Humans of Crypto #3 with Pavel Jakovlev

hello everyone and welcome to episode number three of the humans of crypto podcast i'm joined today by pavel yakovlev and i'm just so honored to have him as a guest today he's usually the one interviewing people and today for this special occasion i was the one grilling him about his experience uh organizing the cv labs during davos his experience with early stage blockchain and crypto startups his mental health a special show and tell and a lot more basically it was a wonderful conversation and i hope you enjoy it as much as i enjoyed interviewing him and if you actually like enjoy the show please consider subscribing liking commenting on this video audio podcast wherever you're listening and tuning in from it means a lot let's get into it [Music] welcome to this episode number three of the humans of crypto podcast i'm here with pavel yakovlev i'm so honored to have you here he's doing a lot of things and we're going to be learning more about about you today uh just a sneak peek he's like a managing partner at encore an evangelist at siktik he's a host of the white spaces show which you should all go and follow and check out he interviews wonderful intelligent people not just in crypto like all over the place it's really interesting um thank you pebble for being here eleanor it's an absolute pleasure and it's i gotta say i'm already out of my comfort zone because it's usually me who's doing the the opening speech and the presentation and asking the questions so i i feel like this chair is getting hotter and hotter so yeah let's get into this yeah i mean i saw that you've been always like a wonderful host that's how i met you i met you in davos as the host of the cvvc labs event in davos and you were already bubbling with energy and i saw all of that and everything you've been pouring in so can you give us like a glimpse of who you are today and like to share everything about you and and everything you've been doing and how come you've been always like this this natural host yeah that's that's a very good question so let's let's unpack it who am i i think um first and foremost i'm i'm a father i i got a beautiful seventh month old daughter which you know a lot of people complain about 2020 and i think for me personally it's been the best year ever in my entire life i welcomed my baby daughter i started the white spaces i started my own company so from that perspective everything worked out so yeah first and foremost i'm a father um second i'd say i'm a builder i i love to build things i love to get involved in different projects i love putting teams together i think that's that's my big thing like getting different people uh to work together get them getting them around the table um just seeing what can we do together what kind of projects we can embark on and and you start feeling you have different energies as well with different people so and this is something that i'm particularly excited about um and then who else am i i love everything new and maybe that's why i'm uh in in blockchain and crypto and other uh tech spaces uh so to say i i love some of the ideas some of the radical stuff that people are uh thinking and doing and building um and it's just yeah again crazy energy that's out there that i just it just rubs off and it's uh yeah it's amazing um yeah i think that's that's pretty much it in a nutshell well not not everybody has this energy and i think um for having attended a lot of events and for seeing the energy that you put into that event and seeing what you you know you know gave that for that week actually was not just i mean i was there just like casually right uh just enjoying the fruits of your labor um but could you tell us more about that maybe that chapter i feel like that was maybe your first crypto blockchain chapter i want to i'm absolutely entangling the the past as well but let's talk about your first maybe your first moment with the the crypto ecosystem um i think believe it or not my my first touch point um was back in 2011 that's when i remember going going ahead it's very early yeah yeah going head to head with a friend of mine saying you know bitcoin is seems to be a a a very interesting technology a currency um of the future i remember getting a tour on my laptop i remember getting onto silk road i remember getting into deep web and just browsing and like there was at the time there was a lot of hype about it and you know in some of the chats and forums that i was part of um but yeah it just there was some kind of mysticism around it and i remember arguing with a friend of mine about you know bitcoin and all these different things and he would take the piss out of me and saying you know it's all complete um crap and at the same time he would be really into aliens and i would take the piss out of him so we just you know rub each other off that way and then i think the next touch point was in [Music] i want to say in 13 i remember remember it vividly i was in brussels and that was the first time when i've seen um the financial times writing about bitcoin and that was the time with bitcoin hit about 250. mind you i didn't buy in not an 11 not in 13 and then you know there was that small hype cycle comparatively and then everything just went away up until i want to say 17 and 18 and all of a sudden like out of somewhere through the grapevine i start getting you know a bit of kind of you know hits oh you know bitcoin oh crypto oh there's ethereum there's this there's that and i remember thinking to myself quite vividly i was just like is that still a thing i thought that thing died um and then the funny story is i remember remember coming back to malta and meeting my friend and like spending some time with him at his place and all of a sudden there was this the same friend who was taking the piss out of krypto and going that it's not going anywhere the alien aliens but not crypto yeah bitcoin and then i'm hearing this buzzing sound and i'm going what the hell is that the guy was mining mining bitcoins and he mined a few and he sold them at 800 bucks apiece yeah yeah yeah that's pretty good that's already that's was he at least being profitable with his mining uh i never asked i was just like why the hell did you sell he's like well i have to you know in any case and then that that whole thing kind of started getting me into a place where i started learning a bit more about like crypto and blockchain and i was also working at the time in tug and all of a sudden like i keep hearing about all these different meetups and events and it becomes more and more evident and more and more prevalent on my linkedin like people are talking about it this and that and i started following i was like okay i need to get into this like i need to understand what it is what is what is fomo just quickly for the for the audience what is what is missing out for for for the for the non uh initiated ones and um yeah i think in in 18 i i had a very interesting conversation with a gentleman called ralph glebischnick who i consider to be a great friend a mentor and a former employer amazing amazing guy if you know i am networking and connecting people and doing different things he's doing the same thing 100 000 x with with his network and his power it's just it's it's incredible the the level of his engagement and and his energy uh despite the fact the guy has a beautiful wife and three kids and like multiple businesses so he's definitely a role model in that sense and we had a conversation and he was like you got an interesting profile why don't you come on board because we were building a bunch of different things and that coffee turned into a contract and then we ended up yeah working together at cv labs in cvc i had a mandate to build an incubator and then the incubator became much more the incubator became an ecosystem and out of the ecosystem we started doing events we started providing services all sorts of different things and i think the pinnacle of that chapter of my life was obviously davos where you and i have met and that was pretty insane i remember not having a good night's sleep for at least three to four months running up to to the event or a series of events because we ended up doing we wanted to do one then we ended up doing two and then somehow out of two we ended up doing eight i don't know it's just something that has happened along the way but we were just like is eight a good enough number for us to do i think that's gonna i think we're gonna be fine and uh yeah it's just the davos bug took over and we just it yeah got overwhelmed and and i still don't have visibility nor understanding nor do i want to to even know whether we broke even or not because it just i remember doing the the budget and just like costs being added and added and added and a few tickets were given away for free and i was just going like i hope i i hope we're gonna be like even by one frank in the black so but it i mean it's it's all good because it's it was a it was an incredible experience i mean you and i met in person after speaking for so long and a lot of people uh came to that event and and we've met a few actually and you were at that panel as well right that was a the fluffy pony britney kaiser uh what's his name uh michael casey and um uh yeah rubini yeah yeah exactly doctor doom and you you know you kind of you look at those moments and you think to yourself yeah it's um it was all worth it definitely i think you created whatever the balance sheet you created a priceless experience for many many people um and i feel like that's something you specialize in and and getting people together and fostering you know and and of course the balance sheets matter like it's something that we all we all need as event organizers we need to know what we're spending and when something sort of you know scales like like you said you started with something small and then suddenly it was like eight events and suddenly you're like okay okay okay and you're still there you're still doing it so you pulled it off it happened for sure yeah yeah i and i vividly remember that conversation where we i don't know if you were with us on a tuesday when we had this um underground club where we did our startup event no um no i i saw the i saw the bling i was at the what was it intercontinental hotel i saw the bling part i didn't see the bling part you didn't you you you were tuesday uh when we had the party and i think you actually texted me on a wednesday and you're like hey somehow i'm gonna i'm in davos what are you what are you guys there what are you doing or like yeah you should absolutely club you should join this panel by the way there's like a speaking story for you here's a chair good luck it was so random like here here just just moderate this now and i was like yeah okay yeah you know jump and i'm like how high but that's that's and that's the craziness of davos and also for the non-initiated ones i think you know a lot of people think that davos is this this this uh place where a bunch of you know berkshire hathaway guys and and bridgewater associates meet and they all you know decide on the fate of the future and like how they're going to rule the world and post pandemics and reality is it's just one big festival and that's how i associate it it's is it though really pavel what's what's the back story no what's the great reset backstory of davos no we i i must admit how i experienced it as well is my like like what you're describing like it's just like a bunch of people that are in the industry so it's just extremely concentrated and and just uh bumping into brittany kaiser in the street was just like you know what's happening in this place and she had this sort of bright yellow coat like fluffy yeah and i was like oh my god that's for those that don't know who we're talking about we're talking about brittany kaiser who's behind or who who who knows a lot about the cambridge analytica story that's just yeah yeah and i mean she wrote she wrote a book she's the main person behind the all new data foundation and also the great hack if that's a shameless plug if you haven't checked out uh the movie go on netflix have a look it's i i worked in the industry so i worked with