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State of Web3 Fundraising | Blubird
Recorded: Aug. 12, 2025 Duration: 1:02:58Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent discussion on The Crypto Radio, Blockchain Wayne shared insights on Bluebird's innovative platform designed to streamline project launches and token generation. With a focus on partnerships, fundraising, and the upcoming utility token launch, Wayne emphasized the importance of leveraging technology and strategic collaborations to drive growth in the evolving crypto landscape.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, everyone.
There's still some time before we officially start.
So if you want to invite other people or share these X spaces,
then feel free to do so.
We will start in about 10 minutes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hello everyone, this is The Crypto Radio and I'm your host, Uriahan.
And I am joined by Wayne Marcel, aka Blockchain Wayne.
He's the Regional Growth and BD Director of Bluebird.
So today we have such an exciting conversation because it's going
to revolve around like Web3 funding and RWAs. Hey Wayne, thank you so much for making time for us.
Hey, good morning. GM, GM. Thanks for having me here.
Yeah, awesome. So everybody get ready, get ready because we have such an exciting interview ahead.
get ready because we have such an exciting interview ahead.
Before we start talking about Bluebird,
I wanna talk a little bit more about you.
So here at the Crypto Radio,
we don't just wanna discover the projects,
we also wanna discover the people behind the projects.
So the first question we have is,
maybe something to break the ice.
Can you tell us a little bit more about your experience
as Blockchain Wayne about your experience as blockchain wayne and uh your
experience before you became the regional growth and be the director at blueberg specifically we
saw that you were a chief meme officer at fio protocol back in 2021 and 2022 so yeah could
you tell us a little bit more about that yeah Yeah, absolutely. So I'll get to the chief meme officer story here shortly. But yeah, so my background. So 2016, I got involved in my first Bitcoin after ignoring Bitcoin for a few years. Right. We all most of us ignored it at first and eventually jump in later.
So 2016 to 2018, I was very intrigued with all the potential that this tech had.
And so in 2018, I started podcasting just because I'd always wanted to start a podcast.
I was like, let's talk about crypto.
And so in 2018, I launched a podcast.
It's still running today.
It's called From No Crypto to No Crypto.
So from N-O to K-N-O-W.
And that's when I started podcasting as Blockchain Wayne.
And it just stuck because eventually everybody I met in the industry after that knew me as that.
So that's kind of how Blockchain Wayne came about.
And so 2018, 2019, and some of 2020, I worked for different projects, kind of as a freelance,
helping them build out educational content, educational libraries, whether it's courses, quizzes,
just to help people understand the basics of crypto.
I mean, any project that's leading to all more new users, you probably have to teach people the
basics of crypto as well, too. And then in 2021, I joined the FIO team, FIO. I initially joined as
a making content for them as well, too. And one of of my special side I love making a lot of meme
content now whether it's a picture meme or a video meme taking a video and repurposing it to
to be funny for crypto so that was the the chief meme officer era I eventually left a full-time
corporate career that I had for over 20 years to go full-time with Theo as the head of growth
I've been doing that for the last four years, and I've known the Bluebird team intimately
the last couple of years.
They're partnering with FIO.
FIO drives crypto usability, simple tools to make crypto easier to send and receive.
And, you know, not too long ago, the team asked me to, I was already helping them with
a pipeline of sending leads, and they asked me to join a team as a growth and BD director just to share what Blue Bear is doing to help give projects all the tools they need to be successful when they're launching.
When they're launching a Tokyo, when they're doing fundraising, it's just it gives them that one stop shop because that that whole sector has been very segmented where,
okay, you got to go here for this. You got to go to somebody else for that.
And so we, we give everyone, you know, all the tools they need in one spot,
both for the founders and teams that are launching,
building and launching projects and those that are investors.
Now, whether they're a VC or a launch pad or a layer one chain or an individual
investor, they have a one-stop
spot too, where they can see transparently what's happening with that project as well.
Okay. Awesome. Yeah. We're really interested in Bluebird, but I think we'll talk a little bit
more about that later. You mentioned that you were podcasting in the early days of Bitcoin.
So what was the audience like back then? I imagine it's evolved so much over the years.
What was the audience like back then?
I imagine it's evolved so much over the years.
You know, it has on some levels and other levels it hasn't because so many people, it's the same questions, right?
I even have some of the same people that asked me in 2017 if they were late to Bitcoin, asked me again recently if they're still, because they didn't listen then.
And now asking if they're still, because they didn't listen then, and now asking if they're
still late. So it was challenging. And I was podcasting mainly to get better at talking about
Bitcoin, talking about crypto. And I wasn't really shooting for millions of listeners.
