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How to launch a startup before graduation: Campus Builder Roundtable
Recorded: Jan. 29, 2026 Duration: 0:46:36Space Recording
Short Summary
Avalanche is experiencing a dynamic start to 2023 with the launch of Build Games, a $1 million competition for founders, and the announcement of $40 million in grants through the Retro 9000 initiative. These developments, alongside strategic partnerships with universities and a focus on community engagement, highlight the platform's commitment to fostering innovation and growth in the blockchain ecosystem.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Hey, Doro. How are you?
Good, good, good.
Sending you the co-host invite right now?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cool.
Let me know when it's connection now
Alright
Hello, yeah, I just got kicked off again
But I'm back, Chris, hello
Hello, hello Hey Hello, hello.
Hey, Chris.
Hey, Herschel.
Okay, so I'm a co-host again.
There you go.
No, it doesn't.
Naaman, you're here already.
That's great.
Yes, I was able to make time and quickly run back to the office.
Okay, very good.
Well, welcome.
Thank you. Thanks, Dora, for hosting this. make time and like quickly run back to the office okay very good well welcome thank you
thanks dorah for hosting this of course thank you and i see cryptosphere king one i'm just calling you guys the cryptosphere kings now i think we're waiting for mark killion oh there for Markillion. Oh, there he is, speaking of the devil. Hello. Hi, Markillion. Can you request to
speak? Okay. Louis did the same. Wonderful. And then we should be ready to rock and roll.
All right. Cool. Well, let's dive in, guys. Thanks for making the time. I feel like January has been absolutely bonkers for Avalanche. We have so much going on, like everything except for a quiet start to the year.
all the stuff, the announcements, build games and whatnot. But we really want to talk today about,
you know, what does it mean to start a business when you're still at school? Is that possible at
all? A lot of students think that if they have an idea, they shouldn't do it yet because they're
not ready yet. So we really want to talk a little bit about what it means to be an entrepreneur.
a little bit about what it means to be an entrepreneur. We're going to talk a little
bit also about what guidance our speakers have today and they'll introduce themselves shortly.
We'll also hear some real-world insights on what it's really like to be an entrepreneur
before you graduate while you're still taking exams. First, let's dive in and talk a little bit about the Build Games.
We announced Build Games on Jan 20.
And it's been huge.
It's actually been on TV earlier.
So if you are in the States and you're watching Fox News, earlier our president, John Wu, was on there and talked about in front of the whole nation about Build Games.
was on there and talked about in front of the whole nation about Build Games. And it's a pretty
big moment to see John up there and the big Avalanche logo across a major US TV station is
huge. And for those of you who live under a rock and you don't know what Build Games are,
let me fill you in. So Build Games is a competition for founders. It will take six weeks
and it comes with a million dollar prize. I mean, it's absolutely huge. A million dollars is a ton
of money, especially if you're an early stage founder. And you can go to build.abex.network
slash build games and submit your idea there.
And we get a lot of questions about like, is this about gaming only?
No, it is not.
So really all ideas are welcome.
And please do not be shy to submit them, right?
This is a competition for everyone, for all ideas.
It's really inclusive.
So no matter what your idea is, you have an idea for
payments, you have a privacy solution, you want to tokenize an asset that no one thought about
before. This is really for you. So think about an idea, submit your idea while you can, and you are
eligible for a million dollars. We also have an all-star panel of judges.
It's really designed for founders, right?
So for those of you with the entrepreneurial spirit,
this is your opportunity.
But what's also cool is for those of you
who maybe are not a founder yourself,
but you have a friend or you know some really cool projects
who you think would be an amazing fit for this, we do have also a $30,000 prize pool for referring winning projects so you can also go
on the Build Games website click on the refer button create your own link and then you can
share with all your friends with all your founders and your network and then be also eligible for a
prize which I think is super nifty like I've been sharing my link left or right so please do the same
and it's been exciting to see the feedback to build games so i'm super um excited to see what
comes out of it there's also a big telegram community so i think there's already like over
500 people in there so hop on that as well it a great community. And there's lots of folks who
are considering submitting, talking about it, sharing ideas. So if you're considering to
submitting to Build Games, which you do, unless you don't need a million dollars for your business
idea, this is a great community to join. The last big thing I'm going to say about January is also
that the foundation also announced major news.
