. But then if you like good food and good wine, um definitely it's the place to be. I started in technology. I started coding at 16, so I've been coding forever, I think. And always like better conferences, like better startups so everywhere else, like not just here. So even like if you think about being entrepreneurial tax wise, it's not the perfect like with everything that's going i on in the space, it's not the perfect place to sell a company, but.
00:01:56
Speaker
But it's, as I say, I don't even live in Barcelona. I live like half an hour, half a Barcelona, small village by the city, so I can focus on work and do the things that I need to do. And then I don't get distracted by the noise. Probably the noise is like one of the worst things ever but today, I think. So what have yeah what do you feel you've had to do to sort of stay at the forefront um with that? You're saying you're maybe not in the most ideal place. One of the things that people do, obviously, coming from say like TradFi and more like Web2 Industries, the sort of the freedom, the kind of um digital nomad aspects of blockchain, I think makes it easier to be in the space. so But what are some of the challenges you've had i um from like 2013 and has it got easier?
00:02:39
Speaker
ah No, it never goes easy. And the the thing is like, this is like a socialist country, Spain, basically. It means that ah the state usually wants to help you. And that's the most scary thing that can happen to you whenever like somebody or some politician company is like, we're going to help you. Every time that they help us, they add regulation. So they have so many really silly regulations here that don't help at all. We don't we we cannot have like things like stock options. or phantom shares. so So there's an exit tax that's really crazy. So if basically even if you succeed, then going out of the country, it's the the tax you have to pay. It's at least a few million just like to move your company and it's the the usual when you do an M and&A. So that's crazy. and And besides that, even like getting funded, it's not the best place. Once again, the mentality here, I would say it's small.
00:03:31
Speaker
remember like as I spoke with a lot of people about that but usually I have an idea just go to investors like okay give me but give me 100k and I'll give you back 1 billion so basically in Spain they they say okay well we're gonna give you 1k not 100k we're gonna give you 1k with really this bad valuation so let's see what happens if you do exactly the same in the states it's like okay if I give you 100k you're gonna give me 1 million then I give you 1 million and give me a back ah 100 million it's like so that's the thing and second thing like it's not really with country for second opportunities and Things like if you go to the states you go to Asia there are many places that the background Okay, you started a few things you failed of course and then you wait you you know you did it again That's something amazing. It's like every everyone said school and he's like, oh you feel maybe you're not that good so this kind of things
Exploring Business Opportunities in Asia vs. US
00:04:29
Speaker
is like this. So with that in mind, having like, um started several venture studios yourself, you're talking about sort of this exit tax kind of feels like you're suggesting you're almost kind of trapped there to a degree, even though you like the lifestyle or from a business perspective, if you could, if you were to start again, where would you start? That's a good question, because like that's something I've been thinking for long. I've got a half kids, so it's not that I can really choose that much. That's a complicated situation. But then- Let's let's say take take take all of the current situation out. We're kind of going to go into sort of later on, we've got our startup, Desert Essentials. But if you were just plump back now, you're 18 years old, you're about to do a startup, you can choose any country in the world.
00:05:16
Speaker
Probably I would go to Asia somewhere like probably Korea or Singapore I think right now if Singapore is the best place to start business business at the moment because they have like the full a good balance between investment regulation, and so That's a good place to be Mm-hmm, probably Asia. Yeah, not not even states. I don't like the states anymore. They don't feel safe too much. So probably Asia. Yeah, I Is that even with, so on my take on Singapore, I was very bullish on Singapore's kind of adoption of crypto regulations, but the more I read into them, the more I feel like they're moving more towards like that very like centralized, controlling CBDC aspect of it, so regulated stablecoins. And obviously, I'm not assuming that everything needs to be the Wild West, but is there not a worry about that part in sort of Singapore and some of the Asian countries that are
00:06:11
Speaker
becoming more, but we're saying progressive, but I've got a slight worry about that. me Me too, but that's happening everywhere. Like basically we are in Europe. When I started with, I started yeah it bo in blockchain in 2013, meaning I had to go to the Spanish regulators, central bank of Spain, our central bank of Europe to speak about blockchain at that time. And then hearing their ideas on CBBCs, like from the beginning. But then, for make ah for business, like ah money needs to have stability. So having some sort of regulation sometimes it can help, like right now we'll have Mika in Europe, and even it's not perfect, it's far from perfect. oh yeah wait ah At least whenever, like i'm latin ah I'm launching a project right now, so I know what's the framework that I need to go by. And that helps a lot, because like starting any company, it's there's so many uncertainties that at least
00:07:04
Speaker
being like having this idea that, OK, they are not going to like send me to jail tomorrow. I've been seeing with a lot of founders from the states that they want to come to live to to Europe just for that. Yeah. No, I was about to say the exact same thing. A lot of people, I find it ah hilarious almost when I'm talking to people in the US and they're saying how far ahead the EU is with regulations. And I'm thinking, well, i i just I downloaded the new strike app because you can finally get strike in the UK. I had to give them my passport before I could even look to see whether I wanted to use the app.
00:07:36
Speaker
um and use a third-party KYC provider that I couldn't verify was actually safe, um which after the Evolve stuff of the day wasn't great. Then I had to answer eight really difficult questions, ah which I don't have to answer on reserve banking when I'm opening a bank account and fractional reserve banking. No, that's not we're not getting those questions, but really difficult regulatory questions, and there was about eight of them. Then after that, once you're finally done with it all and you pass the test, they say, okay, come back tomorrow and we'll let you into the app. And that's UK regulations for you. And people in the US are like, yeah, we'd love that because of exactly what you said. At least you know what you're doing. At least you you have a set of guidelines you can follow. The US, they have no guidelines, and it's just enforcement by, well, regulation by enforcement. Well, did they have guidelines, but they just don't tell you. It's like... okay Yeah, this is like that like the IRS, right? We're not going to tell you how much money you need to pay, but if you have it wrong, we'll go after you.
Blockchain and Democratic Governance
00:08:34
Speaker
And it's it's funny because like, I think everybody complains about China, but like most of the governments, they want to be like China. Oh, there was a very interesting, um, we shouldn't really be, well, we should because it's crypto roles. Um, if anyone listening hasn't listened to the bankless podcast from this week that had Vitalik on it, I highly recommend it. They were talking about the efficiencies of, oh, actually, no, don't watch it. Go to CryptoSlayer.com and read my article about it. because I wrote about it. about the efficiencies of authoritarian governments and how the ah internet is actually pushing countries towards that, because it's more efficient, and how blockchain could save democracy. um Because without it, we kind of, it's just a natural evolution that liberalism and democracy is kind of going away, because it's more efficient to be author authoritarian. So it was really fascinating to hear Vitalik's takes on that.
00:09:27
Speaker
I'm not sure if it's more efficient, the only thing is like probably democracy, it's over rigid. You guys know a little bit about that in the UK. I mean, it's like getting really hard decisions. Really, really hard decisions like, okay, I have like this, I need to i have this operation, so I have to go through the brain. And then instead of like going to the experts to see like, what's the best way to get to get into the brain to to do some surgery in your brain, you just ask everyone. It's like, Guys, people, what do you think? and and like and i mean could i could divest this I find it really fascinating talking about like with elections you spend a lot of time trying to raise money rather than actually governing yeah and the difference between and it was like kind of scary you listen to it going yeah there is some logic to this like the argument for authoritarianism but then obviously the the downside
Technological Advancements in Shanghai
00:10:16
Speaker
is a big downside.
00:10:18
Speaker
Yeah, then I was in China last week and I was so surprised, like, for example, you go to Shanghai and it's an amazing city. It feels like civilization should be at some point. And one of the things, like, they decided that ah we needed electrical cars. So basically all of the cars in Shanghai are electrical vehicles, all of them. it's it's in you You don't you didn't get it until you're just there and you are in your city with 20 something million people. yeah And there's silence. yeah oh I've seen the videos on on that exactly. Well, let's jump into so that the next part. i mean We've kind of touched on it already, but just a little bit more in terms of how has your experience with um so venture studios and tech building changed since 2013, so the last 10 years? What's the biggest change that you've noticed?
00:11:05
Speaker
but but bit Don't get me wrong with all of them. I mean, I don't understand the concept of expert in anything. Things change so far. Like I've been building startups for the last 20 years. So my first startup was in 2008, I think. ah Nothing that I was doing back then, I could do it right now. Everything has changed so fast. So every time you start a company, you need to like be humble enough to understand that you know nothing and need you need to start from scratch. so So how do you keep up? Because I think that a lot of people that, you know, are, let's say, specifically in the Spanish blockchain space, they i think, look at you, they're like, oh, yeah, Alex. Yeah. If you don't know Alex, you don't know anything about blockchain kind of thing. yeah um so So how do you keep up?
