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π CV Labs x Cardano Accelerator: Scaling & Building Cardano-Based Applications
Recorded: April 14, 2025 Duration: 1:07:18Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent AMA, industry leaders discussed the growth and opportunities within the Cardano ecosystem, emphasizing partnerships, grants, and the importance of supporting early-stage builders. With a focus on attracting professional investors and fostering innovation, the conversation highlighted the potential for flagship projects to emerge, driving further adoption and investment in Cardano.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.γθ¦θ΄γγγγ¨γγγγγΎγγ I'm going to go to the next video.γγγγΏγͺγγγ I'm sorry. I'm going to go to the next video. What I'm going to put a little bit of a knife in the middle.
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I'm going to put a knife in the middle.γγγγΏγͺγγγι³ζ₯½γγγγΏγͺγγγ I'm going to go to the next video.γγγγΏγͺγγγ Hello everyone.γγγγΏγͺγγγι³ζ₯½ Good evening, everyone. Huge pleasure to have you today.
Today's AMA is with the Cardano community and CV Labs as well, proudly presented by Nodu.
So here we're really excited to start off the space.
We have moderating the space Janice Aguilar,
Head of Acceleration Program at CVVC.
Mr. Shogo Esida, Co-CEO of Emergo Middle East and Africa.
Patrick Tobler, CEO and founder of EnMaker.
And also we will have Samis Bayan, who is the investor at Draper Dragon.
Janice, over to you.
Thank you so much, Samia, for the introduction.
And hello, everybody, and welcome from my side.
This is Janis speaking.
And yeah, great to meet you also.
As Samia mentioned, the Elite Acceleration Program at CVVC, but also the partner programs.
And for those of you who don't know us yet, so let me tell you a bit about CVVC.
So CVVC is an early-stage VC based out of ZOOC, Switzerland, and we're investing in
early-stage crypto.
We have three startups since 2019.
Now what sets us apart from other VCs is our ecosystem brand called CVLabs, hence also
the space hosted on the CVLabs account.
And through CVLabs we offer co-working spaces, events, and thought leadership reports.
So we started in Zug, Switzerland, and expanded across the globe.
So now we have locations in Lisbon, Berlin, Liechtenstein, London, and Cape Town.
And now the really exciting part that through our investment thesis, we've been invested through our own accelerator since 2019. And now with the support of the Cardano community, the Cardano Foundation,
we received a grant from Project Catalyst to bring our experience to the Cardano ecosystem
and to help accelerate Cardano native projects. So we're very excited about this and grateful
for the opportunity. If you want to learn more beforehand about the program, I think we pinned
the link with a quick intro video but also
a website with some detailed information so yeah definitely check it out but yeah enough about us
let's get into today's space so we got a light agenda um but we want to make this also as
interactive as possible so whenever you have questions just raise your hand and we try to
bring you up but um for the initial part of the space, we will have a brief
discussion with our amazing panelists.
And first of all, big thanks to you for joining us today.
And yeah, today's topic is all about how to support early stage
builders in the Cardano ecosystem.
And now I guess let's do a round of introductions.
Maybe we can start with you, Patrick, as you should pop up first in my list here.
Tell us a bit about what you're building and who you are.
Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Janis.
And yeah, I'm very glad to be here.
I'm Patrick.
I'm currently in Japan, so it's midnight for me, but I'm still very happy to be here.
And I have been building on Cardano for quite a while, actually.
I've been here for, I think think or I actually know exactly four years three days ago it was the
birthday of nmaker which is the company that I've been building and what nmaker does is we basically
are an infrastructure provider for tokenization and for minting and mostly for minting NFTs. So we are responsible for around like 25 or 30% of all NFTs and all tokens on
Cardano. And we are behind the scenes on a lot of projects.
Yes. And that's basically what I do.
All right. Thank you so much, Patrick.
And also Patrick dedicated some of his time over the next 10 weeks to,
to support some of the projects that will be joining our Acceleration Program.
So also, big thanks to you for that, Patrick.
And yeah, now next in the list, I see Shogo.
Shogo will join us, I suppose, from South Africa, right?
No, I am also actually in Japan today.
Well, we have a lot of other events coming up in Japan,
like, you know, TMS event, the Blockchain Expo,
and also Cardano specifically,
it hosts a lot of community events in the next, you know,
couple of weeks.
So then, although, like, you know, my, I'm based in Dubai, basically,
and of course, like, I'm, you know,
we're looking at, youlooking at the whole business activity,
and especially investment and installation and incubation in Africa.
But I need to spend more time with the Kamenap event in Japan.
So I guess Patrick is also in Tokyo.
I just arrived in Tokyo today.
And likewise, in the midnight, then I was speaking at a lot of events.
And also, like, you know, we have an expo in Osaka.
We've got a really good event in an expo next week.
So I'm sort of coming up and, you know, I'm just sharing, like,
partners with, you know, ministers and also the minister of of rebels i come from africa so it's very exciting um so for my introduction again
okay my name is show wish that people call me uh you know shagun and jagaban in nigeria a lot of
you know different names in african countries but uh you know myself i'm working you know as a you
know qce of the mogul minister in africa obviously, Immogos are one of the three founding members of Cardano.
