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The importance of community in crypto
Recorded: June 12, 2025 Duration: 1:02:30Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent discussion, Ross unveiled Hubs, a groundbreaking social entertainment platform designed to foster immersive online communities. The conversation highlighted the importance of community engagement, the potential for token rewards, and strategic partnerships with content creators, positioning Hubs as a key player in the evolving Web3 landscape.
Full Transcription
Hey, Ross.
Could you request to be a speaker?
Hey, Ross, how's it going?
I'm like moving my mic around so I don't sound so echoey.
Sounds fine to me, though.
Cool.
I'm doing well.
Excited to have this chat.
I've actually been looking forward to it ever since it was organically brought up when I popped in here.
Yeah, I think it was two weeks ago as well, where you were an active speaker in the space.
And I'd like to welcome as well Emi Moginger, Michael, basically.
I know him as Michael.
I guess some more people will join in later on as well um e cryptic hello
welcome to the space and um i did prepare prepare some questions as well russ uh that we can go over
because i did the space this evening i mean for me this evening, today, let's say, is about the importance of community, right?
It is.
It can be in crypto, it can be in Web3, Web2, whatever.
So for the people listening in, Ross is the founder of Hubs, which is a social entertainment platform that brings communities together in an immersive open world.
So I'll give the mic to you, Ross, to just explain a bit what it is, what's your aim, your goal, what it's all about, basically.
Yeah, again, thanks for having me.
Super excited to be here and share.
It's always nice when you get the stage and you're not just like thinking that you're talking too much.
You're actually supposed to be the one talking too much.
So this is great. Nice format.
We're great to have you here, Russ.
Yeah. So Hubs is something I have been cooking for about a year and a half.
And I guess it's just been in a response to my experience on the internet.
I mean, I could date it back to forever ago, but I've been, I guess my subconscious has been
thinking about this since 2017, but what it really is, is a social virtual world. So take what we're
doing right here, and then just imagine that it were in a persistent open world
that's owned by the inhabitants and uh that's pretty much the best way to explain it and we
try to be mainstream friendly um and you know be rewarding for your time spent there but
it's a social virtual world so we hope to be um really then a new way to be online
but also gather with the communities that you care about.
Okay, great.
And like, I mean, what inspired you actually to build this?
Well, interesting story.
I think everyone can sort of relate in some capacity,
especially if you were one of the people who used Clubhouse
in the early days. You know, during the height of the pandemic, everyone was like sort of socially
deprived. And I really, really enjoyed Clubhouse for many, many reasons. I didn't know it was
scratching the social itch that I now discovered is called the third place.
It's a type of community, but I didn't know I was getting that fulfilled.
But I really enjoyed the ease of discovering topics and even people that had common interest.
You had the infinite scroll, slightly algorithmically curated feed, and you had the format like we have now
where you can jump on stage if you have something to say.
But that was sort of the seed.
And I wondered if we could actually take that ease of access
and the format itself and apply 3D immersion
and then the Web3 principles of ownership.
And that's what sort of got my journey started like that was
the original inspiration i even have a doodle where i did some quick ui to get the idea out
of my head like if there was just an extra tab in clubhouse uh like what that would look like
and it had like a 3d room and then people with their little emotes and things and and how that would be you know really really fun um yeah so that's
that was the seed so i'll give you that um and then i hope that answers the question yeah for
sure for sure i think it's like especially during covet as well like everyone's uh i mean yeah not
allowed uh going outside so like uh you're behind the computer you're starting to get into
engagement platforms and stuff like this
you know like I think it's pretty interesting
and you start to develop
a certain connection with certain
people as well and like
I think it's pretty cool actually and like
I've never played the game like
you start as well with games like
World of Warcraft, for example,
where people create a community and then they meet up in real life as well, for example.
I think it's a pretty cool thing.
Yeah, it's funny because in my thesis, I pretty much give a nod to gamers
because I feel like they're the closest to replicating in real life communities online.
And my argument is basically that forums aren't a community.
They only cover certain aspects of a community.
You could even say a dynamic forum like Discord,
although you have the voice chat and the video now.
It's still only certain aspects,
but it doesn't give you the full spectrum of normally what is required
within a community in general.
But I'll save that for a little bit later.
That was great.
In the meantime, hi, Kieran.
Hi, Stephanie.
I invited you guys as well to be a speaker.
So I'll be glad for you to accept and chime in where you guys feel the need to.
So again, community is an important thing
I've been in
the crypto space full time since
2017
and like it's
it's
it's such an important thing to
engage with everyone
and it's a hard thing to have everyone to be keeping engaged as well,
you know, with everything that you're doing,
and, like, you're working your ass off.
And then, for example, you have people that would come in with FUD
or, like, try to put in negativity in the community.
And then a question for me would be then,
because you
you also have a discord channel i've noticed it's like um how do you deal for example with
negativity or people that would fudge uh your hard work you know it's always that easy i mean
i think it's in the early days of establishing a community you kind of find your your i'll use air quotes but your rider dies
like your your core members um and as you know that that believe in the vision and the mission
and and everything that you're doing um sometimes beyond pay and and if it i think if done right
uh they pretty much rise to the occasion and and are willing to go out of their way to kind of like just be
truthful i mean i think it's not about like putting out like the marketing message or like
trying to frame things in a certain way or i think like a lot of times if you're creating something
around you know a novel idea that that is like a net positive for society and people are behind it
they just want to like make sure people understand it the
correct way because you know it's more so i think uh stomping out fud is something that
should happen organically if a community starts off the right way yeah i do agree with this as
well and then one of my questions for example as well that i've noted down is like is it more
important to grow fast or build deep engagement with a smaller core group first, which you're already a bit tapped into?
