Podcast

Jaemin Jin is the Co-Founder & CPO @ Magic. Backed by PayPal Ventures, Lightspeed, Social Capital, SV Angel, as well as angels like Naval Ravikant, Balaji Srinivasan, Scott Belsky, Ryan Hoover, & more, Magic provides the leading wallet-as-a-service (plus essential NFT capabilities)—enabling all the benefits of web3, and none of the stress, for brands like Mattel, Animoca Brands, Magic Eden, & more. In this episode we chat about how Magic began, what their market is like, the earliest surprises and challenges in building Magic, working with big brands like Macy’s or 7-11 (and how to think about solving for their needs), how crypto has changed since his start in the space, his most generalizable advice for crypto founders, & much more.

Chris Were is the Co-Founder & CEO at Verida. Backed by Launchub, Gate Labs, Qwerty Fund, & more, Verida is creating a new era of hyper-personalization, where user data is privately and consensually used to create new products and services. In this episode we discuss what becomes possible as Verida scales, thoughts on self-sovereign identity, Verida’s experience launching the first mobile crypto wallet supporting zero-knowledge credentials issued through Polygon ID, & much more.

Tejas Kulkarni is the Co-Founder & CEO at Common Sense Machines. Backed by Intel Capital, Toyota Ventures, & more, Common Sense Machines (CSM) is an end-to-end generative AI platform that creates game-engine ready content – enabling users to generate 3D Worlds from images & text. In this episode we discuss Tejas’ fascinating journey through MIT and Google Deep Mind, the remarkable bet on the pace of technological advancement, what CSM gets uniquely right about approaching their problem set, how gaming and entertainment could change because CSM exists, his best advice for early-stage founders, and much more.

Alex Cort is the Co-Founder at Superform. Backed by Polychain, Maven 11 Capital, CMT Digital, & more, Superform is a universal yield marketplace—enabling users to access any vault, on any chain, using any token, as well as distribute your vaults instantly across chains. In this episode we chat through exciting trajectories for what they’re building (and expected second-order effects), common failure modes for building in crypto, how crypto’s changed since Alex’s beginnings in the space, & much more.

Ben James is the Founder at Atlas. Backed by WAGMI Ventures, Square Enix, a16z Scout Fund, & Collab+Currency, Atlas’ vision is to become the market leader of 3D Generative AI for the next generation of immersive virtual worlds across gaming, web3, and entertainment. In this episode we talk about how virtual world design currently takes place, how what Atlas is building is such a stepwise change from status quo, what Atlas enables (now and in the future), how to build the right team to create something so remarkable, thoughts on the future of generative AI writ large, & much more.

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