The future of work is onchain

Transcript

gmgm welcome back to another episode of web3 Academy your one trusted source to capitalize on the next big phase of the internet don't get caught in the hype cycle I'm Jaybird and I believe that the future of work is on chain that's why I'm coming a path for doers to confidently build and invest in web 3. welcome to another awesome doer Spotlight today we have joining us on the show Pedro oliviera from Talent protocol this is a awesome conversation with a multiple time startup founder Pedro has been a startup founder in web

2 starting one of the leading jobs Tech Platforms in Europe landing.jobs and now moving over into web 3 he started Talent protocol and Pedro is not shy to be vulnerable which is why I truly love this episode finding product Market fit finding the magic sauce that can make a business soar and a business fly is not easy and Pedro's very straight up about that he knows that town protocol has been successful they've raised over three million dollars they have 5 000 monthly active users they have an incredible

scholarship program which is put many people through hackathons many of their scholarship winners have one hackathons so they've had great success but they haven't reached the peak they haven't reached where Pedro knows they can be and this episode is all about what it's like to be a builder and to try to figure it out it's not always simple we always talk about the stories of oh the friend Tech where they came out of nowhere they caught the attention of everybody and boom they set off like a rocket ship well you know what most businesses aren't built like that

they're built in the trenches they'll built through the bull market through the bear market and they're built by people who consistently show up over and over again and that's what this episode is all about it's all about the story of a founder and a business that is working it out day by day that have tried different things that is experimenting that has moved from one chain to another chain and that through it all continues to grow and continues to provide a product that really matters but they're not afraid to experiment Pedro also tells some awesome stories one in particular about how they almost lost

25 of their treasury in one day in the Luna crash he tells us what happened there and he also talks about how they've made some mistakes in the Transitions and the experiments that they've made he's not shy to say some of their mistakes LED them to maybe make more Revenue but sacrifice some of their partners and lose some Partners along the way because it made them lose focus on what the core mission was he also talks about a lot of lessons that he learned in the bull market that he thought would be things that would continue on forever but then once the bear Market happened he realized that

those things were not sustainable and not long term and it's really taught him and his team a lot about the business and how you need to operate with a bear Market mentality because things are always optimistic Rose Colored Glasses everything is sunshine and Rainbows in the bull market well that changes when we get to a bear market and he talks about what that is like to manage this is just truly a episode that is for any Builder any founder anybody who's deep in building and creating in web 3 whether you're a big part of a team or a small part of a team this is the episode

you want to listen to because this is the truth and vulnerability that we need to hear more of that we need more of these stories of people talking about what it's like to work through the trenches so let's jump in and hear from Pedro before we do we'll just take a minute to hear from our sponsor modern newsletters are built on paragraph that's right paragraph is a brand new newsletter platform that combines the best parts of web 2 and web3 to supercharge newsletters for both writers and readers build a community not just an audience paragraph uses blockchain Tech to allow readers to collect and own the words that matter to them this takes reading a newsletter to the next level where paragraph readers can mint collect

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capitalize on the opportunity of being early GM Pedro welcome to web3 Academy so excited to have you today yes thanks for adding let's start at I don't want to go all the way back to the beginning of your career but I'm sure at some point during this episode we will bring up your experience throughout Talent Tech basically but I want to start back at the beginning in the origin of talent protocol so you started in 2021 since then incredible achievements you've built Town protocol into 5 000 monthly active users you launched a scholarship program called takeoff you raised three million dollars and the bull market we'll talk about that you

expanded to polygon initially launched here on cello you then launched it at a tpfp collection called Talent mates and maybe slowly decentralizing yourself into a dow although we'll talk about your exact structure you've done so much but before we talk about sort of what you've built and what is Talent protocol I always like to hear sort of the reason or the light bulb moment that went off in a Founder's head of you know this is your fourth startup right you could have probably gone and done many different things what did you see about web3 about blockchain what was

it that made you say oh this is the idea I want to chase after and maybe what were those founding beliefs or thoughts that you had all right so lots of questions in there but I'll kind of give you a deep dive into the thought process it brought me there first of all like my ethos my my reason for work I've been lucky enough to find it so I want Building Products that other people find their purpose or be more productive at work I think those two combine generate human wealth I kind of figured out early on in my career what I want to be for Less on I worked like almost 10 years in my previous startup called Landing jobs which is a tech commitment Marketplace

biggest one in Portugal one of the largest in Europe and in essence that was my AGR technology pill you know that's that's all I got into the space and then a few things before that but that was my my intro into the HR tech specs and after those 10 years was just like a lot grinding those years including a move to London Free brexit and coming back to Leesburg post-brexis so a lot of stories in there we could do podcasts just on that one I did like a sabbatical it was supposed to be a 12-month sabbatical um and again it is like end of 2020 so

we are full-blowing to kovit life changing movement for many people on this planet and including myself and I decided it's time to take some time off just just water go stop being on focused mode going to the shoes mode and I think sabbaticals are great for that so it wasn't just a time off I had the warning plan I had accountability body all that I really plan that maybe you can put on the show notes but there's a really cool site like learning sabbatical where you know we can just plan out this is probably more to climb out to your sabbatical unfortunately it wasn't a 12 months sabbatical as I wish it was only a three months

