S7 Ep. 5 - From Zero to Web3: Mona Tiesler’s Guide to Starting Out

Transcript

welcome to the how to podcast brought to you by Green pill. Network we are excited to introduce our new podcast series dedicated to the transformative world of decentralized autonomous organization how to Da originated as a book co-authored by Kevin and Lee said to be published by penguin ROM house on January 21st this podcast extends that mission as we explore the unique stories and innov breakthroughs that are shaping the future of web 3 and down we will hear directly from The Visionaries and Builders at the Forefront of this mov this series is more than just a show

it's a vibrant space for learning inspiration and meaningful connections so let's dive in welcome to the how toow podcast brought to you by Green pill. Network today today we have Mona on the podcast Mona tasler is renowned web three venture capitalist Venture Builder and educator dedicated to advancing the blockchain and cryptocurrency ecosystem as a investment manager at tokus investment AG she has played a pivotal role in funding and supporting Innovative blockchain startups worldwide recognized as the web three investor of

the Year 2024 and one of the most inspirational woman in web 3 and AI Mona combines her expertise in Venture Capital with a passion for fostering groundbreaking projects in web 3 so welcome onea thank you so much thank you for that lovely introduction I'm very happy to be here thank you thank you for accepting the invite and also helping uh with the book so uh you like the parts about the Venture Capital uh are some of that it's from you so we really appreciate that and you also wrote recently an article which I think would be great start for our listener is like

how to actually evaluate cryptocurrencies as such and like I this is not a financial or legal advice but you know just like some uh kind of mindset play uh if we are thinking to put some money into tokens sure yeah I'll try to keep it short um I think in essence when you think about evaluating a cryptocurrency there's two sides to look at um one of them is looking at what we call fundamental analysis and the other one is technical analysis which I think are probably nice starting points to work from in terms of fundamental analysis to give a little bit of a more

tangible example would be for example say you're buying a house you want to buy real estate in the market so more fundamental analysis would be say that you're inspecting the property itself you're inspecting the neighborhood you're checking if this neighborhood is growth potential for example might there be a public transport that is going to be built there in the next few years are there local hospitals good schools right so you're kind of doing a fundamental analysis of the property and the surroundings technical analysis in this example would be more around what have the historical price trends been of properties in the area and is this you know an uptrending uh Trend that will

help you potentially figure out if there is further price potential upwards movement if you're want if you're thinking about buying this property as an investment similar with crypto Believe It or Not H you can think about it as kind of fundamental and Technical where you're looking at really the intrinsic value of the asset uh versus or in addition to um the forecasting of the future price by looking at past performance um I'll leave it there but happy to go into more detail but in essence I think that's maybe a good starting point for people who are trying to figure out where do I start uh to just kind of look at those two pillars no I think it's a great

example and uh I did not hear this uh kind of comparison but it makes so much sense like you invest into something what has the long-term potential and how you prove the long-term potential is that you already see that was some past performance basically and it's not just like makeup uh thing and like we can see this failures happening in real estate market and in crypto so we have the meme coins you know they are pumping like for a day sometimes even shorter uh and then dumping but you have also this artificial City I think China it's most famous for like you know they just build up the city on the Green Field but nobody lives there so it's it actually

bankra it at the end or they never finish it and yeah but cities like New York you know we can maybe compare New York to something like a Bitcoin uh San Francisco as a t- room because it's little newer uh they've been here for a while they had their ups and downs uh but um yeah they will probably be here also uh for a little a little longer so when you when you like look at the cryptocurrency uh is there anything else like with people if they want to go deeper uh kind of can look at it is there you know I get the charts and if they have just like you know coinbase or something they probably see only the

charts but is there some other sources they might want to look at well very simply speaking even you could start with the website um of course you can also look at something like coin market cap or coin gecko for some of the more you know price trends and where this coin is trading which exchanges Etc but maybe even to go one step back looking at the website to kind of understand who's behind this what do who developed this what is the development team's background what are their past successes what are their skill sets um that's also an often an interesting indicator to understand how experienced are the founders and the people behind this

