Panel Discussion: What are Investors Looking for in Web3 Startups? | Storage Provider's Summit

well a lot of familiar faces here let's uh i want to say hi to all of you and uh let's get this started awesome all right thanks everyone great great conversation um so we thought about you know as as we're looking at and i know the rest of the team may have not seen the image i put this morning in in front of the team here but i look at the universe right as a as a a falcon universe right as um a nursery of stars essentially right we're building the new the next gen msps but also new applications new projects are being born every single day and hackafest is one of the you know big nurseries i would say right that that where we're building these new projects so this conversation today what we wanted to do is talk a little bit more about what it would take to to move your project forward and either raise funds or participate in one of our accelerating our amazing accelerated programs so we have four um representatives of uh you know one from tech stars one from tachyon long hash and outlier ventures all four are either running or accelerated programs or are starting to run a new accelerate program so with me um we've got gabriel gabriel let's kick off the conversation you're very experienced web3 accelerator um obviously you're currently running a program um now you know compared to a year ago what what trends have you seen and yeah particularly in raising capital in the web 3 space and and what recommendations would you give to the new entrepreneurs to in raising capital today yeah yeah great question um so first uh super excited to be here i love coming to hack fest i love coming to these events uh it's always amazing to see all the incredible builders um i'm gabriel and the managing director of tachyon uh for those of you that don't know tachyon is a part of consensus mesh we've collectively incubated and invested in north of a hundred projects and companies within uh you know the ecosystem some that are some of the key pillars of the ethereum ecosystem companies like in fiora and metamask and three box and pegasus and truffles so on and so forth um tachyon is our accelerator which is uh uh where the most ambitious you know early stage web designers come to join us for a 12 week sprint to really hone their value proposition uh test their assumptions with real customers and prepare for the next stage of investment and growth um and so i think uh you know at this stage you know i have um mentored advise north of 65 70 web 3 founders and companies many of which have gone on to successfully raise and or exit um and every time founders come through a cohort i think um the thing that hasn't changed is the good old-fashioned principles of how you go about building um a company how you go about building a startup right companies are built to solve problems um and most startups never actually find a real or valuable problem to solve so it doesn't matter if you're a web 2 startup or a web 3 startup the fundamentals are the same right the fundamentals are um you know have you honed in on a really good problem um what is that problem who has that problem what's the intensity of that problem how often do they have that problem um are you operating in a good market you know are you operating in a market that is large and or growing and moving fast have you figured out a you know um what your startup does in terms of being a different differentiated solution in the market um you know do you have an insight into the user or the the customers that you have and the problems that they have um you know investors are not investing in your vision quest right investors are investing in companies that uh in teams that have the ability to hone in on really good valuable problems um and solve those problems for real users um you know outside of that i think you know the other solid fundamentals would be uh you know show don't tell can you actually prove demand um you know do you do you have the ability to build a real product um you know can you are your early users or or customers um really interested in this you know can you prove traction can you prove demand um these are the fundamentals of building any startup any company i've i've been a three-time founder two-time intrapreneur where i went in-house to build companies those things never change um in terms of the trends i think you know um and maybe some of the nuances of building a web3 startup i think um you know two of the un most unfair competitive modes in terms of like web3 startups are community and composability and a lot of the trends that we're seeing right now for for what three companies that can really think about where they fit into the stack um and then can actually build a strong community around around their product those are the ones that we always see that that break out um and in terms of some of the the trends that we're starting to see obviously we're like in nft summer um but we're really interested in we're really interested in we're starting to see more and more investors approach us about this idea of composability and convergence so like as we start to see nfts converge with d5 or nfts converge with dows and dow tooling or nfts can converge with social gaming metaverse uh type of plays i think those are really really kind of like the interesting plays um you know in terms of like what we're starting to see in in that investor activity um but the fundamentals are the fundamentals of like how you go about building a company and i think my other esteemed panelists here i think would 100 agree with me in terms of like what they see