And so while the podcast itself has a decent amount of listeners on the audio channels,
because at first, for the first got on many years it was it was
audio only across all the podcast channels but I also cater my audience to the new person so I'm
constantly having new people in the feed people coming in and then from there they reach out they
ask questions I even have a free education community that I launched with a couple of
yes you can call them crypto fam now I used to call them friends, but we've known each other for quite a while.
And we just want to provide value.
We're not looking for clicks or likes or anything else,
but a place where people can get the basic information.
So it's evolved.
The narratives have changed over the years.
It went from ICO phase to craze to defy craze to nft craze to now it's like ai and rwa
which are all of those are very important technologies but we typically see like you see
spikes you know in hype and then markets typically dip after that when the hype wears off but then
what emerges is really good tech that's that's going to continue to be used so it's it's funny because in some ways it's changed it is
getting easier just because a lot of the narratives in the media are have been starting to be positive
about crypto and blockchain and development there and so it is easier people are less skeptic um
and you know kind of took the hard way i have a lot of family and friends that thought I was crazy.
And at least now they're starting to listen.
Yeah, I can only imagine, like, since you were podcasting, like, really early when Bitcoin and I mean, like, crypto in general was kind of a taboo.
And now it's being adopted everywhere, especially like with this RWA thing.
So things have definitely
changed um our next question is like yeah i think like right now it would be a good time to learn a
little bit more about what bluebird does so could you give us like maybe the full description of
uh because i saw so many things on the website that you guys offer could you walk us through it
right yeah absolutely so uh kind of a summary, I typically
describe it as an all-in-one Web3 launch platform that's used by early stage founders, funds,
advisors, and individual investors. So we basically help projects go from idea to token launch faster,
cleaner, and like with less handholding needed uh and when you think about that when you
think about a project that's launching um there's a lot of different uh problems that that they have
and also a lot of development and anyone launching a token i'll just start with this too because it's
kind of a my my financial disclaimer anybody launching a token that should not be their
core product right people are building businesses building businesses around certain tools and projects and certain functionality.
And a token is an enhancement to an existing protocol, which is why we're starting to see interest from what we call the Web2 side.
People that are not even in crypto, businesses that are not even in crypto, that are wanting to launch a token.
They don't want to launch a token for fundraising.
They want to launch a token
to add an additional utility feature benefit
to their platform.
And so that should be your core product.
Let's think about somebody launching a gaming project, right?
If they're launching a gaming project,
the most important thing to them is not the token.
It is to launch the best game that they can.
So they want to be able to build great games.
And so all of the nuances that come with launching a token, you should have a simple place to where you can go and do that and be able to launch that.
It's just going to enhance that user's experience within that game.
And so what we offer is everything. When you think about tokenomics,
I had a perfect example this past week. Last week, I was in Las Vegas at Rare Evo conference
and it was a crypto conference in Vegas. And I was talking to a fairly new layer one blockchain
that are launched. And I was telling them about the tool, about how it helps to manage and deploy like your tokenomics, because a lot of I've seen a lot of great projects over the years have really good intent, launch great products, launch great tools that have a lot of utility.
But the way they handled the tokenomics in terms of what amount of tokens go to early investors, seed investors, the team, like and all those different lockup periods have have wrecked the
price of some tokens we've all experienced i've personally experienced it um just from you know
from our time at feo and great projects will continue to merge even if they have a have a
launch like that but um the this the tokenomics engine allows them to get a plug in and play
around with all those different numbers that they're trying to figure out, okay, what percentage is going to go to the team? What percentage is going
to go to early investors, late investors? How much is going to go towards the token liquidity when
it starts trading on exchanges? And then from there, you can adjust those unlock schedules.
And then from there, after that, it uh what we call cap table management so being able
to invite investors whether that's individuals for you know funds uh to invest into the project
that you're launching and then there's a claims portal for investors because once from that same
platform you'll be able to deploy the token yeah and have and set the vesting contract as well too
and on only investor side
they'll be able to log in they'll be able to manage their investments about a fine other
projects that may be launching that can that can that they could potentially invest in or participate
in a certain round and the platform also has KYC built in so that alone you know typically anyone raising funds in
the early stage until they get to a public round where it's listed on an
exchange they have they're required almost everywhere in the world to do KYC
verification to verify the identity of the people that are investing and that
alone can cost you quite a bit of money and so that's included in the Blueberry
platform and then we also have a bespoke service where we can build out a tool
for anybody wanting to launch an RWA,
a real world asset,
whether that's an asset-backed token.
We recently did some energy,
I'm sorry, emission reduction assets,
which is kind of like the Web3 version
of what most people know in the world
that was carbon credits.
We're also working with gold mine, a diamond mine to tokenize those assets,
tokenize that mine itself to where investors can benefit from the actual metals and goods that are pulled out of the earth.
So there's a lot of different options for real world assets that we're going to see in the future.
So Bluebird also offers that.
