Girls Just Wanna Have Funds | SheFi Summit Bangkok

Transcript

can anyone that has ever considered being a founder or flirted with the idea of launching your own project raise your hand perfect um those that are interested in just like whether it is that you're already part of the industry or you're just learning about web 3 for the first time and are looking to get a job with a team or like an already existing company raise your hand perfect so as our panel says we're going to be discussing what are some Avenues and what are some ways in which people and all of you hopefully if you have ideas

whether it is because you belong to a team or whether is you want to launch your own project how can you access funds to achieve these goals that you have and I'm really excited to be sharing the space with all of these wonderful people that work in different protocols that lead different uh grants programs and different initiatives my name is lamu I am the founder of metrics Garden Labs uh we're an impact design an impact Studio we focus on researching building Frameworks and models to evaluate impact in the web 3 space create prototypes and products around that I've also done a fair good amount

of research into different aspects in the web 3 ecosystem one of them as part of metag gol's Grant Innovation lab in which we looked at several of the different grants programs in the ecosystem and found some very interesting insights I highly recommend you to go and read it if you want to learn more about what verticles are looking for when funding different projects and now I'm going to give it up to my panelists so that each one of you if you can please introduce yourselves and let us know what's your name what's your role and what is the most valuable lesson that you've had so far in the web

three space when it comes to funding okay hi I'm t uh I'm CEO of all the women and I'm really happy to be here today and that we're having this conversation cuz I think it's one of the most fundamental problems in web3 and this is one of my learnings so I've been in tech for 20 years maybe even more than that so I started in web one long time ago I was a Founder three times two of my startups still exist and run uh successfully but what I have learned so I joined cryptospace three four years over four years ago that's when you know the whole promise of web three ether was their compatibility pity that anyone can be any anything you know like no one

cares about your gender race religion anything you can be completely synonymous and all that matters is your own chain credentials and your own chain reputation so I was planning to build this decentralized reputation protocol so that people can gain trust based on your credentials based you know on chain activity which PPS you claimed you know which events you went to potentially or uh what kind of donations you made what kind of transactions you did so I really believed in it and I was like Hey that that's the environment is inclusive by Design This is where as a woman as a Founder I struggled with this fundraising here I won't have the same challenges However unfortunately in reality it's not the case currently only 7% of Founders are women in web 3 and

they receive according to data four times less funding than men it's not much different from you know regular world so unfortunately that's my learning about web 3 and all the things that we've been through uh but I still believe in crypto rails uh believe in web three ethers and the potential that we can achieve with this that's why I'm still here hi I'm Jemma I work at the Stellar development foundation on the ecosystem growth team and we run a program that's called the Stellar Community Fund which is an open application Awards program for Builders that are building on stellar and we provide grants from uh all the way from small ones from folks who have gone through a really intensive boot camp and have gotten one-on-one mentorship and

been able to build up their idea all the way to folks who are building and then launching on the Stellar main net and even support beyond that and I think in thinking about this um in talking with so many of our Founders we had held our uh conference last month in London and we got the opportunity to meet I met hundreds of people who have been funded through the Stellar Community Fund was that no one said no one was like Hey that money was awesome right everyone was like Hey getting to connect with you about this or that time I was stuck and you were able to connect me to someone on your product team who was able to help or the marketing support we got the thing that is so important and that I think what allows our Awards programs to sort of set themselves apart is this

support that's not monetary and so I think really understanding the importance of that in a grants program is been my most important learning hi uh my name is Alex uh I have a corporate background uh previously before lier and I was working in big four five Financial audit firm and uh little bit experience also have in analytical and planning operations so my learns from web 3 adults that unfortunately there is a real world outside the crypto also still and the when the crypto hits this mid space it often creates some tension and you know your Crystal C wound at that