in terms of successful companies that's awesome yeah i know some great great great great ideas there i mean there's like you know nfts you you mention nft i just want to jump in on that i mean it's definitely a hot season but you know my take my take is that eventually all data that we store create right will eventually store it as sort of like an nf in an nft type of format do you agree with that or do you see that the web 2 world is starting to see that um i think we're already starting to early i think we're always starting to see some of those primitives and i'll tell you like gen 1 of nfts so i was building my startups back when social media platforms were the big thing like i've seen this meta trend already play out like i know how this this plays out back when companies first started getting on onto some of the social platforms they tried to take their shitty print publication and slap it on the facebook page and call it a day they weren't actually hacking around the nuances of the actual platform and i think we're seeing the same thing within with nfts right like don't get me wrong i'm all about apping into the board apes and the crypto punks and i like i think it's fun and it's great but i'm really interested to see like gen 2 gen 3 versions of nfts um and how you start to hack around composability and use nfts and their composability to continue the consumer journey and experience and i think that's why we're starting to see like nfts converge with other uh trends like d5 like um you know data dows and and dow tooling um so yeah i couldn't agree with you more and uh and you're gonna start to see new and interesting use cases of nfts as they map to like extending the consumer journey awesome awesome love it um moving on to isaac isaac techstars is recently new to the falcon ecosystem you guys are starting a new acceleration program uh what's your um you know what is techsource looking for when when when recruiting web three founders yeah uh will stefan thanks for uh thanks for inviting me to join this awesome panel um so i am isa kato i'm the managing director of the uh new uh filecoin techstars accelerator um i'm a serial entrepreneur uh and a long time early stage tech investors so i've started two companies i've run three i've raised a couple hundred million dollars in equity in debt capital and i've had a couple of good exits um i was also a bc for about a decade most recently with general catalyst partners and i'm a long-time angel investor so i'm super excited to be spinning up the new filecoin techstars accelerator it's quite a mouthful but it'll run next year from march 21st through mid-june and if you don't know techstars is the global network that helps uh entrepreneurs succeed we have uh roughly 50 accelerators in the in the global network um collectively our our founders have raised over 15 billion dollars of capital there are i think now 15 unicorns and we have a collective market cap of about 52 billion dollars um and and you know really notably on the point of trying to help founders find success of the 2700 companies that have gone through a techstars accelerator uh 86 percent of them are still in business or have exited and our our blockchain and crypto alums include folks like chain analysis and trading view and uh and our weave and my own crypto journey starts uh in 2013 when i brought the first bitcoin miners to iceland so i built the first large-scale data center in iceland and uh uh and i and i and i stumbled across across bitcoin miners who were sort of a perfect customer for us to bring to iceland and they ultimately compose about 50 of our business i think i think in like late 2014 we estimated that five percent of global mining capacity for bitcoin was was actually in our facility so wow so that was a that was a fun and wild ride um so to get to your question what do we look for in terms of uh founders so i mean we first and foremost the first lens we ever look at at a company at our prospective applicant is the founder we care first and foremost about founder quality and their dna so regardless of whether you're doing web 3 or something more traditional we certainly want to see people with a big vision and a desire to make a very big positive impact on the world um we want to see brilliance and capability execution really really matters uh you know one one thing that uh that i look for specifically is founder market fit so i wanna i wanna i want teams or solo founders who have really really deep insight into the problem that they're trying to solve they're not just sort of tourists uh trying something cool out but they they they they've thought about this problem for a while maybe they've experienced it themselves and maybe they haven't earned secret maybe they've figured something out that nobody else has figured out and particularly how to apply web3 infrastructures and methodologies to the problem they're trying to solve um i look for people who have evidence that they're rapid learners and iterators i think the the sole competitive advantage that most companies have at these very very early stages is just how quickly you can move um and you've got to be you know humble enough to learn and get feedback quickly and make quick changes and and implement them so that matters um and then specifically for web3 founders i'm gonna i'm gonna completely echo uh one of the themes that gabriel mentioned which is that uh you know we want people who understand not just the the tech stacks and the web3 and token infras you know infrastructures and mechanics that they're using but you know how they apply to real world problems um uh that that they're trying