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The secret to a successful career in Web3 with Abhinav Vishwa, ex- Director of Engineering, Polygon
46 Plays1 year ago
Behind the blockchain is a series of conversations with technology leaders who have built successful products, teams and careers in Web3. You will have the opportunity to understand how they were able to achieve their career goals, what skills they have learned, what mistakes and frustrations they might have and what advice they can share with you to help you achieve your own career goals.
In this episode, I speak with Abhinav Vishwa. Abhinav has had a successful career at numerous high profile companies such as Uber and Polygon. When we spoke he had just left his position as Director of Engineering at Polygon to launch his own startup in the Web3 space. Abhinav talked through some of the skills he learned which helped him to achieve his career goals and he talked through some brilliant advice for people looking to build a successful career for themselves in Web3.
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Transcript
Introduction to Learning and Career Development
00:00:00
Speaker
There's this thing which I learned slightly late in my career is learning how to learn. What sort of skills did you need to learn and develop to be able to become the director of engineering at Polygon? That has been my constant battle for past at least two years or so. Is there a piece of advice that you'd like to tell yourself back when you first started?
00:00:21
Speaker
Ask as many of them questions as you can. What advice would you give to people looking to follow in your footsteps? Definitely. There's a different career altogether. Don't think of this as a promotion of some sort.
Guest Introduction: Abhinav Viswar's Background
00:00:36
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Behind the Blockchain. Today I'm joined by Abhinav Viswar, engineering leader and ex-director of engineering at Polygon. Abhinav, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining me. How are you?
00:00:47
Speaker
Thanks for having me, Jack. Yeah, I'm doing good. Yeah, very glad to be on this podcast. It took a while for us to get connected, but yeah, glad to be finally here. Great, great.
00:01:06
Speaker
Yeah, let me start in the reverse chronological order, I guess. So yeah, very recently I was a director of engineering at Polygon. I was leading the non-CK protocol teams. So that essentially means POS chain, supernets, edge, avail before it got spun off, some parts of infra and also dapps.
00:01:35
Speaker
Before that, I was a staff engineer at Uber for close to four years. Before that, I was part of the hedge fund. That's where I started my career. Great. So why did you initially take an interest in software engineering to start with?
00:01:54
Speaker
Oh, so software engineering is something which has been pretty much ingrained in me while growing up. My sister is a software engineer. She's actually a computer scientist now after doing her PhD. She also did her PhD in blockchain, so that's very interesting that was back in 2016.
00:02:17
Speaker
And yeah, some of the other senior, some of the other cousins of mine are also into software engineering. So yeah, I have a fair bit of family history there. So that sort of inspired me to get into this field.
00:02:30
Speaker
Plus, yeah, I always used to like mathematics growing up. And then from there, it became like sort of a very natural, organic way to learn more about computers and then apply some of those learnings and then learn more about computers. And then that's how the software engineering happened.
00:02:49
Speaker
So did you always know that you wanted to move into management and become a director of engineering or VP of engineering when you first started out in your career?
Transitioning from IC to Management
00:02:56
Speaker
Actually, no. I started my career, obviously, as an individual contributor, continued to be in that ladder for a while.
00:03:04
Speaker
When I joined Uber, I started seeing around me the influence and the impact managers can have and how good managers essentially can execute through others and then increase the impact multifold. So that sort of inspired me to learn to start with about management, good management to start with.
00:03:31
Speaker
and how exactly I can use my people management skills to execute through others. So with an Uber, I moved to a profile called DLM, which is a tech lead manager. So it's sort of like in between profile between ICM manager. So I remained in that position by the time I left. And after that,
00:03:59
Speaker
When I joined Polygon, I moved into a pure management profile. But given how this industry operates and how, in general, a small startup operates, it's not exactly a pure people management either. It was an in-between profile, again, between an architect and people management. So that's where I'm at. So it's not exactly a traditional director of engineering or VP of engineering kind of profile.
00:04:28
Speaker
which is purely strategic in most of the big web 2 companies. Here it was a mix of strategic and technical role, which worked out very well for me. And that's where I found my niche, that working in smallish companies, in people management profile, where I also get to work on the technical bits, I think that's what works best for me.
00:04:59
Speaker
That's cool. Because I speak to a lot of people who are in that IC role who then always get pushed into management and then within 6-12 months realize that they really miss building stuff or really miss coding and then look to then move to another opportunity where they're again back on that IC route. Was it?
