Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Meet Eclipse Pad's Simon Chadwick!
7 Plays1 year ago
Let’s meet my first crypto twitter friend turned IRL friend and CEO of Eclipse Pad, Simon Chadwick! In this episode, Simon opens up about the Terra Luna crash, the very real challenges facing crypto founders today, and yes, how he’s perfected his covert approach to 'simping' on Crypto Twitter. Simon’s an extremely knowledgeable and experienced crypto founder with an incredibly positive mindset. I can’t wait for you to meet him!
xx Jade
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
this week on Behind the PFP.
00:00:20
Speaker
I
Challenges in Educational Video Creation
00:00:21
Speaker
was building the high quality videos. I mean, if you saw the Terra Luna like section of Loop Learn videos, it was insane, right? So that was all a pain because I understood the potential and then that got ripped out from under me. Not just like losing a lot of money, I lost a significant amount of money in that class. But it was also like all this energy and time and stuff I've spent in this education and the thing that was building just kind of got ripped out from under
Investment Phases in Crypto vs. Traditional Markets
00:00:43
Speaker
me.
00:00:43
Speaker
in a short space because what happens right in, in the traditional space where you've got investors, typically like the startup phases, you go from like seed private and IPO doesn't happen to way, way, way down the line when the project is already massive. But in these early stages, the normal retail users don't get a chance to participate typically in these rounds.
00:01:01
Speaker
So all the building, all the pain, all the failures, all this sort of stuff happens. And it's typically concentrated towards angels and VCs who understand the game. They understand that it's a, it's a game of like, of chances. And I understand it's a game of like, they're going to invest in a hundred things and only two are going to do well. But the two that do well are going to make up for about 99. I mean, as a guy.
00:01:20
Speaker
You get a ton of stuff that comes up in your feed all the time. There's always a photo of someone that gets simp attraction. As a guy, it's like, I'm better than this. I'm cooler. I'm not going to simp on this or whatever. And so I don't. But it's kind of funny. You kind of simp in your head. You're like, oh, she's cute.
00:01:49
Speaker
Hi everyone
Meet Simon Chadwick
00:01:50
Speaker
and welcome back to another episode of Behind the PFP. Today I am so excited to introduce Simon Chadwick. Simon is the hardest working crypto builder I know and he is also my first Twitter friend turned IRL friend.
Simon's Journey into Crypto
00:02:06
Speaker
Welcome to the show Simon. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me.
00:02:12
Speaker
Now, you and I first connected on Luna Crypto Twitter last year before the DPG in half your times. And then we've since got to meet at some of the conventions in person. We've gotten to know each other. And you have a really fascinating story. I was hoping that you could tell us, for those that don't know you, it wasn't that long ago that you were actually working in the retail apparel business. And now you are a very successful crypto entrepreneur. So what's the TLDR on how you went from
00:02:41
Speaker
retail to founder. Yeah, so there's a bit of a story here. I have been in crypto since 2016. And so I'll kind of mix my personal story and my crypto story a little bit in here. I actually, and I say I've been a few podcasts talking about this, I actually first discovered crypto back in 2012. And I was mining Bitcoin on my computer.
00:03:05
Speaker
Um, but it was kind of like, it felt like I like to give analogy. It felt like doing survey, you know, like it was like, okay, cool. There's a way that I can make money on my computer and all this sort of stuff. But it was insignificant at the time as, as to kind of the money that could be made. It was kind of like, Oh yeah, I'm going to set my computer to like do this. And I felt like it was using more power than I was actually making from it. So I was like, I probably shouldn't run up my parents like power bill or whatever it was.
00:03:31
Speaker
But then I kind of like I remember that the old old school like UI that was like this little like one of the download onto your computer and it was like super old like old school stuff.
00:03:43
Speaker
But yeah, so, you know, then I forgot about it in 2016, where a friend of mine came and said, Oh, you got to check this out again. And I, you know, got back into the space. And it was kind of the roller coaster of ups and downs of discovering crypto in the space. And I hadn't invested any stocks or anything at the time. So it was quite crazy. And so I rode that wave 2016 2017, you know, the parabolic bull run of like,
Business Profitability Lessons
00:04:08
Speaker
making money like out of thin air like you know everything was going crazy and it was it was new to me it was exciting and i didn't have you know the ability to kind of contain that and um you know when it what comes up sometimes comes down and if you you don't have the the capabilities you don't have the experience of it you know sometimes it goes kind of back to nothing but interesting enough i made like for me at the time like a decent amount of money i had another business i was working on a menswear brand that was going well but it wasn't kind of going as well as i'd like um it was making money but it wasn't making profit that was
00:04:38
Speaker
And that's a
Growth and Pivotal Experiences
00:04:39
Speaker
big, big learning as an entrepreneur when you're building a business that's growing and everything, but your, your, your cash isn't coming in. So it was a bit of a tough time for me, but you know, crypto was kind of making all this money. I was excited, everything like that. You know, and then, uh, the market like dipped, right? This was around, uh, like end of January, like January end of Jan. And I was like, I had a big bag of assets. Tron was a really big one of mine. I had a lot of Tron.
00:05:06
Speaker
And that went crazy around the start of January. And then I booked a trip to the Himalayas because I was like, okay, my portfolio has dropped and I was emotional about it. I was kind of like checking it all the time. I just wanted to forget about it. I was like, it's going to go back up. I just got to leave this for a period of time. Let's leave it. So I booked it. My little brother was going to the Himalayas on this like big world month long trek and excursion.
00:05:33
Speaker
And I was like, okay, I'll come with you. Like I had a job at the time I was working, I was selling suits and things like that. And I was like, okay, you know, I quit my job. And within like a week's notice, I left and I went to the Himalayas so that I wouldn't be checking my phone and my portfolio. And so this is actually crazy, right? It wasn't the only reason, but honestly it was. And so I went from a month long like expedition, I went to, and I did the Annapurna circuit and
00:06:00
Speaker
you know, went up with 5,400 meters, the whole trek was about 18 days. And I
Navigating Bear Markets and Trading Insights
00:06:05
Speaker
was hoping that by the time it came back, my portfolio would be back up in some capacity or what, but it wasn't, it was worse. So there was that like lesson around that, but I was hooked from then on, you know, I was hooked on it. And I was like, you know, this, even though it may not come back up in the short period of time, I've kind of learned enough to kind of get into it. And
00:06:29
Speaker
You know, I had some other brutal learning lessons. 2018, 2019 was brutal bear market. And, you know, I went through that entire, you know, entire time I was glued, you know, I lost more money, obviously in projects like ethos that went to, from $13 down to three, and then from three down to one, and I bought a big bag at one. And then I was like, okay, one is the floor, you know, it's not gonna go lower than one. And then, you know, it dropped further, I sold at 70 cents, and it went all the way down to 2.7 cents.
00:06:58
Speaker
Which was, you know, crazy and then actually ended up bouncing in the end. But so yeah, so those years right. I spent those years learning how to trade.
00:07:08
Speaker
playing around on Bitmex, getting liquidated all the time. And then Binance introduced Futures, me getting liquidated on Binance as well, right? And just learning and doing all the dumb mistakes. And I actually learned how to kind of reach out and I learned how to kind of navigate the space. And I actually
Exploring DeFi and the Terra Luna Ecosystem
00:07:25
Speaker
did fairly well from trading and over, I think it was about two years or so and I was able to kind of make an income from it. It wasn't like amazing, but I did decently from trading.