That's a little bit more of a custom service, but it is something that we are very focused on.
When I say custom, compared to the Bluebird Founders Toolkit, which is designed, if someone's
just launching a regular utility token, they can just jump in and start using the platform. There's
a little bit more of a setup initially to set it up uh you know just because you want to be uh the thing about real world assets is you want to be
legally compliant with when and where you're launching them and what what the asset is because
some you know some entity is going to have to uh one have custody and two uh be able to have a
transparent verification of that ownership with real world assets.
And that's the risk you run with RWA asset is the fact that you think about, you know,
I always give an example.
If you think about like the Federal Reserve in the U.S. was supposed to be stockpiling
gold for the U.S. and gold was supposed to back the dollar.
And in the 70s, they had to take it off of the gold standard because there wasn't enough gold.
And that, you know, that was pre uh crypto blockchain but just an example that when uh
someone says an asset is backed you want to make sure you have trust in and be able to verify not
just trust but also be able to verify that that the assets are there um to back back that asset so
um work across multiple chains we're blockchain agnostic so right now
most evms are in the process of adding support for all evm blockchains within bluebird and
eventually expand beyond that uh to where anywhere where someone's looking to launch a token they'll
be able to access and utilize uh the bluebird uh all-in-one platform. Thanks so much for that.
I actually had a question about maybe the difference between
traditional fundraising and launch pads
and Bloomberg,
like specifically,
well, what it does differently,
but you actually answered a lot of them.
So I think my next question
is a little bit more about the industry.
Unless you want to add a little bit more
about traditional fundraising
versus launch pads
and bluebird yeah well real quick and i even touch on what you what you just asked because um
you know when i when i do explain bluebird and some people get a perception that that we're a
launch pad and we're not we're a tool for even work with launch pads because if you have a launch pad
um that that has a project that's launching on their
launch pad you would want the tools that bluebird offers for them to be even more successful so we
actually have a lot of partnerships with launch pads and like a two-way referral system like if
we have someone that needs a launch pad we've got experience with certain ones and if you have a
launch pad that you know maybe that that that project that's wanting to launch is having issues
with their tokenomics
or are really just wants an easier way to launch and deploy the token they refer them
to us and yeah you know utilizing the the token and and here's the thing like traditional fundraising
needs to be leveled up but i don't think that the token should have its own utility
and and purpose for any funds that are raised or token seal but it shouldn't think that the token should have its own utility and and purpose for any funds that
are raised or a token seal but it shouldn't be the core business model to fund the entire project
on the token uh that's kind of what i see when i look at that now one thing bluebird is uh is
building out and it's on our roadmap to come out soon is what we call web2 tools because if you're
building a web3 company you're gonna have a token you can deploy that token but also um there is going to be a part in the founders toolkit on our
on our bluebird dashboard where you'll be able to manage equity sales so if you're raising funds
but maybe they're not getting just tokens they're going to get equity in the company
you can manage that as well so the token does um allow it allow you a chance to extend your
fundraising uh to raise funds for different product development features uh but i think
there still needs to be that mix of both where um you know if you needed to build out the core
business then you can do some traditional fundraising as well too but most web3 investors
vc funds they they they're already
asking for a mix of both they're asking for uh you know maybe some equity in the company
and they're also asking for tokens so it's just another tool um that that you can utilize for
fundraising so i think it's it's not most cases it shouldn't be an either or strategy it should
be a both if you're needing um to raise funds and focus that the token on utility more than just speculative value because we see speculative
value even great projects we have tokens go up uh on hype and down on fear but if you build if you
continue to build out a great product where that token is going to be utilized over time, then, you know, then you'll have a better chance at success.
So that's kind of my take on fundraising, you know,
and I think that's what a lot of investors have seen,
especially those that have invested in crypto tokens over the years
crypto tokens over the years with a lot of hype a lot of promise and it didn't quite work out
with a lot of hype, a lot of promise, and it didn't quite work out.
they're looking for um that token not to be the main feature of the show but to be an important
part of of an ecosystem that could help manage governance manage participation um easily help to
send you know basically transfer value back and forth in an ecosystem without having to off-ramp
to any kind of a banking or traditional finance rail. And that's,
that's what we're, you know, we're looking to do.
So we do believe still that traditional fundraising is important and that's why
it's going to be, it's,
it's in the plan to be a feature in the blueberry platform as well.
Yeah. Before we talk a little bit more about the industry,
I have another follow-up question
which is um basically out of all your services which one is most popular and can you tell us a
little bit more about maybe the user experience behind it yeah yeah absolutely so i would say um
on the the founder or the builder like the builder side, it's the tokenomics engine because it allows you to most people I talk to are managing this off of a spreadsheet.
You know, and that is that can be a headache.