Yeah, that's like a softball question, right? I happen to really, oh, here's, let me back
up. Like I didn't even really discover the value of a community until really becoming
really becoming deep in the Web3 space
deep in the Web3 space and even how it could be communicated online. I mean, I played games,
and even how it could be communicated online.
I mean, I played games,
but I never really kept up with people
or people never became truly valuable to me
within these ecosystems until becoming one with Web3.
I think it affords us a lot of opportunities
that I didn't even realize existed.
So I may have just rabbit trailed off of the main question
a little bit there what was the primary
question on that one like do you think it's important is it more important to grow fast
engagement with a smaller core yeah yeah so funny enough like if if you you know look at how long
it takes to actually get to know someone and this is if you're in proximity it's like it literally
as it says two years to actually get to know someone on a deep level I'm not saying that's like a perfect parallel
into community building but I think it's definitely something we can kind of like gauge
ourselves from when we're trying to build something that's authentic because and then you also I mean
it just depends because a lot of times you can pay community managers who are just really good at representing whatever it is, you know, and maybe that could be a great starting point.
We still need those who are there for the authenticity. What we see a lot now, which is like launch, build fast and do some really great gamification mechanics and you see that it i think it looks like the community is growing
tremendously well when it's actually you know very uh superficial and very uh like you said i i would
argue that the ones that are you know like rocket ships out of nowhere uh i would question their
long-term success because i think the only sustainable communities are the ones that have the organic growth in the beginning and how that kind of like formulates slowly.
I think we've just kind of created a culture where there's an expectation on something that's unrealistic.
Yeah, go ahead, Stephanie.
Hey, Stephanie, how is it going?
She got unmuted there, but maybe she has an issue with the mic.
I saw Robin as well that requested to be a speaker speaker robin how are you i'm good man how you
doing geek well we're good we're good thanks thank you for joining as well would you did you
want to chime in some somehow or give a an opinion or yeah sure i saw the topic the importance of
community and crypto and i'm a community builder so i have a lot of experience in this and i just want to know how the conversation is going so
yeah i'd love to be a part of it okay great we'd love to have your part as well because like
community is super important of course um and like it's not always that easy to build
a strong community in a sense that,
especially like when it comes to crypto, then, for example,
like what I feel lately is then they jump from one to the next. Right.
And it's, it's, it's, it's sometimes a bit frustrating because like you try to
educate them and like it's it's a difficult thing and then when we go
back to like uh the question i asked earlier like for uh to start off with a small core core group
i think it's like very surprising what you can actually achieve with with a handful of people
a handful committed people right that are kind of like your ambassadors and then they would,
how they call it in crypto,
then work for their bags, right?
That's what they call it.
But it's such a cool thing to do as well
along with the community members
and grow from there in an organic way.
Because like, as you mentioned earlier,
like grow super fast, quickly.
I mean, to me, that's not something sustainable either.
And you can see it in the market right now,
because they jump ship if something is not fitting their narrative, right?
Yeah.
And I mean, I find it fine that if they feel that things aren't fitting their narrative,
they do have the option to kind of find somewhere that does closely align.
That's kind of like somewhere that does closely align.
That's kind of like the beauty where I feel like this is all going.
There is one caveat to communities online and our expectations and,
you know, like what you mentioned,
like fending for their bags and things like that.
But it is interesting when you take in consideration that most people have very limited
time during their work day and it's like the cost of living is going up and so really the opportunity
to have a like to be even be focused on something for a good while in an online community sometimes
you know that that takes a lot of your mind share And so you really got to think about the trade-off as well.
Even in being a founder of a company and things like that,
you got to think really hard about how you reward your early adopters,
your early believers.
So that's something that definitely gets overlooked a lot of the times.
Like fighting for your bags is one thing,
but feeling like you're respected and also being compensated and seen is as equally as important.
And yeah, so that's that's something I definitely have been putting a lot of emphasis on when I'm sort of building out, you know, different aspects of my community because it is a ecosystem.
And you need to spend time figuring out how it's going to function.
you need to spend time figuring out how it's going to function yeah because i noticed as well
on the website on the hubs that like people will be rewarded for their efforts right on the platform
like how would that work for hubs yeah so there's a lot that is not public facing um you know we're
semi i would actually say we're still in stealth. We definitely haven't kicked off any sort of marketing pushes or anything.
So anyone who's discovered us now are like ultra early.
We haven't even done the free alpha launch or anything like that.
However, the gamification and how we sort of approach that in general is kind of the best ways to do it for anyone.
You incentivize usage of the platform in order
to ultimately convert them into your true users,
because you have the ones that are there just to make some money.
And then that's the ones that join and then leave.
But then you want to have staying power.
I mean, if the platform is actually solving a purposeful service or need or even giving entertainment value to the end user,
then they're going to benefit from the gamification and then stick around because it's sticky.
