Preethi Kasireddy: DappCamp – Becoming a Web3 Developer #459

Transcript

welcome to epicenter the show which talks about the Technologies projects and people driving decentralization and a blockchain revolution my name is Brian Crane and today I'm going to speak with pretty Cassie ready she has been in the crypto space for a long time she writes an excellent newsletter that I've been reading for a while and has has done a bunch of different stuff I guess most significantly at the moment is DAP Camp which is a kind of a school for web 3 Developers but uh before we get into the episode just a quick announcement so we are hiring so we're looking for Community manager for epicenter to help us grow our audience and take App Center to the next level so if you're interested in crypto and creating great content uh we want to

hear from you it will be yeah great if you apply so there's gonna be a link for how to apply in the show notes so just click on that link and then you can follow there and you know share it with anyone you think this might be a good fit for stake wallet is your new favorite multi-chain Mobile Wallet that puts the power of web3 at your fingertips in just three tabs and you can stake and manage your assets on over 22 built-in protocols including all major EVMS layer twos and non-evms like Cosmo Solana near Zig wallet abstracts away oil complexity while being fully self-custodial meaning getting yield on your crypto has never been this easy and secure

steak wallet also has multi-chain nft support so you can view all your nfts in one place and you can Flex by putting your nicest nft um as your app background don't forget to check out the explore section in the app for your daily fix of the hottest apps yields and news across chains this summer stay quiet is upgrading its app to to provide you with more functionality um than many different D5 dabs and wallets combined and to highlight their transformation stake wallet is also changing its name to Omni the next generation super wallet so if you want to try out stick wallet and join thousands of users on this next

Generation wallet and go to um go and download it today on iOS or Android at stakewallet.fi and that's um spelled stake um like the meat so yeah with that pretty thanks so much for coming on excited to be here Brian yeah I know you've you've had like uh intense hectic time you had to reschedule a whole bunch of times um congratulations yeah thank you yeah having a newborn it's like oh wait I think I'm Gonna Be Free that hour and it's like never mind he needs me right now so yeah but thanks for your patience appreciate it yeah not

at all not at all I have now had quite a few friends have friends have babies and I think uh sort of witness witness from afar a little bit the the unique challenges that come with that yeah yeah awesome cool so well it's maybe we can start just uh share with us a bit like how did you how did you get into crypto and like what is your and what was your kind of initial journey into this uh space yeah I would say if I I mean I kind of came into the space dabbled into the space on and off in the beginning

um so I was working at Andreessen Horowitz um on the I was on the deal team there we didn't really have a crypto team back then because this was like way back in 2013 2014. um but I witnessed uh Chris Dixon making the investment in coinbase and I remember him being super excited about coinbase and him and Mark kind of like you know like kind of selling the firm on why coinbase is um is a great investment and I didn't really understand it at that time I was like what is this crypto thing it's like a big because coinbase was like a Bitcoin wallet and I had no idea what the hell they were what that even meant and why that's a big deal and then biology joined a16z and then he was also

very crypto you know Enthusiast and I remember him telling me to read the Bitcoin white paper because it's going to change the world and you know like I read it and it was interesting but it didn't really catch my attention at the time so I got some exposure at a16z but I wouldn't say like that's when I got into the space um and then after I left a16v I taught myself how to code and then I was trying to figure out what I want to do afterwards and I remember asking for sticks for advice and he's like you should join an industry that's growing and the two industries that are really growing right now are like machine learning and crypto um although machine learning was very saturated at the time and so crypto felt

very nascent and I was like okay and then I looked at sort of like what crypto companies are even available and coinbase was like one of them and so I got in touch with them um and did a few interviews and long story store I got an offer there and so and then I got an offer at several other tech companies that were doing really cool things and I was trying to decide what I want to do and ultimately I chose coinbase and the reason I chose coinbase was not because it was a crypto company it wasn't because I was like sold on crypto yet it was because I just really liked Brian I liked Fred I liked the team the engineering team at coinbase I felt like they were very like quirky and weird and doing something different that no one

else was doing so like for you to be in crypto in 2013 2014 I think you had to be kind of weird like you weren't like a normal person that was gonna join coinbase and um be excited about it right so it was like a bunch of like really cool quirky people who were like together and they were very very very Mission oriented from day one um and Brian kind of did that very um intentionally where he hired people who were like super super passionate about crypto like if you weren't passionate about crypto you weren't join joining coinbase so I joined and I honestly loved it I learned so much from the people there and I was not even doing crypto engineering I was doing like react development so I was doing