And then, like I said, well, I'm responsible for the whole commercial activities in Africa
and the Middle East.
So basically, we set up like 100 million US dollars investment vehicle in 2021.
And since then, we have invested more than 85 companies. We actually like 20 plus
companies and we incubated the city project by ourselves. I usually spend a lot more time
in Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa, and of course, I'm currently working with the Saudi India Institution of Technology and many different places.
So it's a real pleasure to be here today. Thanks.
Brilliant. Thank you so much, Shogo.
And actually, I have to connect and also you, Patrick, to one of our colleagues,
because he's currently for, I think, for a couple of months in Tokyo and the region.
So you should definitely drop to some of those events that you're mentioning.
Brilliant. Now I see that Samis also just joined.
So thanks, Samis, for joining us here today.
Maybe for context, we're currently in a round of introductions.
And yeah, the ball over to you.
Hey, guys, thanks for having me.
Sorry, X was not letting me in my own account.
Happens a lot.
So sorry guys for being late.
Thanks for having me as well.
My name is Sumiz.
I'm with Draper Dragon.
We are a cross-border venture fund within the Draper Venture Network, primarily focusing
on digital assets, of course, pretty general all around ecosystem sectors.
And of course, super bullish on Cardano and excited to work with you guys on the accelerator and seeing Cardano ecosystem grow.
Brilliant. Thank you so much, Samis.
And also Samis is committed to join us to become a mentor for the upcoming programs.
Also, big thanks to you.
Amazing.
Before we proceed, Giannis,
just wanted to understand a bit more
about the Cardano Accelerator.
So could you tell us a bit more
and the prospective startups,
what is the accelerator
and also what's the deadline to apply?
Sure thing.
So maybe quickly,
I think most of the people here are aware
that in Catalyst Fund for the 13th,
the Cardano community decided to double down and, you know,
push the topic of acceleration programs.
Also the wider venture where some is joining from Draper to start their program,
I believe this week, and our program will start on May 19th.
So the big idea is to, you know, find talented founders with a visionary
idea and help them to grow scale within, but also outside of the Cardano ecosystem. So to do that,
we set up a 10-week hybrid program, which has an in-person component here in Zug, Switzerland,
which, of course, in the heart of CryptoValley is our home turf. We have a couple of objectives
that we want to achieve with the projects throughout this program. We want to help them first of all become investor ready. So this includes all of the,
let's call it, organizational stuff from a data room to structuring a fundraise to
reaching out to the right VCs. But we also want to help them to find their product market fit and
formulate a go-to-market strategy. And since, of course, we are not super technical,
we have a lot of partners on board who will help us to help the projects that join the work on
their product from the MVP to the actual product. And all of this will be done through these 10
weeks. Coming back to the application deadline, it's actually by the end of this week, but we
might extend it for a couple of days
since we do i would say larger activation this week through a couple of twitter spaces in in
the african continent so nevertheless if you if this is interesting for you let's fill out that
form asap again the link i think is pinned in the in the comment section so you can check it out there
in the comment section so you can check it out there.
Amazing.
Right.
Yeah, I think now let's maybe chat a bit with our amazing panelists.
So I think the introductions are through.
And yeah, Shogo, let's start with you.
So, you know, as a Morgo, of course, you are the main driver of the ecosystem growth of
driver of the ecosystem growth of the Cardano ecosystem, but of course you are also investors.
the Carano ecosystem, but of course, you are also investors.
So from your perspective, having accelerated, incubated and invested in so many startups,
specifically in the Cardano ecosystem, what do you believe are some of the challenges they face today
when they want to secure funding? Yeah, it's actually a big topic. Well,
you know, we've been pretty much like a in investment since 21 or 22, like other VCs
coming into Africa.
But obviously, when you take a look at the statistics, 23 and 24, the number actually
significantly are going down.
I mentioned two reasons why,
like the financial crisis after the collapse of the Citadel Gate
and the Silicon Valley banks.
And then obviously COVID and the Russian invasion into Ukraine,
they actually gave a lot of negative influence on the VC community, especially into the Ukraine, they actually get like a lot of, you know, like a negative influence in it on the, you know, the VC community, especially into, you know, the global South.
But when I'm talking about, you know, probably kind of biggest challenges for startups
to basically get conducted, kind of fundraising these days, well, I get probably like a sum
wise, maybe like a five or six points.
Basically, the fundraising landscape for,
especially like a web three space,
particularly in emerging markets like in Africa
is the undergoing like a profound shift.
So while the global capital has become like a more cautious
post-2022, the challenges especially acute in regions where structural limitations intersect
with involving investor expectations.
Based upon the recent trends, the most pressing challenges including mismatching between global capital expectations and the local realities.
The meaning is that many African startups struggle to secure funding
because they attempt to apply Western organizations, startups models
to fundamentally the different markets.
So these models often fail to reflect the continents, the purchasing power, industry maturity, cultural difference, and infrastructure limitations.
As a result, investors are increasingly skeptical of startups that pitch high-growth tech narratives without grounded operational viability.
without grounded operational viability.
Secondly, the erosions of trust
are following the first wave of failures.
From 2020 to 22,
a wave of high-profile African startups
attracted global funding,
like many of us reaching unicorns' status.