project you can also you know look at maybe some of the documentation that is linked on the websites if you want to dive even deeper understand a little bit more about the technology is it a robust infrastructure how have they built this which chain are they built on or are they you know creating a whole new for example layer one blockchain why is that needed what is the value ad over other blockchains in the market right so there's a few things that you could analyze there make up your own opinion and also then look for maybe certain indicators that are valuable to you or that you think are are growth or success factors and then of course a big aspect

around it is also the utility of the cryptocurrency itself which means what is it used for right like is this project going to have uh intrinsic value that is acred in the token or is is it maybe just a fundraising mechanism whereas really the token is not useful for anything which means probably long term that token will not trade very highly and you might lose money on it token utility can be anything from governance of the overall protocol to maybe even Revenue um sharing which makes it a security so there are other aspects there to consider um but there's a lot of different ways that can where a

token can power and whole economy which gives it utility which therefore you know has a reason to exist and therefore will ACR the value of the project itself um and you know there's a lot of things I could mention there's maybe one last point that is rather or a little bit easier to see is in my opinion something like Partnerships and marketing how big is the ecosystem how active is the project is it explaining themselves is it putting a forward thought leadership in the market is speaking on for example X spaces or amas are the founders active maybe with with medium articles or or similar and that can also give you a

little bit of an indication of you know how much research um as well as how much Partnerships potential clients and users this particular project or protocol can acrw or has already accured which could be nice indicators to understand okay in future will this be be used will there be enough value generating mechanisms that power this for the long term yeah no that that makes sense and uh you know when I'm doing my research I'm trying to kind of do the similar sometimes I'm to I uh that's why I'm losing money well very often on my invest we all do we all do I think that's something a lot of us will have to come to terms with um it's

part of I always call it learning money it's not a lot but I call it learning money and it's part of the development I think most of us and correct me if I'm wrong but I think most of us go through when we start looking at the cryptocurrency market and want to participate in it yeah and like you should serve it small amounts you know the learning money the pocket money you can lose you know and now I started like um like going into some like let's say a little bit more alt coins just like for fun and I don't want to put like hundreds or thousands of dollars into it just like you know 20 50 bucks here and there uh and see how it's performing um you know have fun kind of doing it um

more like a game and like on that like shortterm gains I think uh sometimes even like the Twitter following matters like you know if the project has like 500,000 followers like there is like indication they will go somewhere it's not probably the long-term you know indication like you know it can be just a high but the you know for the short term uh can be there but what what you said also like you know if another L1 L2 make sense yeah I'm wondering the same like we have so many infrastructure projects these days like does that make uh more sense to do I think in you know we

see surprisingly actually um if I may say that but I am surprised by how many this current cycle new L1 l2s and even l3s are coming onto the market um where you know I think if you are evaluating the cryptocurrency market I would really think about is it necessary to have another infrastructure based layer and if why and then from all the contenders to the probably more or larger ecosystem systems that already exist will these new blockchains be able

to attract enough projects enough excitement enough um developers in order to sustain themselves and that is something I think you do have to look into because a lot of the times it might also be short-lived uh so that is something maybe to calculate into your specifically if you're trading into your trading strategy um because because yes the market is growing but do we really need thousands and thousands of thousands of layer one blockchains my opinion is we do not well I would say Chris Dixon agrees with you uh because then uh he shared uh I think it was uh a

couple days ago uh like the a16z kind of ideas for 2025 and one of them which I really like it's like like um let's not let's not reinvent the infrastructure let's like reuse it so basically like we already have the infrastructure let's just start building on on top of it and that's that's getting us more into kind of the app ecosystem like is there any killer app on crypto which like normal people can actually use do you see some like you know good adoption here to be honest um I wish I could give you a super clear-cut answer I I actually cannot I

cannot really pinpoint a killer app I'm seeing more um apps that are utilizing blockchain technology in some way or form but are very like let's say userfriendly or web to interface styled um travel apps for example so creating the ability to use cryptocurrency payment for booking um travel uh such as accommodation I've I've been seeing which is you know interesting in the sense that people might get more accustomed to seeing crypto payment rails right next to their visa and