We had the Retro 9000 C chain round with $40 million of retroactive funding, which is also crazy amounts of money.
And the cool thing is that the grant distribution process is enabled by user submission.
You can also do community voting on there.
So if you go to retro9000.abix.network, you can also participate in that process and help decide who gets this grant funding. So shout out to Memo and Daniel.
I know over at the foundation, they've been really working crazy hard to make this happen. So kudos
to them. So if you take one thing away from this basis, it's like there's millions of dollars at
the table right now for you to start your business on Avalanche. So please do benefit from that.
And before I introduce our panels, I also want to tell you a little bit about our upcoming university event.
So I see Horsel here on the call.
Shout out to you.
He concluded his Turkey University tour in December and he decided he is not busy enough.
He's going to do another one with more universities continuing the success in Turkey. So that's coming along nicely. Shout out to him.
And then we also will be at the major blockchain conferences on campus in the US this spring.
So you will see our execs at Cornell Tech, at Harvard University, and then also the University
of Southern California. so stay tuned for
announcements about that and then we also press ahead with our Campus Connect community events
in the Philippines in Brazil in Vietnam wherever you are we are as well so as you can see there's
not a big lull over the holidays and kicking off the new year's lots going on but you didn't come
to hear me hold a monologue you
came here to hear from our super exciting speakers we have today i'm going to start with
chris who is obviously my favorite co-worker and chris is also on the bd team and i will pass the
mic over to you chris can you just introduce yourself in like 30 seconds, who you are, what you do at Avalanche and tell a little bit about your experience?
Absolutely. Thank you so much, Doro. And yeah, really good recap about January.
Foundation programs, Avalanche ETF on the U.S. stock market, lots of cool things going on and many more for 2026.
So, yeah, my name is Chris. I lead up AI and deepen initiatives here on the BD team
at Avalanche. Kind of could connect a lot of things that you said earlier, you know,
going into the whole entrepreneur college experience, how to start, really how to ramp up.
So really excited to talk about that. Traditionally, I mean, I've been in the blockchain space for
about five years now, helping build products on Solana, Avalanche, before working here at Ava Labs starting about a year ago.
Have some experience in traditional tech, especially discussing with stakeholders, B2B solutions,
and a master's in data analytics and AI R&D for software here in California.
So a little bit about myself.
Happy to dive into it and pass it on to the next panelist.
Thank you, Chris.
Appreciate it.
I'll pop it over to Naman, DeFi bag holder.
Naman, who are you?
And tell us a little bit about your background
and how you can contribute to the entrepreneurial journey experience.
Got you. So hey, everyone, I'm Naman or DeFi bag holder as my new tag, as my new online, what's it called, gamer tag for now.
And I am currently a third year student at Drexel University here in the United States, a full time student.
student at Drexel University here in the United States, a full-time student. And I'm also building
a startup called Entropy to Order, which is building infrastructure to tokenize RWAs in a
liquid manner. And I think over the last two years, I've been building on Avalanche. I was initiated
into Avalanche via Hackathon, where me and my friends, we built a project for decentralized
compute around Avalanche. And what ended up happening is a rapid progression of events over the next week
led us into getting into the code-based program for season two.
And we started building a company called Encryptec, which later took part in the demo day.
And it's been a phenomenal journey since here.
Doro and everyone in the AvalApps team has been extremely helpful towards student founders, as we see right now.
And as Doro said, how do you, I actually do have two midterms today.
I've already finished one and the second one is coming up.
So just lovely to see you guys here.
Thanks, Naaman.
I don't know how you do it.
We definitely need to dive in later how many hours you actually sleep because things get a little crazy there as a student founder.
So thank you for that.
Lastly, I'm going to introduce the co-presidents of Cryptosphere. If you don't know what Cryptosphere is,
I don't know how you don't know that.
Cryptosphere is one of the biggest European student organizations.
