Into the Pussyverse - Laura Jaramillo, Katy Jeremko, Jenni Thompson and Rebecca Lamis

hello hello yeah katie so i'd like to start by introducing our our our crew up here got katie irimko to my right and rebecca lamas to my left um we are part of the founding team of the [ __ ] verse we're here to talk about yeah radical love and empathy in leadership in web 3. um share a little bit about our backgrounds and what we are aiming to build with the [ __ ] verse so i think a good place to start is just introducing ourselves what we're up to now yeah let's start i'll start with that katie hey everyone i'm katie jeremco my background is i've been tech for about 10 years started my career at nasa working on open data sets i was on track become a civil servant and then i got bit by the 3d printing bug and i built a 3d printing hardware business completely bootstrapped it three kickstarter campaigns um and then i got bit by the crypto bug and realized that economic freedom was the biggest potential to change our world um and now with [ __ ] verse really i'm excited about um focusing on women empowerment and my other project is indie dao which is a collective of independent designers and developers working on web3 projects across the space we work on things like level protocol so quick background of myself but of course you know i'm excited to chat with you all today and uh excited to be here hi everyone i'm rebecca lamas uh ceo of pussyverse i'm co-founding it with the team and [ __ ] riot and so i've been in the space since 2017 you know i have kind of focused in on contributing consulting with dows and the organizational structures and governance structures with them and in addition to that i primarily focus on work that redistributes wealth and opportunities to low-income communities and bypaw communities and just marginalized folks in this space and beyond so beyond [ __ ] verse you know i'm currently working with justin arvasano's platform quantum nft and also currently launching commonlands a decentralized affordable housing cooperative that's focusing on providing new uh permanent housing opportunities to low-income communities i feel like maybe we slightly touched on this a little bit but everyone has such a different journey into web 3 a different way that they discovered it hopped in made that leap i'd love to hear a little bit about what was that moment for you what were you doing at the time and what was the promise of web 3 that really made you take that like extreme leap of faith that we've all made one way or another in the past year to five years um i'll start um in 2017 um around the end of 2017 um i was doing some soul searching so with the 3d printing hardware startup it was hard because we were at a point where we needed to scale and it's really um expensive to run a hardware startup because you have to do procurement and get all of your materials ahead of time and if there's quality issues with the materials then you have to there's a lot of delays and we were trying really hard to like give people the opportunity to be entrepreneurs but in order to scale we needed to like sell to basically like navy fleets and sell back into nasa where we started it and it just wasn't the passion that i had i wanted to release the opportunity for people to be entrepreneurs and i saw a video of italic actually speaking about ethereum on a youtube video my partner showed it to me and as soon as i saw it i was like this is going to change the world this is exactly the type of freedom that we all deserve and we deserve to be liberated and economic freedom is exactly what we need to do that so i got excited we came to eat denver hacked on a couple projects won a couple first place awards and just from there we were just like you know what this is it this is it for us so we kind of like went through the ups and downs of the market we survived we just kind of like stayed as a team grew an incredible group of people who are really passionate about this and we're just like here to stay we're just trying to figure out how to make this all sustainable for everyone and that really starts with understanding tokenomics strategy and thinking about how to back yourselves up in terms of like your community your culture your growth there's going to be more down market opportunities so long way of saying i just got into it because of italic like all the rest of us i guess yeah so for myself um i was really lucky to kind of fall into the tesla's ecosystem back in 2017 found the proof of stake incredible then and you know what really interested me is as i spent kind of a year or so really diving into this space and learning as much as i can i really understood the ability for us to create a new and equitable financial model and really economic model globally with this technology and toolkit that essentially web 3 is providing to us and simultaneously you know the more i learned about the way we could really disrupt corporate america and the fun finance industry today with uh web 3 and blockchain and crypto i found myself upset at all of the kind of gatekeeping to the space and how it's very difficult to onboard new community members because it's just not accessible currently and so you know as i started to understand that farther and learn about that more you know i found myself going farther and farther and deeper into the space because i just wanted to use this technology and utilize it to really kind of reshape the way our economy looks today and i've been very uh lucky and i'm very grateful that in the last kind of two years uh the opportunities have kind of come up to allow me go full time in this space and really commit myself 100 and you know i'm so grateful to be here and to keep doing this work yeah i couldn't agree more with like honestly like both of your philosophies going into this i totally forgot to introduce myself as well but i'm i'm a product designer lead product designer