Web3 Talks: Stories & Tips from the Builders
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© Mac Budkowski
Description
Web3 Talks is a web3 podcast where founders of top crypto projects share the backstage perspective of their work and the lessons they learned along the way.
Join 1,500+ web3 founders, devs & operators who subscribe to Web3 Talks.
Hosted by Mac Budkowski.
Join 1,500+ web3 founders, devs & operators who subscribe to Web3 Talks.
Hosted by Mac Budkowski.
53 Episodes
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Henri is an ex-research scientist at Protocol Labs. He Co-Founded Privy, which provides web3 projects such as Friend.tech, t2 & Shibuya with seamless onboarding & embedded wallets.
In this episode, we dive into the early MVPs of Privy, learn how it works under the hood, how they managed to design such as smooth UX & more.
***
If you like high-quality crypto content, check out the project I co-founded: kiwinews.xyz
***
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 A few words of intro
01:56: Why Henri started working on Privy
06:02 The early days of Privy
11:37 How have they built their MVP
13:15 Why did they make a pivot despite having an interest in their product
15:41 Which features helped them to tip the scales
22:34 How Privy works under the hood
34:04 Most wallets were built with L1s in mind
37:23 How do embedded wallets work
48:24 What would happen with wallets if Privy went out of business
50:36 How do they acquire their users
53:24 What kind of metrics do they follow
57:59 How does the world look like if Privy fulfilled its mission
1:04:25 Where people can learn more about Privy
Collab.Land is a tool for managing web3 communities and bridging them to Discord and Telegram. It has already been used by 50k+ communities and 8M+ wallets.
Today we’re talking with Anjali Young, Co-Founder & CCO of Collab.Land, who shares their project’s story.
***
Follow Web3 Talks on Twitter:
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Check kiwinews - a portal with news & content for web3 builders co-founded by Mac:
https://kiwinews.xyz/
Reach out to Mac if you want to reach European devs:
mac at web3talks.xyz
***
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Teaser about Collab.Land's app marketplace
00:56 Intro
02:41 Abridge's first product, pivots & Collab.Land as a hackathon idea
06:48 Early days of Collab.Land during the COVID pandemic
12:07 How did they "sell" Collab.Land to communities
15:50 Cooperation with Axie Infinity
17:54 How they transitioned from a crypto-native tool to a mass-market tool
28:27 How they designed the marketplace and what kind of Collab.Land apps are already out there
35:51 What's their plan if Farcaster or Lens get more popular
40:07 Why they created their token, how they designed its airdrop and what's the utility
49:47 Biggest surprises when building Collab.Land
57:27 Where people can learn more about Collab.Land
Our Gitcoin Grants page: https://explorer.gitcoin.co/#/round/10/0x2871742b184633f8dc8546c6301cbc209945033e/0x2871742b184633f8dc8546c6301cbc209945033e-322
Web3 Talks is back!
Links I mentioned:
Library of web3 startup lessons:
https://goldmine3.xyz/
Web3 startup I'm building with my Co-Founder Tim:
https://kiwinews.xyz/
Mailchain is basically a web3 email. It provides a web app that lets you send your emails as if you used Gmail or Hotmail. But you send your emails via your wallet, ENS, Lens profile, and other identities you may use. Thanks to that and end-to-end encryption, your emails are 100% private.
Today we’re talking with Tim Boeckmann, Co-Founder & CEO of Mailchain, who shares their project’s story.
***
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***
TIMESTAMPS:
1:46 Origins of Mailchain
6:01 Why they didn’t decide to put emails on chain
7:56 How Mailchain works
11:51 How the first versions of Mailchain looked like
14:56 How they acquired their first users across NFT artists and collectors?
19:09 How is Mailchain different from XMTP?
25:20 How do they decide which protocols to integrate
28:14 How do they acquire new users now?
30:16 What’s the process for integrating a new partner?
31:59 How do they want to prevent SPAM?
36:02 What’s enclave computing?
38:07 How do they plan to prepare for a scale of billions of users?
41:39 How do they plan to monetize Mailchain?
44:25 What metrics do they follow?
