How to get a job in crypto and web3

Transcript

are you looking for a job in web 3 then this is the show for you I mean who wouldn't want a job in web 3 blockchain is one of the fastest growing Tex in the world it is going to completely revolutionize every part of our lives from money to Identity to ownership to governance not to mention salaries in crypto startups as compared to trafi salaries are almost double in crypto and a recent study showed that most crypto jobs are remote compared to only 16% of traditional jobs best part right now speaking from experience of working in web 3 is that it is still so small you get to rub shoulders with giants

every day because all the smartest people are here and there's not that many of us yet so the question is how the heck do you get a job in web 3 when let's be real the job market sucks it's tough out there yes crypto prices are pumping but jobs always lag many web 3 companies have still recently done layoffs as late as January of 2024 so we want to make sure you know how to find a web 3 job and we've got the perfect guest with us today Lacy Kalani the CEO and co-founder of meta intro which is the largest web3 jobs Community with

over 600,000 members and today Lacy and I are going to tell you exactly the steps you should take to get a job we're going to talk about how you can prep your resume prep for interviews and make sure you're the best position to get a job and we're also going to look over the job market as a whole and talk about what roles are available and how you can set yourself up for success and we're going to talk about meta intros upcoming job fair at e Denver and then nft NC and some more events they have on the calendar this year so buckup this is a great episode for all those who want to sit beside me and maybe Sunday come on this podcast to talk about what you're building in web 3

gmgm welcome to web3 Academy your one trusted source to capitalize on the next big phase of the internet I'm jird today's host and I believe that you can get a job on chain that's why I'm carving a path for doers to confidently build and invest in web 3 GM Lacy welcome back to web3 Academy GM thanks for having me back again it's been a while it's great to see you it's been a minute I mean it feels like it's been a decade in crypto years it really has I mean since the last time I saw you we've had crashes we've had mini runs we've had an amazing job market we've had a really shitty job market you know it's

really been it's been decades we've gotone through it all we've got through and through it all meta intro not only is still here you're thriving so it was made so much sense to get you back on the show so many of our listeners are looking for jobs in web 3 or their Founders that are trying to find a team in web 3 so having you on the show as really the leading web3 job community and building a great product in space we're going to touch on your product but I want to start off today can you give us an idea of what is the state of the web 3 job market right now and how honest can I be because I don't want to

scare anybody but I want to be honest and I want to set realistic expectations because sometimes I see people out there on crypto Twitter the podcast I listen listen to and they're talking about the job market in a way where I'm over here like what job market are you talking about what are you like what am I completely missing and so be honest I want I want yet yeah yeah the job Market's really scary right now I mean I write this week alone and it's Thursday I put up blog posts every single day I've written about six major layoffs this week alone by hundreds of people and it's been really scary over the past

year and some change we thought going into 2024 knock on W things were turning around every company pretty much did their layout there's no one else to be laid off and then like boom first few days into January 2024 and not only did we think the companies were done making layoffs companies that had already made layoffs announced more layoffs and with that in the crypto States really really tough to watch some of the some of these companies have to go through layoffs have to lay off very talented individuals and it's rough and scary out there right now just being honest it it's it's interesting because from the outside I think there would be a lot of people that would make a correlation

between the job market and the price action of major cryptos right and everything's you know on the rise like bitcoin's over 50k holy like I don't think any of us saw that happening this quickly in this bull run the ETF got approved like all these major Milestones that we're celebrating most of the it's interesting most of the shows that we've done since pretty much December I would say mid November have been this like really bullish sentiment right and it's not to say I know you're not you know the job Market's going to come back but it's interesting how what do you think the correlation is between the price of the markets versus the job

market yeah I think as the price goes up the scams come back and the scams for the job market not scams and crypto in general so I would say over the past four weeks I've seen a meta interest Discord is incredibly secure we have all the Bots I promise you you're safe but I have seen so many scams posted in our server over the past four weeks like it it was almost like zero to 100 overnight and I was thinking about this literally yesterday of huh I wonder why that is huh that's interesting everything is up right now I wonder why that is and so I

think there's a correlation right now with the scam jobs being posted people excited about the market people excited to finally land the job within the space eager to click on anything and the market is very desperate right now everybody needs a job and so it's a perfect time to pray on vulnerable people which is the job Seekers and I think there's a very clear correlation right now happen yeah so from the employer side it's a great job market I would assume right now then it it's great there is a wealth of talent out there I always find it very interesting because we actually have been hiring recently and you actually you helped me out with some of

