hey everyone this is Cena with another episode of into the bite code my guest today is Colin Armstrong the founder of paragraph a web three publishing platform so in this conversation we talk about business models for social networks and content more broadly we talk about the sometimes difficult choice of building for a more narrow Niche Crypton native audience or building for a broader more General audience we talk about using emails or wallets for identity and the deeper ramifications of this choice and we talk about what Collins learned about building a company his algorithm for finding product Market fit what he learned from five years of working at Google and more and with that I'll leave you to it and I hope you enjoy because I feel like these business models Define the trajectories that these companies go down right and then thinking about the web 3 Alternatives the business models also have a huge impact like what's happening with substat because they're they're also kind of changing how they're approaching things versus the beginning which was just that we serve the we serve the writers they have a Subs they have subscriptions and we take a cut of those yeah I think I think at the beginning they were as you described right it's like okay email newsletters you know hosted on our on our platform we help you uh you know reach re reach your audience I think over time they' realized that the the value is not necessarily in the tooling they provide but it's in the network that they're building I think by definition like email newsletters there's not really a network there anyone can export their email newsletter subscriber base and import it into a competitor very easily so uh I I think they realized this that the values in building this kind of network uh which is why they gradually over the past several years started to go in the direction of okay let's launch uh like substack forums right or like let's launch substack chat where we're getting a bunch of this communication that's happening uh which the Creator can not export and take elsewhere like you you you just cannot do this it exists on the substack platform um they're still giving control to the Creator though I mean you can still moderate you know as the Creator wishes and and what have you and there's not really any algorithms necessarily deciding uh you know surfacing some chat comments or whatever but but like it still was moving in the direction of kind of a closed network not this sort of open ecosystem and then I think this really solidified with the um with uh substack uh the the Twitter competitor that came out with notes right uh which is when Twitter and X well X rather started uh you know handicapping some of the the growth of of you know substack link shared on that and by that point I mean like now nothing's exportable you know in terms of all this conversation and engagement that's going on and they're really trying to build kind of this this closed network uh so I mean I think over time they realized I mean I don't have sort of insight into what they realize necessarily but I mean one can speculate that potentially the business model that they were trying to trying to pursue on top of this paid subscription uh you know paid subscription audience to consumer or audience to create or rather um you know what wasn't necessarily effective or as effective as they as they wanted and then they they believ they could just capture create more value as a result of you know heading more into kind of this network Centric approach right and maybe maybe there's a case that they can make both to themselves and to the writer is that you know by building these Network oriented features by letting you communicate more casually with your audience and with the audience of others newsletters like we're we're helping you kind of bring more people into the fold into your community but it also kind of conveniently helps them build a network effect and emote in this like proprietary data set that makes them more defensible as a business exactly yeah yeah so how okay so how do you how do you think about this then that's like the natural next question about about like the substock business model or about the this about about building an alternative to that that has a different logic to it yeah so you know we're we're trying to take the approach that the relationship and the content and the monetization levers uh should ideally be owned by the Creator or at the very least interoperable in a way such that uh the Creator would be able to move off platform with ease right like we would never be able to to put a stop to the the content that's being created on the product because it's stored on a permissionless system right it's stored on our weave or uh you know another example is the network effects rather than building kind of these closed Network effects uh we're integrated very deeply with farcaster and farcaster permissionless protocol anyone can use various clients to to build their own social graph uh you know it's not controlled by any one individual so we're very much taking the approach that a lot of these kind of core things which matter to creators content creation right distribution and monetization uh relationships with your audience Etc uh should not be owned by any sort of single platform or single company or single entity but rather uh building you know built on top of these permissionless protocols that uh can continue operating indefinitely and are not subject to any sort of uh you know Central decision maker yeah I mean that that's that's a very compelling value proposition from the perspective of a Creator right like if I think about yeah building an audience on and and and when you're operating as a Creator it's uh you know uh Tweeting or you know posting on X isn't just like a casual thing that you're doing like the rest of us are doing it's actually your business and your livelihood and you're thinking of it as like how do I build defensibility how does it scale like how do I acquire new new readers you know all all these sorts of things like You're approaching it in a much more serious way and doing that on a platform where you don't have a direct relationship with this audience and where there's a kind of algorithmic feed intermediating you and you know other levers that can be pulled that kind of just disconnect you from this audience that you've worked very hard to build versus this world where all the work you're doing like it's all of those relationships are solid and robust and you have access to them at each moment in time and you can choose to go talk connect with those same group of people using a different Channel that's like a huge night and day difference from the perspective of the Creator um so that that part makes a lot of sense to me but how how do you kind of like do where does it go from the perspective of these businesses themselves and you know I know that the answer to some extent is that we don't know right these are these are open questions where we're we are figuring out what protocol Centric business models look like or what you know business models products on top of these protocols can have but I I'm curious how how not even you know maybe speaking from the perspective of paragraph and like what you're committed to doing or anything like that but just how do you think about the space of business models and and the tradeoffs that there that they would be making from the perspective of a product Builder and um and where where they would lead over time like do you have any kind of scratch pads work in progress thoughts to share on on this area so I have like a handful of uh you know just unconnected thoughts here so I I think there's a broad space of business models in in crypto and web 3 I think there's you know there there's a bunch right I think there's like token based models and like even within kind of token based models there's a large Spectrum right like there's a new and emerging as of like several months ago tipping model right with dgen and some of these other uh you know tipping Centric tokens I think before that there was you know like tokens within the protocol trying to incentivize some positive some action uh you know try to just create and capture value at the same time Etc um I also think there's token based models when it comes to uh like nfts non-fungible tokens right so I think like take a look at Zora take a look at some of these other kind of nft centric platforms like that's effectively their entire business model right now uh you know their entire thing is okay let's let's have content that users can create let's have other people collect that content for uh you know for any number of reasons potentially speculation potentially patronage you know potentially supporting the Creator um Etc and like that that that's the business model right take a small rake um I also think there's and and the Tipping model just to flesh that