It actually gives them something they didn't normally get in their day-to-day lives and things like that.
them something they didn't normally get in their day-to-day lives and things like that.
So for us, and I actually went full circle on this whole idea of, you know, gamifying
the usage of a platform and how that sort of works. And I really actually fell in love with
this concept that you get to reward your early adopters and believers through a token mechanic that has the
volatility or the appreciation potential.
And so, yeah, we pretty much have a pretty, well, we have a pretty simple way of rewarding early engagement and
through our event system, if people are attending and active, they earn per minute while they're actually going
to the events.
If you're exploring in public spaces,
we actually do surprise box drops
that can sporadically just show up.
You run to, you collect it.
If you own a space within the virtual world
and it is visited within a 48 hour time cycle,
like that's attributed to your share of rewards. So it's really simple at first,
but it's a great place that we can grow from, you know, doing seasonal quests and things,
you know, and we are an entertainment first kind of platform. You know, that's why you'll see a lot
of things that are fun, but there are really deep rooted. I don't know know i also say it's like really human designed and based on a lot of deep
psychological like human needs and especially in the realm of community and and how that works so
it's almost like we have this fun fancy gamified veneer but deep down we really do hope to be
solving some like online epidemics if you will uh where you have parasocial relationships, you have, you know,
just this overwhelming amount of content consumption, but never much value return.
You know, it's just not, we're in now we're just, that's the expectation, you know, we,
and that's really, again, going back to the time thing, that's all you really have time for is the,
you know, short form content. We, you know, with a YouTube, TikTok, going back to the time thing, that's all you really have time for is the short form content.
We, you know, with the YouTube, TikTok, we just consume, consume, consume.
Advertisers make more money and we end up being the product.
And it just it's truly unfair.
So we are our motto is, you know, be more fair than the end user expects.
is be more fair than the end user expects.
We hope to raise the standard on even how people are,
I don't wanna say treated,
but how people are rewarded for spending time online.
Like a lot of people don't even feel like that's a thing,
but also a lot of people don't believe
that they can own something within a platform
that they care a lot about,
which is actually how I discovered the space
through a game called Crypto Space Commanders. I bought a spaceship and it was just actually how I discovered the space through a game called
Crypto Space Commanders. I bought a spaceship and it was just like I had an aha moment. Like I own
a real piece of a game that I enjoy playing. That's crazy. This is like, you know, Pandora's
box was open and the rest was history. I never left this space. That was back in 2017.
So I don't, I was a roundabout way of trying to answer your question but there's
a lot of moving parts in how I've
approached that
question in general so we reward
early adopters handsomely
I'll leave it at that
it's a great thing of course
these people will
they will be avid
supporters of it and they're going to be rewarded for it while having
fun in a metaverse right like uh yeah go ahead go ahead well i would i would i would attribute a lot
of like ethereum success to the fact that they made a lot of millionaires so you know why would
you not be building utility on top of an ecosystem that made
you a millionaire, you know, that gave you that freedom to even choose what you wanted to do and
create and attribute to, you know, it's like, it's wild. So, but I mean, I think that's awesome. I
think the fact that, you know, in the future, there'll be already like one click mechanics for not only launching a community
and rewards and figuring out the gamification or whatever.
But I mean, the coolest thing for me is the fact that you don't have to have a bunch of
money up front to be able to like afford, let's say alpha testers.
It's all just kind of baked in there.
And yeah, so once it becomes more mainstream mainstream hopefully we see a lot more of that
uh rise to the surface and the ease of access and all that jazz but um i don't know i'm excited i
hope i hope to see this pan out sooner than later i am getting a bit impatient but um
yeah i uh i have a lot to actually tag onto that but i'll throw it back to you
okay that's fine um like another question i had in mind as well is uh could you maybe share
a moment if there's a moment that you had already uh where your community or someone in your
community actually played a pivotal role in shaping hub's direction as well
man i just want to let everyone know I didn't get these questions ahead of time.
No, no, no, no, no.
So if I have to take a pause, it's because these are brand new, which I love.
That's why I was so excited to be a part of this space.
It felt like organic and authentic in the beginning.
So honestly, it's been like an ongoing thing.
Like I, it's interesting because like the,
I treat like my friend circle and my network,
like I treat that like a community
as if the same way that your home,
your family is actually a community,
the same way that your work is a community.
You know, I sort of like lump all of my Web3 friends into this community. And I guess the,
I don't, it's not, these aren't transactional relationships. And I feel like people would
jump to that, but they happen to be experts in various fields.
And it just we complement each other in these this realm.
And then we both enjoy something tremendously.
And then so thereby, you know, we are friends that happen to benefit from each other's friendship.
It's not friends with benefits either.
Friends who have opportunities anyway so um and since i sort of build in the
public and um you know if you get on a call with me anyone who gets on a call with me i literally
show everything and basically i've been um given so many amazing ideas that i feel like have you know, that shine through in the product because of that.
The fact that, you know, the people I interact with truly want to be involved.
And so, I mean, a lot of my major, I mean, I can't even point out just one person.
I think it's just been an ongoing thing.
A lot of the decisions that I've made have been based on the, you know, even the underlying desires that I've been getting out of all this interaction
from the community that I consider a community.