MasterCard uh option which you know is an example where blockchain technology is used and it's fully powered this app by blockchain technology but it's anybody could use it that also uses booking.com or any of the competitors that are similar Expedia Etc in the market um we're seeing some you know apps around the the I would even say the Deep In Space which I think has slightly more real world um utility in some ways as well if people can you know um basically get rewarded for sharing their leftover energy for example through not using their internet or their um whatever it may be that that generates

energy in their home um then that could create a few more I would say applications um even with Hardware in some of these cases that normal web 2 users might want to get in contact with without understanding the blockchain infrastructure in the background because they get rewards for participating in that ecosystem so I feel like there are we are seeing building blocks of more easy to use and more clear use cases for let's say the nonnative crypto user and the blockchain tech space but a super app or a killer app um I'm very happy to

hear if you have seen one but I sadly haven't been able to pinpoint yet yeah I don't think we are there kind of uh you know our parents can like use crypto and like you know be kind of comfortable with it I onboarded my father into crypto nice probably last year or like a year ago uh but like simple investing you know like just like learn what is uh Bitcoin learn what is ethereum stick to that uh then he calls me hey it went up should I buy more like no now you should sell uh but like you know he holds like and like just actually just holding that

he's like learning about it because he's now interested like why it's actually growing you know and now he hit $100,000 so you know I'm probably getting another call from my father like what I should do now um and a funny fact actually my parents and Mona parents uh lives in two different countries but 10 minutes uh from each other so that's what I learned before this podcast which is fun uh do actually do your parents use crypto or like have some crypto or something or they are totally out of it no no sadly not um my parents or well at least my my father is is over 80 so he actually still has a brick phone not even an

iPhone um so he he did not uh become part of the the tech Revolution but kind of stayed on the normal path but uh but yeah my I think my mother is is interested but very cautious uh maybe similar to many other people I believe that now that there's so much mainstream media around Bitcoin hitting this Milestone I've had a lot of requests people saying oh how can I participate how can I get into this and uh that is amazing but I also realized that you know if you ask the wrong person you might not get the best advice so I think it's quite important to also always do your own research and have a little bit

like your father you know understanding asking somebody trust like your son and um researching a bit about why movements of price actually occur because otherwise if you just blindly kind of follow what people advise you you know we've heard some some bad stories on that and uh um yeah I if if my mom would ever would ever want to get in I think she would also probably just do Bitcoin and ethereum and that's probably where where it would stop but um that is still the goal to to get her hooked on this at some point yeah like and like you know it's fun and uh they then read the news and they're kind of happy and they're even happy for me because like they they

know that my net birth it's basically all in crypto so they're like if my savings are growing probably my son's savings are growing even more so you know that's like the connection I'm keeping with my parents so they know how I'm doing uh when the price is dropping they call me if I'm okay yeah yeah I see I see I've heard this uh it's so interesting how a lot of from our industry how there's when the price is up there's also a lot of positivity overall you know the the the whole industry is very upbeat and then when the prices drop and the bare Market you know is in full swing there's a very

big negative uh you know feeling and and and sadness in in the industry and you know we'll see how after this cycle things uh things evolve but we have already hit quite a lot of growth um in in the recent years so um that's quite exciting yeah actually like the grow was phenomenal if you like really go long term and Brian Armstrong post about it that it's like the best performing asset basically in in years you know if you bought uh Bitcoin when coinbase was founded I think it was like $100 of Bitcoin it's now worth of like $1.5 million I saw that tweet just well today