48:28 Why it might be hard to connect your Mailchain email to Gmail
51:08 How would the world of communications look if Mailchain became a household name
56:05 What would Tim build if he wasn’t building Mailchain
1:00:00 Guests ideas
Zora is one of the most popular web3 tools, used by the biggest creators in the NFT space. What were its early days? How they acquired their first users? How have they organized the Base campaign that generated 700,000+ mints?
This and much more in our conversation with Dee Goens, Co-Founder & COO @ Zora.
***
Follow Web3 Talks on Twitter:https://twitter.com/web3talks/
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Mint free episode NFT (pls share your e-mail address so we can let you know when it gets utility!): https://web3talks.xyz/nfts/
***
TIMESTAMPS:
0:58 Who is Dee Goens, why they started building Zora with Jacob and Tyson and what was the first Zora MVP
05:50 What were the hardest trade-offs at an early stage?
7:18 How they solved their dilemma between staying 100% on-chain and taking care of good UX?
10:46 How Zora acquired their first users?
14:42 How many people work at Zora now?
16:10 How they organized their teams?
18:26 Why they decided to work on a marketplace, NounsDAO builder & API?
20:48 How did they set up a Base campaign that generated 700,000+ mints?
26:01 How does their cooperation with brands look?
33:19 Are they planning Zora Academy for NFT creators?
34:27 Why they invested in Zine, which is a pretty old school content tactic?
40:42 How does Zora acquire new collectors and artists?
47:51 How they want the creator’s life to look in 2030?
54:07 Why they changed their fee structure from 5% for primary sales to a flat fee?
56:58 Mint market share, number of collectors, and other metrics Zora follows
58:32 What would Dee build if he wasn’t building Zora?
1:00:00 What would he fix with his web3 magic wand?
1:02:15 Where can people learn more about Zora?
XMTP is one of the leading web3 messaging protocols. What were the early days of this project? What web3 native features they developed How they built a developer community around their protocol? How did they start handling DMs on Lens?
This and much more in our conversation with Matt Galligan, Co-Founder & President @ XMTP.
***
Follow Web3 Talks on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/web3talks/
Get 15% off your EpicWeb3 conference tickets by using the WEB3TALKS code:https://www.epicweb3.com/
Mint free episode NFT (pls share your e-mail address so we can let you know when it gets utility!):
https://web3talks.xyz/nfts/
***
TIMESTAMPS:
01:48 Why they built XMTP
07:45 What were the early days of XMTP?
10:11 How they acquired their first users?
15:00 How XMTP built a partnership with Lenster?
17:07 How does XMTP work?
20:08 What were the hardest tradeoffs in the early days?
25:57 What web3-native features does XMTP have?
32:29 What’s conditional deliverability?
35:29 What are the most interesting apps built on top of XMTP?
40:03 Why most wallets still haven’t integrated DMs?
43:17 Let’s say it’s 2030 - how does web3 messaging look?
48:47 Most important metrics and factors for XMTP?
50:15 How do they track developers’ happiness?
50:52 Biggest surprises when building XMTP?
52:57 What would Matt fix about web3 with his magic wand?
54:24 What would Matt build if he wasn’t building XMTP?
57:07 Where you can learn more about XMTP
Julien has been building tools for membership NFTs since 2018, long before the NFT boom. What were the early days of the NFT market? How dogfooding helped them to acquire their first users? How they organized ticketing with Unlock for EthCC? What they've learned from running a DAO program?
This and more in our conversation with Julien Genestoux, Founder & CEO @ Unlock Protocol.
***
Follow Web3 Talks on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/web3talks/
Get 15% off your EpicWeb3 conference tickets by using the WEB3TALKS code:https://www.epicweb3.com/
Mint free episode NFT (pls share your e-mail address so we can let you know when it gets utility!):
https://web3talks.xyz/nfts/
***
TIMESTAMPS
0:59 Who is Julien Genestoux and what does Unlock Protocol do
3:21 Julien's experience with RSS & Medium
5:42 Early Unlock MVPs
7:56 How does NFT expiration work?