out a bit more what's the Tipping model yeah so um I think at least my first experience with it I I don't know if it goes beyond my first experience but uh several months ago probably six months ago now at at this point uh on farcaster uh there was this you know new and emerging token called dgen which uh someone launched and they wanted to reward users for creating content on farcaster uh and then they wanted other users that themsel have created quality content on farcaster to do the rewarding so if I'm on foraster uh you know I'm creating good content someone else really enjoys the content that I'm creating they're able to uh distribute some level of cryptocurrency to me uh but I think the notable thing here is like the cryptocur that is being distributed to me does not actually come from the individual it comes from this kind of Center uh pool right then and you get some type of daily allowance based on the quality content that you produced right in terms of Engagement metrics and and other things like that um so I think there's a handful of other you know tipping protocols and tipping models that kind of came out you know after that uh enjoy from from seed Club is another one but you know I think the the core thing is it's like a it's a way to distribute a token it's like a token distribution method um and it's like tied closely kind of built in natively into uh you know enjoy version built into Zora and potentially other products in the future but D gen's built into uh into farcaster and it's permissionless protocol so anyone could build these kind of new and economic models into it it's it's really cool to think of that in the context of something like paragraph because you I mean it it kind of like fits it fits perfectly it it's a diff it's a different it's a different uh axes for like deciding how to distribute value right it it won't necessarily go to the most uh you know the the newsletters with the most number of viewers or the most number of you know it's like as judged by you know a dis distributed peer group who themselves have been judged to have created value and it's this kind of like round based almost like page rank like mechanism that's like propagating and and it's distributed right so it doesn't need to reach consensus like each each edge of it can kind of like Go in different directions and and reward different types of creators that are completely disjointed from each other yeah absolutely I think it's you know as soon as it came out I'm very active on forecasters so from a personal standpoint I was like wow this is very cool uh but from like a business model and paragraph standpoint like I I do think it's it's extremely interesting interesting um I think like I I I think a lot about how you know the main ways to make money on you know with traditional media in general uh pay Walling content is one right you need to gate content you know maybe gate your best posts or gate some section of a post or or what have you um you know that's basically substacks primary way of or rather substack Creator's primary way of making money uh there's also sponsorships like once you achieve a certain level of scale uh you know either on a podcast or long form content or what have you you know just get people to sponsor get companies to sponsor your content and it's sort of relevant for for for uh for your readers and lastly there's like ads so I think you know that that I I I don't necessarily think ads often incentivize the right things I think at that point it kind of gets a little bit more into uh what we were saying earlier about you want to sort of evoke people to to go into your content just so you know you get paid per click or what have you so how how would you distinguish between sponsorships and ads um I mean sponsorships I don't necessarily think are are based per click I I guess it depends like there there's like based on your subscriber list based on your engagement or whatever uh you know there could be sort of an upfront payment from a sponsor to be like featured over some some sort of fixed period in time so I think like by definition the fact that they're not paying for clicks they're not paying for views I think it's a little more conducive to relevant and and sort of higher quality content um versus ads I mean I think the traditional methods are like pay-per-click pay-per-view um but so going to the first one I think like the primary way to make money on substack pay wall content right I think by definition that that reduces reach and and distribution if you create a phenomenal piece of work uh you know phenomenal piece of content ideally you would get that in front of as many people as possible because you you produce something of substantial value right um I I just find it interesting that there's like a tension between you know if you want to make money like you can't do that because you need to pay wall content because you you you want to reduce the reach because you want people to to purchase it right so I I've thought deeply about like how can we maximize distribution and reach how can we tap into forecaster tap into you know our weave storage and then have all these other clients built on top of it you know maximizing distribution how can we have like built-in referral programs you know into the product to sort of incentivize people to share and then like monetize at the edge node like no matter if a user is Reading in farcaster you know on the frame or reading an interface uh you know in a different different client built on top of R weave like how can they monetize at that point right or reading in coin based wallet you know by xmt um so I think like tipping could be one mechanism in doing so where you monetize kind of at the edge node but you're not sacrificing reach you're not sacrificing distribution uh the the form of monetization we have right now is is the nft based so collectible content where if you you know really like someone's post you and you want to um you know support the Creator maybe you want to speculate on it maybe you want to signal that you're early to the post maybe you want to show off some level of status because you know it's a Creator you really adore then you're able to uh to collect the post as an nft so that that also happens at the edge node you can do so you know no matter where the clients are right now uh like the nft it's the IRC 721 spec like it's you know anyone could build on top of it anyone could extend it like you're not going to get rug pulled in doing so so kind of goes back to the sort of vision that we have of building on top of these these protocols so it's like the the core thing is there's also this interesting parallel between doing this as a Creator versus say thinking about social social networking companies right where there's this like with with Facebook it's like you they they when they were first getting started you don't want to you don't want to put any sort of a friction on a new new user participating in the network you don't want the user themselves to pay for this and this is why you go to the advertising model which keeps it free for the user and uses something you know a third party to to like fund a business model um and here I feel like we're making a different move which is that we're we're decoupling from the content itself like the content layer remains open and free and then we're kind of building this parallel economic layer that maybe Maps one to one to you know it it it doesn't it doesn't have to math one to one to you consumed a piece of content and you pay x amount for it it just has much more expressiveness in that maybe maybe the reader wants to tip the writer maybe they want to collect the nft and because because it's not tied to the actual consumption of the content it's like happening at this smart contract level the the interfaces where they're meeting each other on the content layer can also be completely different and the economic layer like connection still the economic lay connection is fixed right it doesn't matter if you're reading it on interface or warcast or paragraph like it's the same address on both sides that's going to interact yeah I I think I think that's absolutely it I think like the the you know again the three kind of pillars which I find very interesting and which matter to to creators uh there's like creating content and storing that content somewhere uh Distributing that content getting in front of as many people as possible and then this new economic layer is discussed like what what kind of new and emerging uh you know economic tools can we implement or can we allow for others to implement uh such that you know this content no matter where it's stored and no matter where it's distributed can can be compensated accordingly hopefully without sacrificing this distribution and reach just like kind of the traditional unlike the traditional kind of pay wall content method yeah and so okay so let's talk about the