I it's a great tweet yeah yeah it's like well I wish I bought it back then but I did not yeah me neither sadly you know but hey um but we are still early we are still early like you know this industry been here just for you know I don't know 15 years uh when really you know pumping in last seven or something like that so we have long way to go and like I think if you are just now learning about crypto like you should join us uh because it will be fun uh now we are going to the hopefully the boom market so the upcycle so everything gets more shiny and if you are a builder so like

now we talk about a lot like people who just want to invest or want to like play around with crypto but if you're actually building something like what do you advise there like okay you are a builder you might uh have some idea of with startups and now you learn about crypto and we're like well should I use crypto for my startup is is there some benefit to it do you have some like like answer to them or questions they should ask themselves I think the main question is do you actually need the blockchain technology or a token for your project to be viable um one of the things I believe you know investors like myself

and and my colleagues in the industry we have seen too often startups that have just mentioned on their slide deck or um in their pitch that it's a blockchain web3 AI you know all the big technological buzzwords but in essence their product they idea the success of what they're building has zero connection or need to have a a blockchain technological you know baseline or use cryptocurrency um projects raised just because they can raise via a token and don't have to give away equity share to investors and if you're thinking of

doing something like that um I would really really think twice because the really good investors in my they will see through that and they will ask you very clearly over and over again why do you need a token why are you using blockchain technology for you know building this startup and if you can't really answer that with conviction it probably will do you much more harm than good in the long run or even in the short run so if you want to build in the web 3 space I think that's great but build something that you know the world needs and that blockchain technology can really enhance um rather than just because it's trendy to have that on your pitch deck

yeah I know these Founders like uh you know they've been here like 2022 all web 3 and 2023 where they were all AI yeah EXA it doesn't matter like what my prod is but I'm just like putting the right buzz word uh on the right time yeah definitely doesn't make sense uh but as you mentioned the you know with the use cases like you know payment it's a it's a great great thing and if you need to do some payments within your product or company uh and it's more like International like crypto can be the most efficient way of doing it and you know it doesn't need to be crypto company per se but it's just like using it within uh so like use the

technology wisely as uh you know what I mentioned like you don't need to over prom is on the blockchain but you can just use the specific things I believe like what actually makes sense and when we get into like more like token so you know like the product is one side and if you are use blockchain or not but now when we like okay now tokens and like Dows and like you know being actually a crypto company means like fully on chain how people should think about that like maybe maybe you can give some examples of like Dows which you think are really great use cases um and we can go from

there I would say well I mean I'm a little biased but I am part of a um investment Dow funer funds which is essentially an investment Dow that invests into invests and incubates other investment Dows and an investment Dow is essentially a a dow structure so a decentralized organization um that gets money from a from the members of the group of the the Dow members and then has a voting U mechanism that allows people in the Dow to vote on where this investment uh goes to so I actually think this is a very

Innovative and also very forward thinking way of looking at the Venture Capital industry because in this way all of the limited partners the LPS right that in a traditional fund model Provide Capital and then often wait and have very little say or um ability to you know have any kind of control um in where where their money is invested and then they hopefully receive a return on investment after a certain period of time five seven 10 15 years whereas in a in a dow structure first first of all your participation can be rewarded right

so again if you basically make sure your Capital that you put into this investment Dow gets allocated into projects that you like and that you did your due diligence on but then you also potentially lead a due diligence here and there you get rewarded for participating and and managing this for the other Dow members so yes it's a little bit more involvement than just providing capital and then waiting for a return but it also means you have a lot more control and you have a learning opportunity it's a community that you can tap into of other investors of of people with different knowledge bases than yourself so I really think that that's an example of of dows that is not

often discussed because it's not maybe the first thing that comes to mind but um and I know you probably have lots of guests you know who who are working in a variety of different Dows and in different Dow structures but since this is you know where I have my main uh Focus I think that that's something that is really um super super interesting and has a lot of potential for the future um and you know this is also in that structure it's also you use the crypto for the crossborder payments you have you know a clear visibility and transparency on on the treasury you understand the salaries of the people that are maybe more in a managerial function um so it's a lot more um it's a lot more transparent and and I