9:13 How they've been educating people about NFTs since 2018
14:37 How Unlock acquired their first users?
16:32 How they came up with the idea of rebranding NFTs
17:48 What's their process of coming up with UX-friendly solutions like wallet-less airdrops
21:56 Message from OrangeDAO
23:17 How their ticketing partnership with EthCC worked
27:55 Why crypto subscriptions aren't widely adopted yet
32:34 How they transformed part of their operations into a DAO
38:24 What have they learned from running a Grants program
43:02 How they managed their token's value dropping during the bear market
45:58 What kind of metrics do they follow
47:49 How they world of memberships would look like if Unlock succeeded
49:49 Biggest surprises when building Unlock
52:12 What would he build if he wasn't building Unlock
53:42 Where you can learn more about Unlock
53:56 Guests ideas
Stefan George is one of the most OG builders in the space. How was it building on Ethereum in 2014? Why they pivoted from their initial idea? How an ICO inspired them to build Safe? Why it later transformed into a DAO? How Gnosis Chain became the #2 most decentralized chain in the space? And why you used it without even knowing it?
This and more in our conversation with Stefan George, Co-Founder & CTO of Gnosis.
***
Follow Web3 Talks on Twitter:
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Meet Stefan at the EpicWeb3 conference and get 15% off your tickets by using the WEB3TALKS code:https://www.epicweb3.com/
Mint free episode NFT (pls share your e-mail address so we can let you know when it gets utility!):
https://web3talks.xyz/nfts/
***
TIMESTAMPS
0:38 What’s Gnosis and how Stefan started working on it
3:28 Why it was hard to build on Ethereum in 2014 and how sharing the office with Ethereum Foundation helped them to keep up with the chain's development
5:18 Why they pivoted from building prediction markets and how multi-sig got designed to help with managing funds from ICOs
9:40 What was Safe’s MVP, and how have they been taking care of the UX to make it usable for as many people as possible
12:55 First users who haven’t even contacted the Gnosis team before they started their product
14:25 Why have they spun off such a popular product as Safe to a SafeDAO and how did it look
19:51 Why have they decided to bet on their own chain, and how does Gnosis Chain work
25:08 How Gnosis Chain got to 140k validators and became the #2 most decentralized chain in the space
28:00 What’s the geographical mix of the Gnosis Chain ecosystem
29:04 Three great apps DeFi that have been built on Gnosis Chain
36:00 Which of these apps can you use today
40:01 What are the most important metrics for the Gnosis Chain project
42:38 What zk & privacy capabilities they’re working on
47:06 What surprised Stefan the most during these 10+ years of building in crypto?
50:33 What would Stefan George build if the wasn’t building Gnosis
53:20 What would Stefan fix with his web3 magic wand?
57:48 What are Stefan’s favorite web3 projects?
1:00:00 Where can you learn more about Gnosis?
1:01:38 Stefan’s guests' ideas
Mint "Genesis Talk" here:
https://zora.co/collections/0xf66f4e9667edb65fd7306c0711cb8fe66450419e
Alex has been building Rarible since 2019, when most people haven't even heard about NFTs. What were the industry's early days? Why slick design helped them to acquire the first users? How did issuing a token change how they operate (and why they weren't ready for that)? How do they plan to compete in a market dominated by OpenSea, Blur & LooksRare? Relax and listen to our in-depth conversation.
***
If you want to buy tickets for the EpicWeb3 conference in Lisbon, check out: https://www.epicweb3.com/ and use the WEB3TALKS promo code to get a 15% discount.