00:05:20
Speaker
Was it a bit of a mindset shift for you to go from being an IC to being a manager, or did you find it quite a natural progression? It was definitely uncomfortable in the start because the feedback loop is a lot longer when you're a manager. As an engineer, whenever you are executing something, you can clearly see the results in front of you in multiple environments. Starting from your local environment, you can see that things are actually working. Eventually, when it gets pushed to production, you can see that they are definitely working.
00:05:50
Speaker
But then as manager, because you execute through others, the feedback loop takes the entire cycle to actually see some results. And that's where also you don't really have a lot of...
00:06:03
Speaker
direct input. So yeah, it was definitely uncomfortable, but then to scratch that itch of building something, what I did was I definitely continued to code on the site, so that definitely helped. I still kept looking at the code base of my team. I also tried to
00:06:27
Speaker
code on the non-critical path, which definitely doesn't affect the roadmap, it doesn't affect the deliverables, but then at least I mean that helps me get some familiarity with the codebase.
00:06:40
Speaker
But definitely, I mean, to answer your original questions, yeah, it was definitely uncomfortable in the start, but then the trust matters in your team. And then if you can trust that, you know, I mean, what needs to be done, if your team is capable enough to execute on it, yeah, then it will actually be done. So that definitely helps. Sure. And you mentioned previously about learning good management
00:07:07
Speaker
or a good manager can make a real impact. What sort of skills did you have to learn going from being an IC to being a manager to be able to be a good manager, as you described? Yeah. So essentially, I think, as I said, the people management bit and the project management bit, essentially, those are very different skills from what a typical IC or any individual contributor doesn't matter which vertical you are part of.
00:07:37
Speaker
like tech or otherwise, they do want a D2D basis. So I think just being comfortable in having these conversations with people that, you know, I mean, this is something which is strategically needed. And this is how we are going to break it down into executable projects. And this is something which needs to be done.
00:08:00
Speaker
being able to break down a very big hairy problem, which might or might not actually result in any technical solution, and then getting that executed through others. This was definitely a learning for me. And I definitely learned from my seniors back in Uber.
00:08:21
Speaker
Uber definitely has a pretty good assortment of pretty good management talent. And then, yeah, it was very interesting to learn from them, see that how exactly they see these requirements coming in from primarily from the business. They understand that how exactly tech can, tech essentially need not mean engineering, right? I mean, they understand that.
00:08:47
Speaker
There are like certain aspects of the of the solution which might not even reach engineering and can directly be done by you know analyst or product managers and whatnot. But then the point is that looking at the business requirement and identifying that how exactly that can fill that gap.
00:09:02
Speaker
and then solve that business problem. I mean, that high-level view, developing that high-level view, I mean, yeah, that was definitely a learning which I wanted to have. It doesn't really have to, it doesn't really has anything to do with, you know, people management or project management as well, right? I mean, it doesn't really have anything to do with
00:09:22
Speaker
how do you use Agile or how do you use Jira or how do you use like on all of these tools and how do you plan your script? Is this about looking at a very abstract problem? This is directly coming from the from the business I mean which is what business needs right and then looking at that and then figuring out that how exactly tech can solve that. And is there any advice
00:09:44
Speaker
that you could pass on to someone, say there's someone who is in an IC role at the moment about to move into that management route, any particular advice that you could pass on that you wish you'd have heard back then or anything that your mentors at the time, by the sound of it, you had good mentors at Uber, any particular advice they gave you at the time that you could pass on.
00:10:05
Speaker
Yeah, so there were a couple of things which, I mean, when I actually made the decision that I want to learn more about management, I went and talked to, you know, like most of the managers I was in touch with at the time, the people I used to work with. And what people used to say, I mean, this is a different career altogether. Don't think of this as a promotion of some sort, right? I mean, you are moving laterally in a different,
00:10:35
Speaker
Think of this as a as I'm moving into a I mean changing your career trajectory entirely and then picking on a new set of skills which is something which you definitely hasn't you definitely didn't have before you will have to learn and also at the same time is not something which is part of any traditional curriculum so don't think that you can you know just leverage on what you have learned back in college or whatever so you will have to learn while on the job and
00:11:03
Speaker
Some parts of those will be uncomfortable. But then if you are allowing that, this is the direction you want to go into. And if you really enjoy working with people rather than directly working with code, which is what you are doing, I think you will enjoy it. And the second bit was that a lot of people think of management as an escape route from engineering.