our hiring so shout out to you and your team and two things really stood out to me from the hiring perspective one was the number of people that are just want to get into web 3 like the number of people I met with that were like maybe not the right person for the role and they're just like just give me a chance like just let let me in right and I'm like yeah but this isn't really like isn't your skill set like you know I don't think this is the right role for you but they just want to get in so there's that a lot of that that feeling and then the other thing that really stood out to me was yeah the the number of people that talked about how they haven't have had trouble over the last

six months months and it made sense to me I operate so much in terms of price that isn't happening in the markets right now that I just assume that the jobs follow that so I'm like oh price goes up everyone must be hiring again a lot of the crypto companies tokens have gone up which means they they have more Capital available so okay they must be in a good position but I always forget that companies lag often their decision making is you know they're making decisions now for a quarter or or a year from now they're setting budgets way ahead so it's actually a lag that's happening what are you seeing from the employer side are Employers in a great

position right now yeah I think employers are in a great position right now in terms of having access to a pool of candidates that in any other circumstance would not be available they have access to top tier candidates that have just gotten let go of the best companies in the web three space they have the ability to set salaries lower than probably market rate they have ability to um you know pump on benefits they can be cheap about it and they can force people to go back into office I mean that's a whole different conversation of companies you know that prefer the return to office and I think employers the big guys they're going to come back we're going to continue see to

see jobs over the next two quarters go up from those individuals I think from the smaller companies the startups that are under 50 employees they're hurting right now they're trying to figure out a how the heck did I just get through that fair market how do I raise more funding who can I hire right now with a little funding that I have left and can that get me the skill set that I need to help me bring my startup to the next level and I think there's a really big gap between the little guys and the big guys right now but all in all it's a great Market to be an employer and you have access to a ton of really really qualified candidates so what are you saying like to our listeners who are job

Seekers and they're having a tough time they can't find something yeah what you should they go back to web to like what's your recommendation right now is there another path that you suggest you tell them yeah my first thing I would say is I feel you I'm with you I understand It's hard out there I speak to hundreds of job Seekers throughout the week um You are not alone I would say the people that will stand out in this next round of hiring are the people who leveled up the resume who spent the time learning new skills you know refining their resum updating it chatting with recruiters and really taking the time to make sure that their resumé stands out in what will be a pile

full of applicants the people that are networking going to conferences is the people that are really going out of their way and at the end of the day you do what you have to do you know maybe you take you take a web two job just to justify the means which a lot of people do people have bills people have everyday day expenses but it doesn't mean that the door is closed on web 3 you can still apply you can still find that opportunity when the time is right and so continue upscaling your resume that is the single most important thing that you can do during a bare market and when you recommend people to upskill is there particular skills that you find are the most valuable within web 3 or

that employer value or that you're recommending to people I'm guessing it's not learning how to go into discords and say GM it no it's not however I would love to see a candidate who in their skill section the first vot point is can say GM in a channel that actually might help you stand out totally yeah I mean other skill sets naturally this conversation will dip into AI you know and the AI job market as well which is very complimentary to the web through ecosystem and I do believe that training yourself to be proficient in certain tooling within the AI space and putting that on your resume even if you're

applying to a web free job will help you stand out because a lot of Founders right now a lot of companies are trying to figure out how to implement those tools any way but it's hard speak generically so what I would recommend is let's say you're an analyst in the space and you're like hey what kind of skills should I have on my resume go to meta interest Discord and you'll see the analysts Channel and you'll see all the jobs have been posted click on a JD and see what the requirements are and make sure the requirements for that are the keywords the skills that are required are also in your resum yeah it's interesting you bring up AI one of the first questions we ask in any in our application process like at the

beginning before we even go to interview is are you using AI how are you using it and what tools are you using and I pretty quickly filter out those who are not using Ai and I and I bump up those everyone's using chat GPT so that one doesn't really impress me anymore what more so I find impresses me is the people who are either very thoughtful on how they're using it and they have like implemented into their workflow into their daily habits or their daily routine and they have like real examples of how they use it or the ones that are deeper down the you know AI text act to use that term and they're using AI tools

