Podcast

Alex Adelman is the Founder & CEO at Lolli. Backed by WAGMI Ventures, Founders Fund, Bain Capital Ventures, Alexis Ohanian/776, Mr. Beast’s Night Ventures, & more, Lolli enables shoppers to get up to 30% back in cash or bitcoin across 25,000+ top stores with the free Lolli browser extension & mobile app. With partners like Nike, Chewy, Microsoft, Sephora, & Lowe’s, Lolli is building the category-defining company for bitcoin rewards. In this episode we talk about how to get partnerships right (in such a partnership-driven model), earliest challenges and earliest surprises that shaped the DNA of Lolli, how to avoid common mistakes of building in crypto (hint: survive!), what crypto’s getting right (and wrong) in 2024, and much more.

Yubo Ruan is the Founder at Parallel. Backed by Sequoia, Founders Fund, Polychain Capital, Coinbase Ventures, & more, Parallel is both a lending protocol and a Layer 2. In this episode we discuss his path to conviction as a founder, what’s exciting about Parallel’s trajectory and roadmap, what happens to the space writ large if Parallel’s adoption continues to grow, an analysis of the future of crypto, & much more.

Nanne Dekking is the Founder & CEO of Artory. Artory is unlocking art & collectibles as a credible asset class—providing the expertise, tech, network, and data to deliver institutional-grade liquidity and financial products to the art market. Artory was the first company to tokenize an art auction, holds one of the largest databases of transaction data for art (which powers Art Basel’s yearly art report), and has worked with art powerhouses like Christie’s, Sotheby’s, Winston Art Group, & more. In this episode we discuss being an early mover in web3 from within the traditional art market, the impact of transparency (via technology) on an opaque market like fine art, some drivers of valuation in the art world (and how Artory’s work assists credible valuation), the art funds they’re creating alongside the Winston Art Group, & much more.

Mark Shekleton is the Co-Founder & CEO of Smart Seal . Founded by aerospace engineers (and recently shipping the first physical NFT sold on Amazon), Smart Seal is delivering blockchain provenance for physical products (via merging encrypted near field communication hardware infrastructure with NFTs secured by 1:1 links) – tackling the massive counterfeiting challenges endemic to companies large and small across the world. In this episode we talk about the benefits to a world with fewer counterfeit products (hint: less funding for other criminal activities and enterprises), surprises and obstacles while engaging their earliest customers, his thoughts about the growth to come in the “phygital” space, and much more.

Benny Giang is the Co-Founder & Partner @ Future Primitive. Future Primitive is a venture studio that builds startups, projects, and technologies for decentralized communities—including projects like token bound accounts (ERC 6551), a new primitive that will give every NFT its own account/wallet address. In this episode we chat through his work as a founding member of CryptoKitties and Dapper Labs, how he determines which projects to back as an angel investor or advisor, the genesis and possibilities of token bound accounts, how to think about learning about your community, his view on the near-term future of crypto, & much more.