Alumni Spotlight: Michael, Co-Founder of Coinsafe

From the grassroots, from the ground up, it has been web 3 bridge. Yeah, web 3 bridge gave us the power to dream. That's nice. Yeah, concept started as um a hackathon project during the web three loss conference. Uh web three legos hackathons.

Okay. Last year, which we somehow lost. But I mean it was it was the genesis. It was like where it started from. Mhm.

So, so coming from Webpro Bridge, the knowledge, the technical skill, the community, the people, the Monday talks with Mr. Right. Uh it just those things all come together to give you the power to bring and that is what I value most about working. The incubation program has been a very very it's been a major catalyst in how fast we've grown. The incubation program just gave us the platform, gave us the visibility, gave us the confidence to, you know, keep building.

[Music] So, we here with one of the co-founders of Coin Safe. I mean, I know you, but they don't. So, let's start with like a brief introduction of yourself. So, my name is Michael and uh I'm a software engineer and uh the co-founder of Coin Safe. All right.

Nice. Nice to meet you, Michael. You guys Michael. All right. So, like my first question for you is um how did your journey with web three begin?

Like how did you start web three? Oh, okay. I've been uh a developer for quite some time. Mhm. And also dabbling into web 3 here and there, but then I was like I was very curious about how my favorite web 3 products work and I was like why don't I check it out and try to build things like that.

And uh being a developer myself, I wanted to I was curious about how those product work and I decided to get into it and a friend linked me up to work through the bridge. All right. So my next question is um what was your vision or driving motivation when you like started your journey like as a web three developer? What was the vision or like the driving force? Okay.

The funny thing is I not didn't necessarily see myself as a founder or like I founding something so to speak. I just like I like concepts and I like to work. I I'm a developer. I love to write code. So my initial drive was just to you know find out how these things work, how the blockchain work and uh kind of like just build cool stuff and find uh a product that I will work with, a product that will hire me to build cool stuff for them.

Mhm. Essentially just making more money. Like if they can bring you back like to money, I mean a typical evil boy so to say, I guess. All right. So our next question um about your project.

So now we know you're one of the co-founders of coins. So tell us about the project. What is coins save? What what what are you guys building? Uh driving to the point coins safe is simply a centralized savings platform on chain essentially piggy fest on chain.

So what we've come to find out that [Music] um people hold tokens, people hold crypto, but they don't save it. So now the most popular way of saving crypto is like holding it in your wallet, your metamas wallet or rabbi wallet. But the problem with this is that it doesn't encourage savings discipline. You can't save. you just hold it and then when you need it when the m the most minor inconvenience you go to withdraw it to solve your problem uh but then people can save towards goals and then the money just sits there doing nothing doesn't end any interest as well.

So, uh, Coinsafe is simply building, um, automated tools and, uh, uh, personalized experiences allowing users to craft their own. Essentially, we offer a buffer of savings options that allow users to craft their own saving experiences. We have uh, features like automated savings where you put your savings on autopilot and like, you know, you just recurring uh, savings monthly, weekly, daily, whatever. Uh and we have uh an AI psychic as well that will help you to you know just looks through your spending habits and suggest to you ways to to save to spend and save uh more efficiently. And then we have things like targets and time locked savings.

You can save towards a target. You can save towards buying a body club or a popular NFT that you always wanted and and so on and so so forth. So basically, we're just building automated tools, things that will help users to save more efficiently while earning interest on their savings as well. All right. Nice.

Just a quick one. Where can people find Coins Safe? Are you guys on Twitter? Are you guys on Instagram? Yeah, we're in Twitter.

coinsafe_afe on Twitter. Uh you can hit our our uh website coinsafe.network. You can find us on LinkedIn as well. So yeah, that's where we are from now.

All right. Nice. So we know you guys went to like recently for an incubation program the am incubation program. So my next question is like to us that so um um about the whole experience um how would you like describe your overall experience? My experience was for lack of a better word I'll just say beautiful.