that I've either never heard of or they're using it in ways that I'm like oh wow like you're really focused on efficiency and that matters obviously to me as an employer so it's really interesting that you bring AI up the other thing I find for us is I just want to see that people are doing on chain like I don't care what it is I just want to know like all you have to do is come to an interview and just tell me about something topical or relevant that you participated in recently you mitted some free nft which then got you token gated access to this which you thought was really cool like walk me through how you understand what it is like to be an onchain user because you

can show me that you are an onchain user yes and you could even have a section for that on your resume so let's say you have your skill section your contact Section on the leand side on the right hand side you have your about me your experience section save some space for literally titled the fun stuff and put those bullet points of what you've been doing in your spare time what you've been doing that's relevant to the industry what shows your curiosity because you will find time and time again that in these job descriptions they'll say requirement bullet point curious about web 3 curious and always wants to learn but that's a really good way as a job Seeker in your resume to relay that information somebody who's

constantly dabbling and if anything that tiny section can be what gets you in the door to uh to an interview yeah that it's such a good point because it's interesting how and and and I find this right now when we're hiring I don't get a lot of people that have professional web3 experience most of the time I get people that have personal web3 experience and then their professional experience is in web 2 or or some you know something else and I'm okay with that I'm actually completely okay with that so long as I think a lot of people are not doing a good job of demonstrating their web 3 experience so

like you do a great job I understand your professional experience okay I'm I'm hiring for a social media manager role you can show me that you've done that role before somewhere else Kate great right on but have you been involved in crypto Twitter tell me how you're involved in crypto Twitter do you understand building community in crypto and why that's different than maybe the social media management role you've done before like it is so important for these candidates to be able to express even something as simple as just tell me when you first bought Bitcoin I I often find I want to know that like want to know like did you first buy it in 2017 or did you buy it in 2022 and I'm not necessarily going to make a decision on that but it's very interesting to know

or I want to know that you bought it and then you lost your wallet and I'm like oh like you you understand the pain of this industry too I'm thinking as we go here but I'm realizing how much in my interviews with people I really do focus more on like your crypto and your personal experience than I do professional often right now at least did you spend a lot of time during during your interviews asking those questions or did people voluntarily give you that information no I have to ask it I have nobody volunteer and if they do they don't do it well right like they give it in the in the lamest way like our our process is first step is a video application and I always ask for it in the video application but people don't

do a great job of explaining it most people like let's say most video applications are usually about five minutes right there's usually about five questions and the two major questions are what is your professional experience related to this role and then what's your crypto experience and most people in a five-minute interview they'll do like three minutes on or more four minutes on their professional experience related to the role and often I find it they're talking about like what they did in a relevant role but in a totally different industry and I actually tune out and I stop listening and I'm like just get to the crypto experience tell me about your crypto experience and yeah it's making me and then and then when we

do get an interview I have to really push them on it because they don't do a good job of telling that story yeah pitching yourself is an art and it's hard and unless you have a ton of experience doing it you probably find yourself as a candidate figuring out is it some is it stupid that I'm saying V well they think this is funny does this give me a leg up especially because a lot of the early crypto experiences are so stupid you know it's like you know you totally got rugged and like what does that make you look like it takes an art to kind of turn that into then and this is what it taught me about the industry this is why I became passionate like the The Art of Storytelling is very hard and it's so important for a job

Seeker to be able to do that otherwise they're going to be stuck in these interviews where I'm sure you've had a ton of qualified applicants who just couldn't tell their story and just like were either too shy or didn't know whether or not that was was a good story to share you know and what would pertain to like an opportunity with you and they may have totally missed out on an opportunity to land this job with you just because of that so if you are a jobseeker and you're watching this the art story telling is so important yeah I'm I'm gonna ask you the natural followup here yeah how is there a frame is there a framework you use for storytelling how does somebody become a good Storyteller good Storyteller how does someone become I don't know I think

