ETH's Biggest Bug? A Lack of Business Model | Ale Marin & Tomas Octavio | ETHMumbai 2026

How is Mumbai? How are you guys? No.

Wait, wait. Okay, let

let's do it one more time, but this time we make a lot of noise because we are rock stars. Okay, let's go.

One more time. One more time.

Okay, so welcome to stage. [screaming]

Let's go. Let's go.

Let's go. [laughter]

I'm liking this energy more.

Yes. Yes.

How are you, Ali? How are you today?

I'm very good. And you?

Really good. Did you have your biryani today?

Yes.

I mean, yeah, we're we're in India. Come on.

We are [laughter] in India.

Thank you guys for having us. This is like a such a such an interesting thing to do like coming all the way from Argentina to be here at Mumbai talking to you. Specifically you. Yeah, you. You.

Nice to meet you. Yeah, you. [laughter] This crowd remind us a lot of our first time going outside of Argentina to Peru. And yeah, it's our first time doing a talk in Asia. So, please be good with us.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

No, no, no. That dance this dance. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We don't like Trump dance.

No, no.

Okay.

Okay. We are

Alien Tommy from Nercom. Whoa.

How do I do this? You got to point there.

There. Boom.

Boom. We're going to pretend. [laughter]

Okay. One more time.

Did it change?

No, it didn't.

It didn't work. Anyways, okay. Al, top three things we love the most about India. Number three, Taj Mahal. Crazy love story.

Sour end.

Sour ant.

Top two.

Top two. Food.

Food.

Food. Jamon. Very good.

Indian sweets. Indian milk cake.

Very good. Milk [laughter] cake. Let's go.

Number one. Blinket. 8 minute delivery.

Let's go. [screaming] YEAH. LET'S [laughter] GO.

Only possible in India.

#notsponsored [laughter]

and number one on top of the other number one.

Eat Mumbai. Hey,

sorry. We appla. We clap a lot in Argentina for no reason. Maybe someone died and you're like, "Let's go." But [laughter] no, he died.

Like there's no claw. Let's see if this side works.

Tip tip.

It's okay. Al, we can imagine the presentation. Okay. We are Ali and Tommy from Nerdcom. We have been running events and hackathons for the last four years.

Actually, since we met and we have been providing social spaces for you and us, for nerds. I mean it's Nerdcom. Um we are very curious people, very interesting people like we we like solving problems and we love technology. And our mission in this world at least for for the next few years is to provide spaces.

Yeah.

Tools.

Yeah.

And experiences. I mean

Yeah.

We all like experiences.

Yeah. But something is happening ali before one second the

Oh,

I'm sorry. This is surgeon. I'm sorry.

Okay. Okay. Sorry. Sorry.

Hello. What? Are you serious right now? He's dead.

What?

He Are you telling me for real? He's dead, guys. I travel to the future and next year web three will be dead.

What?

If we don't do something right now, web three will be dead.

Oh my god.

For the last couple of years, we've been overinvesting in underperforming assets. We're talking about over five billion dollars deployed into DAPs, hackathon prices, and grifters, friends of friends that just do things that don't work. We're talking about a 90% failure rate on these startups. And that's that's been costing us around three million pe $3 million. Let me say this again.

$3 million per startup created successfully executed.

Three million

or maybe it was 5 million.

I I I think it's 6 million

or maybe it was 10 million. And that's the problem. We don't know. No one knows how much it cost to build something successful in web 3. And this way we are just putting out money making just waiting for something to work.

If we keep doing this we are going to fail and next year it Mumbai might not exist anymore.

Oh my god.

Next year Pallic might be working at a McDonald's. What?

You know what I mean? [laughter] I'm sorry, Vitalik. I know you were here today. [gasps] So, in this in this new era, because it was always about the devs. I'm sorry, devs.

I love you devs, but it was always about the devs and never about the business. Maybe it was a good tool for something working in the back, but there was so much friction with the public, with the users in general that things didn't work. Someone took the money and now we're here in a bare market, possibly saw last bull market one year ago.

Oh my god.

So, we need to shift in this era of AI. We need to shift Tommy.

Yeah, that's the thing. Ali, last year we realized I mean I I think pos possibly everyone realized that things have shifted thanks to thanks to AI. Anyone can build anything and it's not about the devs anymore. I mean, we love the devs. go devs.

But we need to shift from dev mode to founder mode and actually begin to think how how to create something that can sustain itself for the future that has a business model that has I don't know users and and and use cases. I mean I I I I think there is a where we should put our minds as an as an industry and and yeah I I think that change of focus um can lead to towards a brighter future and it's actually something very simple to do. At Nirv in Latin America we have been doing this um this kind of shift for almost a year now. uh we realized that as anyone will be able to create anything we don't need to find coders or developers we need to find problem solvers I mean everyone wants to create a business everyone wants to create a startup thing is they don't know how to do it it's like a sensory overload it's like walking in Delhi or Mumbai it's like you don't know what to f put your focus on and we are helping these problem solvers these nerds this the the the talent not only developers, the the potential founders, marketers, uh designers, everyone who can put their mind into solving problems to found their own startup using blockchain technology. It's not like we get people that already know a lot about web 3 and blockchain and we put them to solve uh real world problems.

It's the other way around. Real world problem solvers teach them about businesses and blockchain. And that's what we are doing. That is our our focus for this year and last year. And it's really interesting.

Or else you

who

the girl next to you.

She her.

Hey,

next year web three is gonna die if we don't do something about it.

Oh my god. [laughter] So for the next year, we need to focus about building things that solve real problems. People don't care anymore about your NFTs marketplaces, your AI trading bots that just, I don't know, do something weird and just end up without money.

I mean, some of them are good.

I mean, some of them are good. I mean, let's go AI. [laughter] go base

and just focus on you right now. The the the the people behind the tech we can create is the most important asset. You need to be focused about your business model and your marketing. Just stop thinking that you can do things without it. You can't.

You will fail. pay attention to it either what otherwise people won't use your product. There's this one saying uh from a famous rapper rapper rapper in Argentina. She came from one of the biggest slams and she says it's not the ship, it's the pilot. Maybe you have the worst car, maybe you have the worst computer.

Maybe you have the worst product. I dare to say, but if you're a good pilot, if you know how to well, if you know how to do it, we will succeed. Otherwise, guys, we are dead. Thank you so much. We are Ner.

Let's talk.

That's it, guys. Thank you, Mumbai. Bam.

Let's go.

See you soon. Let's keep building.