00:07:36
Speaker
Um, but it was boring as hell. Like, honestly, like if you want to be good at trading, it's not many people can do it. And the people that are good at it, you have to be conservative, boring. And it's kind of like a lot of losses, a lot of wins. I was, there was a period of time now, I was, uh, selling suits as well. So I was fitting out weddings and all sorts of stuff. Like then fashion is another thing that I'm quite passionate about. So I was doing that for a while. Um, but then around, I think it was like 2019, 2020, like I went
00:08:03
Speaker
full-time into crypto and I delved in and I just learned so much when DeFi summer popped up like I started learning a lot about DeFi I delved into learning about like really the potential that this had to revolutionize the world and I wasn't looking at it from the problems that it currently had I was looking at it from the potential that it had and that's something that I do a lot of. So moving and then you know COVID was kind of rough went through that like portfolio dropping again at the start of COVID and then
00:08:31
Speaker
then the parabolic things started. And that's kind of after that, when like the last time I really kicked off. And yeah, I just got deeper, discovered Terra Luna. That was an interesting story. So Terra Luna was like, I discovered Anchor, because I was actually like really, I had a lot of people come to me at that parabolic time going like, I want to get into crypto. I really want to, I don't know where to start. I had some successful business people are like, I want to get into crypto. How do I start?
00:08:59
Speaker
some crazy storm going on out there actually. I just noticed like as we've been talking it went from sunny to like a hurricane what's going on? Yeah it's like a freaking monsoon out there.
00:09:11
Speaker
It's actually coming in, like the wind's actually blowing it in the door. I mean, successful business people are like, I want to get into crypto, I don't want to stop, but I want to be safe. And this was almost like a fallacy of mine and an issue where I spent time in the space and got more Oliver confident. And I had issues, this is actually how I discovered Terra Luna was that I had a lot of issues with USDC and USDT. There was borrowing protocols like Celsius and Nexo that were centralized, where you could kind of lend your money. And I didn't trust them because if they went insolvent or things like that,
00:09:41
Speaker
it would have been an issue and actually this is quite funny because it actually happened right but i was always worried about like what happens if the company goes bankrupt or what happens if this stuff happens with these platforms then you know the people that i'm recommending to these platforms are going to get wrecked
00:09:56
Speaker
Right.
Building Educational Content in Crypto
00:09:57
Speaker
So I was always kind of very cautious with next next Celsius. All of these platforms you hold. And there's a couple of them that offered yields and stable coins. And part of this was like, you want to get crypto and yield, but you've got to be safe about it. Then, you know, discovered a couple of insurances.
00:10:14
Speaker
And insurances was a way of doing it. So you could go onto Nexo and you could actually get insured in case, you know, something happened. And then, you know, that you'd be a bit safer. So that was something I was more comfortable doing. And when I was delving into some of these insurances, I discovered something cool and kind of like, okay, what's, what is this? And I delved into it. I was like 20% return on stable coin, like crazy, right? And you could get insurance, you could get peg insurance and you could get
00:10:39
Speaker
normal insurance so this was like easy to set up wallet it wasn't hard like compound and some of these others you had to like some of the others you had to like set up and then you had to go through next mutual and it was like really hard to do right so yeah i discovered anchor and i've delved in and i was like i delved into the mechanics and i was like this makes sense like i was like it makes sense to use staking yield to you know bootstrap like uh lenders i knew there were risks like i knew that like
00:11:03
Speaker
There needed to be enough for a demand for this to work, but I understand bootstrapping as well, and I understand that sometimes incentives are used to build up something to a size in which it's the same itself, which you never did, and that was part of the issue. I got a lot more involved in Terra, and then a friend of mine, actually Simon Rami, who I've known for many years, actually came to me, and he was like, hey, I know you're really big in defying crypto. I'm actually building this platform called Loop. I've been with a co-founder, and I want to get you involved in some capacity.
00:11:32
Speaker
Now, I was already doing my stuff. I was making decent money. It was, you know, for the investments and everything on the side. And so for me to kind of jump away from that and focus was a big step. And I was like, you know, do I keep writing this and do I keep like, you know, do I get more into the educational side? Can I pause you for a second? When you say you're doing your own thing, you were making money on trading. And I think you had started actual financial education. Yeah.
00:11:58
Speaker
I had started education and I was going in that direction. I was going to go down the direction of more YouTube courses, YouTube, all this sort of stuff. And I was doing fairly well with that. I was doing fairly well for my own investing, my own trading. And then obviously starting this was. The suits or you'd stopped that? No, no, I'd stopped. Wait, like it stopped a lot earlier from that. I think it was like maybe 2020 I stopped in suits. So you weren't making enough money from your trading. Yeah.
00:12:27
Speaker
I was actually doing fairly well I was actually doing fairly well from invest a mixture of things right investing trading, and I was actually doing fairly well when, when I, when I went through this and anchor and you know built up a pretty decent portfolio.
00:12:42
Speaker
it kind of got me to the size where I could kind of live off that and not have to you know there was still some focus going into it like trading was still active but there was still income kind of being earned that wasn't you know so much active and not have to think about it as much but it was kind of a synergy because when
00:12:59
Speaker
When someone's like, come and join loop is like, I'll find a way to kind of do it. There's a few things that was like potential, like I love making videos, like something I'm really good at is actually educating and teaching people and talking and all this stuff on camera. So it's kind of a natural fit, right? Like I was able to break down things in simple ways that people couldn't.
00:13:16
Speaker
People couldn't explain it normally, but I was able to break things down into a way that people could understand. And that's kind of the skill of mine. And so it was kind of like, I came in as like, kind of from a PR side, like doing the AMAs and stuff, but also I pitched them this idea of like building this learn to earn platform. You know, because I'd been in the crypto education space, I'd sort of seen like the struggles that many new users had. You know, there was either like Coinbase learn, which was great, earn to learn, but didn't really teach you about crypto, talk to you about specific platforms.
00:13:46
Speaker
or there was YouTube, but YouTube, the way the algorithm in YouTube works is that you don't always know where to start. It's kind of like you start here and it recommends a whole bunch of videos, but it's like, there's not a great flow in terms of what do I need to learn first? It's like, okay, I'm going to explain this video, but then you need to learn through other things to understand what they're talking about in that video, right? And so there was a really, there was a high demand, but there was actually, I saw a lot of pain out there around like, I want to learn, but I don't know where to start. I want to learn, I don't know where to start. So that's what pushed me to start the education of the courses and stuff in the first place.
00:14:15
Speaker
But this was a match for me to see this as an ability to scale this up to an even bigger level. So I came in and I pitched this idea of this learn to earn product that would follow a flow that made sense, that videos would be easy to understand. They wouldn't use big words. They'd be high quality. And they'd be quizzes and earn to learn. And I was working on building on-chain actions and NFT earning and all this stuff into the process. The users could come in and learn. And then it would act as a lead. It was free free and act as a lead funnel into an ecosystem of product.
00:14:43
Speaker
That's what started a pitch TFL and TFL actually paid a fairly decent chunk for the videos. And so they're like, let's do this. And with high quality videos, we're using the same ones as the original like Terra Luna videos, really high quality animations.
00:15:00
Speaker
So they put up a budget and sponsored these videos, which I started to build. I built 36 videos and a big education flow, which are really, really high quality. And then we were working on ecosystem videos for the whole ecosystem. So Mars, Astraport, Stata, Nirvana, all these, we're all making videos with these high quality stuff. So it was going to be like a learning flow. And then at their back end, there would be like modules for each of these products and they'd be able to offer incentives. And it was going to be this cool,
00:15:29
Speaker
like learning experience. And you know, this is kind of like my joy and my pain because I got so deep into the Terra Luna ecosystem, right? Like I was literally building the education, like I was building the high quality videos for the, I mean, if you saw the Terra Luna like section of Live Learn videos, it was insane, right? So that was all a pain because I understood the potential and then that got ripped out from under me, not just like losing a lot of money, I lost a significant amount of money in that class.
00:15:58
Speaker
But it was also like all this energy and time and stuff I've spent into this education and this thing that was building just kind of got ripped out from under me in a short space.