I should noodle on that and get back to you Bap story context I used to work in casting and I did unscripted casting for the first half of my career which is essentially recruitment for on camera television and it was my job to get stories out of people who wanted a job being on TV and granted those people want to be on TV so they kind of understood the craziness that you know they needed to implement into their story they kind of knew how to go about it and once I switched out of that industry I realized hey jobseekers like don't really know how to tell a sto tell a good story and I don't know there should be like a master class on that because it's not a hard skill to learn and I'm sure there are basic bullet

points that you should hit I don't know I will Circle back to you on that one maybe I can find maybe we should do like a web Academy meta intro of Storytelling master class because I I love this stuff too and I really do find yeah most candidates are not great storytellers they tend to do two things they they they can be good storytellers they tell the wrong story a lot I find that a lot I get into an interview with somebody I'm like Oh weird like I can already tell that you're telling me something that is not relevant but you know the story maybe so they're comfortable with it right yeah and they just go down that path and then the other thing is yeah they just do a terrible job I feel like I'm being very negative right now I

don't mean to be they do a ter terrible job of like picking one story and sticking to it so they'll kind of jump around a lot but to me like you just got to keep it simple and just tell me a story relevant to your crypto experience like I think that's you know and if you don't even know what that story is just tell me what you did in crypto in the last more recently right like you know tell me you got in the year you buy Bitcoin and then be like in the last six months here's what I did okay here's a good example I got an interview with somebody they told me that they bought a apartment in Tulum using Defi and I will that candidate like I now I now know

that that candidate is ingrained in my mind I mean that's obviously super unique not everybody can say that but that's something they did on chain they did using crypto that makes them stand out to me and I guess you know what the truth is if even if you don't have any money just go do a bunch of stuff on chain like there's free nfts you can mint there's points per Jo there's farming there's all these things you can do just go do one of those things do it fully and then just tell me that you did it I don't even really care if you can tell me like you know what it meant to you that would be nice but if you can just tell me you did it I'm stoked on you now and now I can like really you stand out of my mind not

just as like oh yeah somebody who's been in crypto for a few years but no you did something specific yeah I love that yeah storytelling so important let's go from state of job market well I'm sure we we might have scared some of our listeners it's not hopeless I will say at least I think you know it's coming back be careful out there watch out for scams and I think that there is going to be I would assume I guess here's a question for you when do you think the job market will come back can you predict that at all soon no with my magic ball I think you know the big companies are always hiring the binance cracket and I do say

that a little bit in a skeptical way because there are such a thing as ghost jobs and you know if you've been around GH job what's a ghost job so a ghost job is like a bandity job a job that maybe they're thinking about hiring for but not actually hiring for right this minute there can be so many ways that are like maybe a bit more nefarious I'm not saying that these companies are doing that but I am saying that there are jobs out there that are being posted that companies are not necessarily actively hiring for need that candidate today so when that happens that could mean your interview process takes two months it could mean that you get

ghosted by the recruiter and you never have an answer as to why you didn't get the job or you never get contacted back and so usually you see these like ghost jobs pop up after the holidays after you know sometime in the late fall right before the holidays and so that's to say there are jobs out there so like I'm a little skeptical when I see you know all these big companies consistently hiring and posting new jobs literally every single day but that's not to say that they aren't actually hiring for those roles on all the market will come back it always does people want to work in this space and if people can't find a job they'll innovate maybe they'll make a product of their own maybe they'll I don't know help a web 2 company push

into the web 3 space if job market wants it bad enough there will be jobs yeah okay I'm going to switch up the order of our show here live on you because I've just been in my mind you mentioned networking is such a powerful way to get into the job space and so I want to talk about networking and I don't know if my my lead here is I want to go towards conferences and job fairs which you guys are doing but I don't know if you first want to talk about networking digital versus networking IRL or I'll let you sure yeah networking there's so much so as a job seeker and maybe not everyone feels like this but I I do feel like there's a big

portion of people that do is that being a job Seeker is a very vulnerable process you know you're exposing yourself you're being very vulnerable there's a lot of anxiety around it then God forbid you have to network IRL and like put yourself out there in competition with everybody that's around that's also looking for that same job how do you stand out and I feel like there's a ton of ways you could stand out online having a strong crypto Twitter profile having a great LinkedIn participating in online Hons being in Discord communities being very active and vocal putting content out there commenting on people's tweets and connecting with people on LinkedIn but when it comes to networking in person

it's a different like Beast there's other things that you could be doing that makes a lasting impression that is a good use of your time because networking IRL can be expensive it's not free for anyone it's the cost of getting there it's the cost of staying there and then the opport what's what is the opportunity what's the ROI on that for a job Seeker spending $1,000 on a conference ticket or, to get somewhere can be really expensive especially when you don't know when your next job opportunity is going to come in so how do you make use of that time and how do you do it well so we've done over the past year and some change we've done about five or six conferences job fairs and I've seen the craziest stuff some