00:11:32
Speaker
And I found that, I mean, those folks don't usually end up liking it because they think that, I mean, they can just escape from coding by being in management. And yeah, those people usually end up not being very successful in management is what I've seen from my personal experience.
00:11:53
Speaker
Because even though you are a manager, I mean, you need to learn that, you need to know that what exactly your team is dealing with on a D2P basis when they're coding. And then being a good engineer definitely helps with that. So even though you're not coding, you should have the technical curiosity to understand that what exactly, I mean, where exactly things are going. And that's very relevant for specifically for this industry, because
00:12:15
Speaker
I mean, all we have in this industry are startups, right? Like, I mean, there are very few companies I can consider which are established and that will have like the same level of management structure as FANG plus of the Web2 company need. So in the startups in general, I think the line between like senior IC and management is very blurry. So I don't think any startup can afford to have like
00:12:45
Speaker
pure people, managers, and in like various strategic rules. So you need to know the details. Unless you know the details, I mean, very, very difficult for you to execute. Yeah, I agree. And then just on the technical side of things and being able to get into the technical details, what sort of skills did you need to learn and develop to be able to become the director of engineering at Polygon?
00:13:15
Speaker
Did you really know about blockchain and smart contracts and everything like that before getting into Web3 or did you learn on the job?
Exploring Blockchain and Ethereum at Polygon
00:13:22
Speaker
Talk me through it.
00:13:23
Speaker
Yeah, so I was definitely a late-time trend to the blockchain in general. I started learning about it in 2020 or so. So I knew the application layer. I mean, this is where most of my learning was based. But the learning which I had to do to get into Polygon or to succeed in Polygon was primarily around the client engineering, figuring out that how exactly Ethereum works in the client layer.
00:13:52
Speaker
how exactly get works and how exactly polygons implementation of get works. So yeah, these kind of things is something which I hadn't learned before joining Polygon. So yeah, it felt pretty much like learning on the job and then
00:14:07
Speaker
at least becoming proficient enough to understand the conversations happening to start with within the technical groups. And then, yeah, just asking as many questions as possible to figure out that, I mean, where exactly the gap is, I mean, how exactly you, as I said, I mean, when there's a business requirement and what exactly needs to be done and how much time it might take to get that thing done.
00:14:38
Speaker
Yeah, sure. Yeah, I was going to ask where you went to learn those skills, or by the sound of it, it was on the job asking questions to people already in the team. Anywhere else you'd recommend someone could go to learn. So yeah, one good thing about, at least within the EVM
00:14:56
Speaker
the EVM bubble of the blockchain industry is that the documentation is plenty. So there are multiple resources out there and we are really curious. You should be able to find those and then learn from those. But then I was lucky in that aspect that I had access to most of the founders, the people who have been in this industry for a while and then they knew that how exactly things work in the ground layer.
00:15:24
Speaker
But then, yeah, I would still say that, yeah, asking questions definitely helped a lot. I mean, yeah, don't be afraid to ask questions. Yeah, I mean, there is this thing in a lot of people. And then I also battled with this for a while that you don't want to sound dumb in a group of people, right? So yeah, I mean, you have to overcome that.
00:15:43
Speaker
Ask as many of them questions as you can because Yeah, because in your mind you think that that's probably not a very good question But then it might uncover a insight for you and maybe for the interest of the proposal Yeah, I agree no questions a stupid question So why did you initially take an interest in web3 and blockchain and
00:16:07
Speaker
Yeah, so the promise of being able to build a software that can be deployed on any computer out there and then can act as the backbone of any application you can build on top, that was very interesting. Another way to say that is decentralized computing. So yeah, I mean, I come from an environment
00:16:35
Speaker
pre-polygon ware. Yeah, I've seen that, how exactly software is developed, how it's deployed on centralized servers, what are the costs associated with that, and how much monitoring it requires to just make sure that it's running. So when I started learning this idea that there's a decentralized grid of
00:16:59
Speaker
Yeah, server is not considered a good word in the 3 industry, but then let me use that here. So there's a decentralized grid of servers running on which you can deploy your application permissionlessly. And then you can just build your visualization layer on top of that. I'm just talking about smart contracts and UI. And then, yeah, anyone in the world can access that.