One one miscalculation or mess up in a formula on a spreadsheet can throw the entire thing off.
off and i've seen that happen multiple times already just in the short term like i said i've
And I've seen that happen multiple times already just in the short term.
been i've been uh involved with the bluebird team for you know almost two years now in terms of a
partnership with my other company i mentioned but uh just in in the last couple months and
like diving in being more of part of the team i've seen that that happens so the tokenomics
it allows you to put in add each round of funding you have for your token, whether that's seed round, private round, public round.
And then you also have allocations all the time that are going like what is going to KOLs, what's going to marketing, what's going to the team that's participating in building, how much is going to be allocated for liquidity and any other of those rounds that you want to add.
And then you can put what percentage allocation is going to be allocated for liquidity and any other of those rounds that you want to add and then you can put what percentage allocation is going to go to that if you want to have an unlocked
schedule you can put that in as far as how much is is available at initial deployment and then
how much unlocks each month after that and then that creates you a great chart so a chart and a
pie graph where you can see where each allocation is going and also the
schedule of okay what what how many tokens are in circulation and at deployment and how many at
month one month two month three and the cool thing about that the the founders and the builders are
putting that in on the project side but then the investors are able to see all of that so they can
see everything um in terms of what that's going to be once you publish it.
And you can build multiple models.
So that's the one thing that I find drives a lot of people crazy.
The other feature, I'd say secondary feature that gets a lot of attention just because of the cost savings is the token deployment and the vesting contract deployment whenever you actually launch a token.
and the vesting contract deployment whenever you actually launch a token.
Because if you are launching your own token and you're building your own smart contracts to launch a token,
or for the vesting contract, which a lot of people do,
one, it takes away a lot of time from your development team,
the way they could be working on your core product.
But two, I mean, just to have two of those smart contracts audited by any of the legitimate auditing firms
are typically around $10 12k per contract and
sometimes there would be a slight discount but that alone is is so much cost savings uh when
they can deploy from an audited contract that's already been put out uh and so that saves them
money and then on the investor side it's kind of the same thing i was talking about on the tokenomics
is is that investor can log into their portal and be able to see all of their investments and be able to see kind of what any tokens are available to claim that may have unlocked.
And also, you know, all the transparency, whatever is entered on the founders toolkit side, they can see on their side.
And so it's a one stop thing.
And then the secondary part from there would be KYC because nobody likes doing KYC.
Let's face it.
We go to a hundred different apps and platforms and every one of them wants to give all of
our sensitive information for that.
And it seems there's a lot of great projects that are building tools to prevent that from
being necessary in the future.
But at least on the Bluebird side, KYC one time and any other future projects that an investor
chooses to invest in it's already done it's not likely to do it per project it's already done
once and then they have it set for any anything else they invest in from any of our clients
wow that sounds really interesting also the spreadsheet thing was really scary. I can only imagine.
Our next question is a bit. Yeah. Our next question is, I think, a little bit more about the industry, because further down the line, there are micro caps. And what are your thoughts on the micro cap industry? And maybe also talk about pre-seeds and bootstrap projects.
bootstrapped projects yeah yeah so you know micro caps I think are important I
mean that's typically where most people start and a lot of the projects that that
we saw over the years that had a lot I mean let's face it if you go back to
just just five years ago in 2020 and some of those large um large cap projects that launch many of them
have not even got you know gotten back to a level that they were prior um but microcap allows you to
um really i think it build a more sustainable base and so i think those projects are important
we're going to see a lot of great projects that do that. Everybody's just looking for a good platform to get awareness and grow. And I think if those projects focus on utility, you'll see that. And I think most grow it's going to be big and they will get a you know they're they're they're they're
they're looking to get some sort of a financial return or satisfaction and that value growing
and so micro caps when the market especially when the market is in a good state there's a lot of
positivity in the market that's when they usually. So whether you're building in a bear market,
building in a bull market,
focus on not growing too fast too soon.
We've seen a lot of large cap projects
that had a lot of promise and never really delivered.
Or at the end of the day, you look back
and you're like, they really weren't different
from this project or that project
or whatever the case may be,
or this ecosystem and that ecosystem.
And so micro caps are important and that's where the builders are going.
But the two hardest things that people have is with time and money, right?
So fundraising in any market can be tough.
Obviously, it's easier as the market gets more bullish.
But that's when we've seen a lot of great projects that have failed because they don't,
they run out of time and money. So creating an ecosystem, a system where we're working with layer one, layer two blockchains, we're working with launch pads, we're working with
VC firms and funds just to have that, that build that network where give them the best chance for
success. Because a lot of the conversation we're having with those individuals that I just mentioned,
those different sectors are around partnership pipelines.
Like we have people coming to us that want to use our tools and they need access to maybe a launchpad,
to maybe any VCs we may know, and vice versa.
They may be going to them first.