that moment but still you like gain new experience with uh this collaboration with mid space Also you gain this experience and put it into the work and you like review your hopes and put them into the work and you now have new vision of the future and you still hope that this Crystal Castles can be rebuil but in more stronger uh hardened way so yeah and the grants are pretty open I believe and uh like T mentioned I I think pretty often it really doesn't matter who you are or maybe what you are but still this clashes with the midp space that what creates this really similar paradigms the previous uh

experience perfect thank you so much and I think this is a it's a really good starting point into the conversation like realizing one unfortunately even if we want to to think that we're breaking creating breaking these paradigms from past experiences or like past spaces in the web to space it's we're still seeing the same type of behav being uh replicated in the space um and then what to what you mentioned Jemma as well of funding is not funding and support doesn't only mean money right like for Founders and project leads that are trying to get their projects off the ground there's other things that are

needed that is not only financial resources that will enable your project to thrive and your product to gain adoption and as as a Founder one of the things that I found When approaching this funding question is that it's actually very nuanced like understanding whether you want to go through down the grants route or you want to get VC funding or if you want to bootstrap your project it largely depends on the stage of your project what the needs are for the project and for other Founders and other people that are thinking that are in this room and are thinking of

launching their own Endeavors what if each of you could please reply what is a framework that you suggest they use or that you have used previously in launching your own projects to approach this question of should I bootstrap my project should I go down the grants route and only build it through Grand or like should I start looking for VC funding sure I can start I think like again like this experience comes from non web 3 first uh I was a Founder in web to space I did with VCS CRS everything and really important to understand like who what's your stage

that's for sure early stage a bit later like is it still you know series a preed and so on uh you don't want to dilute your if you go to VCS it's always dilution uh of shares and and it's always control from outside the more investors you have the more control from the outside there is like there will be always pressure you think oh I'm a funder now I can do whatever I want it's not the case the moment you let nvcs like they're lar defined in your agenda like there will be some pressure to deliver more on the revenue while you think it needs to be more on another metric it's just like reality of it but at the same time I feel like it's not really web through related by the AI um I see more and more that early stage

funding is being challenged you can go to the POC stage much faster than before like do you really need VC money at this early stage when you can get traction before you know you even like spend you know first 10 10K or something you can really bootstrap to certain degrees I think what is interesting web web 3 is that funding here is different like it started with like you remember probably icos like a lot of that was scammed but it is fundraising then nfts projects like that's fundraising as well grants um I think well Stella is doing great but also like you might have heard of gitcoin they've been doing it for a long long time those are great as well it has challenges and again I think it helps a lot for the first early stage if you go

in for further stages you need to go for bigger VCS uh there also web three VCS I know quite a few of them I think the game is changing I don't think I can't say how exactly but it feels like VC game investment will be changing in next you know few years web 3 part of it AI Revolution is part of it I would recommend not to look for investment until you feel like okay I am ready I know what I'm doing I have at least some initial you know product Market fit uh signals and grants I think it's good to explore like grants you don't have too much obligation uh for VCS uh you can just deliver on certain metrics and I think yeah grants is a good stting point to explore what you want and what you can achieve with that um y yeah so I'll

Focus you set me up there I'll hit it home for talk more about grants um I think first thing sort of internally is to really have like a reality check with yourself and with your team about the stage that your project is in you know there's nothing bad about being early stage or about being ready for an accelerator or whatever it is and ultimately I understand the desire to go for the bigger sum of money like you're like oh this will give us longer Runway or whatever but ultimately the thing to think about I think is the support that comes with the grant that's not monetary and that by maybe taking a step and trying to get a little bit further than maybe your project is currently at you're kind of shooting yourself on the foot by not getting that support that then you're going to need later um and

so I think just really being honest with yourself about that and even if that means starting with maybe a smaller sum and getting a lot of mentorship and Hands-On support so that you're really set up and ready if then you choose to go to VC funding or or a larger Grant and then the other thing I think is just doing your research on the web three grants space and on what kind of Grants you're looking for like are you a public good would you be eligible for quadratic funding um do you have enough Runway that you could could do something that you could do something with retroactive funding or like is someone running uh you know a request for proposals that your project fits perfectly in or do you need just sort of an open perspective grants program in which case you can come to the Stell Community Fund um but