to solve because you know at the end of the day um while i firmly believe that decentralized infrastructures should provide meaningfully better solutions to a lot of the problems out there um we're still ultimately trying to you know solve a customer's pain point or fulfill their desires if it's a consumer application and it's it's just not enough to build cool you got to build cool that other people care about so we are you know i'll say the exact same thing we want people who who understand how to take the web 3 world and make a fundamental difference to solving a problem or fulfilling a design a desire cool um you got to create cool that our people care about that's about a tagline i'm going to start using awesome um maybe let's move to outlier ventures blake uh you know outlier ventures just closed their application round um this will be your first uh cohort um and then you've been investing in open data economy for the last seven years right what type of projects are you looking for and where where where do you experience um the most value and and what do you think uh you know um new starters should be focusing on great question stefan and allow me to start by thanking for the opportunity to be here i'm always honored and humbled to be in front of huckafest and i truly believe there will be a lot of great projects coming out of it uh i'm blake lezenski i'm the program manager of the falcon based combat outlaw avengers quickly about our organization we started in 2013 and one of the probably first european uh web free focused investors uh probably still one of the biggest globally in terms of number of deals then around 2016-17 we started investing on a venture scale in seed and precede deals but around 2019 we understood that with the expertise and people we have on board the optimal value we can deliver to founders and teams is actually through an acceleration program and that's how base camp came to life and as you mentioned stefan this is the first time we were teaming up with an external organization and i'm super glad it's protocol labs to deliver a version of basecamp that is dedicated to a specific technology stack um so in terms of projects we're looking for um i'm very keen to see projects that have a token in their future and are crypto heavy i believe this is where we as outlier ventures can add maximum value we accept solo founders and teams my perfect sort of mindset to come to the program with would be to be great on the technicalities but also appreciate the value of go to market i would also like to see projects that see the value of protocol lab stack beyond just simple storage capacity and many other implications um that come out from the technology um we would like to dedicate the program mostly to the middleware layer and the infrastructure we think this is the key to the persistence of the metaverse and making it really open as well as introduce an optimal user experience to nfts as you mentioned we have a lot of experience investing in the new data economy maybe to some extent longer than anybody else and we have a full supply chain from data to compute in our portfolio ocean protocol that allows users to create a decentralized marketplace for data secret network which is the first blockchain with data privacy by default uh fetch ai an open access tokenized decentralized machine learning network as well as kudos the centralized compute network and enabling blockchain scalability um so where can we add the most value we are extremely commercially minded hence my point about amazing technical minds coming to us we always put emphasis on fundraising and tokenomics in the last 12 months of base camp we helped raise 130 million of seed capital for our projects since 2019 the combined value of the base camp portfolio is one billion dollars at the peak of the bull run it was closer to three billion dollars and we have several billion dollar networks including boson protocol and dia data uh we also work with a network of 1500 co-investors from world leading investors in west and east from tier one vcs all the way down to community pools so we truly can help you find capital anywhere so we look for technical teams that want to create a scalable business and attract capital um that understand there is a gap between creating a great mvp to hit the market and actually bringing it to that market and commercializing it successfully and this is where we can help uh also including hiring of commercial people and custom go to market strategies we rely on our huge network of partners including large enterprise organizations and finally we have a very complementary alumni stack around data economy uh data marketplaces compute and multi-party computation cool and you're uh just uh that's great by the way you're calling in from from the uk or somewhere in europe right so i'm currently calling in from ibiza uh just to get something where the program starts at six of the places i wanna be at right now yeah that would be cool yeah poor guy because one thing i wanted to call out is that you know we have four great partners here on the table but all of them are calling in from different areas right we have representation in europe asia uh and the us and that brings me to the next uh partner uh stefano uh maybe you can tell us where are you based today i'm also based in an island but i'm in singapore i'm in singapore oh there you go pretty much on the other side of the world yeah so welcome so you you uh longhash you're from longhouse ventures you closed your recent application window as well um very familiar with the web3 world how are investors differentiating themselves particularly