00:17:25
Speaker
And then, yeah, no one can actually censor. I understand that there are some aspects of censorship which is coming into the picture now, but then in general, yeah, no one can censor that application and then it will still be up and running and then people should be able to use it.
00:17:40
Speaker
So, yeah, I found this idea very fascinating. And then, yeah, rest was obviously, I mean, you know, building blocks on top of that. But how exactly decentralization is necessary, and then how exactly we fight the monopolies which have been built over the years in the web too. And there is obviously a better system out there which can definitely, you know,
00:18:05
Speaker
be more can actually accrue more value with the or at least like equal value with the users rather than just with the platform or in this case protocols.
00:18:17
Speaker
Great. Great. So is there any advice that you could give to someone who is maybe in Web 2, I'm going to say Web 2 at the moment, who is looking to get into Web 3? Is there any advice? Is that a mindset shift you have to have? Is it? Yeah, what advice could you pass on to someone who's looking to get into the space you might not have worked on before?
00:18:39
Speaker
That has been my constant battle for past at least two years or so. Yeah, I've tried to convert a lot of my web to engineers, people who were colleagues in Uber, now in Google and multiple bank companies and tried to bring them to web3.
00:18:59
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, it has been a constant battle to, you know, just make those folks curious about the three because yeah, I mean, doesn't matter. Yeah, I mean, that's definitely a reflection of the current market as well. But then 90% of the engine is out there, they don't really want to work in crypto even now. So yeah, I would just say that I mean, be curious about P2P computing, right? I mean, this is
00:19:23
Speaker
What you have seen, what you have read out there during university and while even working with like centralized system, that's not the end. That cannot be the end solution where, you know, AWS and GCP is off the board. They accrue like most of the value, you know, essentially whenever there's like any wave of new technology coming in, right?
00:19:49
Speaker
So P2P computing essentially is the answer. And then you just need to be curious about that. And then it's not like, I mean, it's a very unfamiliar concept. Everyone knows about distributed system. Just you need to think that, I mean, what happens if the distributed computers are essentially, distributed systems are not bound by the boundaries defined by an infrastructure provider, for example, or your company, right? It's essentially just that.
00:20:19
Speaker
So yeah, just stay curious, I guess. Learn more about how this technology works. I understand that the hyper-financialization of this industry definitely doesn't help. It definitely gives off this aura that most of the things here are scammed. But then, yeah, I mean, there is more tech here than just tokens. And yeah, I mean, that tech is very fascinating.
00:20:48
Speaker
about that rather than just getting sidelined by everything that you see out there. Very, very in the context of the past two, three days as well, I guess. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, something to keep a close eye on, I think. But for now, thank you for that. I think that's really good advice.
00:21:11
Speaker
So in terms of your actual day-to-day, Zen, what does the director of engineering at a company like Polygon do on a day-to-day? Right. So yeah, as I said, I mean, it was a mix of a strategic and technical role. So I definitely, I mean, I used to work very closely with founders to define the future roadmap of the company that essentially means that
00:21:37
Speaker
for the company like Polygon where we had multiple product lines. How do we converge them? How do we come up with a cohesive story for the company? And what kind of market trends we are seeing, which we need to incorporate in our products. So that discussion extends from founders to the product, like the product managers, and in some cases even
00:22:08
Speaker
So, yeah, now coming to the technical side of working with the engineering leaders across the org to figure out that what kind of problems they are facing, if they're facing any blocker within the team, across the team, how can I help in solving it, figure out that what kind of
00:22:30
Speaker
what kind of progress is happening on various roadmaps, quarterly or otherwise. And yeah, again, if there is a blocker, then yeah, how do we work within the org, across the org, and actually resolving it?
00:22:51
Speaker
OK, cool. So could you, for those who don't know, I think quite a lot of people probably will. But for those who don't know, could you introduce Polygon in a little bit more detail?
Polygon's Solutions for Scaling Ethereum
00:23:03
Speaker
OK, so yeah, Polygon is essentially a suite of products which will help in, which are currently helping and will help in scaling Ethereum. So the primary product which people know is the PUS chain.
00:23:21
Speaker
which is a side chain slash commit chain, which runs alongside Ethereum. And it provides lower gas fee, more scalability. And then it's also secure in the sense that it publishes periodic commits to Ethereum.