think quite exciting structure of of uh of venture capital and I think um you know just to finish that thought with AI now actually that's I think quite interesting to to start building into Dow structures um investment Dows or other you know for for example government's insites or automating certain operational tasks which now often still need need you know a human leadership um Council or person that executes you know certain organizational operational tasks and leads things versus if you could use AI when it's a bit more developed and functional in

that respect you could actually really make it a real down meaning like there's genuinely you know full community ownership of of all aspects once some of these AI processes are in place so I think there's quite a lot of exciting uh potential there uh for for Dows and and specifically investment Dows no and that's cool like the Dows also kind of started as a investment Dow you know the the da itself which might have not been the most successful Dow in history you know um and you can read it in our book how they kind of failed but also succeeded in kicking off like the Dow ecosystem so I hope you are using using

better smart contracts and you did your audit uh so that's important you know like you need to be safe first uh and go go from there but it's it is interesting on the AI side how do you think uh this will play out like I understand like from uh AI perspective like it's actually better to be in like within the Dow because everything is digital everything it's on chain so it's easier for any kind of digitalization including AI to kind of operate because you know there is no like pen and paper type of thing which you need human to put into it so that's like kind of I would say

like the obvious Advantage why AI can be more efficient within Dows but yeah how you think also AI can help Dows actually to succeed like what do you see like the biggest first two steps of be happening so I think we have to be also aware of the ethical considerations right and there's still a lot of limitations with using AI for a full governance structure for example so I want to say that upfront but I do think that AI can increase efficiency and also potentially decision-making processes right in terms of for example

governance automation so proposal filtering by priorities something like sentiment analysis predictive analysis um to to understand maybe decision outcomes um to to get if not everybody is maybe involved in the voting to still have an idea of how the you know people generally might vote so you have a an an understanding of of what the vote could be and then understand if there's an an outlier or a different situation just to be able to analyze a little bit better what is what is happening what how are

the thoughts and feelings of your Dow members changing you know you have a lot of that analysis can just happen in the background and you don't need a human who puts all of their time into doing this for the Dow which is just in my experience something that just doesn't happen so a lot of you know there's not a lot of documentation not a lot of data analysis not a lot of structure a lot of the time in some of the Dows that I've seen because nobody has the capacity or maybe the ownership of doing that versus AI can just spit that out naturally and learn with the group's decision makings and individuals decisionmaking Styles

and thoughts which is also a bit scary but it is something I think which we see evolving and then I think I mean just on the top of my head you could have something like um incentive structures maybe managed better by um AI kind of analyzing or incentivizing you know different reward mechanisms kind of identifying more maybe of the the freeloaders and unhealthy behaviors from people um versus you know very strongly contributing people having that instead of tracked manually having a system that just gives you dashboards AI enhanced

making everything potentially a bit more smooth and some of the tooling that exists at hand I can maybe pull out a few more ideas out of my hat but that's kind of initially what comes to to mind I don't know how you think about it I mean you're really deep in the weeds in this topic have you have you looked at the AI um additional stuff in the detail well I use jgpt every day so you know I'm deep into AI this way and you know uh one of the things is like just like getting understanding of something very complex and the GPT can help me to like answer my question so like now like uh so I used to be maker out delegate so

what what you would have is like the team is putting a proposal which is very technical usually and then there is a Q&A session so you can ask the team okay can can you explain this can you explain that and like you go through it everyone has different questions based on you know their kind of angle and stuff like that with with the AI like you can have the proposal analyzed right away and then if I have a question like a delegate I can ask my question without kind of taking time from the others and it can automatically answer that because it has all the context it has everything so I think as you said like making it more efficient right make make a lot of sense I'm a little skeptical

