This is episode episode 458 with guest Preeti Castle ready. Welcome to epicenter to show which talks about the Technologies projects and people, driving T centralization and blockchain Revolution. My name is Brian Crane and today I'm going to speak with Preeti Cassie ready. She has been in the Crypt space for a long time. She writes an excellent newsletter that I've been reading for a while and his son a bunch of different stuff I guess. Most significantly at the moment
is that camp? Which is it going to be? Will for web three developers, but before we get into the episode, just a quick announcement. So we are hiring. So, we're looking for Community manager, for epicenter to help us grow our audience and take epicenter to the next level. So if you're interested in crypto and creating great content, we want to hear from you, it would be great if you apply. So it's going to be a link for how to apply in the show notes.
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Yeah, having a newborn. It's like, oh, wait. I think I want to be free that our and it's like, never mind. He needs you right now. So, yeah. But thanks for your patience if you, she ate it. Yeah, no, no. I have now had quite a few friends Friends have babies, and I think sort of witness witness from afar a little bit, the the unique challenges that come with that. Yeah, awesome, cool. So well it's maybe we can start just hears it.
Sheriff is a bit like how did you how did you get into crypto? And like what is your and what was your kind of initial journey into this space? Space. Yeah, I would say if I when I kind of came into the space, dabbled into the space on and off in the beginning. So I was working at Andreessen Horowitz on the I was on the deal team, they're really have a crypto team back then because this was like, way back in 2013, 2014, but I witnessed Chris Dixon making the investment in coinbase.
And I remember him being super excited about coinbase. Him and Mark kind of like, you know, like kind of selling the firm on why coin basis is a great investment and I didn't really understand it at that time, I was like, what is this
crypto thing? It's like a big because going this was like a Bitcoin wallet and I had no idea what the hell they were what that even meant and why that's a big deal and then Balaji joined a 16z and then he was also very crypto, you know, Enthusiast. And I remember him telling me to read the Bitcoin white paper because it's going to To change the world and, you know, like I read it and was interesting, but it didn't really catch my attention at the time.
So I got some exposure to a 16v. But I wouldn't say like, that's when I got into the space and then after I left a 60 MV, I taught myself how to code and then I was trying to figure out what I want to do afterwards and I remember asking prediction for advice and he's like you should join an industry that's growing and the two industries that are really growing right now are like machine learning. Krypto, although machine learning was very saturated at the time.
And so crypto felt very nascent and I was like, okay and then I looked at sort of like, what crypto companies are even available and coinbase was like one of them and so I got in touch with them and did a few interviews and long story, sir, I got an offer there. And so I was and then I got an offer at several other tech companies that are doing really
cool things. I should try and decide what I want to do and ultimately Lately, I chose coinbase and the reason it was going to be, it was not because it was like a company. It wasn't because I was like, sold on crypto yet. It was because I just really liked Brian. I like tried. I liked the team. The engineering team at coinbase. I felt like they were very like, quirky and weird and doing something different, that no one
else was doing. So, like, for you to be in crypto, in 2013, 2014, I think you have to be kind of weird. Like, you weren't like a normal person that was going to join clean days. And Be excited about it, right? So it was like a bunch of like, really cool. Quirky people who were like together and they were very, very, very mission-oriented from day one. And Ryan kind of did that very intentionally where he hired people who were like, super, super passionate.
But crypto, if you want passion about crypto, you want a drink joining coinbase. So I joined and I honestly loved it. I learned so much from the people there and I was not even doing crypto.
Cheering I was doing like react development so I was doing like love development at Point base because obviously putting this is not a, you know, decentralized company but still like I was learning a lot and I still wouldn't say like I wasn't like I was in like deep into the space because again I was doing web development, I'd clean base, it wasn't until I after love coinbase, that I started to like, dabble into etherium
development. So I heard you, I learned like solidity smart contract development, Then I had worked for like a small, I co company which went bust, which was
embarrassing. And like I thought, like I was like working on something super cool and lady, you know, everyone at the time was like, super optimistic, about all these different projects and so was I, and I ended up joining one and ended up being a complete failure, but I learned a lot in the process, I learned about my contract development. I learned about the space. I learned really really deeply about ethereum. Like I went, I decided to go.
Ali deep into the appearing rabbit hole because the main reason was because I just really love the community and sure you can attest to this like in the early days, it didn't Community was so strong. So passionate, I mean, they still are. It was one of the most like entrenched passionate Global communities. And I just really like that. So I decided to just learn about etherium. And that's how I got into this base. I got really obsessed with the darien, like, I just really found it.
