Emile, are you with us, Emile?
So, welcome everybody who's listening.
We waited for a few minutes for people to start showing up.
I've got a couple of minutes, I've got a few minutes for people to share this information, I've
We've got this space, I've got this space on some community channels whilst we were waiting
So, I've got this space on some community channels whilst we were waiting as well.
So, this space we have with us, we have Matt from Trilitech who is a BD manager and then
we have Emil from CLC partners as well.
I'll hand it over to Matt to give an introduction of who he is,
and then he'll hand it over to Emil, and then they'll leave the space from there.
So, Matt, introduce yourself.
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, David.
So, yeah, as David mentioned, business development here at Trillitech
alongside some of my team members, kind of overseeing the UK based adoption efforts
that, you know, the Tesla's ecosystem has as well as a bit more globally,
I guess, the efforts related to Etherlink that you guys might have heard of our VM layer two solution.
And I'm delighted to speak to Emil here today, who represents one of our ecosystem partners,
if you will, a Web3 consultancy called CLC Partners.
You know, we're very proud to have teams like yours join, Emil,
especially kind of, you know, on my side, the kind of adoption efforts side.
I think that, you know, as part of our more global adoption strategy,
working with teams like yours that know what it takes to make projects successful is very important.
So it would be good to, you know, to hear a bit about yourself and I guess CLC in general,
what you guys are up to and, you know, what your background is.
Yeah, no, absolutely. Thank you very much, Matt, for those kind words and you as well, David,
and thank you for having me.
So my own background, I'm an entrepreneur and I've been so for about 20 years time,
both in the hyper-traditional space, so essentially physical goods, pivoting over to the tech space.
And lastly, pivoting over to Web3, we're realizing that this is where I believe that leads to the future, the future line.
And for the past couple of years, a couple of partners of mine and myself, we run a company called CLC and Partners.
And really what we do is that we focus on deep tech Web3 companies and make sure that we can just apply traditional business methodologies to that,
while also making sure they can stay rooted in that Web3 space.
So what we noticed was that there's so much innovation in this space.
There's so much intelligence, so many technology-capable individuals working within the space.
And we felt that it was a shame that there were so many projects out there that would have been able to make it,
but they didn't because they were lacking a couple of key components when it came to how do you actually run a business?
How do you convert what you have and build a proper business out of it?
So that's really who I am and what CLC and Partners does.
Yeah, I guess we'll dive more into the kind of CLC stuff later.
But I guess you have a very impressive, I guess, resume, if you will.
Can you maybe speak a little bit about some of the more exciting stuff that you've done in the past?
I know some of it might be a bit more traditional, but as we'll probably dive into it later,
I think the Web3 world can learn a lot from the more traditional businesses that we've seen out there.
So I know there was a bunch of, you know, kind of C-suite positions that you've had.
Can you speak a bit for the kind of, you know, people here to learn a bit more about who you are?
So I started out in the Army.
I was a Special Forces officer in the Swedish Army, something called the Arctic Soldier Division.
It was essentially Navy SEALs in the snow.
But I decided I wanted to become an entrepreneur and run companies.
And I just dove head first into that one.
I used to be in green tech before that was even a name.
We, back in the early 2000s, essentially built a company selling heat converters and wind power plants and such, right?
And from there, it went on into health, health tech, parking tech, a couple of companies.
The one that most people would recognize would be a company called Happy Socks,
which essentially makes Happy Socks, colorful socks.
So I was in the fashion space.
Recently, I was part of a company up until about 2020 called Cirque, which was a micromobility operator.
So we started that one with essentially a couple of guys.
And we ended up within 18 months growing the company to about 3,600 employees before we were eventually bought out by an American competitor called Bird.
So just briefly about what I've done.
I have my fingers in, I think, a dozen different industries all in all.
But what really is a red thread throughout that is that myself or me and a couple of partners usually actually saw a problem in a market that we really wanted to solve, right?
Or an opportunity in a market that we wanted to capitalize on.
And as soon, you know, you have that entrepreneurial gene.
I think a lot of people probably listening here got that as well.
Well, you really want to do something about it.
So that, for me, at least, ended up that let's start a company.
Let's just solve that problem.
And I've been fortunate enough to fail a couple of times and had a couple of more successes beyond that, right?
So, no, it's been an interesting journey, to say the least.
So I guess that's a whole bucket of experiences that I guess maybe would give you some insights into, you know, why companies, I guess, fail in the first place, right?