on like making like summaries and like just like this like big high level pictures of things cuz I feel like it can incentivize the wrong behavior in a sense like people would just get more lazy they're already not really involved and then like you give them even more like options to not be involved because like it's just like you know you don't need to go deep you are getting this five sentences like about the Dow I don't think that's the maybe right approach but that's my personal personal opinion but agree that the incorporation of AI go to solve for some boring tasks or you know help me understand and actually go deeper into the topics but make make so much so much

sense the second what you mention in the incentivization it's an interesting one I never thought about it but now when you were talking you know we usually set up the tokenomics and incentivization with like very much like fixed variables and it's like kind of long term and at some point it's not working you know when you like create some incentives like some targets uh like those incentives basically just go this one way but everything else get dropped and like AI can be way more flexible it's like oh now we need more help here so we incentivize that behavior and this in device the other and like I think that makes sense to be honest like I never F

about it but I think this can be really good thing for like more flexible tokenomics and now we are getting again into wiow it's like you cannot really incentivize in the C Corp uh in the same way because like we have a flexible tokens with smart contracts the AI can play with it I can drop you 10 tokens now 15 for something else you know and it can be super fast super flexible and uh and and we can do that and we can improve on it if you are SEC Corp like yeah I can probably drop you like some tip or like end your bonus but that's like once a year or once a month you know it it doesn't like really like exactly do you see Dows actually

evolving like you know you've been in the space for a while so is it the Dow what we consider in like 20 2017 the same Dow would be considered Dow Dow now or how you how you see the space kind of going I I think it it is constantly evolving to be honest and I think it's good because the concept had to be tried tested had to go wrong a few times had to go right a few times that's just how new structures evolve and it is a also it is a human centered approach as well which means there are going to be trials and tribulations you know and and many iterations and so I think I guess to be

a bit more concrete what I've seen in terms of improvements or or developments I feel like the tooling has massively improved like snapshot voting for example or um the multisig um there's more legal uh and documentation type uh do support in the tooling um that I've seen so a lot of that has been positively standardized so it's easier to adopt a DA governance model I also feel like one of the issues we've often seen is that the da was this monster and it was very hard to manage

it was just huge and a lot of you know members but very few doers versus now I see kind of subd dows and a bit more of a kind of structured agile structured approach which then causes you know a lot more efficiency and a lot more ownership and a lot more doing from Dow members to actually create like a Community Driven mechanism which is you know essentially what I think it's supposed to be um and again a little bit bias but what I really like about you know the Hydra model is that it also focuses on investment Dows that are

specific to a topic right so we have a potentially for digital art one then for a specific ecosystem like near urbit one then we have um you know Dows that specifically focus on social graphs um and social um startups so it's a little bit really kind of Niche Dows I think that have been evolving not just foundations that have a dow to to govern protocols but you also have industry expert research type Dows as well which create I think or have the potential to create a lot of knowledge and a lot of growth um for different Industries with with experts that have a real

incentivization to participate in research and their provide their knowledge um in terms of either investing but also just general you know research so um a lot of that I think has evolved over the years and has the potential to really just Skyrocket that's what I want to hear it has a potential to Skyrocket uh so if you are considering you know your next startup you should consider Dow structure maybe for it you don't need to launch token you know immediately but you know it it helps uh to have some of the blockchain rails on the back end on and be kind of digitally native you know like I was talking uh to the previous guest who who was from like uh the centralized science

and as you said like the research dows yeah that's kind of what they are building you know the decentralized IP new drug development uh longevity and it's like all the money is going for that type of drug development and it's like the business case is getting better and we can focus on some more Niche kind of aspects uh using this kind of Dow structure and helping like more people in general it's not just like this one drug we will earn millions or billions of dollars for the Pharma company like it's more a Community Driven we need uh all the you know different type of drugs and development uh we can get and they are supporting it so yeah I definitely