Interesting, how the whole block chain work, how their consensus were tell, State Management, worked how absolutely work like actually, like programming and solidity. And that's kind of how I got into it, and then I just kept going and learning about different things. Let me about things like Kosmos, and I met sake, and people like that. And so I kept going deeper down into a space and then eventually, obviously, I started my own company and crypto, so, yeah, that was kind of my entry.
Yeah, I remember I think one of your articles, you wrote this long article about etherium know, sort of like yeah. Kind of detail work. Yeah. Yeah. That I think was like widely read. And I kind of skimmed it. I think I never like fully read it but at least I remembered articles. Yeah. Yeah. That was a very viral article that just explain how it there in worked. Um, in a very like detailed and intricate way. So yep. Yeah, and so true story.
I remember true story because I was working on Cosmos and I was sort of, you know, like I guess you were one of the, you know, early projects that started building on Cosmos. I think one of the specially we project that race like from like Venture capitalists. What was kind of the impetus for you back then? To say, Okay, I want to start my own company or my, you know, own crypto Network.
To be totally honest, I would say someone else actually decided for me. And what I mean by that is after I love claim base, I was just kind of doing random smart contract work for different companies and then my seed investor, she found out, you know, kind of a free bird and I was exploring things. And she reached out and she's like, hey, like if you want to start a company, like I'll find you. And that's how it started. I didn't even have a company name.
I didn't have a company formed like nothing. It was just like me. And actually the the company name was like, creepy Castle, ready LLC when she gave me the sea check because I just I didn't I didn't know what I was going to even build. She just thought I was a smart person and she wanted to find me to go do something interesting.
That's how I kind of how it started, and then I just started exploring different things that I probably spaces that I was interested in. I couldn't imagine doing something outside of crypto because I've already spent so much time invested in crypto, by that point, that I was just mostly focused on doing something.
And in the computer space, I just wasn't sure where I would, what I want to do. And then the things that should I start to really gravitate towards were like identity and reputation type things like using like using tokens to kind of build, some kind of identity a reputation later on the blockchain. Pleasure going deep into that
rabbit hole. And then, you know, true story, kind of emerged out of that where we were trying to build a social network where you can use the token to, basically, curate the truth quote-unquote and you kind of build your reputation identity based on how good you are at curating truth as well as extending to making truthful statements. So yeah, that's kind of how And then we hired a bunch of people and we worked on it for two years.
It didn't work out in the end. We shut the company down in 2020 but it was definitely a really, really fun and important learning experience. I think we were one of the early people who actually went pretty far deep into the rabbit hole of trying to use this token to build a social network and reputation system. Most people kind of just Shrugged it off as possible problem but we actually spent two years really, really going deep.
And so I would say we learned a lot and the takeaway from that was I felt like we were a little bit too early to the market. I felt that there were so many things that we want to test with the market but the market wasn't ready for it. Meaning like you know getting tokens weren't mainstream like if we had built something like that today maybe people would be more Don't even try using the product for back then.
In 2018 the idea of downloading a wallet to you the social network app with the token like you know building a social network on its own is hard to building social network with the token was like, 100 times hard. They were just like a lot of things that I felt like we're too early. So I think tokens aren't mainstream yet and then, secondly, the infrastructure was not there yet. Like we were using Cosmos and kind of build on Cosmos because it's more scalable Than if they're IAM.
But even still like, there are just so many bottlenecks to that and like the idea that users have to go through a worse experience and they're used to and web to was not like acceptable or accepted yet because I again like this is before defy even started. This is before and I've teased and people started to accept this poor ux as a way, as a way to do things because they can make money and be on the other
end. Like At that time like he had a poor ux is like why would people even use you? So yeah, we just ran into a lot of different challenges that I felt like timing timing is definitely everything for a start-up and we were definitely not the right time for it. Yeah. So I guess you mentioned a whole bunch of like issues that came up and maybe I'm curious.
Like if you sort of think in terms of, you know, what a little lessons and learnings from it that you would like try to generalize and they're like it going forward you know and in other contexts in other situations, you know, they would sort of shape in how you'd approach things what are those is that this timing on and can you go a little bit deeper there and what else is there? I think in hindsight II in as a first time entrepreneur I think someone had a tree on this.
I forget who I think was just in Khan. He's had a tree along the lines of like first time Founders. Focus on products like a time for our Founders focus on Market. I think that's very, very true, like at the first time founder, I probably spent six months to a year, trying to build like the right product. But in hindsight now that I'm building other companies, they the Thing I do is test the market.
