Episodes

This week, I interviewed serial entrepreneur Nigel Eccles. Known for his role as co-founder and former CEO of FanDuel , Nigel shares his incredible journey of launching and scaling multiple ventures, including his latest projects BetHog and BetDex . Nigel dives into the pivotal moments that defined his career, lessons learned from raising over $450 million in venture funding, and his insights into the evolving landscapes of crypto, Web3, and gaming. Nigel’s candid reflections on timing, co-found...

This episode features an introduction to the 12 founding teams that form the Techstars Web3 accelerator class of 2024, with each of their founder/CEOs giving you a quick look inside what they're building.

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.

Paul Smyth joins me as guest co-host this week, and he is a specialist executive recruiter and executive coach within the fintech industry.  As a founder of two startups, Paul has a unique view on the startup ecosystem.

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.

Lou Kerner is the founder of the Crypto Oracle Collective, a decentralized web3 advisory firm, and also the DAO for Crypto Mondays, which is the largest crypto meetup in the world with active chapters in 54 cities.

My discussion with Somi Arian is a deep dive into the entrepreneur's dilemma of solving problems vs. fulfilling desires, customer discovery, product building and pivots, all baked into a live startup mentoring session. This episode was originally recorded as an episode of the Somi Arian Podcast.

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.

Eva Lawrence is the Head of EMEA for Figment, the leading provider of blockchain infrastructure, providing staking solutions for institutions.

Asad J. Malik is an augmented reality pioneer and the founder and CEO of Jadu, a next-gen multiplayer augmented reality fighting game for your phone launching this month.  In Jadu, players can settle or start rivalries with friends or compete against strangers for fame and glory in this combat game from the future.

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.

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.