like web development at coinbase um because obviously coinbase is not a you know decentralized company but still like I was learning a lot um and I still wouldn't say like I wasn't like I wasn't like deep into the space because again I was doing web development at coinbase it wasn't until I after love coinbase that I started to like dabble into ethereum development so I heard I learned like similarity smart contract development and then I had worked for like a small Ico company which went bust um which was embarrassing and like I thought like I was like working on something super cool and like you know everyone at the time was like super um optimistic about all these different

projects and so was I and I ended up joining one and ended up being a complete failure but I learned a lot in the process I learned about contract development I learned about the space I learned really really deeply about ethereum like I went I decided to go really deep into the ethereum rabbit hole because um the main reason was because I just really love the community I'm sure you can attest to this like um in the early days ethereum Community was so strong so passionate I mean they still are um it was one of the most like entrenched passionate Global communities um and I just really like that so I decided to just learn about ethereum and that's how I got into the space I got really

um obsessed with ethereum like I just really found it super interesting how the whole blockchain worked how their consensus worked how State Management worked um how solidity worked like I actually like programming and solidity um and that's kind of how I got into it and then I just kept going and learning about different things learning about things like Cosmos and I met Zaki and people like that and so I kept going deeper down into a space and then eventually obviously I started my own company in crypto um so yeah that was kind of my entry yeah yeah I remember I think one of your articles you wrote this long article about ethereum no uh sort of like yeah yeah yeah yeah

that I think was like widely read and uh I I kind of skimmed it I think I never like fully read it but at least I remember the article yeah yeah that was a very viral article um that just explained how ethereum worked um in a very like detailed and intricate way so yep yeah and so true story I remember a true story because I was working on Cosmos and that was sort of you know like I guess you were one of the you know early projects that uh started building on Cosmos I think one of the especially early projects that raised like from like Venture capitalists what was kind of the impetus for you

back then to say Okay I want to start my own company or my you know on crypto Network honestly like what we totally honest I would say someone else actually decided for me um and what I mean by that is after I left coinbase I was just kind of doing random smart contract work for different companies and then my seed investor she found out um you know kind of a free bird and I was exploring things and she reached out and she was like Hey like if you want to start a company like I'll find you and that's how it started I didn't even have a company name I didn't have a company formed like nothing it was just like me and actually the company name

was like pretty cassin ready LLC when she gave me the seed check because I just I didn't I didn't know what I was gonna Even build she just thought I was a smart person and she wanted to find me to go do something interesting um that's kind of kind of how it started and then I just started exploring different things that I have problems faces that I was interested in um I couldn't imagine doing something outside of crypto because I've already spent so much time invested in crypto by that point that I was just mostly focused on doing something in in the crypto space I just wasn't sure where I would what I wanted to do and then the things I started I start to really gravitate towards were like identity and reputation type things

um like using like using tokens to kind of build some kind of identity or reputation later on the blockchain so I started going deep into that rabbit hole and then you know true story kind of emerged out of that where we were trying to build a social network where you can use a token to um basically curate the truth quote unquote and um you kind of build your reputation identity based on how good you are at curating truth as well as like stating making uh truthful statements um so yeah that's kind of how it started and then we hired a bunch of people and we worked on it for two years it didn't

work out in the end we shut the company down in 2020 but it was definitely a really really fun and important learning experience I think we were one of the early people who actually went pretty far deep into the rabbit hole of trying to use this token to build a social network and a reputation system most people kind of just Shrugged it off as an impossible problem um but we actually spent two years really really going deep and so I would say we learned a lot and the takeaway from that was I felt like we were a little bit too early to the market um I felt that there were so many things that we want to test with the market but

the market wasn't ready for it meaning like you know getting tokens weren't mainstream like if if we had built something like that today maybe people would be more willing to even try using the product but back then in 2018 the idea of downloading a wallet to you the social network app with the token like you know building a social network on its own is hard to building a social network with the token was like a hundred times hard um there was just like a lot of things that I felt like were too early so I think tokens aren't mainstream yet um and then secondly the infrastructure was not there yet like we were using Cosmos and trying to build on Cosmos because it's more scalable than ethereum but

