A Note from the Editor

Following up on her previous reflections on creating a web3 podcast, W3G (Web3 Growth) Season 1 Co-Host, Julie Octaviano, dissects each of Season 1’s 20 Episodes with industry leaders, and gives us her favorite quotes and takeaways. Look out for Season 2 launching next week (also now under the Netcetera umbrella), with Blake, Co-Founder of Myosin.xyz, chatting with the great minds behind the latest emerging tech. 

Rowan Spencer 

Myosin.xyz 

Editor-in-Chief

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Ep. 1 Alex Taub, (Upstream/Truth Labs/Goblintown): "You might as well just do what you think and the way you think it's right, because there's literally someone that will have an issue with what you do no matter what."

• As our very first podcast guest, I really appreciate the raw insights that Alex shared as a true founder who has been building his own path for years. You can tell he is a guy that takes risks and does things based on what feels right, and this quote is very telling of that. We live in a society where no matter what, how, when you extend a positive offer, critics are just a tap and scroll away (and in web3 - usually anonymous to make matters worse). Therefore, a huge part of acting on something is simply following your own moral compass to ensure that you feel at peace with your decision.

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Ep. 2 Carly Long (Women in Web3): "It doesn't have to be perfect. Just do it. That is one of the best lessons and things I've learned both professionally and personally. Because it can only lead to growth, even if you fail."

• Boy do I adore the enthusiasm and can-do attitude of Carly! She is the epitome of self-taught and has the personality and resilience to match it. In this episode, she speaks of her various skills like painting, public relations, recruiting, and recently a content writer for her very own web3 newsletter. I appreciate the learning she shared here, because fear of failure is a very real-thing for professionals across every industry, every age range, etc. No matter how much of an expert you are, humans are conditioned to have a fear of the unknown. Her quote serves as a nice reminder that "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" -- and as a woman in the tech space who recently transitioned into a new role, this really resonates with me personally as well.

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Ep. 3 Jeff Kauffman Jr. (JUMP): "From a professional standpoint, try to build, try to ship products, do all of that stuff, and just kind of have that faith that the space is actually growing at a speed that we don't understand and is gonna be way bigger in five years than we can actually predict and talk about."

• First of all, I could listen to Jeff all day! This professional learning has a special place in the hearts of all us folks building and working in web3. Having doubts about the space, the technology, where it's going, government regulations, etc. is a daily if not weekly fear in the back of all our minds. So I love that he used the word "faith" -- this is a key emotion to help ground us in times of doubt, to help us push through all the noise and truly believe that we're working on something that is absolutely transformative and positive for the greater world.

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Ep. 4 Diana Richter (Consesnsys Mesh): "You do not have to be on 24. It is okay to be a daytime crypto person. You don't need to go to everything, it's fine. Nothing happens after eight o'clock at night."

• Reading this again makes me chuckle, because Diana's delivery is always spot on and hilarious at the same time. It is no secret that being on 24/7 and trying to attend all of the conferences in web3 has become the norm over the years. However, for those (like myself) who have passions or responsibilities outside of the world of blockchain technology, there is a lot of FOMO and sometimes guilt involved with not following this path -- a lot of moments of "should I too be eating, breathing, sleeping crypto?" followed by "..but I don't want to.". So with that, I love her take on this as it's a nod to both early birds and to those of us who like to limit web3 conversations to 9am - 5pm local time.

Ep. 5 Tangpoko (Banquet Labs): "It's more important to be consistent than it is to be perfect."

• The holy grail of professional learnings. So simple yet so impactful. One of the hardest parts of building, whether it's building your own brand, your social media following, developing a product, is the perseverance to continue going. Often time, the most impactful thing you can do is be consistent until it's perfect.

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Ep. 6 Justin Vogel (Safary): "I would say it's building a personal brand and network. I'd never had a personal brand before 2022. I never had a Twitter before 2022. Investing in that has changed everything for me personally, and people have been telling me for years it would... I think that there's such an overload of content on the internet today, but the irony is that most of the great insights out there are still just in the minds of people and will not be written down. And so in order to really up-level yourself, you need to talk to other people in as many of them as."

• Talking to Justin was such a breathe of fresh air. He is the epitome of someone who just goes for it, and figures it out along the way. I love that his answer involved two very valuable learnings: build a personal brand and talk to people. Yes, it's 2023 and most people have established personal brands online, but by nature of the web3 industry there are still a lot of contrarians in the space who feel too cool for school when its comes to broadcasting their every thoughts, feelings, opinions on mass scale. So for those individuals, Justin conveniently also offers up the alternative recommendation of actively engaging in interpersonal activities on a one-to-one, private basis.