And our toolkit gives them
a leg up to be able to say focus on building your core product build a great product or project or
ecosystem and just leverage the tools at bluebird to deploy on the token side and so uh that's where
i think we're going to benefit because uh it's just sad over the years to see so many great startups that had a lot of potential and just didn't make it for one reason or another.
And then one thing I didn't mention earlier is in the Bluebird platform, we have a gem field.
So as more projects deploy on Bluebird, as an investor, an investor portal, you'll be able to see a gem field that would recommend other projects.
And you can click on them and look at the same thing you see before us in terms of transparency. And one thing
I failed to mention earlier, just to think about how Bluebird got started because the origin story.
So Corey Billington, who's the CEO of Bluebird, is also involved in many VC funds, including
Andrava Capital and some others. So he's participated in hundreds of project of product launches uh
project launches over the years and bluebird was designed from a need that he saw that he
particularly had with him and his team and those in those funds like this is something that he felt
was necessary and needed um so it's that whole adage you know built it for out of something out
of a personal need that he had particularly and then realized this is something that is a universal need across different projects.
And so that's really how Bluebird came about. It wasn't just like the team got together and said, hey, let's launch.
Let's launch this because we think this the market needs this.
They knew from experience that this is something that they needed and probably uh are most definitely would
have helped some of the other projects and that they've worked with um if they were successful
be even more successful or if they they struggled to uh to make it uh could have gave them that edge
up to where uh they weren't bogged down with trying to manage uh tokenomics because once
you launch a token that's out in the wild it's kind of hard to uh to pull anything back and make any changes and so getting that foundation for a launch
set is the key to uh to success over long term
yeah thanks for that um that that's really interesting because um so bloomberg bird was
built to fix a certain need that was already existing in the VC market.
We want to hear a little bit more about your thoughts when it comes to bootstrapping,
because there are some projects that are listening right now that are bootstrappers and everything.
So has the definition of bootstrapping changed now with tools like Bloomberg or Bloomberg?
or how do you see bootstrapping today?
Or how do you see bootstrapping today?
Is it still effective?
What are your thoughts?
Yeah, I mean, bootstrapping can be very, very effective.
And all that means is you're not getting,
so anytime you take on investors in a company or project,
you are giving away equity or tokens or both, right?
And so the earlier you fundraise
before you build anything or build much,
the more you have to give away to get the funds you need to launch. So the longer a project can bootstrap, the better control they will have over their company and their projects.
And there's nothing wrong with aligning with strategic investors that will bring more value outside of that.
bring more value outside of that but i i always find like if someone has a capability and the
means uh to bootstrap to a certain extent unless bringing on investors also going to be a strategic
move because they have the knowledge and you also want that maybe mentorship or that that advice
that that consultation um build as long as you can without raising funds i mean even at blue
where blue where has taken you know some investments over over the last couple
years and I think with what we're building right now this is my personal
opinion not the companies but we could raise a lot of funding from a lot of
other funds and firms and everything else but you want to be able to build as
much because the more autonomy you have over the project and the less you give away the
more you can ensure that you can you know i think the communities will benefit a lot more from that
in the long run because you're not giving away as much as your company so this is it's not new i
mean this is kind of going back to even pre-crypto and web3 that the more you can build uh the better
and so bluebird is one of those tools
that allows them to not i mean just imagine if you know a lot of founders are developers but if
they're going to build their project they don't want to worry about launching the token contracts
and everything else but if someone is a founder and they're not not a developer then they have
to pay to hire someone to do that so we're taking money off the table that they would have to spend to deploy. And then, I mean, let's just partner that with the strongest narrative that's out
there right now with AI, because AI also allows a lot of projects to do a lot more with a lot less.
And so bootstrapping could be even more important now. You know, we see a lot of great tools and a
lot of great tech that just sometimes never makes it to the market because of not enough funding and not enough resources.
can do that be that true definition of bootstrapping all if not most of the way
um to where they can launch great projects that'll get out to the market that
in an environment five years ago they wouldn't have had the resources or the tools to make that
happen and those great ideas just kind of never leave the founder's head they never come to
fruition um but yeah bootstrapping is definitely important. I don't, I think the only change, like I mentioned, is just the fact that as better tools come out,
like Bluebird and like AI and other tools, that is great. I talked to someone recently that
has built several very successful wallets over the years, and he's building a payment rail system
for Africa that's going to include stable coins with on ramps and off ramps.
And he's done this before in Latin America.
And I asked him what was different then and now.
And he said, basically, you know, he knows coding, he knows developing.
But with AI, he was able to deploy the working product in three months.
What would have normally taken him nine to 12 months.
So I definitely think with the tools that are out there in the tech in the state that it's in right
now more users can bootstrap and then you can be more strategic about the investments you take
instead of just saying we're desperate for money we'll take anything from anybody you can be
strategic like okay this is the person that that that has done x in the past and i want to work
with this person specifically.