And this is, I guess, the one important thing that I think,
if anything is a takeaway from this, you know, call or whatever,
is having a very productive feedback loop with your
community. Um, and then sourcing information to help guide, uh, the direction of the product or
service choices, like the people who actually like use it day to day. And like a lot of times they
just get, you know, drowned out. Um, and, and I mean, I've been a part of companies that I felt like
I was shouting in the void because everyone
was unanimously saying that we want this
and they delivered the opposite.
So having a pulse on the community for one
and then having a pipeline or a feedback loop
that actually addresses and implements
on top of community suggestions,
the people who are there because they enjoy the product, the service or whatever it is.
I think it's just so, so crucial. one it was this uh individual who was looking at you know hubs and said that you know he
was really curious if we had a feature where he travels a lot and what he'll do is uh him and his
wife will like basically both press play on a netflix movie at the same time and have that
shared watching experience and he's like do you have anything that sort of facilitates that?
And I'm like, you know what?
We didn't until right now, because that is a incredible use case.
And it's something that we can easily facilitate
with our technology.
So we have now these things called smart items.
And depending on the partnership,
you can essentially log into your virtual TV
within the private space that you own through Netflix
or whatever partnership we actually end up getting.
And then you can have that shared watching experience right next to your,
you know, significant other friends, whatever. And,
and it's all part of it.
And so that was some feedback that, that really changed the game for me,
but I just don't think that I would have been able, i don't know if i would have ever thought of that without
someone bringing like an authentic question like that you know to me and uh so i definitely
attribute that to it's ben his name's ben if he's out there and hears this in a recording
thanks ben yeah that's actually a that's actually a great thing because like a lot of people travel
uh or like uh for work or whatever and it might actually be a super cool thing to like watch a
movie together like knowing that your wife or your partner is watching at the same time right
yeah so that's a that's an amazing thing i mean if I throw back the ball in Geeks Camp
when it comes to like for the same question,
I think from our side,
like people making these amazing GIFs or memes,
you know, like some members of the Geek Team
have like these crazy stickers.
John has an amazing meme as well with the trust,
verify and not trust.
So like it's really cool.
And people posting a lot of stuff on X,
like being engaged,
asking questions,
spreading the word,
educate others, actually other community or new members
in the Telegram or in the Discord.
And it's an amazing thing to see as well.
But then when it comes to the technology for Geek,
like when we launched the testnet or the stacks,
we asked for feedback, obviously, as well.
So it's great to have feedback from the users, right?
People who are actually using it in order to make it better.
So yeah, that's a great thing.
And they have, you know, I don't, I don't know how your tokenomics work,
but you know, having vested interest, I think is also a great, you know,
incentive driver. I think, I think that's a,
it's really a cool thing that happens in this space where people,
they not only want to champion your product,
but they have an interest in doing so.
That's part of this space and it's awesome.
Yeah.
I'm going to throw another question at you, Ross,
that you haven't had from before, of course.
How do you think a strong community
impacts the long-term success of a project? How do you think a strong community impacts the long-term success of a project?
How do I think a strong community?
I mean, without, I don't see it,
like, especially in the new wave
of how communities will function.
I hope, let me put that in there.
Like, I hope this is how the future is,
where we're headed in the future in Web3.
Like, without a strong community, like there should,
like that is the lifeblood of a product or service.
Like I, especially in the wake of AI taking everyone's,
you know, jobs, it's the,
the human aspect is going to be the only thing keeping things alive in the,
in the longterm. In my personal opinion, like I, I,
I always use like a
quick example of you know like a customer service and if i call customer service and it's a freaking
ai agent like i will not just not do business with them if you can't give me if i don't have
enough value as a human to talk to another human i don't know to me it's just like a no-go. But so here's the thing is I believe the future is less about like businesses will start to sort of morph into communities more and more.
You know how you hear like B2B?
Like I kind of have this concept of C2C.
It's like community to community.
And they will just be their own ecosystems
that solve a need.
And it really is a,
especially if you tie in smart contracts
and all this other jazz,
like you can literally automate every aspect
of how an entity is ran.
And then the communities are sort of baked in there as well.
I don't know if you want me to kind of like explain that
too, too far in, or how't know if you want me to kind of like explain that too too far
in or how much of that you want me to explain but it sort of looks like a kick it's like a
a one-click kickstarter where you basically have the ability to raise funds, payroll taxes,
benefits for early adopters like all of that is literally within a click and I hope that it looks a lot like Kickstarter and
it is super easy where anyone can do it but um within that sort of structure you
would have a community and that community would again they would be the
ones that are essentially you know do are like boots on the ground and I think
if done right as well and if you have a system where a DAO is actually
properly, like the DAO is messed up. No one even cares about DAOs. There isn't been a successful
DAO in my opinion. And I think the best DAO that you can have is a chair member led DAO.
However, I also believe that the community should be able to cast a sentiment or signal vote.
And it's an interesting thing that would happen if you went with a system like that, because you would be able to have a sentiment alignment score kind of contrived out of the decisions of the chair members and how they're voting and making decisions of how to spend the treasury and yada yada and what the community is actually saying that they want
through the sentiment voting,
which I think, again,
it's like a relationship with the community.
And I think if like to your question,
you can't, I don't believe that you can have
a successful product or service without a community backing.
And you could actually parallel that
without a successful consumer return, a return customer.
Like the parallels are really endless.