I have personally worked with them for many years.
They're super technical and super entrepreneurial.
They work with thousands of students across France and Europe.
We worked with them together last year on our Paris Blockchain Week
student meetup together with Blockchain in Berkeley, which was a huge success. So thank you again.
And then last fall, Antoine and Credo from our team, they supported the Big Cryptosphere
Conference in Lyon. So maybe, Louis, do you want to start first and introduce yourself briefly and
maybe say a sentence or two about what Cryptosphere is if you want to add to my description?
Oh, thanks. No, you described it well. Thank you very much. It's a huge description. So thank you
for that. Yes, to introduce myself, happy to meet, to e-meet you, all of you guys, incredible profiles.
I think, yes, we are dedicated people to not sleep a lot the night.
So, yes, for me, so co-chairman, co-president with Mark Lillian.
co-chairman, co-president with Mark Lillian.
So our community is a network of students,
dedicated students and professionals
also that help us to bridge the gap between school
and the job market and also the demands
in blockchain field and also tech related to it.
So we start to get a lot of opportunities with AI, also with Consum.
And we try as much as we can to participate and to push our community
to participate to hackathon like the Bull Games.
Bull Games is a huge opportunity for people to get involved in projects
and to start to build their own companies.
And now, yes, Cryptosphere has many, many success stories about companies
that launched just after, sorry, passed by Cryptosphere.
So it's like an incubator for new tech leaders.
So I think, yes, the debate described the Cryptosphere Network.
Thank you, Louis.
Marc-Kelion, anything to add to what Louis described?
Yeah, yeah, of course.
Hi, everyone.
I think you hear me well.
Is it correct?
Yeah, we can hear you.
Yeah, yeah.
Very nice.
So hi, everyone.
Thanks for having me, Doro and everyone.
So you did a very great description of what is Cryptosphere.
And yeah, so as Louis mentioned, we are leading Cryptosphere together.
So on my side, I've always been focused on the bridge between, you know,
traditional finance and decentralized finance and, you know and Web3 in general.
So I come from a quantitative finance background, so I had experience at NatSixSys.
And yeah, my goal is really to bring that strategic and institutional lens to how students
build OnCh China today.
So, yeah, very, very excited about this panel.
Thanks, Mark and Leon.
Yeah, I'm a big Cryptosphere fan, been for years.
So thank you for coming today.
I really appreciate that.
I know it's late for you guys.
So I'm going to dive in and start with Chris.
So Chris sometimes gets text messages from me with project descriptions.
I'm like, hey, Chris, what do you think?
This sounds cool, doesn't it?
How does it fit in the business development perspective?
And he probably rolls his eyes, but he's a nice guy and he does respond.
He gives super great advice.
So, you know, you're on the B team.
You work with our icon, John Nass, every day.
You know, do you have any practical advice you would give to student founders who are just getting started?
And how do you think students can most effectively approach and work with business development teams without feeding too early or too junior or too underprepared?
Do you have any guidance there?
Yeah. No, Doro, please, you know, send me everything.
Doro, please send me everything. I love it when you send me things. They're high quality.
I love it when you send me things.
They're high quality.
If a college student or a young entrepreneur thinks it's too early to get involved, it really
isn't, right? I mean, you don't want to waste the next six months building something that is
not going to work. Sure, it's great for your portfolio. It's great for, you know, when you graduate and start talking to the big leagues. But there's a fine line between, should I start now,
or should I wait until I have, you know, more funds, more accessibility, etc. You know, you can
think of it like, you can think of BD like a person at a big company whose job is to connect
the dots, right? I mean, yes, we do work on the revenue side and we work on, you know, growing our own business, but our business is
nothing without the people who are passionate about building on our project, which is why I'm
always eager to learn more and see how I can connect those dots and how my team and my colleagues can do the same. You know, if you're building a new brand, right,
you know, if you're in the food and beverage business,
you don't want to wait until you're in Whole Foods
and call yourself successful, right?
You want to know what it takes to actually get on the shelf.
You want to know what the demand is, where the spark is.