um even still like there were just so many bottlenecks to that and um like the idea that users have to go through a worse experience and they're used to in web 2 was not like acceptable or accepted yet because like again like this is before D5 even started this is before nfts and people started to accept this poor ux as a way uh as a way to do things because they can make money and be on the other end like at that time like if you had a poor ux it's like why would people even use you um so yeah we just ran into a lot of different challenges that I felt like timing timing is definitely everything for a startup and we were definitely not the right time for it

yeah so I guess you mentioned a whole bunch of like issues that came up and maybe I'm curious like if you sort of think in terms of you know what are the lessons and learnings from it that you'd like try to generalize and they're like it going forward you know in other contexts in other situations you know they would sort of shape in how you would approach things what are those is that this timing one and can you go a little bit deeper there on and what what else is there I think in hindsight I you know as a first-time entrepreneur I think someone had a tweet on this I forget who I think was Justin Khan he's not a tree along the lines of like first-time Founders

focused on products second time Founders focus on market and I think that's very very true like as a first-time founder I probably spent six months to a year trying to build like the right product but in hindsight now that I'm building other companies like the first thing I do is test the market like I think we can build I can hire great engineers and build a great product if I if I can validate the market so that's one huge learning for me it's like flip the flip the order of how you do things like make sure there's a market for what you're building and then build something and you know like the other thing is I thought I was doing iterative development and building an MVP but I think I as a first-time founder we spent

way too much time getting that first product out the door and not like really scoping down to a true MVP there's like founder-ish entrepreneur type first time founder lessons kind of that I can go into but those are the two big ones it's like not valid in the market and not having fast iteration Cycles um in terms of like just crypto related learnings I would say um 2018 again the infrastructure was just too early um to build any kind of user-facing app we needed we were in that cycle like Fred Fred um Wilson talks about the app infrastructure cycle right like first a lot of people build infrastructure and

then once that infrastructure is built entrepreneurs go in and build applications on top of that and then those applications reach a limit and then we realize we have to build infrastructure to to meet those requirements so we go back to building infrastructure and then we build more apps and then we hit limits and then we build infrastructure we kind of go through these loops um I would say 2018 2019 was probably more of an infrastructure time period time frame where people were um really focused on building like more scalable blockchains um better um but cheaper blockchains and things like that so that they can be more user friendly and that's why you saw the wave of like D5 nfts happen in the last like in the last type cycle

um and then we hit limits on that as well and now people are continuing to build infrastructure so yeah I would say timing was not the best in 2018 um another learning about crypto is that like I think in my in terms of my team um because it was 2018 because it was a bear market like the people I hired they I wouldn't say they were I don't think they were like 100 crypto native and in some ways that was a good thing that's a good thing because they challenged me and they're like why would people use this or like why would people do things this way um but the con of it was that

it was really hard to get them to like truly Embrace a crypto native product um and so I hindsight I wonder if we had like everyone on the team who was like truly crypto native would we have built something more different um something that was actually usable Etc um yeah I'll think of more but those are coming up some of the things that come to mind um but yeah like I mean I think as a second time founder you just do things so much differently um I just I I feel like if I had the knowledge that I have now like maybe we could have been successful I wanted to talk a little bit about your so your newsletter right so I've been

I've been I think on subscribe to your newsletter for quite a long time probably a lot of listeners ha you know are aware of it as well but tell us a little bit like how did you end up starting a newsletter and what's what's kind of the role of the newsletter and writing in general in in sort of your own journey and especially around learning because I think that's that's that feels to me like this big recurring thing that like kind of reefs through uh what you're doing and what you're writing yeah I mean I I've always just been um a good writer and I don't mean to like brag but like um I do I just enjoy writing because I

find writing is a very um a very powerful way to articulate and and form your own thought patterns and um and sort of crystallize what you think you know um I find that if I try to learn something and I don't write about it I actually don't learn anything like I haven't really truly learned it it's only when I've written something um about it that I feel like I've really tested um all my all the gaps in my knowledge because as soon as I put pen to paper and you start to realize like what you actually don't know um so that's kind of why I started writing is because like as I was learning um programming so when I was teaching myself programming

um writing goes away to kind of test what I knew and test what I was learning and I just started writing blogs every week and and writing about different Technologies like related to JavaScript and stuff and it kind of continued doing that in my early days of crypto and that's how I built an audience and so forth and so the newsletter now is just honestly just a fun way to interact with my audience and my audience is kind of pretty broad I have people in crypto but I also have people on my newsletter who are who follow me from my like JavaScript days or from my Instagram um or just like you know different things I'm interested in like Fitness food like all these different interests