at upshot um help with product operations of friends with benefits suffice a few different like culture meets crypto companies like and i think i think what really made the leap for me was that as a as a designer as a ux ui designer i was like this space is like so untapped has so much potential has has the potential to change the world but as someone with like a technical background i could hardly engage with it without hand-holding without someone like walking me into the space and telling me what to do what was safe what wasn't how to take advantage how to not and what to stay clear of and that's something you can solve with design if you have good product design good ui good ux you could ask anyone to like come into the space and they can figure it out on their own and i think that's the only way that we're going to scale this um so i made it my mission to just like get my hands in as many things as i can and try and bring that perspective of someone that's like relatively new to things um learned very quick like very very quickly um and how to how to really like translate the hyper complicated into something that's like way more accessible way more enjoyable actually like shows people like what they can build with this and not prescribing what they should or could be but like here are tools here tools for you to build with hear applications for you to play with get inspired by this it doesn't have to be the same thing every time um so that was really my my intro into the space a background in furniture design and product design and graphic design and truly just like what i love about web3 is that you're allowed to be like a plurality you don't you don't have to like silo yourself into one type of person or one career or one project even i think we should be spreading ourselves we should be helping each other we should be sharing our ideas because so much of this is untapped and difficult to look up difficult to learn on your own and we're at a stage where we could all have conversations with each other and like broaden each other's minds so very excited about that thanks greg so something that brings us all together as the name of this panel would say is the [ __ ] verse i think we should probably all talk a little bit about what the [ __ ] verse is to us and what we plan to build with that idea and that space in this metaverse web 3 world that we're creating together i'll start so i'll just be completely vulnerable and say that i'm incredibly frustrated as a female business owner that i don't feel that i often get the respect that i deserve and so i went through a long period of being just mad right just i'm mad frustrated pissed off but that's not productive for anyone that's not productive for my team that's not productive for the people that i work with so a better approach is to think what can i do to make this better and i started to think about the ways that i could change the world in one percent just with the effort that i can do to represent myself better do better for my team do better for other women as well instead of tearing other people down what can i do to build other people up um and so i started to really explore look at female-led projects um met nadia i was really inspired by her vision and everything that she's doing for the space met laura laura's incredible thinker has done incredible research on all of this and she inspires me every day the women on my team are absolutely incredible and inspire me all the time and also our entire team like just it's it's just as soon as i started to open up and think about how can i make the world a better place i started to see examples of how people are already supporting me and already supporting the mission that i want to get behind and when i heard about this opportunity and i was asked to participate in and i was like hell yes [ __ ] yes this is exactly what i [ __ ] want to do with my time on this planet we have a limited amount of time and this is what i want to do i want to make the world a better place i want to promote female-led projects i want to help invest in them i want to help make them work i want to show everyone that women can be technical and that we can actually make projects happen and be successful and i want to be one of the first people to do that [Applause] i love yeah i mean it's hard to top that because it's just she iterates i think everything that we all feel on the team and what's i think has been so special since we started building this something that nadia and i have done a lot is reach out to some of the leading female non-binary and lgbtq plus artists in the space investors in this space and really just creators at large and when we tell them about the work that we're doing and how we're kind of trying to create an organization and a collective that is focusing on the female non-binary lgbtq plus community and really creating a safe space for them while simultaneously proving that there is value in the work that we are doing and there is value in what we can create long term uh almost every single person we've talked to just agrees so deeply with where our sentiments are at and then simultaneously it and it kind of makes me sad that a lot of the females specifically that we've talked to um haven't been able to talk about this with anyone else you know it's such a boys club right now and most of us are in companies with that are primarily dominated by men and you know it's just kind of the work we're lucky to have our feet in the door but there's so much more work to be done and there's so much more work to make it more accessible and safe and sustainable for the female non-binary lgbtq plus community and i think specifically creating more communities and spaces where we can come together to collaborate work support each other is just going to be so key to kind of create creating a larger platform for all of us because eth has been around now since 2013 and you