Like I can, we can build, I can hire great engineers and build a great product if I can validate the market. So that's one huge learning for me, it's like flip the flip. The order of how you do things, like make sure there's a market for rebuilding and then build something.
And you know, like the other thing is I thought I was doing it or a development and building an MVP, but I think as a first-time founder, we spent way too much time getting that first product out the door and not Like really stopping down to a true MVP. There's like, founder ish entrepreneur type first time, founder lessons kind of that I can go into, but those are the two big ones.
It's like not valid in the market and not having fast, iteration Cycles. In terms of like, just crypto related, learnings, I would say, 2018 again, the infrastructure was just too early to build any kind of user facing up. We needed. We were in that cycle like Fred Fred Wilson talks about the app infrastructure cycle, right? Like first, a lot of people build infrastructure and then once that infrastructure is built entrepreneurs, go in and build applications on top of that.
And then those obligations reach a limit and then we As we have to build infrastructure to to meet those requirements, we go back to building infrastructure and then we build more apps. And then we hit limits and then we build infrastructure.
We kind of go through these Loops, I would say, 2018 2019 was probably more of an infrastructure time prayer, time frame, where people were really focus on building like more scalable blockchains better, but cheaper, block chains and things like that so that they can be more user-friendly. And that's why You saw the wave of like defy and if teeth happened in the last like in the last type cycle, and then we hit the limit on that as well. And now people are continuing to
build infrastructure. So, yeah, I would say timing was not the best. In 2018, another learning about crypto is that like I think in my in terms of my team because it was 2018 because it was a bear market like the people, I hired they I wouldn't say they were I don't think they were like 100% crypto native. And in some ways it was a good thing as a good thing because they challenge me and they're like why would you please her like why would people do things
this way? But the kind of it was that it was really hard to get them to like true. Embrace a crypto native product. And so I in hindsight I wonder if we had like everyone on the team who was like truly crypto native, would we have booked something more different? Something that was actually usable etcetera. Yeah. I'll think of more but those are kind of some of the things that come to mind. But yeah like I mean I think as a second time founder you just
do things so much differently. I just I feel like if I had the knowledge Is that I have now. Like maybe we could have been successful. I want to talk a little bit about your so you newsletter right. So I've been I've been I think on subscribe to newsletter for
quite a long time. Probably a lot of listeners have, you know, are aware of it as well, but tell us a little bit, like, how did you end up starting a newsletter and what's, what's kind of the role of the newsletter and writing in general, in sort of your own journey and especially around learning? Because I think that's that's that feels to me like this big weaker Team that like kind of
weaves through what you doing and what you writing. yeah, I mean I have always just been A good writer. And I don't mean to like bribe, but like I do, I did I just enjoy writing because I find writing is a very, very powerful way to articulate and and form your own thought, patterns, and, and sort of crystallized. What you think, you know, I find that if I try to learn something and I don't write about it, I
actually don't learn anything. Like, I haven't really truly learned it. It's only when I written something about it. I feel like I've really tested oh my god of the gaps in my knowledge because as soon as I put pen to paper and you start to realize like what you actually don't know. So that's kind of why I started writing is because like as I was learning programming. So when I'm teaching myself, programming writing, goes away to kind of test what I knew and test for those learning.
And I just started writing blogs every week and and writing about different technologies that related to JavaScript and stuff and it kind of continued. Doing that in my early days of crypto and that's how I built an audience and so forth. And so the newsletter now is just honestly, just a fun way to interact with my audience and my audience is kind of pretty
broad. I have people in crypto, but I also have people on my newsletter who are who follow me from my like, JavaScript days, or from my Instagram, or just like, in different things. I'm interested in like Fitness food, like, These different interests that I've kind of built up over time. People kind of follow me for
different reasons. So my list is kind of diverse and I don't write just about crypto, I write if I feel like writing about my life or something related to have different, think how completely outside of crypto, I'll write about it and I think people do find that interesting because even though it's not a crypto topic, most people can relate to what I write about. But yeah, like II and I don't
like I do now. Nowadays like having a newsletter and a paid newsletter and the subscription-based newsletter is like a huge thing now. But personally, the only reason I have that newsletter is just more of a hobby. It's like I write when I feel like it to that to that newsletter. But I also definitely use it for marketing to that campus as well, which you know about? Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. You thought we might, some of my newsletter. I was like I think I've like I
used to, right? I was writing like a Weekly Newsletter before the baby was born. I'll continue it. But I was going to writing about just different things I do in a week. You know, like I dance, I'm a I've been learning how to dance and I have a dog and now I have a kids. There's a lot that a lot of interesting things that come out of come out of that and it's fun to write about it. Yeah. No. Thanks for sharing. I feel like this what you said.