I learned a budget thing since day I wanted to learn for a long time but you just still have to find Space to go into things like psychology I dive deeper into blockchain I've been in the space the most seniors like the user or Trader if you wish and not really a builder well I was always curious you know being the age or tax place there weren't many stars many founders uh you know using blockchain it just didn't make sense for me so I decided to go deeper on on that side to my surprise and then I bumped his way we're not in the the people market yet but there's a lot of excitement in the space so I started talking to to a lot of people and I think there was a moment

you can say I'm a fan of of Dolly oh yes and if you were expecting and sending out a fan I'm a viewer of their podcast it wasn't that episode when they were discussing you know just trying some web Tree in particular how it was going to change society and there was something they said about decentralizing JSC centralizing that and then one of them said this is Horizon careers and that kind of like that was the light bulb moments you were asked about as far as real wise you know I had always you know throughout my microwave always thought there was shitty way for people to be you know more vested into each other's career that needs like Bullseye into the the pigeon death tools of child where

talent in in this world is is always being Revenue driven employer-driven transactional to I think we should move away from debts into where tells should be really which is ownership driven you know when you work for someone you're working for yourself you should stay on whether it's Talent organizations Dallas they don't really matter but we should evolved into something that is better I think you know in a nutshell I think Talent is the most unusualized as in the world by War doubt is truly decentralized that's a reality the thing is that opportunity isn't and so is essentially we try to change things

all change how things work in in this place it started like that as you mentioned things have evolved we've launched a bunch of stuff and you know like all stars I've seen previous episodes in your podcast where you know the father's things change and and and it happened to us as well so it's been two years now and I mean the way it starts is not where we are now in it pretty sure it's not where we're going to be to use synapse it's probably one of the biggest misconceptions that I think people have outside of a business is you look at a business and typically you don't find out about a business until they're

successful and you think oh these guys I've always been successful they always knew what they were doing it must have been the plan from the beginning but it's usually not the case the way that you actually succeed is you experiment you try things and you make mistakes some work out some don't work out and eventually you grow into the end product the end use case that actually solves a problem for your users where are you right now can you tell us a little bit about what is the product right now maybe give us some examples of some users and how they're using Talent protocol yeah so we have the black almost evolved into a place where people would stand

permit publicly uh to goals the cash out of progress with their supporters and you know involve these supporters into helping them achieve those goals it's both a social it's all social fight it's a social platform because there's this social partner in the economic part where we reward users so this rewarding part is with our token we call it tell which hasn't been launched yet so we should go on teleport to call.com you can set your profile not only um it's good for you know showcasing your talent but also it's more focused on future if you go on LinkedIn and other platforms he's always focused on

best we try to focus let's focus on the future because your career is a collection of your goals is they were achieved or not or abandoned sometimes they stop making sense who wealthy throughout the way and again what I mentioned in the beginning you know there should be a way for talent to be vested in each other we think that goals are in essence that some of everything all the work that we do starts with the goal sometimes you don't know what the goal is that's okay we also help you with that we have some AI support as well I mean with all the images goals are not they're endless but there's patterns in the goals that we have at

the Care by Islands start this a new start of building new products to do a lot of similarities between our purposes so that's what it is nowadays we're now making a new experiment and uh just want to double down on your comment I think way to start something you have this thing we call Runway All right so it's almost like almost time how much money you got until you're done and you get experiment anymore I think it's the main um thing that has started other CEO should do is like make sure that with limited resources that you have you make as many experts as as you can It's tricky because you may find yourself in

a situation where you do too many of them in parallels it's a balance you need to balance things out in here so in essence the algorical is that and there's this new experiment we're running which is for our takeoff programs or scholarship profile to take web tree undiscovered talent to their first web tree IRL and we're doing this for a symbol Dev connect coming in November I don't know the exact date sorry and in essence you're going to do a voting system that uses almost like um batting until where people can involved retail or the the applicants on the scholars applicants and the winners in

the end so if you better tell the right person you'll get more more child tax so we're making some experiments with the dopam utility as well and think we're ready to to go public read the token so effectively during the token launch I think we need to do some more experiences that have a bit more or working if we were in the bull market though the conversation would have been very different and it you can make a lot more mistakes in a bull market it's so much easier it's such a more optimistic context and things just tend to go better in a way but to ask you a question yeah go on television goal and you know set up your goals

start collaborating with each other commit publicly make career updates so we see a lot of people tweeting about this just sharing and keeping themselves accountable in a weird way when I did my sabbatical I was doing this but it wasn't publicly I was very you know at this mental framework things that I wanted to do but in a way it was related to this so actually one of my goals on developer's goal is to get back to my sabbatical in two to three years time the rest of the nine bucks you know hopefully I can do the dying Mouse and not start something else maybe that's good because you get there then that means Town protocol has succeeded which