know we haven't really seen a change in this environment yet that's kind of ridiculous honestly and so i'm really grateful that there are a lot of people in this space who have the same mindset across the board of just really everyone in this space that are ready to kind of put in the work and do the time to make it a much more equitable and safe space for the communities in it absolutely and i think such a huge component of why it's taken so long for women to find each other in the space and connect and like really carve out that real estate is because there's there's nowhere nowhere that points to every like female love project every woman working in the space everything like like there's there's no source of truth on that it's very it's upsetting like the loudest voices in the room are not often the marginalized voices in the room and i think that one of the first steps that we're trying to take with [ __ ] versus just like have this hub where you can come find and and and submit people that are not your average cis white man working on your average project so that there's somewhere that you know to go to discover and i think that discovery element that networking element is extremely important and then of course the financial support element of all of this like keeping like making this like this like exciting sexy interesting like what is this project and space is so important because it's not a charity case it's not about like bringing them down from the bottom up it's like no it's just like shedding light on the incredible work that's already happening and making it part of canon so i think we're really trying to use that like cool factor that wow factor that like this this is exciting work these are exciting people and people that you should be following and listening to and giving them that platform with the access and communities and connections that we have personally yeah and you know one of my favorite things that we kind of iterate as a team quite a bit is that we do not need empowerment that's not what we need we need resources we need opportunities we need support we need finances we have every ability to succeed but there just is a lack and a lack of connection to really giving us those opportunities at large and you know i think you know we were doing this work before 2021 even ended but at the beginning of 2022 as i'm sure a lot of you know about is only five percent of all nfts that were purchased were created by females that is insane you know after the incredible year that we had in 2021 that ideally nine perc primarily 95 of nfts were made by men is kind of concerning that those are the only ones that were being purchased so i think it just speaks to a lot of the work that we still have to do as a community and you know i'm excited that at least in the last two months i've seen much larger conversations in the space for both the lgbtq plus community and the bipark community and i hope that they are continuing to happen um as we kind of level the playing field i think all of us can consider ourselves leaders in different ways whether we're in the spotlight or behind the scenes and something that i've noticed from talking to both of you is that you have radically different ways of leading from every other person i've ever met and i think it'd be helpful and worthwhile to this audience to like hear a little about about your leadership styles and the differences that you you find between the way that you lead and others that have a little more visibility around their style and why you think it's important that you're bringing that new perspective to how we govern and lead in this in this space my leader my leadership style is mostly leading by with my heart honestly i really care about people i really want to understand who each person is what motivates them what frustrates them i want to make sure that they feel happy because nothing is possible without a good team it's not just done by one person so you know that's i think sometimes called relational but i also won't ask my team to do something that i would not be comfortable doing myself and of course if their expertise is gigabrt and galaxy brain way outside of my expertise then i want to really appreciate their time and i really want to respect what they're bringing to the table because projects aren't possible without really intelligent people who put their heart and soul into it as well and at the end of the day we're all humans we all have hearts and i know that sometimes in business it can feel like we can't lead that way but that's part of the change that i really want to see happen is waking up from the dream that we're not humans and we're robots no we're not robots we can make awesome [ __ ] happen if we just kind of come together and show our true selves and create a really positive working atmosphere and culture and i think that's really important in dao's right now and so at pristiverse we're really focusing on that as well is like thinking about how can we promote women who don't have opportunity financial opportunity to participate how can we give them how can we use clever tools like fractionalization and how can we use clever business and legal strategies to set up opportunities for them to come in and participate at an equal level as uh you know that five percent that rebecca mentioned how can we elevate that and make that a bigger number we have to start with the people who aren't getting enough visibility and i think we live or like we're working in in a future now where people people can afford to only work on the things that they're passionate about and be mission driven and work on multiple different things and i think to your point like leading with with love and empathy and like keeping that spirit alive in every project that you're doing like showing everyone how how their piece is integral to this project like i think is what keeps things moving and keeping that humanity