00:11:48
Speaker
to understand, to make sure that, you know, you're you're staying at least in the right lane because there's so much technology coming out. um and And I think that's different than, let's say 10 years ago, 10 years, it was more and a niche, obscure industry where now it's so widespread, right? So the the only way to keep up with that is like, fuck experts. I mean, but what does that mean? in your Because i'd feel I've seen a lot of people like talking about shit, talking about the startups, so talking about technology. And i'm just I'm just building, I wake up every day at 5am and try to build something and just do it. I code it. Yeah.
00:12:26
Speaker
Then I just keep it as in that I need things and then things change. And so I have to read the commendation and I speak a lot with Chad GPD. It's my best friend right now. But. But oh you'll you're lovely in them. Yeah. and You have to be stupid. I mean. usually like smart people every time like my in my life every time that there was a problem and they ask smart people smart people always like answer no that cannot be done it's impossible it's gonna be expensive whatever and I was the only stupid guy to say no I can do that so that attitude that being hanger that oh that's really hard I want to do it let me do it
00:13:05
Speaker
Sometimes it's it's like football that that that there's like ah there's this guy like I don't want the pressure on the other way I want the ball I'm gonna like go through all of these people with my whatever So having yeah attitude helps a lot and not our thinking too much just like doing and then and I keep up because I wake up at 5 a.m. Every day and I build things I don't read the about things That's how you build you you deploy you feel fast Exactly.
Essentials of Entrepreneurship and Building
00:13:30
Speaker
I feel a lot by the way, but yeah, yeah and that's you So by failing, you learn, right? Exactly. and I mean, I've seen know like a lot of tech guys like going to management. Of course, they have a lot of experience, but at some point, their experience is managing people, but not with technology. And that's the different skill, and ah by the way, it's really needed. We need a lot of people with that skill. It's not that it's bad. But then, of course, like they have their job, and then they need to keep up with technology, and but then then it gets hard.
00:13:57
Speaker
Yeah, it's the old move fast break things. Yeah. And I mean, I think we're moving on here to the advice for founders section. I think that's a really great one already, which I would actually entitle kind of be stupid. Yeah. Don't know if you think too much, like there's so many things that can go wrong that you will never do anything. Just do it, break it, and then see what happens. Yeah, it's better to fail 100 times than not to fail at all, right? But not but what when I like, you asked me like, what do you recommend to entrepreneurs? Don't be, don't be an entrepreneur. Usually I do a lot of talks for entrepreneurs, like universities these kind of things. And always when like, I asked like, who wants to be an entrepreneur? And like, all of the room, all of them like, I want to meet me. Yes, amazing. Who wants to get broke? Who wants to get divorced? Who wants to lose their friends?
00:14:49
Speaker
Of course, health. You don't need that. That's something think nobody, you know, freak time. Wow. And that's it. and And honestly, most of the people, they just go low down and whoa. And then you see a couple of people in in the back, always in the back, like so excited about, yeah, I want that life. And it's not for everybody. You need to be stupid. Yeah, yeah, right. you You need to be quite a stupid because like youre you're choosing the hardest path ever. And if you think about too much, probably you would not do it. Nobody would do it. I remember talking to Ross McKenzie, who was one of our guests. He used to do
00:15:27
Speaker
billions of dollars worth of sales for IBM. And his kind of vibe around entrepreneurs is that you have entrepreneurs and you have enthusiastic amateurs and you're one or the other. And I feel like you can still be what a lot of people will consider an entrepreneur as one of these enthusiastic amateurs. um But it's kind of choosing that lane, isn't it? There's the entrepreneur that you say that just does the meetings and raises funds, and then you've got the entrepreneur like yourself that moves fast and breaks things and does it themselves. And I think it was, I don't agree with him very much, but I thought this was interesting. is Elon Musk was recently talking about the fact that we need more engineers as CEOs, more people that can actually do things. Is that something you'd agree with? um For me, the difference is between, I see that a lot with entrepreneurs. um I don't think of myself and as entrepreneur as an entrepreneur because i had just I have an idea in my mind, I want to see that idea working.
00:16:21
Speaker
so I don't care. I just like have something with like context protocol. I thought about this, the the semantic web. We can bring that on Web3. And I want to see that working. And there is the a lot of entrepreneurs that they're looking for this year because they're yeah being entrepreneurs to build something big, to get rich, whatever. And then, yes, they get excited about raising money and they even they celebrate raising money. Raising money is a big responsibility. You should never celebrate that because you owe that money to someone. and and they get lost on this idea of you know beautiful idea that you're free you do whatever you want you're an entrepreneur and you want to be an entrepreneur i think like most of the
00:16:59
Speaker
you know, OGs or whatever you want to call them. They don't think of themselves as entrepreneurs. They just do things. And it's not that I'm looking for the next big thing to do. I just see a problem um and I need to solve that problem. And I'm not looking for the problem. I just, you know, that I could do better. Then I get obsessed with that. So I think that there's like these two paths. And I like this idea of amateur somehow. Because I've seen that a lot, like, OK, I want to be an entrepreneur. I'm going to I'm going to join a university to do a course on entrepreneurship. It's like, what? Yeah, it's crazy. I think it's it's it's being humble, isn't it? It's the aspect of knowing knowing that there's lots that you don't know yet and you can always learn. But but then it's it. That's what we're thinking, like, what you you want. You're doing something you feel so many times it's impossible not being humble.
00:17:49
Speaker
because you feel well because you're stupid you just try things and then of course you fells and you try again and you feel again and then you speak with a lot of people because you want that to succeed you speak with smarter people than you you never speak to people that says no you're right you don't like that kind of people i don't like them i like people saying you're wrong because that's not gonna work because of this oh shit that's good idea so and then because you're speaking all the time with people that they know better than you and whatever you are i always hire people to tell me what to do not yeah the other way around If I had someone on marketing, I want him or her to be way better than me. And yeah so, and then, of course, people are with this kind of people that make makes you feel humble all of the time because there's so many things you don't know. I used to say that knowledge is like a balloon, that there's like but the things you know inside of the balloon hits the air, and then the things you don't know are outside. And basically, you just know the things you don't know, but you don't know the things you don't know. And the more you get more knowledge inside,
00:18:47
Speaker
the the surface, the area of the balloon grows. And the things that you you get to know that you don't know, they keep on growing exponentially. So every time that you just like get some air of knowledge, the kind of things like, yes, now I know this, now I know that I know do this, this, this. And it gets great. So there was again, like Thomas, you have to be stupid and don't think too much. You're not never going to be smart enough. You're never going to get there. So you just keep on pushing and trying. Otherwise, like If you wait for everything to be perfect, you will never do that. It's like the perfection is the opposite of done. I think they see. So, yeah.
Managing Failures and Risk in Tech
00:19:25
Speaker
Yeah. No, I don't want to say I want to jump on. So in terms of another tip here, you talk about failing a lot. How do you deal with failure? Because like, I don't know. It's part of my life. I don't think failure is a bad thing.
00:19:41
Speaker
And someone said like, I never fail, I just found a thousand ways of not doing it right. No, but in terms of if you you were talking to someone that's just starting out and you you need to say that you're going to fail lots, what would be the advice of how to deal with that failure and knowing that it's going to come a lot? um So, ah my advice would be ah being able to then identify failure on different topics. It's not the same failing that I tried something that didn't work or I tried something and I lost $200,000 or I tried something that didn't work, lost $200,000 and i ah now I own that money to ah to a bank.
00:20:19
Speaker
So being able to identify this kind of failure, ah you know, being able to identify the risk on everything you do and manage that risk in a way that it's like calculated risk. I mean, I'm going to fail big, but then I can, you know, raise up a again because I'm okay. I never lost my you know health or never lost my you know wealth. So it's not that, basically, that's the end of it. So being able to identify those risks, like at the end of the day, being an entrepreneur, it's like about cash management, you need cash flow, being able to understand like where you are, where you want to be. And then with that, make a lot of mistakes. And of course, you're going to lose a lot of money at the beginning because you're going to make a lot of bad decisions. You're going to hire the the wrong people. You're going to, you know, but then
00:21:04
Speaker
You learned? So I like that perspective. But then if you talk, let's say, about future-proofing, right? like Let's say we build, and I think context is a very good example. So you know you're you're building something that you hope will scale over time. So how do you ensure that you build future-proof technology um that is inflexible and can add value to what you do? within the boundaries of failing, right? Because you you will still fail often and fast. But how how do you ensure that your future proves your failures? it's it's It's really hard because you cannot predict most of the things you're gonna predict them. You can choose a chain that maybe like it just come in a couple of months or gets hacked or there's so many things that they're not up to you. It's not your failure. Of course, you fail because you choose something, but it's not your fault. You as an entrepreneur, I think you never have enough information about like everything you're going.