stuff where I'm like that should be like the poster child for like how a network IRL all the way down to you know other people where I'm like I wish I could just give you like a pocket so you could read through it and you know so that the next conference you have these like many like tools in your tool bag so I can rant about this for a while because I've done so many of them now but if there's something specific that you wanted to talk about within that yeah yeah I think let's let's talk a little bit about I mean I'd love to hear any stories if you have any funny stories of the best or the worst any stories that come to mind let's do that first I've seen some pretty narly t-shirts but narly t-shirts and like that are like like a t-shirt

that's like promoting that I'm looking for a job totally totally some that are like really inappropriate but it's clearly a job Seeker trying to up somebody's attention I don't want to call them like lingerers yeah like that will like literally stay the entire conference in the corner making sure they talk to every single person that's also called hustle yeah either I'm trying to think I wish I came more prepared with like what do what do some of these t-shirts say what does some of these t-shirts say I don't know if they're all like appropriate to say on this oh no you could say it yeah no i' I've seen so much the best t-shirts that I've seen though are the ones that have like literally on the back I am a solidity developer hire me

with a big QR code and the QR code links to their resume their onl portfolio love that I've seen people get really creative with their t-shirts because you are a walking advertisement and so you know if somebody can passively see that and like that Sparks a conversation somebody scans it I think that's such a fun opportunity to network passively I love that I wouldn't never even consider that okay so you guys have got a job fair coming up at East Denver I think you're doing aun more maybe nft NYC and some others tell us a little bit about the job fairs actually you know before we talk about the job fairs what would be other than t-shirts and yeah set what other advice would you give to somebody

who's attending one of these job fairs or maybe just attending a conference around networking yeah so to have your contact First have your contact information ready whether that's do you know what a pole is no like those cards there's something called a pole and not Endor SP them whatsoever just love their product it's essentially like a card that has like a digital NPC is that what it's called in it where you can tap it okay so you tap your phone you tap the card on somebody's phone and then up Pops that person's Link in BIO their website their Twitter whatever that is and this way instead of like having to airdrop something to them you you know stick on the back of your phone and you

just tap it on the C's phone that could be your resume that can be whenever you're going to the conference how do you how do you spell it how do you spell p o PPL and there's a other competitors Poes are a little bit expensive but those are a great way having fun Swag like the t-shirts setting up meetings beforehand shoot your shot slide into some of these DMS if you're not sure who's going to be at the conference go to crypto Twitter see who's talking about it go to LinkedIn go to the conferences um uh website see who sponsoring the the event try to reach out to the recruiters the people that are in BD reach out to them on LinkedIn shoot them a message see if you can grab

a time for coffee or if you can meet them at the event and then also have a clear follow-up strategy I think that's what people miss a ton of the time is like great I connected with so and so at this conference when do I send them message do I send them a message do I add them on LinkedIn what is that followup strategy so I think having that idea in the back of your head when you're going to these events is helpful because you know hey I'm making this contact for a reason I'm doing this for a reason and hopefully there's some Roi on it on the other end after I follow up with them other things you can do participating in the hackathons there's most often non-technical and Technical tracks is generally free to participate Side Event are great if you can't afford

the actual event the side events are almost always just as good if not better than the actual event itself I know a lot of people who will go out to the conferences it's like for instance consensus is so expensive it's insane but the side events are it's literally the same people that are in the room at consensus they're just hating out outside of the the conference so just go to the side events don't even go to the actual conference that's okay there's a ton of stuff you can do people can get really creative that's all really great device okay tell us a little bit about your job fairs and how they work and how people can show up to those yes so last year we hosted so many fairs it was an amazing journey we learned so much and we are back at it this year we'll be

co-hosting the official job fair for E Denver it'll be on the second floor of the conference center we're expecting about 400 people which is amazing that's going to be packed we panels at all meta intro events we have headshot stations where we get to m the head shot into nfts a real time which for a lot of people it's their first time minting an nft first time figuring out how to claim it using it last year as their professional photo on Twitter and using it in a professional manner and we'll have resume at help we'll have coffee we'll have a DJ I try to take the anxiety out of the job bears as best as I can so usually some good music in the room does it some good copy cool so that's youth Denver we'll also be