love like how the space evolved and you me you said that it's human Centric you know it's not stakeholder Centric it's like really human Centric like a human Centric organization and we coordinate what we want to achieve and that's that's beautiful I agree I really do I one of the reasons why I was so drawn to the decentralized world or the whole philosophy behind the web 3 space is because I believe everybody deserves a chance to be awarded based on Merit and not because of background or or or

financial means and um a DA structure in its Essence to me has a lot of that philosophy built in because no matter how if you are a member right you participate you also get rewarded for it and it's a clear it's a clear structure around that so everybody is rewarded based on Merit and um to some degree but there the opportunity is clearly there versus you know being maybe held down because of a bias or some other aspect that sadly is keeping you know a lot of people maybe from progressing in their

jobs and this is something I think more people should consider when they're thinking about their organizational structures because it does provide not without its faults of course but it does provide a platform where incentivization is really clearly giving and favoring those that parti ipate and um that can also be a really great mechanism to just get people enthusiastic about what you're doing yeah and you know that's why I'm here as well you know democratizing the kind of access to Capital and kind of democratizing the entrepreneurship and people who want to achieve something

they can you know it's not perfect it will never be perfect but they getting better um and uh and like as you said like the part ipation is rewarded and that that's you know the I would say many investors are giving the same advice like it's not about the best product it's not about the you know the most skills but about the perseverance and like you know you need to be here and like be persistent uh and and flexible and like you know I think like Dows maybe even extra polite on that like like it's even more important just to be present you don't need to be you the most skillful i''s say or the mo the

from the best family for that sake uh but like if you are here you like you get the opportunity uh to succeed so for for the founders maybe also I know you are like working with many Founders and stuff like that like can you maybe mention like recent examples uh Pro projects uh you can mention them you don't need to like which you think like this is like a cool use case or great team like why you maybe invest in those and um you know just like for people to get more like practical sense like what is actually now kind of being supported by Mona yeah sure um so from a investment perspective I mean we are often

investing in in kind of preed seed series a startups what I do have to say is that it is very tricky in in the in the funding environment that we have seen for a while to go to a venture capital specific investor and say I have nothing I have this great idea I'm a great person and please put a lot of money into this idea and this Ultra precede or even pre- precede uh napkin back of napkin idea is not something that I think is the right way to go

because maybe all but definitely most VCS will tell you come back when you have some tractions come back when you have a MVP a most viable product um so we can actually evaluate something and I have to admit I'm in that same boat um I have a responsibility also to the uh shareholders to the you know limited partner ERS the people that give their capital for me to be part of the team to distribute that Capital into startups and we need something to analyze so given that Baseline to answer your question I would say if you you should be a team or a

collection of people that really have subject matter expertise and a passion for what you're building um I like to give this example because I think it's very clear if you're building a decentralized cloud infrastructure but nobody in your team or yourself has ever interacted in any way or form with the complicated Cloud infrastructure as we know it today um it is very difficult for me to believe that you are the best person or the best team to build a decentralized version of something you have no clue of right um the idea might be valid but you need to have the right knowledge in order to actually execute

on a very complex topic like this so that's something I think is really important plus being around and surrounded by other co-founders team members that kind of have a um symbiotic or have a a positive kind of relationship um complimentary is the word I'm looking for relationship to your skill set if you're great at sales you might need someone who's a bit more technical if you're more technical you might need someone who's a bit more business oriented ated or commercial in the way that they approach or look at the project so there's a you know this is one thing that's really really important it's in a very early stage project that is not something to brush

over um secondly what I would say is quite important if you have a dow structure or not but what is really important is will anybody pay for this will anybody want to use this will there be a way for you to generate utility either in the token or in the Equity um or in incentivization within the Dow structure that you have but there needs to be a reason why this is used and there needs to be some sort of value creation and if it's wonderful to have if it's free and people can kind of nonsticky potentially sometimes use it it's not a venture back project right so think about that because a venture