00:22:01
Speaker
But then but on the engineering side, yes. Then I plan everything that's modular. I never trust just one technology. So if I need to connect to a blockchain, I just do it in modular in a way that, okay, this blockchain didn't work. And then how long it takes to connect a new blockchain? Five minutes. so but that's actually yeah then go that just think about that like uh because we don't know so that's like every time we're using rwif amazing what if rwif doesn't work then okay you're right so then we can connect uh filecode or whatever and
00:22:34
Speaker
Think about that. and But that's a good thing. You feel so many times that you already know that things fail, so you're prepared for that. Your mindset changes just because it's not failure. It's just like, no, and evolution. But that this is this is a very important thing for our listeners. and that that's how you know we kind of just You use a bundle of three devices into one. um But most of our listeners, some of our listeners are like maybe veterans in Web 2, but go to Web 3. And Web 3 works definitely a little bit different when it comes to development and looking at technology. um But also, like just first-time founders in in um in in the Web3 space, um I think you said something that's really important here. is like Because one of the questions, like, hey, choosing the right tech stack is like, well, make it modular. right Make sure that you can switch out things left and right. Don't make it dependable. Because if you do, um if you you make it monolithic,
00:23:27
Speaker
And it turns out that whatever you build on or whatever third party decides to stop, you're you're in big bad trouble, right? So it doesn't it doesn't matter what the right tech stack in terms of technology is, it it matters on how you build it from an architecture perspective where you're able to remove things um if they are a risk or becoming a risk in the future, like, for instance, um any chain you're building on. you You need to have a plan B and plan C for everything. It's like, okay, what happens if I get hacked? No, no, no, no. What happens when you get hacked? It's probably not going to happen. It doesn't make it really good or bad. So your ability to plan in the future and then plan for that, plan that, I'm going to fail.
00:24:07
Speaker
I know that, yeah for sure. So then, whenever you fail, you're prepared. You're right. It's like, you knew that. I knew that. Of course, it's it hurts. But then it's like, you get strong and just move forward. And by the way, lately with Web3, most of the times, it's not about technology. Nobody cares. It's like more business decision. Like whenever we choose the which blockchain we we want to deploy. Right now, we're we're choosing the blockchain we want to deploy it for mainnet. on And it's a business decision. It's like, who's going to be more user's partner? So more on the business side. Right now, it's more important than actually the tech side. And if the tech side is more alert and it's ready, and I'm really obsessed with testing. So all of my software, it's always like, it has like, you know, you need this for everything. So then if I change the module, I just pass all of the tests and I'm ready to go. Sorry, go ahead, Liam.
00:24:57
Speaker
I was just going to say, and I think with the rise, you were talking about chat GPT earlier, and we've seen how good Claude 3.5 Sonnet is at coding. um I think it's only going to get easier to transpose code to another platform as well as AI gets better. Completely. But then if if you you plan for that from the beginning, then that's fine. Yeah, and that's ah that's a future-proofing piece, right like making sure that you you can bring in new technologies. it's not a but and And this is always the interesting thing. like we We talk a lot to our clients, and they're like, yeah, you know we we love Avalanche. We want to build on Avalanche. And we're like, OK, what are you going to build? And then they come with this idea. And we're like, there's better chains out there um that that can do this on a technology perspective. And also, there's better chains out better can there that can do this on a business perspective. and
00:25:45
Speaker
It's very often where clients kind of get married to a certain technology. Oh, we love TypeScript. It's like, yeah, but nobody cares about it. Your end users don't care about it. And your end users doesn't care on the block, which which chain you are. um Unless but when it comes to, you know, bringing more users in yet, then it makes sense. But if you're a maxi on any technology, it doesn't I think it's a really big risk towards future, but also towards like what you're building, because you're building exclusively for one chain. um And whatever happens to that chain, you you can't influence, right? If that breaks down, you're done. But not just blockchain, any technology. Me as a coder, I can code in almost... I've been coding forever. I can code in anything, I don't care. And honestly, like one one of my favorite languages is Rust, because I come from working with ah machine code. so
00:26:38
Speaker
I mean like coding at low level and I love that. But then business-wise, it makes no sense. Like, having people with experience in Rust, that's really hard. so And then you can find a lot of people maybe with TypeScript, JavaScript, or or Go. So that's a business decision. Once again, like you' you cannot get in love with the technology. It doesn't help. And then you need to
Strategic Technology Choices for Startups
00:26:58
Speaker
plan that. That thing technology that you're just building right now, it's an MPP, maybe whatever, it will change. Like me, myself, I build most of the tech stack we have. But we we just recently had the CTO. And now he's taking all of the decisions because he's the CTO. No matter if like I have a lot of experience in technology, it's up to him to decide. And probably it will be changing things. And then probably we'll have someone else and we will be keep on evolving. If you don't plan for evolution, you will end up like I was working for a bank and and this bank, they never plan for that. So most of the banks, they don't. So at some point, 70% of the code was older than 25 years.
00:27:38
Speaker
Yeah. And that that's more common than than people actually ah think. It's very, very common. Yeah. It means that basically changing a couple of lines of code, whatever it is, it's like around two days to change, like even a copy, two days. And it's the budget of 2000 euros to change. and It gets crazy. Yeah. So I'm pretty sure there's still some ATMs in the UK running on windows 98. Even a joke, like genuinely there are um um talking about testing he does what unit tests in the moment ago. How do you product test your proof of concept?
00:28:15
Speaker
i i At the beginning, like ah my background, I was working for a setup called Softonic, so basically we had around 50 million users, and at that time, if something was wrong, the code what we are making we were making ah as a as team, but did the for every five minutes we were losing $5,000. So we were involved everything was like, it needed to be smooth. It was crazy and the kind of responsibility. So that's my background. So at the beginning when I started as an entrepreneur, I was like creating code that could handle millions of, you know, ah petitions and I had five users. So learn a lot about that to fake everything at the beginning.
00:28:53
Speaker
So it's ah it's like I call it like the the chopping process. And I have this idea and what I need to build. And then I keep on chopping and chopping and chopping. And then I talk a lot like with my team or even my wife, like she has a lot of experience there. And what are you going to build? able I'm going to build this. You don't need this. You don't need this. Chop that, chop that. And you you get to the core of what you're building and then just try that. See if people do that. So being able to chop, but then once like you chop and you have everything first, like I do the tests always. like I don't know why most of the people, they think that you lose more time by writing the test than the code. Usually I first write the test and then I do the code and then from there evolving, it's really hard it's really easy. And then you move faster. You you make a lot of time for yourself and security, of course.
00:29:40
Speaker
but chopping with an axe like everything I can from the beginning everything even something it's like can be manual I can do it manual so I will receive an email and and then I will set up in the backend don't of course like at the beginning even like admin tools whatever don't do that just like keep keep it simple keep it simple core business make it work and once again it's like It's a good problem to have needing to scale running, so you're going to do that. yeah But at the beginning, probably I would spend more time on UX than on like my technology being able to scale. like you So we're getting real fast. Yeah, real fast. Yeah, yeah but but then because it's easier to build software for me, it's easier than explaining whatever I'm building to people. So building theraina the narrative, being able to explain that in a way that people, that the users, they just come to a your place and they naturally know what they have to do. That's the the hardest part.
00:30:37
Speaker
so So let me ask you a question regarding, because like I have had so many discussions regarding POCs and MVPs. right And we we always said, POCs are just a piece of software that demonstrates that what we're building works. And you know there's a very simple user flow. And MVP, we always say, look, an MVP is something that you can deploy onto the market. It has generally one happy happy path for the user. And you can get paying customers. um like that That's skill from there. And very often we see like, you know, what a POC needs to be able to, you know, onboard users and do all these crazy things. It's like, and what map sometimes so we've we've been doing POCs and showing the POC in a Figma without even coding the backend. Yeah. Just clickable, clickable Figmas.
00:31:26
Speaker
Yeah, this is how it's going to look like. this is what it's ah This is what it will represent. Hey, this is this something you like? um and And I think very often in Web 2, where we've seen a lot on Web 3 as well, like people confuse that concept. right So they talk about POCs. like No, no, where you're talking about an MVP. And MVP is obviously more work, um takes more time, takes more man hours, there's more risk involved. um have you Have you ever have you done the POC step? Because I think that's a very valuable point to just at least like market test or back test your ideas and your perspectives. Hey, do do people actually like this? Does this actually make sense? um you know If you do that with an MVP, you're going to probably spend a lot of time and money and effort.
00:32:07
Speaker
um for something that may not be a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, right? like one three what is It's even worse, because when you do an MVP in Web3, there's a lot of things you need to take into account, as you can imagine. like ah Of course, security transactions, it's not that easy. So, no but then an MVP, you can just like play with that. And then of course you can move, move faster than when you have, like, if you know what you want to build, it's faster to build an MVP. But honestly, you have an idea. You don't know what you're building.