nftd method a bit more um what is that can you can you describe that concretely like how how would it work in the in the context of paragraph like let's say I'm I'm an author on paragraph yeah so you're you're an author on paragraph like maybe you came from substack um you know maybe you came from one of these other these other platforms maybe you don't have a very large audience okay so you come on a paragraph you create a post uh you that post and then we give you the option of turning that post into a non-fungible token into an nft uh you can also optionally specify the cost and the supply and a few other things which aren't aren't the most necessarily relevant to this kind of illustrative example so after doing so like that that would effectively tie the post one to one to this kind of onchain representation of the post uh so the benefit of an nft like it's ownable it's tradable there could be liquid liquidity built around it uh it could be extended by other developers there could be kind of Novel use cases built on top of it you could use it across the ecosystem uh Etc so after turning the post into this token uh someone else maybe a reader who absolutely loved your work maybe they followed you a lot on substack and then followed you to to paragraph uh they could come on and then they would be able to collect this and then own this and then add it to their collection um and then in doing so it would be effectively sending you some level of of tip right so I think there's numerous reasons as to why people would collect content I think there's you know could be utility maybe that would Grant you access into a membership uh you know if it's collecting like a hypers sub nft um there's patronage you know you just really adore the Creator you want to support them in you know in sort of a more meaningful way than just liking their content uh giving them a like on on Twitter Facebook uh I think there's like the creativity and kind of individuality I mean you want to express your tastes and your your culture and your interests uh through this kind of footprint that you begin acre on chain uh I think Financial upside is one that's that's large and sort of undeniable in crypto I mean I think speculation uh either in the form of you know referral fees where if you're the first mentor and then you have a thousand other people that me after uh you'd be getting paid for that you know built into the the system or just like secondary you know the nft appreciates in value uh Etc like status historical significance I think there's like numerous reason why but if someone comes on and then experiences one of these and then collects this piece of content I like you'd be getting paid in in doing so and then they would be receiving something in return they'd be receiving ownership of this kind of onchain representation of of this idea that you came up with and that you published online so we've had a lot of people migrate from some of these other you know the these web tube products and then they they've made zero dollars and then they have a handful of people that begin collecting their content uh and then they just start making money and then it's like wow I I made zero dollars on on some of these other platforms I have no desire to paywall content um and then I migrate over and like you can take advantage of the distribution take advantage of the the forecaster Network effects and then take advantage of this this economic layer that we're we're building and exploring so I think we really want to try to get users to This Magic Moment kind of as quickly as possible into the bite code is sponsored by privy one of the biggest problems we're grappling with as Builders working on crypto enabled applications is how to make the right tradeoffs between user experience on the one hand and security and privacy on the other hand how do we promote self-c custody and ownership while letting the application shine rather than the crypto behind it so privy plays an important role here they provide simple onboarding so anyone can connect to your app easily by allowing them to sign in with an existing wallet or by making it easy for you to provision a new self- custodial wallet for them linking to social logins like gole gole Twitter or Discord I personally have faith and privy because of the team Henry Stern who's one of the co-founders was previously on an episode of this podcast so you can listen to that conversation for more of a deep dive and he and his partner AA Lee have been thinking about data privacy and security for a long long time and you can see this in the level of thought they're putting into the product so if you're working on a new product and thinking about how to reach a wider group of users without compromising on either user experience or privacy and security then I encourage you to check out privy at privy.com each individual piece almost like as an artist would think about like their latest piece that they're putting out and it has some degree of you know um supply and demand and some way that it ties into a grander Arc of the people who buy this one become participants in something larger than that and uh what where where where do you think like where are you seeing interesting experiments on this on this Continuum and like what what would you do yourself if you were beginning to write seriously on paragraph So I I think we've seen a lot of interesting experiments uh we've seen people represent each post as an entry into a raffle and then the raffle they eventually rewarded like they the uh they like Drew Drew a ticket and like each collecting post was sort of a a ticket that they got um so sort of an onchain raffle ticket I thought was pretty interesting we've seen like storytelling and fiction also be the case where somebody you know they published a book a physical book uh they came to paragraph and then started publishing each post as a new chapter in that book and then each post was focused on a character and then they minted the character as an nft so people would be able to kind of collect their favorite characters I think they had sort of a longer term vision of tying this into some type of of game where you'd be able to collect the character and then make use of it sort of in other uh you know other mechanisms so I think there's been a spectrum of of interesting use cases I think the most common and where we've seen the most success with creators is uh like an open addition and free so Unlimited Supply and it's just free so people would be able to come and then collect it if they wanted to support you um and they'd be able to kind of own some of their favorite content of yours but uh I think it's sort of a larger ask for the Creator to then go do something sort of more substantial I think the creators often just want to just create content and then put put it out there um so I think we've seen the most success with with those right well because as a Creator if you want to do subscriptions you are kind of you are making this more serious commitment right of like I'm going to do this consistently over a period of time and try to create value for you if you're doing sponsorships you're making it another form of like serious commitment to to these people who are working with you that I'm going to help you kind of move towards your business goals and I feel like there's there there's probably you know the the most successful versions of this will probably be taken seriously in their in their own way right like what would it what would it mean for a writer to really take seriously the idea that they're doing collectible nfts as a part of their writing process yeah I think like I I I think we've had writers that have migrated over and then they they maybe have been monetizing using sort of a regular paid subscription model uh but Their audience just starts collecting their nfts sort of as a an additional way to show support I I think the paid subscription model in general it um it has sort of a ceiling upon which your biggest fans cannot support you more than what like the highest subscription could charge right I think like nfts and some of these other kind of new and emerging cryptoeconomic models like kind of flip that on on its side and then there could be substantial value that that can be given to sort of your biggest fans in a way to differentiate them from others either in terms of status or in terms of actual physical benefits um and like you as a Creator would be able to capture a lot more value from these people who absolutely adore every single piece of content that you're that you're putting out um so I mean I think like kind of finding more of these ways and maybe even building some of these ways in a paragraph to incentivize more people to um incentivizing both creators to like provide more value in the form of status and some other things but incentivizing readers to also uh you know be able to collect and own things and kind of put