is probably why part of the reason why you want to decentralize not only for the reasons of your belief in web 3 and the power decentralization but also that will allow you to maybe step back and take your sabbatical again okay there's there's a a bunch of things there I kind of want to unpack I definitely want to talk about the scholarship program and take off because I know it's in its this is its ninth season I think eighth or ninth season that you're going into so yeah just to clarify on that one so the the takeoff is the ninth or tax Edition the last one was that ECC berries we brought like 10 lines to their first

second life-changing moment and now we're doing it with 15 uh other people luckily we were sponsored by by the crews at protocol ads sell Foundation as well that has helped us you know come up with the money to support this so these the way the scholarship program works is anybody can apply if you are chosen you get paid add exactly to ECC or a a major hackathon yeah so you get your flights it covered stay as well some year money and tickets as well so right if you leave the the packets on events they

offer tickets for for US dollars because it's such a social impact thing right it's what I said at the beginning challenge is the most underutilized and since in the world so people see value in this organizations developing this and communities are seeing value and who are the applicants are they what's their experience level what are they bringing to the table yeah mostly like um students usually in University students work wrapping things up at Uni but it's not exposing sometimes someone just started working Web video collaborating with with doubts there's a lot of

diversity on that front it's hard to to make it better but I would see fat to risk I would say students and then Forever on the regions side of things it really depends on where the next one is going to be so we we tend to faculty we bring people from all around the world but it usually is people from around the region so if you're doing in here okay let's bring from around you know the next one is in Turkey let's bring from around 30 it just it just we found out that it makes it easier for post takeoff collaboration so when they set up their goals on Talent protocol all that it just makes it easy for people to keep in touch or collaborate if they are from uh closer locations but it's not something

set in stone we also keep experiments we experimenting with with the tape of uh programs same thing as we do we tell yeah right okay I want to just touch on Tau quickly the token because I want our you our viewers and listeners to understand the current situation of Tau that it's not yet a launched token but that you are using in your ecosystem I think there's some Nuance there that people needed to appreciate and understand how that works because I think most people they see a token and they think oh it must be a fully liquid

token can you explain sort of like where it's at now how it's used now and more focused on the token Less on like how it's used and then maybe get into what will happen when you launch it and what changes in its current state versus its state once it is icoed or launched sure so when we we first raised sets were all the rage the car in the so simple agreement on future tokens which is the uh model that is a web tree copycats of a safe simple women without future apathy for me the way it takes place right and it was all the rage back

then again bull markets we're trying to build calipers goal as a creature native startup so no equity no care uh the core team the the core contributors getting paid in in you know Stables ads tokens or future tokens in this case so to understand like the Baseline for funding this dispatcher all right so you can see you need public information or or token distribution things might change a little bit but we committed 12 of hotel to to private investors we put like 45 to community incentives from out of those throughout season one two three we

mentioned that say 12 program its Edition so we are on the ninth test on the tele for the doll side reworking season so see reasons are a specific period of time where we do a lot of experiments and how long is typically a season typically six lousy now we kind of established that six months is the right period before it needs to be like nine or longer but six months is it's working better for us so from throughout season one so roughly November 2021 until season three which ended a couple months ago so in June 2023 we experimented with we tell okay so we had this solution five economics where you could by Someone's Child tokens almost

like like to say shares there's nothing that possible but good to say actually a lot of quotes in it so you buy someone's tokens and that would be you investing into someone so you have a mistake it's someone the only way for you to do that is if you wiped out and that was the majority of of uh tell it was called for a long time we get he said this by you know when you do that you'd actually be staking down so we're giving off the supporter and the talent daily rewards for this so it would be your way for people also to be collectively invested into Talent protocol to be part of the

the community would say yeah this catch for a success is collected and that was the main manager behind season one two two three and we I mean at the start it was going super well still a bull market and bull market said the thing you know they they can be uh Illusions you know some things you think yeah but this is quality thoughts and that's what we realized wish that I've done it sooner and maybe we'll talk about latest scene dealing with Legacy later yeah but um yeah we we realized it wasn't really working that's why we're doing new experiments without and you know because takeoff is the most successful product that we want uh into which is a market

to make people love it it's like there's no one was big part of it doesn't love it or any of my community is amazing and we're not trying to join the token with that this the token remains on launched but one of the things that we built and this makes our life very easy each level of experimentation is we now at a virtual tab so if you go on tell let's call it's almost like abstraction so you go on tell protocol you can already earn and you sell in there it's almost like five economy surely interesting because it allows us to learn so much about it and yeah that's in a nutshell what happened to tell as a token it's really hard to dissociate the market side of

the token but with the Utility side token but because they go together they're part of the the same thing religious let me just ask a clarifying question there so you call it virtual Tau right now yeah am I buying it is it a a fungible token right now or is it just a more of like uh web to point system yeah it's still a web to ontsm so we can really have the the token in your uh wallets yet right there's been some some other other goals doing interesting stuff on that front like say so they I think the tge where they distributed the token but with no Financial value so