00:32:39
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And so but we had a conversation yesterday with some of our ah partners that are doing a lot of go to market and ideation, like they start with ideation stage, and so the amount of clients that we start with. um And they're like, Oh, yeah, we have a really great solution. Okay, what's the problem that it solves? And they're starting actually backs like, okay, what are the problems? And they you can't you can't name the solutions as a problem. And they, they realized that 80% of the time they built something, there's no value. But in their head there is because you know it's a great idea. It's another wallet on ChainX, which does five things different. It's like, it was going to be your users. Well, we'll figure it out. and Maybe that should be the other way around. Me too. I see that a lot with a lot of entrepreneurs that they just come to me, I had this crazy idea and nobody's doing that.
00:33:31
Speaker
Maybe there's a reason for that. nobody's yeah that's that's That's a very, very good point. There's sometimes a reason why people don't do it. There's a reason why some of the industries can't be disrupted because disrupting it is going to cost you $100 billion dollars and a lot of traction. And it's not. When people talk about disruption, it's often a very small piece of an industry that has a niche and of that niche, you do a disruption and that's disruption of that piece of industry. You don't disrupt the whole industry. um but's always
00:34:02
Speaker
then like i think like People is confused with that. It's like startups adding work with corporates, something like that. um And honestly, I've always been in ah in in the nowhere land, in the middle ground, like me myself, because I'm a coder. So basically I work with the community. and But then I work a lot with the big corporates.
AI and Web3: Opportunities and Risks
00:34:22
Speaker
And then for the corporate exam, the hacker, you know, the geek guy hacker, you know, know but then for the hackers that I work with, I go with and they look at me like you're the corporate guy because you you speak with these guys. The truth is like by far technology made by the community, but open source and hackers is way better.
00:34:39
Speaker
Yeah, but then you want to have impact the guys from the corporate. They know a bit about that So you need to listen to that and sometimes use crazy idea Nobody did and the corporate is not doing you talk to the corporate and maybe in five minutes It's like just five minute interview with a corporate. They will tell you why and they are not doing that It's like because we try that people don't want us. It's like it's as simple as that. We try that data weight So being able to work It's another word, cooperation, like talk to corporates sometimes and ask them why, why there's no solution like that. And they're going to tell you why sometimes and it's going to hurt once again. Yeah. Well, that's, that's a very good perspective. Uh, definitely a web tree. Um, so and I wanted to, like, you know, we, we had another one and that's interesting, um, because AI has been a hot topic for the last two years, right? Like specifically LLMs.
00:35:28
Speaker
How do you see the whole AI narrative playing into the Web3 technologies? like Liam and myself had a couple of really hot discussions about this on on how where AI sits and where it goes and if AI at this point is not Web3. How do you see this whole AI narrative? And then we're not necessarily talking about the the coding structure, but the general LLM vision and perspective. How do you see that play into the Web3 technologies? and And that's a discussion that I've had a lot too. And I've been really like, as you can imagine, I'm really into ah AI doing it using it for my work in in many different ways. uncoding l lamma And and Lang chain and all of these things. and and i'm i'm I'm really scared a lot. I mean, it's about, you know, training LLM at the end of the day. It's about training AI.
00:36:17
Speaker
so the way we train AIs will be probably you know in science fiction there's like there's three paths that AI can take one is that basically uh it's good it helps us it improves lives everybody's happy second it's bad it kills us all not happy third is like AI sees us as ants so it ignores us completely and as long as we don't get in the in the way that's gonna be so Three paths and depends on the way we train AI. Right now, it's going to be like probably the the path we are going to take. So the responsibility we have right now is the idea to train AI in a way that information can be trusted. Because it's not that easy if you think like you just look at internet. It's crazy, like a lot of fake information.
00:37:06
Speaker
So if we use ah this fake information, false, lies, whatever, you know, everybody is like creating conflict just to get more power. So if we use that information to join AI, we are doomed. So we have a responsibility to to find a way to, in a collaborative way, I'm not going to say a democratic way, collaborative way, to join AI. And also in a way that all of the the the different algorithms are open source and we can check them.
00:37:33
Speaker
Maybe then we have a chance to do something good. And then it's not really web three, I would say decentralized in the sense that if we have ah an open source, decentralized way of training and verifying what AI is doing, maybe we have a chance. If we give that power to just governments like Europe, they're going to regulate, but then they are really so afraid of everything. So they're going to create some crazy regulation and I don't know, or even companies. So what are your thoughts on um bit sensor then? What do you mean? You're a bit tenser? Yeah.
00:38:06
Speaker
Because I mean, their goal with their kind of their submits is to allow the decentralized training of AI models. So is that something you think is moving in the right direction? Yes, exactly. Completely. In in fact, like um context protocol, we started as like, you know, a company so everybody can like be have self-souting data for everyone. So all of your public data instead of being owned by LinkedIn, Microsoft, whatever, it's like all by you and then you decide when it whether to change it or whatever. But then we have a way to verify that. And then lately we've been like working a lot on integrating all of this data into AI, in know you know, yeah as a community. So the way AI is as a community. And and I think that's the the real way to go. So it's it's about governance. It's about that data governance. It's about like being able to challenge any information in a way that's like reasonable.
00:38:54
Speaker
so I couldn't agree
Building Effective Startup Teams
00:38:57
Speaker
more. I think things like what context is doing um are just absolutely critical because we need those. I mean, there's other AI projects as well. And I think that competition is what we need as well to drive the whole community forward in the right way. um But yeah, being able to know around AI origination um and AI training, where the data's come from, whether you can trust it or not, these are some of the biggest problems that we actually have. And they're not the ones that are most talked about. In fact, like because we have this name service, you you can get your domain, whatever. One of the first decisions we made is like we we didn't want to sell the domains. I don't want you to like just because you can pay for that. You can get a name. Because then you lose like ah all of this credibility you you need to have. But then like by putting the data on Web3 storage, like our way for file going, it doesn't matter. But then you have to stability.
00:39:46
Speaker
It's like a lot of data linked to a domain that can be trusted and modified. So you can create all of the so the the chain of ah not just possibility, but accountability on data. yeah You cannot make up things yeah on the block. So for me, it's really important that basically Web3 and AI, they work together in that. Otherwise, honestly, like I've seen so many crazy things lately. And of course, there's a lot of inequality in society. But then with AI, it's going to even get worse. You're going to have data inequality. Yeah, people think about basic income, so everybody gets paid. Ah, that's fine. But maybe we do start talking about basic computation income, something like that. So you have your own amount of computation. You can use an AI to, you know, to adventure your career, maybe.
00:40:35
Speaker
right now it's not money like anybody with I have a really an amazing computer that I just bought just for that so I have a competitive ah competitive advantage against anyone that doesn't have this kind of computing because like I can get train it I can configure it it does everything I have as in so it's amazing yeah I love that universal basic computing that's brilliant and and I really the book it's not it's not mine this but but I thought like well I was thinking this man got sense
00:41:05
Speaker
So we talked about a lot of really complex ah things there. When you are either running the business or starting up, if you don't have the knowledge to, say, write in Lang chain or to um understand different blockchains. I know your perspective is that you like to just learn and use AI. Do you suggest that that's what other people do to get their team to upskill? Or do you think outsourcing for that role makes more sense? Both. um Honestly, like but for me, usually I get a ah core team with the you know the core knowledge of the business.
00:41:44
Speaker
But then there's a lot of things like ah but DevOps or even like ah the website. There's a lot of things that probably once you know what you want to do, they don't add that much value. So having like, ah i I think in in different startups and some of them, they wanted to do everything on their on their own. I was in one startup, we started 20 people. When I left, we were more than 200 people. But then i I felt that we could do the same, like with 20, we were like creating as much software as with 200, almost. Yeah, so I would say like keep your core business inside, outsource everything else. Everything that you can outsource because it's not vital to ah your business model, just if you can't do it. Otherwise, like teams, there they're gonna they get really big and then you become like really inefficient.
00:42:36
Speaker
and so so So I want want to add ah ask something about that because like the you're obviously, you have a big tech background, right? Like how is that for non-technical founders? Because bringing in knowledge in-house also means that you need to vet like your CTO or you know your your first three, four devs. That's hard if you're having not technical experience. Yeah, you yougen yeah need someone, I think. likeve I've seen, like, in the vendor studios, some of them, they never got a CTO at the beginning, as it was not that important. um They had the hardest time by not having someone at least. Because even if I outsource technology, I need to have someone ah that understands how to outsource technologies. I cannot outsource technology because I know what I want.