Impact of Terra Luna's Crash
00:16:07
Speaker
So yeah, that was that piece and that part of my journey at least. And I'll stop my rambling a little bit and let you ask some other questions, but there's more to the journey and it's a learning lesson.
00:16:19
Speaker
It's funny because you rambled right into the next question that I had for you, which was I wanted to talk about the crash. I wanted to talk about May and the aftermath and it was really dark times for lunatics, myself included. I think it caused us to bond. You really emerged as a key figure with a level head and I remember listening to you
00:16:42
Speaker
run marathon Twitter spaces and just keep the community together. I remember sending you DMs in my darkest of hours and you just, you said it was going to be okay. You, you'd been through hard times before. And, you know, just listening to you talk about this now. Yes, I lost a lot of money and my savings. You lost a lot of money and your savings, but not just that. During that time, you lost your blood, sweat, and tears. And
00:17:09
Speaker
everything that you worked on. I still had a day job that I could go to, but this wasn't just like your personal savings. This was your work and your business and everything that you put into it and the projects that you were working on. It was their treasuries, you know, someone recovered from that and you were so calm and not worry. Not only were you calm,
00:17:28
Speaker
you went out of your way to keep me calm and check in on me and every other member of the community and I don't know if other people are aware of that or if they remember a lot of people have kind of dispersed from now but you were like I owe you a big thank you because you really helped me and I so appreciate that so
00:17:47
Speaker
I suppose my question is, you know, I've kind of heard you talk about your relationship with failure before, but you know, what got you through that time and what allowed you to be so strong when I felt like the world was crashing down around me?
00:18:04
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really good question. That was interesting enough. Like, you know, all this happened and there was a ton of stress that happened in a short space of time. It's kind of like the adrenaline kicked in. Luke's treasury got wiped out a period of time. I got wiped out really, really hard. It was almost surreal. It was almost like unreal, like what had happened. And there was literally a space where like the whole treasury got wiped out. I'd lost a huge chunk of things and no one was getting paid. Like no one was getting paid. No one knew where like the next,
00:18:32
Speaker
like what would happen next. But I think something, and this is actually a great reminder for me, especially like in maybe in the recent, maybe in recent times, because you kind of get beaten down and after it just, it, it, it.
00:18:45
Speaker
kind of pass on but like I built up this decent amount of self-trust right and I say this like and I think I've told you this before it's like I've kind of like over the last maybe couple years and it's not just a byproduct of bull
Post-Collapse Strategies and Leadership
00:18:59
Speaker
market it's a byproduct of the whole building up skills and connections on some stuff
00:19:02
Speaker
that like, if you drop me in a desert, I will find my way out and I'll manage, right? And so it's kind of this level of trust that everything's worked out in the past. So it's going to work out in some shape or form in the future. Maybe not in the way that you want it, but it is going to kind of play out. When the Terra Luna collapse happened, obviously I got hit, but I saw everybody else got hit as well. And it was almost like, you know, you can run in a ball and cry in liquidy wounds and kind of like curl up and
00:19:30
Speaker
like ignore the world or you can really like be there for the people and leaders are the ones that step up when the times get harder you know i always listen to like audiobooks and stories and things around you know good versus bad presence and the ones that go and visit like a cyclone when when after the fact versus the ones that don't or the ones that kind of like stay in their like place during times of crisis when leadership really shows up when everybody's at their worst and you actually
00:19:57
Speaker
you know, almost take personal sacrifice to go and actually be there to support people, not for any motives, but because that's what the right thing to do. And that's what people need. People need direction and they need certainty at a time that isn't certain. And it was tough for me. Like I think that time I didn't feel the heat till maybe after those two weeks, like I w I didn't sleep. I think the whole entire two weeks I was running on adrenaline and stress and everything like that. And I was trying to think, make things happen and make things move. But.
00:20:23
Speaker
We got there and I was there for people and I saw people get through it and everything ended up working out in the way it was meant to. It was definitely a tough time, but I felt that that was
00:20:38
Speaker
really empowering to me as well, right? Like to kind of do that and to step up during those times. And I think, I mean, it wasn't just me, there was many others that really did that and showed, you know, so Nina, Sifu, Steffi, and many others stood up and thank you, like Randy's faces. And it really, like that really solidified a lot for the community and kept the community together and headstrong because, yeah, it's
00:21:03
Speaker
It's tough, but then you saw people that was really struggling during that time, they did find their feet again, right? Or some capacity found their feet. So it shows you that like, no matter what happens, it always works out in some capacity, even if in the time you don't feel like it does that.
00:21:19
Speaker
It's interesting to reflect back on it now several months later. I don't know how many months it's been, what, eight or nine months, seven months? At the time, I couldn't have this conversation with you. It's been too painful, but to be able to look back and reflect now, it's much easier. Like several projects, you were forced to pivot after the crash. Can you tell us a little bit about what happened immediately afterwards and how that led you into the exciting new launchpad project that's been keeping you busy?
00:21:44
Speaker
Yeah, so interesting enough, I think there was always a silver lining that came with this crash as well, and I saw it this way.
00:21:52
Speaker
taking on too much before the crash. Like literally like, I think I got stuck in this bubble, especially with like the loop guys love to like, you know, focus on a lot of things. Uh, and I kind of got stuck into that world, which was like focusing on six things rather than, you know, focusing on one thing and doing it very well. It was almost like a, like an issue and I was taking on so many different projects and things. I think I've told you at one point I was like, like do six things, like it was just too much. Right. And I was able to like handle it on this high level of adrenaline, but it was not like efficient. Right. And it wasn't.
00:22:22
Speaker
Um, so I took on actually, when I was back on terror, I took on advisory position at a platform balloon launcher, which was meant to be a new launch by the cosmos ecosystem. And when I got involved, like the tech and stuff, and what was.
00:22:34
Speaker
was really, really good, but there was no one really doing anything to the marketing side. And it was actually a project that was incubated by Luke, but it was a separate team, had separate devs, Trevor. Um, but there wasn't an, it wasn't getting love. It wasn't getting focused and it was trying to do this stuff, but it was like, not the energy marketing wasn't. So I came in as an advisor. I was like, what the hell is happening here? Got to fix this stuff. Right. So I came in and I drove like NFT campaigns, giveaways, and I smashed it and actually got in 1800 people on a white list, uh, you know, in the space of a couple of days.
00:23:02
Speaker
And then when Terra Luna collapsed, um, you know, that treasury got wiped out as well. But the main guy that was kind of running the platform just vanished. Right. Um, and so I actually ended up taking over that platform. And so, uh, you know, what happened in the Terra collapse was like, okay. Uh, just to set the scene was like, okay, crap few days. What are we going to do? Most of our treasury is gone. We're cool. We've got this team that this project, we've got everything. What do we do? So then, you know, these avenues started coming from multiple angles, which was.
00:23:31
Speaker
You know, we're getting hit up by, no, I wasn't part of, you know, the high level of these conversations, but, uh, you know, these chains were coming, we're reaching out and every single chain, it's like a vultures, every single chain, one of a piece of every terror project, right? You had like Kedra and polygon and near and, you know, secret and osmosis and everyone, it was like an auction or a fight for these grants. And people kind of forget what it was like at the time, but it was kind of, it's free for all of like, you know, we had like partizia, like random, like.
00:23:59
Speaker
Salana offshoot project that was like wanting to bring on projects and grants. And so it was like, you know, I saw Tom and Simon kind of like debating, like, where are we going to go? What are we going to do? Like these Monday's like options. And it was kind of like this kind of light bulb moment of like, we've actually got options right now to kind of go to places and.