Like, what does it take for a startup to be successful, whether we're talking Web3 or not Web3?
Maybe starting with, you know, the reasons why founders might fail in the first place would be a good starting point from your bucket of experiences.
There's actually a lot of statistics about this as well.
So, I mean, personally, when it comes to working with my own company, but also helping other founders and working as a consultant for them, probably work with a couple of hundred companies.
But beyond that, if you take a look at the literature you have out there, it's very, very clear statistics.
So the main reason, the overwhelming most common reason why startups fail is because there's no market need or they lack product market fit.
So they can't really resonate with the market.
So they have a product they believe in strongly, right?
But probably they haven't gone in and done enough market research on it.
So they just throw themselves in there.
They spend usually quite a lot of hours and sometimes a lot of capital as well to build up that company.
And it turns out that once they got everything over the line and they launch it, nobody actually wants it, right?
So that's a major disconnect.
I see that just over and over and over again.
But then, of course, there's additional things as well.
You know, inadequate capital control, lack of resource management.
There's ineffective team dynamics.
You know, you have maybe two co-founders that can't talk to each other in a good way, right?
So these kind of drift apart and it all kind of fizzles out.
So when you do hit that market and you realize, oh, bloody hell, you know, this didn't work out at all.
Do you have the capability of actually pivoting and do something else with what you've already built, right?
So multiple reasons, but that product market fit and the lack of market need, that's the most common by far.
Yeah, I think the whole tunnel vision problem, right, I guess is quite common in the Web3 space, especially with us moving so quickly and kind of, you know, the market shifting so quickly.
Oftentimes we kind of, yeah, focus on, laser focus on a thing that maybe eventually isn't actually required by the market.
But I guess maybe let's separate these two, I guess, Web3 versus others.
Do you think there's maybe some more Web3 specific reasons or maybe how to solve that problem from a Web3 specific standpoint?
How does a Web3 business differ from a regular tech business?
And ultimately, how do these differ from a traditional business?
Well, what can you do to, I guess, alleviate these issues?
So what I see in Web3 is, well, first of all, it's faster.
It's just so much faster.
You know, someone's got a great idea quite often and they jump into that and they build a product around that idea and it's out there on the market significantly faster than what you had, you know, even just a couple of years ago in traditional Web2, right?
And certainly faster than what you will be able to do in brick and mortar businesses.
So that's a major difference.
So there's a positive side and a negative side to that.
So the negative side, we're going to start with that is, well, you tend to kind of skip a lot of steps, right?
So there's a certain methodology you usually want to follow if you want to take an idea and build a proper business out of it.
If you have a founder who's got no experience at all, a first time founder, and they don't have any funding in, the probability of that founder or that company rather actually being successful, meaning that they don't go bankrupt within a couple of years, is about 2%.
It's really, really low probability of success for a founder like that.
And the reason is that there's a lack of experience and usually they move a little bit too fast and they don't have that framework to kind of fall back on.
If you have funding, it's better.
You have about an 8% chance to be successful if you don't have experience, but you have funding.
And the reason is that all of a sudden you have a longer runway.
Let's dive in for that for a couple of seconds, right?
The definition on runway, it's not how many months you have left until money runs out.
The actual definition of a runway is how many times can you afford to pivot your idea, right?
So say you have a million bucks in the bank and it's going to cost you $250,000 to pivot.
Well, you can pivot four times.
Essentially, you can go down the wrong path four times, back up and do it again.
And the likelihood of success will be significantly higher due to that.
Whereas if you have an experienced founder who's done this three, four, five times and they have funding in, all of a sudden the probability of success goes up to almost 30%.
So almost one in three actually make it.
Well, they've done it before.
They've done the mistakes, right?
And you can take that even further.
If you follow the methodology that I use myself, so my personal success rate in running companies is kind of depending on the industry, but it's between 80% and 90% success rate.
And it's not because I'm good at running companies.
It's because I've been stupid running companies and I just had to learn how to do it, right?
And listen to people who revised it to me.
And doing that is kind of stumble upon that methodology on what should you do, in which order should you do that just to make sure you have an as high likelihood as possible to actually be successful.
And this is something that should, in certain places, the cases are applied in Web3, but a lot of places should be applied in Web3, right?
And if you take those positive sides of Web3, so the speed, the innovation, and then you take these methodologies and apply to that as well, the companies that I've seen being built out of that are just next level stuff.
You know, they will take over the world, similarly.