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Ep. 7 Evin McMullen (Disco.xyz): "My biggest professional learning from the last year is that unit economics matter. The size of a big, fancy investment round from a big, fancy company can yield a lot of users when you pay them to get on board. But at the end of the day, if you're not solving problems for people and generating value with the core capabilities of your offering you're gonna have bad ---."

• Classic Evin, always telling it like it is and that is why we love her! The web3 industry has been hit hard over the last year or so with FTX being the climax of negative sentiment surrounding the space. Understanding the depths in which a "rug" can take place while involving legitimate institutions and corporations was a very hard and gross pill for us all to swallow. So going back to Evin's learning, the silver lining with these instances is that it served as a valuable lesson that we need to all jointly do better in policing what is being built and funded.

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Ep. 8 Amanda Tyler (Polygon): "The biggest, the biggest learning from last year for me was not to be afraid to take a path alone. Because sometimes you don't get stakeholders on board. And if you really believe in that idea, I think it's important to stick to your guns and stay on that path. And even if you're the only independent contributor doing the work, you will get people rallying behind you because of your conviction."

• Amanda eloquently speaks to the power of perseverance and the recognition that one gets for it. Being passionate about something is an innately attractive quality that sometimes is understated or squashed when dealing with corporate politics. As a woman at one of the most successful companies in web3, I appreciate Amanda sharing her ability to "stick to her guns" even in times of hardship.

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Ep. 9 Derek Davies (Medallion.fm): "Time management is my boring answer, but I think our biggest learning as a company was following our gut."

• Okay so for context Derek, had quite a year behind him with starting a family and a company at the same time, so although the "time management" part is understated here, it is a very real thing that us adults should perfect to maintain our sanity. But touching on his second learning, I love that Derek collectively includes the company as a whole and the faith they had to lean into when building Medallion.fm and going through the fundraising process.

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Ep. 10 Quinn Campbell (Sky Mavis): "It was absolutely trying to ship the first iteration of our Axie creator program. We spent like four months doing it. We interviewed all of the commanding heights of the Web 2 gaming creator programs, thought we had something beautiful, shipped it, and our community and our creators hated it and hated it. One we had, we built it entirely without talking to them about it, which is very web2. But as someone in web3, as I look back on it now, I'm like, ‘How could I have so much hubris, right?’ And that was huge learning for me. Absolutely huge. And then two, the structure of how we wanted to provide them payments, everyone in Web 2 told us you have to pay your creators, just kind of buck up, pay your creators, give them a path to sustainability.

• Talking to Quinn who was at Sky Mavis, the company behind Axie Infinity, the game that brought Play to Earn to life, was a really fun moment. Here he was talking about one of his biggest surprises and moments where the outcome was very different from originally anticipated. We love hearing moments of vulnerability from our guests, and it’s so important for all of us to be humble enough to recognize when we’re trying something that isn’t working, and to reassess and try again.

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Ep. 11 Ludovic Simon (Ledger): "Do things that don't scale to scale. I think when you're working at Ledger, that is quite a big company in the ecosystem with a lot of clients you want to scale everything, but actually you figure out sometimes that doing things that don’t scale have much bigger impact when you do it well than wanting to scale everything."

• Louder for the people in the back! Ludo was one guest who stood out to me because he was so transparent and vulnerable in admitting the unsuccessful tactics that his team implemented over the last few months. He had absolutely no ego about it, and genuinely wanted to just share learnings that they took with them each time. He really embodies the whole "building in the public" ethos and this seemingly counter-intuitive, yet helpful tip was the cherry on top for me!

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Ep. 12 Matt Kim (Smoothie): "I'd say it's two things. Number one it's move the needle and stay very, very simple. And what I mean by that is there's a lot of people that will go into the details of how about we optimize this, optimize this it's like, let's scratch all that out. What is that key thing that's going to move the needle and really focus on that?
And then the second piece is how to think about ideas. There's this really good book called ‘Alchemy’, and it basically talks about how the illogical ways that ideas actually become successful. And most people think that the way you think of an idea is very logic based."

• We love a two-part learning here at Myosin! The more the merrier in my opinion. I particularly feel the first one resonates with Myosin more than anything, because we constantly are getting excited about new ways we could potentially build upon our existing structure. For example, a few months ago we added PR & Partnerships offerings to our stack of offerings, and now we're exploring new types of content to produce. Matt's learning is a reminder to take a pause every once in a while and evaluate if each new initiative will be impactful before adding more.