And then the subsequent years exposed the weakness and the post IPO underperformance.
When you take a look at the number of the Jumia, for example, or the SWVL, the business model fragility, for example, like a cheaper cash.
example, like a cheaper cash and, you know, they found the attrition. This has led to a crisis of
And, you know, the founder, the attrition.
confidence among the VCs, particularly those that are based outside of the continent, who are now
more the risk adverse and, you know, the required deeper proof of traction. The third point is the exit bottlenecks and series A freeze. Despite healthy
top-line growth in some sectors, the African ecosystem lacks sufficient exit pathways. The
backlog of mature startups awaiting acquisition or IPO cloaks the pipeline, which in turn slows a series A progression.
The city-state setups,
the finite increasingly had to move up the funding ladder,
especially in the so-called big four market,
where the saturation has become a concern.
I guess the, there are like over 80 African startups
that leads between series A to C from 2017 to 2021,
but have not exited or advanced significantly.
The fourth point is the founder's burnout
or the maybe so-called like an African fatigue. The both foreign is the founder's burnout or the maybe so-called African fatigue.
The both foreign and the local founders experiencing African fatigue,
many foreign entrepreneurs returned to their home countries after three to four years,
disillusioned by the complexity and the scale of the challenges.
Some American founders also,
the relocating themselves are gonna blow
driven by the operational fatigue
and maybe they're gonna better support ecosystem as well.
So many of them are gonna choose like the US or Delaware
or maybe Dubai or London.
I would say like that's, you know,
the ultimate way back,
but the ECs are now more cautious
about funders commitment and continuity,
particularly with expatriate, diaspora, red,
the benches, the local management benches.
So I guess you need to seriously display your commitment.
Then the fifth, the over-dependence of storytelling without reattraction.
Some startups have excelled at fundraising through compelling narratives
and that resonate with international investors' stereotypes
or a good way to out Africa.
However, when storytelling is in the back-to-product
of product market fit, operational depths
or scalable models, these ventures eventually falter,
which actually also are damaging investor confidence
like this region.
In fintech space, over 30 subs funded between 2021 to 23 failed
to reach even 100k active monthly users, despite multi million seed rounds. So investors now
demand verifiable metrics, which was not and it happened before maybe 21.
However, the request is pretty much much, much stricter than before. So then monthly active users, the revenue per user, and the burn to runaway ratio, not
just visionary decks or the photos of the rural usage, but you really need to prepare those numbers.
So having said so, well, probably the world works instead.
The most resilient and fundable web series startups today
are the deeply integrated into local supply chains
and the sectors with existing or existing the cash flows
and bridging of flying operations with tech layers tailored to user behaviors. Also creating
embedded finance models that allow for better ROA and the capital investment, other involvement.
and the sales party, a capital investment,
other involvement,
and finally built by the founders
who understand local systems.
And like I said,
I can commit it to the long-term value creation.
So I guess there are challenges,
but of course, having said so,
we could definitely overcome these challenges.
So that's my point.
All right.
Thank you so much, Hugo, for this thorough insight.
I guess you guys definitely know the market pretty well from being for such a long time there and investing for such a long time.
Now, Samis, you know both sides of the coin, right?
So you've been a founder yourself.
You participated in a project, even in the Cardano ecosystem.
And now on the other side of the table, grilling the founders at the interviews and, you know,
figuring out who gets the cash and who doesn't.
So maybe from your experience, right?
So what key factors do you guys specifically at RaperDragon
look into when you screen early stage blockchain projects?
I think this is super relevant for not just for us,
but also I think for all the participants here to understand.
Yeah, definitely. And no, I'd break it down in two stages. So the pre-seed where it's more of
an idea of viability and the founder strength, and then obviously there's seed where we're looking
for early product traction, clear route to market, you know, what have they done for X amount of
years building, how's the team's chemistry, stuff like that. So pre-seed challenges a lot of the
time, it's a lot of the concept over proof.
So, you know, at the PC stage, we're often evaluating ideas and prototypes and MVPs.
And the challenge is really showing that there's a real market need and that blockchain usage is more than just using blockchain as the buzzword.
Because there's a lot of times they might not entirely need to use blockchain or don't even have an idea of what the blockchain is, but they kind of throw it in there.
And this is for a lot of the inbounds, like if we get and new people kind of coming in.
But overall, really just want to see how is the blockchain tech being utilized and reading through the white papers and prototype demos.
Does it make sense to connect the dots from what they pitched us to what's actually written in the documents?
And of course, team credibility.
I think one of the biggest things we focus on
is the team and founders.
So if the founders, technical expertise, backgrounds,
they have a board, they have a strength
of a lot of different people in their team and network,
we value that a lot.
And I think team is probably one of the most important things,
even solo founders.
If it's a solo founder looking to build a great team, but him himself is very strong and, you know, technically expert within what he's
building. That's super bullish for me. And I never think having a big team or small team. I think
I started off as a solo founder and built from there. And I think it really doesn't matter if
you have one person grinding it in the pre-seed, but you know you're going to need obviously a few more, and then you'll get that eventually. Another issue that slowly is getting better here in the US
and all around now, but regulatory side. So of course, unclear how the token is going to play
the role and stuff like that. But thankfully, I think now we're getting towards the route where
it's not that big of a concern yet. I think it's still somewhat just keep in mind, know what the KYC, AML laws are, wherever
you're deploying.