tools like cambridge analytica so for me that movie was not a revelation necessarily but i know that for a lot of people it blew their mind and i and i always whenever we have those discussions and i go so let me get this straight you're using facebook which is a tool where you upload unlimited videos pictures posts you connect from people all over the globe whether you want to stay in touch or you want to creep up on somebody don't care you know not here to judge you can chat you can call you can sell your items in the actual app and you do that and you don't pay for it how do you think that's working like what what's do you think it's a fair exchange that you just get to use it but there's no price attached to it and i bet you if facebook tomorrow went out and said you know we've done the calculations we can leave your data without any problem like we're not going to use it but you got to pay us i don't know let's put a price tag on it 99 bucks a month i think my guess is most of the people are not going to use it i i wouldn't i i'm one of those uh facebook users i think since 2008 yeah you know not very cypherpunk of me not very private not very uh not very tour not very silk roadie of me at the time not at all absolutely not and just looking back and discovering social media like that but i guess today people are a bit more aware they use facebook maybe differently than like we did in 2008 when we were just maybe over i think people still over share but like yeah we didn't we didn't we didn't know we didn't think we were i don't know maybe just very uneducated users i'm hoping that people are just a bit more aware socially aware of what they're using and the platforms that they're using i don't know yeah yeah definitely and then there's a whole discussion to be had yeah you know ethics and all the rest of it but you know if we if we go back to davos so i'm very happy to hear that you had a similar experience that it it felt like one big party to you can you can you yeah to me can you describe like how do you as an organizer manage hundreds of speakers so many events logistics what is it like to actually be the one who has to be controlling all of that and and delivering on it um that's a great question and i think my answer is i i had an amazing team uh and you've met a few of them you you've met nikolai you've made you've met um hani you've met fabio and those those kind of experiences they really battle test you on battle test your team and it brings people together in my opinion like if you if you go through something that's grueling you develop a special bond uh with another person and you know that they have your back and you have their back but in terms of managing all of it i think um i'd say we made a lot of mistakes doing it and going into this i don't want to say like oh my god we've executed it flawlessly we lost a lot of resources i i would say human resources just maybe over-engineering some of the things that shouldn't have been over-engineered but just because we were dealing with something relatively unknown i would say especially for us i mean before that we organized events outside of davos and dallas is a completely different beast i mean you have um you have special passes for example you need to register people in a centralized database then that was davos has made it even like the not davos the world economic forum made it even more difficult in 2020 that before you would have just one pass and you would go into five different hotels and then your past would work everywhere and then because it was getting out of control it tying a little bit they said all right so as an external event organizer if your event is on a thursday in a hotel a your guests would only be eligible to access that hotel with that pass if you would want to have access to any other hotel the event organizer from that hotel from that day almost like from that hour needs to enable you and that added a whole layer of complexity for us to register everybody um within the system you know as an organizer we had to pay for everybody to get their their badges uh organized that was just i think it was like memory service miraculous 200 bucks a pop um per per um per badge and then like reclaiming that you know clock clawing those kind of costs out crazy stuff um so dealing with that unknown was kind of the big thing for us that we didn't really know how to operate in that environment and then as you get closer to the event it's um it's a lot of meetings pretty much we we had daily meetings we had um the event organization team grew i remember i was counting we were at 20. um so a few people on actual operations a few people on promotion we had a team of three people that would just all they would do is go through the tickets that we've sold reconcile those tickets with the events and guest lists and then reconcile those because people could buy different types of tickets and then reconcile those with the list that we would have to upload upload to the world economic forum database and then pay and then because it was all all over and inconsistent you would basically have to yeah a lot of reconciliation and i remember sitting there with them and just they were yeah difficult moments where i was losing my my uh you know my mind for sure uh but it all again it's something as an attendee yeah you don't see it you don't see it it's just like that as an attendee yeah no you don't see it and then it's it's always it's it's like that meme right where you have the front end and the back end the front end is nice and the back end is like super messy and that's what it was and i remember i think as we were going through our eight events i think it was wednesday evening where we wrapped everything up at about 1 a.m and we had to start the next day at 6 a.m and i remember thinking to myself we've got this like we're we're actually gonna make it because at some points i had my doubt so just like what if because you that that's the thing in the event management is that you you you all like it's it's a rule much more than um you know and an exemption from the rule like something will go wrong you just don't know what will go wrong but you always have this impeding feeling that something in the event management is going to go wrong and you're there and you're going like okay today went well is something going to go wrong tomorrow but surprisingly i think for the eight events that we've organized maybe it was the over engineering maybe it was because we were just so afraid of of you know making um mistakes while being there because it's a completely different level right if you if you do something in zuk or in zurich and like somebody's not on the guest list big deal you know you just like issue a tag you write it with a sharpie you stick it you're done there if somebody's not on the guest list they don't get through the security and we were doing it at the intercontinental that's the same hotel where allegedly president trump stayed so you know it's kind of heightened security and the last thing you want to do is have somebody like you who's a speaker not getting through the door so that's why and um yeah we we've pulled it off again like huge huge huge till this day like huge thanks to the team that has pulled it off like i remember yeah it's just amazing i mean they're they're all amazing friends despite the fact that i'm not with cv labs anymore and like we meet up and we even have we even invented a word in in davos and one of our junior colleagues wrote something i think she wanted to write schedule like is what's tomorrow's schedule starts and then she she kind of misspelled it and it turned out to be shadow and then that that word shadow just like took a life of its own like i could be i i could that was but then you know i i became shadow or like is where is shadow so it's just like and and that kind of brain form became like we had a group that was called shadow and like we were calling each other it was just it was like it's just and and these kind of moments that's that's the stuff that i cherish the most yeah yeah i can imagine it's like it's making me think of like huddle like when it's like these moments when you slip but they become iconic because because it's a slip but it's it bonds people and like you said it's like your inner private joke um yeah i just it's it's hard to imagine for those that don't realize what davos is uh the level of security and what you're describing i think it it definitely shows an it's not the glam part it's just it's the hard security you know admin part of an event that we don't realize as an attendee um yeah and the beauty of it as you were saying right it's it's meeting somebody like brittany kaiser in uh in the middle of the street i mean um what's what's the chief libra person i keep forgetting his name um david david martin i don't even know yeah so like a friend of mine met him like just casually walking and he has a selfie with him uh then ray dalio who i'm ran off was at uh russia house and by the way there's like just to imagine it it's it's it's basically a bunch of storefronts that get turned into these i would call them lobby centers yeah pop-up lobby oh nice i was gonna say pop-up i was gonna say pop-up store for like all the brands you can imagine there's like a facebook pop-up or like a philip morris pop-up or okay i should stop plugging companies but basically you walk through davos and it's just like the the fanciest marketing the marketing team just has a blast creating like an experience basically for people yeah yeah yeah and it goes beyond far beyond just brands it's it's also associations uh it's like groups of companies it's countries so there's like a russia house and a ukrainian house just not too far away from each other and then like get some feel a bit of tension there and i as an estonian i can sympathize with both but that's a you know different topic altogether um then there's like you know polish house and like um then you have all these different uh nights also like an african night or bollywood night um where you just it's like a party in the evening which is also a guest list and these are all also kind of lobbying networking connecting events and uh surprisingly for 2020 maybe because we were still kind of coming out of crypto winter uh there weren't that many blockchain and crypto events at least comparatively not as many as there were in 18 and 17 from what i hear i mean britney shared a story where there was like a 24 7 crypto party in a bar that just kept on going for five days which knowing crypto scene i can totally see that happening yeah yeah it's interesting so you saw did you see that phase of the crypto valley or like the that really hyped crypto ecosystem in switzerland and did you see it go through these ups and downs like these market fluctuations yeah i i actually seen that i think i joined as i want to call it like during the meltdown uh because like one of my first events that i've attended i joined in october and the one of the first events i've attended was in november and i was and it was in basel and uh i was one of the judges for for startup competition and i you know saw startups you know some are good some are bad normal pitch competition you know you have your favorites you vote you ask questions all right no problem but then there was also the speaking part and like the vip dinner part and everything that you usually have now that i know in like crypto blockchain events but i what i remember is people leaving during that event just going like screw this i'm out and just like leaving from this event on the first night and then the second day i remember the organizers god bless them like calling people and going you have a like you have a speaking slot like why aren't you here and people just going i don't have a speaking story like no no no we put you on a panel you should be here so they were struggling with actually having people on a panel to even attract the attendees to even try to do a bit of like networking matchmaking like it was that bad and it was and i remember looking at it and going this is really really sad and i had no idea that we're getting into like a year and a half of just when was when was this end of 18.