Yeah, I guess, so from what you're saying, I guess from what I'm gathering from this is that kind of human capital mixed with market understanding and repeated, I guess, trial and error is what makes or breaks a startup.
Even more so, maybe, than that.
So, the way I understood the question is, you know, human capital versus essentially tech capital, right?
It seems like Twitter Space is having some issues, guys.
This is a classic Twitter Space experience, but hopefully it sorts itself out in just a minute.
Let me just invite Matt back up again.
Matt should be able to come back ASAP.
Classic when you do Twitter Spaces and this happens.
It's a, it's not a perfect system yet, surprisingly.
Well, speaking of tech, right?
But, you know, he's on to something, though, Matt, I have to say, right?
Because it's all about the team.
So, to have the perfect tech, if you don't have the perfect team to back that up, you're not going to make it.
If you have the perfect team, but you don't have the perfect tech, you can still make it, if that makes sense.
Can you, can you hear me now?
I'm not sure where we, where we left off.
I didn't mean to, to interrupt, finish your thought first.
No, it's been so much down to the team, right?
And when you think about that, so what is the role of the team?
Well, they got to take the business.
They got to take that investor money that they probably got in and you got to turn that into something, right?
And the way to do that is just follow almost a pass of lead resistance, right?
If they see that, okay, there's an opportunity here that we hadn't really figured was there before, they should probably try to pursue that, right?
If they want to increase their odds of being successful.
And what that really means is that, well, probably you will have to pivot.
It might be a small pivot.
It might be a significant pivot, right?
In fact, I've never been involved in one single company that hasn't had to do that in one shape or form, right?
So, we got a couple of great, you know, well-known example of that.
They started out with DVDs and then went over to streaming.
They just changed the way that they actually distributed their products, right?
Then you have bigger pivots with Slack, for example, that focused on games and then went over to corporate communication instead.
Instagram was the location-based check-in service.
It went over to photo sharing, right?
So, this is example after example after example.
If you want to have an extreme example to go back, you know, 100 years, Nokia, the old cell phone company that used to rule the world once, you know, a long time ago, they created rubber boots.
They built rubber boots back in the days, right?
So, I guess it's extremely important.
So, I guess, yeah, like you said, market understanding, human capital over tech.
And I guess tech comes as a tool for that human capital to be deployed into places, right?
And you gave some great examples of companies that did exactly that.
Do you maybe can think of your favorite maybe examples in the Web3 space, given that, you know, I guess our space moves even faster, so that pivot probably happens even more often.
So, in fact, I would say most of the clients that I have worked with, some who can and some who can't be named, but they have all to a certain extent had to pivot around, right?
And very often, that has been about them maybe not being right on the money in terms of their technology, and they had to do something about it.
One example would be a company called Trust Anchor Group that we work with, who builds essentially Web3 infrastructure for enterprise-grade businesses.
They didn't start out doing that.
They started out building wallets and such.
After that, they pivoted and they built their own lane one.
It didn't really work out.
After that, they went on to focus on digital assets and management and transaction of digital assets.
And now they kind of hit, you know, that sweet spot that their customers really wanted to have.
So, everything from the transaction of, for example, you know, NFT to transaction of various types of data to transaction of some sort of currency, be that cryptocurrency or fiat.
So, that's where they ended up.
So, that's just one example.
But, again, you know, it's going into Web3, since things are moving so fast, what I'm seeing is that that need of pivoting is probably even greater here.
But also, the capability of most founders that I work with to pivot is significantly greater than most other industries because it's an extremely adaptable sector.
You know, this crowd, and we all know that we work and live this space every single day, right?
It's just full of innovation, and that's really what's crucial when you want to go in a different direction all of a sudden.
Yeah, yeah, totally agree.
And I think, I mean, you know, I guess it would be good to hear your thoughts then on a strategy in this space.
And given that those pivots are, you know, often costly or kind of hard to come over as a hurdle from a founder's perspective, how do you brace for that?
What do you think is the kind of key strategy elements that you need to take into account, even if you know that, you know, a pivot might be coming and that it's sometimes inevitable?
And how do you build, I guess, a sustainable and scalable model where these pivots are maybe accounted for?
I feel like in the Web3 space where, you know, I guess that funding needs to be kind of secured.
You need to think of how to deploy your capital along the way.
How do you plan for what's going to happen in six months?
First of all, it's extremely difficult.
Six months is a lifetime in this industry, isn't it?
But, you know, apart from that, it's having true deep market insight and customer focus because this Web3 crowd obviously moves quite fast.