An NGO, you have to have supporters and donors.
I mean, literally anything you can think of
can be really, you can follow the thread back
to it being a community in itself.
So can you have a successful product or service in the future of Web3 that is void of a community?
I don't think so.
And if you do, I don't feel like you're giving enough value to society as a whole to survive.
If you're literally like how PayPal, for instance, takes a fee off of, you know, every transact. I mean,
that's just like nonsense. You can't just like be taking a cut. And like, I don't feel like
they're giving enough value in return. So once smart contracts solve all of that, they, you know,
solve the intermediaries of banks, you know, they solve the, you know, capital, they replace VCs.
of banks, you know, they solve the, you know, capital, they replace VCs. Once all of this kind
of like settles, then I believe that this whole idea of communities being literally
the starting place of companies and organizations and whatnot. Yeah, until anyway, it's what a time
to be alive, you know, it's but still still a ways to go and
that's why you know having people who are really pushing for this sort of thing versus uh a lot of
what you're seeing actually in real time right now where it's um you see a lot of web2 legacy
industries basically buying out all of these companies and I'm just worried that we're
going to have the same stuff happening all over again with you know with web3 veneer in the in a
web3 veneer kind of situation if that makes any sense but sorry so no I just to go back again to the third time, I do not believe that a product or service should survive without having the validating presence of a community and that lifeblood that actually, you know, it's almost like it actually validates that it should exist.
You know, having people that back it, have people who would, you know, go to bat for you.
Like that is how we, you you know think something is of value we validate that it should
be there or you know it helps us or something yeah i agree as well and um kieran i'm not sure if you
um can be a speaker as well because i gave you the right to speak. So chime in if you like.
But I mean, when it comes to DAOs, oh, there he is.
Kieran?
Yeah, thank you.
I'm engrossed and digesting what everyone's saying so far.
It will wind up like a jack-in-the-box, I reckon, and I'll speak.
He's super-SAN-ing.
We're about to super-SAN on these questions, man.
Don't make him too difficult.
I don't know.
I had a question for us.
Go ahead, Robin.
Go ahead.
All right.
I think I've heard everything you've said,
and they've been exceptional. I think I've heard everything you've said, and it would have been exceptional.
I love them.
But my question for every founder is, what is the motivation, right?
When was the point or the time that you got the idea or the moment that shaped the idea of the project,
the product you're building right now?
Because one thing about a strong community or strong product is their founder's motivation because it gets to a point that you you're like
oh why am i been doing this and you need to like remember why you're doing it so i would like to
know what the motivation is for yeah projects um yeah that's it i mean i i actually concur with
that i say like um you know people aren't investing in Tesla,
they're investing in Elon. So being a founder, you really have to kind of think of things like
that, because you kind of, you know, carry the torch for a while until you've sort of spread the
vision around, but in the beginning, for sure. You know, and it the fact for me personally um I always had a hard time doing
things I didn't feel like I was authentically aligned with uh so I happen I feel like I have
like I uh I feel like I'm primed to to be in a role such as this never did I feel validated to
do it but I feel like enough things happen where I got frustrated enough and people I guess you know gave me the vote of
confidence I needed it was enough people like so I have these like swirling ideas and then once you
see so many people kind of validating these swirling ideas over time you feel like well
dang it if no one's
going to do this then then maybe i'm the person who needs to do this because i don't want to go
on without something like this existing and so uh and also the you know they say that your energy
output is four times more if you're uh sharing or selling or or talking about something that you feel authentically, like, it's like part of you, like, you know what I mean?
Like, these day and age, we join a company and we pretty much may or may not believe in the product or service at all.
And so the comparison is like, you are four times, your output is four times less or four times less.
So I kind of look at myself and I'm like, man, I am extremely excited about this certain thing.
And it's like I – so it's almost I just let myself be the indicator.
But, yeah, that's – it is interesting because, like, I've battled burnout.
burnout. And if I didn't feel like there was something deeper behind, like basically, I mean,
you could even call me cheesy. And I believe in serendipity. I believe that everything happens
for a reason. So I do have that, you know, benefit. You know, I may be naive, but it's
something I've learned to really, really, I don't know, man, the world's weird having that to cling to,
but it definitely helps when you believe, you have the true conviction that whatever you are
carrying, the product service is, well, one, a net positive for society. You believe that it is worth sacrificing for.
And you also believe that it is like,
it's like a part of you.
I mean, even like Steve Jobs, it wasn't the money.
He felt like he had an idea
that he just needed to share to the world.
It's almost like if you're a nerd like me
and you know how a zip file works,
like I kind of attribute a lot of the ideas of
me just like um you know transcribing this zip file that was dropped in my head and I'm just
exploring and seeing how all the different or you know like the the information is just you know
um something I'm discovering in real time with everyone else but um having the authenticity to
fall back on and then reminding yourself you know why you got into it in the first place.
And I can't man, that's like I don't feel like I would, you know, have would have continued this if I was just trying to make a ton of money.
Like I genuinely everyone asked me like, well, not everyone.
One guy in particular asked me, you know, if I had all the money in the world, what would I be doing?
And it would be absolutely this.
It just feels like I have these weird niche interests and skills that just, I don't know,
it just seems like I was primed to care a lot about what is happening with hubs and what it like the challenges in, you know, today's modern society that it's tackling.