00:23:42
Speaker
So yeah, I think that's the product which everyone uses. It's the highest TBL product in the Polygons suite of products. And the recent launch is Polygon ZKVM, which is a ZK rollup, again, on top of Ethereum, which is a true L2 solution built on top of Ethereum.
00:24:06
Speaker
Other than that, we are also working on Edge and SuperNets. So SuperNets is the app chain solution for Polygon.
00:24:16
Speaker
using which you can build your custom ad hoc solutions, which won't be on any public network, but then they will be deployed on your dedicated network. So this is especially useful for products like gaming or if you want to build a dedicated text, for example. So yeah, for that we built a new in-house client called Edge.
00:24:46
Speaker
So yeah, these are like some of the products which BondiCon works on. Great. And what does it take to work at a business like Polygon? Yeah, I think, again, as I said,
00:25:00
Speaker
Curiosity is very, very important. You need to be open to the idea of learning more about blockchain and Web3. And then the second step is, of course, learning more about the EBM ecosystem because Polygon is a core part of that. It was the first scaling solution for Ethereum as far as I know.
00:25:22
Speaker
Yeah, other than that, like, as I said, like, like any other startup, it's a small, it's a smallish company. So yeah, the execution is even now is more important than ever. And we're seeing at the moment, we're obviously seeing an increase in number of layer ones and layer twos enter the blockchain space.
00:25:48
Speaker
How can we evaluate which ones are needed and which ones are going to make it, going to stick around? What's your thoughts on that? Yeah, again, I mean, I usually try to stay away from these debates because see, I mean, as an industry, we need these solutions, right? I mean, because
00:26:10
Speaker
All of these complement the ecosystem in one way or the other. Just to give you an example, Aptos actually came up with this paper a while back which was around parallelizing EVM transactions. Polygon, POS took that paper and then we
00:26:29
Speaker
implemented that in-house and added more features on top of that. And then now we are working on deploying that within Polygon. So that will boost the scalability of Polygon peers by quite a lot. So yeah, we need this research for sure, which actually happens because there are multiple players, people who are actually trying to build within the SQL system.
00:26:53
Speaker
So yeah, I mean, there's definitely learnings involved from all of these ones. And just that, yeah, we just need to make sure that everyone is collaborating and then trying to grow the pie rather than just thinking about, you know, trying to win like a sub segment of the market. Okay. Now that makes sense. So essentially what you're saying is it doesn't necessarily matter if
00:27:21
Speaker
if any aren't needed or which ones aren't going to make it, which ones aren't, it's more around everything is needed because it drives innovation, right? Yeah, for sure. I mean, we are very early essentially in this. I mean, look at like overall market of web 2 compute and compared to that web 3 is a very small player, right? So we definitely need to grow the spy on board as many
00:27:44
Speaker
users as possible. And yeah, all this innovation and this research will definitely help when building a very, very strong horizontal platform on top of which, you know, the applications can be printed for the end users. Okay, great.
Future Ventures in Secure Data Access
00:28:05
Speaker
So you've actually left Polygon now, right? Fairly, fairly recently. Yeah, I quit this last month, yes. Yeah.
00:28:14
Speaker
to work on my own thing. Yes. Yeah, I was going to ask, what is it that you're that you're doing now? Obviously not putting your feet up. Yeah, so you're evaluating the data prominence space. So essentially, how do we get the data from the
00:28:32
Speaker
from the users in a secure and privacy preserving manner. So the objective here is to build the dataset for others to consume for their AI use cases or finance or, you know, like multiple use cases essentially. But the idea here is to provide a secure access to users' private data as a platform.
00:29:03
Speaker
while preserving the privacy of the end user. OK, so watch this space. So why did you leave, obviously, a fairly stable role in a large, well-known web3 company to launch your own thing? How did that happen? Why did that happen? I just wanted to get back to a 0 to 1 journey. I actually tried that before Polygon as well.
00:29:32
Speaker
I wanted to work on my own thing and then Polygon happened. I wanted to learn more about the industry and hence I joined Polygon. But yeah, it now seemed like the correct time to give that another shot. Yeah, just wanted to get back into the builder mode and just try to launch something of my own.
00:29:57
Speaker
Sounds interesting. Well, yeah, I'll definitely be keeping a close eye. And yeah, we'll be really interested to hear more when you're allowed to say. So in your opinion, then, what are some of the challenges which need to be overcome before we could get more users into Web3 or before blockchain does become more mainstream? Yeah, so I was recently part of A16's crypto startup school.