00:24:16
Speaker
who is going to look at like, not just money wise, who's going to have the best community and who's going to kind of look after us and this sort of stuff on the loop side, right? And so it was a lot of like uncertainty still around unity decisions and there was a lot of conversations happening and it kind of got to a point where drag gone and behind the scenes I tried to pull the kind of puppet strings and trying to make a decision because to move forward, I felt like the team as a whole needed to know what was happening. They needed
Strategic Moves and Opportunities Post-Collapse
00:24:41
Speaker
to kind of have some kind of direction.
00:24:43
Speaker
And Juno was the one that stood out because the community was very strong and they came out very strongly, especially on social in terms of like bringing us in. Obviously the grant was decent, but you know the grant and you know people talk about this big grant that we've got now, but the grant was, there was grants offered by you know many ecosystems that were quite sizable as well and it was kind of like at the time maybe it seemed you know it was this free-for-all, it was an emotional time with people just one of these terror projects and they were doing big things to make it happen.
00:25:14
Speaker
And, um, you know, the Juno community put them some polls and they were super loud. They went all the telegrams and tweeters and everything that came out in force wanting to bring on these terror projects. And so, no, in our minds and in my mind, you know, that that community was, uh, you know, really stood out and that's something that we needed. I felt like we had a chance to have a fresh start and to start from, from, from not from zero already having built these products that we could like wipe out maybe some of the mistakes in the past or some of the things that happened on terror or anything that kind of.
00:25:41
Speaker
happened and I really was hopeful of that being a fresh start. And so yeah, I kind of pulled the strings as much as I could behind the scenes to get this relationship happening and to get the community engaged and everyone was excited. We thought it would be a really easy port over from Terro to Juneau. It wasn't
00:26:01
Speaker
The tech wasn't as easy as just like taking your code and spinning up on Cozmwasm. It was, there was actually a lot of stuff missing, um, in many of the chains, uh, like in terms of infrastructure, uh, it was a different version of Cozmwasm. So the tech wasn't easy. It's easy to just like, you can just pick it up and then move it over, which was what I thought it would be like. Um, so that was challenging. It took a lot longer to deploy the things. And, uh, Luna launcher actually got kind of bundled in into this grant, which was a little bit kind of messy now in hindsight, but it got bundled into this.
00:26:29
Speaker
brought over helped to bring over a lot of terror projects as well. Like I was talking to Levana at Consensus and talking to a lot of like, yeah, different projects. And so a lot of projects followed a loop over to Juno. And from there, you know, I actually took over in the launcher and decided to rebrand it. So that's kind of the story of how we got to now. And I'll leave it open for any other questions. I'll stop my rambling.
00:27:10
Speaker
things took the way they did. I found Loop learn a lot harder to kind of focus on and build. Even though it's still my baby, we started with such high quality videos. And so we actually did do some more editing and focusing on more education and actually kind of pivoted more towards Spanish education with Nina and stuff. But it was challenging because the retail market just basically disappears. All these educational videos that are meant to onboard retail, suddenly
00:27:17
Speaker
So where are you now? Where are you going? What is the product? What can we expect from it?
00:27:40
Speaker
don't really have as much of a place. And your budget's not as high to be able to build these videos. And I found that difficult. I actually started making a lot of recorded videos with my face in educational videos.
00:27:50
Speaker
But a lot of my energy kind of moved more towards Eclipse, which is the new rebrand of Learn Launcher. And, you know, I kind of dispensed a bit from Loop over time and I spent a lot less time on Loop and more time on EclipsePad. And now I think it was about a week ago I officially left Loop in an official capacity to focus on my energy on Eclipse and everything that needs to happen there. You know, for the last few months I hadn't been as involved, but
00:28:16
Speaker
I hadn't
Challenges of Launching During a Bear Market
00:28:17
Speaker
really been involved, but now it's just from an official perspective of parting ways and closing that chapter.
00:28:25
Speaker
When I brought Eclipse Pad over to Cosmos, I saw an opportunity. There was a ton of change in project building and launching, and I saw an opportunity. There was actually no active launch pad. There was no way of raising money or launching. There was LVPs and airdrops and stuff, but there was no launch pad and way of gathering exposure from outside of the Cosmos into the Cosmos. So I saw that need. I talked a lot of projects that saw this as a need.
00:28:52
Speaker
And, you know, I kind of doubled down on that and basically, you know, created a clip that in the proposition, expand the cosmos, build the future, which is about, you know, bringing exposure to the cosmos ecosystem of something that I believe is going to play a massive part in the next cycle, but just doesn't have the adoption that it deserves. And so that's been challenging. Honestly, it's been really, really hard because launch pads aren't a bare market product. And even though there's a lot building on cosmos, as the market got worse,
00:29:19
Speaker
It got worse in terms of propositions around projects that thought they were going to launch soon. Like, actually, we're not going to launch till Q1, Q2. Or when you launch a launchpad and you launch projects, it's very reputational based. You can't launch products. You can't launch something if there isn't enough chances of it selling out, because then if it doesn't sell out, people are like, oh, this is a dud. And you're bad for the project, bad for clicks.
00:29:43
Speaker
So that's been a challenge because, you know, I was going through capital raising rounds and going through this whole emotional roller coaster of being a founder in the bear market mixed with factory building a launch pad in a bear market, which is literally like one of the worst things that you can build in a bear market because it's literally a bull market product. It does not to say it's not possible. And this is where my vision attached to it. And I see still the potential for it, but it was definitely like the hardest product to build in a bear market.
00:30:11
Speaker
combined with the fact that it's not just a tech product. It's 90% relationships and reputation and stuff. It's all about business development. It's all about building close relationships and projects and building community, right? Which are hard things to also do in a bear market. So all of these precious combined created this cook pot, which was definitely challenging. I tell you, it's a tough thing and precious for, you know, Juno going, you know, you got to launch now. And it's like, no, if I launch now, then it's dead. It's like, do you want to, do you want a successful launch pad or do you want like a ghost product?
00:30:41
Speaker
You know, and that was kind of my line that kept pushing. I was like, no, I'm not going to launch now. I know that we need to build running and we need to do stuff, but we can't launch right now because we do. We're
Innovations and Future Directions of EclipsePad
00:30:50
Speaker
not going to serve anybody. Right. So that was some of the challenges. Um, but I've still kept going and we've built out some insane, like around UI, UX and propositions around like onboarding. So now, you know, a squid.
00:31:01
Speaker
You can onboard from any chain using any asset. You can use your E to participate in Cosmos, your Cardo on ramp. The UI UX is seamless. But we've recently, and this is still alpha, so you're getting an alpha drop here. We've recently been working on pivots, and this is the sign of entrepreneurship. If you're an entrepreneur and you're not willing to pivot, I think this is where many entrepreneurs go and dive. They're not able to
00:31:24
Speaker
they either pivot too much without the right research and thought, or they don't pivot when they need to pivot. So basically, the first pivot that I was looking at was how can we abstract the UI UX from this experience
00:31:36
Speaker
Lunaroch had already built code for five major ecosystems. We built multi-chain capabilities to be a multi-chain platform. But the main issue that I've noticed with a lot of these multi-chain platforms was that you had to change wallets or change networks or bridge your assets over every time you wanted to go from Solana to Cosmos or Cosmos to Nia or any of these ecosystems. And it's not a beginner-friendly experience, right? Well, it's an absolute nightmare.
00:32:00
Speaker
And, you know, with AXLR, IBC and AXLR, something called general message passing, there's an ability to sign transactions on a cross chain network, right? So IBC, you can sign it within two chain accounts, you can sign a transaction on a different network using one chain. And so I really delved into this proposition of what, what if we could abstract the UI, UX away from this experience so that I could, you could build a platform that's across 10 chain
00:32:25
Speaker
that doesn't matter what chain you're on or wallet you're on. You can interact with it and you could participate in a launch across 10 chains while still using a wallet. So I really delved into this trajectory and I kind of ran into some bottlenecks, which kind of decided on me, but it kind of gave me hope was wallets is the, is the blocker here because you still had to have multiple wallets. So I'm still investigating talking to a lot of wallet providers about how can we abstract this high level UX so that user can come in, use their email to sign up to a wallet. Right.