So, yeah, I think you got to do a lot of soul searching before you want to take the founder's journey and just make sure that, you know, there are deeper reasons that you're even doing it.
Hopefully it's not just like trying to watch a YouTube video on how to, you know, make
AI create opportunities to get you super rich.
Like, you know, it's not like, you know, again, it all does trail back to me being a little
cheesy on how I approach life.
And, you know, I like that there's a little mystery and
and you kind of chase the mystery and see where it leads like I've gotten to rooms that I never
thought I'd be in and I can't really attribute that to anyone and definitely not my own intellect
it's just I'm like how did I get here kind of scenarios and to me that's like validating I'm
like man if this keeps happening I'm gonna I man, if this keeps happening, I'm going to believe that,
you know, that there's more to all this and maybe there is a purpose behind all of it.
But you wouldn't know unless you kind of went out on a limb and took a little risk.
So just believing, I guess the short answer is like really, really believing in why you're
actually doing something, because that's what's going to sustain you when everything sucks um man you're you're absolutely right and i don't think it's cheesy or naive to
just want to believe in something because a lot of people go to building a certain thing with the
wrong motivations and they ended up they end up feeling and it's because they actually believe
in what they're doing so it's not being is your knife you're absolutely right my man thanks man no i i've realized it's not like
a universal universally accepted thing so it's like a yeah like or or like you know um so i
but i appreciate you you uh leveling me on that one uh i feel seen okay great thank you for the question as well robin um
and like ross as you mentioned earlier like people buy tesla because they believe in elon
elon right um then another question for me would be like how important is transparency and direct
founder interaction in building trust or like make people believe in you right yeah yeah
that's the benefit of uh i think it is the uh i think as someone who you know loves the idea of
truth and being honest and uh doing the right thing the benefit of web3 is that isn't it is
inherently transparent um you know in essence right and uh you know you
see nowadays if you're going to launch a project you also couple it with a white paper or blueprint
of basically saying everything that you're going to be doing in the next six months year whatever
whatever but you're being transparent and it's becoming like an expectation and people hold you to that as they should. I think it's, is like us, you know, um, just treating companies probably like
how they always should have been treated. And the fact that, you know, the old way where you
couldn't really see what was happening. I mean, heck, you can take a, a non-governmental
organization and like, if you, you can't trace the money that
you donated to see if it actually makes it to the cause and not to an executive's pocket
but i believe that that should have always existed but i guess the technology wasn't there but the
fact is is they weren't transparent with that anyway and if they were i don't know um i they're
not i mean it's not all public and things like that.
Like, I feel like that is a big issue.
And I think Web3 definitely provides a solution for a lot of those things because of the inherent transparency that's just, you know, expected and becoming the norm.
So that is a huge, huge benefit.
And I think that you'll actually see better quality products
and services and things like that because of as a result.
So in my eyes, if you're not transparent,
it's always like not being transparent,
kind of you would assume that they have something to hide.
And I think that the best companies
with the best intentions are gonna be public anyway, they're going to be public facing.
And so I think we were just afforded the opportunity to weed out all the institutions that no longer, never had good intentions or, or took too much value than they were giving back.
And yeah, I think because of that, we're going to have a lot better products. And as a consumer, you're even going to have like your niche interest met that you didn't even know you had niche interest.
So I don't believe that a company, unless it's like, so I actually did nuclear weapons security back in the day.
So take that, like, so like, I do believe that some things don't need to be transparent for the sake of global security, like, you know,
like OPSEC. So don't take everything I'm saying and apply
it across the board. But when it comes to things like, you know,
companies, especially when you have, you know, the ability for
your consumers or your community to have a buy in, like
transparency, especially like a publicly traded,
like being SEC qualified, everything's gotta be transparent.
So now we kind of have the same system,
but in a much more open market per se.
So if anyone has a stake, you have to be transparent.
And I think that's a net positive,
the fact that the less transparency, hopefully, if you have to be transparent and i think by and i think that's a net positive the fact that
the less transparency hopefully if you have less transparency your chances of survival in web 3
become less and less that's that is something i'm just you know wishful thinking over um so
with your question i i don't i don't just think it is a requirement i think it's like
it is like a if you don't the know, there is a repercussions in there.
Yeah, for sure.
I do completely agree.
And especially when you mentioned like the white paper, like for crypto projects or any other, like, or you post a roadmap, the community and people will call you out on it.
Right.
If you're too late or when there's delays.
And I think it's only normal
because you're telling them something's coming.
I mean, obviously delays happen.
That's normal.
But yeah, there's so many companies out there
that will promise you the world, right?
And then just nothing happens.
And with transparency in web 3 for
example like it's not more transparent and people have a bigger say in it all as well right which
is a great thing in my opinion and um i think it's only fair yeah it's only fair yeah i i agree um
and you know as long as like and if things aren't delivered, you know, based on the mile, I think you should do milestones and less timelines.
Like you should probably save yourself some headache and don't put dates on things. Put milestones. Right.
Amen. Yeah. And and and if things come up, just be like be transparent about the things that came up. Like you'll be very surprised at how forgiving people are if you're just
honest, because that's just you respecting them as a human.
It's people get mad when you hide things from them.
Like you don't give them the, you know, like,
I feel like you should respect your community enough to be transparent,
even in the midst of something going wrong,
even in the midst of you making a bad decision as a founder.