You know if I learn something and don't write about it I don't actually. Learn it that like really? Yeah, the restructure because I was like writing a bit on a Blog especially at some point I was getting into the rhythm of like I was like, different from you. I wouldn't write these like long post but we try to write something short and just put it out and I find it so enormously satisfying.
But then I would kind of get stuck again like not right for a while and I, but I feel like this, the way you face it of this kind of connection between expressing, you know, expressing. Years about something you learned and actually the act of learning. I feel like that's a really nice way of thinking about it. Yeah, I think the, like, I mean, you do podcast, so that's kind of your I guess mode of expression.
Speaking is also one way to, if you're trying to explain something through voice, that's also another way to, I guess, crystallized your thoughts, but everyone has reformed, right. Like, when people like to write, some people like to talk, some people like to do both, but there has to be some way that your, I think you have to force yourself to articulate, what you think, you know. And that's the Attachment knowledge, whether it's written or voice. Yeah. No, I do think actually writing
is very powerful in this way. I mean, podcast is an amazing tool to learn. It's amazing to have your conversations with different people and like learning about lots of different topics. But I think there's like something something a bit different and it be harder in having to condense it in like a written form. Especially when you, when you sort of publish it, right?
I think. I think like putting your ideas out in the world is a scary thing and not many people are willing to do it. If you're willing to do it. I think you get a lot of. That's why you get a lot of new repo, a lot of benefits from it. You can build an audience, you can make friends by writing publicly, you can make, you know, have look really strong connections. Like my, my husband is an example of someone who basically
wrote his way to two big. Damn, I guess he has connections out all over the world based on his interest and people he has followers from all over the world and anywhere we go, people start to recognize him. So like there's really cool benefits to writing and Publishing things online. Definitely encourage more people to do it, the finger you say about publishing, I think that it does absolutely right right.
Because like this just a huge there's like a world of a difference between like writing some kind of drafts of Blog post or blog, because it always feels like a draft of a blog post if you don't publish it, right? It's like the actual Act of like putting it out, like changes something. Yeah, it's kind of like an artist, really?
Like I give I have a lot of respect for artists who are willing to put their art out because there's a lot of people who pain or dancer or, you know, do stuff, but they actually don't publish it. Whereas like it takes a lot of guts to put that out because, you know, you're going to be critiqued, this is me somebody out there who doesn't like what you're doing or what you're saying, what you're writing, and it takes a strong-willed person to be able to be able to put
that, put that out and and And receive that kind of criticism but you also receive positive to this positive positive responses as well. So it balances out. Yeah I mean that was that was the amazing thing when I was like, right? I mean I will die. You know like maybe 30 blog post last year and really my goal was, I didn't republish. It didn't really promoted much at all. The only thing he did was they retweeted it automatically through my account.
That's the only thing I did. And my only goal was basically just to probably stuff. So I get sort of Habit of like putting something out and like not, not sort of censoring myself and and getting into, some sort of writing habit and everything. Especially like, also sort of told myself. Okay. I'm happy to publish like really bad blog posts, right? Because and I'm not going to promote him, I just want to
publish stuff, right? So I'm kind of okay with polishing about posts and then I was still amazed at like how many people some have found it and gave feedback about and say oh this is really Be great. And they really like it was very interesting to see that even though I'm like you know, definitely nowhere near like your level of like writing and you know, a lot of it was like very quickly put out and but yeah it's it's just it's just such a powerful thing.
It is it really is. And I'd like you said, even though like, boys podcast and other forms exist, I still think written form is is one of the most powerful because it can like like when you write something it's out in the world forever. Right? Like you read written stuff from hundreds, hundreds, hundreds of
years ago. And I think people what you write today, who knows if people from 100 years or 200 years or dinner years because we do writing, like, I think it's a very powerful thing and so you have a way to like kind of make your mark in the world by putting your thoughts out there. Let's talk about that camp. So how how did you decide to start that camp? Like cut it?
That coma? So honestly with a side project I was I took some time off from work just to focus on help life, all different things and then I kind of missed doing crypto stuff and I was like, how can I get into crypto with that like, going full time and do it? Now they let me just do a little chorus where I teach people how to do smart contract development because it's something I already know. So I was like, I'm just gonna leverage a skill. I already have and do a course on it.