it's fungible but no Financial development yeah only when they do the tte so token just durability events that it will have like so the actual filter launch then it will have a real Financial Bell so in our case it's still pretty much wet too if you yeah the smart cortex both of them are added you can check them but email control is within the core team so I'll say big stick Wing web 2 and web tweet in terms of the token large itself so like looking into the future we still haven't decided on the best way to to do it that's something that changed a lot you know doing it took a launch two years ago if it's not aim is not

precisely the same thing as doing anything else so we still try to understand what changed what didn't and how can we activate it so that the community can can benefit from it it's really interesting and I think that there's been other examples as you mentioned safe for or gnosis where it's very difficult to figure out the as you said both the tokenomics and the utility of your token and a lot of and we're seeing this right now a lot of web 3 businesses launched a token during the bull run and sure they did great during the bull run but now in a bear

Market they have gotten wiped out and your token value goes to zero or goes very low and that affects your entire business and you're not prepared for that and maybe you haven't yet figured out the utility so you realize oh wait there isn't enough utility so everyone just sells out because there's no reason to hold that token it's interesting to think about I think and I think that a lot of Founders would benefit from this model I'm curious if you would advise as well as well of start with this maybe more web to point system to experiment to see what makes people want those points what makes people keep them and

use them and then expand to a fully fungible token with within a liquid Market I think that that model works so combination of of the two I think you still it should keep things barely extracted abstracted but also adding this web tree framework behind it so that people really they can see that the value is there so it's all in in your servers and trust is trust me bro that that's not the point so they can see okay there's the smart contracts things are happening on chain but there's an abstraction layer and I think you know talking about abstraction I think that's like probably where red

tree has evolved the most in the last couple of years like for real like I think we are at the point where and going into to answer your question I think it should feel like web 2 but it's web too yeah so that's the way I think we should do it at or the token launch itself you're totally right I know a lot of projects like that you know what if some things didn't happen like the dead would probably be one of those because the leading through a pool and probably a lot of the the viewers of web tree Academy will get this because they went through it as well but for those reputation it's going through it the such a aura of optimism

everything works you're going in down the street you you kick a song and opportunities appear you know like it's just so you know it's it's also so easy to fall into the the bull trap and which is thinking you have a business model when in John's which is thinking that you have to open until when again to economics token utility is super correlated and this can drive you to launching before University and between I think it happened with a lot of projects that mean well I'm not talking about those that they were clear Red Bulls you know

they're involve that yeah unfortunately but I'm talking about the ones that meant well they executed in a boom wage and that doesn't work when it's sustainable I love that you're bringing up this difference between operating in a bull market versus a bear Market other Industries are affected by the swings of the market but not to the extreme that web 3 is right now because we're still so small right when you're small and there's only I mean by our calculations there's about 20 million active wallets per month right now and a good percentage of those are just using

stable coins probably like 25 percent of those are just using stable coins and that is their pure use case so you're talking about a very small and I might be my numbers are usually optimistic somebody else might come in and say the numbers much less than that but you're talking about a very small market and so you are more in a small Market you're much more impacted by swings what has it been like for you you know you mentioned business model the challenges of having a sound business model it's tough to have a business model in this in a startup usually in the beginning of a startup you've got an idea of what your business

model is but it can take you I mean the the best example of this is think about the biggest tech companies today Facebook didn't have a business model for I don't know five ten years until they figured out that ads were going to be their main thing for the longest time they just grew users and made they took advantage of building this big attention platform so I'm curious to talk a little bit about your business model and you can sort of take this there's a few directions we could go in first we could talk about how the bull market versus the bear Market impacted your treasury like I think that's an interesting thing

to discuss because I think that all founders who raised in the bowl were then very impacted by the bear and maybe you can talk about how you navigated that and then maybe we can lead into more the business model and revenue model yeah all the directory front so I think one one big mistake I've seen a lot of Founders and you know not only Founders but the whole assistant pushing people in this direction including investors things are crazy so now it sounds like crazy but back then you know oh yeah this we're able to waste this amount all right why don't you put this working this Capital working for you and then you would have Limitless Runway so a never-ending Runway and that's a real

you know that doesn't make any sense so it's uh who has each of it one way and he said nobody does I'm just sharing because it's kind of like the lights of some people and in our case we we part luck or wisdom and I don't know telling bro that was my first startup in the wet tree space it's not my first started though I was always a bit skeptical about this this Behavior so we were fortunate enough like we we had the uh 30 of our treasury or a bit more actually exposed to this protocol in the lunex was giving like retires 30 percent apy is like that right and um this protocol was called Android and we like