particularly in a bull market condition yeah well first of all also super excited to be here today uh you know thanks a lot for for having me uh you know very glad to be able to speak to everyone so i'm stephan bury i'm the program lead at long hash ventures and i'll just give a quick intro to uh to our organization uh so we're a web 3 investment fund and we're also asia's leading web 3 accelerator program for those of you who haven't uh uh you know heard of us before don't know us uh so we've accelerated over 40 projects uh for the last uh about three three and a half years and we've helped them raise over 100 billion dollars in funding and earlier this year we launched a 20 million dollar d5 focused uh and and to an nft focus now uh fund uh where we've uh invested in over 30 companies uh including uh you know the likes of instadap sapper uh mintable and alchemy nft uh and uh yeah as you mentioned we just closed up locations uh i think a couple of weeks ago uh for our next cohort uh which will have a file contract so it's the second time that we partner with protocol labs to run the filecoin frontier accelerator super excited uh so some great applications and and we're in the process of reviewing them in the next few weeks i think um i think then to your question around um you know how investors are differentiating uh themselves and especially in in the past you know 12 or 16 months where we've been in uh a pretty strong bull market i think that um first of all of course you see you know a lot of capital available for projects and i think as investors you even see some notable investors that are really you know almost like like fighting to actually be able to get into funding rounds and so i think um you know if you go back you know a few more years or even a decade or more where capital and the network was was all you needed as an investor to bring to the table uh that's definitely not the case uh and it definitely hasn't been the case over the past year i think that investors really need to put forward um you know their value proposition be on money and network uh to their portfolio companies and um and and those you know whether you're you're meeting investors through an accelerator program or or through other channels i think that investors you know have to get their hands dirty uh they really need to help the startups with you know developing the product the the strategy scaling uh growth and even to continue to innovate right particularly in web3 where um you know you see protocols you know they launch a b1 then there's a v2 and so on and so forth and i think the investors need to uh be part of of that development in one way uh or another and i think investors really have to become venture builders right i mean capitals not enough and as a matter of fact we started out as an accelerator uh and then we we launched the fund but we decided to keep the accelerator uh because for us it's it's it's a way a structured way for us to be able to help uh uh our projects and i think um particularly when it comes to web three uh you need investors that are also knowledgeable about the space right so it's not just the the web two topics like you know they go to market the business model etc but it's really around you know designing the tokenomics uh helping the projects uh you know decide which decentralized governance model they go for uh you know things like that i think you bring up some good points stephanos like the token sale is definitely auto economics in general is definitely new to a lot of traditional investors too so uh maybe a question for gabriel would love to get your perspective on what's you know what sort of recommendations you give to startups when it comes to token sales yeah and raising capital around that right yeah 100 i think you know the introduction of tokens is uh is unique to web3 um and so uh you know it's definitely um in terms of building like your startup it's definitely an unfair competitive advantage uh compared to like you know those of us who built our companies in the web 2 era um but i i see a lot of founders and a lot of teams rush to launch a token um before they've actually built utility and and or a community around that token and i think that's a that's a big miss um you know shout out to uh to jesse walden from variant formerly of a16z the goat um he wrote a piece a long time ago called progressive decentralization which um i i've all it has always been kind of like the framework our mental model for how we think about companies and how we think about startups and how they should think about launching a token which is you've got to find utility and function first and you should really really really spend a lot of time focused on your community especially the early early stages of the community launching a token is just like launching a product or just like launching a company it is that hard and trying to do both before you've actually found utility or function or product market fit with your startup is a big miss and what i see is i see a lot of investors who push startups to try to launch a token that has more to do about optionality and liquidity for the investor than it actually does does it make sense for that particular project in that particular startup so for startups who actually find utility and function find product market fit who find you know early use cases and then can rally their community it's a massive un unfair competitive advantage as they go into market essentially your community are both your users and your and and your investors in some cases in that case which i think for a lot of startups is the holy grail uh but but