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Telling the stories of startup founders and creators and their unique journey. Each episode features actionable tips, practical advice and inspirational insight.
Greg Moran (00:01.423)
Welcome back to the founders journey podcast. Greg Moran, uh, one of the hosts here along with my, uh, my cohost, Peter Dean, uh, I can see you back Peter. And so it's a surprise. Um, and, uh, and here today, uh, actually with our guests, I'll do a quick intro, but, uh, Ali Madhaji, uh, who, uh, we are thrilled to, uh, thrilled to have with us today, Ali, welcome, uh, welcome to the podcast.
Peter Dean (00:11.414)
Thanks for having me back.
Peter Dean (00:16.694)
Thanks.
Aly Madhavji (00:31.204)
Thanks so much for having me on the show.
Greg Moran (00:33.567)
So just a real quick intro of Ali here. He is the managing partner at Blockchain Founders Fund based out of Singapore. And Blockchain Founders Fund really focuses on investing and really building top tier startups around blockchain intersectional technologies like that with AI and things. He's also, and we're gonna get into that. So if you don't know what any of that means, we'll talk about that. Cause that's kind of the topic today.
Ali also consults with organizations on emerging technologies like INSEAD and the UN. Because I think one of the things we're going to talk about around alleviation of poverty, and that's another area that these technologies are, you know, they're not only good business, but I think there's also a lot of societal good that comes from. So he's an internationally acclaimed author, multiple books, serves as a board member of a few publicly traded.
publicly traded companies and so all around super qualified to be talking about emerging technologies, blockchain, web three, things like that. So welcome. Glad to have you.
Aly Madhavji (01:43.492)
Thanks so much for having me here and excited to share and also learn from the two of you.
Greg Moran (01:49.507)
Yeah, no, we're, we're glad. I don't know how much we're going to be able to teach you about this stuff, but, but we're certainly, we're certainly glad to have you. So let's start out just really high level talk about your background and it really and blockchain founders fun how you got into this, you know, how you got into this entire space.
Aly Madhavji (02:10.084)
It's a really good question. And for me, it stems from, I would say, even the way that I was brought up at the environment and the circumstances, right? And so when I think about blockchain technology and really what's happening here is it's about really leveling the playing field. It's about increasing and allowing for transparency and more fair opportunities essentially across the board.
And when you put that in the context of why I gravitated to this space so fast, I look back and I see the environment that I grew up in. I mean, both of my parents are refugees from East Africa moving to Canada. And I think that environment created a lot of uncertain circumstances and a lot of unfortunate events, but that led to, I would say, a fortunate situation, circumstance. And then you put that with
the earlier things that I did, and you mentioned some of them in my bio around, you know, the books and, you know, having served on the Board of Governors at the University of Toronto as well, which is a multi-billion dollar institution, published three books in the education space. And a big part of that was, you know, how do we help level the playing field for everyone? And I think education in a similar way is a great equalizer of opportunity. And, you know, that
Aly Madhavji (03:33.22)
Bitcoin and blockchain technology, even though it was in a fairly early form to what we see today, it really triggered this ability to really level the playing field and actually solve a lot of these global challenges around circumstances that just aren't fair and not equal opportunity. And so fast forward, did a startup in this space in 1617. Once we exited that, we started Blockchain Founders Fund in 2017.
We now have 110 portfolio companies in the space. You know, we've invested literally all across the spectrum in this area and this technology even beyond some of those areas where I mentioned around like leveling the playing field, solving multi-party trust issues across organizations. But it's even further than that. And I think in a lot of cases, you know, the hype sort of masks what's really going on. So take...
You know, over the last couple of years, there's been a lot of hype around NFTs and people think that these are JPEGs and monkey images and it's, it's further from it. Right. I think the big innovation here that everyone's missing that's even it's so apparent, but it's, it's just missing is that this is the first technology in human history that essentially allows it to have ownership of the digital world. And if you think about how core ownership is in the physical world,
Right? I mean, our societies are based on ownership of things. And so what makes us think that that's not required in the digital world when we're moving more and more in that direction? I take it 30, 40 years ago, none of us were spending time in the digital world. Right? Maybe it was 0% or 5%. Now, if you ask a Gen Z, you're going to see 50, 60, 70% of the digital world. Right. And that's only going to continue. So these things are actually so critical.
to, I would say, everything that we do, unlocking value in like the future of human society in so many ways of being able to transfer value digitally, being able to own things digitally, that this is actually the core, and I think we're gonna start to see that over this next a few years where it's gonna become more and more apparent.