i was just like november 18 wow number 18. yeah and then i remember our event in zug in march which was i would say quite well attended but maybe because we we always try to do it not too big um like a maximum of a thousand people and try to bring in good speakers and obviously ralph globishnik that's that's that's pretty big that's that's pretty big you know yeah it's it's very critical okay it's also very swiss right and to me like blockchain and crypto events that i've been to would have to be quite you know quite big and and international i mean the stuff that you see in ulta for example the stuff that we've seen just last week i mean i've seen i've seen it through the lens of youtube uh miami btc and all the craziness that was going on there and me you know hating all the health authorities for not letting me be there because of the covet 19 i mean it's you know crypto events are are big and they attract a bunch of different people but yeah going back to the 18 it was just it was a bit of a sad sad thing to see and um in switzerland as well despite the fact that switzerland has a bunch of really really good projects like i mean main protocols are in switzerland right you have tezos you have cardano you have um polka dot uh near protocol i think moved recently dfinity um well you know all of the big guys um despite all of that there were a few companies that were closing doors in 19 and just you know there yesterday gone tomorrow we're here today gone tomorrow whatever the expression is so yeah it was it was brutal and the the the bitcoin price at bouncing between what three and six on good days and just staying there flat wow yeah scary stuff then i have no idea what the hell happened why all of a sudden how long has it been how long has the bull run been going a year a couple of months uh yeah but it's yeah but like it's it's it's it still fluctuates right but yes we have had we did come out of a bear market we that did we had a we left sort of the the stagnant floating phase for sure for sure and now it's back at other games other other waves are happening right now but um it's interesting for you to to have lived it from an ecosystem perspective and to see it well at the time through the eyes of cvvc labs by organizing events testing the audience the you know panelists i'm happy you weren't the one struggling with getting panelists and stuff at some point but um i think what do you think overall of like the swiss ecosystem like you've seen it go through a lot and you've mentioned sort of certain protocols are present in switzerland is it tangible or is it just you know we have and we have an address here is it is it more than that uh well i think it's it's it's far more than that i think um it's there's obviously the address part and there's obviously the tax part so we can park it here yes there are advantages to being in switzerland from the company perspective but i also think that there's there's much more um other things happening in the background i think we're seeing the the same model uh what the ethereum gang has have had being replicated in switzerland and that is setting up a foundation in switzerland making sure that whatever capital is being raised against whatever idea is not being you know is being managed in in the most yeah non-revenue generating way in the most open and transparent way as much as possible because we've also had some stories with some of the protocols we're not going to name names that were at risk of having some governance issues let's put it this way but having that set up in switzerland then brains and and some of the firepower coming from north america like us and and and in canada and setting shop setting the shop up in switzerland and then against that hybrid raising funds in asia and this kind of interesting triangle of brains out of us um and in canada um the neutrality and rule of law and you know taxation and support system and quality of life of switzerland and then the capital from china somehow creates these very interesting companies um i mean let's look at um ceba bank which is one of the most prominent crypto crypto first banks right so those guys have raised they would have raised more um from asia but they've raised uh yeah half of their seed round of 100 million out of asia being a swiss bank and i think that's quite sizable and as for other players within the ecosystem i mean yes of course we have the most prominent protocols but we also have a few layer 2 companies i mean some one of the biggest ones is utopia music which is doing really really really crazy stuff in terms of um iep management for artists so if if you're an artist and your music is being played x amount of times on air why aren't you getting paid well this is something that they're solving and then you know if you go further this is interesting yeah this is yeah yeah utopia i'm just it's making me think of because i have a i have a next event after this which i'll be participating in and it's about and i'll be talking about opulus and it's quite interesting but they basically use nfts to split the copyrights with the artist but also with their fan base i love all these sort of uh interesting use cases where people are disrupting a certain industry so yeah happy to hear that utopia is in switzerland and part of the ecosystem i really i think that was i'm just asking a bit more about the you know switzerland because i i left right i'm not part of so i'm not in switz i am swiss but i'm not not living in switzerland anymore and i think from afar the crypto valley always had like this this aura you know this coolness and it's like it was a lot in the news and there was a lot of you know fun i would say pr releases like you know cff accepts cryptocurrencies uh for payments or soog accepts crypto certain cryptocurrencies for payment of taxes and i was just like whoa and then i heard a lot of course about the crypto valley and then i wanted to see like now today um if it was still the place i want to ask if it's still the place to be for cryptocurrency companies like if if that's still going strong i think it depends where you are on you know on on on on the spectrum let's put it this way um and where do you want to take your company and and i know that there are some some companies some outfits that are extremely anarchistic very kind of developer driven communities uh that is i would say more berlin right so i've been to berlin blockchain week uh like prague right and there's there's a lot of great talent these guys don't i mean they don't care about you know taxes they don't care about any of this stuff they they because they live in the it world right in the in the tech world and they have their own rules and their own it's it's a completely different environment so if if your blockchain or crypto company is more that then i think switzerland is not the right place if you are more into hey cryptos or digital assets and they are an alternative assets and whether it's currencies whether it's security tokens which are coming despite what everybody's saying whether it's nfts or whether you're looking how to experiment with you know defy and and and kind of raining it in it's hanging a little bit more into a more centralized environment because there's a ton of liquidity that's waiting for something like some of these d5 protocols that are out there in terms of you know yield generating and things like that and fixed income but you want to do it in in a somewhat regulated way with a regulator that actually understands what they're talking about what you're talking about and wants to work with you where they don't just go like in the us oh my god let's uh you know let's let's see how we can regulate crypto or let's see how we can regulate uh who was it recently how we can regulate d5 and i was just like by in its nature that's that's not going to happen like these are two opposite things uh but if you want a regulator that actually recognizes this move like movement trend whatever you want to call it then i think switzerland is the right place to be because you have that like even if you overstep some of the stuff with the regulator in switzerland and you notify them and you go oh sorry you know innovation went a bit and we kind of made a big boo boo and like collected 65 million but we're not really sure whether that's you know but there's this then the regulator is gonna go away let's have a look let's assess it no let's let's work with you and then let's figure it out well we can make it like we get it it's innovation and you need to you need to break a few things in order to be innovative and like how can we you know ring fence it and there's a sandbox and you know all these different things so i think it's cool switzerland from afar yeah is is a box right we do see suzanne as a box but it's it's not it was surprising and refreshing i think to see switzerland well you know as the mercantile place to be or maybe as the you know maybe our banking system is not going great so let's you know but you know diversify at least our sector and allow this to to grow and i saw from afar i could see that regulators and institutions were like okay we don't really know what's happening so we're not going to do anything actually we'll wait and i think just that just by saying we're not we want to see it grow first i think was pretty interesting and did did make a difference especially i would say in the early days i think now it's more common to hear countries being more open about cryptocurrencies and maybe not seeing it just as a criminal uh activity but really seeing it the benefits and you know also financial economical benefits for a certain region by attracting talent and and and money can you maybe share a bit like i i want to migrate a bit so we've we talked about your experience like as an event organizer the ecosystem in switzerland and i think for some listeners this might be interesting you're the first i think who has experience in terms of a vc like you're the first who had to like analyze and go through thousands of projects um and i've heard your talk that you gave for blockchain ua so shout out to those guys as well that always have great distributed lab is like a fantastic place exactly and you shared the three keys that you like to see um when you're reviewing a project you know three takeaways would you mind sharing them as well here with us yeah sure of course i mean as a vc i think that's a stretch uh i worked uh for vc and we need to separate the two so cvlabs was in charge of putting together the incubation program and doing the scouting and filling in the yeah the pipeline so to say with startups and we've managed to get over a period of a year and a half managed to get more than a thousand applications so yeah i think you're saying thousands of applications that's we're almost there okay the guys are doing yeah i'll stay accurate so yeah a good chunk you have a good chunk of applicants a good chunk of applicants and but then the selection process was then handed over to cevc what was interesting is that when we you know me and my colleagues nikolai reinbold also shout out to to my homie can you hear the baby yes okay bring her because she's going to bed and it's it's now it's really strange just give me a sec just give me a sec yeah please [Music] i chose sorry about that she was upset how about this oh don't be oh well you're not holding her to go to bed and just rambling about your experiences yeah so where were we uh vc yeah yeah so let's see how we can start let's take it from the top so and then you know whenever cv labs um would fill in the pipeline that then we would hand it over to cvvc for them to to check the applicants you know check their