And Maven, I started I started at camp on Maven, actually. Sounds like a cohort based online platform where you can run cohort, based courses. And so I use Maven as a platform to launch this course, and we had like 60 people during the first cohort and someone in my network had reached out to me and he's like, hey, can I help you with the course, I'd love to work with you on it. And so I've me and him we were co-instructors on the course and lo and behold.
Like it turned out to be a little really, really successful. Course the people the students loved it, we love teaching it. Like we got so much it was so
exciting. Like we walked away with so much energy and we were just like so energized by teaching these students and we just like felt like there's so much so much we can do beyond what we had done in that first cohort like so much potential for what we can do in cohorts 2 3 4 and so forth and that's when we were like okay like let's keep doing more cohorts and so we do the second one.
And then we did a third one and then like, every single time I feel like we get better and better and better. And we just like, we find so many cool things that we can do Beyond just what we just did in that cohort and both me and my co-instructor. We both love teaching and we loves like the, the experience of having to sit down and keeps that live course, because it's, it's different from what you see
out there in the market, right? Like, most of the online courses, today are kind of asynchronous and you're kind of having to passively read on your own and and complete the things on your own. Like very few people are doing like live courses and for us like print that live course was was very unique. Like we got to have a room full of 60 developers who are asking us like really really deep
intellectual questions. And we were answering them live and everyone was getting to hear the answers and learn from the learn from their peers. So it's really cool in that way. Yeah. So we kind of started it and it just blew up and we just kept doing it and now we're going to be on our fourth cohort at the end of the year. And we are making some pretty big improvements for what we, what we're going to do going forward in a nutshell.
We're going to make a lot. We're going to make a lot of the course, a lot more web, three native meaning, we're going to experiment with things like, you know, signing with so everything that as a student, you're represented as a as an interim address. So you basically apply with your The master address and everything is tied to your mat.
And last address, we give you badges for completing certain milestones in the course we have like a reputation score for each student based on like the different Milestones, they reach different, cool things that we're doing, just explore like can we can reuse some of the Primitives that have been built in the last cycle like nft Badges and and identity and things like that to build like a web three native experience for
the that cohort. But yeah, it's Been fun, curious like these people so much like, enthusiasm, you know, about like this experience of teaching, this course, what do you think it is? That makes it such a wonderful experience for you? It's seeing the students kind of thrive on the other end. So like, you know, it's this is knowledge. I already know, it's like there's no point of me holding on to that knowledge, right?
Like if I pass it down, then it's super interesting to see how other people use that analysis. Then do really, really cool things that I would never do in my lifetime. And then just seeing people who maybe never had an opportunity to come into the space, to get that knowledge and now be a full-time. And but three engineer like the, seeing the, I think the best part is seeing the outcome of what happens in these students.
After they graduate, my everyone is successful, of course, and people, just and of going back to their current jobs, but a lot of people do make strides towards becoming full time, but three engineers. And, you know, you guys, I think I heard a couple people from our grad grad list and so those women like they it was hard to find them but it was cool to see them go from like it's my Dream to be about their engineer to
them, taking the course. And then a few weeks later than having a job offer, to be able to re-engineer, or just an engineer at about three company. So that's probably the most rewarding thing. Yeah, yeah. So just explanation here. So we've course, one, I guess we, I think I saw at some point in your newsletter, I think there was, you know, some some company that did some scholarships for dap camp and then we were Oh, this is cool.
Like we want to do this too and I think the company was and so we also Focus the scholarships on women, right. So we have been doing these T scholarships for a few cohorts. I think we did three chords. Right? I guess not the first one but I think the ones or the ones after that and yeah we ended up carrying two people out of it. So to like Marie until L, you know, that joint run this full
time and is very cool. I mean, first of all, the the do both Amazing. So, I'm like really happy that we hired them but they're also like very different like backgrounds. Very different. Yeah. Just very different from our server, normal applicant pool and like bring you like very different perspective and approach to it and you know, very deep enthusiasm for crypto which is definitely something we
look for a lot. And so it's been like really great for us to like work with with that component. They're so eager to learn and so eager to contribute. So it was cool to have them be part of the cohort and then go on to do like really cool things like join course and it's also like good motivation for other women to write.
Because if they see talita, they see Maria and they're like, oh like you know, I'm just like, damn, like I could do what they could do and so more people come in and just kind of follow their lead. So it's cool to see you guys open doors like that for them. So when it comes to like learning rf3 development, is there, what's hard about this?