But just having an understanding of the regulatory side, because that is one question I've heard
many times asked when I was in the startup stage of raising to still now we ask that
question on the regulatory side.
How do you guys see XYZ could take place where you're building?
And another one is the fundraising use and kind of the clarity of that.
So having that budget on, let's say, technical development, legal setup, initial marketing,
clearly qualifying what the capital needs will be used for and how you end up using it
in a very clear roadmap structure to understand that this is from A to Z, how it's going to
be done and focused on, I think is really strong too. Because even if it doesn't go entirely as planned,
you know exactly how it's going to go. Of course, markets adapt, stuff happens and you have to kind
of shift the plan. But knowing and being able to trust the founder that you already looked at,
that can tailor and adapt this model and also have a good roadmap of how they're going to start inputting the capital, that's super strong. And lastly, it is pre-seed. So early traction,
and if we see some early traction signals, some early use cases and everything, even if there is
no traction, but it's a really strong founding team idea and clear roadmap, those signals to me
are potential network effects to
get this adoption within whatever blockchain they're building on, especially on Cardano.
If they really utilize the tech within Cardano and it makes a lot of sense and why they're using
Cardano, that's super bullish. And I know, you know, it's a really good signal. Then on the
seed side, you know, this side, maybe a little more traction, a little more mature, three or
four team members. This is where we kind of see the product validation so instead of the concept over
proof now it's more of a validation of okay uh we we expect more than just the vision maybe an nvp
um that's even more built out or functional prototype that maybe is a pre-alpha that is
closed for some people to use but something that demonstrates real world viability,
that's key. Because obviously we always hear this, but the goal is mass adoption in the future and
get everyone on board, even institutional level on board. So is this product going to be validated
by the institutional level, consumer level, B2B, B2C, where does it really make sense?
And having that proof of early market demand or pilot
partnerships help us kind of gauge and signal where this will be at. And these are hard commitment
partnerships or in LOIs or within the past, like, oh, we're talking to these guys to partner. It's
more so we're going to secure these people with this agreement or we already have them on board.
And being proactive as well on
the regulatory side and having all the jurisdictions set down, everything you know that you need to do
and have these milestones within the next 6, 12, 18, 24 months of traction milestones,
revenue milestones, and overall just having a strong business model that is sticky and not
something that's, you can say, oh, these guys are
doing it and they're doing it even cheaper. So why would, you know, is your business model like this?
Something to have a sticky business model that benefits the community and benefits the project
to get some more revenue in and keep it sustainable in the long run, I think is really important.
well I think this was some very very valuable insights so take note there and
Well, I think this was some very, very valuable insights. So take note there.
I love that you mentioned the founders composition you know for this sort of
founder team technical non-technical so this is actually discussion we also have
quite a lot in internal in the team when we look at deals and Patrick remind me
were you actually a solo founder did you start and maker by yourself or were you
in a team no I was actually in a team so um i founded nmaker
originally with my friend from high school his name is fahim and he's a designer so we basically
just said one day while i was writing my thesis actually in university i said okay let's do this
in like a weekend because i was getting bored of writing the thesis
and he was like interested in NFTs and stuff.
And then we built it
and it took more than a weekend to be honest,
but we've still built it, released it
and realized, okay, people like it
and said, okay, we're going to stick with it.
And then more and more people came on board
and we decided at some point
to found a company in Switzerland, of course, as you know.
And actually, the founders of the company are slightly different than the founders of the actual project, I would say,
because Fahim still played a big role, but there were also a few more people like Christian and Anne-Christine, our CFO and COO who came in.
So it was a whole team and i think it really helps
if you have a team to be honest because you know i'm good at certain things and i'm very bad at
other things and i just need someone who's uh you know like the opposite in a way yeah i'm pretty
sure because also in the growth stage right and you need at one point you need to distribute us
you can't do it all yourself but but you will then make correction at that time you know early days of the cardano ecosystem when
there was actually not so much support around you know i'm talking accelerators i'm talking
pitching competitions and so forth now you know um with samiz and this wider venture and us we
were trying now to bring you know sort of more investor professionalism to the space, you know, in terms of acceleration, the programs and bringing strategic partners.
So how do you believe, also thinking a bit about your early days, right?
So how do you believe this can help Cardano founders and how they can benefit from all of this?
I think it's mega important, actually, that VCs and investors look a little bit more into Cardano because
Cardano is a really interesting ecosystem from my perspective like a very like
undoubtedly there's some of the best technical founders in all of all the
crypto startups in Cardano 100% because Cardano also has a very high like area
barrier to entry right so it's very you have to be very technical to start a start a startup there
and all the startups in cardano are kind of at the same stage they're all kind of in this like
weird position where they don't have any money but they have a community they have a little bit
of a running product and they just need more advice more, more money to really grow and become, you know, like,
big in comparison to other like cross chain companies. So like, as a VC, I would say it's
a huge chance because I can tell you, like 20 startups in Cardano that could become really big
immediately. And, and I was very surprised that it took so long, to be honest, for more
professional investors to come to Cardano.