***
Follow the pod:
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Follow Alex & Mac:
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https://twitter.com/MacBudkowski
***
0:40 EpicWeb3 promo code
1:48 What's Rarible and what role they plan in the NFT space
2:46 How trading experiences & building exchange products inspired Alex to start Rarible with his Co-Founders in 2019
7:47 What were the early days of Rarible & how being specific helped them to design the first MVP - NFT form
10:42 How having a slick website & curating the best content helped them to acquire their first users back when NFTs were much less popular
14:00 Why from November 2019 to Summer 2020, growing Rarible was a smooth sailing
16:10 How NFT & DeFi summer resulted in 30X volume growth in 3 months
17:50 How issuing a $RARI token opened the company to a community and why they were not ready to operate that way
20:14 How they reorganized their community-centric operations in 3 iterations to focus and work more efficiently
23:34 How they plan to compete in an NFT market dominated by OpenSea, LooksRare & Blur
28:47 How Rarible acquires NFT marketplace users
29:47 Why Rarible is a strong promoter of creators' royalties
33:42 What metrics do they follow in trading & protocol businesses
34:55 How communities provide liquidity to their own NFT marketplaces
36:33 What are Alex’s favorite NFT collections
38:24 Why the web3 UX might be a feature, not a bug
41:57 Why having to learn something new can be fun!
42:52 Why would Alex build social apps if he wasn’t buildwasn'trible
46:33 Why Alex would fix coordination
47:20 Where to learn more about Rarible
48:05 Guests ideas from Alex
Huddle01 quickly became the leading web3 audio/video communication toolkit. How it all started? What helped them acquire 16k+ users? Why they're so excited about Stage 3 of their development plans? Ayush Ranjan, Co-Founder & CEO of Huddle01, shares a deep backstage perspective of their company.
***
If you want to buy tickets for the EpicWeb3 conference in Lisbon, check out: https://www.epicweb3.com/ and use the WEB3TALKS promo code to get a 15% discount.
***
Follow the pod:
https://twitter.com/web3talks
Follow Ayush & Mac:
https://twitter.com/ranjan3118
https://twitter.com/MacBudkowski
TIMESTAMPS:
00:38 Special announcement & promo code
2:13 What is Huddle01, what problems does it solve, and how it started thanks to a hackathon
6:58 Why the name "Huddle01"?
7:40 Why they wanted to target the education market, and why they pivoted to a crypto-native audience
9:28 How login via MetaMask & NFT avatars helped them to acquire their first users
12:50 How token-gated meetings helped them to accelerate growth
14:10 How Pudgy Penguins use Huddle01
15:29 What was the process for developing Android & iOS apps & why was the UX challenging
18:10 How long has it taken to build web & mobile apps, and what was the process
20:01 Why they started with a Huddle01 app and now expand to SDK that helps to integrate audio/video chat in other apps and the upcoming Real-Time Communications protocol
25:10 Why is documentation the cornerstone of DevRels, and what's their approach to hackathons, rewarding devs & building micro-communities
28:00 Why it's important to promote your own tech team among developers instead of giving the job to marketers
29:30 Why "minutes spent on meetings "is their most important metric, and what other things do they track
34:22 How Huddle01 Real-Time Communications Protocol can replace AWS & Google Cloud
39:05 Since Zoom is already facing strong competition from Google & Microsoft, how is Huddle01 planning to compete in the long run
42:40 What surprised Ayush the most during the development of Huddle01
45:45 What 4 layers of web3 projects would Ayush consider if he wasn't building Huddle01?
46:53 What are his favorite projects?
49:15 What would he fix with his web3 magic wand
49:48 Where people can learn more about Huddle01
Colin Armstrong has been in crypto since 2011 and has spent years working at Coinbase and Google. He built Paragraph to create a more neutral and web3-friendly alternative to Substack. The project has already amassed 5k+ creators and 100k+ subscribers, and Colin shares how they made it happen.