startups do due diligence talk to them and then out of a thousand i think we had a success rate of 1.7 so out of more than a thousand applications only 22 startups were selected for the two batches um what was surprising to me is that whenever we went on like journeys and we ventured off into different ecosystems like berlin or tel aviv and like my my my colleague nicolai went all the way to armenia um to to find startups so you know crazy crazy crazy stuff like the lengths that you would go to find the early stage startups when you get to meet the people and you have a conversation with them um and you spend some time so what we'd usually do is we would go into like an ecosystem would usually go when the event is there and we'd organize like a site event a meet up and say crypto valley is here we're looking for startups we're giving out you know 125 000 in exchange for 10 of equity you should come and like at least you know do an information event get some food get some drinks um and you know when you start having those conversations with different teams then you get to know them a bit better and then when you come back to base and you speak to your you know venture capitalist colleagues and you go here are the guys that i spoke to or gals um and and and i think at least from the motivational perspective these and these and these and these things align and to me the early stage game like the early stage vc is is all about the team and trusting that the team that you are putting your bets on is actually the right one um and to me that the whole human element is is extremely important because they are so far away from making money you're looking at like seven eight nine ten year horizon before you potentially can make significant amount of money on your investment that the only way that you can be certain in your investment is if you're certain in the team and i think going back to your initial question what are some of the three factors factor number one is obviously is the team to me that the team is everything and then the second one is i would say product it's very important are you actually solving a problem and is the problem that you're solving does it need blockchain and crypto is it are you just like bolting it on to sell it to to us to get the investment or like and if you're issuing if you're issuing tokens and that's your only use case oh we're doing an ico i'm like that's not anybody can do an ico well not anymore but in in 18 and 19 you could just go you know and there you have it and then the third component this surprise surprise is the team again because even if you like your team right in the beginning and then you think there's a product market or potential product market fit and you believe in all of that the benefits of putting people through an incubator is you have an incredible opportunity to spend 12 weeks with your investments and you see how they behave and you see who is coming to lectures you see who's there in the office working late at night you see when you just go guys you you you we have a pitch opportunity be ready in five minutes you see who's ready right you see who's putting in the work and i think immediately within even the first batch out of the 12 startups that we had you could see two three that were leading the pack and then you could also see yeah a few a few write-offs as well and you don't get to see this if you don't spend the time with the team and i think that's yeah for me that was that was incredible to actually be there with the founders and then you know when all the glitz and the pizzazz and all of the other stuff that you get through their marketing materials and the spiels and their pitches that all fades away and when you write them hard during the incubation yeah what's uh how do they perform how do they behave how do they behave towards you how do they behave towards their lectures how do they behave towards the other people in the team how do they behave with their teammates um that's yeah i think it's very fitting to to be talking about these things and the name of your your podcast humans of crypto so i think it's [Music] very fitting i wonder why i asked that question no obviously when i saw that bit that you gave i was like you know we wish that with cryptocurrencies that you know it's only about the protocol it's just where i'm here for the tech you know all those memes that are just like we don't need humans anymore we have we have decentralized consensus algorithms you know the human factor disappears but it's still very much present and i think what you're describing here is is a very unique perspective i think not many people realize how much it's still very much about the people it's still a people industry what we do who we work with and the team and i think it's it's something that we don't always talk about the human side of things and that it matters more if out of your three most must-haves for a company in an early stage blockchain startup two out of the three other team whether it be how they present themselves how they work the staff that they work recruit you know the talent themself like as just pure jewels of like smart people and then the next step you know smart people that can work together um and that's yeah that's the next level and have you seen like of course you see all the good the bad then the ugly [Music] um is a successful team then um like like you say they show up and but if anybody who's listening who's in this phase and is in an early stage um startup and and they're thinking this is something i'd like to pursue what what advice do you have for them oh that's a great one um i think it's it's that fine line between being confident in yourself and your abilities and at the same time taking on a lot of negative feedback which you will get uh whether you want it or you don't or you like it or you don't or you seek out negative feedback or you don't you you get it that's because everybody's an expert and everybody's gonna give their opinion from you know your your friend to your mom to your dog everybody will have an opinion on what you're building and you know some of that opinion will come from people who would like to support you and wish you well and some of that opinion will come from your competitors and also potential industries who are actually quite afraid of you disrupting them so you need to have that fine line between being able to manage that feedback and have the confidence in yourself to continuously execute that even if you get you know not to get like too cocky on on on that side either where you go ah you're just a bunch of idiots you don't know what you're talking about i know everything i'm gonna you know make it all work have like a good amount of sense checking once in a while and reality checking and take that take that criticism see if you can work with it if it's constructive great if it's destructive throw it out and then keep building keep building as much as possible and just keep keep going until you till you get it right i think that's the most important thing and then i think it can get really really difficult at times can get really like grueling when you've done when you spoke to a hundred investors and none of them is biting and you start doubting yourself and i think that is the moment where a lot of or at least the ones that i've seen like teams really get upset and even now even the stuff that i that i do right now like people get discouraged you know how many times are you going to get your your your nose shut in the door um but i think the 101 or 102nd is going to be the right one so the important thing is not to give up and continue going and then even after all of those efforts and the amount of time and resources that you've put into whatever you're building and if that fails be ready to say screw it and move on to the next thing because that's that's what i mean some of the most wow yeah some of the most successful founders have failed many many times before uh before they became successful um there's yeah there's this running joke that in the silicon valley um you when you talk to vc vc asks you how many times have you failed because that's important because every time you fail there's a learning and then once you go through all these loops of hell and you learn that's when you get to a more or less successful startup and i'd say that relentless drive to know that you are building something that will change the world and that you need to build it no matter what this is what gets people over the edge i think and that's why and again it's not for everybody also if if um it could be the case that even if you're if even if you're building it and you and you're failing it's just it happens it's the market it's all these different things and you might have the best idea i think i heard this i think was it a podcast or something like this there was this i'm sure all of you guys know asana which is this uh project management tool oh yes oh yeah what was that story there's a twitter i know what you're talking i think you're talking about a twitter thread from the competitor of asana or right yeah yeah that blew up like a couple of months ago yeah how yeah they were like faster they had better product they had a great team they had all these different things and asana met up with them and they said we're gonna kill you like you know no no hard feelings we're gonna kill you because we just closed 60 million in funding and you have two and it doesn't matter and that's just that's that happens and you need to be ready for these things um you need to be ready you need to be aware that these things happen and there's there's a reason why only a fraction of of startups succeed and there's a chance that you might as well but it's also should be okay if you don't right um but that doesn't stop you i think the worst thing that you can do to yourself and if you're listening and you're thinking about it is not try despite all of this because if you don't try that is so much worse much much worse do you think this is a philosophy that you have applied to yourself personally yeah for sure for sure i'd rather i'd rather regret things um that that i've done than than things that i you know regret things that i have never tried and what the hell it's it's it's so cliche people say oh you know yolo oh my god but it's true it is yolo it's it is you only live once so what's the worst thing that can happen right so you start a company you fail you go bankrupt are you gonna not be able to find a job of course he will be able to even if it means you know flipping burgers or becoming an uber driver you'll be fine you'll find you'll find work if you don't find work where you are you're not a tree you move somewhere else you can continuously figure out a way i mean we live now this is we're never really getting into philosophy we're living in some of the most incredible times ever in terms of our access to technology our access to knowledge to connecting with other people to talking to them to getting feedback to finding a mentor to like hell kevin o'leary who i you know one of the shark tank uh investors who i hold to like a super high account he's got his own like vlog on youtube where he talks about everything like that's crazy getting into a mind of an extremely successful investor and he's like he's open he's sharing about this stuff like this is how i did things this is the playbook so having all that knowledge and and all that information it's almost like why wouldn't you have so much resources and so much stuff available to you for free right um and not try to do something with that knowledge with that with with all of that information almost owe it to yourself i don't know i like