i really would uh i always have founders step back and make sure that they that they act their token has real utility has real use has has a real function and it's not just about trying to create um liquidity um and i think it's really really important for founders to focus on that uh first first and foremost cool yeah i know i couldn't create more i couldn't agree more with you um it's definitely a topic that that's coming up a lot more often now uh as as startups are investing and sort of raising capital um you know it's definitely in a bull market some of the startups you know question like hey why should i join an accelerated program so maybe isaac would love to get your perspective on like you know why should they you know join accelerate program and when they when they choose a program of course we you know we have four programs here at the table and we're going to create more um you know which you know what should should they be looking at right when they select one of the accelerators what's your take on that yeah well you have you have four terrific options right here uh and i always when when i'm talking to founders about hey why should i why should i come into your accelerator let alone any to any accelerator what i always say is look the the our value proposition boils down to we will dramatically increase your chances of success in your entrepreneurial pursuits it's as simple as that if you don't think that we're gonna like you know 10x the probability of your succeeding you shouldn't come because you're going to give up a decent chunk of equity for you know most cases not a ton of money but what you're getting is an incredible basket of of goodies that will you know really help you to find success and certainly you know the tech stars numbers and it sounds like colleagues numbers really play that out if you go to a high quality accelerator so you know to to disaggregate that a bit what should you be looking for um for sure you want to find a place that will dramatically expand your network um i don't i mean we it's in it's in our tagline we are that we are the global network that helps entrepreneurs succeed and i i think everybody else here would agree with with that but you should you should be sure that by coming into an accelerator you're going to just explode your network by orders of magnitude and then oftentimes that's the most valuable thing that you'll get whether it's access to investors or customers or prospective hires ecosystem partners mentors you you should you know what what we often do is get people who maybe have been toying away and quiet but are not necessarily national networkers all of a sudden they have access to people they never could have dreamed of and so i think network's a big part of what you should be evaluating certainly closely tied to that is access to capital if you're going to come into an accelerator we should really be able to help you to raise money and i think you know everyone here is quite good at that but um you know you want to make sure that you know look at look at our track records and see have you been able to help the companies that have gone through the accelerator raise money um certainly again the case of techstars we have a global network of 15 000 early-stage investors as well as the very strong personal uh networks that each md like like like like i have um and again we have we have a great track record but make sure you're gonna actually get people who will help you raise capital it's still on you you're the founder you ultimately have to you know you have to bring your your a game to do it but we can help a lot on that front um mentorship and expertise i think that's just super super critical mentorship uh is part of the core experience at techstars it matter in fact it matters so much that we take uh you know two of the first weeks in program doing mentor speed dating to help you find three to five lead mentors who will who are dedicated to spending time with you while you're in program um but also uh that kind of leads to the next point like make sure that you're going to get long-term support from an accelerator um you know we do not say okay you've been through your 13 weeks uh and then you know kick you out the door and say goodbye um we're here for the long haul we're we're investors in your company we have a ton of incentive to see you succeed and again we we put a lot of effort not just at the md level but at the techstars global network level to ensure that there is long-term support for our alums in the form of portfolio services so that when you get on to the next thing you're trying to raise the you're trying to build your team you're trying to find the right you're moving into a new sector or whatever you can usually find it throughout tech stars not just you know while you're in the program but for hopefully years after um and i think the last thing is everything always still kind of boils down to people so spend time with the mds and the and the program teams the programs you're evaluating make sure you like them i know i i can't speak for the others but i know at techstars most founders tell me look i experienced techstars through the lens of the managing director like and and so make sure that you like the md because you're going to be spending a lot of time with them make sure they're accessible make sure they actually uh you know have some some value to impart and wisdom to impart and uh and those are the i think those are the high level things that i would i would evaluate there there are plenty others but those are maybe the most important in my mind yeah people do business with people right