>>> Never miss an episode and check how Paragraph works in practice by subscribing to our newsletter: https://paragraph.xyz/@kanfa <<<
TIMESTAMP:
0:38 How to make sure you get info about the new web3 talks episodes
1:27 Why Paragraph is a great example of web2.5 Substack
2:22 How Colin’s experience at mining Bitcoin in 2011, building decentralized Kickstarter in 2014, working at Coinbase with the founder of Litecoin, spending 5 years at Google, and being dissatisfied with Substack led him to build Paragraph
13:37 What were the most interesting Paragraph use cases Colin has seen so far
16:24 How do they manage to ship features so fast, and why waitlist doesn’t make sense in most products
19:40 How do they decide what to include on their roadmap
21:12 Why they’ve been integrating with web3 social and how it works in practice
23:17 How they acquired their first 10 users via cold outreach on Twitter, and why they didn’t implement any crypto functionalities in v1
25:16 What they’ve been doing to acquire 5k+ users and how they used the market situation to their advantage
28:40 How do they measure success in their product and why just looking at the number of writers or readers wouldn’t work
30:34 What do they do to protect newsletters from landing in the spam box
33:09 What are their plans for integrating wallets and why is infra not ready for it yet
36:43How does wallets x Paragraph x Farcaster integration work technically and why do they use Searchcaster
39:20 How a developer built a streaming payment with Superfluid on top of Paragraph without needing any permission
40:51 How getting developers to build on top of their APIs was easier than he thought
44:13 Why choosing the right feature set for their niche was so hard and why web3 UX & e-mail limitations led to design challenges
47:10 What would Colin build if he wasn’t building Paragraph
50:00 Why would he get rid of airdrop hunters and speculators with his web3 magic wand and add new useful dapps with great UX
52:33 Colin’s favorite web3 projects (spoiler alert: he mentions Farcaster)
56:00 Where can you learn more about Paragraph
57:01 What other builders would be a great fit for the podcast
SimpleHash is one of the most powerful NFT APIs in the space. It's being used by wallets, portfolio trackers & web3 games. Olly Wilson came to the pod to share the backstage perspective of their ultra fast growth.
Timestamps:
0:38
What is SimpleHash
1:39
How their Co-Founder got tired of building back-end infra for an NFT project and decided to start SimpleHash
2:47
Why is indexing NFTs across many chains so hard?
5:25
How being in YC helped them to acquire first users
6:22
Why they ditched the idea of an NFT search tool
7:10
What's their process for supporting and integrating new chains
9:34
Why do they go very deep into NFT data and specialize to compete with other NFT APIs
11:40
How do they solve the corrupted media problems in NFTs
12:37
How they designed the NFT Spam Score to protect wallets from unsolicited and scammy airdrops
15:11
What are their most important metrics?
16:20
Why is everyone on their team involved in customer support, and how do they decide what features to implement?
19:20
Why Olly likes the OG NFT projects
20:50
Olly's thoughts on utility NFTs
21:55
Why joining YC was worth it
23:35
What growth & tech challenges do they see on the horizon?
24:49
How do they take care of their business's infra side, and why is 850M indexed NFTs still a small dataset?
26:00
What would he build if he weren't building SimpleHash?
26:20
Why removing the scams would be the target of his magic wand?
27:00
Why Ethereum Merge is the most mind-blowing project that Olly has seen
28:26
Why he likes the crypto twitter's dark humor
29:20
Where to find out more about SimpleHash
0xFrens is a matchmaking tool used by web3 communities such as: Developer DAO, Jericho & Skylab. Gilbert - Co-Founder of the project - spent almost a decade at Google, then started his social podcasting startup, and in 2022, he started working on 0xFrens with the rest of the AGMI team.
0:37 What’s 0xFrens, and how it helps communities to build relationships between members
1:40 How talking with communities & DAOs inspired them to start 0xFrens
4:30 What has Gilbert been doing at Google for almost ten years & what was his previous social podcasting startup about
5:25 How 0xFrens plays into web3 strengths, what was their MVP, and why they pivoted
7:17 What insights from users surprised them, and how they iterated based on this information
9:05 Why online coffee chats can be awkward and how 0xFrens addresses that
12:15 How they acquired their first users and how they do it (and why “web3 lunch club” wasn’t a good idea)
14:35 What metrics do they follow to track product engagement, and why does choosing the right community to work with matter the most
17:54 How Kudos might become important for building a reputation in a community
22:08 Which lessons from Google & previous startup are the most useful
25:30 Why the biggest growth & tech challenges on the horizon are related to web2 users
27:10 Why solving reputation-related challenges is omnipresent both in web2 and web3
28:08 Why it’s so hard to face market feedback and make decisions based on the data
31:45 Why would Gilbert build onboarding-related tools if he wasn’t building 0xFrens
33:08 Why would he fix seed phrases with his web3 magic wand
34:57 Why web3 ecosystem is so mind-blowing
38:24 What made him smile while using 0xFrens
39:33 Where you can learn more about 0xFrens
40:31 Guests ideas
PWN is a decentralized pawnshop where you can use any tokens as collateral. But it’s just the beginning. Their ultimate goal is to provide crypto loans for decades so that you will never need to sell your crypto. I spoke with Josef, PWN’s Co-Founder, who shared their story, challenges & growth strategies.