But we're finally seeing it with you guys, but also with Draper University.
And more and more is happening.
So it's really cool.
And it's a really positive sign, I think.
Yeah, I 100% agree when you mentioned, you know, the technical founders are strong.
They are.
We saw that when we were judging for the Battle of the builders when we were screening over 100 projects so we were really surprised
even though you know we lived door-on-door with the cardano foundation and we saw a lot of cardano
projects beforehand we we were surprised how good the founders were so this is actually also our
wake-up call to be a bit more active in the space right and um yeah yeah, so maybe coming back to you, Shogo,
so I think Patrick mentioned just now,
you know, about the great tech that CF
and IOHK is building and all the upgrades
and all that stuff.
So do you believe that accelerators
can help startups navigate these technical advancements
and help them, you know, enable them,
or let's say enable them to build future-proof, scalable applications on top of this?
Oh, yeah, sure, definitely.
Cardano is all about technology and, you know, what is really missing is
and how actually, you know, the global accelerators,
and to try to, you know, help the, you know the the global accelerators and it's trying to
you know help the you know navigate a little more you know the founder and the startup and
to connect and with you know the card on technology itself um so then um it's it's it's really um the
um harris it's it's it's really good actually again a lot of opportunity for the 40 or the
setups in africa
to me this you know particular opportunity to meet like in the cv labs and you know kind of
the next later um we we emogamed this in africa is actually like one of the lps in it for the you
know um the the cv labs um and then well i i've been personally working together with like you
know um the many years and we you know the guys from like cvvc and with like, you know, the many years and with the, you know, the guys from like CVBC and CVLabs, you know,
we shared, I guess we had a good time in Davos
with the, you know, materials
and a lot of guys, I guess, from the CVBC.
And of course, you know,
with all other like a countdown related, you know, entities.
But this particular, the countdown accelerators
is a uniquely positioned to help the early studies
startup and because that's the very,
get the expertise and it would buy the CBBC
and the CBLOPS and just strive in fast moving,
technically sophisticated ecosystem like in Cardano.
Of course Cardano has actually given like a lot lot of difficulty for the DApps, the founders,
and the builders, because of its complicated language.
However, well, Cardano's infrastructure, so currently working on the layer two solutions
and easier version of the developer friendly know, the developer friendly, you know
the smart contract language, like an icon.
So you could have like a more, kind of easy access
and to the, you know, the building, you know, POC
or MVV and Cardano.
So we've got, you know, the, it's which the, you know
the building culture
or maybe like I call it on
as in the building infrastructure,
now you can actually utilize it.
So then it will be a really great opportunity.
So I guess I can actually act as the translator
and the guide to having the startups,
especially like an understanding
which parts of the tech stack
and can fit their product vision.
The incorporating best practice around the Cardano,
the smart contracts and model,
like the extended UTXO, like Prooteris and Niken.
And also access documentation, Testnet.
And also the technical development ecosystem contract.
So the one of the actually really good thing
you can for Cardano is when you go to like,
any kind of like a Cardano documentation,
the storage, it's the bunch of technology
and a bunch of documentation,
which has like a full of knowledge.
And then like, which mostly are
going to open to everyone.
So then it's really great for the young engineers and the entrepreneurs who touch the knowledge.
And I really encourage on that.
And also, maybe I had a couple of points.
The mentorship for blockchain and the Cardano experts, of course, you've got a couple of points. The mentorship for the blockchain and the Cardano experts,
and of course, you've got a lot of mentors,
and including the experts from our organization as well.
So CBLAB, like, so that I connected founders
to a global network of the blockchain engineers
and Cardano architectures,
Cardinal Architectures,
other architects, and the serial entrepreneurs,
and, you know,
the serial entrepreneurs.
Was invited,
like,
a couple of times
to the CVVCs,
you know,
Demo Day
and there was a night
in, like,
Switzerland.
But you could actually have,
like,
a lot of,
you know,
great opportunities
to meet the great VCs
from all over the world.
And that is,
you know,
the probably kind of biggest, you know, the probably kind of biggest,
you know, the benefit that you can definitely enjoy
to be part of this, you know, the great, you know,
accelerator program.
So hopefully you will definitely enjoy it.
And also maybe an investment readiness
and a strategic positioning could be like another point
that I want to mention.
Web3 founders often struggle with the aligning their narrative
with that VCs actually look for
and demonstrating a scalability in a way that makes sense
to both crypto-native and institutional investors.
The accelerators that fill this gap,
especially by preparing startups
with VC-friendly pitch materials and metrics,
the coaching them to articulate how their product
and how their project,
the level edges and cardinals long-term differentiation,
such as like an on-chain governance,
or refi, or the energy efficiency,
all those kinds of things.
So then, like I said, like a CVLabs and a CVVC
has given like in a such kind of the unit services
and for many years, so they get expertized.
So then it's really great
for the CVVC
actually leading this particular project
on behalf of the startups
and connecting with the Cardano ecosystem.
Yeah, thank you so much,
I think that summarizes it quite well
and also from a CVVC
investment thesis point of view
since early days
our take was always on the
ecosystem that we want to invest in startups that are able to get an option and scale adequately.