that I've kind of built up over time people kind of follow me for different reasons so my list is kind of diverse and I I don't write just about crypto I write so I feel like writing about my life or um something related to suppose to get something out completely outside of crypto I'll write about it and I think people do find that interesting because even though it's an it's not a crypto topic um most people can relate to what I write about but yeah like I I and I don't like I know nowadays like having a newsletter and a paid newsletter and the subscription-based newsletter is like a huge thing now but personally the only reason I I have that newsletter is just more of a hobby it's like I write when I feel like it to that to that newsletter

but I also definitely use it for marketing for Deaf Camp as well which you know about yeah absolutely yeah you've probably read some of my newsletters like I think I've like I used to write I was writing like a Weekly Newsletter before the baby was born I'll continue it but I was kind of writing about just different things I do in a week um you know like I dance I've been learning how to dance um and I have a dog and now I have a kid so there's a lot a lot of interesting things that come out of um come out of that and it's fun to write about it yeah thanks for sharing that I I feel like this uh what you said you know if I

learn something and don't write about it I don't actually learn it that like really um yeah that really struck with me because I was like writing a bit on a Blog especially at some point I was getting into the rhythm of like I was like different from you I wouldn't write these like long posts but it would try to write something short and just put it out and I find it so enormously satisfying but then I kind of get stuck again like not right for a while and and I but I feel like this um the way you face it of this kind of connection between expressing uh you know expressing ideas about um something you learned and actually the act of learning I feel like that's a really nice way of thinking about it

yeah and I think like I mean you do podcasts so that's kind of your I guess mode of expression um speaking is also one way to if you're trying to explain something to the voice that's also another way to I guess um crystallize your thoughts but everyone has a reform right like people like to write some people like to talk uh some people like me both but there has to be some way that you're yeah I think you have to force yourself to articulate what you think you know and that's the only way to test your knowledge whether it's written or voice yeah no I I do think actually writing is is very powerful in this way I mean podcast is an amazing tool to learn uh it's amazing to have you know

conversations with different people and like learn about lots of different topics but I think there's like something something a bit different and a bit harder in having to condense it in like a written form especially when you when you sort of publish it right I think um I think like putting your ideas out in the world is a scary thing and not many people are willing to do it so if you're willing to do it I think you get a lot of that's why you get a lot of um you reap a lot of benefits from it you can build an audience you can make friends by writing publicly um you can make you know you know have like really strong connections

um like my my husband is an example of someone who basically wrote his way to to um like Fame them I guess like he he has connections now all over the world based on his interests and people he has followers from all over the world and anywhere we go people start to recognize him so like there's really cool benefits to writing and Publishing things online um definitely encourage more people to do it the the finger you say about publishing I think that that's absolutely right right because like it's just a huge there's like a world of a difference between like writing some kind of drafts of a blog post or a Blog because it always feels like a draft of a blog post

if you don't publish it right it's like the actual Act of like putting it out like changes something yeah it's kind of like an artist right like I give I I have a lot of um respect for artists who are willing to put their art out because there's a lot of people who paint or dance or or you know do stuff but they actually don't publish it whereas like it takes a lot of guts to put that out because you know you're going to be critiqued there's gonna be someone out there who doesn't like what you're doing or what you're saying or what you're writing and it takes a strong willed person to be able to be able to put out put that out and and receive that kind of criticism but you also receive positive positive responses as well so it balances out

yeah I mean that was that was the amazing thing when I was like right I mean I wrote I don't know like maybe 30 blog posts last year and really my goal was I didn't really publish I didn't really promote it much at all the only thing it did was they retweeted it automatically through my account that's the only thing I did and my only goal was basically just to publish stuff so I get sort of in the habit of like putting something out and like not not sort of censoring myself and and getting into some sort of writing habit and everything especially like also sort of told myself okay I'm happy to publish like really bad blog posts right because and I'm not gonna promote them I just

want to publish stuff right so I'm kind of I'm okay with publishing about posts and then I was still amazed at like how many people somehow founded and gave feedback about and said oh this is really great and they really like it it was it was very uh interesting to see that even though I'm like you know definitely nowhere near like your level of like writing uh and you know a lot of it was like very quickly put out and but yeah it's um it's just it's such a powerful thing it is it really is and like you said even though like boy podcasts and other forms exist I still think written form is is one of the most powerfuls because it it can like like once you write