Greg Moran (05:48.483)
It's so interesting. I, you know, it, it's funny. I sat yesterday and until you just explained it the way you did. Right. It, I wasn't making this connection because again, you know, I, I've sort of lived in the enterprise SaaS world. Every business I've started has been around that. So the whole concept of blockchain web three is still fairly new to me. Um, and I sat with a founder yesterday. I was in New York yesterday and, um, and he's starting a, and his business is basically it's art.
curation, digital art curation, right? And he was explaining the same concept to me around this digital ownership. The problem is you have so many, in this use case, right? This is around works of art. It's just out there. And the ability to basically trace it back to the actual creator itself, right? To the creator of that work has historically just been nearly impossible, right? But that ability then to connect that
creator with the end consumer of that art. You know, it, it makes sense when you start to think about that, right? Because I produce, you know, a lot of written content, other people produce a lot of digital content, you stick it out there, but that's it. It goes, it could go anywhere. This is actually connecting those dots. Am I sort of explaining that? Right. I mean, that was the use case I sort of stumbled across yesterday.
Aly Madhavji (07:11.108)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when you look at this even from an art perspective and you start having the creation of all of these things around like stable diffusion, and you see all these different forms of art that are only at really at the start, only at the sort of the cusp of what's happening in this technology. I mean, all of this needs to be trapped even in terms of a blockchain. When you think about auditability of AI even, right? Like this is still in its very early stages, but as you see regularly come up more, which it will, it's in discussions now.
All of these things are going to need to be auditable and understanding what's going into this black box and what's coming out is going to need to be pretty clear. And all of this is going to end up having to happen on some sort of blockchain.
Peter Dean (07:48.056)
Huh.
Greg Moran (07:53.563)
That's right. Yep. Yeah. That's pretty, it's really amazing. Peter, good.
Peter Dean (07:58.858)
Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. Back to your, now you've funded a lot of companies in this space. What does that landscape look like now? I know you're talking about like emerging AI with some of this technology, but have you seen the funding for this change? I know AI, we talked to Carter recently and they say that's obviously a big place a lot of funding's going. I know...
you had a time when there was a lot of funding going towards this technology. How are you seeing that evolve in what you guys are doing?
Aly Madhavji (08:33.124)
It's a good question, right? So when we look at investing, we're investing in web 3 and blockchain as a whole, but we really look at major and incoming ethics of technologies and technologies. When you bring together AI and blockchain, when you bring together like IoT and blockchain, you can start unlocking real exponential growth from timing of these technologies for the app right now. So when we look at what's happening sort of from a broader landscape,
There was a lot of funding, you're right, into 2021, 2022, 2023 have been relatively slow years, and you've seen a really big pullback until probably the last couple months. And I'll sort of explain what we've seen more broadly. It's not just blockchain, it's actually the, I would say the macro venture. And so once you saw public market valuations get cut, we talked about SaaS a little bit earlier, you saw public,
Peter Dean (09:05.845)
and
Aly Madhavji (09:29.348)
Public company multiples on SaaS go from forward revenues of 30x, 35x, down to 5x, 7x, 10x, right? And we're probably closer to 10x even right now in certain cases, right? Obviously, there's a range. But when you saw that decline, what you actually saw was series ABC funds decline in terms of their funding, right? Because they looked at their exit multiples and they looked at what public company multiples were and they said...
we can't be backing companies with these valuations. And they started pulling back. They had obviously a hole in their, you know, on their balance sheet, let's call it, or, you know, when they look at what their current investments have been, because of the pretty steep, you know, pullback, you know, 70, 80% in terms of these valuations. So what that actually meant was a lot of these series A, B, C funds couldn't actually stop investing, right? Because they have obligations to their OPs. It's very difficult for them to go back to OPs and say, hey, we're not investing at all anymore. So what they actually...
they actually became seed investors or pre-seed investors in some cases. And so what was interesting over the last year and a half, you saw a decline in valuations pretty much against every category except for AI and you saw an increase in valuations though at seed stage and pre-seed, which was very odd because you're taking a large amount of money, you're trying to deploy it in a much smaller category. So we then looked at this and we tend to typically are a pre-seed and seed and then we very much follow on to series A.