00:32:52
Speaker
It creates a wallet across 10 chains. They don't even need to know what chain they're on and they can participate in cross-gen applications without even knowing.
00:32:59
Speaker
And that's possible. It's a little bit in the making, but there is definitely inroads towards making this happen. I've talked to the TFL guys about this. I've talked to a lot of wallet providers about this, and I really want to pioneer this as well. That was one of the main pivots, but it's kind of held back by the wallet solutions. The secondary one that we've been pivoting and one of the team members kind of brought this. It's awesome. And we've been like digging in and doing a lot of research and digging into this.
00:33:23
Speaker
is building Quest-style platforms. So it's like a marketing bounties platform where projects can come in and set up marketing on-chain actions and marketing budgets where a user might, you know, have a near project that wants users to kind of interact with their NFTs. So they put up this marketing bounty, this Quest, users come on, they participate and they can either earn experience points, NFTs or rewards by engaging with learning, kind of similar to learn a little bit, but kind of more advanced with Quest and bounties.
00:33:51
Speaker
It's a couple of projects that have done this. I actually noticed recently CoinHaul has built CoinHaul Genie around this, but just for Terra. It's a similar kind of project, but I'm seeing the potential to really tie this into the launchpad. So instead of just being like for users to get into these IDOs, they can really, what if users
00:34:08
Speaker
Engaging is on socials a lot and engaging with these quests and all this sort of stuff could actually have the ability to earn whitelists into IDVOTs. And that's kind of been my kind of direction that I'm working on pivoting to is building out this product that's like what we can actually generate revenue from projects coming on and listing these marketing bounties.
00:34:27
Speaker
we can be generating user adoption and getting users excited even during the bear market, even if there's not launches happening, more utilities for the token, and kind of building out this ecosystem where users can learn, can earn, can do quests, and then can participate in launches. And so that's kind of our more recent pivot and the direction I'm excited to go into.
Founders' Pressures and Community Expectations
00:34:48
Speaker
And this is all our focus. This is not being talked about in public, so the first one here. Don't broadcast it too wide.
00:34:55
Speaker
Don't worry, I've only got 12 followers, but it'll spread quickly if I say the word alpha. You know, you put out a thread recently that was very vulnerable and I appreciate you sharing. You were talking a lot about the issues that founders go through that aren't talked about so much. And I feel like for every one person like you that shares these difficult experiences, like what you were talking about just now, the issues with FTX and kind of the indirect consequences,
00:35:22
Speaker
you yourself were not affected by FTX, however it affects investors, liquidity, things of that nature. You set a line, it was the pressure of potential and that really resounded with me. I feel like you pulled yourself to this high standard, maybe that's common with
00:35:42
Speaker
young entrepreneurs but i was wondering what what prompted this we did talk about this a little bit and how can we get more people like you in this position to speak out i feel like it's needed in this space and this is how i kind of started this ready it's a tough one because what happens is you get into this position where you're like okay i'm in a position of leadership so i have to show a strong place for the people or you don't want to show weakness because you're showing whether you're raising from investors or dealing with people you want to show that you've got this like
00:36:12
Speaker
invulnerability to the market, that things don't affect you and they're able to handle the pressure and go forth. And to some extent that's true, but the other extent is that people don't see sometimes, and this is something that I really wanted to call out, I've seen a lot of drama and a lot of stuff on Twitter on things, people don't realize what founders go through, like what really goes on behind the scenes and the amount of pressure that happens at a founder level.
00:36:40
Speaker
And I'm sure there's somebody even more than me. But like, if you take everything into account, and then you slap on multiple pressure cooker things on top of it, it gets insane. Like, because as a founder, you're not just looking out for yourself, right, or your product or your vision, you have the team, you have mouths to feed, you have you know, things
00:36:59
Speaker
relying on you. You know, if those things go down or they go bad or whatever it is, it's like, if you fail as well, like you raise your reputation on the line, it's like, well, you failed at a product, right? If this goes under in crypto, and this is huge, and I want people to understand this massively. It's one of the biggest problems, I think, in the space that we don't understand. In the traditional space, the majority of startups fail.
00:37:24
Speaker
Like a very large majority of startups in the space file. I think I was listening to a Y combinator thing the other day, like out of 4,000, uh, you take a sample size of 4,000 project, 2000 will do okay. 15 will do really well. But out of that, the majority of those will fail, right? Even good, good founders, good projects, good things. They will struggle to reach product market fit in crypto. When this happens, it's a rug, right? It's like the team's rubbed, right?
00:37:51
Speaker
And all these projects become ghost projects. They become, because what happens right in, in the traditional space where you've got investors, typically like the startup phases, you go from like seed private and IPO doesn't happen to way, way, way down the line when the project is already massive. But in these early stages, the normal retail users don't get a chance to participate typically in these rounds.
00:38:12
Speaker
So all the building, all the pain, all the failures, all this sort of stuff happens, and it's typically concentrated towards angels and VCs who understand the game. They understand that it's a game of chances, and they understand it's a game of they're going to invest in 100 things, and only two are going to do well, but the two that do well are going to make up for the 99-letter thing. In crypto, we kind of bring in these tokens that are now utilities or investments or whatever it is,
00:38:37
Speaker
where you know retailers suddenly got interactions and village to participate but they don't know understand the game that it's like the vast majority of things they invest in are going to fail right so they put all their ends in one basket or they like super invest in one project which statistically has a very high chance of failure no matter what anyone tells you and suddenly then they're emotionally attached through the whole way down and then the founders cop a lot of it because
00:39:04
Speaker
you know, for whatever reason, and sometimes fairly, there is a lot of rugs and a lot of scams, a lot of stuff. But then there's also like, there's also the fact that like, founders aren't perfect, right. And they're held to a high standard in terms of having their shit together, or, you know, knowing how to run a company or, you know, knowing how to run a company, but also maybe not being able to find that product market fit, no matter how many pivots. And I think this is an important discussion, I think for founders, you add the pressures of
00:39:30
Speaker
Runway, you had the pressures of the market, regulation, like you got to make sure that everything that you do is not going to get you screwed with regulation. Teams, hiring.
00:39:41
Speaker
vision, like do a pivot now, how do we generate revenue, there's like the space collapsing, Twitter fud and yeah then mixed with the community piling on and just going like crazy. It's just the pressure cooker of stuff and I think founders, I think it's important for founders to talk about this and to be there because there is definitely real emotions behind the scenes and it's definitely a tough thing.
00:40:02
Speaker
And if you need to raise more capital on this market, it's brutal. Anyone going through the VC rounds pretty much will tell you that if you need to raise more runway right now, it's very challenging. So uncertainty around the future, we don't know how long this bear market is going to last, et cetera. So yeah, that's kind of my perspective on this and kind of from my place, trying to piece that together. So people understand that a little bit more maybe.
00:40:21
Speaker
That's so important what you just said, and I really appreciate you putting that into terms that I can understand, right? You're right. So many projects do fail, but when they fail in crypto, they're automatically a rug. Well, just because it didn't work doesn't mean it was a scam.
00:40:36
Speaker
It doesn't mean that you didn't try your hardest. Sometimes it wasn't the right timing, or there wasn't a need for the product, and people's emotions are getting involved, and you're right. I'm not an accredited investor. I haven't spent my whole life investing in projects, and here I am able to invest in these early projects.