And you would have to do that as well, running your company in the Web3 space.
So just having that market focus, I think, is even more important here than in other spaces.
That would be my main focus when it comes to strategy.
Robust but also adaptable technology.
Just leverage those unique features of blockchain technology, you know, decentralization, security, transparency.
It's extremely important.
And I think it's crucial to remain adaptable to new technological advancements and integrate those seamlessly into the business model.
Which, again, is a core strength, I think, of the whole Web3 community.
Effective tokenomics design.
I mean, the token economy is just vital, isn't it, for a lot of projects.
So you might have a great project.
You might attach a token to that project.
If your tokenomics is bad, you'll sink the entire ship.
So it's making sure you have that tokenomics design truly, truly effective from the get-go, right?
You don't want to go back at a later stage and redo it.
Community building, obviously, and engagement.
There's no industry in the world that focuses so much on community.
And that's a positive thing.
As the Web3 community, it's having that strong, active community around your project.
Community involvement can provide valuable feedback.
It can drive organic marketing.
It can create a loyal user base.
And that is especially important in the decentralized nature of Web3.
Then, of course, you have regulatory compliance.
There's transparency, partnership collaboration, scalability, flexibility, et cetera, right?
But those first couple of things there, the market insight, the robust and adaptable technology,
tokenomics design, and community building, those, for me, would be my four main points.
I think you summarized it very well.
And I can't help to think that partnerships like ours, where we have kind of a strong protocol,
I guess, tech fundamentals paired with a team that understands exactly what you just outlined,
Both the regulatory space as well as the community and how to navigate the space from a tokenomics standpoint
and all these kind of things.
This is a combination that, to a founding team, is explosive, right?
And I feel like giving the ability for a team that we believe in or we see that is extremely
skilled and helping them on the both technical and go-to-market side is something that can
make or break their product.
So it would be great to hear more of your thoughts on that side.
Like, can you speak about the role of these kind of partnerships or yourself in accelerating
the growth of these startups that you work with?
Oh, brother, it's just so important.
So what a lot of people seem to think, and they're not wrong, they're really not, but what
a lot of people seem to think is that, okay, I got my product out there.
I'm going to focus a little bit on marketing.
I'm going to focus a little bit on sales.
I'm going to get the sales and marketing people in, and all of a sudden, money's going to
And, you know, it might be true, but there's so many more components to that.
So if you work with proper partners, leveraging complementary strengths, those partnerships
allow companies to just feed off each other's strength, right?
Don't be that in technology, market access, expertise.
This collaboration can lead to more innovative solutions and a better market positioning overall,
It can also help you expand the market reach.
So having a strategic partner, and people overuse the word strategic, you know, a truly
strategic partner can provide access to new markets, new customer segments.
For Web3 businesses, they can mean tapping into different geographical regions, industries
that were just previously out of reach, right?
But there's also sharing of resources, of knowledge.
So partnerships often involve sharing, just intimately sharing those resources, which can be particularly
beneficial for startups, right?
So if you have a strong partner that's been around for a while, and you are a freshly created
startup, maybe a couple of months behind you even, right?
To have that steady partner to kind of anchor onto can just mean a world of difference, right?
So, and I mean, that's one of the reasons why we're partnering with Tesos as well, because
I mean, the way that you can be not only a technology partner, but also a partner for companies
developing on your chain, can you just take them to that next level, right?
So this is extremely, extremely important.
Another part about that is, as a new company, one thing that you do lack most often is credibility,
right, unless you have a long track record before starting that company, but most people
So if you can build proper partnerships, that will actually help you increase your credibility
But you got to be careful about it, because we've all been onto those project homepages,
You take a look at a partner page, and it says, well, you know, Microsoft partner, whatever,
But, you know, in reality, they use Windows as an operating system.
That's the only connection they have to Microsoft.
You want to make sure you have proper partners, and you want to make sure that they can actually
validate, they are your partners.
Yeah, yeah, that's very well said.
And I just wanted to touch upon the, I guess, double click on what you said about us and
Tezos, I guess, the technology stack itself.
From a more technological standpoint, maybe you can speak to that.
Why do you think it's attractive to build on Tezos?
Why do you think that, you know, the partners that come your way will see Tezos as a beneficial
Is there any particular kind of points that you see, maybe as a market feedback for the listeners
here, why they choose Tezos, and why these work out more than others, maybe?