Peter Dean (10:31.95)
Mm-hmm.
Greg Moran (10:48.963)
Right.
Aly Madhavji (10:56.868)
And we said this gets very difficult to back because you've got increasing valuations on seed and you've got significantly decreased valuations, 70, 80% on exit multiples, et cetera. So that as a whole, we weren't the only ones seeing that basically across the board, most people saw that from the, from the VC landscape. And so you saw pretty large, you know, decline or slow down funding and valuation higher on seed stage.
Peter Dean (11:02.996)
Yeah.
Aly Madhavji (11:25.732)
there wasn't a lot of deals happening. And what we probably saw about 90 days ago, maybe 100 days ago now, our data, is we started to see this pick up because we saw now a pretty large correction in seed valuations, you know, lower, but that's actually good for everyone because we're seeing actually an increased activity. And so if more deals are closing and more companies are getting funded, it is a lot better for everyone. So we saw companies getting better, of course, better numbers, better metrics, you know.
A lot of companies obviously washed out of this process over the last year and a half, but we're actually seeing a lot more deals happen. And even from our perspective, we're now doing more deals last month and this month than we've done in any month in our funds history. We think that will continue for at least the next three months and obviously we'll continue to reassess that. But we love what we're seeing in the market now. And we tend to typically look at, you know, 400 to 600 a month.
Greg Moran (12:24.323)
Yeah. That it's completely consistent with what I, you know, see in our fund as well. I mean, we essentially slowed down to almost a stop, you know, for 12 months in terms of in terms of funding, because we're at the same stage you are. We're seed. You know, we're that's, I guess, precedency would be the would be the way it and we've seen the exact same thing the last few months. It's it's been this.
quick uptake as we've just kind of had to wait for those seed valuations to start to come down. And I mean, that's a big lag. It's super. I think that's held true even in enterprise SaaS or anything. And it's interesting that it would, you know, within blockchain web three, it's been the exact same thing with the exception of AI, right?
Aly Madhavji (13:14.756)
I mean, I think one of the big things is in environments where there's high interest rates and high risk free rate, right? It is very difficult to invest in venture private equity. So you're seeing less investors deploy money into these categories from an LP perspective. We had quite a bit of timing because we raised our fund and closed it last year. You're seeing that. And I think as there's expectations that...
Greg Moran (13:21.318)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (13:26.094)
Mm-hmm.
Greg Moran (13:26.631)
Totally.
Aly Madhavji (13:41.828)
interest rates will get cut in 24 or mid 24 or depending on who you're talking to. We're seeing increased activity.
Greg Moran (13:51.119)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Peter Dean (13:51.855)
Yeah. And it's interesting. I've also seen do a lot of work with private equity firms and we've seen them creep down and size and deals that they never really touched before. And you've kind of made that point. And I'm seeing that kind of across the ecosystem because that's a good place to deploy now, really.
Greg Moran (14:09.615)
Right. Absolutely. So when you look out kind of on the on the landscape, Ali, when you think about the future of blockchain in general, if you're a founder interested in getting into this space, right?
Greg Moran (14:25.519)
What should you be looking at? What should you be thinking about today in terms of where you see this, where you see the technology emerge and where the opportunities for founders are gonna really emerge?
Aly Madhavji (14:37.252)
It's a really good question. I mean, look at this technology, you know, going and impacting a lot of different sectors, right? So when we invest in companies, we sort of break it down into, you know, three categories, essentially, when we're thinking about investing in startups in the three space. There's essentially, you know, companies that are servicing the space, which could be like, you know, a little bit more web two, you know, kind of company, but they're, you know, they're on off ramps. It could be like exchanges. They're more centralized though. They're not decentralized. They've got your more.
web three native companies, which are going to be your decentralized protocol, like fully decentralized applications or DeFi, et cetera. But then we've also got a category, which is real applications of, right? And there's a lot of really cool examples in here, which are, you know, when you have the technology impacting the everyday life of people and they don't even know they're using it, right? And I've got some pretty cool examples of that as well. But, you know, I think at the end of the day, when I give advice,
It's, you know, you've got to be passionate about this, right? Like you've got to find a problem you're passionate about and then figure out what solutions are required to help you get there and get a competitive advantage. And so if blockchain is not one of those, then obviously don't use it, right? If AI is not one of those, don't use it, right? Like, you know, so, but I think there's a lot of ways these days to apply these technologies and get a competitive advantage. That's the big thing that we're looking for when we look at those real world applications.
