There has been a lot of activity this year around macro - inflation, recession, geopolitical conflicts, etc.
A lot of views have been exchanged on social media, driving up euphoria/panic/distress/anxiety etc. Doesn’t matter that perhaps over 90% of the views are inaccurate or just a case of talking one’s book. A lot of crypto influencers and bigwigs are also guilty of it, but the blame probably lies with the folks who follow them as it doesn’t appear that we have learnt our lessons from excessive adulation.
Nothing comes close to the recent events around US banking - with 3 banks closing down within a week, and the Fed having to create a new program (BTFP) to stop the contagion.
Most of the chatter (accurate/inaccurate aside) post this event is whether the Fed’s action is quantitative easing or not, whether the Fed will hike/not-hike/cut rates on 22 March and beyond, and whether we are at the cusp of another post-2008/2020 period of excessive money printing leading to substantial asset price increases.
I am not saying that this is not relevant. But perhaps a lot more relevant to folks who are holding a lot of digital assets (funds, whales, traders, investors), and not as much to developers, founders, and serious builders!
Any builder who spends an inordinate amount of time on twitter is NGMI, imo.
Keep calm and keep building on…
Podcast Series:
As many of you know, I have started a podcast this year, titled ‘Web3 Normies’. If you haven’t already, then you can subscribe to the podcast through this link.
I am running this with my good friend Raghu Mohan who co-runs Buidlers Tribe, a Web3 native incubator. It is being distributed by the Doodhwala folks who have reinvented newsletters and have made them both informative and fun.
The podcast focuses on Web3 trends and we interview founders who are building these trends out. There is a skew towards Indian builders (as you will notice from the podcasts we have done). Raghu brings on-the-ground perspectives and I, top-down.
We hope you learn something from it, and do feel free to share your feedback and suggestions.
As we have hit 10 episodes, I have briefly summarised the various episodes below, in case you want to check them out:
#1 Genesis Block - This was more of a “mike test” between Raghu and I, with discussions around the current state of Web3
#2 Predictions - Here Raghu and I covered the key Web3 trends we were looking forward to in 2023
#3 State of Solana - Our first guest, Akshay BD, from Solana Foundation and Super Team DAO, discussing the latest about Solana (post FTX and during $BONK period)
#4 Founders and Layoffs - We both gave our perspective on what makes a great founder and dos/donts of a Web3 founder
#5 Mantle and Hustling - Our second guest, Arjun Kalsy, one of the best hustlers in Web3. He is currently heading up Mantle, an L2 incubated by BitDao (L2 is a scaling layer for Ethereum blockchain that makes transactions cheaper and faster)
#6 DeFi dYdX and app chains - We spoke with Karan Ambwani, Head of dYdX India, to understand the current state of DeFi, dYdX’s plans (esp around Cosmos app-chain), and his own journey from an entrepreneur building on Cosmos to dYdX
#7 Metaverse from an expert - The ‘from an expert’ part is quite relevant as otherwise the term metaverse is thrown around like garbage. We had Sai from Cope Studio (also Polygon Labs) who has been building/shipping in the alternate reality space for years
#8 Consensys and Enterprise - This was with Vijay Krishnan who has extensive enterprise sales experience and is now with Consensys. We discussed Consensys, and specifically Infura (RPC node provider) and Metamask (non-custodial wallet), two of the most used solutions in Web3.
#9 Liquid Staking - One of the raging themes of 2023, specifically around Ethereum. We had Amit from Stader Labs, a liquid staking platform, and who rose up from the ashes commendably post the debacle of Terra.
#10 and #11 ETH Denver and US Banking Crisis - The former was Raghu’s views from his trip to ETH Denver (a leading conference in Web3) and the latter was my views on the banking crisis and its impact on digital assets and esp USDC
There’s a lot of noise and distractions for founders so hopefully these podcasts help you understand what’s happening in Web3 at opposite ends of the spectrum.
Masterclass on Web3 Ideas:
Separately, as a fund, we are thesis driven, and want to be at the forefront of identifying key trends. We follow the ethos of Web3 by open-sourcing our thoughts on our website - be it our overall thesis on Web3, or a deeper cut on some of the specific ideas we are looking out for.
Just yesterday we even conducted a masterclass discussing some of these ideas in-depth and answering queries from listeners - founders, developers, investors. I was joined by Neel and Adam. You can access the recording of this session here.
Conclusion:
While I have obviously used my article to shamelessly plug-in my Podcast (sue me!), the overarching point I want to make here is that the focus within the building community, including serious investors, should be less on price and price related events and more towards solving real problems within Web3 and helping builders find their way through all the noise and distractions.
I am trying to do that from multiple angles and I just hope this is helpful to at least some of the genuine builders out there.
Cheers.