Like, what do people struggle with How to have the engineering part of it. I was actually not that difficult like learning solidity and that part that peace is not that challenging. The, the challenging part is like Like obviously crypto is very multi-discipline meaning. We give to understand a lot of different things to truly understand like The Right Use cases for it. Like, you have to understand economics, like now crafter, like blockchain engineering. Obviously you have to understand
my politics in some way. There's a lot of different subject areas that could their kind of touches and I think as an engineer, the challenging part for them is like thing. What to see that bigger picture and think about product from that angle and not just thinking about product from the engineering side. Because just building this engineering and product, doesn't mean it is not going to make it useful. They give to think about how
you're going to get aligned. How you going to use like incentives to basically align the different piece of people in that Network. These are all just like very, very, very big and thorny problems.
That Engineers are not really used to thinking about and so a lot of people that take the course, As they kind of tell us that blockchain engineering feels a lot more entrepreneurial compared to other engineering because other engineering, they're just kind of like engineering or is it crypto? You're kind of thinking about the bigger picture and thinking about a lot more different things until you are being a lot more entrepreneurial in that way.
And a lot of people, some people are not that good at that. So that's also the other challenge. I would say like, there's people that come in thinking that, you know, because they're really good engineers. And that they're going to like it or they going to be successful, but sometimes they're not like, we had a really strong engineer who thought like would crush it.
But like it was pretty clear that like, he just like he was just too stuck in the engineering side of things and not able to see like the bigger picture of like how to build a how to build a good product that people can actually use. Yeah, I think that's right. I think this sort of like, political and philosophical dimension of like, crypto is like something that's like very crucial and a lot of people, I really get it, right? And they kind of, like, understand it on some deep level.
But then, like other people really struggle with it, and they can even work in crypto, but just somehow, don't, they don't quite they don't quite get it. Yeah, Yeah and I think it's an acquired skill. What I want to say is I think it has also to do something, they've kind of maybe a fundamental you know values and way of looking at the world I think you know especially people who maybe don't like Authority so much or look for freedom.
In some way, you're like more sovereignty and autonomy. I think they kind of well often they become interesting crypto. Because of that. But then I think that also gives you like. I mean, for example, if you think about, you know, the keys and who controls the keys, and the trust assumptions, and like, all of that stuff, I think that's like, very deeply interwoven with that.
And I mean, I remember in the twenty Seventeen or eighteen bull market, there's a lot of these people came and then they do these ico's but like, clearly just like, didn't really, it was maybe an opportunity for them to raise a bunch of money, but it It missed the point of what it was all about. Yes, that's a really good point. And the other, the other thing that I would add to that is people I think like it's it takes a really It's not easy to figure out where a token is
youthful. And we're talking is not useful and that's like, I would say a skill that you only learn by seeing a lot of a lot of different projects and really trying to understand like what is the purpose of that token? And I would say no one's really truly an expert on this till later. Still debates about whether certain projects should have a token or not.
So that seems to be something that I think the engineers sometimes struggle with because they like put a token into That probably maybe doesn't need a token and could be done without and it might be a good engineering experience for them but it's not like a really good use case for a token, you know. So from from the people who came through dab cam, what do the people who made it successfully and, you know, they're like, working group do, what do they have in common?
I would say there, I mean number one is there strong Engineers because we do do a pretty strong screening on them before they take the cohort. So they're strong Engineers. So they have like a strong fundamental Baseline set of engineering skills. Secondly they're really eager to learn and they're like super passionate because you know, crypto it's like you're coming to space, you have to just be willing to just drink through the fire.
Hose, And if you if you're just kind of slow and trying to take your time, this is not going to work with give to be very very on top of things. And eager to learn. I would say most of the people the people that are most successful are the ones that like are very eager to learn and
then and they learn fast too. And third, I would say they going to like the point we're trying to make is like they have a more, they have a they have a pretty good grasp on, like the whole, the bigger picture of things and there. Not just like a code monkey. But for lack of better words. Yeah. Yeah.
No, that makes sense. I think one thing that also I have stood out to me a bit that I see, sometimes people struggle with a lot is, I guess if you're in an another industry, I then you want to like work in this industry, then you know, you may be research a bunch of companies and then like you apply there and you try to get a job with those companies.
You know. I guess that's kind of like the standard way but in crypto because These are so, like the information is all open and a lot of this more kind of Community Driven. Like, that's not the best way, right? Like the, it's a better way to sort of figure out like what you actually find interesting, and then learn about that. And then kind of get involved in that community and maybe like, you know, go through conference, like right block, right, right, about it.