I made the decision to remove all of our treasury from it like three four days before the whole lunar crashing system went down so effectively saying a big charcoal of the treasury again art lot or Reason and what I felt was like okay this is just too much you know there's it's great it's starting not to make any sense I was seeing some signals some things that were you know appear to be bad and like I started to realize look this is not my money this community money it's not my job as a CEO to put this money to work it's my job to say job number one right and that's what I did we were lucky again I know some other startups that

that worked and they effectively went down because of this so this is not bragging at all it's just a lot slash wisdom and so that that's just the story I like to share because if we go back to Bull I'm afraid we're gonna see New farmers Aerials bedroom Farmers making the same results it's just easy so easy to to go down that radical first of all kudos to you combo of luck and wisdom like you said to four days before the lunar crash to pull 700 000 of your training out of anchor and save that money is just man like I don't know who

you pray to or what belly you rub or whatever but let's let's look I'm glad I did it and we did it and but this is the thing about about again this is one of the challenges that web3 that is unique to web3 Founders and crypto Founders is your treasury is going to be in crypto and when your treasury is in crypto you're talking about very volatile assets and do most Founders want to put their entire treasury in stable coins probably not right no you're like well let's put some of it in to some Investments that makes sense I mean even a web 2 founder would also have a part of their Treasury and investment right

and you know so you have that mix but there is that huge risk right now and I think that's what you're saying is if you go back when we go back and do a bull run not if when we go back into a bull run you're not necessarily going to get caught up in the greed that so many of us get caught up in when crypto Twitter is going crazy with 30 apy you're not going to say oh yeah let's go after that because that is not the best use of a your time but also the risk aways the game again easier said than done then he said it's so interesting right I mean if you what if you could have 12 extra months of ramen or you know whatever the amount and sometimes

you know people just want them offer and it's fine it's a very human reaction but so is learning and and then this this podcast wagtree Academy is all about morning that's why we're sharing this so that I mean this can help more to followers not make the same mistakes that others did then I think we did a good job what is the breakdown of your treasury is how much of it is in investment tokens and volatile assets versus how much it is in stable coins I'm just going to our Financial cards because I got it today oh nice great question all right so the with the

treasury allocation split by by token so um 10.8 percent is it Fiat 66.3 stable yeah and then 17.3 in the ritual uh we can go deeper into that one and plus 5.7 percent we talk about the state into something so in terms of the cryptocurrencies we got BTC matig cello mistake if if these are the five ones we we only have exposure to tokens in the change that we're building up right so it's kind of like so obviously in theorem because with

billing on on cell cell is a layer one but it's now moving to Layer Two which is very interesting for the cello ecosystem and totally you know you should interview the seller founder on how they decide it's really interesting for sure yeah that's all right and um Paul again basically vested into you know same way people should be invested into other people projects be invested while the project and that's and I can't remember what the percent I think you said 30 around 30 17 no 17 was the crypto bucket yeah 17 plus 5.7 let's say plus the stake a bit over 20 right so 20 is a a good percentage to have in what would be

consider are riskier assets but within that bucket you're not you're in you're invested in the safest of all of the cryptos because a you're in the the largest networked chains that are getting to the point where they might be too big to fail I mean there's going to be some that will and some that don't but you're fairly safe in that you're not you know invested in some riskier cryptos as some people might be okay I wanna I wanna talk a little bit about revenue and sort of understand your experience of the different Revenue models you've tried and how some have

worked and some haven't how when you when we went into the bear Market I know you've told me that you've focused a little bit more on Revenue you went into wartime load and maybe that the did that work or did that not work or the lessons learned from that yeah actually on that phone does it really old school veteran book the hard thing about the art things by our weights and it talks about you know peacetime CEO award-time CEO there's some lessons learning there so pre I think we can put lunar crash as a the moment where we kind of Passenger okay no it's bear Market I think for a lot of people it was only when FTX went

down that was okay now it's really a bear Market but for for us it was when the crash like things weren't already were already looking sketchy before that especially since beginning of 2012 when the the war in in Russia Ukraine war started and you know but but still I think we can point that say so before that date we end the the token model I presented before I totally bought before so people buying sell tokens of talent and getting stake so we would just be Distributing the wars in that sense what we were doing is selling using incentives but also selling the tool basically people would be buying the

token in that there's like our early users are also part of the the plan you know so again going back to that manager of success is collective or should be collected and that was how we made like I think uh off a million dollars with that which goes straight into the community Treasury and that there could have been some variations of that like it being part of it to the channels without making new experiments around it especially since this is less new wave of social fiber and learning with friend Tech and others and also we will make our move that we actually to in the future and when when loaded press we can

make this transition to wartime right and again my first startup in the webpage space so maybe I I made a mistake of falling back into modular software on the like way of work that was more wet to you like so we started doing things like sponsorships like I'm not talking about the takeoff that's a successful father we got knowing but other things for child protocol more related to to Recruitment and stuff like that which wasn't really our mission at all like it wasn't but I think like again it's people panic and a lot of our investors and and committee members did including people on the team I'm not going to say I did

but definitely I was employed well anyway and that influenced us to try experiments in the revelry you know making gravity and we did make some Revenue we do have some some shiat uh LPC we do our judge maybe we add some Fiat comes from from this moment in in time where this period where we did a bunch of experiments so we did make some Revenue but that what I realized what we realized is that this was moving our Focus away from wet dream you know like building like life or we had enough we're lucky to have because of the move we did and because we were conservative normally extremely optimistic on the space we had enough