marketing come on yeah it's interesting yeah yeah yeah i think you're right we're totally at a phase in in life where our generation is just blessed to be walking around with computers in our pockets right literally um but to also i think you know what you describe the sort of this hard journey of a startup and to never give up and i think in crypto we like to also have this very like entrepreneurial very like you know i don't need all these diplomas i can do it a lot of self-starters a lot of people that are just entrepreneurs just by being and i think i want to tie this also to maybe the others the flip side again to all of that greatness that we see on our space and i'm just flashback to an old post of yours on linkedin which really touched me where you were really open about your struggles as well like that yes there was all these things to celebrate but there's also a cost you know and to how do we navigate this space with like you said all this access to technology to amazing people and at the same time finding ourselves and and making sure that we as a human that we're happy and balanced it's it's a very interesting i think decoupling that we that we go through yeah yeah i think you know i'm i'm a strong advocate of of of mental health and i i think this is now that we are pretty much at the pinnacle of of the maslow's uh pyramid i think it's it's it's uh we're becoming more aware of all of the things that are happening around us and yes true we have all this technology all this knowledge but we also need to balance it with yeah find a way how to recharge yourself figure out a way what what helps you unwind what helps you um just feel better and whether that's i don't know punching bags or going for a run or listening to the music that you like or drinking glass of wine whatever whatever your poison for unwinding that should be um you know i i would embrace that because you you need that and it's it's very easy to get caught up in in the in the hustle porn as somebody once told me right this uh oh that's a good one yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah which that's that's yeah yes that's what it is it's just like yep it says a lot like it sure it's about 5 a.m like oh and you know the 5 a.m club which mind you i whenever i get a chance i joined that club but lately it's just been a little bit more difficult but you know and you do get that time and you do get there's all the benefits and yes routine is the way to go to kind of keep yourself accountable and to just like perform perform perform but we also need to be absolutely okay with having an off day you know having a day where you just go it's wednesday i got a ton of stuff that i need to do but i don't feel like that's absolutely fine and you almost owe it to yourself uh because i think the client the work is always going to be there the clients are always going to be there the business is always going to be there it's nothing's going to happen if you miss a day or like a couple of days or even if you just tell everybody hey i'm i'm stopping whether it's for your benefit or for somebody else's benefit i'm stopping i need a break and i think that's important for me that's important to realize that's important to like i was kind of almost like retrospectively i've realized i was i was going through a burnout only when i somehow i found a list of do you have a burnout and i was like no that's interesting and then you know i just went through this checklist of like you know sleeping well you're angry like you're irritable you're all these different things and i was just like that sounds a lot like me for like in the beginning of of of the last year and yeah i mean once you go through something like this that's when you start going yes i am ambitious and yes i'm driven and yes i want to attain all those different things but at the same time if i'm low on fuel and my my tires are worn um i'm not really gonna get far right so you need to kind of stop you need to take a pit stop refuel put on new tires you know spend what is the pit stop time for the formula one now 2.

5 seconds spend 2.5 seconds hit the pit stop thank you you're looking at me 4x1 2 wait what is that 2.5 seconds to what is that what are you referencing in a pit stop so when the car comes into the pit lane and they change and they fuel and you're out like and they it's it's a crazy thing they're going to take five seconds yeah yeah but obviously it's a joke but that's very fast no because there's that's a again but basically learning how to so micro naps take micro naps or yeah take my stop at some point yeah i think that's that's that's a good that's a good yeah like micro naps and even if like reading a book or something something that gets your your mind of things because it's it's it's easy getting caught up in stuff and it's easy especially when you love what you do like i i've never seen anybody go through a burnout doing something they hate right it's all it's all like being overworked it's all coming from a place of i love what i do i'm you know a high achiever i want to outperform like i'm super like i'm highly competitive and i want to win i want to just like and maybe if i work more and i take more responsibility maybe i'll get ahead and i and then you don't even know where you're getting there sometimes but you just like you're you're you're getting there somehow um and then it's also easy to take a step back and it's also easy to get that passion to creep into your personal time because you're not really seeing the hours fly by right and you're just like oh you oh like all right also work on sunday or like sunday is not enough i'll take half of saturday as well maybe you know do you do you now do do you make a difference now between work time and like how do you what's your recipe right now like do you do do you catch yourself basically do you have like more like safeguards to make sure that you might don't go back to a burnout you know zone yeah yeah i i think whenever i'm starting to see that i'm i'm pushing things and it's just it's like it's it's not going that's usually a sign for me to um to stop and like take a break and i might be overwhelmed with like fomo and anxiety and like checking my phone and checking my telegram because if you're in crypto that's where the whole world lives um and and like i might participate but i i step away from like the intensive work where i need to like do research or you know like write content and like do some some planning or things like that and i'd rather it has happened to me a few times where i i'd be like beating myself up and going like oh my god you know i have this deliverable and it's on wednesday and it's like tuesday evening you know i'll just like i'll have dinner and like i'll put my daughter to bed and then i it's nine so maybe if i spend an hour then like i'll i'll go i'll go to bed at 10 and then i'll wake up but you know it's gonna be fine and then i just go whoa take it easy just wake up at five tomorrow and you're fine with waking up at five have a coffee and just go at it and it's uh it worked a few times i mean i i apologize to some of my clients and they go i'm sorry i promised it yesterday but here it is and then they go it's 6 50. what's wrong with you so yeah i think it's just yeah so you it's being aware i think okay so so that was like okay being more aware because i was i was like that's still not except that's still like very very tough i mean obviously you have like you said you have deliverables and deadlines and and clients and you want to perform you want to retain clients and you want to make them happy so it's i think it's also the nature of this industry maybe that it's just so non-stop and like you described like this this fomo feeling if it's not marked fomo it's professional fomo and it's all this sort of you can never miss a beat i i think a lot of people feel that and um just to learn how to step back and breathe and i don't know have you gotten into any tips to be more zen and to sort of be more yeah more rational maybe i think um so my daughter despite being seven months have taught me a lot of uh patience recently so i think that's uh just like being patient with with the fact that some things just don't happen fast enough no matter how much you want them to happen and no matter how much you push no matter how much you're just like all over the thing it's just not gonna happen like everything happens in its own time and i'm an extremely impatient person i'm just like immediately now now now um and you can and you can also tell that from like the way that that we've for better or worse i don't know like future will tell but the way that we've scaled anchor is just crazy so we started in october we were servicing 14 clients already and we're nine people we're just out of nowhere and i appreciate the fact that it's a bull cycle but it's just it just went too fast um but the fact that you know i have my my daughter and the fact that she almost especially in the early earlier months not like she's very old now uh she almost forced me to spend time with her to put her to bed because it's like she was getting overwhelmed because she was developing very fast and like you know imagine you would see everything in like gray shapes and all of a sudden you start seeing color and all of a sudden the next day you start seeing patterns and then the next day you start seeing depth and then the next day you start seeing your like your parent from far away so that's like an immense immense um development difficulty almost for you for your nervous system and then every time we'd come to bed bedtime she would be crying and i would sue there and i'd spend hours and like i knew i had to work but i didn't have an option like i needed to be there with her and i needed to get her to a place where she would sleep and that kind of put me in a state like i gotta see this through that doesn't mean that on some nights i would just like put her into bed walk out and be like no i'm done i'm done and my wife's like what do you mean you're done i'm like i don't care i'm done i don't do this she's like but that's not like just nor here nor there um and that kind of i guess taught me patience with things and uh it's yeah you go through some stuff and that's you and then you experience it and then you go all right so gotta learn how to be patient yeah you basically got you became a father i feel like three times in the last ten months you had okay yeah of course your baby daughter then you had encore and you also had white spaces so you have like you you sort of gave birth to a lot of new things and you mentioned anchor uh do you want to tell us a bit you mentioned it that you're growing and you have 14 clients right now but what are you doing uh playing vanilla we do everything i mean we we we say that we work uh with founders right so we we try to position our company as a sparing partner so um so you you come to us when you want to grow your company to the next level and you can be early stage or you can be a bit more developed but you're kind of you're missing that additional push and whether that push comes from reorganizing your strategy or that push comes from like framing your communications properly and doing a bit of marketing around it or maybe like running some yeah product market fit tests and and and you know potentially getting a bit more feedback from the market we will help you with with this stuff and uh yeah it's um it's been an incredible journey i i say to to um to everybody that when i was working in cv labs and if you think of it as a you know as a funnel for startups then the kind of the very bottom the 1.7 made it through and i want to work with the other 98.