00:43:23
Speaker
So, yeah, Leo Thomas, I need this. This is the way I want it. And and maybe sometimes they're going to say, you know, it's going to take two weeks and it's not. it That's two days and you know that. So that kind of experience helps a lot. And I think you you need that. And for me, like, there was a question like, I think you made me like something really important. It's like my my first sale, every every time I started a a company, I do startup, the first sale is your team. And and going from this map of concept to an MVP, you need, that I think for the MVP, you need the CTO. So the proof of concept will help you sell to the CTO. Fair. Yeah, you need you need something from a business direction. I think a POC can help with that. ah Exactly. It can visualize. Yeah, I absolutely agree.
00:44:08
Speaker
But then with that, you can sell to your team and usually the big team. But, you know, I think, you know, management or organization on finance and technology, it's not that much. But I always recommend having someone with experience. And I know it's not it's going to be an unpopular opinion. Don't hire young people. Don't hire young people. Not hire young people. Why?
00:44:33
Speaker
um First, of course, like lack of experience. Fair. They're not that humble. Of course, we've all been young and we were not as well as we are right now. So because you have not built up and you need to feel a lot to be humble. And drama, sometimes like everything, it's a big drama for them. Young people is like because everything is about them. And seeing people usually like, I think we stronger in that sense. So you you would argue, but that I assume that's for your core team, right? Like I saw say always like, yeah yeah yeah, if you build out your team, you can probably add junior developers or or mid mid developers in there just you know for your core team, you want stable.
00:45:14
Speaker
Not at the beginning, because like yeah if if you have there's a lot of really good junior people, but with that it means that you need to tell them what to do and to help them and to teach them. That's a lot of time you don't have. yeah So having really young people with no experience means that you're going to spend a lot of your time that you have to be racing, marketing, doing a lot of stuff. Telling this guy, no, no, this is a loop. This is how you look. bad No, no, no, this is not gonna work because like wallets work like that. So, things that, for me, they're really basic, so so. So, if I would flip it around, I would say like, okay, because there's a lot of these young startup, technical young startup founders, right? Like, we see them a lot when we work with accelerators and, you know, these guys are like between 2025, maybe coded for a couple of years. So, why would you advise them? Because they're they're generally like, you know,
00:46:05
Speaker
ah Young, eager, to relatively technical, I would say. um like Find find an an older, more experienced person in your team that is not more on the business side or actually more on the on the tech side, or both maybe. Both, both because that can help a lot. and And honestly, I've seen people like that, 25, 24, and they're really good on the tech side. yeah But then it's like, I don't know, I'm the CTO because I have the best tech guide ever. And first, you're not. And second, being a CTO, it's not about knowing knowing technology. It's about managing a team yeah and managing ah providers and being able to choose the best provider for what you do. ah Whatever it's like, um you know, cloud or whatever. yeah Outsourcing, being able to find the right team to outsource and
00:46:52
Speaker
That's a lot of things that they have nothing to see with technology. It's about experience. It's about, you know, how you you can handle and manage people. Usually ah me, myself, I'm really good at the beginning because I like, I charge with everything and just move forward. But then I don't like much managing people. So that's why I have a CTO who's better than me at managing people. yeah So you can focus on except building. yeah I can really resonate with that. i wrote just It made me realize something. um So when I first started my second business, um we got our biggest contract, which was like a huge government website project. And it was, it needs to be built on Unbraco. And we were like WordPress guys. We had no idea about Unbraco in the slightest. Most of our developers were PHP or JavaScript.
00:47:38
Speaker
Um, so we won the contract anyway, because we knew we could bring someone in, uh, to do the backend part. And we hired a guy that was about 10 years older than all of us. Cause we were all in our kind of early to mid twenties and having him on board. He helped us realize that we was were saying earlier, the stuff we didn't know, we didn't know. And also what stuff we thought we didn't know that we didn't need to know.
Personal Sacrifices in Entrepreneurship
00:48:03
Speaker
that we thought we needed to learn like, oh, like we thought there were so many things we were missing. Like we need to learn this, we need to do this. And he's like, nah, nah, nah, nah. All that stuff's bullshit. Ignore all that. You don't need that. This is what we need to focus on. Because we had a lot of imposter syndrome. So then when you've got imposter syndrome, and you feel like you need to build everything perfectly. And he was able to point out
00:48:22
Speaker
the parts where as you go up you know that quite a lot of stuff as you were saying like it might be fine to build a situation have an email come through and do it manually like we always think you have to build everything automated and perfect the first time it's like nah you know seeing and build web forms and like you can't really that that's not the way you do it you've got like 20 years of experience like yeah that's the way i do it and it's the right way and i'm like oh it learns so much so i do agree getting someone older than you In the inner core team can help you learn stuff you didn't even realize you needed to learn. yeah But that means that you you want to listen that's not always the case with the young people. but
00:49:02
Speaker
Well, there you go. There's another tip for young founders. Listen to your elders. Look, someone with experience there, someone you can talk to at some point. I usually, for example, like the big guy, someone that at some point they can call me and we can have a beer. And know and because so sometimes it's like, it's not that they are doing it wrong, it's just that they need to understand that did is is it that hard? yeah They're having someone to talk to with experience that went through that before you. When I say like, are you an entrepreneur? Are you losing your friends? It's not that you're losing your friends. It's that basically your area of interest is changing a lot and the things that moves you are really a million miles away from whatever moves your friends.
00:49:46
Speaker
ye So they will be speaking probably about their wives their kids or or Not even their jobs. They don't care that much about that But about football or whatever and then you're thinking about the next world market because like there's a new start up on so and Then you talk to them and it's worrying because like you have so many things in common on that gets crazy So having someone you you can speak about all of these things that went through before you and Yeah. Well, I think, I think there were amazing tips. So, um, in terms of that segment, I think there were some amazing tips there. Things that I was really helped me resonate with, even look about to my career, things that I've realized that I've learned those things and I haven't realized that I'd even learned them. So that was really fascinating. and Um, Thomas, what do you want to do about the next section? and Yeah, let's, ah like, we we have our our brainstorms. And I think it's, um I mean, with some of this stuff we already spoke about, Alex, like, you know, and cover, custom development versus leveraging existing solutions, but also evaluating what technologies I think for our listeners, that might be a very interesting piece, like,
00:50:54
Speaker
you know signals on on from a builder perspective when something over is overhyped or underhyped. And ah we already talked a little bit about continuous layer learning, so you know keep on failing, failing upwards, basically. But maybe we can we can touch actually upon the um how How do you evaluate um ah you know over like blockchain technology on where you want to build on? Do you have a specific format that you look, oh, there's a new chain coming out like you know every day? right and There's some old school, like old school.
00:51:30
Speaker
like chains that have been out there for a long time, like Algorand, for instance, right? Like, it's been there for for a good long time. There's also the kazooie that's been coming out, there's a bunch of layer zeros, there's now zk's, the rollups, like, there's so much stuff coming out. For you as a builder, how do you evaluate that? How do how do you look at these technologies and say like, hey, this makes sense for what I'm going to do, this doesn't, is that has that a lot to do with They have already users. They have good documentation. They have an an APK. like How do you evaluate that? It's a web team. Nobody has good documentation, I guess. i was I was waiting for that one. Yes, it's terrible. It's always terrible. um Usually, I just thought i fred should talk to BD or even like marketing teams so to evaluate the evaluate the community I have and if they can help or not.
00:52:22
Speaker
And like, well, I tried to talk to other other teams building on top of that technology, because then you get a lot of surprises there. No, no, they basically some of the these even layer later ones, later to even even some, some of them, they really knew they they act as a corporate in the sense that basically they don't help at all. If you have any problem, nothing happens. So going to these like public channels where basically you have. I want to, I want to be sure that if I have a problem, I can talk to the core guy that's coding that. Yeah, and if we want to do anything we want to have PD helping us out or you know So for me once again, like it's not that much about technology. Yeah, I think like EBM It's really convenient because like there's more like there's not enough ah blockchain developers But at least like there's enough developers where that they know about like EBM compatible kind of technology But right now it's EBM compatible
00:53:14
Speaker
The rest, whenever it happens, it's not that important. If it's like a slower block or faster block, I don't care. I'm going to do something that I call like ah optimistic UX. Basically every time I send the transaction, I just think that's going to go through. So the message to the user is like it went perfectly. It went smoothly and so I can handle that and then I can retry and then I will take care of everything. So time block. It's not that important, and but but yeah like the the cost, it's important. And also now, like for example, for us, like if we want to evolve in the future, you you need to be sure that, for example, I can launch an MVP with a set of small contracts, but if we want to have our own L3 in the future, and for us, for example, it makes sense, I want to make sure that I can do that. So that's a good technology that you can scale.