yeah whatever you sell you're selling to to human beings um thanks thanks uh isaac so two weeks ago i was actually talking to one of my friends who pitched an idea of a startup he's tuned his own startup and he was pitching to a a vc and and the response he got was like love the idea can you add crypto to that i thought it was funny uh because then i can you know so they again um you know it was sort of an indicator that you know there's a lot more momentum there too and this is a traditional uh vc firm i'm not gonna bring up their name but anyway stefano uh at longheid ventures you know what what are some of the use cases that you're seeing uh that are gaining the most traction with investors i was going to say before i answer that question you reminded me i think this was in in 2017 there was an iced tea company in new york if i'm not mistaken that that put blockchain or crypto in their name and their their stock went up like i don't know how much but anyway um hopefully not a top signal um look i think in terms of winning cases i think gabriel said it earlier uh you know if last year we had d5 summer this year we definitely have nft suburb and i think we're right in the midst of it um i think um i think obviously there's a lot of you know there's some hype there's there's a lot of noise there's a lot of things to waddle through um we as an investor do come across a lot of nfd platforms and and i think i mentioned we have invested in in some of the earlier ones um but i think also to to link it to gabriel's pointer is really around utility and some of the winning nft models going forward around utility uh we've seen it with um you know with gaming of course axe infinity is the most i would say famous or well-known example but there's plenty others um we are seeing it with um you know some of these like social dowels and and and launching uh nfts that have some utility linked to it uh and um and uh and yeah and even we're seeing it in in the metaverse in the form of real estate right so so beniversal real estate if you will uh i was hearing i think yesterday uh some fairly well-known media houses from asia buying uh land in the metaverse uh and and then you know looking at uh at launching nfts that have utility around having events i mean we're basically now used to like you know being on on zoom for these kind of events and while i guess a lot of us are probably itching to to meet up in person but there will still be a form of this virtual in the future and and how can we actually make it a better experience by leveraging this kind of technology so i think i think that's one um emerging let's call it a use case of nfcs that i think are starting to get some traction among investors and i think i think the other one is um you know d5 is still really big and i think uh you know we we believe that we're just getting started right i think in the past uh 12 or 16 months um you know we we saw uh you know d5 explode right uh and i think what we're starting to see now is that we're going beyond the um the the you know simple for lack of a better word applications of tradify coming into define starting to see the more sophisticated products coming in so things like you know derivatives structured products all these more sophisticated uh financial instruments uh starting to to crop up as you know the d5 version of it which is very exciting because i think for one is that you know we we see more momentum in this space but then second i also believe that this is one of the ways that we can at some point in the future start to link with with you know the traditional financial system yeah i i think you know it's great to see all these new products i see it on the lending side you know as well it's sort of like an iteration right you have the first program high interest rates high collateralized collateral requirements and slowly on they start to implement what is what currently exists in the traditional financing world and starting to improve on it so it's amazing to see all the innovation you did mention something that i want to pick up on is that the metaverse i want i want blake's view on that because outlaw adventures has been like very uh vocal about you know and very engaged in on bringing a metaverse right in different verticals and uh so what's your uh what's your take on that blake you know where do you see web3 storage startups and and trends uh in this whole new metaverse uh evolve and and uh do we have blake yeah so thank you for bringing up the metaverse operating system probably organizationally one of our favorite things to talk about uh and allow me to start by saying that at all adventures we consider ourselves an evergreen investor so looking into the future we invest and support startups throughout the bull market and bear market actually some of our best investments were made in the deep dark freeze of the crypto winter so in the context of the metaverse operating system and trends we try to look beyond the web itself up until the point when digital becomes undistinguished from from real in context of social media you can also see it happening with gaming virtual roads so from the perspective of trends that means the world will become more automated and it's important how data is permissioned and controlled it has to be user-centric the difference would be the user is in control of the data and they can give permissions and commoditize that asset they can participate in the value that is generated from data in combination with things like falcon and ipfs access to other protocols that when combined enhance privacy preserving computation commodification of data in data