And I'm just, I'm getting this picture in my head, you know, sitting on a plane in the
And the pilot comes on and said, well, we know we have a choice in air travel, and we want
to thank you for flying American or whatever airline it is, right?
And for me, Tezos feels almost like that.
You do have a choice in partnerships in the Web3 space.
There's a lot of players out there, right?
But they're not all the same.
So for me, the reasons why myself and the rest of the CLC team felt that it was a no-brainer
to have a strategic partnership with Tezos, and why we continue to recommend Tezos as
well to new companies out there to want to make an impact in the Web3 space, it's a multitude
So there's massive support from the side of Tezos, if you jump on board, the tech stack
that you guys have as well, and the way that you make sure you can just stay up to date
with all the innovation that is happening in the field, right?
There's a massive agility in your ecosystem as well, which I think is extremely important.
So Tezos' ability to evolve through this self-amendment process makes it highly responsive to market
needs, I feel, and technological advancements.
And then you have interoperability and scalability, right?
So the platform is designed for this, you know, two crucial factors for business looking
to grow and adapt in this really fast-paced tech landscape.
Yeah, and you mentioned scalability here, which is, I guess, very much top of mind for
us here at Trillitech and, I guess, the broader ecosystem with the introduction of our, you
know, EVM-compatible Layer 2, where, you know, for those that are listening in that might not
be as aware, I'm sure it's, you know, been talked about out there by David and my colleagues,
but we're very close to launching our EVM-compatible Layer 2, Etherlink, so I strongly recommend
And I actually wanted to put some pressure on that to see what you think about that EVM
compatibility, I guess, opportunity, kind of what does that mean for founders?
Obviously, the space is much bigger on the EVM side.
So now that you can experience Tezos in a more EVM way, is that something that you see
opening up a lot of doors?
Are these conversations that you would have had already?
And I think it's a massive shift, actually, for the positive, for the people wanting to
jump on board with Tezos, right?
So there's a couple of main benefits, the way that I see it.
So one of them, if not the biggest one that I think, at least, you know, attracting a broader
So EVM compatibility means that developers familiar with Ethereum's solidity programming language
can easily transition to building on Tezos as well.
And as we all know, there's a lot of these guys out there, right?
So all of a sudden, the pool of available talent for you will be significantly greater,
If you want to hire, if you want to have outsourced coders, it doesn't really matter.
The pool is just significantly bigger all of a sudden.
So this lowers the entry barrier for companies jumping on board, essentially, right?
So this makes Tezos more accessible.
And to me, it makes it significantly more attractive as well.
It's moving forward with that thought.
So also expanding the range of possible applications with EVM compatibility.
I think Tezos opens up a wider range of decentralized applications and use cases that were primarily
developed for Ethereum, right?
So now those can be used on Tezos as well.
Now, this compatibility allows for a greater variety of products to be built on Tezos,
you know, from DeFi platforms to NFT marketplaces, you know, really, you know,
So it just opens up a whole new world of possibilities, the way that I look at it.
It's also leveraging Ethereum's innovation.
So by being EVM compatible, Tezos can leverage the extensive, I think,
innovation developments already established in the Ethereum ecosystem.
So this includes not just applications, but also tools, libraries, best practices developed
So essentially, it's piggybacking on something that a lot of people know and immediately
And then lastly, I would say balancing innovation with security.
So combining possibilities of solidity with Tezos native features like formal verification,
You get the best of both worlds all of a sudden, right?
So the innovation and familiarity of Ethereum's programming environment, along with the enhanced
security and efficiency of Tezos.
Yeah, yeah, greatly, greatly, greatly put, I would say this is kind of exactly what, you
know, we've been we've been chatting about, and we really hope kind of people, people do
get to experience that, that the Tezos side of things while, you know, maybe still being
in their in their EVM world.
So I guess lastly, as this kind of last section of this session, I wanted to touch upon some
of the maybe trends that you see, obviously, you guys as a CLC have foot on the ground, and
you see founders talk to founders, you know, see a lot of good ones, a lot of bad
ones, what trends do you see in the Web3 space, you know, be most prominent for the
upcoming year, given that exactly what you've highlighted, L2, scalability, maybe in the
context of Tezos more specifically, the kind of opening up for the, onto the EVM world.
What, what kind of startups would you like to see?
Or what do you think you're going to see more of?
So, well, I see, I see a ton of trends, actually.
So one of the main ones being that this whole space is becoming increasingly more mature in
a positive sense, that doesn't exclude that you have these young companies in there, quite
It just means that they have a more mature ecosystem to jump into, meaning that they will
have a greater possibility of actually building a successful business.