quite a way to keep going and we still do without over we have 24 months of Broadway two years one way recalling to larger token next year so and we're going to make more money yeah so I think that period of this web 2 Revenue testing the testing web to revenue models was a mistake even though it made some Revenue it was a mistake because it's not like our in Bullseye in our mission and also because the reason really then we had a situation where we did our cash applied for the future that obviously we solved the situation and all that but but it wasn't necessary so just sharing because it's a situation where

we just fall into these traps that are viewing your your path and sure you want to learn from them but sure you also do want to do again and and nowadays this experiments were running like the one I mentioned about the voting for takeoff to select the people will go to Istanbul that connects and something that we need to do like we need to select the winners let's use adult and to almost do that some create and game Talent game around it and when people bat all the talent and then we give those tokens back there's also a 10 platform commission that goes back into the drug rather than that those tokens can be reused or

eventually in the future when we have a more decentralized decision-making process maybe the community can decide to burn them it's a different way of thinking about business models so I think I see a lot of times web true followers with a webtoon mindset and I tend to fall back into that mindset nowadays a lot less than than before but still it's a risk but I've been thinking about web 2 is bad but it's a risk I'm in a lot of things for the make only the whole structure the whole Community the way you do things is totally different so you need to change also your brain framework and how it did things how do you balance that when particularly right

now when it's tough to grow most businesses in the space are not growing right now it's we're in this bear Market period where we don't have a lot of new people coming into the space as you said you know it's very different than the bull run when everything is turning to gold and everybody wants to jump on everything and spend money you know how do you balance that as a founder and a leader in do your investors give you pressure to make revenue does that pull you in a different direction like how do you keep that you know sure you say you have 20 more 24 months of Runway but that's not forever like I I guess I'm really

curious what it is what is it that gives you that like ability to still try still stick true to these experiments and stick truly with like obviously by night uh no basically it look actually are great this is a long run project I've been in like super handy to them about this like they're not building uh a short term project we're building Indo Auckland open source with the community with you getting your feedback experimenting around tons of webpage so I was always very clear about that and I said that there's obviously pressure to

deliver and it's only delivering a tokenberg token that works and it's so good networks needs proper business model or Community model built or wrapped around it so that's what we're focusing on let's put them Runway definitely not for it I think we're going to launch next year and so the launch will also assume some more treasury but for an inbound so it's more money involved so not to worry about the runway because of that but yeah definitely basically the the long term I think there's like three things that we the founders commit to Walter community so one million immune members instead of 5K Mau 100K monthly active users so 10

which is really good we committed to launching the token making sure it's successful we doing in post launch and last but not least I think the way we're building so we're building in public like what I mentioned about our financial public information in our notion so we try to be as public as possible there's some scenes we can't share for security reasons or or stuff like that like on the token launches some things we definitely can share but we try is open possible and we hope that we can do both right that was built and the way that we've built it so I think the way that it builds things that is fundamental

nowadays especially in the web there's a lot of more eyes on you but there's a lot more eyes on you for a big reason and you know everything worked on as a founder and web 2 and web to eat it's very different but it's very rewarding as well to know not doing this at all we are in this together this community it's really interesting to see that I just want to drop a note on people coming into this space so something I was buried for it was like all down in the knowing about what everybody's gonna go away because that was the experience from 2017-18 like the space got emptied right and I didn't say that happen so you'll see a lot of Builders designing

telepersical and wanting to learn more about where tweet mainly yes some some chillers Traders the moon boys as we call them big went away because liquidity is low yeah sure that's a good thing it's a good thing they have their own role I guess I didn't see uh slow Downing the number of Builders coming into the space Stephanie regions like latam which is one of the reason regions were so like Argentina Brazil Venezuela Colombia Peru even though Mexico is not part is part of North America also like we have

really good culture products with people in this regimes some glad it's like I live in Europe and we tend to be do not appreciate the value or the way we appreciate appreciate the value on web tree is to opportunity I think in a lot of these regions the way they appreciate the value of poetry or crypto at least two needs and what we feel is that our our members from these regions they are mixed Builders so people like I said before you know what finishing university studies all that but they also get creature because there's a lower belief in their financial and

political infrastructure uh local which increases demolition in in poetry and and so there's really interesting balance over there it's hard for us to attract European for what I just said so we're very focused on Latin we've done a bunch of takeoffs and by the way take off there's this secondary goal to take off which is to get higher our understanding of the the local ecosystems and we did a bunch of them in America the us if there were Defcon Bogota East Mexico City each video now each Argentina and we're learning a lot

we realized the black and there's a really nice fit to what we're building and how we're building it yeah you make a good point uh just going back to what you were saying about the bull versus the bear and who gets washed out in this market and I just pulled up some stats here and looking at the number of the new smart contracts verified smart contracts launched was at an all-time high last month in August we hit almost 50 000 48 000 new smart contracts launch and that's the highest it's ever been the previous month basically we've been on an upward Trend every month even