I think yeah make sure you do your research find the program that fits find the program and the people that are going to be good support for you and just to shout this back out I think a great resource for that is the state of web 3 grants report uh put out by metago and Grant stack it's got like really great pretty objective information about like 13 Grant programs so if you're just sort of looking for a place to start and you don't know where to find this information I think that's a great jumping off point um yeah so as a potential ground receiver or maybe uh Team asking uh looking for some VC to support the project I personally would recommend you to think your plan ahead of all this rounds of reing funds what you do what you will do uh with this

with that money how many uh funds you need to make a proof of concept to make some MVP because uh actually I agree with JMA that you can actually have a lot of help outside of forums and communities free of charge and because you can actually find your new teammates there that will uh probably even bring more they will put more like uh work in the project that you expect uh and uh maybe it will be more useful even with uh than having tons of funds from the start from some VC that which uh whose heart you ignited with your incredible

project so my my um uh suggestion here is not to lose your mind because of this oldest opportunities out there and uh have your cold mind put in the work plan ahead and make baby steps then run if you uh clearly see your aim and clearly see the opportunity I think this is a really good point even though we we're talking about okay yes we want funds there's a lot of money out there in the web3 ecosystem like if we're being very honest everyone is going to try and throw money at you so I think it's a really important decision just as you were mentioning and like Jimma mentioned it Alex also mentioned it and it does

receiving a gr from an ecosystem can very much look like entering a relationship with a VC in that there are going to be expectations not only in terms of metrics or kpis that you will need to deliver with your product or with your project but there's also some sometimes unmentioned or unclear expectations that the ecosystems have when they granting giving a grant sometimes they are laid out there in terms of this is how long we want you to be part of our ecosystem and this is the type of impact that we want you to see to generate as a builder in the ecosystem and sometimes but sometimes it's also not clearly laid out there I know that the three of you have

participated in running different grants programs so I would love to hear and it might be very useful as well what are some of these considerations that grantees people looking to get a grant from each of your ecosystems should keep in mind in terms of what are the healthy expectations that you have when giving a grant sure actually we don't have a grand program yet as it is but we have been funding and supporting women who are artists and content creators and event organizers and now we're moving on to builders so basically extending and launching an official gr program so just quick clarification for everyone uh so far as it has not beneficial it's not like we had these Frameworks and uh

criteria for people but for us it's very clear we're worlder women we're supporting women especially Builders we want to support women in terms of like if it's a woman founder if there's a sea level woman on the team or it's a project maybe it's all done by men but for some reason they decide to do it for women their product is for women their service is for women uh that's our basically the only criteria we're not obliging anyone to build on a specific L1 or L2 which is very often the case so for us it's like women focused uh funding you get extra points if you build on tesas or ethering because we belong to the ecosystem but it's not necessary so that's pretty much match the criteria for now uh we want to see

how it goes uh with this extended type of Grants uh that we're launching and we're going to see a lot of probably Farmers which has been a challenge in the grand uh space but I guess like in our case it will be a bit easier to sort it out uh because again like it's not about ecosystem adoption per se it's more about impact on women in the space yeah I think the biggest thing for us is that the funding for the Stellar Community Fund comes from the Stellar development foundation um which is where I work and it's the foundation sort of cultivates the growth of the network and the mission of that Foundation is to create Equitable access to a Global Financial system it's right there um that's not a requirement for projects that are submitting to the Stellar