alive because you want to work with the people that you love you want to work with the people that you respect if you're like cracking a whip every five minutes like no one's gonna come back i was joking with laura about that earlier that i've been crapping cracking the whip this week it's been a hard week but um our team is just great so yeah yeah yeah not too much to add to that i think that really kind of speaks to how we work as a community and team you know i think what's really fascinating about web 3 is it's a whole new kind of community and a whole new job opportunity in space and so as a result i think leadership for a lot of us in the space looks very different than what we were doing before now and in the web two days and you know what i have found that i really try to prioritize is one it's making sure that everyone that's a part of your team feels like they have ownership as well and whatever they're building and creating i think that's a big thing we prioritize as a community at large that corporate america does not do and i think is what makes it really enticing to a lot of new community members is that ability to have ownership in the products you're building and then i think in addition to that what i have found from some of the strongest leaders in this space is creating opportunities that allow community members to come in and out and working in the organization you know we're all working on 10 000 different projects at once and so being able to have that ability to commit your time when you find it most impactful and meaningful for yourself is really vital to the long-term um kind of growth of your organization and success i think in web 3. some of the ways that i think beyond just the financial as well like ways that we can onboard more marginalized communities like one of the biggest ones for me has been education is like there's always that argument that like oh like we want to hire more female developers but there aren't female developers and that's that's not that's not true there aren't as many and there aren't as many women that know that they have access to this space so i would i would love to hear a little bit about like how you two are thinking about onboarding and calling in but i also wanted to mention that like personally been trying to set up like an internship program between risd and web 3 so if you're a founder out there and you have design needs like please approach me we want to put women from risd or non-binary folk from risd into your companies for a summer and like start learning about the space and like start getting access to this and i encourage other people that have access to universities to start like trying to set up programs like that as well because it's not something you can just yeah it's not something that you can just look up on google and learn like you do need access and exposure and the easiest way to do that is to get someone in the room and that's such such an easy way to do it um then beyond that just thinking about how all of us got into the space i know i was just called in by another person i was called in by another woman another creative director she pulled me and feels like we need a product designer i think you can do that let's run with it and more and more i hear that story so if we all just like went out and called in one of our friends who has no idea had no idea that they could be in here without being a developer i think suddenly we'll see a huge demographic shift but people just aren't doing that so again like take the time to call in your creative smart passionate friends that are open-minded are curious are looking for work there is so much to go around um and that that is like one of the main steps that you could do towards like diversifying the space as well yes laura yes oh my gosh that's so true we all have the opportunity to teach somebody else how to enter the space and i think that right now is the time where we're kind of rebuilding the internet right so we all have the opportunity to participate in that figure out governance roles and how different economic strategies can work helping to elevate female-led projects and incubate them and and really give them a place to shine and so like we have to think about that in terms of the responsibility and the weight that that carries and making sure that we can truly rebuild systems that support every single person from the lowest common denominator we're not just trying to um give power back to the same types of people that had power previously but how what what would the world look like i think this is the thing that we the three of us and the rest of the team chats about is like what can we do to rethink the way that the world should be and set a vision for that and execute on that in a way that other people can grasp and lean into and maybe can be even a place where people find other female projects and can support them and they're actually financially viable for you to invest in and participate in and it's not just a pipe dream it's actually tangibly at the bottom line it's actually a very valuable thing to be investing in yeah and i would say adding to that as well is i think just educational onboarding is such a priority within our organization and that's one of the biggest things i've enjoyed about working with [ __ ] person on this project is you know for many years you know i find it almost scary how much of a lack of educational onboarding there is in this space and specifically i would say by our leaders in the space those that have the largest following or the largest wealth they don't seem most of them do not seem to prioritize onboarding of new community members and i think it's so so important that if you know we're building web 3 to kind of be a 180 of web 2 make it accessible make it equitable redefine what our economic and financial structure looks like then from day one we have to make sure that this space is