00:54:01
Speaker
But that's that's not an easy and easy ask for a new first-time of new firsttime founder. right They're like, look, build your architecture out in the most like modular, crazy way so that whatever happens, your like there's not many people in this space that I know of that can do that. right and and Because it's really hard. it's like you know you You're preparing for what you don't know so build as modular as you can um don't trust any chain you're building on because that that might change as they go generally that will be better but
Balancing Innovation with Practicality
00:54:33
Speaker
chains can go dead right like there's not enough traction um that's a really hard it is because you don't know that's why i probably focus on business
00:54:44
Speaker
yeah Because business, at least, they will you will get enough investors, then you can sell to a CTO and have someone with experience and yeah with that. So at the beginning, because you don't know, and there's no way you can like have all of that information. so I tend to agree. i think if you and that It always kind of goes back. um Because we are of course in this industry for a long time we have a big bias about technology around it most of our end users don't care they you really don't care what we're just none of them Thomas us nobody cares none of them but we what we do needs to be perfect but nobody cares.
00:55:18
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's, that's an important piece, but it needs to work. And it's like, we always, uh, recently have been, been comparing it to the cloud, right? I think, you know, Azure and, and AWS. I'm like, do you care where your data is? Do you care how the cloud works? No, no, I don't know care how the cloud works, but it works, right? It works. Okay. That's great. So now if you're going to advertise your you know new platform, new, whatever, You know, say, yeah, you know, and we're using AWS. Like, do you think people are going to buy that? Like, they don't care. yeah They really don't care. They care that it works, and they care that it will stay working, and that it's secure, and it's safe, and it will get better and better. So that's an important thing. But they don't care about what technology you use in the back end.
00:56:00
Speaker
But then with the Red CTO, you know that you're going to start with AWS and it's going to be cheap, but then in time, yeah if you need to grow a lot, that's going to be really crazy expensive. So you need that kind of experience. That's why, like, first, like build something, you can launch the design anywhere. nobody Nobody cares. If it's modular enough, you're going to choose later and then get a proper CTO to help you with that. So kids, it's less about technology. It's more about business. Always. about money. You need money it to do everything. So you need to come down people to give you time or money. I fully agree. Do you have anything to add here? No, ah absolutely fantastic.
00:56:40
Speaker
It's just like, ah ah it's interesting, Alex, because then you and I spoken about this so many times last year in in East Denver as well, where there's so much technology, so much noise out there. And it's really, really hard to distinguish it if you're not in this industry or in development for at least a while, right? Like, you'll you'll just move with the waves otherwise. And I think that ah you're one of the people that I always really appreciate on your opinion on this because you've generally always said like, well, I call bullshit on probably all almost everything. And that's I think that's a really good perspective because I think not enough people do this, right? Like there's just too much echoing going on. It's like, no, but this new technology piece, or this new ZK roll up or this new. Yeah. Okay. But who's going to use it? Right. And who cares? really Who really cares about this technology?
00:57:28
Speaker
But think about that, like new technology, um you know, ZK relapse, they are amazing. The thing is like the guys that started with optimistic relapse, they launched earlier, they have technology that works. yeah And now that they know, basically, they're going to make red to ZK relapse. But they already have the market, they did just like fit the business side. So now they have like, for example, Arbitro, really huge community, a lot of people building on top of that. Nobody cares if it's optimistic for collapse of ZK Relapse. And I do believe ZK Relapse is a better technology, but at the end of the day, this is about the business.
00:58:03
Speaker
Sometimes it's not the best technology that wins, but the the biggest adoption, right? Always. No, no. Sometimes I think that that's always the case. so But if you see that right now, this, like, Optimism, Arbitrum, all of them, they're doing really great, better than most of the ZKRelab technologies. Because, like, if you try to code, I tried with StartNet, Alejo. And I love those technologies, by the way. They're some of the best pieces of tech i've I've ever seen. But, of course, you need to understand Kaido. So, basically, coding in Kaido, It's fine. Or according with Leo, even they're they're really good languages, but there's so many things you need to learn before before doing that. So focusing on the business side, I think that's what makes a lot of sense, basically, right now.
00:58:49
Speaker
that's um That's probably the best the best advice that it's is being... like It's consistently, by the way, being giving throughout, I think, all the episodes that we're shooting over the last this two or three months. People always say, like, technology is great. Make sure it works. Focus on the business. Make sure you get your end used. Make sure it makes sense. you know Retain your users. like Build features that make sense and now... you know but Don't build stuff that you think is great. Might be great, but back test it. Back test the hell out of it, because if you don't, and Someone with experience probably me me myself as over engineered so many times in my life, but and you think about it It's like the amount of money I spent on salaries or whatever that basically on things nobody used Yeah, it's great yeah it's crazy yeah so Just because I over engineered I did like an amazing thing technology yeah that could handle like millions of petitions and I had five so
00:59:45
Speaker
Yeah, this is this is an issue that we've seen um consistently and in you know with Intersect as well. And and before that, there are previous companies. People come in and they have like these crazy cool ideas. And they're very cool. they're They're really leveraging interesting strategies and customer attention and everything like that. like That's great. If you want to build an MVP, that's also great. um And we have these 20 happy paths of users. I'm like, whoa, why? Why 20? Do two. two like, no, no, because without the other 18, it's not a full product. It's like, no, that's, you know, we you got to refine your your your happy paths. Like, what's the top three? These five? No, what is the top three? These, these four? No, what is the top three? And it's really hard. um If you can't get there,
01:00:32
Speaker
um Because like you think all all your stuff is great, you're doing something wrong. And and we've seen people throwing away money at that. We're like, don't do this, just launch, just get your shit out of the door, back test it. If it doesn't work, we'll add something new to it. But make sure you get that market feedback. Because if you're not, you know, you just spend a ton of money on nothing. That's thomas probably the worst, like the most difficult thing to do. I mean, imagine like a pizza deck. I need to explain my my my technology. And I have one hour. I will do a great job. And then I have 30 minutes. Okay, it's not gonna be that easy, but I can explain my dang logic 30 minutes, but then suddenly I have two minutes.
01:01:12
Speaker
yeah yeah And then, yeah but exactly, I cannot explain everything. I just need to focus on... But it means that you need you got to be very critical in what comes in and what goes out. And that that, again, I think falls back on experience, like understanding what is important and and and then still test it out. Like talk to people, just throw it down the wall and see if people are willing to pay money for it, for instance, right? like and And once again, like we've we've seen people just coming with big budgets, like, you know, they raised five plus million and they're like, oh yeah, RMVP is going to be a million plus. something
01:01:44
Speaker
I don't think that's a good idea. No, but we really want to build it. It's like, okay, well, you know, we'll we'll advise you all the way, but this is a really bad idea. And it turns out it's not a good idea. i agree is You know, yeah, you you pivot, they pivot as they go and that's why they still survive. But, you know, you've we've seen people and that that goes for all ah places. I think all emerging tech spaces that you you you spend too much money on building something great that doesn't get users. So just it out, throw it out. Spend money on acquiring users or go where the users are. That's why why like when you choose like which blockchain, talk to the users, look for community.
01:02:25
Speaker
Yeah, I absolutely agree. um so So Alex, alex like you know you talk a lot about um you know building stuff from scratch, custom development. Are there are there solution like are you leveraging existing solutions? And and how how are you looking at those? like Is that a calculated guess or a i calculated risk that you're taking? Or you say, well, you know most of the things that we do or that you should do should probably be custom. No, no, I try to use as many, pretty many things as possible at the beginning. And like, and right now we are lucky because there's so many tools and options we have. Even like most of the people, I go there's a, we need to do a website that then maybe not just try with a telegram group. Yeah, very lean. Yeah, and if it works with a Telegram group, then maybe do ah an app for Telegram, and then... So keeping as simple as possible using everything that already exists at the beginning, for me, makes a lot of sense.
01:03:28
Speaker
Simplicity, what's it like? I think one one of the questions that we had, like but what what one of the things that you would take with you everywhere if you want to start, minimalism. yeah Being able to, because once again, like simplifying, it's always harder than just over explaining, over engineering. That's what people with no experience do. yeah Because that's the easy thing to do. Building something, it gets easy. Building something really that focuses on something and the that's really hard because you need to know what you want to build. Yeah. Yeah. And it's generally a very small piece of an industry, like a piece of a piece of a piece of an industry. Yeah. We always... Really, on every platform or to everything until you get there.
01:04:10
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like a case principle. um I've not heard heard it like very recently. But you know, when we did engineering, or we still do engineering, it's always like, okay, so I keep it simple, stupid. Like, that's just, that's where you go with it. It's like, if you if you can keep it simple, you're probably doing something wrong, or you're in such a complex industry. that you know simplicity doesn' not doesn't exist, but that doesn't happen very often. um Definitely not in where we are, right? so The chopping process chop things like whenever you have your ideas, for everything you add, at least take out too. Yeah, it's interesting. we had ah A while ago, we had a client that wanted to build a bridge. I forgot, I think it was Solana Ethereum or?