But, you know, that being said, so, I mean, the expansion and evolution of, of layer two
solutions, right, scaling and efficiency, so the continued development of layer twos, I
think will be pivotal in addressing scalability and efficiency challenges in blockchain networks.
L2 solutions are, you know, expected to enhance the, the user experience by reducing transaction
fees and increasing transaction speeds, and making blockchain applications more practical
And that, for me, would be a game changer.
And I really see a trend moving towards that, and a lot of companies building towards that
I see, as another trend, an ever-increasing adoption of DeFi.
So DeFi is likely to see further integration into more traditional financial systems, potentially
offering new investment opportunities and financial services.
Because, you know, everything that we've been talking about for all these years are finally
kind of happening, right?
It's right around the horizon right now.
So I would expect an emergence of more sophisticated and diverse DeFi products, and I expect them to
cater to a more, well, it's a broader range of financial needs and preferences, right?
I see NFTs, you know, those were, everybody's bullish on NFTs for a while, right?
And it all kind of fizzled out, but I see that there will be an emergence of that.
So just beyond digital arts, NFTs have been popular in that field, but other areas like
identity verification, intellectual property, real estate, et cetera, et cetera, right?
NFT as a technology, I think will, it hasn't taken that big step yet, and it's just about
It's just so many benefits of that, and I see a lot of trends right now, a lot of companies
building towards that, right?
So it will happen, that I know, I don't know exactly when, but it's not too far off.
And another huge trend that I'm seeing, and this is an important one, it's Web3 integration
into traditional business models.
So enterprise adoption, right?
So more traditional businesses are exploring and integrating these Web3 technologies, recognizing
the potential for enhancing transparency and security and customer engagement, and you
have these hybrid models blending Web3 elements with conventional business practices, which
can lead to really, really innovative ways of doing business in the future.
And this is all the way down from brick and mortar, you know, mom and pop shops up to the
$100 billion companies, right?
No matter where I'm looking, there are opportunities to integrate Web3, and a lot of companies are trying
And what this means, it opens up a whole new world for the Web3 sector to actually target
when it comes to generating revenue as well.
And that's the reason I'm so bullish on Web3 as well.
We've only penetrated single data percent of the total rest of the market we have available
And then, of course, you have other stuff like...
Yeah, because I think you've touched upon a very important, I guess, area here that I think
Tezos is a great, you know, place for, and I think historically, Tezos has been a great
home for all these Web2 slash Web3 projects that kind of just, you know, skimmer the space,
dipping toes in both ends of the spectrum.
So I just wanted to ask you and your thoughts on, I guess, what can those Web3 startups or
Web3 companies or solutions even that are trying to put their solutions into the more,
you know, Web3, Web2 legacy world, what can we learn from the traditional business model,
I feel like people very, very often separate the two, and we speak of Web3 as this completely
different approach to things, right, and a completely different way from a business model
But maybe there's things that, you know, now that we start to apply these things to the
more traditional world, maybe there's things we can learn from that, right?
What do you think is the...
Does that overlap, lend any learnings?
Oh, yeah, no, absolutely.
And the thing is this, right?
We say traditional business versus Web3, right?
And we're absolutely right about that because we have a different way of doing things.
But when it all comes down to it, if I were to build a financial model for a Web3 business
versus if I were to build a financial model for a traditional business, they would look
You know, a cap table is structured the same way.
You know, a cash flow statement is structured the same way.
A balance sheet is structured in the same way, right?
So those core components on how to build a business, they're always the same.
They haven't changed for 2,000 years.
They're not going to change for the next 2,000 years.
You know, it's about how much revenue do you have coming in and what are the costs you
have to take in order to generate that revenue, right?
And what you have left is the profit.
So when it comes to what Web3 can learn from traditional business is that there are a lot
of methodologies out there in a lot of different areas of doing business.
There are methodologies for how to market effectively, on how to raise capital effectively, how to increase
sales effectively, how to increase profitability effectively, right?
All of those, almost without any change at all, can be lifted over into the Web3 space.
And that's exactly what CLC imparts to do it, right?
So we're taking these traditional business, best business practices and applying those to
And the consequence of doing that is that you're going from having a project that is really
cool to actually having a proper business.
You can scale up into millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, and even billions of
dollars worth of revenue as long as you keep pushing that success button, if that makes
And there's really two main ways to look at it.
One way is to look at it because what's the way for me to be as successful as possible,
How do we get more sales in?