TIMESTAMPS:
0:38 PWN as a decentralized pawnshop
1:35 How not being able to get a mortgage & risk of DeFi liquidations inspired Josef to start PWN
9:30 Why they decided to give more protection to borrowers by not baking up loan liquidations from the start
13:43 How do they plan to implement filtering to protect the tool from SPAM offers while still keeping the platform open
17:31 How they designed their smart contract to support ERC20, ERC721 & ERC1155 tokens
19:16 Why it’s so hard to develop everything in a crypto-native manner, and they decided to make some shortcuts at this stage
21:10 How they acquired their first users and how they expanded from the friends & family stage by breaking the “stay focused” rule and cooperating with other communities
25:30 How will their tech let GameFi players borrow money on their in-game assets and still use them in the game
27:08 How they let you borrow money to buy NFT assets in a mortgage-like manner
29:19 Most interesting collaterals on PWN - Nation3 DAO, Aavegotchis & Beeple’s $250k art piece
31:40 Trade-offs: openness vs. niche, utilizing third parties vs. decentralized operations
32:50 Why would Josef stay at EF if he wasn’t building PWN
33:30 Why MakerDAO blew his mind
35:20 Why would he make all grifters disappear with his web3 magic wand
37:55 Where should people go to learn more about PWN
39:00 Guests ideas
Zerion is one of the OG crypto companies, operating since 2016. It started as a tool to do fundraising through token sales. Then it transformed into a DeFi exploration tool where you could track & invest in different assets. Then it expanded into NFTs & other web3 assets. And a few months ago, they also joined the wallet space and already got 80k+ users.
What inspired them to start? Why they made so many pivots? And why they're confident that they can compete in a hard wallet space? I spoke with Evgeny, Zerion's Co-Founder, who shared the backstage perspective of the last 6 years of running Zerion.
TIMESTAMPS:
0:38 What’s Zerion and why they pivoted a lot since 2016
2:20 Evgeny experience at Google, with chatbots and with a crypto trading app that got 1M+ downloads
3:59 Why meeting Vitalik inspired them to start Zerion
6:10 How they started as a smart contract developers’ team
7:10 Why the 2019 bear market prompted them to pivot to build a token tracking aggregator
8:30 How a blog post about fundraising inspired them to go to San Francisco to earn funding and get the first users
10:33 Why they entered the aggregators & wallets space, and why are these markets less crowded than Mac thinks
14:05 Why there are so few wallets on the market and why the timing is so important
16:45 Which use cases do they cover with their wallet
19:05 How they designed the wallet so it’s useful both for beginners and more advanced users (Web3 Citizens)
20:52 What was the hardest part about making the wallet multi-chain
21:47 How they want to battle MetaMask and why web3 helps them to do it
25:22 What web3-native marketing tactics such as NFT collections and community-building let them acquire tens of thousands of users
28:32 How does their NFT collection that changes based on your wallet activity work
30:45 Why on-chain information can be a goldmine for marketers
33:42 The vision behind their API, why it’s been used by Rainbow Wallet and StakeDAO, and why having it centralized might be okay
36:05 Why wallet can become an e-mail on steroids
38:19 Why open architecture of web3 makes it better for users
39:35 Why building the wallet was the hardest decision Evgeny had to make while running Zerion
40:45 What would Evgeny build if he wasn’t building Zerion
41:25 Why would he fix privacy with his magic web3 wand
42:25 Which web3 projects he found interesting
45:40 Where to learn more about Zerion
46:30 Ideas for other web3 builders
Moralis joined a pretty crowded web3 infra market in 2020, and it's already become an important player serving projects such as MetaMask and Polygon. How did they do it? I talk with Ivan, Moralis Co-Founder, who shares the backstage perspective of their last 2 years.