It was it was a splendid experience like it was an eye opener. It was an avenue to learn to expose yourself. If you're a fraud, you get exposed and then I'm not a fraud. All right. Good.

Well, I mean it's it's hard to do a whole lot of soul searching. You find out why you are building what you're building and uh you know meet with a lot of brilliant people as well. people who will critically assess what you're building, give you good feedback or bad feedback and it's left to you to learn from those feedback and uh it was just beautiful. It was it was an amazing experience. Now our experience what would you say was like the most impactful moment with incubation program?

Okay. I would say uh the problem exploration cuz pivots are very good for businesses and startups. So problem exper exploration is going to what it did at least for me and the rest of my team is it helped us refine our products cuz we started off of course we started started off as a savings platform still but there were like things that we didn't things that were a little bit gritty weren't well refined. So the problem exploration we had to do extensive user interviews with people actual people conducted surveys with our potential users and got those feedback and things that uh helped us to you know look at our product a little bit more critically and say oh okay maybe we're not going at this the right way. Let's let's do this and solution results.

So looking back, how has the incubation program influenced your project trajectory and growth? H the incubation program has been a very very it's been a major catalyst in how fast we've moved. I was speaking to a friend the other day and I was like without this program I don't think coins safe would have gotten to the heights that we have now or had the confidence to march on and build further. So the incubation program just gave us the platform, gave us the visibility, okay, gave us the confidence to, you know, keep building and uh yes, it was it has just been a very a major catalyst cuz then it's not just you're not leaving it to vibes. Without the program, you're just building with vibes, right?

But then with the program you have people who are expecting results from you and it has just been very helpful. So what do you like value the most about web three bridge community and the mission? H I think that from the grassroots from the ground up it has been web three bridge. Yeah web three bridge gave us the power to dream. That's nice.

Yeah. The concept started as um a hackathon project during the web three loss conference uh web three logo hackathons. Okay. Last year which we somehow lost but I mean it was it was the genesis. It was like where it started from.

So so coming from web three bridge the knowledge the technical skill the community the people. Yeah. the Monday talks with Mr. Right. Uh just those things all come together to give you the power to dream and that is what I value most about.

All right. That's that's so cool. I want to cry. But yeah, I'm not crying. How has this commentorship like impacted your team's approach in building three?

H uh I'm going to go with this getting to Kifi. Mhm. Before we got into the house, all we were told is that this is the no zone. And just prior to that during the virtual uh sessions, we also told that being a founder is no So what it has done is to make us live up to make us look at things real life, real life scenarios, not just dreaming and you know delusional. So it has impacted in us the no mentality that even though you want our bias to play out.

You have a bias in your mind. You have a bias in your head. Something you think is cool, you you have to play it out in real life, right? Cuz nobody's going to buy into your bias. Mhm.

So what it has done for us is um we approach things realistically with brutal honesty essentially. All right. All right. So my last question for you is what makes Lisk platform or ecosystem uniquely valuable for developers like you? That's a beautiful question.

Building on Lisk is smooth. Mhm. I'm going to summarize it with that word. They are there to support you. They are there to build you up.

They're there to give you technical support, financial support in grants and you know link you up to avenues and uh just yes ways they're always looking for ways to make building on lisk smooth and effortless. So they have we have uh uh they have this uh workshops uh I forgotten what they call them but this this is like uh times where you jump on calls with their devril team to sort out if you have uh any technical problem any technical hiccup. They're always there to not just texting them and replying them texting and replying on Discord or wherever. They're ready to get on a call with you and help you sort out your issues. That's right.

list is blazing fast. Gas is very cheap. So yes, it's just very good. All right. Thank you very much.

It was really amazing to have that conversation with you. But I'm going to tell you my take home from this. He said all of this would not start without three braid. So if you're looking for to start, my founder, Mr. I would always say web three bridge is the primary school.

You need primary school before you can do secondary school, university. So looking forward to start your journey bridge. That year.