How do I get more happy customers, et cetera, et cetera, right?
And by doing that, you will increase the likes of being successful.
But the other way of looking at it as well, and these go hand in hand, is that how do I
decrease the risk of everything, right?
Going back to that pivot and the runway.
So there's usually from the inception point of a company to when you exit a company, no
matter how you do that, everything from selling it to you essentially dying and giving that
There's usually about 200 to 400 different, very easily identifiable steps in the lifetime
of a company if you want to be very mathematical and scientific about it.
And each and every one of these steps, you can break down into a risk rating, right?
And what you want to do in each step, you want to reduce the risk.
And if you do that, you will have a compound effect because every single time you reduce
the risk, you will also increase the likelihood of you being able to leverage of those successes
that you're bringing in when you're doing sales and all these sort of things, right?
So just keeping that in mind, making sure you keep track of all those risks, don't make
stupid decisions in how you deploy your capital, and make sure that you also sell for a heck
of a lot of money, essentially, getting revenue.
I think that's why these partnerships and having you understand Tezos as a technological layer
And I think it's very valuable for us to bring in players like you and teams like yours is
because we can deliver the tech stack and we understand the tech stack very well, and
you understand what it takes to make a team successful.
And I think Tezos is really the right place to do these kind of things, especially across
the use cases that you've mentioned and these potential trends, you know, the blend of Web2,
Web3, some of the more financial use cases now that we're opening up ourselves to the
EVM world, I think there's potential for a lot of teams to come and take advantage of
that combination that we're presenting them with, right?
The great tech stack and great technological opportunities that from a risk assessment
perspective are safe, right?
All the audits are there even from an institutional perspective, not just a smart contract perspective,
and then paired with that kind of ironclad strategy that you guys provide.
So just closing things off, I know, I guess we could talk on and on, but I kind of wanted
to leave the people here that joined maybe with a bit of a tip from you, right?
Given the trends that you've highlighted, maybe there are some blockers that are still
yet to be unblocked for those trends to truly flourish.
Any suggestions to people building on Tezos or Etherlink as to what to build to help solve
these problems or to unlock these trends?
Oh, yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.
And it was going back to mitigating those risks as well, right?
So, for example, complex UX.
So a lot of Web3 applications have complex interfaces.
They're not intuitive for average users.
I mean, we understand them, right?
But the average user, they will have difficulties doing that.
And that complexity can deter widespread adoption.
So the solution that we're focusing on building user-friendly interfaces, simplify interactions
with your project, right?
Emphasize clear design, straightforward navigation, educational tools and resources to help new
users to understand and navigate these platforms would also be beneficial, right?
There's scalability issues, which I think, again, is going back to what Tesla can provide,
you know, a perfect way to solve those scalability issues all of a sudden.
So scalability remains a challenge for many blockchain networks.
And this is affecting transaction speed and costs.
And this is where I truly feel that Tesla stands out.
And one of the reasons why we're actually recommending Tesla as well, lack of interoperability is another
trend, another blocker in Web3.
So the lack of that seamless interoperability between different blockchain networks can limit
the functionality and reach of certain Web3 applications.
So an investment in cross-chain technologies, I think, is beneficial.
So you might have one home layer, so to speak, right?
But that doesn't mean you should be able to take advantage of everything that everyone else
got to offer as well, right?
So it's having that interoperability.
There's a lot of regulatory uncertainty.
We can't do a lot about that as an industry, at least not on a low level.
On a high level, we can in terms of lobbying, et cetera, right?
We can choose where we want to be domiciled.
But apart from that, so the thing is this, the evolving and often unclear regulatory landscape
can be a significant hurdle.
And the solution, I would say, is that we need to engage with regulatory bodies and participate
in policymaking processes.
This is not something that a normal founder would do.
But when you take a step up in the hierarchy of the industry, so to speak, there's a lot
of work being done on this right now.
So there's a lot of security vulnerabilities.
And the risks of hacks or frauds can just undermine trust in Web3.
And it has over the period of a lot of years, right?
And the solution for that would be just truly prioritize security in all stages of development,
including rigorous testing, audits of smart contracts, education of users, et cetera,
And also, I think one of the main blockers out there is there's a very limited mainstream
awareness and understanding, right?
We as an industry understand what we're doing.
But if I were to talk to my mom, right?
She had, she's, I might as well be on the move for all she can, she's concerned, right?
She does not understand this stuff, right?
So there's a limit there.