throughout the bear maybe a little bit of up and down but mostly not Quade up only but mostly and I think like you said a lot of certain people a lot of the volume has been pulled out a lot of liquidity is pulled up the speculation but the building is still here yeah on chain summer baby yeah that's it okay you had a couple other lessons that we didn't touch on throughout this we talked about Legacy at the beginning of the episode I want to come back to Legacy and a couple other lessons that you've shared with me before we started recording around over raising versus Under raising can you touch on those

lessons and what those mean to you yeah regarding Legacy too and look at this and it's called the issue to you to find worse I think it's any human can relate something that we've built something they've created if they will be emotionally attached to it right again we're not talking about like dogs or baby you know that's a different mechanic issue maybe you're talking about things and and products and with real use cases and stuff like that but uh something that has been ordered me and I would like to share is that it's really hard to let go foreign before like we started season one we we tell

utility which you know we couldn't see their own signals or we weren't suspicious suspicious enough to go deeper into the data understands or talk more with our members to understand the the why why they were buying all that because we were getting a false positives uh and and we couldn't see it so that I'll uh create even more Legacy around that token utility model and it took us a lot of thought to realize you know like we need to get a breathe a bit because it's hard it's really hard to relax to do that nobody likes to meet

the fit and let's move on it's hard the thing is if you don't do it your mind is not focused on the new things that you should be doing but also your team isn't and there's also the maintenance costs so you still have to maintain all that running should be focusing on new ones so it's really something to watch out for we had like some investors like really strategic ones coming through and helping us like get through it and and make that transition uh not gonna say names but some interesting very relevant meetings some IRL where the investors and community members contributors

helped me process that but certainly something that we Founders Builders should be aware of maybe a good thing that can help is if you have a hackathon mindset it's interesting that if you do that maybe some weird way it can help you let go of Legacy because there's always new things yeah so pushing more for this positive side of things so I think having this act on when to come help with that I don't have an exactly it's still a theory but I think it can help the other thing that he mentioned on over raising versus Under Rising again going back to

the ball ideally you should raise enough if you press it they're high enough or right so that we then do a follow-up race whether you're catch neutral yes positive and most of the starters are cash negative and you should plan it forwarding right that I still remember one time back in the day it's still in the web tool where it was like playing the episode we raised now we have to spar you know raising nine miles again or whatever and then ask the investor you know what if a market changes or just the expert to running or without it pmf Market fit as as fast as we we want

to it's like oh then I need to end Plan B you know it's not so easy to say right but but it's true right so when it comes to fund rating it's really hard to establish okay what's the right moment I tend to to say that you should override I'm I'm on the over race uh side of things because there always going to be unexpected let's say I'm on a Brash or FDX I mean not those are unexpected moldings in the markets that you can when we plant those but if you over raise it it can help you get through it or at least add a few more months to you to cope with that now if you over race to watch you may

compromise you you should swear to World your captain or or your distribution open distribution type and so it's a balance it might mean it should override a little bit to predict you know bad weather days but you can't do it too much otherwise you'll be destroying your future in the web free space it's interesting because photos in the web just places like to follow this other company just flick the company in half right so the to share all the value is just with the founders and then investors come in they start to dilute their Equity all that but it's always private setting for shareholders eventually there will be employee stock

option plan this thing is supposed to open up a little bit and then knowing all the IBO which only a few of them do when you're starting web 3D it's completely different so it will be really weird to start like the token distribution split which we follow this one one-third for each and it would make any sense right to destroy the economy again your token is not only this economics the utility and how much Community will benefit from it so things consider you need to understand the the decisions you make on the race or with fact your future um and if you override too much might be couples to keep raising like if you raise it if you raise that evaluation

that doesn't make sense anymore then you probably need to do a Down Round that's bad for everyone it's just bad perception bad everything so it's really hard to balance things out but yeah I'm just I think it's interesting to to mention this to all this you know like the videos for them when they're racing yeah yeah I think it's uh the best thing that comes out of that for me is that like you're not gonna get it right so don't obsess over getting it right or being perfect as your investor friend said to you have a plan B be prepared for the unexpected and take your best shot the most important thing that any founder or any Builder can do is execute

experiment and move forward and that is the way that you will you know that compounds into success not success does not come from the first time you write your roadmap or you write your business plan and you nail it and you're like I can just go next no like success comes from that adaptability and that willingness to have a plan B have a plan C have a plan D have a plan F right that's the truth for sure okay if people want to get involved in Talent protocol or project take off or if they just want some advice from a fellow founder how can they get involved in Talent protocol how can they reach out

to you where can they find you yeah I mean just just go on that's a really easy one soundcloud.com set up your account I'm in there my username is pcbo so for letters and it's really easy to find and then you can message me there you can support me if I like your goals what you're doing I can support back as well ask for to take off will be launching the boarding for for the new takeoff in that connect disable and it will be done as it will so you set up your goal to attend the takeoff to automatically a part of the following people can can vote for you with the talk so that's the best way to get involved in both of those that point and in reaching out to me on top was called