01:04:52
Speaker
was something no no It was not that but was something um pretty exotic. And we were looking at layer zero to ah to use and um or fireflies from from um high pleasure. And they both fulfilled about 80% of the requirements. But the other 20% needed to be custom, but we couldn't build on top of what they but but but currently fireflies in layer zero expected. It was basically, we went back to them and were like, look, we either, this is what the cost is going to be if it's, um, if it's, if it's custom development and it's a lot because it's a bridge and it sucks and security and you know, or we're going to go with this, which is about 80% of your requirements and it's up to you. and And in the end through different, um, business circumstances to decide not to build it at all. But they said like, well,
01:05:43
Speaker
about we we're We're thinking about the 80% solution. I said, well, if I can give you an advice, do it. like you know if if If that custom development is needed, let's say in a year, you'll probably made so many fees and so much money off that bridge, you can build that custom piece. But don't don't build something that's incredibly expensive. If you don't have a and enough users to to bring that by money back, and and luckily they understood that, but that's not often the case. right like it's very often i can but We're going to build a custom bridge. I'm like, oh, please don't. Entrepreneurs think they get really in love with their ideas. Yeah. and That happens. I have it to me many times, by the way. but
01:06:25
Speaker
That's a theme that I've kind of gathered quite a bit, I think, from my conversation today is your you try not to get emotional when it comes to your code, the software. Don't get emotionally attached to the blockchain, to the language. Is that something that fits with your ethos? Yeah, completely. It's just code at the end of the day. Don't take you yourself too seriously at the end of the day. Whatever you do, probably it's wrong. So you're going to do it from scratch in a couple of months.
01:06:59
Speaker
So don't get everyone to do it because it's fine. You're going to change it anyway. Don't get attached to it. So most developers, CEOs, entrepreneurs, just people in business, they're fanboys of something. Yeah. I feel like you're just, you're one of those people that watches, like you watches football, but doesn't really have a football team, just loves football. Do you know what I mean? It's like being a developer. No, no, not even that. I think football is boring because like I like doing sports, but then watching sports, I think it's so boring that I never do that. An example. like my dad my dad doesn't support anyone but he watches football out all night like you're the sort of a developer that's like i don't care which blockchain i don't care which code whichever one's the right one whereas so many of other people but no i'm a javascript developer nah i'm an ethereum developer now i'm a bitcoin developer it's you're just seeing kind of technology and business
01:07:49
Speaker
agnostic Because probably it's rock. So I'm fine with that. And so yeah, but completely like I love it. It's fine I love because I've been using that Bitcoin and Cody with the Bitcoin script from the beginning so but it just technology At the end a that's not the important thing. So you won't let your passion into there with the business. yeah are you somebody told me was like innovation is where you build something nobody did before and somebody buys it or pays for it if nobody pays for it it's just a piece of shit
01:08:20
Speaker
a
01:08:23
Speaker
It can be technology as good as whatever thing technology you're using. it doesn't It doesn't matter. So using the best tool at the moment makes a lot of sense.
Funding and Marketing in Blockchain
01:08:32
Speaker
And building, it's not about know knowing technology. You know how to build things in a way that they scale or that you can build on top of that. And there's so many things that you can think about that. Even like when you build technology, you even think on a potential a a ah M that somebody buys you and then they have to do the due diligence for your software. war So you already have that in mind. because you know like they're gonna come but then I have all of the setup it's there so it's fine but once again it's not about if it's JavaScript or e theory of all
01:09:01
Speaker
So I think nobody cares, honestly. Only tech guys, we we care about that, but when you just like go out of our world. Do you ever think about grants when you're choosing technology? One thing we haven't thought about, you say no one cares. That's what really triggered a thought and that's as a process for a minute. Some people care in terms of there may be specific funding if you choose a specific technology. Depends on on on your funding strategy, I guess. In my case, i I don't care too much because I think that's like short term. Choosing just the technology because they give you a grant, of course, like can help sometimes. But it doesn't say anything about the community they have.
01:09:42
Speaker
Yeah. So, and even sometimes like I was once working for the grant and I just started playing with the technology and it was so bad. but nothing good to yeah It's got to be crazy. No, no, I don't want that brand. So I got something to add there, Liam, because we've we've been looking at grant programs and work with grant programs on and off. um It's sometimes also the rules around the grant program that don't make any sense. I'm not going to name any names here, but that there are grant programs out there that are so restrictive
01:10:16
Speaker
So let's say you're a Greenfield company, you just have at least your POC out and they're like, no, no, but you can't pay a lawyer with your grant. It's like, yeah, but you want on me on your chain, right? I need to have an LLC open. Yeah, but you can't do it right now. So there's a lot, there's a lot of restrictions around grants as well, um because if people really want to use, make make sure that you use their technology, but they don't look at the larger perspective. It's like, well, what else needs to be done? um The grant programs are very short term thing, but also very fickle, in my opinion. I like the theory and the idea behind it. I just don't think it's being executed for the benefit of the founder. It's being executed for the benefit of an ecosystem, in my opinion.
01:10:57
Speaker
And then I think like if brands were given more like on the growth or go to market, more on the marketing side, but big you build something on on our technology, like we have this blockchain, you build something on the blockchain, it works, people is using that. And now we want to tell everybody about this. So we want to spend some money on marketing to make sure that we have hackathons or we have like whatever. That probably makes sense. suit yeah they already part of the community. So but then just like paying people to use your technology. It can work sometimes maybe it depends a lot but depends if your technology is easy to use and fast to skill. Like I think that's that's exactly but the same same with hackathons. I've been a lot of people that they just go to the hackathon to build something make the price and then they will never you know, yeah.
01:11:47
Speaker
yeah I suppose you they also then have like, you talk about a community, you've got things like Gitcoin grants and quadratic funding, which is kind of all about exactly that, like democratizing building and democratizing grant money. I think all those kind of open source funding methods are are really fascinating. They are, and but then Gitcoin, I think like, they have a really an amazing approach to help community. So it's, you know, I think they have the right approach to two grants, but they're not like trying to build up a technology and get users for that technology. So they're just like trying to get interesting projects. um we so as I was kind of building onto your idea is that it's away from this other specific grants and then into say, one of my favorite grant projects isn't actually tied to anything. It's kind of, it's as a community, which is exactly what you're saying is the most important.
01:12:36
Speaker
um So, um, anyone who is watching very closely will realize that Alex has actually transported, uh, his laptop
Essential Lessons for Startup Success
01:12:44
Speaker
diet ever so slightly. So he's he's come back on and we're going to use that, uh, transportation metaphor to segue seamlessly into our next section, which is where imagine Alex, um, you have been transported back to the beginning of your career, um, with our any of the knowledge or experience or personal items or anything that you currently have. But you're starting up again. ah you honor ah So it's the Startup Desert Island Essentials is this section. What five things would you give yourself? You can deliver them to yourselves now in the future so you know you'll get them in a little capsule when you arrive. And it can be anything though. It can be even sort of esoteric things. So and can be books, courses, even just concepts, ideas.
01:13:30
Speaker
What would they be? What would you give your younger self? I think mostly if I could send me concepts, even like if I could talk with me in the past, I would send like these concepts. But first like minimalism, being able to, you know, once again, like being big things, it's really easy compared to build really compact, small, usable things. So minimalism is one. And second, ah you you mentioned that. I think it's quite important. It's not personal. Forget about that. And because, like, life life of an entrepreneur, it's like it's a fucking rollercoaster. It's crazy. So once you are up, then are down, and when you're down, really down, then when you're up, really up. And and if you if you learn how to manipulate that curve in a way that it's instead of being like that, it's like that, and you learn to handle that.
01:14:23
Speaker
ah the Just to jump in, one of the things that I did mention earlier that I thought was fascinating, and it's not just about people think about the journey as being like that, and like ah some some people might have that concept. Well, you were talking about being an entrepreneur and funding. that your wealth and your funding as an entrepreneur will be like a chart as well. You can lose money and still make money over the long term. So people might look at the Bitcoin chart and go, I'm not going to sell the dip, but there might be an entrepreneur that's just lost £100,000 and thinking I'm going to give up now. right You kind of really put that into perspective. I thought it was fascinating. of It's just a dip. Buy the dip. Build something new.
01:14:58
Speaker
yeah And I use that experience at the end of the day, like every every failure got you there. And for every failure, like, I think like one of the most important thing that nobody's speaking about, usually it's about connection. It's like, oh no, I can do it on my own from scratch, from zero. Say like, if I can bring something to my back, it's like people I know, because my connections make everything really faster because of course, like, I have 48. I've been building for a long time. So I know a lot of VCs. And then I can call this VCs in the earth. What are you building, Alex? I'm building this. We love that. um We know you. We trust you. So the network of connections. Yeah. So important. I always hate this this this thing that people say is like, your your net worth is your net file your network is your net worth. But it's it's very true. It's just like knowing the right people to, yeah.