So that is really blocking wide stream adoption of blockchain and Web3 among the general public.
So that would be just launching educational campaigns, workshops, just to raise awareness
You don't even have to mention the word blockchain.
Just talk about the solutions.
What can you actually do with this, right?
And all of a sudden, people don't understand that.
Oh, you know, shoot, this is way better than what I had before.
Why haven't I done this before?
Well, yeah, we will all say inquire, right?
But we've been very bad in how we communicate these benefits to a wider audience.
And which out of all the kind of user flow issues that you've highlighted, which I'm sure
we're all aware of, maybe we got used to it, used to them as a community.
But we all know that they are a blocker to broader adoption.
Which one of those steps along the way of a user journey do you think is most important
and we lose most people at?
And what can we do about it, right?
Like, what would you suggest the founder build if they had to solve one of those user experience
issues, whether it's at a wallet level?
I don't know what, you know, what you might think about that.
Yeah, I think the biggest one is the complex user experience, right?
You know, the UX for a lot of these solutions is not there.
And I'm going to combine that up with lack of market fit.
So you might have an excellent product, right?
You might solve a problem that needs solving.
But the way that you're doing it is complex, right?
And all of a sudden, what that does is it limits you to onboard users onto your platform.
You might get the DGEN Web3 crowd and, you know, more power to you for doing that.
But to step outside of that might be difficult, right?
So that, to me, is the biggest block that I see.
Because what do we have, like 98% of the world that doesn't understand what Web3 is, right?
So that's 98% of your total addressable market is being gone unless you can overcome this, right?
So making sure you have a proper user experience and making sure you can properly communicate this.
One of the things that I see often is lacking in Web3 in particular is the way that offers are presented.
So if you were to go on to a traditional home page, traditional SaaS company, something like that, the way that they present what they're doing is significantly different from what most Web3 companies does in terms of presenting their product, right?
So there's a lot of maturing, I think, that needs to take place in the Web3 in order to get up to that level that they have had to learn in the Web2 space over the past 20 years, right?
And they do really, really well right now.
So if you can communicate that in a very, very clear way, what is it that you do?
How do you actually solve a problem for the person you're trying to target, right?
And when you have them on board, making sure you have that very, very, very easy user experience where you can just kind of click a button and everything is done for them.
When we've done that, we've overcome the biggest hurdle that we have in Web3 the way that I see it.
Then we have everything else with the scalability and all that kind of stuff, right?
But that's, you know, let's worry about that when we get all the users.
And I think that's a great kind of way to end it, leaving some of the listeners with, you know, food for thought, if you will.
If they were to think of, you know, ideas and products, we're all here for it, both from a technological standpoint as well as a market readiness standpoint.
I hope that, you know, our partnership will bring some meaningful adoption to both Etherlink and Tezos, and I can't be more excited to see what we bring in 2024.
Yeah, I guess that's, you know, that's that for me.
If you want to say anything else, Emil, go ahead, David.
I'll leave it with you guys.
Yeah, so from the side of CLC, we don't pick partners lightly and serve in our strategic partners lightly.
But when we started talking with Tezos a while back and we saw how well we align in our view of what will happen, not only in the coming couple of months, but in the coming couple of years.
For us, it was a no-brainer to jump in bed with Tezos, right?
To be a bit cheeky about it.
I truly feel that where you guys are going right now is something that could truly be a game changer moving forward for a lot of companies.
So, and that's also the reason why we're essentially recommending every single one of our clients to check Tezos out, because we do believe that what you have built and are continuously evolving is really next level stuff.
So we just want to thank Tezos for having us all as partners, and we're very proud to have you listed as one of ours.
It was great speaking to you, Emil.
I think there was a lot of insightful kind of tips and tricks that you've provided, and it was great to hear someone, you know, coming from that more traditional background to have a take on the Web3 space and provide the insights, you know, across the board.
So thank you so much for joining, and hopefully we'll get to do one of these again.
Thank you very much for having me.
A big thank you for me as well, Emil.
It's been super insightful sitting here listening to this entire space.
I haven't been too active in terms of speaking, but I haven't had to be.
Matt has done an amazing job sort of moderating and leading the discussion.
But honestly, as Matt said, you coming from a traditional background, it's almost a breath of fresh air in the space.
And it feels very great, and I'm happy you're on board and you've partnered up with Tezos, and thank you so much for the space.
And everybody listening, thank you very much for doing so, and you have a lovely continued rest of your day.
Thank you, everybody, for joining.