And so you can be more strategic about the investors you bring in instead of
grasping and being desperate and saying, I need to take whatever money I can to keep the company
alive. That's really encouraging. Yeah. Our next question is, I think a little bit more
further down the pipeline. So big ideas often delay profit,
sometimes just because of how big or massive the mission is.
In your opinion, when does revenue and product market fit
become most important or at what stage?
Well, it's at your MVP, I believe.
I mean, your minimally...
Sorry, I had a little tongue twister there.
Your minimally viable product is when you can start bringing on people to utilize it.
I mean, we've got a long roadmap.
I mean, we're live now.
We've got the Founders Toolkit.
We've got the CapTable Management.
We've got KYC Investor Portal already live.
But we've got a lot of other tools that are in the pipeline. but you've got to, you know, you build out your core product.
And because even with the concept that I mentioned that Corey had, where he's like, Blueberry was, was, was basically designed for a need that they specifically had.
But then you get it out in the market and you want to get people using it.
And so, I mean, product market fit is important and I think it's actually like right at the right time because Blueberry could have been built five years ago seven years ago right if the if if
the team was further along there but sometimes it's about timing and it's the same thing I lived
at that world when I was at a you know are still at like i mentioned also what i do at fio is because we were just way too early
not a lot of people are using crypto payments yet now we're starting to see an uptick in that i
think it's the same thing with blueberry blueberry would have launched four years ago or seven years
ago it wouldn't have been a good time so product market fit is important but also timing of of
everything is important too and uh you know everybody has that mantra or here's that mantra like it's great
to be early but it's really sometimes it's best to be a little bit later uh and that's what we're
seeing here because now the market is at a point where they they are wanting you know they're
wanting great tools they're wanting to be efficient, realize that with so many great competing projects out there,
you want your leg up.
So product market fit is important.
But I think also, you know,
if you're launching for your investors,
it's also to see a roadmap of what you're leveraging.
We've got some great tools that are going to be coming out,
some AI-based engines that are going to help as well too.
And we're going to continue to build out Bluebird.
And what you see now is just the beginning. And then we're also going to have tools as i mentioned
that um you know founders want to do on on the web two side where they're managing uh equity
sales for investors they could they can do that in the platform as well so uh but getting that
mvp out and active is is important because then it's less of just a concept of what you think the market wants or even in our case, like what we felt the market wanted based on our own needs.
But then you can start getting that feedback and and tailor your product towards what the market needs.
And we know these crypto markets move really fast, right? So things could shift pretty quickly and being nimble to be able to say, okay, we can shift
with those market needs and market demands, which is also why the RWA platform is so important
because that is something, I think that's where we're going to see some of the largest
numbers and tokenization.
I mean, Bluebird itself has already tokenized $32 billion worth of assets that I mentioned earlier, the energy, I'm sorry,
emission reduction assets for, you know, for some very large projects.
And we're going to see just a mass tokenization of everything that's normally managed through
like a Web2 centralized database.
I think even when we're starting to see it now even when you get to like stock trading
I think even when we're starting to see it now, even when you get to like stock trading,
stock and bond ratings those those could all be tokenized at one point in the future
and so seeing that narrative as something that is coming and being able to pivot and also say that
okay Bluebird is doing not just normal tokenization but we have the customization
of where we could do that and that's where companies need to really focus on not just on
what the market needs today but what is the market going to need a year from now two years from now
and crypto things happen fast um and be able to pivot uh you know towards that as well um because
you want to give the market what it needs not what you think it needs and so by getting that mvp out
with a viable product and that that's really where I think most of the,
back to the bootstrapping side,
most of the fundraising,
I think companies should do after that MVP is launched
because then it's live and you have a working product
instead of pitching just a concept,
a concept of what could be or what may be in the future.
Yeah, thanks for that.
I also wanted to ask about MVPs uh like is it good to race before or
after but you answered that perfectly my next question is a little bit more about the market
because i mean like right now the recent report of y combinator i think um was that they invested
the majority of their funds into ai projects and ai startups. So AI is definitely like a hotspot for investors right now.
But what do you think is a close second?
Yeah, I think it's RWA.
I think AI, that's what I tell people.
AI, RWA is, I say, a close second,
if not right there, neck and neck,
like as far as like right even with it.
And I'll even give you a third one
that I'm still very passionate about.
I think it's going gonna be a strong narrative is deep in decentralized
physical infrastructure deep end projects are also gonna be I'd say right
there right there behind it and it's important to note all of these all of
these different narratives have hype cycles and there's let's face it we all
know there's companies that will just attach AI to their name.