So, you know, bottom line, we want them to be still there in five years. So, you know,
like things such meme coins and so forth, which is not bad for ecosystem. They have their views,
right? But this is not what our thesis is about. And I think also we will drive this narrative for the Cardano program.
And in terms of what you mentioned, you know, scalability and these kind of things,
I think we tried, you know, to build our program around certain milestones
that make founders accomplish these things.
You know, we want them to follow a structured program to achieve this milestone,
you know, what is first needed, what is secondly needed, et cetera, et cetera, to give them a achieve this milestone, you know, what is first
needed, what's secondly needed, et cetera, et cetera, to give them a sort of guidance, you know,
because often when you're, when you're starting your startup, you know, there's just a million
things that you have to do and you should do, but then there's another million things that have
priority. So we try to be, you know, the coach on the sidelines there and help them with a bit of
advice, like what is the next step and how to reach it now staying at the
scalability topic patrick right so what do you believe are best practice for building a scalable
web3 solution i mean nmaker right you you started four years ago as you mentioned and now you pretty
much are one of the largest startups in the in the cardano ecosystem so how do you believe
it is possible to achieve that and secondly also also, how can accelerators help for that?
That's a very good question and very tricky to answer
because there's so many different directions
that you can go.
I think it was really interesting for us in the early days
because we completely got overrun, right?
I think your connection is probably not stable at the moment, Patrick.
It's not a normal startup problem that you have thousands of people coming at the exact same
second when an nft drop is basically happening and then also bodding you and all this kind of
stuff so all the traffic that you typically get over the whole day we got in like one second so
we don't have to build scalable like from a technical perspective for a longer period but
we have to build it scalable for like i don't know
five minutes of the day basically which is crazy and um and we learned a lot from a technical
perspective we had to learn a lot it was very tricky but i think um the the number one
thing that i learned from this was that you know you you can always fuck up but you have to just have really
good support and really good communication that's the most important part right and actually the
first person we ever hired at endmaker was phil who was doing our support and he's still with us
today and he was the best hire ever because he was just there in the critical moments talking to
everyone answering everyone's questions when something maybe didn't go wrong didn't go right or so and and that's really helped us and i think
that's the that's what you need you need to have good support and good support mechanisms and a lot
of startups don't have any support or any support mechanisms and i would argue that um you know you
can also do a lot of stuff like just writing good documentation, which for us as like an infrastructure provider, of course, is very important.
And then you reduce the need for support in a way.
And the more stuff you build like that, the more documentation you have, the more tutorials you have and so on, the less you need to have an actual physical person doing the work.
And then you can actually start scaling up more.
So yeah, that's kind of one of the lessons at least I learned.
And there's many more that I could talk about,
but I think that's the one.
Yeah, I mean, I agree.
Specifically in your case, you know,
when you have a consumer-facing product and you have a platform, right?
And also in an ecosystem.
And let's say the
cardano ecosystem can be quite brutal sometimes so you know um there it's quite important that
you know that you keep communication clear and you know when fuck ups happen which happen all
the time that you have the right troubleshooting so yeah great story patrick um coming back to you
samis um as a cardano builder and investor, you've been bullish in the
Cardano tech quite early on right? So from an investor's point of view, what unique value
propositions or let's say technical differentiators do you look for in Cardano-based startups compared
to other startups building and other L1s? And how do these factors influence your conviction
when backing these startups
and finally then pulling the trigger to invest?
Is there some insights you could share?
Definitely.
I mean, I have been extremely bullish,
obviously, on the eUTXO model
that Cardano's have in the UTXO in general.
I was very bullish when hearing that,
okay, the Bitcoin ecosystem and the Bitcoin building has a similar UTXO in general. I was very bullish when hearing that, okay, the Bitcoin ecosystem and the Bitcoin building
has a similar UTXO model, but Cardano has been doing this in a much faster way.
Let's merge this two together, tap into the trillion dollar value and also the technological
output of Cardano.
So I look a lot in how they utilize the UTXO and what they're building.
I think Sam is just disconnected.
I will just invite you again.
The speaker may pull you up.
I thought it was me.
No, no.
I think he just disconnected, but he's back in sent him the
speaker requests and
but in the meantime until some is back up a quick few words about the deadline
so again mentioned for our program deadline is end of the week but we will
probably extend it till Wednesday next week because some folks might be busy over Easter and so yeah it's a it's quite a short decision making process
as well so as you know the the program starts on May 19th so you will probably hear if you apply
now by the end of this week or early next week what how the application is going we're actually
already since last week
taking plenty of interviews on a daily basis so so yeah don't miss out on this if this sounds
interesting to you now i see some is dropped again um maybe we can ask another question to
you patrick if uh if that works so at the moment you know know, specifically for you, when you went through your Endmaker journey, what were the funding opportunities that you had at your disposal?
We know Catalyst is a big one.
We know Emuru is quite involved.
Is there some other allies that you tried, or could you give us some overview there?
And right at this moment patrick dropped as well
yeah i should be okay hello can you guys hear me okay so then we can maybe uh come back to
your question first samis uh sorry i think there's some technical issues with x today so yeah maybe
maybe come back to you yeah don't worry not today. This is probably every space I've been on for the past like two years, probably like a year and a half doing spaces.