capitalist thingss I want to support you but I also want to return on the back of this support because that's my job so in my opinion a good venture capitalist gives you funding and gives you support gives you connection gives you an open ear gives you a long-term friend like a marriage almost um but they also want something for that in return right which it is a business transaction to some degree and you need to keep that in mind um and so also when you're pitching to a VC I think it's important to remember that right it is creating a safety Network for the investor like we are the

right team there's a market for what we're building there's a market that will pay for what we're building we can get a huge part of the market share for this product or project or service we can uh we're at the right time it is now that we want to hit the market because the timing is right it if we have a token the token has utility and this is how the utility is generated our tokenomics are well thought through we understand that many people sell upon tge we understand sell pressure could potentially tanker token right there's a few of these really Baseline things that um I think are important plus of course we actually have a product we have a

technically sound product we have we understand we need to audit our product right before we bring onto the market and we cannot go and completely ignore regulations either because eventually that might bite us harder than anything in the back so it's a long-winded answer but I think if you rewind this and maybe listen to it again those are probably I would say the six or so main building blocks that you should have thought about and are able to talk to or talk about with a VC when you go pitch to them that's a great learning from me me so you know if I will go pitch uh to VCS I will definitely listen to it again I

think the main main takeaway from me is like don't come with the napkin come with the product yeah um and if you want to really get the funding come with product that people pay for uh yes yes yes at the right time uh with the right team have they already pay for the product I think we are almost there um you know like we have something we already built people love to pay for it no no this was this was amazing and you know myself I learn a lot and um and it's always great you know catching up with you want uh is there anything I did not ask uh you would still want to say in the last couple minutes look I think you know um tiny

tiny tiny minut minut part of this uh the book that that you authored and I think um it is a really good this is really a Shameless plug and you didn't ask me to do this so but I do want to say it it's a great guide for like newcomers right and it also some something that offers insights for kind of more seasoned practitioners into the complexities and demystifies a lot of these complexities around governance around tokenomics around Community Building um around organization exploring to become or be Dows and I think that's very rare um in in the market I haven't seen a lot of

Publications that have such a you know overview for all types of people that are interested in in Dows so I think that that's something just worth actually mentioning and I am I am cautiously bullish on on Dows I think they have really immense potential for transforming governance and like we said collective decision making community incentivization giving democratization like you said right giving really a collaborative environment to to organizational structures and therefore I think a lot more people should actually consider this we have a lot of teething issues yeah when we will get it right I think

there's so much potential for actually a lot more value creation use utilizing the Dow structure thank you I appreciate it yeah it was um you know that's what we are trying to achieve and I hope uh we will be aome successful I'm bringing more people into now so if people want to learn more about you know what you are thinking what you are up to where they can find you um yeah I mean they can either find me on LinkedIn uh Mona tasler there's only one of me so you you won't have trouble figuring out which one to to contact I have a Blog on my LinkedIn um I also have Twitter which me is Crypt Mona T that's also the handle for telegram so happy for people to to

reach out mention you know that you've heard this and in in the how toow podcast and happy to you know support give advice or learn from you as well so happy also to receive advice and feedback and um yeah yeah reach out and this is amazing and we will put all the links in the show note so people can find you and people can find some of the content we mention on this show so thank you again Mona it was uh amazing I hope are you know newcomers into crypto uh learn how they can evaluate the tokens or their business models uh for that sake so thank you again and hopefully talk soon yeah thank you so much speak

soon thank you for tuning into how to Da if you are excited about the future of dows as we are don't forget to check our book how to Da available on Amazon and for those looking for something special visit how to dow. XYZ to grab a limited partner Edition version with an NFD that unlocks some very exclusive perks and if you want to dive even deeper we just launched our six week course on Dows by with actionable insight and expert guidance so get a book follow us on social media join our community and we will guide you through the fascinating world of decentralized

autonomous organizations until next time keep building keep Dowing [Music]