hosting the official job fa for nft NC that's at the javet center iwb and DC which is a female crypto blockchain conference and a few more so maybe after I'll I'll give you the link to where you can find out about all of our job fairs they're fun I promise sounds like a fun I've never been to a job fair with a DJ I'm lucky I haven't been to a job fair in a long time but I remember back in my University days job fairs definitely did not have DJs so am when when we were first talking about doing the job fairs I said to my I was like what if we just like hosted a job fair in a nightclub like and we had TV screens around the room you can scan the QR codes we had drink so it's like relaxing and chill

you know like it's web three we can really do anything and my CTO was like no we're not doing that that's not to say at some point I will win and we will have one of those so coming soon we'll see we'll get your CTO on the show do ask him about it yeah I have a question for you you you brought up the uh a professional head shot which actually I think is a great idea because I think you're right most people have never gotten a professional headshot but here's a question what about using your own face on crypto Twitter or LinkedIn versus the pfp any thoughts on on that as a job Seeker so at all of our job fairs except for eth Denver because

there just was such a lack of space where we're really not constricted on the space that we have we actually have a build your own professional Avatar station okay which is a lot of fun a lot of people will apply to jobs with their PP or they're ready player neon guitar and they use that as a professional identity however not all of those avatars are professional and it is okay to have many iterations of your avatar that showcase who you are as person and both as a jobseeker and as professional and so we built that activation with hopes that people can kind of see hey I can be anonymous I can use some of these tools within the web space and still

have fun with it and have a professional version of it that's been interesting to build that out I think it could apply with anything I've seen it all I think days are like gone are the days of anonymous resumés I don't know if you remember that like over the past few years where people were just like fully Aon I think those days are behind us you you have to do dox yourself for some of the bigger companies yeah un unless you're joining a dow where where everyone's Aon right like unless that was the the sort of the standard then but I don't sure I mean that there might be 10 of those left like there's not many one thing I saw recently that I really liked was the combo so I actually

just hired somebody for for our team and this was their crypto Twitter profile pick was their face professional photo and then they have a little pudgy and so they put their pudgy on their shoulder and I thought that was kind of cre I I love that like and it doesn't matter what pudgy is obviously an expensive pfp and I'm not telling job Seekers to go buy a pudgy but any little like I think that kind of that that shows that you're in web 3 that you're part of the community that you're active here you're not just trying to get in I love that that did that help that individual stand out when they were I mean I hired her so it's definitely not the reason I hired

her but yeah yeah it for sure you know you know the thing about hiring is and and I'm sure you know this too is you meet so many people that and this is I think why storytelling is so important as well you forget right like so I'm so busy I'm hiring for a role usually you've got to have hundreds of people apply you don't have to do hundreds ofws you need hundreds of applicants in order to get you know probably like 20 to 30 solid interviews in order to short list three to five pick one right like that's usually the numbers that I find you need to do and I forget people I just do right like I'm like looking through through my database I'm like who that I

interview that person like I don't even remember who that is yeah and so anything you can do and for for her this Diana is her name I'll use her name instead of just keep referring to her for Diana this little you know creative profile picture it made her very memorable for me so I was like oh yeah the little fudy one right like so yeah it helps well shout out to Diana yeah way to go H yeah sure she'll listen this and laugh that she I did not plan on bringing her up in this show okay I want to go to The Meta intro you guys did a great raise since the last time we had on the show and you guys have built an incredible product and incredible community so I want to focus a little

bit more let's shift from the job Seekers to Let's Tell audience a bit more about meta intro tell us about the raise and tell us what you guys have been up to and what you're building yeah so last time I I was on the show I don't even know if I had raised yet no I don't think so I don't think I had so right after the show I went on to raise three rounds of capital that year which was insane it was a long journey to like learn how to do that as an entrepreneur I went and I raised a really substantial grants round which gave me enough Authority and on street cred to then be able to go out and raise a preed round which then led me to quickly turn around

and raise a seed round so we ended up raising about 5.6 today it's a little over six Mill with uh some of the grants and uh credits post that but that was a wild ride that was amazing and I did that with about 1,200 people within the man e system and today we're actually closer to about 600,000 people that rely on us for jobs in the space and I set out to build what I coined as a resume wallet for web 3 we're earning and it's always been the case we're always earning credentials every Every Which Way on the internet but there's not a single way to be able to as a job Seeker take those credentials and turn around to an employer and show them those on onchain skills that onchain work history and So