And I've seen it happen, right? They,
they were doing something completely different in the space and all of a
sudden AI narrative comes and okay, now we're an AI company too. Um, but I,
and this goes back to the educator. I mean,
I always tell people look back at history, there's going to be hype cycle.
There's going to be a lot of like basically a bubble,
like people call it a bubble. Like it's a bad thing, thing but it happens and what emerges from that bubble is great tech go back
25 years ago plus to the dot-com bubble burst every company out there was adding dot-com to
their name and then all of a sudden when that bubble burst most people walked away funny enough
i had just graduated college around that time with a degree in computer science.
I decided not even to go work in tech at first because everybody was looking for jobs because all these dot com companies went out of business.
But what's emerged since then is tech has been huge. And we saw it happen.
I mean, DeFi, we saw a DeFi bubble pop. And now, I mean, DeFi, everybody would agree, is still going to be a strong, strong narrative in the long term.
still going to be a strong, strong narrative in the long term. And the same thing is going to
And the same thing is going to happen with AI.
happen with AI. RWA, I think, is going to be more of a consistent growth just because,
you know, the one thing people struggle with when they don't understand money and supply and demand
is they like, well, what backs that currency that, you know, you talk to someone about Bitcoin,
let's not back buy anything. They don't understand economics and how money and what are the
properties of hard money.
And so it's hard for them to grasp that.
But if you say you have an asset token
that's backed by an asset,
that's a lot easier for people to grasp.
So those I think are going to be good.
But also at the same time,
I tell everyone to be cautious
because not everything that says they're building on AI.
I mean, they say they're an AI company, really at the the back and they just have like a chat GPT API set up
that you're you're using their tool but all you're really using is chat GPT so
you're gonna see a lot of that too so definitely buyer beware when it comes to
those but I think those are the three strongest narratives we're gonna see as
the market heats up yeah that's hilarious uh
the chat gpd rep we've seen like definitely a lot of projects trying to do that uh yeah going back
to rwa because it's really interesting because when you open up that topic it seems that a lot of
web 2 or trad 5 people are also interested in rwa as well because like it feels like a lot of crypto narratives or
technologies they don't really have that much of an an inkling to but like when it comes to rwa
they they're suddenly like really on board could you tell us a little bit more about like in your
opinion what's a good rwa project versus a bad one yeah i mean a good one is going to be anything that's in demand i tell you a couple that i look
at um i think real estate and precious metals are going to be two huge ones because people can grasp
what that is in terms of real estate think about like a a multi-unit complex that would normally
sell for say 10 million dollars now traditional funding someone's going to go in and they're
gonna they're gonna get some large investors maybe's going to go in and they're going to they're going
to get some large investors maybe a handful to invest in that project through tokenization you
can make the investment unit smaller it can reach more people more people can participate that
wouldn't have before and even the people that would normally participate when you have a token
think about if you invested in a real estate project when do you realize your gains it's not
till the property is sold.
So what if they hold that property for 10 years before they sell it?
Where you're not going to be able to get anything out of that until it sells.
But when you tokenize it, you create a market.
You create a demand to where you take an illiquid market and make it liquid.
I've been able to say, okay, five years it's worth 50 more than when i invested i can
sell that token on a market without them having to sell the building uh so that's one example um
precious metals i mentioned is a big one because people are wanting to invest in those gold and
talking to some people that run different minds like they have they may have the mind but they
they need the funding and equipment everything to uh to get it out of the ground and so people can invest in that but also like i went down the rabbit hole recently
because i think what most people don't realize is there's a lot of uh what you call traditional
finance trad fi investment vehicles that most of us as individuals have never had exposure to
and as we see rwa tokenization we'll be able to participate in those, whether it's energy commodities, whether it's agricultural commodities, you know, farmers and commodity traders, government bonds, corporate bonds, even being able to participate in debt, like tokenized debt, loans and receivables.
A lot of us may not have had access to that and defy protocols, decentralized finance and RWAs will give us access to those.
You're going to say, I think we're going to see a lot of mutual funds and ETFs, which a lot of people are already familiar with, become tokenized.
So there's just so much that you can see.
You know, it's I go down the rabbit hole all the time of what what could be a good RWA asset art.
Imagine being able to own a piece of, say, a famous art piece.
And then you don't have to wait for someone to sell that art.
That art can just sit in a museum.
And based on the appraised value of it, you can offer that when you're ready to sell out you know you're
ready to sell it you can sell it to someone else without ownership of the actual art piece having
to um having to be sold and that can carry over into luxury collectibles like cars or watches or
immobilia uh i mean i i all the day i'm constantly i've actually got a task set up in chat GPT to where every day it gives me the top news on RWA and gives me some summaries of everything.
There's just so much out there that's possible.