marketplaces and institutional buyouts you need data for ai and machine learning and we have those complete projects in our portfolio and can accelerate startups working with the centralized cloud in its totality um other aspects of the metaverse operating system thesis that this is touching i believe is financialization of data the user centricity based on the principles of sovereignty which is very close to most close to my heart personally and i truly believe you know expense currently you need expensive hardware to access the metaverse um so those kind of technologies can increase performance and can offset some of the costs by renting out the capacity and in turn turning um cryptocurrencies and joining the virtual world economy um so i think you need data for ai and machine learning uh as i mentioned and i truly believe um falcon and apfs is the key to solve that and make the metaverse truly open persistent and interoperable awesome yeah thank you yeah any um any players um any axiomfinity players on this panel because i just installed it like two weeks ago i'm still trying to get my uh my right team together no any recommendations on what combination i should go for no anyway put it in the chat all right well we got one check we have one question from uh the audience uh kartik can you maybe take that question and absolutely wrap it up it was a really awesome discussion um i think uh this question uh i'll rephrase the question but it's been answered in parts but maybe we'll kind of ask this more concretely but do you have any frameworks around how do you how should you think about performing a legal entity or launching your company if you have a token and obviously this question is going to differ based on where you are but um for all of you here any comments advice or frameworks that you like to talk about would be great who wants to wade into this one it's very hard question yeah it's i'll take a shot at it and then uh but i'm sure like stephano i know you guys have worked with a bunch of decoy projects blick as well uh i'm sure isaac you guys are working with them as well um for i guess first and foremost i'm not an attorney i don't play one on uh tv or hackathons etc so this is not legal advice for anybody um but uh yeah we've worked with a number of projects uh who have launched tokens you know uh paid out i love that finance uh secured finance power loom so many great companies um um i would say and i know our legal counsel would love this first and foremost get really good competent counsel um do not skirt this uh do do do not skirt this you want to find council who is uh extremely competent in both web3 and and has done this before so like you know don't get your brother-in-law because you know he practices law on the side don't do that whole thing in terms of jurisdictions that you're looking for it really depends on the nature of your project and the nature of your token um what we have seen uh historically is um a number of different structures and setups you know we've seen a delaware c-corp parent and then a child that sits in bvi or cayman island something like that something with friendly jurisdictions um this again this is not legal advice here's what i would tell you like if you have even a single customer even a user who's using a vpn who's based in in in the states you're not gonna skirt the sec um so you know don't even think about it um so we've seen a number of um jurisdictions that are friendly to d5 that are friendly to tokens um you know i named a couple singapore shout out singapore you know as has great jurisdictions for token and token based projects uh but um but i cannot stress this enough please please please go get really good competent counsel if you are thinking about launching a token it will more than pay for itself in spades in saving you a whole bunch of headaches and potentially ending up in an orange jumpsuit um so yeah yeah i will just add to that and i will also give the disclaimer that i am also not a lawyer and and this is definitely not legal advice but um i think uh i think the jurisdictions are important and so we are quite lucky that uh that we're based in singapore and i mean generally when you're you're at the really early stage before you've launched the token before you've decentralized into a dao of course um you know a lot of our accelerates would have incorporated in singapore it's super easy and it's like also super cheap uh and and very fast um so so that's an option and it's a very i think globally it's one of the most uh crypto friendly uh technocratic jurisdictions uh but uh yeah so so that's usually a starting point but i echo what gabriel said just get a really good lawyer there's not that many that understand crypto but but you know we can introduce i'm sure all the other guys here can also introduce it depending where you are and and speaking to a good lawyer on this is critical thank you it sounds like that the legal environment um could use some innovation there as well and you know um maybe we should do a session around that at some point anyway great great conversation i really appreciate everyone's active participation and um uh thank you again we'll hope to do more of these the next session i want to thank all of you isaac gabriel stefano and blake um because i know for some of you it's really late out there so appreciate to do that on a friday afternoon or friday evening or friday night um and with that we're going to move on to the next topic cardiac i'll give it back to you thanks everyone have a good rest of s thanks everybody thank you for monitoring it moderating an amazing chat so next up we have our next