00:30:27
Speaker
Looking at the projects which are being built in that cohort, one thing I definitely realized is that we need to make UX as seamless as possible for users to onboard. So blockchain and crypto industry seem to be the only industry where we talk about the tech before we talk about the use cases.
00:30:50
Speaker
So which is very strange to me, because if you go back to the web2 world and look at the landing page of any up and coming startup, they usually start from the use cases. But here, the focus so far has been primarily on tech. I mean, use this product because it uses blockchain.
00:31:17
Speaker
usually a very good proposition for the end user. So we need to fix the use case, we need to define the use cases better. Account abstraction and some of the recent advancement in that area will definitely help.
00:31:31
Speaker
And I feel like the blockchain and this industry will become more mainstream at the stage where blockchain essentially has been abstracted away entirely. When the end users don't know that the product they are using, it uses blockchain underneath. That's when it will become mainstream. Yeah, I agree.
00:31:59
Speaker
I think about my parents when I say this. My parents, for example, won't necessarily understand the blockchain. They don't really want to know about the blockchain. They just want something that works and that allows them to achieve whatever they need to achieve. The underlying tech doesn't necessarily make a difference to them too much, to be honest. I've heard that a couple of times, to be honest.
00:32:24
Speaker
I think, yeah, the language that you used is definitely a barrier. Just on the user experience side of things, because this, again, is another hot topic, the user experience. Obviously, when email, let's just use email as an example, when email first came out, the user experience around sending an email was probably fairly awful. Obviously, over the last
00:32:50
Speaker
20 years to 30, whenever it might be. Obviously that's changed and evolved. Now it's something that's really seamless, easy to use. Do you think that there are, that people are focusing on maybe bigger problems around the actual functionality of the blockchain and things like that before they're looking at the user experience? Do you think there's bigger problems to solve first? Or do you think we should learn from past mistakes and fix the user experience?
00:33:20
Speaker
before we go any further along the journey? I don't think we need to choose at this stage. So if you think about it, we need the horizontal solutions which are being built right now. We need the scale. We need to reach at a point where
00:33:48
Speaker
making a credit card transaction versus making a transaction on Ethereum or like variance essentially in year two is should be should feel the same to the end user in terms of latency but also at the same time the the UX matters because
00:34:14
Speaker
Again, it depends on which user you're talking about, right? So let's talk about an insider of the industry. So definitely they will benefit from the first, right? And we need to serve those users because those are the core maneuvers. Also at the same time, if you need to bring a new user on board. So for them, I think the second makes more sense. And then first essentially has to be given for them, right? So yeah, I mean, we definitely need
00:34:43
Speaker
Okay, interesting. Because yeah, because I'm seeing more and more companies look at hiring user experience researchers or user experience designers, whatever it might be at much earlier stages. So I think there's some larger companies like Kraken and stuff like this, for example, who might not have hired their user experience team until maybe a year ago. But obviously they've been going for quite a while now, whereas I'm seeing more and more startups actually hire people
00:35:10
Speaker
when there are only five, six, seven people in, they're hiring someone in that user experience role. So yeah, definitely think that people are starting to really push user experience. Obviously, I guess it just takes a little while to trickle down into the products, right? Yeah, and also at the same time, the primitives need to be built. So the primitives are just not there.
00:35:35
Speaker
Primitives like session key, social recovery, which will be enabled by some of the recent AIPs. I think those need to be built, those need to be part of the protocol so that applications can essentially take advantage of that and then build on top of it. Okay, cool. So is there anything about the Web3 space that you would change?
00:36:03
Speaker
Yeah. That's quite a vague question.
Critique on Web3 Financialization and Personal Advice
00:36:06
Speaker
No, I think that is something which I definitely
00:36:11
Speaker
thought of when I started learning more about this industry. I mean, that's very primitive. I mean, that's very core of it. But then, yeah, hyper-financialization of this industry is something if I could change. That is something I would like to. I think a lot of people have started realizing this very recently that just launching a token and then hoping that as soon as it keeps going up, that means that your project is successful.