something it's out in the world forever right like you read written stuff from hundreds hundreds hundreds of years ago and I think people what you write today who knows if people from 100 years or 200 years or 300 years could read your writing like I think that's a very powerful thing um and so you have a way to to like kind of make your mark in the world by putting your your thoughts out there let's talk about Dev Camp so how how did you decide to start that camp like how did that come up um so honestly it was a side project um I was I took some time off from work just to focus on how life all different

things and then I kind of missed doing crypto stuff and I was like how can I get into crypto without like going full time and do it and I think let me just do a little course where I teach people how to do smart contract development because that's something I already know so I was like I'm just gonna leverage a skill I already have and do a course on it and Maven I started I started that camp on Maven actually maven's like a um cohort based uh online platform where you can run cohort based courses and so I use Maven as a platform to launch this course and we had like 60 people join the first cohort and um someone in my network had reached out to me and he was like hey can I help you with the course

um I'd love to work with you on it and so me and him we were co-instructors on the course and lo and behold like it turned out to be like a really really successful course um the people the students loved it we loved teaching it like we got so much um it was so exciting like we walked away with so much energy and we were just like so energized by teaching these students um and we just like felt like there's so much and so much we can do beyond what we had done in that first cohort like so much potential for what we can do in cohorts two three four and so forth and that's when we were like okay like let's keep doing more cohorts and so we did a second one and then we did a third one and then like every single time I feel

like we get better and better and better and we just like we find so many cool things that we can do um Beyond just what we just did in that cohort and both me and my co-instructor we both love teaching and we love like the the experience of having to sit down and teach that live course because it's it's different from what you see out there in the market right like most of the online courses today are kind of asynchronous and you're kind of having to passively read on your own and um and complete the things on your own like very few people are doing like live courses and for us like creating that live course was was very unique like we got to have a room full of 60 developers who were asking us like really really

deep intellectual questions and we were answering them live and everyone was getting to hear the answers and learn from the learn from their peers so it was really cool in that way yeah so we kind of started it and it just blew up and we just kept doing it and now we're going to be on our fourth cohort at the end of the year and we are making some pretty big improvements for what we what we're going to do going forward in a nutshell we're going to make a lot we're going to make a lot of the course a lot more web 3 natives um meaning we're going to experiment with things like you know signing with so everything that as a student you're represented as a as an ethereum address so you basically apply with your metamask address and everything is tied

to your metamask address we give you bad news for completing certain milestones in the course um we have like a reputation score for each student based on like the different Milestones they reach different cool things that we're doing just explore like can we can we use some of the Primitives that have been built in the last cycle like nft Badges and and identity and things like that to build like a web 3 native experience for the for the cohort but yeah it's been fun I'm curious like you speak so much like enthusiasm you know about like this experience of teaching this course what do you think it is that makes it such a wonderful experience for you

it's seeing the students kind of Thrive um on the other end so like you know it's this is knowledge I already know it's like there's no point of me holding on to that knowledge right like if I pass it down then it's super interesting to see how other people use that analysis then do really really cool things that I would never do in my lifetime um and then just seeing people who maybe never had an opportunity to come into the space to get that knowledge and now be a full-time web 3 engineer like just seeing I think the best part of seeing the outcome of what happens to these students after they graduate not everyone is successful of course and people just end up going back to their

current jobs but a lot of people do make strides towards becoming full-time but three engineers and you know you guys I think hired a couple people from our grad grad list and so those women like they it was hard to find them but it was it was cool to see them go from like it's my dream to be about three engineer to them taking the course and then a few weeks later them having a job offer to be a web 3 engineer or just an engineer or about three company um so that's probably the most rewarding thing yeah yeah so just the explanation here so we've of course one I guess we I think I saw at some point in your newsletter

uh I think there was you know some some company that did some scholarships for uh dap camp and then we were like oh this is cool like we want to do this too and I think the company was and so we also focused the scholarships on on women right so we have been doing these these scholarships for a few cohorts I think we did three cohorts right I guess not the first one but I think the ones or all the ones after that and yeah we ended up carrying two people out of it uh so to like Maria and talita you know that John John this full-time and uh is very cool I mean first of all the the they're both amazing so I'm like really happy that we hired them but they're also like very different like

backgrounds very different yeah just very different from our sort of normal applicant pool and like bringing like very different perspective and approach to it and you know a very deep enthusiasm for crypto which is definitely something we look for a lot and so it's been like really great for us to like work with with the app camp on that you're so eager to learn and so eager to contribute so it was cool to have them be part of the cohort and then go on to do like really cool things like join chorus one um and it's also like good motivation for other women too right because then they see toleda they see Maria and they're like oh like you know I'm just like them like I could