Meta intro it's a resume W for web 3 it's multichain custodia wallet that holds your onchain credentials and interacts as a browser s with job application however our community for the most part lives within our newsletter and we have a tri-weekly newsletter that goes out three times a week highlights different jobs within the web 3 AIS space and the wallet is plugged into that experience which is really exciting so as the newsletter grew we were like hey I wonder if people would actually prefer their wallet to be connected to their newsletter experience and instead of them receiving this like big randomized list of jobs that we hope that they're interested in let's instead give them a

wallet that then plugs into their newsletter that shows them jobs that are only relevant to them so instead of receiving dozens of jobs that are not relevant to you you are now receiving jobs that are completely relevant to you jobs news who knows sk's liit with that so it's been great when I first was on the show it was only me and my CTO and now we have a team of 10 and it's been a good ride it's been a crazy ride we got really lucky raising and deciding to build what we wanted to build at that time um I think timing is everything when you're building and we got lucky with that you you make your own luck so I I appreciate you saying that but I'm sure a lot of that was hard work and hustle for sure that you and your team r

a lot of credit for so I'm a job seeker and my first step would be to join your newsletter I assume and then do I need to already have onchain credentials to bring to the wallet or do I develop those through setting up the wallet and joining minute intro what's sort of the typical process for a job Seeker to get involved in your community and start to use the wallet yeah so you could have uning credentials however most of our members do not yeah that's what out of the six and also like I realize how crazy it sounds without some contact 600,000 people R ranging from djn who have been in the space in for five plus

years all the way to people who have never heard of web 3 before or maybe have just heard of what like an nft and they're like hey is this a path that I can pursue is this something you know is this an industry that I can build a career in I'm not sure meta intro like helped me out to figure out what that path could be so it is a very very wide range we are also I also some other stats were're also represented now in over 170 countries we represent almost two dozen languages and so it is a very wide audience and so as we were building we're like how do you service that not everyone's going to have oning credentials not everyone's most people

don't have a wallet so how do we build a product for such a wide audience so you can either have onto credentials which you can put into your wallet or you can upload your resume our team built a res what we pointed like a resume parser which is built on a Model that takes apart your resume then puts stuff on chain free I'm totally bet well R guys puts stuff on chain and then puts that into your wallet and your profile and then helps deliver a more accurate newsletter to your email inbox huh very interesting so like I could upload upload a PDF like that could be my resume and it will take out pieces of interesting oh wow very interesting yeah and so so then do I

receive the newsletter through the wallet or do I receive bits still just like through my email you'll still receive it through your email I'm sure at some point here soon over the next six months you'll just get notifications to your wallet or you can opt in for either the issue is that so many people still just prefer email as their form of receiving anything people might not want to have to go into their wallet to then see what what they're being notified of and so we'll build based on what people are asking for but my guess is at some point you'll get notif notifications just sent to your wallet yeah we've talked I'm trying to remember we had xmt on the podcast they're a web 3 messaging

protocol coinbase uses xmt and a couple others I can't remember the names right now but it's amazing when you think about how early we are in all of the tech here that it's so clunky it's so difficult to use you know a lot of the the web 3 Tech and we don't even have things like notifications or messaging embedded within well it's no wonder no people not many people want to use it yet but once we have those things it'll make such a diff difference and I agree I think it's I mean it's already here in some apps and I think it's coming in a lot more yeah uh Ops in in the future I want to touch base on your your community a little bit here because I think it's absolutely incredible that

you have 600,000 person crypto Community you might be the biggest or one of the biggest communities in crypto do you have any idea like how probably yeah I would say so you're definitely the biggest that I you're the biggest that I know of yeah uh maybe there are some that are big but anyway yeah we're growing about 30,000 people a month and last year we did about 550 million in Impressions across our brand so it was a really big year for us and so with that Community like I love web 3 and I think it's been a conversation almost weekly with my team of like at what point does web fre take the back seat in what we're building because the people in our

community yes they love web 3 they want a career in it but they just want a job they just want to be able to work I don't think they care about the wallet they don't care about the necessarily the onchain credentials they just want to know can I use your product to get a job faster and it's the struggle which I feel like a lot of Founders in the web 3 space go through is like we're web 3 we're going to Champion that's going to be across all of our branding but I think us internally we're kind of at this weird fork in the road of like do we just drop web 3 and do we just build a product that operates better be you know within our industry and services or customers better because of web 3 tools I don't know so you might see you know