If you don't want to miss our episodes, subscribe to our Substack and get an e-mail whenever the new episode comes out: https://web3talks.substack.com/
TIMESTAMPS:
0:38 Who is Ivan & Moralis, and what got him interested in blockchain
3:52 How their web2 experience inspired them to start Moralis
4:40 Why they entered a crowded infrastructure space with many already established players such as Alchemy, Infura & QuickNode
7:25 Why it’s hard to bootstrap infrastructure business and how they leveraged their online education platform to grow it
9:29 How not thinking too much helped them to start and grow
11:29 How their SDK & APIs help developers to better understand on-chain events
14:51 Why their onboarding process has quite a lot of friction
17:50 How they build strong relations with developers via free education, hackathons & Discord
20:27 How their YouTube channel & hackathon helped to acquire their first users
21:30 How they managed to grow the 100% remote company from 0 to 90+ people in 2 years
24:44 How being upfront about their way of working helped them to recruit the right people
27:08 Why cutting down features was hard and what they learned on the way
28:44 How do they decide what to include in their SDKs
29:48 What does he think about centralization risks by using centralized infrastructure
34:03 Why team building was the biggest lesson he learned from running Moralis
37:45 What would he fix about web3 with the magic wand
39:40 What has been the most interesting project he has seen
42:26 Why craziness of the crypto industry makes Ivan laugh
44:14 Where to learn more about Moralis
44:32 Guest ideas
![Mac Budkowski, Host @ Web3 Talks | How to explain what your web3 product does and convince users to try it [Builder’s Guide]](https://d3t3ozftmdmh3i.cloudfront.net/production/podcast_uploaded_episode400/19271842/19271842-1668367863325-59d3d1420c198.jpg "Mac Budkowski, Host @ Web3 Talks | How to explain what your web3 product does and convince users to try it [Builder’s Guide]")
Hey everyone, today I got the info about something I've been working on for a long time.
Twitter link (all Likes & RTs much appreciated!):
https://twitter.com/MacBudkowski/status/1587525519398129665?s=20&t=6erYSQKMxrLJMJGD6POfXg
Website link:
https://macbudkowski.com/how-to-explain-web3-products/
Web3 Talks Substack:
https://web3talks.substack.com/
Dan Romero was employee #20 at Coinbase. After helping to build the company for 5 years, he left Coinbase in 2019 to build an alternative to Twitter with his Coinbase colleague, Varun Srinivasan. This idea transformed into Farcaster - a web3 social network that has become a go-to place for the crypto community in the last few months.
TIMESTAMPS:
00:38 What is Farcaster
1:20 How Dan Romero became employee #20 at Coinbase and what he learned about crypto, and why he left in 2019
4:32 Why RSS lost and how Farcaster started as RSS+
6:56 Farcaster as a Twitter for crypto people, sufficient decentralized social network, why it’s great for users and developers, and what are parallels to crypto exchanges
12:23 What’s so unique about their user onboarding process, and which parts have been inspired by Coinbase
19:00 How permissionless building inspired the community to build a bot to make onboarding greater
20:25 Why they went for slow growth… just like Facebook
22:44 Why are they more interested in Daily Active Users than sign-up growth
26:29 Special moments that Farcaster delivers and how they designed the app to facilitate them
30:00 Why they don’t have quote tweets
34:15 What apps have already been built on top of Farcaster
37:00 Why developers should be able to create new social experiences
38:39 History of pseudonymous co-creators of the US Constitution
40:00 Why does the growing amount of data inspire people to build apps on top of Farcaster
42:45 How web3 social makes it much easier to start a new social app
45:52 How does Farcaster works technically, and how it’s similar to Domain Name System
51:11 Why they gathered FC developers on Telegram instead of Discord
52:45 What’s the 6 months plan for Farcaster, and what’s their 3 years vision
55:50 How switching clients would help people to “build their own Facebook”
58:24 Where people can learn more about Farcaster
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