them on display maybe show show them sort of a little more socially um Etc I feel like would be would be a great kind of next step to have some of these creators start taking a little more seriously like there's a way as as a reader I can also play a part in this and that I can I can actually more intentionally show the nfds that I'm collecting you know talk about them like put them on my website rather than have them be hidden on my wallet where no one ever sees them right I mean I think there's there's entire companies built around this like Gallery I think is basically doing exactly that right you can showcase this Gallery integrated with mirror you can have like this bookshelf as well so like I I think like purpose built for writing nfts yeah exactly so you'd be able to Showcase some of your top things that you love then and that you adore of do you think the right do you think the right way to categorize this is like writing you know art music is that the right way to think about this or is that like a is that a bit of a like a 20 IQ version of thinking about the type of content we consume I I think it's a good way to start but I I I think at the end of the day like they're all they're all like I I would say music and writing is art as well like I I think they're all kind of more similar than what people cut them out to be um I think like the actual functionality of the underlying nft would maybe be like a little different with a music nft maybe you could play it directly from your wallet uh you'd be able to read paragraph nfts directly from your wallet so like from a functional standpoint I think they're a little different but from like kind of a a an abstract standpoint like I I think they should be a little more united uh in my opinion and I think there should be sort of more experiences built on top of it that would allow you to Showcase your art or your content in general and like whatever that means to you would be um you know would be up to the Creator like not just sort of right visual this is this is media that I've appreciated personally yeah and you could maybe sort it by price and there's a writing nft I got for a dollar and there's a piece of art I bought for $10,000 yeah and you can sort them chronologically you could sort them based on the type of media it is but ultimately they're all just media that I've kind of connected with and resonated with on the internet exactly yeah um another like weird question that I'm curious how you think about it is I was reading you know one of vitalik's recent blog posts um where he talks about um two forces that have injected a lot more chaos and variant into the world and those forces are social networks and markets you know which I think intuitively I would agree with that right like a world with X and a world with you know markets and assets both of them are just like more chaos than before and I think about you know how the two of them come together and how the positive sides or the the kind of easy to see sides first order effects of um content that has that's also an asset and has value Associated to it is that we can have these more expressive economic relationships between reader and writer um but are there like what what are the second order effects of say yeah markets speculation ups and downs you know coming into the world of media in a way that they haven't been in the past like do where where do you think this goes because this to me feels like the analog to to how you know with with social networks initially we were like we're all going to get connected with each other and it's going to be awesome and then they become these attention economies there's a similar thing here where I feel like basically the internet as a whole is going to start looking more like crypto Twitter where the prices are going up and down and everyone's like losing their mind over everything yeah I mean I I do think think in the distant future I think it could Trend in some sort of negative Direction with like social networks and markets kind of being combined in sort of a negative way I think um I mean I imagine at some point like I I think we see a lot of uh new and emerging um like social profile trading card games emerging on farcaster um there's one called scoop that launched recently there I think there's a bunch so from like a mental health standpoint like if your card was very up at some point but then you know it it really started crashing and then you maybe you were relying on that to to live in the future relying on the income from this trading card um you know I don't know I'm kind of speculating on on what would happen but I definitely do think that that there could be a future where there there there would be some sort of unforeseeable or potentially sort of distant second order effects that would be strictly yeah I guess I guess we just have to move forward with eyes open and and see and you know see see what's happening and um because I feel like we do we do we do play a role in how these Technologies play out you know it's not pre-ordained it's kind of fth dependent yeah I do think like a lot of like I I think the Tipping meta is a good example of something that I don't think people have really um thought of as sort of a a prominent or as successful kind of token allocation method until D gen came out and then it kind of took a lot of people myself included by by surprise and I think like the actual you know you have to comment and reply to someone's cast in order to distribute the tip and like that act of doing so also gives more sort of attention to this new methodology and other people see you commenting and say like oh what's this so I you know I think my point is I think that was like pretty unexpected so I imagine there's going to be you know new methods of this economic layer that we're discussing new me you know new method of distribution new methods of you know these Market forces that that come out which we haven't really thought of before that kind of catch people by you know by uh by surprise so I mean I think it's like moving forward with kind of our eyes open I think is a a good idea here yeah um so I've heard you describe how you're building paragraph As a web 2.5 company right and you're intentionally kind of building it in a way that you know non- crypto people can use it both as writers and readers um what you know what are some of the trade-offs you've had to make to do that um is it you know has it been straightforward from a product point of view or are there are there kind of decisions you've had to make to make it possible yeah so there I think there are definitely trade-offs I think like speaking more generally you know I think the approach that a Founder takes who's working in crypto I I think there's like two common approaches the first is okay let's target the crypto natives uh you know the average revenue per user in crypto Sky High like let's target the marketing let's target the go to market let's target the the wording you know only to Target that kind of these these Niche users uh the other bucket is like a little more so as you described in kind of what I think is sort of the longer term right approach where you know let's try to like there's kind of this cliche like let's onboard the next billion users right like let's let's get more and more crypto in the hand of users and sort of show them uh you know all this awesome stuff that that it it enables um so I think like any founder like often well not any but like most Founders I think kind of pursue one of these two paths I I think the successful Founders like you you ultimately want to capture a niche a small Niche first uh you want to build something that solves a major problem for users in this Niche uh and then it should be small enough such that people of consider it a toy right like consider it just laughably small that that you kind of capture this Niche and then before you know it like you're going to be expanding in concentric circles and then you have product Market fit and then you're you're kind of unseating incumbents so I think that's generally the right approach so what we've kind of been doing at paragraph has been focused a little bit more historically on the Crypton native users um reason why is because it's easier like we don't have to build in wallet abstraction from day one we can say hey connect your wallet like you need crypto to purchase this nft like we're not going to you know we're not going to cover gas for you just yet it's just it's just easier to build uh and building for kind of this small Niche group of users in particular like building on on on top of farcaster for these sort of farcaster long form content creators uh allows us to iterate very quickly because we get substantial feedback we you know we could navigate the IDE Maze We can ship something if people don't use it we could kind of kill it immediately but my kind of longer term um you know pathway is to work a