I do believe that, you know you shouldn't try to market message your way out of everything no indeed i agree and at the end of the day we're all human right and it's it's hard to
like everyone makes mistakes uh and it's hard to admit that you make mistakes like if you admit it like people appreciate that
that you're transparent about it like right and then you you can work on from there probably even
together and then uh yeah yeah and like um if you could give a piece of advice to a founder starting uh for example a rap trick uh rap tree
project community what advice would that be for you like what what for example made you
like how do i phrase this like uh what's what's a good piece of advice would you give to that person to start a solid community?
I mean, I would say don't start from scratch.
Spend some time in existing communities doing things that you want to be involved in or innovate off of or from.
Because you're getting to see the inner workings of behind the scenes.
It's just to save yourself some time.
Rarely are you going to create something that is pure creation.
It's always going to be somewhat of an innovation of something else, whether you want to admit it or not.
So spending time learning more and more about the problems that you're trying to solve,
it should, once it gives you enough assurance that your solution may be like the thing that
everyone really, really wants, I think that should be the best indicator. And then, yeah, just, and then also just be in the network that, you know, you want to
either leverage, you know, get the buy-in basically.
I don't say leverage, that sounds terrible.
But like people that, you know, would basically go out to bat for you.
And if, you know, if you want extra assurance, like I feel like I waited a long, long time to, you know, it was other people's belief in me to basically drum up enough confidence to, you know, put everything, put my whole life on hold and put all my eggs in one basket and convince my wife that, you know, this isn't crazy.
This isn't crazy. I needed a lot. Some people don't need as much as I did. But the fact is that I think it's really healthy to have people in your life that would, you know, one are in the areas that you want to build in and then also would give you the vote of confidence that you need to actually do it.
do it. And the more the merrier, like I would never go off on my own. Like I needed to know
that I had, you know, pre-existing users of my product. I needed to know that the technology
existed and that it was feasible. And now you have AI to kind of like figure out like,
is this even possible? And, you know, but even the best, the best thing to actually
trump that is having really
smart friends in areas that you're going to be building in so you can actually know for a fact
what you're dreaming up can even be done um and so yeah kind of like making sure that that's the
case getting the buy-in uh and then just understanding that it's not going to be freaking
sunshine and rainbows and like it there is going to be freaking sunshine and rainbows.
And there is going to be a time where you're going to question everything. And as long as you have a vision that you can fall back on that will eclipse the pain,
then I think that's when you're ready.
If you tick all those boxes, then you're ready to be a founder.
Yeah, it does make sense.
Your entourage
also helps
in cases like when
you're a founder, you think like,
why am I doing this?
And then
if you can fall back on a
great entourage, it
always helps, of course. Especially if you
have a great community,
like you wake up and everyone's, good morning, how are you?
You know, like, having conversations about whatever,
maybe Portugal won, like, the soccer game then,
so, like, people are talking about the news and what's going on,
and you're like, ah, this is why I'm doing this, you know,
like, people are active and about,'re testing uh what you're building and basically having a great
time in telegram channels yeah that's it's interesting because those what you just mentioned
are like little blips of community already like because the community is just corralling around a
shared common goal or like you're literally interfacing with the concept
of community and just it's almost like evolving that community into something more purposeful
you know and even if it's if it's a uh ngo you know or or if it's going to be a big revenue driver
whatever but it's really i i think i didn't even think about it but it really is like you you evolve a community into like something that is like productive in a way that allows you to
even hopefully for everyone you know like you can actually just make web3 a career um early
because I think this is going to be kind of the starting place for all careers, not the tech, but where we actually, the infrastructure of careers.
Yeah, I think it's pretty amazing if you kind of take that approach where, you know, you
understand that a community is a shared vision goal or like even a, what's the word I'm looking
for, cause where you pick it for things, you what is i forgot what it was anyway you but and if
you take that idea and then actually apply the fact that you could evolve that into something
that's tangible you know and can actually have a return in value like a company or whatever
that's an interesting approach anyway i'm actually thinking out loud here sorry to
thinking out loud here sorry to no there's no worries at all i think it's cool yeah it's definitely
cool um like if anyone from the community here has a question for us as well or wants to chime in
uh because we're getting close to the hour so now is the time i'm giga i've got a question is that okay? Yeah sure Robin go ahead
I love what you're building
sounds fantastic
my question is
it's all about community and creators
and brands right?
What are the plans to bring communities
in and creators in?
Are you planning
a bigger outreach to more communities to get more creators in? Are you planning a bigger outreach to more communities and to get more creators
in? Or like it's already in plan?
Yeah, building the incentive mechanics behind that in particular, for content creators to
want to add us to their tool belt. I will say that has been one of the trickiest parts
because as novel as I believe the platform is,
I can't purely rely on that
to get people in the door and use it.
So I do have the benefit of content creators
already having an existing following
and cross-pollination of communities.
I mean, the fact that I'm not even cross-pollination of communities.
The fact that I'm not even cross-pollinating, I'm giving their community a virtual home,
that's sort of a benefit.
For me, it was like nailing the experience, but not totally relying on the experience
to keep people there.