But yeah, I definitely think it's going to start with those ones that your everyday person is used to at least being aware of.
at least being aware of real estate investments,
Real estate investments, precious metal investments.
precious metal investments,
but then our DBA sector is going to really expand from there into just about
anything. I mean, imagine even a music, a musician,
artists being able to tokenize their royalties to where they can get paid up
front and fans can benefit from the growth and popularity of that musician.
It's, it's definitely a rabbit hole once you go down,
you're like, man, there's so much possibility here.
Yeah, that definitely sounds like a rabbit hole.
It sounds like there's so many things that can be tokenized.
I think before we go, one thing we'd really like to ask you
from the fundraising side is maybe a little bit of advice
to those that are starting out with their small projects
on when i mean like you already talked about when to raise funds but like maybe could you give a
little bit more advice of like how to navigate especially now with a lot of regulation here and
there and um maybe the the the environment is a bit different for a builder right now
yeah it's actually a little bit different but it's actually good now there's still there's
still laws there's still regulations anytime there's a creep over sometimes you have to wait
for a new law or new regulation um to figure out what you need to do what you need to follow
because sometimes it can be classified under existing laws but i would just say leverage
the tools the technology that's out there to make your teams more efficient. And then for your investments, look for the strategic partners that you would want to
work with anyway, even if you didn't have to take an investment from them or ask them.
And that's really the key to success.
Like no individual team can do this on their own.
They've got to align with other people.
We've got an advisory board.
We've got just the last week, I've got some of our team was asked to be on other advisory
boards for different companies. And so you want to leverage the skill set and the experience of
different people that are out there and then leverage the tools. And that's kind of what we
built Bluebird for is to leverage the tools that are out there find uh what you need that can increase
efficiency save you time save you money uh and better put those resources into making a great
product because we all know uh saving money on somewhere either allows you to be more efficient
and or allows you to put that funding in where it's going to be where it's going to be most
impactful uh and so find find those those tools that are out there um and
and reach out i mean we've got uh you know what we do at bluebird it's not just a you subscribe to
our platform as a project or an investor and we just say oh here's the tools go and use them
no we provide you know support advisory uh advice because we want anyone that leverages our platform
to be successful we want any builder that's out there building to have the tools they need to,
uh, to be successful.
But I can tell you just from my entrance into this industry, um,
I wouldn't have gotten to where I am today personally without leveraging
networks and building networks of strong people, uh, attending events,
participating in online events, networking, meeting with different people,
talking to different people. And that's the same concept when you're building a project that you
want to get out there. Great tech is amazing unless nobody's using it. Because if nobody's
using it, then it doesn't matter how great the tech can be. And so it's very important that you
build great networks or reach out and connect with people that you would want to work
with. Have that dream list of who you would want to be involved and try to make that happen. And I
guarantee you, even if you don't connect with that exact person, you'll find, or that particular fund
or whatever the case may be, you'll find similarities elsewhere that may even lead you to somewhere
better. But we're at a part now where technology and tools
and just AI that's out there,
anybody has a chance to be successful
if you leverage those tools properly.
Wayne, thank you so much for your time.
Before you go, is Bluebird working on anything
you want to plug,
like something that's going to come out in the future?
Yes, yes, definitely. so make sure to follow our account uh at bluebird we also have a vision for
um for uh you know token utility we actually have tge um coming out this week so the bluebird token
is being launched it's a utility token that's gonna um allow people to even participate more so
uh there's a community side to it where there's a community Treasury that's gonna benefit
that's gonna benefit those that provide feedback and participate in different
features and for those that are using the platform as tools so that's actually
this week it's good bluebird is on the launch pads of spores and also
communitas and then it will be listed very shortly after that.
We'll have an announcement coming soon about a centralized exchange listing.
So that's just on the token side.
But other than that, you know, follow along with those.
We are announcing certain things in our roadmap that's coming soon.
And a lot of those features that I alluded to that I hadn't really given specifics, those are coming as well.
lot of those features that I alluded to that I hadn't really given specifics, those are coming
as well. Along with, there's a lot of great partnerships that we forged just in the last
month or two that are going to be announced. And everybody wants to, you know, I'm a user,
like I like to use great tech. And that's kind of what's always intrigued me is I always like to be
the first to try out something. And so a lot of these companies that we're working with, you'll
get a chance to get in if you follow us, find out about great projects.
Not just, you know, yes, being if they have a token, being able to participate in that token is one thing, but also being able to leverage the technology that they're building out.
So follow us for all the great information we do have.
If you're listening to this and you're interested in finding out more, maybe you're building a project and want to launch a token.
in this and you're interested in finding out more maybe you're building a project and want to launch
a token uh we actually have a requested demo on our website and you can if you ping that that goes
directly to myself and a few others on our team and we'll set up a time to get on and show you
what bluebird is all about this is the crypto radio and i'm your host ryan wayne thank you so
much for your time all right thanks so much thank you everyone have a great day everyone bye