And that's what talking to BD early on is.
You know, if you're building in a health,
if you're in the healthcare space, right, you don't build for one year and then ask the hospital,
do you want to use my application? You just wasted a year, right? You know, you start small,
you talk to what do the nurses need? What do the doctors need? You know, so when entrepreneurs
figure this out and, you know, start planning ahead, you know, who needs the data?
Who actually has the problem? Right. Where's where's where's the bottleneck?
I think it becomes a lot easier that way, especially talking to your colleagues, talking to your peers and talking to companies like us and getting you in the right space.
Thanks, Chris. And yeah, I just want to reiterate, you know, that our doors
are always open. I have students and faculty reach out to me all the time via email or via our
student club launch platform on our website. And they just have a question. Like just today,
we had a conversation with a graduate student from the University of Trento, who's doing his
PhD in blockchain and uses geospatial data. And then one of our engineering execs hopped on a
call with him and they bounced off some ideas. And we do these things. We don't only do like
these big conferences and the big sponsorships. We do a lot of individual advice and, you know, like how Chris just talked about it,
like you just need to start reaching out and really, you know, curating your idea and getting
feedback early, I think is super important.
So thank you.
Thank you for your input, Chris.
I'm going to go to Naman.
So we already heard you built multiple projects.
You're super active in Team One.
You recently also organized a huge hackathon.
You were one of the Codebase winners in the second season.
So for those of you guys who don't know what Codebase is, Codebase is our accelerator program.
And on this side, you're also doing a little bit of studying, getting a degree at a really good university.
you're also doing a little bit of studying, getting a degree at a really good university.
So you have a lot of experience under your belt in the student entrepreneurship space.
What best practices have you learned along the way that you can share with other student
founders around this space?
And then also, you know, what mistakes have you made that you feel like can be avoided
and student founders should probably make earlier
rather than later. Over to you. Yes, thank you. So the way I would start this off with like a bunch
of things that I've thought of before coming to this space is ship before you're ready because
us students especially massively overthink correctness, right?
The real unlock for me personally was shipping ugly,
partial, even broken things early
and letting reality punch holes in them.
Because as students or in academia,
what we've been taught is that the perfect solution
is the best solution.
But when you jump to the real world or in startups,
there is no perfect solution.
And it's the one that's built over time.
So ship whatever you have the fastest out, get as much feedback as you have and improve it over time.
That plus build in public, ask dumb questions early.
So when you're a student, right, like me, people expect you to not know everything.
Use that, reach out, ask expect you to not know everything. Use that.
Reach out.
Ask for feedback when it's cheap.
Like reach out to me.
Reach out to any of the Team One members or in one of the group chat.
Keep asking questions.
And that's what I did in the beginning.
And pick ecosystems, not ideas.
So the biggest wins for me came when I built inside ecosystems that wanted me to succeed.
Like Avalanche being a great example, right? wins for me came when I built inside ecosystems that wanted me to success, wanted me to succeed.
Like Avalanche being a great example, right? The infra, the grants, the devs and the distribution matter more than the idea itself. And another thing which I personally feel like is that
mistakes a lot of student founders make and the ones that i've made is that we we
should fail in public sooner meaning not launching because you're afraid to look stupid is a real
failure right your worst demo is now better than your perfect product two years later and they
should build the wrong thing once everyone needs one project that dies because no one cares.
And it really rewires how you think about users and startups forever.
And just overbuild once and then never again.
Because we did this within Cryptek, right?
Where we learn the hard way that fancy architecture without users is just academic cosplay.
Do it once, learn, learn move on and don't try
too hard alone and feel the pain because that's how you learn what good co-founders advisors and
ecosystems are actually worth and i just want to shout out build games build games again and how
it's a real opportunity is because right now i've seen people who have ideas about building projects on chain.
So Build Games pushes you to ship and not just stock.
And that's rare, right?
And especially in the community with people from DevRel,
like Owen Walgren, Ash, et cetera,
you get engineers, infra teams,
and actual ecosystem players looking at your work
while you build in public
and guide you through the process, not just judges checking boxes.
