Web3 Episodes

Brian Zwerner is the President and Founder of W3 Studio, and a VC and Founder of Beyond the Game Network.  As the President and Founder of W3 Studio, a 501c3 non-profit venture studio, Brian and his team help diverse founders in Atlanta build startups in web3. W3 Studio partners with corporations and provides grants to startups to fund the launch of their first products.

Blockchain ecosystem advisor and researcher Simon Brown from Consensys joins me as guest co-host this week. Consensys is a leading blockchain and web3 software company whose products like MetaMask and Infura are well known to the blockchain and crypto community. Simon and I riffed on Spot Crypto ETFs, the Besu Outage and the creation of the PBS Foundation in the context of the over-centralization of crypto.

I’m joined this week by two of the wonderful people I met at the Solana Breakpoint conference in Amsterdam last month: Amira Valliani, the Head of Policy at the Solana Foundation, and Nick Ducoff, the Head of Institutional Growth at the Solana Foundation.

This week I’m joined by guest co-host Mai Santamaria, the Head of the Financial Advisory Unit for the Department of Finance in Ireland. Mai and I riff on where crypto exchange Binance goes from here after being fined $4.3bn, with co-founder and CEO Changpeng Zao stepping down.  We also look at the new crypto-friendly Argentinian president, Javier Milei, and what he might do with dollarization and crypto adoption, and then finish up with a mind-opening counterpoint on Ethereum co-founder Vitalk Buterin’s new manifesto.

This week’s episode is from a session Pete Townsend hosted with Alex Tapscott, author of ‘Web3: Charting the Internet's Next Economic and Cultural Frontier’ (Harper Collins). Alex and Pete were joined by venture investors Justin Swart from BITKRAFT Ventures and Sterling Campbell from Blockchain Capital.

Pete Townsend introduces an insightful line-up of entrepreneurs and investors who share their thoughts on web3. Opinions are gathered around what aspects they hope to see web3 founders solve - their web3 wishlist - focusing on topics such as user experience, digital identity, decentralized finance, AI, regulatory issues, and real-world applications.

Sean Lee is the senior advisor at the Crypto Council for Innovation, which is a global alliance of crypto industry leaders advocating for responsible and healthy regulations in the digital asset industry.

Arry Yu is a 23+ year emerging technology industry veteran, serial founder and strategic operator with expertise in scaling businesses from "zero to one" with a consistent track record building high-performing teams.

Joining Pete as guest co-host this week is Pet Berisha from Sporting Crypto, the number one Web3 Sports business exploring the intersection alongside 3000+ subscribers from the biggest sports and crypto brands in the world.

We’ve got a special crossover episode this week courtesy of our friends at the Irish VC podcast, with a big shout-out to Finn Hatherell for producing the initial episode on the Irish VC podcast channel over the summer.  The Irish VC podcast is produced by BVP, an Ireland-based venture capital firm founded in 2004 by Elliott Griffin.

After intersecting stories of meeting Vitalik Buterin and Bono, Pete Townsend and guest co-host Laura Walsh take a look at the recent SEC ruling in favor of Grayscale that many expect will open up the floodgates for the trillions of institutional capital currently on the sidelines of crypto.

Joining Pete this week are Liang Wu and Dan Herrera from Eleven26 Capital, an early-stage VC firm investing in diverse founders on the evolving Internet across web2 and web3. In this episode, we get into how Liang and Dan originally got together and stayed close through the years, their Evolving Internet thesis across web2 and web3, building a platform for investing through content creation and community into a flywheel, and a ‘so-what’ look at the intersection of web3 and AI.

We’ve been on a bit of a hiatus this summer, as we took a break to recharge after a few mad months, as sometimes, you need to go away for a while and dream it all up again.  In this episode we recorded on the Fourth of July, we pull the curtain off our upcoming plans, with a big announcement from longtime co-host Eoin Fitzgerald that brings him and Pete Townsend to a fork in the road with MoneyNeverSleeps. But before we get into all that, Eoin and Pete take a look back at Pete’s experience with the Techstars Web3 class of 2023 founders and their ‘distributed demo day’ at the end of June with 3 investor events across 3 cities in 2 countries in 5 days, and an epic journey in the spirit of  Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

Neal Peters is co-founder and CEO of JR Studio, a frictionless web3 gaming platform that gives game creators the superpowers to build, host, launch, manage, and grow their games and communities.

Federico Panisi is a co-founder and CEO of Loki.code, enabling simplified and intuitive co-creation of smart contracts with a collaborative web app for smart contract designers and developers.

Tatiana Botskina is the founder and CEO of Mintycode, a decentralized IP marketplace for software creators, bringing together software creators, software buyers, and software contributors. By building communities around software creators’ source code and enabling shared ownership, Mintycode helps software creators monetize their work and incentivize and reward contributors.

Terence Reilly is the co-founder and CEO of OLTA, a protocol for creators and studios to create dynamic media, pushing the boundaries from generative art into interactive art and story. OLTA brings this all to life through dynamic NFTs which enable collectors to determine the outcome of the artwork over time.

Javier Tamashiro is the co-founder and CEO of Ospree, a comprehensive anti-money laundering compliance solution for Virtual Asset Service Providers that seamlessly integrates customer onboarding, blockchain monitoring, and the Travel Rule.

Greg Hannam is the co-founder and CEO of Peerkat, a data analytics tool for marketers to help them understand their users, increase engagement and drive growth in their web3 strategies. In this episode, Greg chats with Pete Townsend about how his life experience drove him to the Peerkat vision, driving value for brands moving from web2 to web3, the evolution of non-fungible tokens (or NFTs) beyond profile pics, and a few life lessons along the way.

Howie Young is the founder and CEO of Protico, a universal chatting interface that enables web3 chat on apps in seconds for enterprises that want to migrate business and engage customers at the web3 level.

Deb Pratiher is the co-founder and CEO of Quest Labs, building infrastructure enabling organizations to leverage data in a privacy-preserving manner to unlock powerful user experiences.

Lee Gray is the co-founder and CEO of SonX, a community platform that allows superfans to subscribe to their favorite musicians via a monthly membership fee unlocking fan-only ticketing, exclusive audio content, and digital and physical collectibles.

Katerina Bohle Carbonell is the co-lead of TogetherCrew, one of the 12 founding teams forming the Techstars Web3 accelerator. Some web3 communities fall apart under pressure, others come together stronger. TogetherCrew exists to help build and grow communities by ensuring members and stakeholders create together.

This episode features a rundown of the 12 web3 founding teams that form the Techstars Web3 accelerator class of 2023, along with an intro to each of their CEOs.