accessible because if it's not accessible you know it's not revolutionary at the end of the day and it's so important for us to prioritize this educational onboarding um to communities that may not have the resources or opportunities traditionally to come into this space um and i think you know with pussyverse in particular we're really thinking about creating a very large educational onboarding model so we can do just this so as new people learn about us find out about us you know we give them the resources in place to kind of walk them step by step you know here's how you get your wallet here's how you buy your first nft or your first cryptocurrency etc and there's definitely been some other projects that have started popping up that are doing this but my hope is that you know over the next year we're going to see a larger priority of this among the biggest people in this space and the people that have the largest platform in the space yeah honestly there need to be like more tool tips in web3 like every other word just just define it yes please so that we're at the very least people people can ask those questions themselves when they're using these products because they're incredible but the language itself isn't accessible so that that's one easy thing you can do so tooltip your entire your entire dap um another another thing we got like a meme please yes yes seriously tool tip web 3. need more tool tips we need more tool tips the the other thing that i that i think we desperately need and i hope that someone out there is like got a little bit of free time and it's like a mega developer it's just it's just like warn people if they're about to connect their wallet to something that's like been draining wallets for the past five minutes like we know that we can notify people we can add that as a plug-in on our wallets i don't see why that hasn't happened yet so at the very least like let's start building in some security measures to like protect the community so we can help onboard it's going to take a long time to restructure how everything looks and works and feels but in the meantime we can set some guardrails and some protective infrastructure to protect the people that are new here trying to learn by themselves and don't have the access to people that can guide them through it like we do um yeah i don't know how much more time we have about five oh we have five minutes okay well maybe then um if we could just like go around and say like a few things that we're looking forward to that we want the audience to know um moving forward with [ __ ] verse and things to come that probably good place to end yeah so um a couple things um in the first [ __ ] verse realm uh so we are officially publicly launching um this organization and a dow we can't officially announce the dow yet but a dow that is going to be focusing on uh financially supporting and investing in just female non-binary and lgbtq plus creators as well as collecting their art and so that'll be happening on march 3rd definitely give us a follow and look forward to that in addition if you're at south by southwest we'll be having our first launch event on march 11th open to the public if you hold any of gremlins or [ __ ] riots or trippies and ft's you're going to get a free pass in um so just be on the lookout there and then i guess kind of the final thought that i would leave with you guys from my perspective is you know like what's the call to action from this um first and foremost i would really prioritize all of you within your communities to kind of think about how you can onboard new people into this space um you know think about how you first got into the space and what if that conversation had never happened you know i think there are so many people that i worry are going to get left out and so thinking about how you can support your communities and getting in is really a priority and then the second thing i would really encourage everyone to do is really think about you know these marginalized communities women non-binary bipac lgbtq plus communities remember that they don't need empowerment you know this word gets thrown around a lot in this space it's that they need funding and they need opportunities and they need support you don't need to give them um empowerment as people say rather give them the larger platform and resources to make it happen um so i definitely encourage people to think about that in their kind of like day-to-day work or their personal lives on how they can do that with their community amazing amazing there's so much exciting stuff happening um yeah so i think just like my perspective on this is i want to be part of that change of cultural shift that can happen where we can embrace other types of leadership and more feminine lead strategies i guess in terms of just like being okay with a different type of leadership style and also just embracing it and believing that that can lead to success we have to set that first foot forward and all work together to make it happen i think that masculine leadership is really important too and i think that those two work really well together like yin and yang and you can have one without the other so i think we've been a little bit imbalanced in the past and that's okay but we're all in a period right now where everybody that's here right now is excited about the change and i feel really excited about the energy in the audience and i feel like everybody that is here listening is wanting to be part of that change so i think as the pussyverse team we would love to hear your thoughts on how you want to see that change happen um and as rebecca mentioned we're at pussyversex on twitter so if you want to follow us um and check some stuff out there um and create the conversation with us we want to hear your thoughts on what you think that looks like especially as it pertains to nfts and just female-led tech projects thank everybody thank you guys