It's a very low-risk way to get institutional grade reps.
And as a student, you're effectively stress-testing your founder instincts with real constraint, real users, and real technical depth.
and Avalanche in itself doesn't box you in.
And Avalanche in itself doesn't box you in.
You could do build games.
You can look at the infra build grants,
the finance tooling, whatever,
without fighting the platform
and that flexibility matters early.
And it's the best thing I love about builder games
and Avalanche in general with different grants, et cetera,
is that it has asymmetric upside.
The worst case is that you learn fast and build something tangible.
The best case is you get traction, capital, and long-term ecosystem support.
So I just want to give it back to Doro by saying that being a student isn't a disadvantage.
It's a sandbox with lower penalties.
And Avalanche Build Games gives you the place to take real shots,
while the cost of failure is still low and the upside is very high thank you man that was a good summary um i do have a follow-up question though for you naman so i know you just you have two
midterms today i think you're also with dendis or something and you're on this x basis and you're
also the cto of a company like
can you walk in one minute can you walk us through a typical namand day okay what that looks like
i don't know through it all in 24 hours for me the way it usually works is we i get up around
like 9 a.m which is like very late but go on finish classes till 1 p.m head back to the office
that we have the student entrepreneurship center where we sit down and then just grind until like midnight or two, depending on how strong we're feeling or not.
And then when exam seasons are about to happen or assignments, you just take, I think, five or six hours of work and then just get done with them and then just go back.
And then you just go back. Easy peasy.
Okay, so we all need a little more Naaman energy. I think this is fantastic. Thank you for your
insights, Naaman, because I think it's really important to know like what does it actually
look like? And I want to go over to Louis and Marc Killian. You work with students all the time.
You know exactly what that lifestyle looks like when
you're trying to finish your degree and write your thesis and then also build your company.
So maybe, Louis, can you share one or two like standout success stories from the
cryptosphere community and maybe just to signify what is possible when students get the right opportunity?
Yeah, sure.
And you said right.
I'm right in the middle of my thesis, right in the middle of everything about CILI. So it's a bit hard to manage, but it's cool to see a lot of opportunities happening.
And I think so.
Maybe I will repeat myself, but
Bull Games is an amazing opportunity
and that's what we try to focus on,
to find also the person who are dedicated,
like Avalanche, to help students
and to provide the environments to, yes, give the possibility and to build
the next startup and also to go forward and further than the actual hackathon and then
to engage them. And that's kind of the role of Cryptosphere. One of two success stories.
I don't know if I can tell that,
but one of the cool things we love to say,
I think everyone here knows about Marshall.
Actually, the founder, Paul Frambo,
is from Cryptosphere.
So he takes the incubator of Cryptosphere
and it helps building Morpho.
We didn't build Morpho, actually, it's not true.
But Paul Frambo was part of Cryptosphere
and it was one of the great things to see,
to see that one person who shared the knowledge
and then build amazing companies
and walk through the network we have and we manage now.
And so actually it's a cool story and it's kind of recent,
but Morphe is really is now getting old,
but getting bigger and bigger.
So it's amazing to see that.
And also I think we can we can
talk about France crypto that is another media and so France crypto is the past
president at his rapel who built his company with two other people that comes
from also from pictures fear and I would say the significance progress
and what we try to do every single time
is to promote the teams within our network
to participate, to support us, to support them, sorry,
and then to lead them to structured.
And as you say, Chris, the demo is cool,
but the product could be a fail, I think.
That may be correct me if I didn't understand well.
So it's actually what we try to do,
what we want to help and to share the knowledge for. And yes, I think it's also like a matter of time
and a matter of also in terms of student speaking
and student environments.
As you said, Naaman, we have the upside benefits
is like huge and giant.
And the thing is when you do also internships,
that's a kind of personal experience,
but you, and especially in institutions like banking system,
you see the, you know, the frictions,
the frictions and you can solve the problem
and you can have ideas actually by doing internships.