X has never had a smooth space given that they're moving on to payments and doing all this go to Mars.
But we can't fix a Twitter space.
I don't know what Elon's doing, but sorry about that.
Hopefully I don't rug out again. But anyways, what I focus on within the card, I know, I guess, technical side and why I
really like it is first layered architecture that it has, you know, the separates the value
transfer from computation, obviously dividing it to operations with the settlement layer
for ADA transactions and then the computation layer for smart contracts.
So it doesn't congest, stays strong and fast.
And building on top of Bitcoin's UTXO model
that a lot of people are bullish on
in the Bitcoin FI space.
And so are we.
We've been looking a lot in the Bitcoin ecosystem
in the Bitcoin FI space,
but the UTXO model that Bitcoin has
is really strong and we love.
But what Cardano has is another step above the UTXO model,
which is the eUTXO model, which I'm sure everyone knows.
And that's just additional metadata and determinism and, you know, supports this parallel transaction output and more predictable smart contract execution.
So not only does that, you know, improve our throughput, but minimize risk of conflicts during any type of operation might be doing. And this is super beneficial for strong DeFi, RWA, even D-PIN projects on Cardano that have this heavy transaction loads on and
off puts, whatever may be. They have this model to make sure congestion doesn't happen. Like
we've seen in Solano, high gas fees, we've seen in Ethereum. And a lot of the negatives of
different blockchains that we see,
maybe that's where, you know, Cardano really shines on low gas fees, fast outputs, and really
strong consensus mechanisms to be able to have this all functioning and running. And of course,
you know, the scalability that we really want to focus on with being able to utilize the Bitcoin
ecosystem now with the EU to XO model and having this bridge
over that, you know, we've seen a lot of projects start doing. And big shout out to like Maestro.
Maestro started off in the Cardano ecosystem and really did amazing and, you know, brought a lot
of developer infrastructure to Cardano. And now they're doing the same thing on the Bitcoin
ecosystem. And this is a great leeway for new projects who also want to get to the Bitcoin ecosystem,
but also tap into, you know, both liquidity pools, utilize Cardano, but maybe go into
Bitcoin as well.
There's two, you know, really close connectors.
And I think if we know one thing from this cycle so far, Bitcoin is king.
And, you know, a lot of different chains and blockchains have been hit.
Bitcoin relative has stayed up pretty well.
And even Cardano is staying up pretty strong.
Ethereum got hit really hard.
Solana got hit really hard.
They're kind of back at the lows that we've seen.
But Cardano is still staying strong above the 50 cent mark.
And Bitcoin is staying strong around that 80, 75 mark.
But regardless of the price, the fact is that the utility and the aspects of the
Bitcoin security and Cardano's UTXO model is super strong. And having some good sharing of on and
off-chain compute, of course, not entirely off-chain. Obviously, having some off-chain is
still strong and great, but having a good mix and you know leaning on the security of what you're
building on cardano but having some outputs or whatever it may be to speed things up off chain
is super strong so um in general to put in a nutshell the youth excel framework is something
i'm super bullish on yeah brilliant and i agree this is a golden opportunity right with this
crossover to bitcoin and and this brings me now to a segue to the previous question that I directed to you, Patrick, because, you know, there's a lot of investors that invest into Bitcoin-only projects, right?
Be it, you know, just hedge funds, but there is also VCs that look into projects building on top of Bitcoin or anything that has to do with Bitcoin.
that has to do with Bitcoin.
And I think, you know, that opens up, of course, also new funding opportunities.
And I think, you know, that opens up, of course,
also new funding opportunities.
And, you know, now going back to the previous question
before we had the technical difficulties.
So from your side, like existing funding opportunities
and wishing to have funding opportunities
in the current state of the ecosystem,
is there something that you can share?
Yeah, absolutely.
And first of all, I love how bullish Samis is on EUXO.
That was like the best pitch I ever heard.
I was like, wow, EUXO and Cardano and Bitcoin, that's actually pretty cool.
So yeah, I of course completely agree with that.
I think, you know, Cardano is basically or can be used as an extension
to Bitcoin and we're seeing so many projects
that are doing this right now in Cardano
where they're going to Bitcoin
and they're building the Bitcoin like DeFi
and because
all these Cardano projects are so
like familiar with UTXOs
and with EOTXOs of course
from a technical perspective they're
super strong and they can basically build better DeFi
than anyone else on Bitcoin right now
because they just have done it for longer than anyone else, right?
So I think Maestro, of course, is a great example of that.
But then also Fluid Tokens, for example,
who's doing so many things right now.
And even IOHK with Charles is doing Bitcoin stuff now. So I think
this whole narrative of Cardano
as a layer 2 for Bitcoin is actually really strong
I don't really care about the narrative.
If people
want to call it a layer 2, who
cares? It just matters
that Cardano gets users.
So yeah,
coming to your question, I think the funding is definitely an issue in Cardano gets users. So, um, so yeah, coming to your, to your question, I think.
The, the funding is definitely an issue in Cardano 100%.
