Embracing Open Graphs to Solve the Cold Start Problem | Gabriel Vorbeck - TimelessWallet.xyz

[Music] I'd like to thank everybody that has been behind the scenes so please a round of applause for the people that are able to put this together and um yeah so thanks for thanks for coming in um my talk is going to be around how to solve the coar Problem by embracing open graphs I'm going to keep it a little bit more leveled down I'm not going to dive too deep but my intention really is to reflect uh take a look at how the landscape has been building up through the past couple of years 40 years and so uh in Silicon Valley um reflect where we currently are and where the industry is going specifically with uh web 3 so the coldstar problem fundamentally where we all begin uh as as startups uh it's hard to build right if anybody here already has a 100 million users please get up and leave this probably won't be for you so essentially the starting point for everyone when we build something there's a lack of value right and Andrew Chen the general partner of a16z has wrote has written a book about this uh because it's important for everybody to know um he also talks about Network effects I'll be covering that as well and I want to dive in into the open graphs as well so why is this important um everyone faces it right but if we take a look at the current landscape of the industry and by that I mean the most valuable companies in the world we have the value capture um with with graphs right so if you think about Google the knowledge graph you think about Facebook the social graph and if you think about Amazon the product graph and altoe you have a massive value capture of more than 4.8 trillion and all of these graphs have been closed now we are beginning to see more and more adoption with open graphs and uh I'll get a little bit later into how we're we're going to be able to tap into these opportunities so let's begin with defining what a graph is right just just very simple we have a structure and on that structure we have objects and their relations very simple um and within those graphs there are specific types like I mentioned the product graph the social graph and the knowledge graph now the reason why these graphs become valuable is because of network effects in simple terms the network effects are when someone joins the network it becomes more valuable right think about the phone uh it took a very smart person to create a phone but it takes a genius to sell one why if you're the first person that ever gets a phone who are you going to call there's no value in the network then fast forward you have billions of people using the phones and the value of the network is apparent so again tying the dots together Network effects and graphs together a lot of value um that you can capture so the faces that everybody knows here I'm only going to pick it uh I'm only going to pick on web two not going to pick on web 3 you can see how these people started very cold and at that point it was the only way right so how they tackled this Facebook famous for starting only in Harvard getting people into the network now all of a sudden you had a social graph that you could tap into right Tinder they started throwing parties in universities who would have wanted to attend one of those and essentially within their Network now they had people that you could date no no one's going to want to join a dating app where there are no options right so Airbnb being famous their Founders for knocking on doors having people list and as well encouraging people to rent from the from the platform right so that there is the graph being built up and Uber who has been seeing the uh series on Netflix anyone all right I just started yesterday so um there was a large Capital injection in order to begin building the graph of Transportation so in summary it it took a very big effort to to reach escape velocity and grow those Network effects all right so we can see a relation here right as Network effects go higher the cold start problem goes lower just like that so let's touch now into the role of open graphs because the examples that have been giving are the majority of them are closed graphs right permissioned um they have walls wall Gardens they're not designed for anybody to just tap in and make use of that data as much as you want and essentially now with open graphs we are able to have more momentum we're able to build with Innovation because we're not starting from zero you don't have to go knocking on doors you don't have to have massive injections of capital anymore to begin with uh a user base you don't have to have large large amounts of capital in order to incentivize people so it it is a different playing field in which we currently are and are heading towards so think about when you're starting something right we all have some decisions that we need to take into account if we are beginning a startup and well we're going to need some users we're going to need a network it makes sense to build where the users are it's more attractive they can be more engaging and essentially you don't have to really convince them too much to to run down a mile in order for them to download your app and to begin trying out a new home right so why why reinvent the wheel when there's a lot of wheels up and running and the most exciting part here right so we already have very well-developed graphs like I mentioned before the social graph and so on that they have captured a lot of Val value however now we can build on top of value you can add and take that value further by tapping into open graphs because as a developer you have the freedom to use that data as you want you have compossibility you have modularity and you're able to just experiment so let's take a look at some examples that have used open graphs um many of you might be already familiar with Mastadon um threads as well Instagram Now activity Pub is actually the social um networking protocol it's an open graph that is below of both of these applications an asterisk for Threads because they're supposed to go with activity Pub that's the promise um but so we're going to see that hopefully in the next couple months but essentially the whole value add here is if you are tapping into an open graph like activity pub now you tap into the network of both Mastadon and threads so for a minute imagine that you want to build your own social network or an app that you want to tap into these um users have a little birdie there now everything is interoperable it is accessible if I want to have a social app and post on masteron I'm going to be able to see it on my Bird app I'm going to be able to see it on threads and vice versa so this opens up a new landscape of tapping into Network effects tapping into people without them having to start from zero without you having to start from zero uh this is a very classic example right the evm um people launching layer ones layer twos social graphs on ethereum and this is going to continue but let me just for a for a second imagine where we would be if every time a new layer one spins up we have different wallets with different formats and we have to start from zero and this is one of the most exciting graphs that are coming up and and um being developed which is the financial graphs so again in blockchain we have a lot of Advantage we're still young right uh ethereum has is going to be has been around for what around 9 10 years soon so um do we talk about Cosmos here Cosmos ecosystem uh this is another great example of uh tapping into Network effects having interoperability between ecosystems and the users being able to um engage engage seamlessly this is one of the most recent examples that many of you might already be familiar with uh foraster right by tapping into the extended open graph standard which Facebook developed they were able to develop frames um so essentially creating mini apps that have a lot more flexibility inside of the forecaster protocol and um we're starting to see a lot of crazy stuff being uh done there so a very good example oops so this is an this is the approach that we are taking at Timeless um which we're building a web three wallet right leveraging account abstraction and in very simple terms we are tapping into different open graphs to provide a seamless experience within the same place right so the starting point in web 3 is your wallet you have open graphs you have means of communication that are open as well why not put that all together right so let's talk about the potential here the Clos graphs four more than four trillion in value and the open graphs that are growing we're moving from renting our data in the internet to owning our data in the internet when we own that data into internet that lies mostly on open graphs it's the data that we can control and one of the most interesting parts of this is that when you have an closed graph it's singular right remember activity Pub you have different applications now you have you're tapping into an aggregated pool of data where multiple open graphs are able to um so you're able to put together multiple open graphs instead of just building on top of one so so essentially now we're able to tap into use cases that even the Builders of that first open graph didn't even think about so the key takeaways open graphs best friends for Network effects we don't have to start slow we don't have to start cold and we it's ideal to build where the users are so that we can get up and running and um as the network effects go up coar problem comes down all right so for everyone that stuck around here I've just created a little poab for you guys um very thankful for supporting for for very thankful for your support um I'll be here if there's any questions I think I still have a a little bit of time so if you want to connect you can find me here as well and and thank you