00:40:58
Speaker
you know, my emotions get involved. I'm not, you know, a rational investor, I can't separate the two. And I have direct access to talk to these founders, I can tweet at you all day long, and I can harass you with direct messages, but you're a real person, you know, in traditional world, there's at least some separation, you know, that is, that's a very real problem. Yeah, customers are shareholders, like a lot of time, and this is against securities laws, it almost like customers almost act like shareholders.
00:41:28
Speaker
Which is interesting, right? Because at the pre like early stage startup, I mean, at an IPO level, when you got a Tesla or an Apple, whatever big company, they got this shit together. They've got like massive, like, you know, things, but at a startup level, like the statistics don't lie that the majority fail. So majority, if they don't fail directly in crypto become ghost companies, right?
00:41:48
Speaker
And then this whole community stuff can take away from a founder's ability to build. I've actually really loved the Fuji guys. I've spent some time with them in Portugal. I absolutely love Dove and the crew. They're amazing guys. And if you can't see that through Twitter, meet them in person because they're really, honestly, really good builders and really good guys.
00:42:08
Speaker
and I feel for them because they're passionate and they're emotional and that's why they're still engaged with it. You know, even you see Dove tweeting some of this stuff on Twitter where he could, where everyone's, people would be like, just ignore it, but your passion, it's your baby, like it's your thing. And in the traditional space, you don't, you have to answer to investors, VCs and angels and stuff, but you don't have this kind of social media pressure that's like taking you away from, you know, the building that you need to do, which is like,
00:42:32
Speaker
you know, you need to focus, but you've got all this, you've got to handle all this other stuff, which is shareholder stuff, which typically happens with VCs and angels, right, which you'd experience, or they've kind of got knowledge or contacts and stuff to fix these things. But instead, you're doing this in the communities, which is almost, it's the two edges of the knife, right? It's one of the blessings and the curses. Community is one of the most important things. But the fact that this community can also be on the other side is difficult, I think, because you may not be at a stage like where that is helpful.
00:43:01
Speaker
So yeah, that's just an interesting perspective. So is there a
Personal Growth and Entrepreneurial Lessons
00:43:06
Speaker
solution or we're still working through that? I don't know, honestly. I think it's both the hot and the cold. It's both sides, right? The DOWs and communities and stuff are one of the most amazing innovations, but at the same time they're challenging for founders because, you know, they could obviously bring a lot of wealth of talent and knowledge, but if you've got like a founder that's driving a ship one way and they have to go through a lot of like things to be able to
00:43:29
Speaker
Pivot it. I think the one advantage is with dows, at least, and the one thing that makes them kind of strong in a way is that they are automatically putting the user focus in the crosshairs. Right. So, you know.
00:43:42
Speaker
with a project in the Trev space or normal, you're spending a lot of time trying to figure out your customer, the needs, the demands, the product market fit. So Dows in themselves, the communities are almost the product market fit by themselves. But if they want to grow to another big level, they still need to be able to get rid of some of these biases and stuff of like, hey, we're only going to serve this market. Like if you're a Dow and you build this community, this tightening community that's like,
00:44:12
Speaker
You know, we got these values about the strength with this strong community boom. Cool. Awesome. But then if you want to grow past this bubble, you need to be able to figure out how to research customers, how to create product market fit for users outside of that, that bring money in because your niche is probably only like to a certain size. Like an archery club is only going to grow to one certain size, right?
00:44:33
Speaker
I don't know why I'm using archery as an example, but if you're an archery club of like 20 people, 30 people, you're super passionate, or you've got even maybe a couple hundred members, you've got every single possible archery people that fit within this box. And you want more people to get into archery, right? You have to be able to kind of then, instead of like go, okay, we've got to expect everybody to be like fanatic archery people like us.
00:44:55
Speaker
It's about like building out programs outside of that, that are working into users in the real world and promoting benefits into the real world of what they're wanting to use. So archery might be like, hey, this is a really good balance coordination thing. Instead of selling archery is like this amazing, the most amazing figure in the world of the craziest thing. People don't care about that, right? But if you can sell it to their benefits and you can find a product market fit outside of that, you can expand those use cases. And the problem sometimes with DOWs, I could be completely wrong with this, is that they get stuck in this kind of
00:45:24
Speaker
this bubble in which there isn't always someone to kind of drive that and go, hey, we need actual, we need product market fit. We need to go out into the real world. We need to go do this stuff and we need to kind of grow out of this little container. I agree with you. So switching gears a little bit, I'm wondering what do you feel is your biggest accomplishment or proudest moment in the crypto space?
00:45:45
Speaker
I'm going to take it to like a growth level rather than what I've done. I mean, Loop Learn was amazing. Getting it to where it is is amazing. I think for me, it's just the growth that I've seen in terms of potential of
00:45:57
Speaker
Uh, like just being able to kind of see the possibilities and all the moving pieces and actually like be able to go to, to go, Hey, I know that I can actually build something significant in this space and I can do something. I think I know that's not a direct answer to the question. Um, I mean, I'm, I'm super proud of all the work that I've done in terms of like, you know, being engaged with the community and building up.
00:46:18
Speaker
like knowledge in DeFi and then building a vision for like Eclipsepad, for example, and kind of like even seeing all the UI that was built and all the stuff and getting to this stage. I'm super proud of all that. And even though it's not this massive, enormous protocol just yet, like I'm proud of each piece of that. And I'm proud of like that journey that I've taken even from before getting
00:46:36
Speaker
full time, like into deep building to like where I'm now and seeing kind of the road ahead of like, looking at myself, like, look, this thing tough at times. I mean, even, even as I mentioned recently, I lost a lot of self confidence in some narrative stuff, which is rare for me, like someone who normally has a lot of them. But at the same time, I still see this like, ability to kind of build some cool stuff. And I'm, I'm kind of excited about that. And I don't know if that's an answer directly to your question, but it's kind of been my weird way of thinking.
00:47:03
Speaker
I think it kind of raises like seeing the person that I was, the person I am now and the context I've built and the people that have helped him on the way. I think that's probably a big accomplishment for me is like, really, I've been helping a lot of projects behind the scenes with VCs and all sorts of different things. And I've absolutely loved doing that. And that's something that I'm definitely proud of for sure. That and always being able to get back up on your feet is a huge accomplishment.
00:47:28
Speaker
Yeah, learning and learning adapting. I never thought of it like, you know, it's still failure, something I still have struggled coming to terms with because, you know, as an entrepreneur, you're going to fail many times and it's kind of like.
00:47:40
Speaker
You know, I've put all this time and energy into this one thing that didn't work out. And then, you know, your reputation and your like self-confidence sometimes leans on that of like this failure, but it's being able to get back up. And I think learning how to adapt quickly and make decisions quickly for me has been a huge shift. It's like, okay, this isn't working. I need to recognize when this isn't working. I need to recognize when this needs to shift and tweak. And I need to like make quick decisions around this. And this is something that's not taught to you, right? You're not taught to like.
00:48:08
Speaker
you're attached to a vision or a business and then suddenly like something changes you need to be able to make those decisions really fast to go we're going to shift this way and it's not intuitive right it's not like it's not something that we kind of used to knowing but it's kind of sometimes required but you can't pivot too much if you pivot too much all over you flip flop all over the place and you don't do research and stuff then it's another issue but yeah
00:48:30
Speaker
So then on the flip side, I've been asking everyone what is the biggest challenge that they face and how do they overcome it? But as a founder, I feel like we've talked about several of them and you've overcome several of them. Is there one that stands out to you the most as the biggest challenge you faced? All of it, like, I mean,
00:48:50
Speaker
It's almost like a video game where you do a level and you struggle at this level and then you do that level and then the next level is even harder and that's kind of like what it's like. I mean for me there's so many things I've had to learn on the way and so many things that you this is where advisors and stuff and mentors and stuff are so important because you can't always piece together. It's like
00:49:10
Speaker
know, I think sorting priorities, figuring out what the biggest priorities are, right? Hiring teams, that's a really been a really hard thing for me. It's like how much you pay people? How do you structure this? How do you like structure incentives? How do you do this sort of stuff? You know, once you've done it many times, it's obviously like more intuitive, but there's a lot of learnings on the way of
00:49:29
Speaker
this journey and founders, you do a list of a hundred things. I mean, I went through like a lot of VC rounds when you were doing six to nine calls a day with VC. And every single call is super repetitive of like every single call you get asked some new questions that like throw you off of like, oh crap, I don't know the answer to this.