So use that, use that,
what's those opportunities you have during your studies because you will see what actually the job market looks like
and then you will have ideas because you will see the needs,
you will see the slow processes, the things that are like really,
I know you want to blow this
because you can't imagine
how hard sometimes
it is for processes
banking system, asset manager
like actual
system we have and how we can
revolutionize this thanks to
blockchain, Avalanche also because
it's like a super super
ecosystem so yes thanks to blockchain avalanche also because it's like a super super
Ecosystem so yes, I think do that and upside
upside benefits is like huge in there
like there is little little risks about failure studies because you start your company and
The the reason is like you will fail. Maybe you will start a year again.
In France, we have the privilege that universities cost almost zero. I know it's not the same in different countries, but yes, use that.
And yes, try to build as much as possible.
And Cryptosphere is here to help.
Of course.
I think a lot of people want to move maybe away from certain
countries right now so i'll come into france and go to school there but i know it's also super
competitive to get into the superiors and and all that so um yeah but it's definitely a big
plus of france or you don't have to pay tuition don't have that big debt hanging over you
and just to sort of summarize what naman and Louis were both emphasizing was like,
okay, as a student, you do have a little bit of wiggle room because you are on campus.
Folks do not expect you to know everything.
And at the same time, you can look for supportive ecosystems,
either, you know, with us like Avalanche, but also locally on campus with your student clubs
or with entrepreneurship
centers around you who offer opportunities. And then there's also, you know, competitions like
belt games that offer opportunities to really anyone, no matter where they are on their journey
or where they're from, it's really about having a good idea and a university degree is not required.
So I think you're looking for supportive ecosystems and circles and trying out
ideas quickly. And I don't know what you said, Naaman, earlier,
you have to drill holes in reality or let reality drill holes in the idea.
I think it's a very, very well-said sentence there.
So I'll try to remember that.
Mark Guilherme, I want to chime in over to you.
You know, so Louise spoke already about, you know, how cryptosvers support students and what makes student entrepreneurship so attractive.
But, you know, from your perspective, what do you think student entrepreneurs are struggling with right now?
What challenges do they face and how do you think um they can solve
them from your perspective you know maybe you've stories from people who struggled and then and
then solved them although they were stellar students and also an entrepreneur yeah okay um
thanks for the question um before that yeah yeah come to to to France. It would be a pleasure for us, or at least in Europe.
And, yeah, to be honest, you know,
launching a startup before graduation or the theme of today
can seem stressful, or at least, like,
when you want to start before you're ready.
Like, I think it's i think it's breaking up a
little bit can you i don't know if you're using your your earbuds or something um can you maybe
change it at least for me can you hear me perfect much better okay yeah okay nice okay okay nice
so i was saying like um starting before you're ready, kind of resonates with me.
When I first became head of DeFi at Cryptosphere,
I had massive, you know, imposter syndrome.
So I felt I wasn't technical enough.
And in my opinion, like rigor, discipline, it matters more than knowledge at first.
And yeah, I learned by doing and that is exactly what we want to push within our community.
So yeah, I'd say today what excites me most is the fact that technical barrier is dead.
And today, you know, you have AI, you have open source tools, and you have a lot of communities.
So even if you're a student in your dorm room or whatever, you can build for free and you can build fast.
dorm room or whatever you can build for free and you can build fast.
But, you know, that easy access, it's kind of funny because that easy access,
it created a much harder challenge.
And, you know, it's the discipline barrier.
Like, it is so easy to start, but it is it is also so so easy to quit you know a project so um
like the the the biggest challenge i would say it's laziness and lack of focus uh and it kills
a lot of projects uh and i i think it will it will continue in 2026, you know.
So at Cryptosphere, we want to provide a collaborative
and inclusive community.
We want to share, you know, collective ambition.
And you can't find that everywhere.
So like when you're alone, you know, you need,
I feel like you need a community to help you
being motivated to build and so on
and yeah so I think you should integrate a community and uh it yeah that's it for me I think
thank you I'm gonna I'm gonna add something there you you brought up a lot of good points a lot of
people who are you know coming to us coming coming to Ava Labs and the community,
expect the community to follow along with them just because they have a product or they have an
idea. But look at Naman or look at a lot of other people building products. They are building their
own communities and generating interest in their products genuinely. And that interest comes back
and circles back to us. It circles back to the rest of the community, which I think a lot more younger founders need to do.
