Three Things You Need to do to Get Started in Web3 - Gavin Nicholson and Julian Hirsh

so all right howdy everyone my name is gavin uh i work at opolis i am the membership operations steward and uh today here with me is julian we both work at opolis and let him give a little introduction to himself as well yeah i work in membership at opolis so just in the community and so we're just here to to inform people about how to get into web 3 and some things to think about yeah so the the main talk what we're going to focus on is actually three things i know these three things probably weren't what you were expecting when you know you hear what do you need to actually work in web3 uh the reason why these things are really important though is because they all actually go back to the ethos of web3 they all go back to what we're actually here trying to do and what we're actually trying to build so the first uh thing that we're going to talk about is interpersonal skills the second one is determination and the third one that probably nobody talks about is compliance a lot of people like to stay away from that but we're going to try to hit it head-on and hopefully answer any questions if anybody does have them so what do i mean by hone your interpersonal skills well i mean this space right now what just be frank is the new digital frontier of things so there's not really an organized way of doing things your biggest strength is going to be the network that you actually build up yourself it's going to be actually going through people that you know trying to find job opportunities through your network connecting with other folks through protocols that's how you actually hone your interpersonal skills so i actually really like this quote from steve jobs i think this is fantastic technology is nothing what's important is that you have faith in people that they're basically good and smart and if you give them tools they'll do wonderful things with them to be honest i don't care how good of a developer you are if you are awful to work with i probably don't want to work with you being able to work in a team setting being able to actually work with others and get a project completed being able to set aside your ego and being able to do what's best for the team is going to be far more important than your actual technical skills especially with someone where i deal with operations a lot i can't tell you the amount of times that i've struggled with trying to talk with a dev or something like that trying to get them to actually go through something that's going to make the product better but because of ego or because of some other factor it actually hinders and hurts the projects even though they might be a fantastic dev so another thing about the network you know you think about it like this you tell one person about a problem you might be having that person may have a buddy that they know or another friend they know that buddy may know somebody that they know and your reputation is key in this space being able to maintain that and being able to work with others being able to actually go to somebody else and being able to return a favor for them that they might have given to you is critical that's how i actually got my job at opolis how i actually became a full-time web 3 if you will my good friend joshua that some of you might know he came to me one day and said hey we have this opening here at opolis i think you'd be a great fit i joined opolis and now i'm part of that networking process where when people have an issue or if they want to actually get started in the space i'm actually able to refer them to other people that uh some of the connections that i've built up to try to make it a more friendly and approachable space for all of us so the second thing and i'm sure everybody in here knows this but you have to be determined determined and know that you are going to run into problems you know this is the wild west we aren't actually uh operating in something that a lot of people are familiar with where we're building the next generation of technology the next generation of the internet doing all these awesome things and that comes with problems and we should acknowledge those problems and recognize that they are going to be there so some of these problems are obviously going to depend on what you're actually doing in the space for somebody that's starting their own protocol starting their own company you're obviously going to run into different problems and somebody that's just looking to be full-time web 3 and is maybe a full-time dow contributor so the big one is growth this doesn't happen overnight those stories that we hear where an organization goes from zero to you know ten thousand percent growth it's not going to happen for most people you have to be aware that that's going to be a grind it's going to be a process that you have to actually manage yourself and you're going to have to actually put in time to keep your community growing to keep your project growing but it goes back to your interpersonal skills in order to grow your project you actually have to be able to connect with other people the second thing is revenue uh you know making a living in this space does not happen overnight i know some people like to think it does but it can take months and months at a time to actually get your project deployed to get everything done to get the frameworks all set up and that does take time and you should be prepared for that don't over commit and don't do something that you're not actually fully prepared to spend whatever money you might have on make sure it's smart don't apen i know that's probably not what a lot of people would say but i'm telling you it most of the time it won't work out in your favor the other time the other thing and this is common especially if you're starting your own project is foot people are always going to doubt you people are always going to say your protocol is not going to be the next big thing there's going to be an issue maybe you have to push back the launch date or something like that you have to be prepared to ignore that flood and keep pushing forward i know that's really big we're i saw this recently with an nft project they had to push back their start date because the developer got covered there was so much fun in the community that they actually only minted out three nfts uh when they launched so instead of closing on the the project and doing all that they took a step back they got everything going again they currently i think they minced it out and now the floor price of that nft is something like point five eighth almost a 10 x increase because they were actually able to push through that foot the last thing is stress i know this sounds really weird to mention but if you can't handle your stress in the str in this space if you can't handle it appropriately it's not going to work out good for you you have to find methods that you can actually let go take it disconnect from the space a little bit do something that you actually enjoy instead of just grinding this through until you actually hate what you're doing burn out burnout is real it happens way too often and you have to be prepared to actually take a step back and not burn yourself out so i'll before i let julian speak i just want to say this if you think there's not a spot or a space in web 3 right now you are wrong there's over as of last night i checked this there's currently something like 4 000 downs that you can actively contribute to there is over at least 10 000 active web 3 job listings all the way from developers to people that work in operations to marketing you don't have to just be a developer to work in this space i don't know how to go to save my life if you threw something in front of me i don't know what i would do with it it would not end well though the other thing there is money out there ready to invest in good projects something like 33 billion dollars were invested in by various vcs and crypto and blockchain adjacent projects so that money is definitely going to increase and will be flowing later this year and then the last step to think about is compliance so obviously when you get a job at a dow or you're working in a space the first thing you're going to think about is not oh i need to start making sure i withhold taxes i i do all these steps to make sure this income is compliant but it really is important given that we're working in the wild west we're working in this this cutting-edge frontier so you need to be make sure you're thinking about proper withholding and make sure that at the end of the year you have enough taxes to pay for the income tax owed regardless of whether the tokens that you're working in may may drop in price over a bear market or something like that you need to separate your accounts so thinking about having an eth wall that's a personal lead wall that you send the money to from a business heath wallet or a business bank account to a personal bank account these kind of things are really helpful for accounting at the end of the year and if something were to happen where you get audited or or for some reason you need to have an account of where this money flowed then having just one account with all of your you know your nft degen purchases and all of the income from a dow like that's not going to make sense and the last thing is an llc or an s corp which gives you a protection from the law and can shield you so that your reliability is in some ways constrained to what's within that llc or s corp so to go into the llc or s corp a little bit more you might not be thinking that this is something for you even if you're just working for a dao or you're working in a space and you've just started but the protection is extremely important because when you have liability if you don't have an llc that is incorporating all of the assets from a specific project you contribute to then you're also liable for your personal assets so like your home or other things that you don't want to have be connected to the business or the dow or the projects that you're working for the next thing is legitimacy and making sure that you can run compliantly and operate within whatever state whatever jurisdictions that that you're interacting with in a way that that makes sense the irs and make sense to the us government and then last the last thing is privacy so it actually even though you think kycing might be infringing on your privacy it adds another layer of abstraction from the money coming into your accounts connected to your personal now it's connected to your business and so there is one more layer of abstraction and it's harder to find who you are so the one last thing i'll add before we close really quick um we are actually i'm going to show opus just a little bit for you if you are not familiar with opolis we actually provide a lot of these things that we mentioned we do payroll compliance tax compliance we can help you form an llc and all of that but we're actually looking for devs so if you are a back end dev or a full stack dev come see me we are actively hiring for that and the other thing is if you have any general questions or need any tips you can come find me at the opolis booth we're literally right on the corner back there and i guess if anybody has any questions be more than happy to answer them any questions well thank you so much uh julian and gavin and if you ever have any questions for the obelisk team you can catch them outside the venue i'm sure thank you so much i'll give everyone