00:49:44
Speaker
and you think that you've covered everything like I wrote a like 38 page document of questions of like answering every possible question and I still got questions from VCs that was like like you know really like throwing you off and every single time you solidify your offer more you solidify your answers more and you learn more about yourself and your products and you do more research and you dig in more and more and more and it's it's a it's grilling like hundred thousand things and it's a hundred thousand more but that's the journey
00:50:12
Speaker
So on that note, what advice would you give to someone, a new founder that is getting their start in the crypto space? Yeah. So as a new founder in the crypto space, I would look at a couple of things. Like firstly, I would look at, uh, you know, the team around you. Do you have a co-founder? Like do you, can you put a co-founder in place that can do the stuff that you can't do, um, that can kind of help carry that load? Um, if someone who's synergize and work really well with, but has a like maybe a different skillset to you, I think that's super important.
00:50:42
Speaker
Second piece is like, okay, you've got a cool idea and ideation ideas and ideas on your piece of it, right? You need to like be able to execute it, but is your idea, and this is something I get from VCs a lot. Is your idea defensible? Like do you have a moat or do you have like something that sets you apart that isn't just tech related? Because again, if it's just a tech advantage that can be copied. You open source that can be taken, like that can be replicated, but what is stuff that you have that's not replicable? What can you build like IP wise that's not replicable by anyone else?
00:51:12
Speaker
Um, then I look at customers of like, is there a demand for it right now? Um, or is there a demand for it in the future? Can you survive up to the level in which there is a demand for this product? Can you prove that demand for your customers? Um, and then distribution, like, how do you get out into that market? That's called go to market strategies, which is like, how do you take that product to market? That's unique and different. How do you create integrations partnerships? How do you reach those customers of yours that are out there? Um,
00:51:36
Speaker
and then thinking about sustainability and stuff. There's a lot to it, but I'd say start with the basic blocks of who your customer, who are your competition.
00:51:45
Speaker
What's the demand? What's the differentiating, but not just a feature set? I got trapped in this like features as a differentiator, but it's like, well, what is your unfair advantages that are like unreplicatable, right? What are things that you can kind of create that are most that are not easy? Like that could be a partnership. It could be like a specific like level of contact. It could be a specific community can be a moat, right?
Visionary Thinking and Entrepreneurship
00:52:07
Speaker
But you need to start thinking about these things as like untangibles. That's what sets you apart.
00:52:13
Speaker
It's such fantastic advice. I'm really excited for people to see this because you are doing it and you're so successful and you've built so many different businesses in this space. Anyway, I would like to know if you could have dinner with anyone in Web3, who would it be and why? In Web3, I'm kind of split. I'm going to only be controversial. I would potentially say dope. And this is interesting, right? Because
00:52:40
Speaker
You know, I especially with it, the Terra Luna collapse and the kind of flat relationship. She's probably two is I would either have dinner with, uh, I think there's a guy from tangent ventures called Jason. And I think he had some awesome knowledge and stuff. And I love to pick his brain. So he'd be someone that I definitely want to catch up with, but does another one and.
00:53:00
Speaker
Doe for a different reason because I know that he's got controversy people. There's a lot of people who hate Doe, a lot of people that love Doe, everything that happened. But he is someone that dares to dream and he has visions that are bigger than, you know, they're big. He works hard. Obviously, look, I can imagine the kind of person Doe is to work for, right? It's similar both to Elon Musk, very tough Steve Jobs.
00:53:23
Speaker
awful boss potentially but in terms of like as someone who you want to pick their brains and you want to synergize with like I like to see that the vision of a bigger world of something that's so big that gives people dare to dream and that many people don't think big enough from this perspective like Doe was always going like how do we go to this level and not afraid to fail like obviously terror was a massive failure like terror one right
00:53:46
Speaker
and you know seeing what everything that happened and then the pickup of like okay we're going to attack it again from a different angle on another level you know the past is you know cooked but now like now we're moving forward and we're going to keep dreaming we're going to keep having this vision and so that's something that to me is something that i treasure and value so much i understand the perspective i understand a lot of people hurt a lot of people were burned but if we if we like hang on to that too much then we get roped in so if someone i'd love to have dinner i love to like exchange great ideas with
00:54:17
Speaker
And I love to kind of, you know, just yeah, kind of pick brains because he built something massive and he can do it again. And it's kind of the way that my brain thinks as well around these big visions that people think are impossible and manageable and that you strive out to achieve them.
00:54:34
Speaker
I think you found her an entrepreneurial types. You just have a way of creating these visions and something so big that you can engender these communities and something so beautiful that we all want to believe in. And one of the things that we were talking about previously is, you know, when Luna collapsed, we were sad. We all lost a lot of money, but we lost this vision of something that we believed in so strongly. And when you can create a product like that, it takes a really special mind to create something like that. So I do understand.
00:55:03
Speaker
big time and then there's the founder issues of that level with like ego and cockiness and like at every level there's a there's a new devil right um and some people say it's the same devil some say new devil but there is definitely like like i think layers to entrepreneurship and the where you learn at stage one and then i think you know what you see and some of the stuff you may be able to handle kind of earlier in your journey but you see a lot of founders that go they get overconfident and
00:55:30
Speaker
You know, and people hold it against them, but it's like, it's a part of, it's part of the journey, right? It's part
Balancing Work and Life in Bali
00:55:35
Speaker
of the learning people expect. They will pedestal people and expect them to be perfect when it's far from perfect. They're just humans that have maybe a higher work ethic or they've, you know, or not even, maybe they don't even have a higher work ethic. They just have a different mindset around like entrepreneurship and risk. And they're able to kind of dream things and create them, but they're still humans with real human emotions, real human problems, um, failures, things they don't know.
00:55:58
Speaker
they're just willing to kind of take the step into the unknown of like, I don't know this, but I'm going to try anyway, right? And that's a risk attributed to that. And I think that's part of it.
00:56:09
Speaker
That's a huge reason why I wanted to do these interviews because I want to pick your brains and I want to know what sets you apart from every other person. You know, how does your mind work? You know, how are you able to take actions that others don't? So you have been spending some time in Bali. I imagine it's just living the dream, this remote life and this beautiful
00:56:31
Speaker
place. I was wondering if you could tell us a tiny bit more. I know that you haven't enjoyed it so much. I've also seen some crazy videos of the wildlife neighbors that you have. So maybe just tell us a little bit. The monkeys come and visit me. The monkeys come and visit me. Um, yeah, the ball is great. Uh, like I have enjoyed it for sure. Um, obviously I haven't enjoyed it like as much as it's like, I'm not here on a holiday. I'm living here. And I think, you know, I spent so much, like the workload was a lot and it took me away from being able to focus on things. But
00:57:00
Speaker
What I really love about Bali for me is that everything seems like really easy. Like it's cheap, it's easy to access stuff. It's always like pretty much sunny except for now. Um, and like the surfs are nice, the beaches are nice, the food's healthy everywhere. You can get green juices, green smooth bowls, everything. Um, and like, I just jump on the scooter and like literally in two minutes I'm at any restaurant, any cafe anywhere.