3 that didn't so if i can just help them somehow figure things out then maybe we can get more ideas funded and i'm a strong believer that tech will save the world um you know maybe it's naive maybe it's idealistic but i think if it's the only way that i we can we can engineer our way out of this mess and whether you know by figuring out a way how to like harness energy from the sun or i don't know creating alternative foods stuff so we don't cut out all the forest because we need to have more cows because we like candied bacon i don't know something or we go to another planet or some stuff like that so i honestly believe we can engineer our way out of this and i want to see my daughter grow up without the need for you know any assisted breathing things because we're running out of oxygen i want to see my grandkids like i don't want to have that doomsday scenario stuff like i actually want to see a better more technological more sustainable world and maybe if we help enough startups at some point somewhere somehow somebody will change the world for the better place is that how you you get clients you're like are you will you change the world if you don't then i'm not you're not on our portfolio is that yeah i'd say it actually says did you keep yeah yeah no it's i i can read this to you i mean this is what it says i'm not even you know there's no no but it's difficult because i think this is something we we want all of us to see and then every startup will have a different way of phrasing it or you know how they're actually solving a problem or they think they are but they're not they might be creating a whole other one um but it's i can imagine that being so close to these startups you said that the human factor before was so important and you see these startups grow or or die basically it must be really emotional as well like just to be so involved and have so much maybe you as a supporter and everything do you sometimes you you know you want that kid to to go through school you know but it's just it's just not gonna fly does that happen when you just like oh i get involved like i get i get emotionally involved because i can imagine i just i you know i uh i think the so and i get frustrated a lot especially when i know that my team is is putting in a lot of effort and you know you could say yeah but you know they're kind of paying paying you for it but i know that it goes beyond because i have the conversations behind the scenes and i know how people especially you know some of my team members how they push through their ideas how it's not just it's not just a business for them it's an experience and because we work so close with with with founders and with core team we get to know the people um and you know it's in consulting in itself is is is not a business where you make a lot of money uh per definition because it's it's very it's it's not very scalable because you know the more clients you have the more people you need so it's kind of leveled leveled out complete entirely so there's there are different motivations obviously when we're seeing that some of the founders are not performing despite all of the tools then we have a talk and my ceo um valentina is i think sometimes we play bad cop bad cop uh not even bad cup hookup we're like we're both bad cops with some of our startups and i think yeah it's uh the last one that i had we have this incredible setup it's a female founder she's i think she's doing something that is very much needed um in the space and and she's brilliant and she's she's extremely kind and she's super bubbly and she's very positive but she doesn't want to do fundraising and she would rather give it to somebody else and let somebody else and she would like pay them and like you know do all the and just like just not to do this and i had a bit of a tough love heart-to-heart conversation with her recently and i said everything else you know including your kid and your dog and your husband and your house and your bills everything takes a step back the most important thing is you need to sit down and you need to start fundraising and that means you need to be talking to only investors you cannot talk to anybody else except maybe us but that's it and you need to take this seriously because how can people take you seriously if you don't take yourself seriously so you know get and and she was like yes you absolutely i was just like and and i remember like getting so frustrated that i think after that i had to i think i apologized and i was like you know what i kind of i might have been too much like no no it was all good it was fine like i needed this and i'm like yeah but i can be a bit too much on that but yeah it's uh i get involved and um for better or worse i don't know maybe maybe sometimes i i um i go overboard but yeah i get involved so far none of the startups died maybe that's what your clients that's that's what your clients want they probably they chose you because there's a lot of consultancy out there they chose you because of that or you valentina the rest of your team because of that touch probably that's maybe you're you're unique in a way because others like you said would just be like well you're paying us we're going to do the strict minimum but if you get emotionally invested then she might listen to you more as well or i mean in this case she knows that you're not you know doing this for no reason fundraising is is really interesting though and she's reluctant and this just dive a little bit she's reluctant because she wants to focus on other sides of the business instead of that part or is it just just not her cup of tea to go pitch you know 300 times is that what's blocking her i've i've witnessed two types of founders in my in in you know in the past few years and there are some who see this as a necessary evil um and they just like go with it and they go yeah i'd rather be building my product but money is important and therefore like i need to do this nobody i haven't met anybody who's like yeah i knock on 100 doors and none of them open that's amazing like nobody's truly enjoying this you're asking for money and especially the way that somehow there's this perception that investors are here and startups are here or even lower that you know because they have the money and you're kind of asking them for the money and you know there's this kind of skewed slightly skewed relationship which i don't subscribe to i think both need each other equally so investors need new ideas to invest in because if they had ideas and they had the money they would have been somewhere else but they don't that's why they need ideas to invest in and the same thing on the other side you have the idea you have the plan you have the team you just need the money so it's a it's a transaction and of two equals at least that's that's how i see it but somehow it's we're we're not always there let's put it this way and some founders can do this well and they can manage that well and they just like yeah it's i just got to go through this i it's a process the more people i talk to the higher my chances are fundraising whereas some i think in my opinion it has to do with um their fear of rejection and their fear of um just somehow not making it or maybe failure and this is you know going back to some of the things that we discussed previously that they just they'd rather they so much don't want to do this they know they have to do this but they don't want to do it and they would rather give it to somebody else and and there's a there's a whole host of professional fundraisers and you know all sorts of brokers and oh my god i'm going to introduce you to so many people the reality is i'm yet to find somebody who would come to a startup and would say love what you guys are doing i'm going to take you to my 100 investors and whenever i bring somebody to them 50 invest that i don't maybe it exists i just haven't seen it and the tools are there you have crunch bass crying out loud you have pitch book if you want to go really fancy have all these different tools you have linkedin you have sales navigator all you have to do is just spend the time sit down spend the time and just go through the fundraising and we go even as far with some of our clients where we say you just need we will do even the first step of the list of investors that we prepare for you which are tailored we will even ping them on your behalf for the first time and they will have you will have the calendly link in your message and then the investors can find the the calendly slot all you have to do is just show up and do the job do the pit this is something that we cannot do for you you gotta do the pitch you gotta nail them down it's a relationship and you gotta start building that relationship from the first time you talk to them and uh some are okay with it some will just say oh you know thanks for the list i'm good i'm you know i'm going to do it another or just maybe somebody somebody will introduce me to somebody who will have some dry powder and then somebody's going to it doesn't work you have to do the job that's my thing okay so you're in you you hold hands you're really holding people's it's really um i yeah i salute because i can there's a reason why i didn't go down social work at some point in my life because it was just so emotionally consuming to support people like not even crypto we're talking refugees in geneva so it was just like but i couldn't at the end of the day i was drained by i i couldn't it would come and more than crypto even though crypt could gives me you know other problems but like it's really difficult to get so involved with with certain people or certain projects um because it will creep in and your dreams and your subconscious when you're not with them and you'll be doing grocery shopping and then you'll be like oh my god they need to do this or you know it's just like it's around the clock in the end that you're working for them even though they don't they might not all realize it interesting so do you bring these founders to white spaces like tell us more about like how do all these kids that you have interact with each other um yeah and by the way the pavel has a show so i know we already mentioned it before but white spaces is like a really interesting format and i really like how you've done it it's very upbeat i love as well the the graphics of it it's really nice so yeah