do what they could do and so more people come in and just kind of follow their lead so it's cool to see you guys open doors like that for them so when it comes to like learning web 3 development is there what's hard about this like what do people struggle with engineering part of it I was actually not that difficult like learning solidity and that part that piece is not that challenging um the the challenging part is like like obviously crypto is very multi-discipline meaning like you have to understand a lot of different things to

um to truly understand like The Right Use cases for it like you have to understand um economics like now uh crypto or like blockchain engineering obviously you have to understand like politics in some way um there's a lot of different subject areas that crypto kind of touches and I think as an engineer the challenging part for them is like being able to see that bigger picture um and think about product from that angle and not just thinking about product from the engineering side because just building just engineering a product doesn't mean it's not going to make it useful like you have to think about how are you going to get a line how you're going to use like incentives to basically align the different piece of people in that Network

um these are all just like very very big and thorny problems that Engineers are not really used to thinking about and so a lot of people that take the course they kind of tell us that um blockchain engineering feels a lot more entrepreneurial compared to other engineering because other engineering you're just kind of like engineering whereas with crypto you're kind of thinking about the bigger picture and thinking about a lot more different things and so you are being a lot more entrepreneurial in that way and a lot of people some people are not that good at that so that's also the other challenge I would say like there's people that come in thinking that you know because they're really good Engineers they're gonna they're gonna like it or are they gonna be successful but sometimes

they're not um like we had a really strong engineer who we thought like would crush it but like it was pretty clear that like he just like he was just too stuck in the engineering side of things and not able to see like the bigger picture of like how to build how to build a good product that people can actually use yeah I think that's right I think this sort of like political and philosophical dimension of like crypto is like something that's like very crucial and a lot of people like really get it right and they kind of like understand it on some deep level but then like other people really struggle with it and they can uh even work in crypto but just somehow don't you know they don't quite

they don't quite get it yeah yeah and I think it's it's an acquired skill what I want to say is I think it has also to do something with kind of maybe a fundamental you know values and way of looking at the world I think you know especially people who maybe don't like Authority so much or look for freedom in some way you're like more sovereignty and autonomy I think they kind of uh well often they become interested in crypto because of that but then I think that also gives you like I mean for example if you think about you know the keys and who controls the keys and the trust assumptions and

like all of that stuff I think that's like very deeply intervoned with that and I mean I remember in the 2017 or 18 bull market there was a lot of these people who came and then they do these icos but like clearly it just like didn't really it was maybe an opportunity for them to raise a bunch of money but it it missed the point of what it was all about the other the um I think like it's it takes a really it's not easy to figure out where a token is useful and where a token is not useful

and that's like I would say a skill that you only learn by seeing a lot a lot of different projects and really trying to understand like what is the purpose of that token and I would say no one's really truly an expert on this still like there's still debates about whether certain projects should have a token or not um so that seems to be something that I think the engineers sometimes struggle with because they'll like put a token into something that probably maybe doesn't need a token and could be done without and um it might be a good engineering experience for them but it's not like a really good use case for a token you know so from from the people who who came through that camp

what do the people who made it successfully and you know they're like working in crypto what do they have in common I would say they're I mean number one is they're strong Engineers um because we do do a pretty strong screening on them before they take the cohort so they're strong Engineers so they have like a strong fundamental um Baseline set of engineering skills uh secondly they're really eager to learn and they're like super passionate because you know crypto it's like if you're coming into the space you you have to just be willing to just drink through the fire hose and if you if you're just kind of slow and trying to take your time that's just not going to

work like you have to be very very on top of things and eager to learn I would say most of the people the people that are most successful are the ones that like are very eager to learn and they learn fast too and third I would say they kind of like the point we're trying to make is like they have a more they have a they have a pretty good grasp on like the whole the bigger picture of things um and they're not just like a code monkey for better for lack of better words yeah yeah no that makes sense I I think one thing that also I have that stood out to me a bit that I see sometimes people struggle with a lot is I guess if if you're in a in a in

another industry right then you want to like work in this industry then you know you maybe research a bunch of companies and then like you apply there and you try to get a job of those companies you know I guess that's kind of like the standard way but in crypto because things are so like the information is all open and a lot of this more kind of Community Driven like that's not the best way right like the it's a better way to sort of figure out like what do you actually find interesting and then learn about that and then kind of get involved in that community and maybe like you know go through confidence like write blog write write about it write blog posts or