Write blog posts, so like contribute in some way and then Two things will happen, right? So I think this sort of I'm going to start with trying to get a job is if it can be a big obstacle. Also because people don't want to speak with you. If you don't if you if you if you could just go ahead and get started but you don't and you just want to do calls with people. That's a good point. That's the way to put it.
Yeah. And I guess that's I mean that's in any case because we're still good quiet, the beginning of that. But I think this whole You know, working for a doll is, you know, is another thing that you know, there's probably maybe right now. I don't know how well those start maybe some of the Dolls work pretty well, but it's probably still, like a better
option for most people. I think might be to go for like work for a normal website company but it's definitely becoming something where it's just an entirely different way of working. Yeah. And I think, And I think whether you should join a job or whether you should join a regular update company, just depends on your
personality. Like, if your entrepreneurial to begin with and you have a high risk tolerance, I think you can do it down low and, and you have like, I guess the financial cushion, you can turn it down and be very exploratory that way. Have maybe have a few different dials that you're part of where you have different roles in
those dolls. But if you're more like employee mindset ended then I I'm joining the web three company and going spending maybe a year or two years there to truly understand the space and have the time to build your confidence.
Before you go the doll route. This probably what makes sense for you because like if I try to come into crypto and join it out right away, I think I've been pretty confused and maybe depending on what how I joined or what dowels, I joined, I might even be discouraged or have false.
False starts or what not. But because I joined coinbase for example, it gave me a really strong foundation and time to really spend time learning about crypto before deciding to, like, go out and explore and do my own thing. But there are start a company or Journey down or whatever. And I actually like when people graduate that camp, I tell the same thing to them. I'm like, if I were in your shoes, like the first thing I would do after June graduating, a boot camp is joining, what? Great.
Even if it's boring spend like a year or two years there, and then go do my own thing, go be more entrepreneurial Journey Down. Start, my own company, whatnot. There's some people who are ready to start a company right after graduating and usually, those are people who either started companies in the past or they just naturally more entrepreneurial minded. So there's exceptions, but I would say, for the most part, yeah, Joanna Webster company.
And for that can be talked a little bit about Fourth cohort in like you know building in morph descriptor elements like
what's your what's beyond that? I mean, there's so much we can do. I mean, right now, the cohorts are like, less than 100 in size and mostly in the US and some parts of Asia markets like one thing I mean I think like we can scale this to a lot to be a lot bigger and to reach a lot more people for one, especially people in like Emerging Markets, you know, I can I continue to hear how about how people countries like Certain countries in Africa, like Nigeria and so
forth. Are apparently very, very crypto friendly and have really, really smart people. They just don't have access to the best education, the best platforms to learn and go off of. So I think the bigger vision is just to like, scale it to a lot bigger of an audience and be able to bring this to people like that who can use it as a as a tool to jumpstart their
careers. Krypto basically, what we want to be is like the bridge for people who want to get into current do. So if you're an engineer and you're kind of lurking in the background, we want to be that bridge so that you don't have to go on it on your own. Just like, you know, when I started learning how to code, I could do it on my own, but it probably take like two years.
But instead, I did a coding bootcamp, which was a really powerful way for me to learn in a very structured way, any other people who are also learning to code, and then go do my own. Thing. Yeah, I know, I think that's very true, like this kind of like learning with others is to keep a. I was also once you know, spend time like try learning to code on my own and I was pretty consistently, you know, for maybe two years.
I spent like, you know, most days like spent a bunch of time coding but I was actually very slow progress. And you know, in the end I was kind of like, all right, I also need to do some kind of coding bootcamp, but then I discovered crypto and I kind of just focused on crypto instead but I felt very much this kind of lack of Like, working alone, makes it very hard and and I think working with other developers,
right? Is that clearly such a powerful thing that it's just like dramatically accelerated makes a huge difference. Makes a huge difference. Yep. Maybe talk a little bit about, you know, the silver aspect of like, you know, is topic right in the industry, a lot like spinach correspond in many different contexts. But like you being a woman in crypto, what are your thoughts on that? And like, what is your experience? Been kind of seeing that the chat the unique challenges of
women through that camp. I think compared to when I was joining crypto and there's like, zero think he's gotten a lot better. This is there's definitely a lot of diversity. Now, a lot of a lot more female in the space, especially with nft, which are more related to art and culture. So I brought a much, much more divorce, diverse audience into the space. But in terms of Engineers, female Engineers is still a huge
lack of them. And I didn't realize that until you guys gave us the opportunity to give scholarships to women to join the cohort and we were like, okay, awesome, like we have five tanks or ten scholarships to give to women. And we realize, like there's actually very few female Engineers who are one interested into, who are qualified. We did haven't people who are interested, but they didn't know
how to code. So we couldn't really accept them and so there's very few like it's it's really hard to find, female, Engineers, or qualify. And who want to do crypto? That's kind of a big challenge that we continue to be forced to meet and deal with every cohort with the scholarships that you give us.