And then when formulating that process into a real-world business use case, right?
Let's take AI for an example.
AI is very broad, right? You have multiple scopes, you have payments, vibe coding, identity, agent identity or personhood identity.
I think that a lot of mistakes that young founders are making is pitching it as a blockchain solution, right?
You're not supposed to do that. You're supposed to compare it to the traditional Web2 solution but you're you're working with blockchain rails but those blockchain rails are invisible um obviously you
know the community cares about the blockchain rails at the end of the day but as you scale
your product as you're using avalanche whether you're building an l1 or building on the c-chain
you have the unlimited power to scale that solution into a web 2 business which ideally
is what you want to do and is how you are going to
grow your company and grow equity to do that. Most importantly, right, is when you come in and
explain your product to someone who doesn't know what it is, you don't want to get too technical
with them. I know a lot of young people do that. You know, a lot of people in this space are technical, a lot are not, but do
understand the tech at a high level. So, you know, the best thing that you can do to start with your
product is, you know, first scoping the industry, right? What's the problem that your solution is
solving in the industry? And how are you tailoring that problem? The size is very important as well, right?
What's the market size of the industry?
Who has this problem?
And then you go into what you've built so far.
And also, you know, if you speak to us at Ava Labs,
you know, what do you want to learn
and how can you grow this business, right?
Yeah, thank you.
And I want to pitch here our Entrepreneur Academy on the Builders Hub. So where we interviewed all the folks who are mentoring our code-based accelerator program participants, and they give you sort of super condensed advice on, you know, how to do a sales pitch, how to do your go-to-market strategy, how to do your tokenomics. We have Brian Limeman on there who really gives you the play-by-play
on how to talk and interact with VCs.
So we have a lot of that content out there and you can take it for free
and you can also get certified for free.
So if you want to add that to your LinkedIn and your resume,
and you're learning from real people, from our colleagues and experts
from our ecosystem who are giving out all this advice for free so
and again and everything that chris said you know super good advice and don't feel
shy about reaching out to any of us and asking for that advice and also coming back to community
avalanche has a big community build games has a telegram channel as i mentioned earlier we have
a big team one discord server we have lots of Team One members really everywhere in the world.
They're all super approachable and happy to help.
So do reach out, pitch your idea, get insights, super important.
We're almost at the end.
So I just want to reach out to each of you and ask you if there's a student or a professor
right now who has an idea what should
the very next step be and why do you think participating in the avalanche belt games
is a strong way to turn that early idea into something real maybe we'll start with um
yeah yeah of course so yeah i i'll keep it brief like if you want i think you you should start before
you're ready so if you wait until you feel like a ceo you know you you never launch so um let's say
um the avalanche build games are the perfect playground for that, you know, you need to turn your, your laziness into execution and,
and that is perfect for, for, for that. So, so yeah. And plus you have, you have a clear
deadline, so you need just, you know, a little, a little discipline and, and you have a massive
incentive. It's, it's literally insane. Uh, so, so yeah. Thank you. Yeah yeah thank you yeah and i think that's nice right
because uh i think louis you're the one who was that we were saying like some folks just like a
half-backed idea and then they get lazy and follow through and i think the third sort of concise
framework that bold games offers is kind of like a nice kick in the bum you know to get stuff done
and really ship something.
So Louis, what's your advice? If students are listening right now and they have a business idea and they
have a web three startup idea, they really want to build out,
what should their first step be?
No, first go for it, go for it, try to experience.
And as I've seen the comments of KEEP,
sadly, the universities are logging
behind the product development.
And that's a true story.
Like, universities won't help you to build a product.
They will help you to understand,
macro speaking, like, oh, it's maybe working in finance, in blockchain, in dev.
But they will never tell you how to build a product from A to Z or at least build your MVP.
And that's why acquisitions and opportunities like this are like the must-have
and the gold, actually the gold
you can jump onto.