tell us a bit more about what you're doing there and maybe just give us like yeah maybe a favorite guest of yours or something you really liked learning from hosting all these people oh my god now there's uh i'd say there were a few memorable conversations that i've had with folks um but let's maybe start with how all of this intertwines together so maybe i take a step back so 2020 was supposed to be a year where i would have four kids so there's a fourth project that i unfortunately didn't have uh the the power to build but it's it's it's coming along so and that will all i i like this kind of ecosystem approach to things and for me white spaces also fits into the overall concept where you know encore is the the powerhouse the consultancy and then you know the white spaces is um it's like a content marketing strategy where we get to know very interesting people and the main topic that we discuss is very similar to you right it's humans of crypto for me it's it's uh personal stories of people who work in innovation and maybe i'm a nerd and maybe some of the topics that i choose and some of the questions that i ask maybe could be considered a bit too deep and and and some of them i asked because i'm genuinely interested but i don't even know how the audience may be responding to some of them but i just i just get the kick out of the conversation that i'm having with truly remarkable people that are working in the you know in the industry and i remember i was being like when we were embarking on this and you know a year ago in the summer i was just like the only way that i would do this would be in a studio and the studio would have to be entirely white and then my producer found it and you know we shot there and we shot our first four episodes there and then we've realized it's a bit too far and people just like won't be coming to the studio unless it's central zurich and then further lockdown measures came into force and i was just like in order for me to continue feeding this content beast i need to do zoom and i just i hated that we're in so much but nonetheless i had really good conversations and i think now we're tomorrow we should be releasing our 10th zoom what we call remote white spaces stuff which is not bad given everything there's a pipeline of additional two episodes of in person that we also need to release and yeah we're just the whole premise is talking to people who work in innovation and and feel them out for their personal stories um i think in terms of the most favorite one i'm biased because yeah i think the most favorite one was with my current ceo valentina and we so we clicked before and then we had the interview and then during the interview we we got very very deep very fast and very personal in our conversations so we were talking about things like just like with you you know burnouts mental health human um you know issues and mindfulness and how do you manage certain things at work and all of these kind of human related stuff which she's obviously passionate about and i am passionate about and yeah i remember having that that interview i remember that very quiet ambiance despite the fact that we had some people in the audience and there was a production team and we were streaming it live and then kind of becoming very vulnerable on on live tv with who turned out to be my my ceo in a few months was yeah it was great it was a great experience um and but that doesn't mean that the rest of of of the people that i've interviewed um were not as remarkable i mean the last one that we've released with johan which we only have on youtube i haven't even promoted it on linkedin which i need to do speaking of which that's a remarkable story of a prop trader who just went from trading equities to trading cryptos and he's has this incredible libertarian anarchistic very similar to zeb's uh approach to to to the way the market should be working he hates regulation he hates like all of the stuff that european union is doing he's a amazing amazing person and a really good friend then uh the interview with fungi where we talked about some of the volunteering stuff that she does and her amazing life story i think that was really really empowering um the interview with arun who is this you know insane insurance and insurtech innovation expert who is sponsoring kids in india right that's what he does and just you know one of the most like one of the most humble human beings that i've ever talked to and and like very positive and like full of energy amazing amazing amazing person um eberhard who is doing like crazy stuff in the met tech space mattel uh jesus christ liberty i mean all of them have incredible incredible stories and to me but getting to know them and also having that period before the interview where they go oh i hope i'm gonna do well and i'm like it's don't worry you're doing you're building amazing things and you're worried about an interview like the latest interview we have that's coming out now with aryan so his team of like 10 engineers built this like tilting vehicle out of belgium with like bootstrapped small amount of funding and it's like electric and it's just and he's like oh i hope and he's sitting there and he's got these two machines behind him and he's like i hope i will do well because i'm not really an interview type i'm like are you serious like you've you've built that stuff behind you and you worried about this like this is easy so yeah it's uh it's amazing it's it's great um it's it's my question was your favorite and i realized it was a terrible question because how how can you have a favorite when you speak to all these people and they all have something so unique about them and that's also why we keep bringing on new people because we keep learning from all these different people and i'm looking forward actually i think this is a good segue maybe to to talk about you again because i know you you have all these wonderful guests but we have a special bit in this show which is called show and tell and for those that are listening i guess jump to youtube to see what we're talking about or odyssey um but i wanted something where a moment in the show where even though it were through zoom we haven't had a lunch or seen each other for now more than a year um but where you could talk a bit about something that we could remember you by so this is the show-and-tell moment do you mind showing us and telling us a bit about something i really i thought about this long and hard and i really wanted to flex on kalani and his golden rolex and then i realized that most probably is going to be a weak flex uh despite the fact that there's also some things attached some some meaning attached to you know to my uh to my watch as well but like you know forget it like i'm not gonna flex on that it's just it's way too crazy i mean you know i i spoke to him after i've seen the episode and i was just like kalani you're crazy he's like yeah man it's like it's an amazing watch so and i'm like i'm i'm i'm huge i'm a big watch um buff so and i love i love watches and i nerd out on that as well so seeing that was just like whoa amazing okay you also need to understand that what he's showing there and if you haven't seen that episode you need to go and watch it is and then i'm going to nerd out now is a factory set diamond bezel and that is something which is very strange in the watch community if it's factory set despite the fact that it's iced out as the cool kids call it if it's factory set it's amazing if you give it to somebody and they set it even if it's the same set but they set it after market it's terrible so the fact that he has a factory set and like it's a gold watch and it's like one of the top models from rolex is just like extra credit to kalani and he's uh he's also a good friend and a colleague and a client so i i know him i know him quite well we've worked in a few projects together but back to me i think my show-and-tell is very simple it's it's these and despite that some and i've and i've heard this so many times people really think that this is a fashion statement and it has nothing to do with me being blind it has nothing to do with me kind of you know and i can show it to you like you see how how how i i wear stuff like till they break like people think that this is me showing off and they're entirely fake and i'm just doing it to to look smart i guess so i kind of extrapolated this uh and and almost made it my own personal trademark and that even in the white spaces you actually see the glasses turning and it's all about like you know putting them on and putting them off so i think despite the fact that i somehow that's true and now i'm just yeah yeah yeah for the for those that are listening uh pav was showing his glasses that's what he's been showing me right now on the camera he's showing his worn down but very much him glasses which why are you even listening you should be you should be watching us on youtube no because we're so much better in person i think um so yeah these these x have been with me for three years and um the story of how i got them were even you know it's even crazier like i was i was in st petersburg it was dark it was cold it was winter time and i remember i deposited my car with uh with the car rental and i i walked into um like a you know a supermarket and it was just like i think 8 30 or something like this like late in the evening and i walked into the first um store because my previous in the first like optic store that i saw um because my previous glasses were i think i broke them or something like i didn't have glass it was terrible and like i'm you know especially at night i'm just i'm mr squinty face because like that's the only that's just i squint terribly and i walked into the store and i just you know looked at a few specs and i found these and they put them on and i said you know i need to do a test and how long it's going to take you and then there's this typical post-soviet doctor which is you know always kind of slightly educating tone and like young man don't you know you should have glasses that fit you and do you have any headaches that's most probably because you're wearing like all glasses and she just like gave me a lecture and she's like don't you know but we're closing in half an hour and i just said yeah but can you get me can you get me the glasses done in half an hour and she was like she just went