Community Fund but it doesn't hurt I mean I think if you think about our voters who are our community members um and other folks who work at SDF they're there they're invested in this community because they are invested in that mission Stell is also optimized for payments for financial services and so I think a lot of folks submit just thinking oh this is another grants program and maybe haven't looked deep enough into sort of how what sellers optimize for and also what the community that's around Stellar is interested in um and then the other thing I'll say is just if you're submitting a grant prog a grant submission to Stellar make sure you don't talk about how excited you are to build on salana in it which is great I'm so excited you're going to build on salana but you know just quick proofread

there I think is a good thing to do so if we talk about grants in Lio I would say from the first time viewer from the site it could look really sophisticated because we have like egg requests it's ecosystem grants requests we have Lego it's like ecosystem grants organization and we also have a sub subcommittee into Lego Community lifeguards initiative and uh I would say that if you wanted to apply something to something similar or in uh for ligher uh you would like to first of all uh understand what problems you're solving so if you're solving something particular useful for

particular certain protocol or app or Community do your research what the what needs they have like what that doesn't have grants program or something like that similar or maybe maybe even their competitors working on something simul that you want to introduce and you can search for Grants there I don't know it's really W opportunities there but even if you're doing something like a commonwealth uh for the community communities out there or the network itself you still can look for some grants program like like Lego for example because we support uh Builders and initiatives not only purely Tech

ones but also research is helping people out there just for doing cool stuff or for being into trouble so there's always a way you just need to understand what you're solving what you want to do and I think you just need to find a path to the Synergy with some other communities which are already adult enough to help you perfect and we're almost at five minutes well we're at five minutes before we close I have one question for each one of you if you can share in like three words five words at most what would you say is the first thing that you review to decide should I continue reading this Grant application uh

conviction I want to see conviction that people actually believe in what they say in there um even if it's written with Chad jpt I would see if it's real it can be written you know like many of us are not native speakers you can use it but just it should not be generic conviction like if you see it's generic like you see it it's not there like I really believe that Founders have to have conviction it has to be either a problem that they want to solve you know or something else that they really believe the future is going to be like this and I want to contribute to it and this is how I feel about it without it like I think it's just generic okay I'm going to do this in four words budget use case team and achievability I think unfortunately I cannot state it more

more better than uh Gemma because it's really it's about solving the problem it's about accountability and know knowing what to do so if you know what to do you got to have a plan and if you have a plan you can present it oh of course the previous experience of solving similar problems could be also useful but that's not like 100 requirement like you can do you can be a first time adopter and uh still you have a high chances if you prove that you're doing something really useful you have a plan uh and you well basically I think that's the points are

the most critical perfect so I do want to leave some minutes in case people and I hope there are questions out there from people that want to access funds whether it is to this three particular upcoming Grand program and two two existing Grand programs we're wrapping up if each of you can please tell our audience where they can find you in the interwebs and if they run into you this next week at Devcon or any of the many side events that are happening what should they come and chat you up on so Twitter is taica like actually like Thailand but then Tha Ka uh you can also uh catch me up and get my telegram I do Mentor proon people if you can find a

spot on my cly that's also an option I have been doing it uh for quite a while especially Founders especially at the early stage um especially women yeah you can find me at the booth in there um come check out our Pass Key activation and make a 10 donation to charity if you haven't um I'm also on Twitter uh at um I'll give you my Twitter if you come find me um and yeah check out Stellar org also we run we're running monthly rounds of the Stellar Community Fund there's a round open right now when that round closes there will be another one open if you're at all interested in that please come chat with me we'd love to get more people more women especially building on Stellar so if you have any interest please come find me and I'd love to chat about that uh you can find

my telegram handle on leo. Li and also I'll be around here for sometime also and you will can see me at Devon uh but there don't forget about other council members of Lego there are plenty of them you can also find the handles and the Lego that litify perfect so you can also find me at lamu no I I should Li at lamu in telegram at ZX yo on Twitter I am also happy to provide any insights into brands in the optimism ecosystem C ecosystem I'm a public good Steward there I'm a badge holder and delegate in optimism So and I've done ample research in the grants ecosystem

for the EF for Stellar for several other ones so please feel free to reach out if you have any questions thank you everyone