00:57:25
Speaker
Um, there's yoga, there's like good kind of like mindfulness stuff. And, you know, I mean, this sounds like such a first world problem, right? But like in Australia, like everything is very contained, right? Like, um, people live in their own bubbles. You know, there's rules, regulations, everything for anything, right? Um, and here it just feels more free. Like you can kind of just live and it's,
00:57:49
Speaker
living. Like, and you don't think about like this and that and, oh, am I speeding? Are cops looking at my shoulder or do I have this or any of this stuff? I mean,
Excitement for Web3's Future
00:57:58
Speaker
this seems so banal, but like restaurants are open late, cafes are open late, and they can kind of just like live and people are just chilled and relaxed and happy. And I think that's, that's definitely a cool, cool thing. I enjoy that. It looks amazing. And I'm coming to visit you, by the way.
00:58:15
Speaker
All right, so I have a couple quick questions for you and then we'll wrap up. First one, you actually inspired this when I was coming up with the idea for this podcast. So all my future interviewer guests have you to blame when I asked them this question.
00:58:32
Speaker
Okay. Who is your web free crush and or who do you think on the most on crypto. I'm like a simp anti simp so whenever like there's something I want to think on I usually put like a comedic.
00:58:45
Speaker
I've put a comedic gift rather than putting something like serious. I don't think, I think I've simped on you in the far, but I don't think there's any one person that I've simped on or like web three crush per se. I don't know. I don't know. It's a tough one. I think I spent so much time focusing on work that like, I'm like, she's like, you're like, I'm your web three crush. I'm going back to this anti-sympt comment. I think that's funny.
00:59:15
Speaker
Well, maybe it's like a deflection. I don't know. But like, I mean, as a guy, you get a ton of like stuff that comes up in your feet all the time. Like there's always like a, there's always like a, like a photo of someone like, you know, they'd get simp attraction. And it's like, as a guy, it's like, oh yeah, you know, I'm better than this. Like I'm cooler, you know, I'm not going to simp on this or whatever. And so I don't, but it's kind of funny. Like you kind of simp in your head. You're like, oh, she's cute. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, it's funny.
00:59:40
Speaker
What I think is so funny about this question is, again, when I said I was going to do a podcast, it was you who said you have to do fun questions like this, and you're the first person to not give me a straight answer. And I think that's absolutely hilarious. I'm good at deflecting. I'm good at deflecting. Yeah, I told you to ask my question, but not to me. Well, I'll give you a pass because it's been good content for my other videos.
01:00:11
Speaker
All right. What's more fun? Consensus or Cosmoverse? Consensus. Don't get me in trouble with this. Columbia was awesome, but I don't know. Consensus. Consensus is definitely insane. Trading or building? Building. Are you more of a plan ahead or go with the flow type of person? Absolutely go with the flow. I hate plans, which is funny because I'm a visionary like ahead of time, but I hate plans. It's kind of funny.
01:00:39
Speaker
Complete this sentence. Being an entrepreneur is rewarding, but hard work. So just a couple of last words. What excites you the most about the future of Web3? I think for me, the next, uh, you know, obviously a lot of the crap's been
01:00:57
Speaker
kind of drained out, which always happens in these bull cycles. So now we kind of, I've actually seen so much developments. It's just 16, 2017, which was like mainly ideas of what, you know, when three could be to now the development and the infrastructure and stuff is becoming insane, right? Like some of the stuff behind the scenes.
01:01:14
Speaker
is really cool. So I'm really excited for the next couple of years to see that evolve more. I'm really excited for the layer of UI UX that enables this technology more. Because right now there's been so much focus on obviously this behind the scenes infrastructure, which is maturing at a ridiculous rate. But I think now that this kind of is maturing behind the scenes, it's about like starting to build on top of that to build these like adoption layers so that people can actually use it in the real world. And there isn't this same stigma that's like, oh, crypto is just this coin that goes up or whatever it is.
01:01:42
Speaker
And we actually start using this tech. It actually starts generating revenue. It starts like really getting wider adoption to what the tech can enable in a lot of countries rather than focusing on like a speculative like up and down and what's the next dodge coin and all this sort of stuff. So
Learning from Mistakes and Building Value
01:01:58
Speaker
I'm seeing this tech evolve and I'm really excited to kind of help on the UI UX front in the user base. And what is one thing that people should know about you or you hope they take away from this interview? Maybe that like I'm human.
01:02:12
Speaker
And, you know, just, you know, pushing forward and working hard and all this sort of stuff, like it doesn't mean that everything's going to be perfect. Like everything that I feel is not going to be perfect.
01:02:22
Speaker
Even the things that I think are going to work out a certain way aren't going to work out that way. But the question is being able to adapt. And this is something that I will be able to do is always adapt and adjust and make things go in a direction that I need to go and create something bigger. But yeah, I'm not perfect. I'll make mistakes. And that's just a part of the process. And that's part of the learning. I've learned so much more from those mistakes. And sometimes those mistakes is not always something that you do, but it's your reaction to something. Something is done or something
01:02:52
Speaker
gets done and you don't react to it quick enough where you don't like take responsibility quicker for like fixing these things. So yeah, just that's that's probably one of them. And that I also care like I'm here for people even if I'm, you know, kind of busy like I try and like trying to limit more distractions but you know, like I really want people to succeed and I want people to do well and I want people to build. And yeah, that's that's huge.
01:03:17
Speaker
Well, Simon, thank you so much for taking the time out of your very busy day to come chat with me. There is so much wealth of knowledge in what you shared with me. And I know that people will really, there's a lot of value what you share for people that want to move forward in being a founder in the space.
01:03:35
Speaker
you have such a good heart. And you're someone that I've met in person. We spent a lot of time just running on the phone. And I can just say that you've helped me go through some really, really dark times. And it's fun. I learned a lot about you that I didn't know. And we've spoken quite a few times. So I really appreciate your time. I am so excited to hear about your project and everything that you're building. And I know that you're going to continue to do
01:04:02
Speaker
wonderful things in the space not even got me rambling because I have just nothing but great things. I appreciate it so much and I absolutely love that you're doing this it's super exciting I think you're the best person for this and I'll add a little thing guys if you haven't subscribed make sure to like share and subscribe to the channel I'm shilling it for you but yeah that's definitely like
01:04:24
Speaker
I'm excited to see this this YouTube grow and you start to get some like even bigger guests and share some exciting stories. I think it's like really well suited for you and you're gonna do some great stuff in web3. I think you've got a touch that web3 does need and I think that's important to kind of like embody that and you are like embodying that touch that that is different and and setting apart from everybody else and I appreciate it. Thank you so much. It's that human element and you are a really big
01:04:52
Speaker
inspiration for me. So thank you very much. Is there any place that I can link people to follow your website and your launchpad? Yeah, Twitter is probably the best. So Simonch00, I think, and then Eclipsepad is the handle for Twitter. So go follow that. We've got a few channels and things, but we pop a lot of updates in there.
01:05:14
Speaker
the place to follow on all the developments and stuff. And I look forward to building up this awesome community. I want to build something fun, something exciting, and something that's sustainable and brings value. I think that's like
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
01:05:23
Speaker
the biggest thing, like focusing on, as the Kooji guys say, growing up DeFi, focusing on revenue, focusing on real value provision. And that's the whole stuff that we're going to do for sure.
01:05:32
Speaker
Well, we will link to that and I think it's so important that as a founder, you're putting your face out there and a lot of the challenges that you spoke to, you're not hiding behind the profile picture, you're out there, you're talking to people, you are engaging and we get to see the real person who's building these products and I'm very excited for the future of it. So thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks for hosting this Jade and I look forward to future podcast.
01:06:01
Speaker
Perfect. All right, we'll see you soon. Thanks, Simon.