like contribute in some way and then things will happen right so I think this sort of I'm going to start with trying to get a job isn't if it can be a big obstacle also because people don't want to speak with you if you don't if you if you if you could just go ahead and get started but you don't and you just want to do calls with people that's a good point that's a good way to put it yeah and I guess that's I mean that's in any I mean I guess we're still quite at the beginning of that but I think this whole you know working for a doll is you know is another thing that you know there's probably maybe right now I don't know how well those stuff

maybe some of the Dolls work pretty well but it's probably still like a better option for most people I think might be to go for like work for a normal like three company but it's definitely becoming something where it's just an entirely different way of working yeah and I think I mean I think whether you should join a dow or whether you should join a regular company just depend on your personality like if you're entrepreneurial to begin with then you have a high risk tolerance um I think you can join a Dao and and you have like I guess the financial cushion um if you join a Dao and be very exploratory that way have maybe be have a few different dials that you're part of where you have different roles in

those dials but if you're more like employee mindseted then I think joining a web 3 company and going spending maybe a year or two years there to truly understand the space and have the time to build your confidence before you go the dial route is probably what makes sense for you um because like if I try to come into crypto and go join a dial right away I think I'd be pretty confused um and maybe depending on what tower I joined or what Downs I joined I might even be discouraged or um have false um false starts or whatnot but because I joined coinbase for example

um it gave me a really strong foundation and time to really spend time like learning about crypto before deciding to like go out and explore and do my own thing whether to start a company or Journey down or whatever um and I actually like when people graduate dap Camp I tell the same thing to them I'm like if I were in your shoes like the first thing I would do after graduating at boot camp is join a library company even if it's boring it's been like a year or two years there and then go do my own thing go be more entrepreneurial Journal start my own company whatnot um there's some people who are ready to start a company right after graduating and usually those are people who either started companies in the past or they're

just naturally more entrepreneurial minded so there's exceptions but I would say for the most part yeah join the webpage company and for the app Camp he talked a little bit about the fourth cohort in like uh you know building in more of these crypto elements like what's your what's beyond that I mean there's so much we can do I mean right now the cohorts are like less than 100 in size and mostly in the US and some parts of Asia markets so like one thing I mean I think like we can scale this to a lot to be a lot bigger and to reach a lot more people for one

especially people in like Emerging Markets you know I can I continue to hear how about how people countries like certain countries in Africa like Nigeria and so forth are apparently very very crypto friendly and have really really smart people um they just don't have access to the best education and the best platforms to learn and go off of so I think the bigger version is just to like scale it to a lot bigger of an audience and um be able to bring this to people like that who can use it as a as a tool to jumpstart their career in crypto basically what we want to be is like the bridge for people who want to get into

crypto so if you're an engineer and you're kind of lurking in the background we want to be that bridge so that um you don't have to go on it on your own just like you know when I started learning how to code I could have done it on my own but it'd probably take like two years um but instead I did a coding bootcamp which was a really powerful way for me to learn in a very structured way meet other people who are also learning to code and then go do my own thing yeah I know I think that's very true like this kind of like learning with others is a key thing I I was also once you know spend time like try learning to code on my own and I was pretty consistent with you know for maybe two years I spent like you know most days

like spend a bunch of time coding but I I it was actually very slow progress and you know in the end I was kind of like oh I also need to do some kind of coding boot camp but then I discovered crypto and kind of like just focus on crypto instead but I I felt very much this kind of lack of uh like working alone makes it very hard and and I think working with other developers right it's like clearly such a powerful thing like it's just like dramatically accelerates it is makes a huge difference makes a huge difference yep maybe talk a little bit about you know the sort of aspect of like you know this topic right in in the industry a lot

like course one in many different contexts but like you know being a woman in crypto what are your thoughts on that and like what is your experience been kind of seeing that the child the unique challenges of women through that camp I I think compared to when I was joining crypto and there was like zero I think it's gotten a lot better there's just there's definitely a lot of diversity now a lot a lot of a lot more female in the space especially with nfts which are more related to art and culture so it brought a much more much more diverse diverse audience into the space um but in terms of Engineers female Engineers there's still a huge lack of them