little bit more towards the like onboarding more and more users to crypto I think a lot of what we are building right now can benefit uh traditional media and can benefit traditional creators that don't know you know know nor care about crypto um I just think it's going to take us a little bit to actually get to a point where we are providing sort of an alra compelling value prop for you know a top sub stacker who is maybe anti- crypto to migrate over uh because they see sort of all the all the benefits of the composability of the network effects within forecaster of everything we've kind of been doing so you know I think it's kind of a a pathway a little bit more towards this kind of web 2.5 approach but some like kind of notable design decisions that we've taken from the start you know I I wanted to support email and wallet login from the start uh I wanted to support emails for readers as well I wanted people to subscribe with emails there's a lot of these web 3 kind of Crypton native distribution methods uh which I just don't think have much adoption right now uh so I really wanted an easy way for users to like export from one of the competitors export their email list import them into paragraph and kind of hit the ground running within minutes um so I mean I guess one to answer your question from like a product standpoint like it's been a little challenging kind of having two methods of identity that we somehow need to tie together and like you can tie a wallet to an email account but then like say you disconnect your wallet and then you connect another wallet to it like what do we do like maybe you have nfts that belong to that wallet like do we still tie them to your email so like it it that has actually introduced a little bit more um this like wallet versus email is almost like the perfect symbolic representation of this divide of like do you go crypto native or do you go for like everyone yeah and trying to do both of them and seeing all the ways that they kind of like mismatch and don't fit nicely it's it's it's tough It's been like a little tough kind of navigating this I think you know recent developments in kind of the crypto identity space uh smart wallets like from coinbase wallet we're we're actively integrating right now I think like privy Dynamic and some of these other kind of abstraction layer um you know identity providers I think solve some of it I don't think they solve all of it necessarily uh I don't think there's ever going to be a world where we like only support wallets necessarily because I I always do want people to migrate from the other platforms over and like until substack is wallet only like people are going to have have emails that that they need to import so we need to provision accounts for these readers like let them manage their subscription and like they're not going to have wallets necessarily tied to it so I I don't see this kind of dichotomy between wallet and email at least from a paragraph product standpoint going away um but we certainly have started moving a little bit more in the direction of like okay can we what can we do to kind of abstract away crypto a little bit more and like make it easier for the the kind of users that we target to get value right like one easy way is like right now you know if someone has a post uh that they turned into an nft and they minted it on base uh right now you need eth on base to Mint if you had ethon optimism or like polygon like you just cannot do that right like we say hey go go Bridge yourself uh we could do the bridging for you right like we could let you choose any any crypto any year C20 to uh to do that so that's like that's getting in the direction of beginning to abstract away some of the kind of detailed sort of pain points which would benefit like the crypto native crowd uh but in the future you know if and when we want to start targeting some of these more you know crypto uh you know crypto tangential or like crypto unfamiliar users uh we'd be set up from an infrastructure point to to do that maybe talking about this email versus wallet point a bit more there's also an interesting way in which they map to that thing we were talking about earlier where email is for the content layer the wallet is for the economic layer and you kind of like need the wallet to do all of these cool things we've been talking about to do tipping to do nfts like without the wallet you're just like a you know a web two platform um so in an in an Ideal World maybe slightly putting aside where the infrastructure is today even though like you're saying it's improved a lot like in an Ideal World if you could wave a iic wand and we're living in this world um what um what does the combination of email plus wallet slash identity from the perspective of a user look like like I'm on the internet today I go to sign up for a paragraph newsletter and I know that I want to Minch things and like engage with this with this writer in economic ways what what does my sense of my internet identity look like as a user so I like I kind of like the direction that smart wallets with with coinbase wallet have gone in I think you can sign up I mean when we launch this like on on paragraph you'd be able to to click a few buttons provision a wallet the wallet's tied to your pass key most people have pass Keys tied to iCloud um I have like one password I basically have all my passwords in there um so I mean like we'd be able to you know you'd be able to provision like some type of identity kind of uh um not layer but like identity info no matter if it's a wallet no matter if it's an email or what have you and it would be kind of tied to this sort of single single access point that you have either an iCloud or one password or whatever uh and then the value would acre to that coinbase smart wallet you know platforms like paragraph would be able to integrate with it directly uh you log in a paragraph just by again clicking a few things and it logs into the smart wallet and then you'd be able to see very clearly kind of this this platform specific um you know layer on top of your smartw where it says like hey you have you know X mints available or or something and we kind of abstract it a little bit more than what what happens right now um I think that would be at least from a personal standpoint that would solve problems for me like I I use you know I have a bunch of different wallets both hot and cold I have uh a lot of passwords in the password manager um you know preferably pass Keys wherever but like it's a little bit of a pain if I don't have enough crypto on like one and I got to transfer it and and all this other stuff and and preferably you know part of this kind of hypothetical world is like there'd be no need to care about what chains things are on necessarily like you'd be able to just click a few buttons and then just the value that you have not like a specific ERC token but the value that's in your wallet would be able to to get bridged to whatever the Creator decides they want to get paid out in uh and if that value is Fiat then like so be it you'd be able to enter a credit card uh you know pull out maybe it's connected via plaid to your bank account or whatever and then um you know just click a couple buttons and then seamlessly gets kind of transferred to uh to the Creator so that's kind of haven't thought too deeply about it but like I would like to see that's like the Contours of it yeah that that's like a rough kind of in my mind a rough outline of of what would be so the so pass keys are like the kind of like Key Management layer and the fact that we have iCloud and all the browsers integrated with it is this like huge unlock which means that as a user I can just kind of like that's all abstracted away from me no more extensions no more uh pneumonics all that stuff's like abstracted away I have it on my iCloud I know that there's like this this file that's like very important and that I need to keep secure and that's like the root of trust for all of my online identity and security stuff and then the the kind of smart wallet and other identity things are built off of that and help kind of simplify the user experience of me getting crypto moving it across different chains like abstracting all of that away from me potentially and then when I when I off into a specific website like paragraph then I can kind of see how many mints I have for what authors things like that yeah that would be that would be kind of my rough outline of uh of a a great direction to go in we're pretty close to that right I would say so I think the smart wallet stuff I think is is great I'm a big fan I um I think that was a great great step forward I think pasy adoption also is a great step forward I don't think years ago like certainly I I'm a tech ear adopter I have I have not been using Pas Keys like until somewhat recently so I do think there's been a bunch of steps forward I think it was I iOS 17 or something