definitely otherwise we're saying for letters pcbo on Twitter and follow me there awesome awesome we'll put links in the show notes for everybody okay speed round couple fun questions just to wrap up first question a must read book that you find yourself either coming back to or recommending to others yeah I mean I I'd show this one based on the the context of wagtree Academy and and webtoon general um which is Ministry for the future and not like uh the best book in the world for sure so I don't want to oversell it here but I think it's interesting to see what the future could

look like especially with climate change climate devices whatever you want to call it but also a blockchain and and quiet tree can help solve that problem to Identity having your identity your own Keys priorities to your identity online or in this case and also having climate base or climate to either or Planet driven economy set it up the only thing is that on that book uh we end up in a world where yeah and but there's risks to all these executed

we use blockchain armed by essential players AKA governments he may end up in a safe Planet but when you say wasted Humanity or west Sweden or no Freedom it's really interesting to challenging you to understand what like and also you know our blockchain place plays an importable and that's yeah it's fascinating we'll put the link to the book in the show notes one thing you've bought recently for under 100 that brings you Joy yeah it's joy and obsessive learning and in this battle that I was holding back on this for a long time actually you're

with me so it's the atomic habits I've read the the blog post but I felt like okay I mean just get it out of my system and and it's good it's always good to to go back in and read some stuff that makes sense I disagree with some some debt essentially your right but uh it's it's a really good book and it you know we're talking about achieving goals I think achieving goals is is like you know understanding where roles are all that's fascinating but it's also very important the the system of productivity that is built around it like there's an example like if you have a football teams competing or sports teams

competing obviously their goal is to be number one right or the gold map or the silver medal if they there's someone that's going to be in the gold matter for sure so some goals are like super straightforward so it's so that's like much more about like what's the the system productivity that you build around you that's very interesting to watch I don't think telling through the goal tackles that and then we've built our productivity framework that's not the point that's our goal but I think we're attacking that by saying you know goals can be shared you can collaborate with other people I think whereas that's where the book and the framework can be improved it's all

very individual Focus so I just said the review of the book sorry about that yeah no it's actually real value yeah it's it's great to uh to know what it means to you and clearly the book has has had an impact on you and it's probably one of the most recommended books you're not the first guest to talk to mention that book and you're also not the first I feel like I people talk about that book a lot and James Clear is an incredible writer okay last question if you had a billboard that one billion people were going to see what would you write on it my mine is hard or slate on this one so my signature cat phrase is let's do this so it's just positive it's very

actionable and I think like you wouldn't okay let's do this can it can change someone's day you know something like that so but I realized that maybe you know too out there for some people still I have another one so there's this saying like well I live in Lisbon in Portugal so there's this like Street tiles that are put on the buildings we paint the town stuff like so I have one you know the translation to English is like life is hard if you're soft and I hope that I can transfer this not learning or or way of leaving and being in life in general where

you know doesn't mean that if your soft life will be hard on you but it definitely means that the odds of it being harder on you will be higher even though that's why I hope I can transmit to my kids not necessarily like Brian Brian grind that's not the point but yeah that that would be the the phrase the liking sword if you're soft people are like figure trigger figures a lot it definitely no it's it's a it's a very triggering line which would make people think about it which is the point of a billboard so inside to achieved that it also it makes me think of I watched recently on Netflix I think it was called Schultz it's um a movie that

Jonah Hill made a documentary with his therapist the therapist talks about one of his core principles is the reality of work which basically is that life takes hard work and you cannot get around that so put on the work boots and show up again and again because that is the reality of life and it very much I agree with your comment life is hard if you're soft so be prepared because yeah you got to put in the work and keep showing up that's it Pedro true pleasure to have you on the show thank you so much for your time thanks for your

contribution to the space I hope our listeners will check out Talent protocol every one of our listeners could benefit from taking the time to write down their goals and making themselves accountable if anyone does do that out of this episode please let us know in the web 3 Academy Discord will for sure support you and hold you accountable to your goals and I'm sure Pedro will as well Pedro keep on building we'll have to we'll have to have you back on the show maybe after the token launch it'll be interesting to do a part two at that point for sure no they might accept it thanks for letting me really appreciate it it's always nice to talk about these topics I mean we're all on the day-to-day grinding right and it's good to just

take a step back think about the best future uh so important thank you awesome thanks so much for listening everybody have a great day thank you for listening to web3 Academy your one trusted source to capitalize on the next big phase of the internet if you enjoyed this episode please share it and subscribe or follow so that you don't miss the next one while you're at it there's a link in the description for a free newsletter where we provide timely and relevant web3 insights so you can confidently build and invest in web 3. make sure to subscribe today one final note this podcast is for educational purposes only and nothing we say is financial advice crypto and Webster are risky and you should never invest more than you're willing to lose thank you friends and

see you in the next one