And it's been a great thing to get it, forced us, to go outside of our networks, and reach out to networks where they are female engineers and try to get in to see if they are interested in doing the cohort and to try to reach a broader audience beyond what my my following. Because it seems like most of my following is as male or female who don't know how to code yet.
Yeah. I think the the funny thing is like the people who do and the female Engineers who do end up joining are actually very very capable there sometimes strong or a strong or stronger than the male. So it's not like they're not capable, it's just that sometimes they either don't have the resources to do something like this. Scholarships help or they don't sometimes of no. It's not. It's just that they don't have the.
They don't even. They don't have their almost intimidated to do something like this. And so some of our marketing efforts have to kind of show that like, hey, like you can do it too and we kind of encourage them to apply. Yeah. Is there something specific about crypto? Do you think that like stops women from, you know, applying to that camp in general like female developers of like
Wanting to work in the industry. So why don't you just don't feel like some of them don't don't feel like they're qualified even though they are. So there's a little bit of an intimidation factor and this is just like a female thing. Sometimes where we have we're not like as confident as the men are about our skills. We can sometimes underestimate ourselves and be a little bit more reserved or shy about or
skills. And we I think there's like a lot of studies that prove that like men will apply for a job. Even if they don't meet all the qualifications resume and they don't want to meet every single qualification before they apply.
So we have some of that, a little bit of that Dynamic going on. And secondly, I think just the nature of a lot of like, if you're, there's not that many women who are like mid-level senior Engineers to begin with, because most people by the time, they're in their late 20s, right? They might start families or
they might have kids. And so So there's just a lot less female to begin with in the market so there's kind of both factors playing into it and so our goal is never to I don't believe that we're going to have like equal 50/50 ratio and the Thunder goal because that's not realistic like women and men like you know, they're just play different roles in society and sometimes women don't want to be Engineers.
But our goal is at least like for the woman who are Engineers to give them access and how do we Each them. How do we get? How do we find them? That's kind of our goal, each cohort, and we're short slowly trying to discover different networks where these women exist and, and trying to get to them as, as efficiently as possible.
Cool. Well, let's do one last question before we wrap up because there is like asking, I think Marie until L was like, oh, we should ask PT and like both Dimension like one question, which is not a question. One that I expected but it's like how do you stay up-to-date with all that's going on in the crypto industry? Yeah, I think everyone has their own way, personally, I don't find that I like I will listen to podcasts, but it's more just like to pass time than to truly learn.
It's kind of like passing knowledge, passive knowledge. I mean, the best way I learn is by reading and and so for me, the way I keep up with things is if I'll have friends or Twitter whenever the interesting whenever like some of the big Post drop, I'll read those and I'll just read stuff that like people I trust or that I like their writing. I read their writing. So that's how I keep up with things. It's I like to read other people like to use podcast as a way to keep up with things.
That's totally fair way. It's just that for me, I know I get distracted easily and like I'm listening, but I'm half listening because I'm doing five other things while listening to a podcast. So it's not really the best way to learn for me. And I I can't sit there and just like listen to a podcast and take notes like that just doesn't work as well as just like reading in terms of what sources, how I find the sources mostly.
I don't really read like mainstream sources like coin Market, coin gecko or whatever like all these like different platforms that exist that proliferate node is mostly individual. So they follow that I like and that I trust I so I read their newsletters and everyone will be different like who you resonate with? Who's writing your resume, with will be different from mine.
So, you know, just go down the rabbit hole and find people that you whose writings you really like and read that and I'm just been follow their writing cool. Well, thanks so much Beauty and thanks for coming on thing at a time and thanks for all the good work you doing. If that cap, I'm excited to see, you know where it goes. And you know all the all the new developers that are going to come into the industry and also of course, to follow along and see where your journey.
I will take you next. I'm sure you go on to do. Lots of lots more, cool things in crypto and Beyond. Yeah. Thank you, awesome.
Thanks fine. So yeah, thanks again for listening for tuning in. If you want to support the show, leave us not to interview, share the podcast, or let us know on Twitter what you think and of course we'll put links to you know the things pretty mention to our newsletter that camp Etc in the show notes and yeah thanks so much for tuning in and we look forward to being back next week. Thank you for joining us on this week's episode. We release new episodes every week.
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