like one of the the recent iOS versions also added it natively so you know I think there's I I think we're we're getting way closer for sure so is the move then to complete stop thinking about it as a crypto native thing and just go all in on making it usable for the everyday internet person are you talking because why not are you talking about paragraph or about the yeah anyone paragraph but also crypto products more broadly so I I think it depends on the The Journey that you're on as a Founder like going back to kind of my recommended approach that Founders and myself take like own this Niche expand in concentric circles after that and then once you have a very compelling reason and you know how to sell to some of these non-crypto natives then at that point start going after it if we launched paragraph two years ago uh well we launched two and a half years ago but if we launched it two years ago and we did not mention anything about crypto we abstracted it all away and we like immediately started trying to get the substack users they would like look at the platform as it existed and like scoff they'd be like oh I can't do any of this stuff that I can on substack why would I ever use you guys so I I don't think the answer is always like let's abstract this away like let's make it as good as Pro you know as possible I think the question question Founders should be askings is like if I do this will it help solve a problem for the users that I'm targeting that I'm I'm solving for right now um if the answer is no and like you know I I just think it's wasted effort and I think you only have as a Founder so many shots at goal uh so I you I think that's kind of the wrong direction to go in I I would I would love to you know couple years down the line once we do have this kind of ultra compelling reason for these traditional users traditional media to migrate over uh I think at that point it would be the right time to do so and and I would love to do this uh but in the meantime I would still love to do these things to solve problems for the users right now like the bridging that I mentioned like you shouldn't need base eth to Mint a base nft on on paragraph We should abstract that away I think Zora has done a great job uh you know in this direction yeah so it's it's not it's it's not only kind of Technology product decisions of this is what we can offer and how much we can abstract it to today it's also a kind of like go to market and like how coherent is your offering with the user base and what you know their their behaviors today exactly and like again kind of just to hammer the point home like if we had launched two years ago uh you know we abstracted away all the crypto we didn't mention anything about nfts or anything like that like I think the audience that we found the most success with which is these farcaster kind of early long form content creators they probably would not have used paragraph necessarily because they they would look at it and say like uh you know oh I want to turn my post into an nft but like they don't mention nfts on the product they call these right you can almost put off crypto people by being too Normy exactly exactly so I think you got to strike a balance depending on where where your product is depending on your go to market like what you just effectively said I think so so I think you could shoot yourself in the foot by like optimizing your marketing and go to market and Technology too early yeah how do you think about what you shared about the average revenue per user and how it's different between crypto and non- crypto I think there's there's more of a um a uh eagerness to spend I think in crypto I think if you told the average like Instagram non- crypto user that in order to like a post you got to pay $3 they're going to like scoff at you like they're going to they're going to be like why would I do this so but you tell that to you know an average user in Zoro they're going to be like yeah like I'll do this all day right so you I think like there could be numerous reasons as to why I think speculation is one like they think that money that they're investing investing now investing necessarily but uh will be worth more in the future or or what have you but there could also just be this kind of more like openness and willingness to to just exchange value more more value fluidity yeah exactly so I I I think that's because of that I think companies can capture more value as well and hence why the uh average revenue per us per user is a little high yeah like there there is a behavioral change as well in that we we do kind of spend more freely and I feel like this is this is maybe something that will that will kind of percolate more broadly into it's not only a crypto thing I think I think a lot of people have this like in the in the health and wellness world like friends I have who are deep in there like they just like buy all sorts of things just to like experiment you know like this new whatever it came out and I'm gonna spend like $150 to get it because because I'm curious you know it might also be an early adopter thing and I don't know it's important to tease a part which parts of this Curve will kind of extrapolate into a larger population and which parts won't yeah I think that's a good observation I think another kind of parallel observation in line with that is like mobile apps I think when mobile apps started becoming more prominent like I I was like you want me to pay $2 for this app like that's it's ridiculous but now I just buy apps left and right and buy game like you know games for your phone and stuff like that so there there's certainly I think that's it's now a a behavioral thing to just spend money on you know this this software that exists on your phone and that you know you use on occasion so so yeah I think you might be the I think that's that's a good observation like this could just be potentially these crypto users are sort of an early adopter uh maybe it would trend for everybody in that direction I do think that there's some level of speculation which like would also increase the you know the average revenue per user but then I guess like going back to your your uh the market and social sentiment over time like maybe that's also an early adopter thing like maybe the internet in general is going to become substantially more financialized and then there's going to be speculation everywhere and I think like poly Market becoming a lot more mainstream now is kind of one representation of that that we're actually starting to see uh you know bubbling Beyond crypto natives so yeah maybe maybe this is the direction that everyone's heading totally totally okay one one thing I wanted to ask you about was about building paragraphs so so far and you know earlier on we were talking about how you were three people until very recently and um and I'm curious you know how you would describe the journey so far and also what your what your kind of like algorithm for finding product Market fit has been you know what what do you think the right way to approach this is as you as you see it after your kind of Journey so I'll start with the the journey so far and then talk about the uh the algorithm for finding product Market fit so Journey so far has been fantastic um you I love I love what I'm doing it's been been phenomenal you know before they spent five years at Google uh worked in big Tech before that worked at coinbase for a little bit before that like Blackberry like I've worked kind of at a at a bunch of different places and I think this is my first time being a full-time founder uh you know it's been fantastic I think it's it's much more fulfilling to produce something like from your fingertips you know coding something and then kind of getting in the hands of users versus I think you have much you're much further away from your impact at larger companies like you can't actually tangibly see and talk to users of a lot of the products that you're working on so yeah Journey so far has been great I I've been you know deliberately as you mentioned we've been a team of three for like two years um all Engineers uh deliberately kept the team small reason why is because I think and this kind of actually touches on the algorithm for finding product Market fit I think your job as an early stage founder should be you know try a lot of different things uh navigate the idas in doing so just keep shipping code as quickly as possible and then getting that code in the hands of users talking to the talking to those users like seeing okay are they are we providing value for them are they using this like are they excited about this is this kind of changing sort of core metrics uh Etc and then if it is double down in that direction if it's not like I mean kind of analyze why it's not maybe the timing wasn't right maybe the technolog Is Not Great Etc but uh just kill it K kill the feature so I think it's much easier to do