00:36:38
Speaker
That's definitely not the correct measure of PMF. So yeah, I mean, that definitely gives you a wrong signal that gives market a wrong signal. And also it brings in a different crowd, which you probably wouldn't want as your ideal customers. And also at the same time, I mean, from someone looking from the outside of the industry, that also gives a very different signal that
00:37:07
Speaker
I mean, these folks are not serious about solving the actual issues. So if that is one thing, if I could change in some way, yeah, I think that will definitely help the industry. I don't think you're alone in thinking that, to be honest. I think that's probably anyone building substantial things within the space.
00:37:33
Speaker
Yeah, the people I've talked to, people who have built very successful products and protocols in this space, if I ask them that, what would they change in their journey? I mean, the answer which I keep hearing is that they would defer launching a token as much as possible. Because that definitely didn't help them figuring out that, figuring out the PMF of the product
00:38:02
Speaker
It sort of like, it sort of like sidetracked them in terms of their journey and identifying the features to build and the products to launch. So yeah, I mean, different token launch is something which people would definitely want to do.
00:38:22
Speaker
Yeah, I think so, too. That's definitely a theme that's come out of having conversations with leaders in the space. Yeah, lots of people would try and take away that. How did they describe it? The moon boy approach, if you've heard that, where people are asking, when's the token going to moon? When moon, all this kind of stuff. Now I've been involved in and in plenty of communities in the Web3 space. And yeah, you do see parts of the community, all they're bothered about is
00:38:51
Speaker
when's the token going to make me rich? When's it going to hit however many dollars so that I can sell and retire? There's a huge proportion of communities which are like that. Obviously, you get the core community which love the products and love the vision and love the idea of the Web3 and this kind of stuff. But yeah, there's always that sour side of people complaining because the token hasn't hit X amount of money yet, whatever it might be. So as a leader,
00:39:21
Speaker
Yeah, so as a leader in Web3 then, overall, if you could sum it up, what advice would you give to people looking to follow in your footsteps? Oh, yeah, I mean, don't just follow in my footsteps. Figure out that what works best for you. Yeah, there are multiple paths to be successful in this industry. Definitely, I mean, figure out your own journey.
00:39:49
Speaker
Yeah, see, I mean, identify things which interest you personally, align best with your personality and then just go with that. Yeah. Great. And is there a piece of advice that you wish you'd have heard earlier in your career or is there a piece of advice that you'd like to tell yourself back when you first started knowing what you know now? Anything you'd say?
00:40:19
Speaker
Yeah, I just actually tweeted about that today. So there's this thing which I learned slightly late in my career is learning how to learn, which definitely, yeah. I mean, yeah, if I knew about how exactly, you know, like the output oriented approach works best in learning.
00:40:42
Speaker
that definitely would have helped me being more efficient in just jumping into new industry and starting fresh. There's this book which I would recommend. I can actually send a link also for that. It's called Ultra Learning. It essentially gives this approach that start with the end goal in mind, and then try to break it down into what you actually want to learn and then learn those specific.
00:41:10
Speaker
pieces. So what school and universities have done, sort of like they have conditioned us into learning everything about a particular subject and then go and build something around that, which I feel is very inefficient approach.
00:41:27
Speaker
I think starting top to bottom usually is very, very efficient. It helps you retain that knowledge more. So yeah, I mean that also applies to my
00:41:41
Speaker
learning in blockchain. So I started learning bottom-up, so that definitely took me a lot of time. But then when I switched to this approach where I was more output-oriented, that this is something which I want to build, right? And then what do I need to learn to get there? So yeah, that actually helped me accelerate my learning plus my execution quite a lot.
00:42:09
Speaker
OK, cool. But what was the name of that book again? Yeah, it's it's called Ultra Learning. If you look at my tweet today, I think I think I was. Yeah, brilliant. Perfect, we have. Thank you very much for taking the time to have a conversation today.
00:42:30
Speaker
I really enjoyed it. Obviously, you shared some brilliant insights and great advice. If people are watching or listening to this and they'd like to reach out to you to find out either more about what you're doing or any further advice or anything like that, are they okay? Is LinkedIn the best just to kind of send you a connection or drop you a tweet or what's best? Yeah, either LinkedIn or Twitter. I'm very active on LinkedIn.
00:42:55
Speaker
Okay, perfect. Well, I'll tag your LinkedIn and your Twitter when the podcast is launched in the comment section so that people can, yeah, log on and have a look. But yeah, thank you very much for your time. It was great to chat and I'll speak to you soon. Thanks, take care.