01:15:54
Speaker
Even like not funding but your team like your city or whatever like if you know people it's easier but We've got three there we need two more Okay, so basically And that's one of the concepts that that it was so important for me that even I got it tattooed to my arm Probably I don't know if you see that so far Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong-Pong
01:16:45
Speaker
It's, you're not that good. It's fine. Have fun. Well, have fun in the process. Even like when you're up and down, be, be like this crazy punk that just do things because it's fun. Sometimes we just forget that thing. Like, okay. We we just have one life. Once again, like, um fuck society. Have fun. And I think that's probably one of the most important for me. Reminds me, one of my favorite philosophers is Albert Camus. And that's very much a lot of his philosophy. Yeah. ah I've been reading a lot about philosophy. I love that. but
01:17:25
Speaker
Anyway, ah so we have four. So the fifth, I would just get my laptop and start doing things and don't plan too much. So just the laptop so I can start sending messages, calling people, getting started. Start doing. Yeah, going, do it, do it, do it, whatever. Like, try. And part of the, I always say like part of the entrepreneur is like, Yes, listen to you ah your elders, but not that much. Be crazy. So if you do as like every time you want to do anything, a lot of people will tell you not to do that. It's not, it's impossible. Nobody has done that before. Nobody. So once again, like be punk, do it anyway. And I think it's not for the money. If you just do it for the money, just get a job.
01:18:16
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah money money should never be the goal. No, if you were if it's for the money, get a job, do savings, invest in like ah real estate or whatever. So there's a lot of ways that in a safe, ah secure and not driving you crazy way, you can get money. This is not the best way to get rich. Forget about that.
01:18:38
Speaker
A heart not life. That's why I say probably obama if I'm ah or on an island and I'm like doing well probably I would stay there.
01:18:50
Speaker
Why do I do? I mean the part of it is that I have food, I have everything, it's not fun. I have my contacts, I mean I have my family with me, so that's fun. Fantastic. Well, I think that was a five of the more more unique hands, other than the laptop. um I really enjoyed those, and I think I listened as well as well. um So at the point of the show now where, Alex, um you've got a dedicated space here to plug yourself, your business, your products, what else you'd like to promote,
Open-Source Standards in Blockchain
01:19:18
Speaker
um feel free. The floor is yours. Tell us about where you'd like people to to go from here. So, well, cool. Long story short, like
01:19:28
Speaker
A lot of years ago, like six years, seven years ago, I started the association about blockchain. And we were working like we were dealing with ah standards. We learned a lot about the standardization process. Working with ESO, you do this kind of everything commission, this kind of like, you know, big organizations. And I started thinking that it would be cool if standards were open source. So instead of like experts, as I said say like before, fuck experts, if but instead of experts telling us like how to build things, creating standards, that's really complex, nobody cares. We should to have a way of creating simple things, once again, like going back to the minimalism, creating simple things, simple schemas that we could use to organize all of our data.
01:20:07
Speaker
So basically, one of the things I built was like context protocol at the beginning was a framework to coordinate standards as public goods. So i imagine like a GitHub for schemas that instead of creating standards, I don't want to create standards. Anybody can create the schemas and by adoption, these schemas, they become standards. Okay. That was the beginning, but just to do that, I wanted, like, I needed storage from Web3, I was using R with, so I was doing a lot of crazy stuff. And of course, like, oh, I can give a name. So I started the name service for that. So you could have, like, names for your standards. And it was cool. And at some point, everything that I was building, it was going back in a direction that was, like,
01:20:44
Speaker
Not just familiar, but something that I've been thinking about for the last 20 years, that it's an old day, it's the semantic web. This idea of separating data ah from presentation, from HTML, and then put it on a web with the Web3 twist. Once again, like back then, you have full control on your data. That data is organized with documents under your domain, something really simple. And that's what we do. So basically, we're working on on a lot of different use cases. And most of these cases are web2, not even web3. So imagine that by by having this technology where every winemaker in the world, they can have like their own domain with the name of the wine, and then they can organize all of the documents, data, under that domain. So all of the different kinds of wines, years, sellers, everything, like all of the information.
01:21:31
Speaker
and And they have full control on that. So the idea is that if they change something there automatically, all of the resellers, websites, e-commerce or whatever, they can take the information from there because it follows ah this is this is schema, this is standard. So everybody knows how to read that information. And that would result in a world where basically any company, individual, anybody, instead of like having all of their data under whatever platform like LinkedIn, Google, whatever, that basically have all of your data, it's not yours. They can get back control on their data. It's mine, all of my company. And then instead of going to but thousands of platforms to update everything, I just need to update my data, have full control, my keys, my data. That's the thing. And then having like,
01:22:18
Speaker
Automatic propagation of that data so I have full full full control and then of course like when we were building there all of the Crazy thing with AI came and we found out that that was the perfect solution. So i imagine a way that we can train AI As a community without the security. So that's what we're building. It's called context context protocol You can look for it on on internet just need to join there get a domain and then if you want to have a personalized domain talk to me we can like Get personalized amazing and then just build. I well want people building stuff on top of that That's the only thing probably we're gonna do grants then i mean you can completely right though as well like the I mean standards are something that is a huge problem. I completely agree with that part um but universal open standards then is kind of
01:23:10
Speaker
crate If we were to able to create the internet, recreate it with all of that, AI would be so much easier to build and so much easier to use and decide if you want to give an AI access to train, like what you're the the AI robots file, which parts it can look at and which it can't, like training your data and making so that one of the things that I struggle the most with LLMs is when I'm getting trying to get it to compare two different types of data that are very very different, it can really screw it up. Because a lot of these AIs and they are going to become more so ah going to become agents where they actually want to run code. And if it's not properly formatted and unified, it's got to convert it all first and it takes forever. If you give like an LLM two pieces of data that are formatted in the same standards,
01:23:55
Speaker
you then you see how powerful it really is. Exactly. Or even if they have different standards, because like I have the de definition of both and it's really... yeah yeah Yeah, as long as it knows the standard, yeah. You're right. And at the beginning, like one but I was advised with a couple of games. And when when when you speak about the standards, like everybody thinks about biggest standards, I guess, like date standards, like payments, identity, it's kind of biggest standards. At the moment, I was thinking about the stupid standard like a cap. and And it's so simple, because if if I have an NFT, that's a cap for a game. But then that done cap has them standard. Something that everybody recognizes, like even AI, they know, ah this is standard for a cap. Then I can use that cap not just in my game. I can use it everywhere. I can interoperate that cap, that NFT with everything. So having real interoperability inter interoperability in data, just by having the schema's definitions.
01:24:49
Speaker
And then once again, like you can integrate with the I a lot of things, but that was like how we started, like how we we do the semantic meaning ah of NFTs. But then the cool thing, because we want to be this GitHub in top of Web3, we have version control. And that became the, okay, now we can we can do dynamic NFTs, but this NFT that's evolving, level two, level three of the NFT, All of the metadata is unchanged, so I can have trustability and see back, OK, how my NFT was originally, I never and never lose my NFT. I have like the full trustability and accountability on that NFT. So that's the kind of things we're working on right now. And that's one of the problems, because there's so many things we we can do with this idea, with this protocol. And I can't wait to see what people build on top of that. I have a lot of ideas, and probably the one that will be bigger than anything is not even going to be mine. It's going to be some crazy guy.
01:25:40
Speaker
I can do this and why not do it? Sure. So Alex, what's the website for context? Where can people find? CTX.XIZ. It's www.CTX.XIZ. We already have an SDK, so at the beginning, we had two SDKs. One, it's like the full web experience. So you can handle your keys, you can like pay for the gas on the blocks and everything. And then we have another one, that basically, you just have an API key, and then we do a counter abstraction, we do with sponsor gas, and we do everything so you don't have to. so And everybody, of course, is using the... the api key Yeah. Easy. it's it's It's always like, you know, easy, right? Like, just what we talked about. Yeah. And it's like, okay, read and write. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Man, this was awesome. Like, I really enjoyed this, this hour and a half. I think it was great. I'm 100% sure our listeners and viewers are gonna catch on nuggets out of it. And hopefully, um maybe even some other people, some people will look at this and say like, shit.
01:26:47
Speaker
I've been thinking about this all wrong and I hope that it's the case because I think we need more people on the bandwagon with Alex and with ourselves where we care a little bit less about technology and we care a little bit more about the business and ah how how the business solves the problem. Technology is just needs to work bringing down the hood. Alex, thank you so much for being here today with us. I had a lot of fun. like um and this was our episode for what the three with alex puke today um please like and subscribe and repost our our ah content we love to see our stuff uh coming back to the worldwide web because we believe that what we bring here with our first season is very educational and will add a lot of value to whatever founder needs uh in order to survive and thrive so thank you for listening thank you for watching um and have a great day see you next week
01:27:40
Speaker
See you. Bye. Thank you guys.