So I would say the first step is like
just have a discussion.
Start a discussion and be curious.
Always be curious
because curiosity will lead you
to know people
and then people will teach you
some basis, some new stuff
and this new stuff, you will have some ideas
and then these ideas will match
maybe in a hackathon
and then you will have the price and the recognition
and then this recognition will help you
to get the confidence
to build your startups
and then launch a project
so yes, the first step is
be curious and start a discussion and then like launch a project so yes the first step is like be curious
and start a discussion and then you'll see thank you i agree being curious and going out there and
just like chatting at a meetup or a similar event or conference about your idea and then meeting
people and asking questions super important and naman can you hear us yes I am I am back I am back up here so I would like to just
end this with a couple of things is here in Philadelphia our American football team has a
slogan hungry dogs run faster and so always be hungry always be curious always fail fast, fail publicly, and let the market evaluate your product.
Don't overthink it and always be going to competitions, always be going to hackathons
that some of we organize or other ones go to team monuments and everything else.
Because for me, it was just serendipity that i found avalanche at a random
hackathon and everything just cascaded from there so yeah just put yourself out there
keep fighting be hungry and fail as fast as you can thanks that's also the scary though fail as
fast as you can it's like but um i think you're right you know just go
out there and try stuff out and and be open about what you are interested in and really i think it's
it's a bit harder for folks who are introverted right and have good ideas but then find a wing
woman or wingman or like a team member the hackathon who's willing to do that with you and
go out there and pitch your ideas. So hackathon is a great way to get started. Chris, last but
not least, Godfather of BD, share us some advice, please. Yeah, I would say, you know, adding on to
what everyone else said is go with your product. Don't be scared to showcase what you've built.
Build in public.
You know, some people will argue that, you know,
publicly building on your GitHub repo is good.
It doesn't matter.
I personally like it.
I like to see updates.
I work closely with our DevRel engineering team to really get builders what they need.
They're a fantastic team.
They're smart.
And Neman already mentioned Owen and Ash and the rest of them. There's a lot to name. They're all fantastic. Definitely, you know, keep up with all the initiatives that we're offering. If you are building something, go today, right now, go register for the Retro 9000 C Chain round.
It's a free initiative.
If you're building something on the C-chain, you should be absolutely participating in it.
We're going to start tracking those on-chain transactions March 1st.
Always reach out if you have any questions about the process.
If you need any sort of scalability or optimization for your program on Avalanche, reach out.
We do have a lot of partners that offer solutions for storage, data, compute, etc.
So all of these are, you know,
they're disposable, they're ready for you. You know, reach out to myself, to Doro, to the rest of the team, and we're happy to help. Thank you, Chris. Again, we have $40 million for Retro 9000,
which is insane. We have a million dollars for Build Games. So if you're interested in any of these initiatives today,
go to build.avex.network,
get your free Builders Hub account.
That's what you're going to need to apply
for any of our programs.
If you want to get certified in Entrepreneur Academy,
Developer Academy,
and for those of you who are in a student club,
leverage our student club launch pads
where we have clubs
reach out to us all the time with inquiries, and we get back to them and support them with
speakers and events and educational materials. So please do that. And then, yeah, good luck for
Build Games. It's a big, big month for Avalanche. I'm so excited to see all the fantastic projects coming through and today I
want to thank Chris, Nama, Markelion, Louis for coming in the middle of your day and so late in
the evening for Louis and Markelion sharing your insights and ideas please do give them a follow
and again as Chris said our doors are really always open we mean it give any questions comments input
for founders and you know I run the university input for founders. And, you know, I run the
university program for Avalanche globally. I should have introduced myself at the beginning,
shouldn't I? I didn't. Okay. Well, I run university engagement for Avalanche globally. So if you are
a student, a researcher, a postdoc, a faculty, I do want to talk to you. So feel free to DM me or
find me on Telegram or shoot me an email and I will respond. So with that said, happy Build Games, everybody.
And thank you to our speakers and look forward to hearing from you soon.
Take care.
Thanks a lot.
Take care.
Au revoir.
Bye. Thank you.