that with a smaller team than a larger team it's much easier to just have you know a ping on slack and then just tag the two people and be like hey guys we're now focusing on on XYZ or like hey I don't think this is working out let's do this but if you have like a you know designer and a marketing person and a bunch of other stuff it's much much harder to kind of do a full pivot or navigate the admas you know a little a little quicker it's more challenging um so just elaborating a little bit more on the algorithm for finding product Market fit so I I talked a little bit about this earlier but I think like really try to go after this this laughably small Market um which I think it was in the words of christic and like it looks like a toy right like people are going to look at it and kind of scoff at what you're building in kind of this this very small market and then just prove that you can build some valuable that's much better than kind of the incumbents are are catering here like typically I think small markets have um some Niche that are it's it's not fully catered by the incumbents uh so like we took a look at substack and some of the other competitors people who are doing this as their full-time job and pay well in content they have a team of writers I think they're having a lot of success on these platforms but 98% of users in substack they're making zero dollars they just want to use the product to maximize reach and distribution so you know we're thinking like okay maybe we can build a product kind of for those users but only those users who are in crypto on foraster First and you know that allows you to iterate very quickly it allows you to talk to them very frequently it allows you to get sort of a very good understanding of uh are you building in the right direction to kind of solve for this this kind of Niche group of users and then after doing so like begin expanding in concentric circles right move Beyond foraster like move Beyond uh you know people that that are sort of act very active and kind of vocal in the crypto ecosystem um I think we've done a good job of getting people who have not written long form content before like on a paragraph and then just started writing right maybe they hit like the character limit on on warp cast and they saw like everyone was using paragraph So they they uh they registered and used us um but just begin expanding in concentric circles after that and at every stage you're going to be running into different uh you know things you need to navigate in order to get to product Market fit I think we did a lot quicker ideation and maneuvering at the very earlier stages but now that we have a lot more users we kind of need to be a little bit more deliberate in terms of what we ship uh before I was happy shipping like half broken features and kind of doing things that that don't scale now we're getting to the point where like it's a little tougher to do that like still given kind of the small team um and if we ship a half broken feature like immediately it's going to get used by a bunch of people and that's just not like that that that's not great in terms of user satisfaction so we we need to be a little bit more careful um given that we we've grown a little B bit but I still do think it's the same principled approach in terms of iterating very quickly always having sort of a sense of urgency sense of focus uh trying a lot of different things seeing are we providing value for for creators and uh you know rinsing and repeating as you as you grow into the bite code is sponsored by optimism the optimism Collective is building the open-source modular software project known as the op stack which allows developers to run layer 2 blockchains while also addressing key governance and economic challenges in The Wider ecosystem optimism is also leading decentralized grants experiments like retroactive public goods funding which recently granted 10 million op to projects across developer tooling infrastructure and education more recently they had a major Milestone by adding coinbase's blockchain base to also be governed by optimism governance and also contribute a portion of their sequencer revenues back to the collective I've known the optimism team for many years and know that they're dedicated to both scaling ethereum and extending its ability to build better economic structures so if you're interested in learning more whether you want to build something new or you want to apply for grant funding then I encourage you to check out optimism at optimism. in terms of in terms of kind of shipping iteratively and with Focus like if I if I think of like two like uh two kind of unit vectors or two axes that that can happen on one is speed like how fast are you moving and one is um how correctly you're oriented right if it's in the right direction and like speed in the right direction is velocity which is the thing you actually want to optimize for and when you say that as you've grown you have to be kind of more care more thoughtful about thinking about what you're shipping to me it feels like you have to sacrifice a bit on speed in order to like Orient more carefully um do you think there's like a Paro optimal way to approach that because I think we each of us have our own biases right like some people want to kind of think and plan more and you know measure twice cut once and some people want to just like YOLO ship it action produces information and you you you'll never know as much if you're sitting in inside your own walls like thinking about what's going on than if you contact reality um how do you think about that like very fundamental tradeoff that happens on a day-to-day basis yeah so yeah you're you're absolutely correct like the the two axes in my mind which is exactly what you describe but just in different words uh urgency and focus so urgency just the speed at which you ship and focus like are you in the right direction right like are you focus focus on the right thing so and like I've tried to instill that in my team as well like like these are the two most important things by far um I definitely think when you're in the earlier stages it's it's important to have a hypothesis and it's important to have sort of a semblance of focus in the sense that like you know I knew there was an opportunity for improved distribution I knew the current economic models for creators could be improved I didn't know exactly what it looked like yet I just knew that I I was not being served by the current solution right when I when I Tred to sign up and and try to use the product so I think in the earlier stages at that point good to have a semblance of focus but urgency is substantially more important try a lot of different things just ship all these Integrations see see what happens uh you know just get get code out there at this point because because your model just hasn't been tuned at all you don't really know what you actually want to do exactly the the orientation that you have it's not narrow it's very broad you're thinking at least for me I was like okay monetization distribution I think there's opportunities here but like I I did not have a very clear idea of uh at least what I can articulate right now in terms of the value that we're providing so because it's such a sort of broad uh direction that I was heading I think the most important thing to do is like narrow that direction and how do you narrow it to get closer to like product Market fit you do that by trying all this different stuff within this direction and seeing what works and what doesn't work uh so at the earlier stage is important to to do that I think over time the um you know the line goes a little bit more towards uh towards Focus I think as you kind of trial these different experiments you know preferably during this time you're growing preferably during this time you have you know a much better idea of what experiments are failing and and succeeding uh so like naturally you're going to want to double down on the things that are successful and kind of kill the things that are are not and in doing so I think you're uh you know the shipping velocity may be like a little lower I don't think it's a good idea to ever go to too far towards focus and not urgency I think you even as a large company like I I really think you should always be shipping like I I I'm not a fan of kind of the like the the stale like slow kind of incumbents that are just massive bureaucracies and and all that I I think I think that's terrible I I would never want to become that um I think there should always be sort of a desire to ship but I do think over time as you sort of have a larger user base you're you're not able to ship kind of at the lower quality that you did before and like maybe at the start you don't have testing Frameworks in place you don't have a designer you don't have design infrastructure you don't have all this other stuff so naturally layering on some of this