and I didn't realize that until you guys gave us the opportunity to give scholarships to women to join the cohort and we were like okay awesome like we have five ten or ten scholarships to give to women and we realize like there's actually very few female Engineers who are one interested and two who are qualified um we did have it people who are interested but they didn't know how to code so we couldn't really accept them um and so there's very few like it's it's really hard to find female Engineers who are qualified um and who want to do crypto um that's kind of a big challenge that we continue to be forced to meet and deal with every cohort um with the scholarships that you give

us and it's been a great thing because it's forced us to go outside of our networks and reach out to networks where there are female Engineers um and try to get and try to see if they are interested in doing the cohort and just try to reach a broader audience beyond what my my following um because it seems like most of my following is is male or female who don't know how to code yet yeah and I think the the the the funny thing is like the the people who do and that the female Engineers who do end up joining are actually very very capable um they're sometimes strong or as strong or stronger than the male so it's not like they're not capable it's just that sometimes

they they either don't have the resources to do something like this with scholarships help or they don't sometimes it's not it's just that they don't have the the they don't even they don't have they're almost intimidated to to do something like this and so some of our marketing efforts have to kind of show that like hey like you can do it too um and we we kind of encourage them to apply yeah is there something specific about crypto do you think that like stops women from you know applying the dab camp in general like female developers like wanting to work in the industry if I don't just don't feel like some of them don't don't feel like they're

qualified um even though they are so there's a little bit of an intimidation factor and this is just like a female thing sometimes where we have we're not like as confident as the men are about our skills um we can sometimes underestimate ourselves um and be a little bit more reserved or shy about our skills and we I think there's like a lot of studies that prove that like men will apply for a job even if they don't meet all the qualifications whereas women they they want to meet every single qualification before they apply so we have some of that a little bit of that Dynamic going on and secondly I think just the nature of a lot of like if you're there's not that

many women who are like mid-level senior Engineers to begin with because most people by the time they're in their late 20s right they might start families or they might have kids and so um there's just a lot less female to begin with in the market so there's kind of both factors playing into it and so our goal is never to I don't believe that we're going to have like equal 50 50 ratio and that's not our goal because it's not realistic like women and men like you know they just play different roles in society and sometimes women don't want to be engineers but our goal is at least like for the women who are Engineers to give them access um

and how do we reach them how do we how do we find them as kind of our goal um each cohort and we're slowly trying to discover different networks where these women exists and um and and trying to get to them as as as efficiently as possible cool uh well let's do one last question before we wrap up because I was like asking I think Marie antelita was like oh we should ask PT and like both to mentioned like one question which is not a question that I expected but it was like how do you stay up to date with all that's going on in the crypto industry yeah I think everyone has their own way um personally I don't find that I like I

will listen to podcasts but it's more just like to pass time than to truly learn it's kind of like passing knowledge um passive knowledge I mean um the best way I learn is by reading and um and so for me the way I keep up with things is if I'll have friends or or Twitter whenever the interesting whenever like some of the big blog posts drop I'll read those um and I'll just read stuff that like people I I trust or that I like their writing um I read their writing so that's how I keep up with things it's I like to read other people like to use podcasts as a way to keep up with things that's

totally a fair way it's just that for me I know I get distracted easily and like I'm listening but I'm half listening because I'm doing five other things while listening to a podcast so it's not really the best way to learn from me and I can't sit there and just like listen to a podcast and take notes like that just it doesn't work as well it's just like reading um in terms of what sources how I find the sources mostly I don't really read like mainstream sources like coin Market coin gecko or whatever like all these like different platforms that exist that proliferate nodes it's mostly individuals that I follow that I like and that I trust I read their newsletters and everyone will be different like who you resonate with who's writing you resonate with will be

different from mine so um you know just go down the rabbit hole and find people that you whose writings you really like um and read that and and just and follow their writing cool well thanks so much Petey uh thanks for coming on taking the time and thanks for all the cool work you're doing with staff Camp I'm excited to see you know where it goes and you know all the all the new developers that are gonna come into the industry and and also of course to follow along and see where where your journey will take you next I'm sure you'll go on to do lots of lots more cool things in in crypto and Beyond yeah thank you awesome thanks Ryan so yeah thanks again for a listener for

tuning in uh if you want to support the show uh leave us an iTunes review share the podcast or let us know on Twitter what you think and of course we'll put links to you know the things pretty mentioned or newsletter dab Camp Etc in the show notes and yeah thanks so much for tuning in and we look forward to being back next week