I mean, the reality is, um,
there's no VCs, uh, realistically, no one was active.
Um, the Mergo wasn't really active in the early days of Cardano
investing into projects, which has, whichgo wasn't really active in the early days of Cardano investing into projects, which
has, which has luckily changed.
It's really.
Well, well, sounds like X is at its best today.
I'm, I see that Patrick, you're, you dropped out again.
Ah, there he is. Okay. You just dropped out again for a minute. Sorry, Patrick, you dropped out again. No. Ah, there he is.
Okay.
You just dropped out again for a minute.
Sorry, Patrick.
Okay.
We lost you when you were praising Emurgo's investment activity.
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
I'm very happy that Emurgo is really active now.
And, you know, I was just talking that in the early days, there was basically only the option to do like crowdfunding for icos or uh basically using project catalyst um and this is slowly
changing now there's more vcs and i think there are more and more coming especially from the
bitcoin ecosystem and i hope that we get you know one or two really large flagship projects on Cardano. One or two which get really incredible funding, incredible traction.
And then all the other ones, all the other VCs and all the other projects
are going to look at Cardano.
And I have a few projects that could easily achieve this,
like Book.io has Mark Cuban and John Ingram and multiple billionaires,
I think three billionaires i think
three billionaires at this point as investors which is pretty incredible um but also a few
other projects that could become really big so we need these like flagships in my opinion and
yeah and then i think everything else will will fall in place basically oh yes 100 patrick i mean we hope that we can help building
one of those flagship slash you know lighthouse projects for our program and also you know the
funding side of things so we also put it as you know as our mission to help projects fundraise
be it from our fund but also from you know from one of our vcs from our close network. So let's definitely drive this forward and make Cardano great.
Now, we have a couple of minutes left.
Is there any questions, remarks from the audience?
If so, raise your hand and then we can pull you up
and you can ask either myself or one of the panelists a question.
All right, I see there is Ed and staff.
Hey, great to meet you, Ed.
Hey, can you hear me OK?
I know the space is having some issues, so.
Yes.
Good, good, good.
Yeah, I'm just going to, I'm just
a regular community member.
I've been in the ecosystem for about eight years,
helped out a bunch of projects in my own way, community building and stuff like that. And just going to co-sign what Patrick and
Samiz here have said. I think the Bitcoin stuff is massive and it's been underestimated,
you know what I mean? Because that market cap is larger, frankly, than other layer ones combined.
And Cardano is the natural extension of that.
It's like Bitcoin's little proof of stake brother, really.
And to Patrick's point, you know, there are a number of projects in our ecosystem.
I only joined the space later, so I don't know if they were brought up.
But this isn't a shell.
This is just an example of what Patrick and you were speaking to, which is there are certain verticals,
especially like deep and real world assets, stuff where they're trying to go after income outside of just recycling money.
Right. Within the Web3 ecosystem that I think can bring in some real liquidity into Cardano,
that I think can bring in some real liquidity into Cardano,
which will certainly spur on other things like stablecoin adoption and what have you.
So I would give Iagon as an example, right?
They have a much talked about, but we're still waiting to hear about F50,
you know, Fortune 50 company that is probably going to be a very big deal for our ecosystem and really crypto broadly.
And then there are other examples, right? There are smaller projects like
Nuvola, which has really surged up lately because they are getting interest for some of their
products from some traditional Web2 enterprises via their little system called C-Hub, which is like an eBay kind of marketplace for selling
credit card rewards and things like that, which you could sell to grandma. Do you have some extra
points on your credit card that you just want to toss? And she'll be like, yeah, it's just sitting
there. Stuff that people can really relate to. And you get a few of those lighthouse projects as you said Janice you know those the rest the rest will come and there's there's a few
of them in the ecosystem because they're very focused on real-world income and
assets and decentralized infrastructure so I think yeah absolutely just wanted
to check if you have any questions for the speakers as well
uh no just curious if you had uh any thoughts on um
sort of what we could do about the stablecoin situation in general just broadly speaking i mean i have my own thoughts but it's certainly a worthy topic for discussion. Oh, yeah. I think that's a big topic of discussion, right?
So I know that a lot of involved folks, they're talking to, you know, the big ones and trying to bring them.
But, of course, it's kind of like a chicken-egg problem because for big existing stablecoins, you need volume to show in order to make the integration.
So I know Emurgo is working on it, right?
And yeah, I mean, definitely another topic, but an important one because it enables so
many use cases to have that.
Well, is there any other question?
And also thanks, Ed, for the valuable contribution.
And this goes to you and everybody else, these amazing projects you were just mentioning.
If they're interested, send them our way, right?
We're happy to talk to them and see how we can help them.
Right, so if there is no more question,
I want to thank once more Shogo, Patrick, and Samis
for joining us today.
Thanks, Nodo, for setting up the space.
Again, applications are closing very soon. So if
you're interested in working with us, but also working with all these gentlemen that have been
in the space because they will support us, then don't hesitate. Submit an application. We will
be doing all-nighters to go through all of them and then hopefully welcome you soon in ZOOC.
And then on that note, let's call it a day. Thanks, everybody, for joining.
And yeah, see you soon.
Thank you all.
Have a great day.
Thanks, everyone.