other stuff uh hopefully your quality of what you ship would increase but your your shipping you know speed and pace of what you ship would would likely go down yeah that that makes a lot of sense to me um what did you learn learned from working at Google for five years both both lessons on what to do and what not to do um so it was a very good I I love my time at Google it it was fantastic like just to to start off with that I really liked what I was working on I had a great manager I had a great team um you know it was great I from like an infrastructure and code standpoint like it was it was phenomenal I I think Google they've been coding for like a decade right like they they have a lot of really good Engineers that have built phenomenal infrastructure so it was trivial to deploy something and immediately have it used by a massive amount of compute power uh which like then I started working on paragraph and like it's really tough to work on infrastructure that's not sort of at Google scale um so in doing so I also got to see uh you know how how things were done well I think it was very valuable to get this kind of both like a 30,000 foot perspective but also like directly working on some of these large scale systems to kind of see how things were done well uh also from like a team and kind of uh like managerial standpoint like also seeing how they did like performance reviews how they did a bunch of other stuff so I started as an IC but then became a manager uh and was manager for like a year and a half two years before I quit um that was very valuable I don't think that translates all of this does not translate directly into being a Founder like I think there's Ma you know massive amount more bureaucracy uh at Google because they have a massive amount of people but it was very valuable regardless to get this kind of insight it was also very valuable to contrast this with my experience working at smaller companies like I was at coinbase 2015 uh worked at a couple other startups as well so I I think it it was great getting kind of this broad spectrum of um of experience the bureaucracy and the uh like politics and a bunch of other kind of non- Tech like non- infra not coding stuff um I wasn't a big fan of I I don't think they necessarily incentivize the right things in terms of promotion like for helping people get promoted I think if you work on like flash year and kind of larger visibility projects uh that would help you get promoted not necessarily the right things for the company as a whole um so those were a couple things that I wasn't do do you have a set of kind of like organized ational design or management principles that you're you know it's it's probably too early in many ways to you know obviously build a whole system in paragraph but do you have a set of principles that you kind of like believe in and you think will be the the the value system of the organization as you're building it um I have a handful nothing's been formalized I I would say like not this isn't like written down necessarily but just things that I thought I was doing well at Google and I think my manager were doing well um so I'm kind of just going to go off the cuff here but I think like transparency is valuable like I try you know as the founder to be very transparent if we're fundraising if we're you know just in general I think it it was very valuable for me when I was at Google for my managers to be transparent and I really like to get kind of an overview of what everyone was working on direction of the company and all of that so I also try to be transparent um uh from like kind of a a more practical thing like you know weekly one-on On's just check in with everyone how H H you know H how everything is working um all that I think it's too early in my opinion for like at Google we did like quarterly okrs and uh you know bubbled up into companywide okrs and stuff like that I just think we we like I I I was thinking about doing this at the start but the pace at which we moved and like the the knowledge that we gained quarter after quarter would mean the okrs you put 3 months ago were were completely irrelevant at that point so I think like no early stage company in my opinion um would have very much success doing that what we do have success with is uh kind of like broader arching like vision and and strategy and kind of like working towards these like I've talked a lot about like urgency and focus are the two most important kind of not Vision or strategy but just companywide things that I really want everyone to be focused on uh and like from a vision and strategy perspective like distribution monetization I think two things that I I like really try to nail in um you know to everybody the direction to go in uh lastly I'm just going to say like communication I think is is important the team's full remote right now at Google during the pandemic we were also uh fully remote for a little bit so I think really air on the side of overcommunication and I'm a big fan of writing stuff down so big documentation culture uh heavy usage of like notion linear you know obviously slack but you know very much try to encourage kind of overcommunication there so that's kind of yeah just kind of off the cuff a handful of things that are sort of not formalized but I try to manifest yeah totally makes sense maybe a last question is I I feel like I I've gotten the sense that you're really kind of enjoying this process like you're you're having fun building why is it so much fun for you why why do you think that is I I've I uh um I've wanted to like I I've worked on I I I've always I think had an in in innate drive to uh to create I have been interested in like tradition the intersection between traditional media and technology for a while I I was like you I was contributing ater to Tech publication a decade ago um but I I really much very much enjoy creating like products uh specifically coding like coding you know software products and then seeing how people use it like I I just get substantial enjoyment out of that um it's just something extremely fulfilling to solve a problem for people uh to see what you're using in the hands of of users and they're they're very much enjoying it and it's like kind of another level if they start making a living off of it and like you're able to kind of provide through your your Creations that you conceived of and that you put into into code and then put into put into product um is just something entirely different so I get I get a massive amount of enjoyment out of that I also think as a Founder you know I I have a lot of freedom as well like if I wake up one day and then we want to you know I I I like when far foraster didn't exist when I when I started working on paragraph like it was only after I started working on it that that foraster came out so I saw I I worked with Dan Brun at coinbase 2015 but I saw what they're doing and then one day I was like wow I'm just going to build all this cool stuff on top of foraster and like as a as a Founder like you can just do that you can go in that direction so it's just it's very freeing the the level of kind of flexibility and the freedom that you get which like I certainly did not get at uh you know working in in other companies um yeah I think those are kind of the main the the first things that come to mind uh I I think it's I also just really enjoy like working with smart people and like I can hire smart people myself and uh you know really enjoy chatting with with users and yeah I what's not to like yeah you can you can kind of like yeah you can you can craft the environment that you're living and working in and choose the problems that you're you you care about and want to think about and then just make an impact in that direction and it's also very I I think enjoy you know in enjoyable for me to like navigate the ideas as well um there's like a massive amount of ambiguity when you start out and then progressively over time as we discussed it kind of gets a little narrower but I really enjoy having kind of like a clean slate and like thinking like wow this is just there's so much I can do here there's such a large surface area of cool stuff I can build within this this Clean Slate so it's just very exhilarating and very fun to me to to get this stuff shipped and and to kind of conceive of ideas and then discuss them and then kind of go in in these directions so it's yeah very very exhilarating I think well I think on that note we can close thank you so much great yeah thank you very much for having me on really enjoyed this conversation hey I have a small ask here if you've been listening to these conversations and want to support what we're doing here I would really appreciate if you leave a rating and a review for the podcast it might seem like a small thing but it actually makes a big difference to help other people discover the show also thank you and I'll see you again soon Back To Top