fine let's test you and then she tested me and i went i grabbed dinner and then half an hour i had these glasses like in petersburg in half an hour in the middle of winter evening something they've been with me for four years and i yeah they've been everywhere in the world with me they're terrible they're worn out they're my daughter bit them because she constantly tries to take them off and like nibble on them and you can actually you can see this do you see this that's my daughter she so she scratched my glasses with her two teeth oh exactly so and even though i think even being very vain i would maybe look better without glasses i still don't see myself like going through lastic and like removing them because they're they're now a part of me and that's my show and tell thank you so much for sharing and they're great glasses they do suit you very well uh i i'm also a glasses person um i i can't touch my eyes i don't know if you've gone through that whole like should i have lenses you know contact lessons but yeah i think it's interesting that you shared something that you wear every day that we see on all your shows that you actually do have a bit about them now that i remember you do have a bit where you take them and remove them in a very like smart way and in the intro so i'm happy you're not squinting on this show and that we can see you properly and they can yeah see the the rest properly and that you're doing everything that you're doing um in crypto and innovation in tech through these lenses um yeah really pavel you've you've done a lot and i and i can see that all your journey for all the way from 2011 you mentioned the silk road you mentioned discovering it not touching it going through all of these all of these experiences um it's quite a journey that you shared with us quite a journey and all these these children whether they be actual actual children um and also all these these projects that you are not only hmm are you also like a foster dad you kind of are you have like all these like mama bear i call myself a mama beard that's are you oh right mama bear but the rest of your team then they're like i see do you have a lot of mama bears then cause i've also noticed that it's exclusively female right now your team at encore right or at least on the on the website not exclusively yes predominantly well we've added a few um a few male profiles as well because we're we've and this is this is news expose um we've launched the adventure builder as of last week and now we have a second team focusing specifically on building ventures we we found amazing amazing amazing talent and i'm extremely glad that i've i've met one particular person who i'm building the venture builder with but yes other than that angkor is predominantly female and i've heard through some of the found founders that we work with they go pavel we um we've been talking about this but can you tell us um how does your wife feel about you being surrounded by these brilliant and very good-looking women and i go just it's it's absolutely fine it's um you know my wife is like knows most of them and then yeah it's just there but i also feel that working with female colleagues is is teaching me a lot first of all that i'm not as demanding nor am i as pushy as i've been with my male colleagues but then i also don't need to do that because the quality and the level is is very much up there and what i appreciate and again i could be painting with a broad brush but what i appreciate is the level of diligence that no matter how much i try or i've observed it's very rare to find men who have that level of diligence that i have with my female colleagues it's just when there's a task when there's a challenge i know that they will go through hoops and loops and all the way till they they complete that and it's to the highest possible level and i'm very i'm very hands off and i don't need to you know i don't i don't need to write them like i don't need to like i'm it's very yeah it's uh it's an incredible experience like i'm i'm like i i wouldn't want to hire anybody else for the positions that i have but yes somehow it turned out to be mostly women i don't know well from you've you've mentioned like you've had these several uh projects right and now you're launching this venture builder um was that the project that you sort of had delayed from the other years you know you mentioned before that there was another project is that finally is that coming to life no no no no that's even another one that's another project then another one yeah because i i think my long term vision is and i told this to my wife um some time back so the the only two things that i want to be doing in the long term is i want to be working with my early stage investment so i want to get to a place where i will be investing in early stage startups and i want to be a value-added investor like i don't want to be a guy that just like comes and like drops capital and then just flies off and then you know [Music] ramps things up so the next valuation is higher and higher and higher that's i actually want to be a proper angel investor that's one thing and then the other thing is maybe one day i'll get invited to more events and like speaking opportunities hint hint whoever is listening um because i i think i may amass by then a ton of interesting stories and i'd like to share them and experiences and yeah that's that's the only two things i want to do in the long term and then that final project that i've delayed from last year and maybe i will launch this year or maybe next year not sure is slowly getting that he's slowly getting me closer to that dream um so it will be it will be a non-profit and it will focus on connecting yeah ideas ideas and capital i'd say but in a non [Music] yeah in a non kind of aggressive revenue generating 100x output type of way i yeah and then but that means that all of the other things would have to have strong teams in place so i can step back and i'm getting there with anchor believe it or not it's um again i will continue to shower her with with compliments valentina my ceo is an incredible incredible incredible colleague i mean 15 years in in corporate is you can see that you can see that experience coming through very well organized commercially driven super focused all of the attributes of of um a great managing partner so i know that anchor would be in good hands with her uh but for like the white spaces venture builder i still need to build out the teams and then maybe at some point i can i can do that final form thing let's see wow so much to look forward so for those listening uh apparently bevel's recruiting so go check out go check out what he's building if you're yeah yeah if you're a startup and you're thinking hey i need extra consultancy i need someone to actually show me the ropes show me how i can be better and and how i can actually make a difference also hit him up um if you want a speaker and you're looking for someone interesting to share stories like we've shared today maybe about the swiss ecosystem what it's like to be in the early stage investor game and and what it's like to support these startups again i hit pavel up um and i what you just mentioned that that unborn um idea or a project about this non-profit i yeah maybe now or later but i i want to talk to you maybe about an old project that i was involved in because i saw the volunteering activities you've been in um you know from alumni stuff to also you know what you've done with the saint katherine project i see that you've done that for a long time as well um and and i can see that the non-profit side is also in you and something that really motivated me when when i was at uni was a project called euphoria euphoria was um the name's already really good i don't know if you know them they're they're swiss-based actually but they it's kind of crazy then the idea is very much like you're a change maker i'm a change maker well change maker so if anybody's like wants to blame a part of my life for the person i am today and for learning how to facilitate and talk and present that was actually a really life-changing experience it was two and a half days where they taught us that we can have a project that it an idea doesn't have to just stay an idea it can become something very fast and i owe it to them i owe it to euphoria and to the programs that they have like uh impact which taught me that and which university never taught me so maybe that's something we can talk more about i'm not involved with them anymore but it was a definitely very interesting project to have pavel any last parting words that you have for our audience on my side it was an absolute pleasure to have you today honored to have you as my third guest for this humans of crypto podcast uh thank you for sharing all your your insights um yeah tell us last words uh well first of all thank you so much for inviting me i know we've been trying to schedule this for a while and i'm extremely happy that we've spent what pretty much the last two hours just like chatting away like we haven't seen each other from 2020 which is the case pretty much um yeah i think my last message is very simple whatever if you if you cannot sleep and you keep thinking about something that you want to do um you know and you obsess about something but you cannot find the strength or some or i don't know [Music] the will or you keep putting it away in in like a you know in a cupboard far away try to actually execute it try to find a way how to test it how to build it because i'd rather see you fail with whatever and like put that thing to rest then have yeah have regrets about not trying it and that's that's i think that's my my only thing for everybody is that if if you if you if you keep obsessing about something do it just like nike said it just do it that's there's just it's it's brilliant and another shameless plug with another brand thank you which we're not sponsored it's fine we'll accept it we'll accept the royalties it's fine yeah well it's a good slogan it sucks that they just have the monopoly over it it says a lot it says a lot and it fits well to what you're doing and what you're trying to accomplish in all your ventures so again pavo thank you for these last words thank you for being here tonight and i hope we can see each other very soon in switzerland in person you're always welcome to come back yeah bye