I do have certain mechanisms that in my deep my kind of deep dive and, you know, studying
how Clubhouse became such a wild success outside of the fact that they were during the pandemic
and everyone was socially deprived. They also had like, they were paying content creators
$5,000 a month for producing shows within their drop-in audio mechanism and stuff.
I mean, there were celebrities in there, and it was invite-only, and only iOS.
It was iOS only early in the day, but it was still blowing up.
That's crazy.
So we've definitely took some lessons from there, but just more so automated.
We have automation for basically getting rewards for even attending an event, but there's also rewards for events that have a high turnout.
In virtual worlds in general, the only success that we've seen,
like a true success is events within virtual worlds,
but not just events, it's events through notable brands,
notable content creators, and then even a step further,
a lot of times there's also a reward given,
sometimes it's a PO app, sometimes it's an actual virtual
asset, so we've pretty much tied in all of these things that have worked to try and build something that, one, is just an easy yes for the content creators to want to adopt.
Because what we do is pretty much provide a premium experience for them to engage with their audience in a way that just doesn't exist.
with their audience in a way that just doesn't exist.
Like we bring novelty that doesn't exist
in terms of one discovery, but two, the spatial audio.
The fact that we're talking here now,
you can kind of imagine what that would be like
if there was a spatial audio
and you had your character representation.
And we actually go from isometric view
all the way to virtual reality.
You know, we call it selective immersion,
but crazy amount of novelty.
But again, we didn't rely on that entirely.
So the incentive drivers for having content creators
be onboarded, we use a leaderboard.
And then if they're actually getting large turnouts,
they actually get a, every two weeks,
their large turnout can turn into a payout.
It's almost like hackathons, for virtual events you know it's it's a similar uh similar mechanism in in a way
um and then for brands um you know what's funny is that i actually want to champion a lot of
the underdogs because i don't know i think that we I don't know, the Marvel and DCs and they've got to like, they're really great.
And I'm not saying anything negative, but I also love the fact that there are a lot of artists out there with complete universes built out in their docu, like, you know, just sitting in their drive folder.
drive folder and I would love to be a place where they could showcase that and I realized
And I would love to be a place where they could showcase that.
as well that there's the immense amount of quality that I would love us to be a place
where they could actually be showcased properly so we have an interesting approach to like
brands when it comes to collectibles because we have collectibles in the world as well
we have curated catalog we also onboard digital assets from other collections,
fun stuff.
And yeah, and then bringing communities in general,
I happen to just be, again, really decently networked.
I, in a lot of my decisions where, you know,
I built this out to pretty much, much again make it a really easy decision
for communities to want to be on boarded um because we give them a you know a new universe
of way to engage their members again in a way that doesn't exist i mean the only analog may be
gather town which they kill it with the co-working spaces, but there's a lot of missing aspects that I think we deliver.
So yeah, a lot of it,
like it's hard to answer because we were still so early and I'm excited to
see how things are used and I'm going to be fine tuning as we go along,
but that's sort of the starting place.
We have a lot of soft commitments already,
a lot of large communities that want to see everything when the beta is out and they want to be involved.
They want to have watch parties with us or utilizing the platform.
And I think that's really, really cool.
I can't like name drop yet, but they're really well known in the Web3 space.
But yeah, I mean, I'm confident just because I have had these talks already.
So I'm not like cold calling per se to get people on board.
And then I'm really banking on this being like a momentous thing.
Like you get one big, you know how it's like you're going to a party and then you find out your buddy's going to be there.
And then of course I'm going to go, my buddy's going to be there.
It's a similar thing.
Like hopefully we get one cool community and that one cool community is
connected to other cool communities and then it'll be easier.
And then our product is like cool enough that there's some staying power and
then everyone benefits in the end.
So I hope that kind of covered everything you were asking there.
Yeah, you did.
So I found out about this space from you because I found out we were following each other and I had no idea that was happening, right?
So I'm head of operations for 3Nigeria and this is nice and would love to be a part of it if possible.
Wow, man, that sounds prestigious.
I would love the chat, man.
Like, yeah, that sounds like a really great fit for, you know,
use cases that we want to provide.
So, yeah, sure.
Let's talk.
Awesome.
Awesome.
Like, we at Geek, we have a mascot.
It's called the Zero Duck.
So, like, let's stay in touch as well, Russ, At Geek, we have a mascot. It's called the Zero Duck.
So let's stay in touch as well, Russ,
to see how we can have Zero Duck running around in your metaverse as well.
Yeah.
No, that's exactly... It's funny you just bring that up
because we love encapsulating Web3 culture within the virtual world,
you know, to live on forever, to outlive us if done right.
So that's cool.
I would love to talk about that.
Awesome, awesome.
Okay, I think it was great having you, Ross.
It was a great space.
I'm happy to have learned more about like hubs
and like what your motivation was.
So that's really, really awesome to hear as well.
Let's definitely stay in touch.
And I would like to thank you so much for joining.
Thanks.
Thank everyone as well.
That's in this space and definitely stay in touch and hope to see you guys
as well.
Then soon enough.
Awesome.
Yeah.
Thanks to the geek community for having me,
letting me have this time. And yeah,
I look forward to catching up with anyone who wants to chat and watching you
guys kind of progress through the web three wilderness.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. No, thank you so much.
We'll definitely stay in touch. Thank you so much for joining. Thank you.
Thanks everyone. Bye bye. Thank you.