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Ep. 13 Tara Fung (Co:Create): "Resilience. There are very few things that are actually as bad as they might feel in the moment."

• I think everyone can benefit from hearing this. Resilience is everything, especially in this industry and especially for founders. Tara's learning is a classic, but a truly important one that applies to the many consistent hardships one encounters within the building process.

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Ep. 14 Blake Menezes (Bitski): "Be perpetually curious and adaptable in what you're doing. I think you need to be a constant learner and someone that's just always learning new things to be successful in any career at the moment, not even just Web3. I think if you're someone that's trying to make it in the space, you should be experimenting and trying new things. Marketers should keep experimenting and learning and be curious. And that's been a big learning for me."

• Although I wasn't able to join this recording, I really enjoyed what Blake shared here and how he applies it to marketers specifically. I think it's easy for many that work or play in web3 to read this and think of how overwhelming it is to always be on the cusp of the latest new developments in the space. However, I like that Blake makes the point to constantly learn even outside of web3 -- play outside of your sandbox and be curious about the world in general.

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Ep. 15 Steph Alinsung (Seed Club/Vessel): "Everything is relationships."

• As someone who has both owned a small business and worked with a sales team in corporate America for years, this is absolutely true. Forming relationships is a basic human need. Our species is programmed to nurture relationships that make us feel good or have some sort of primary benefit. Steph's learning is a good reminder to be kind and professional no matter what you're doing and most importantly, who you're doing it with.

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Ep. 16 Shreyas Gavit (OKX): "Adaptability. I think things always change and roadmaps can always change. So listen to the market and keep evolving."

• Shreyas came into this episode packed with insights and lessons from his time at OKX. His team has been building in times of so much market uncertainty that it makes perfect sense that his learning involves being adaptable and evolving. It's another classic lesson for those of us in this space, but is an important one to take with us in all aspects of life.

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Ep. 17 Calvin Chan (Solana Mobile): "I've been at three different Web3 organizations over the over the past year. It's been a tough year. It's been a bear market. There's been reductions in force like across the board. I would say the biggest professional learning I've had in the last 12 months was really to have like some thick skin through all that because it's like not personal and also not to be afraid to double down on yourself and what you believe in. So I'm not sure where Web3 and blockchain technology is headed, but I'm super curious. I want to stick around. And my biggest learning is really just to lean into that."

• We've had a lot of guests share lessons that have to do with their time being a founder, and although very valuable, I think Calvin's learning is a breath of fresh air for those that are more so on the employee level of things. Unlike founders, employees are in a vulnerable position where they're the first to get impacted by the decisions being made at the top. It is also much easier for an employee to "quit" and move onto something more secure. However, this serves as a reminder to trust yourself and trust what you're a part of.

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Ep. 18 Deana Burke (Boys Club): "I think it is to be willing and be excited to be wrong and embrace being wrong and not having an ego about it. I think that's been the biggest unlock for me over the past year."

• It was a pretty full-circle moment for me to be interviewing the co-founder whose community red-pilled me into Web3, as well as introduced me to Myosin. To be expected, Deana delivered, and this learning was no different. I think the overarching lesson in what she shared is probably the most recurring one we've seen thus far, but each guest's take hits on a unique angle of why this is important and how much it truly can help.

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Ep. 19 Sarah Lu (Layer3): "I would say the biggest one that I've already touched on too, is just to experiment as much as possible. Don't be afraid to just try something out. Don't be afraid to be embarrassed. I think that everyone has to fail sometimes in order to succeed."

• Fun fact: I actually credit Sarah for helping us find direction with Myosin's own social media execution from this one quote alone! We recorded this episode at such a perfectly timed moment, because Blake and I just came off a discussion about how we've been turning our wheels trying to perfect a social strategy for months. Blake wanted to really perfect the strategy, whereas I was on the side of just putting content on the channels and seeing what sticks and what doesn't, then pivoting accordingly. So once Sarah stated this learning, I knew... I was right.

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Ep. 20 Sean Clayton (Myosin): "Oftentimes when we listen to other people's noise, we end up doing the thing that they would do and not the thing that we would do. And finding that aspect of stillness within yourself to be able to actually find the truth and executing starts to create significantly better outcomes than I was doing when I was following somebody else's playbook."

• Our conversation with Sean was hands down the most philosophical we've had out of any of the episodes this season. And I think it was an important one to have, especially when we're talking about a technology that has great implications and effects that go beyond us and our generation. So with that, I like that his learning brings it back home to the basics: finding true peace and stillness internally, in order to execute at your best externally.