at some point that vocabulary change on our site and know what we do but our community at the end of the day like they love 13 but they just want a job and they just want to be ble to get a job faster and K we use web 3 tools to do that so agree I appreciate you're sharing this with us this is the hardest thing as a Founder is to know when to Pivot and which pivots to take because there is constantly opportunities presented to you when you're growing and it's very difficult to know where you should focus on it where you should put allocate resources to and also to know when you make like

that's a major pivot that you guys would make shout out to you for you see incredibly calm you look great you know you're handing it all very well yeah well it's a good problem to have and like I don't want to stay web three forever like I want to be able to use what we're using and service every industry what's to say that somebody Chipotle who's hiring I think like 800 workers in the next two quarters to go work for their branches needs to hire faster wants a tool to be able to do that people want to work in the fast food industry what to say their onchain credentials aren't food related and they're instead of getting crypto jobs to their newsletter or to their email inbox it's just food jobs and so I'm

thinking like that and that also parlays into like other rounds of capital we might raise what our business model ends up looking like down the road and so I just want to be open I don't want to be that web 3 company that like cannot dig their way out of being web three at the end of the day ultimately isn't it just about the tooling that we're building that makes difference well and the ironic thing here is you know I'm making this parallel is everybody talks about account abstraction abstract the chain abstract the chain it's you know and it's so for every founder right like there was a point when leaning into being crypto and using nft and using those terms really worked that's gone right like that is that's behind us abstract all of that what you're talking

about though is very interesting you're almost talking about like abstracting web 3 at the business model level which is really I had not thought about that and I think that we might you're right we might see more Founders say you know what I came into the space I wanted to build in web 3 because I believed that the tech could offer a better product and and initially all my customers were web 3 because that's the space I was building in so I kind of built it for those customers but you're sort of saying no like now what I'm realizing is actually we could use our product still using blockchain still using all that same Tech but we could offer it to anybody and it's not necessarily just for crypto Deens yeah absolutely right

on wow exciting times over meta intro okay I want to give you a quick chance to give a shill and then I got a couple fun speed round questions for you before we wrap yeah shelle if you're heading out to e the durn come by our job fair and you can't miss it we'll be on the Billboards and you'll see all of the signs and whatnot will be on the second level it'll be on March 2nd between 10:00 a.m. to 3: PM come get your head shot taken come mention out tea come listen to good music and then outside of that if you go to minute intro.com wallet events you'll see all the other fairs that we'll be at we're adding fairs what seems to be like every month what we're looking at some International affirs as well so if you're not in the US I promise we're coming to you and at

meta intro across everything right on we'll put all those links in the show notes for all of our listeners okay fun questions one prediction for 2024 that's web three related or just like in general you know what you can think it whatever way you want we're talking about abstracting web three abstracting from the question yeah I know right you know you want to tell me who the next president's gonna be I know if you had asked me before the Super Bowl I would have said Team Taylor's winning uh I think jobs will come back 2024 Q3 Q3 okay yeah that's my guess I love it one thing you bought recently for under $100 that brings you Joy defract crypto

from this yeah you asked me this question last time and I'll never forget it because whatever my answer was it was so embarrassing it I don't remember days and I was like who says that like like I no one ever listens to this best thing that I just bought under $100 would be my new espresso machine was like 120 bucks so nice it's around Cofe amazing good coffee very important agreed yeah I also an espresso big fan okay last question you might remember this from last time if you had a billboard that one billion people were going to see what would you write on it

so I technically have like online build boards a ton of people see and they range from job markets Dead all the way up to work in web three I think it' be between those two are those lame are those lame answers the job Market's dead is not a lame answer working web 3 is a de but job market Dead with a QR code would definitely get a lot of job Seekers to scan it which actually could lead them to hahaa the job Mark is not dead to intro we'll show you our swag at all the conferences we have T-shirts and on the back it's a application to McDonald's so if you're coming to e demver pick up a t-shirt it's dark humor that's like pretty much

all of our brand is is dark humor so nice I love it I love it Lacy thank you so much for the time uh today thanks to you and your team for everything you guys are building you're just a a necessary resource and product in a space where we need more great talent coming in I hope everybody listening have hope you will get a job in web 3 eventually you will I promise it'll happen one way or another and thank you for having me I appreciate it thanks everybody have yourselves a great day thank you for listening to web through 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 our free newsletter where we provide timely and relevant web three 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 web3 are risky and you should never invest more than you're willing to lose thank you friends and see you in the next one