Peter Dean (15:46.592)
I know.
Aly Madhavji (16:04.58)
does this technology give you a major competitive advantage versus the market? And if that's true, then that becomes very interesting for us as an investment. So I would say you've got to be passionate about it. You've got to really go talk to customers. If you're starting off a business, we generally recommend our startups talk to at least 30 potential customers, figure out what they want, figure out their pain points. Is there a real problem here that you're solving? And can you?
you know, can you get to a stage where you can solve this effectively and monetize it, right?
Greg Moran (16:39.191)
Yep. Can you, you just reference up, I'd love you to go back to it for a second. Those cut those, those use cases, those examples of the use cases that where this technology is happening in our everyday lives and we don't even realize this is what we're dealing with. Right. Because I think a lot of the, there's sort of this kind of magic, right. Associated with like, you know, blockchain and web three, but it's around us every day. What are those examples?
Aly Madhavji (17:06.66)
I'll give you a few different examples, right? So take gaming, for example, right? And when a lot of people look at this market, they think about these AAA games, very high detail, etc. But they might not realize that 65% of the entire industry's revenues are hyper-casual. And so we've actually
Aly Madhavji (17:32.388)
And Breschne essentially allows anyone in the world to create a video game in minutes, these hyper casual games in minutes. And what's really cool here is she's also now built the world's first text to game engine. So you can just type what you want and it'll build you the game, which is really, really cool. And these are like, you know, Super Mario, Floppy Bird, Space Invaders, you know, Wordle, but like these are the templates. And so as they get more and more of these templates and they're opening these up so anyone can build a template.
then anyone can just build a game in seconds. And so, you know, we backed Brachina a year and a half ago. They hadn't been creating games really yet. You know, this year alone, they've created about 150,000 games already. So it's just blown up. There's millions of users playing these games every month. And you know, what's really cool here is as part of this layer on the blockchain, there's now incentives for people that create the...
you know, game templates, right? People that actually create the games, people that own the assets or think about royalties, like, assets or et cetera, you earn royalties from that. Anyone that helps to promote and share these also earn. So you have these really cool things, but it's a very different take on gaming. Some people think about, let's create one killer game, but how do we create millions, right? And you know, even if a small fraction of those actually become popular and win, it already amounts to a lot more in aggregate, right?
And now we're seeing teachers actually use this technology because they're saying this is the first time we've ever been able to monetize our work and create things that are fun for students, but actually be able to share it even more broadly than just our own classroom. So there's a lot of really cool things that we're unlocking opportunities here. Another cool one that I think impacts any pet owners, if there's any listeners here that are pet owners, and I'm not a pet owner myself, so I've learned a lot about this market, but at least what I learned about this, and many of our developers are pet owners, is...
If you've got a dog, a cat or a pet, and you typically have to pack their vaccine certificates, and these certificates are typically on paper. In some rare cases, they're actually digital, but they're in these kind of more centralized or localized systems, so they don't actually get accepted everywhere. But every time you go to a dog daycare or a pet daycare, every time you go to a groomer, you've got to actually bring these certificates with you. And this seems like such an archaic process. So yeah.
Greg Moran (19:55.751)
That's right.
Aly Madhavji (19:57.412)
And so Petastic, one of our investments, is digitized this and created almost like a pet password or pet ID. And this is essentially easier to do than say, human health records or human IDs because you don't have to follow say HIPAA compliance for pets as an example. It's a lot less regulated, a lot easier to actually execute scale, less red tape. And so this actually has been really cool. So we put over a half a million pets on chain in the last few months. Nestle came in as an investor in the company as well, which is one of the biggest food makers in the world.
Peter Dean (20:11.679)
and
Aly Madhavji (20:27.204)
But like really, really fascinating things where this is gonna change the entire industry. In reality, this shouldn't be gold standard across the entire world of how it operates because nobody should have to kick around these certificates with them when they need to get through their path. So really, really cool things that, you know, we might not be thinking about, but at the end of the day, it's powered in the background by this technology that's allowing, you know, more effective, better sort of experiences.
Greg Moran (20:57.359)
Yep. I'm curious if this is just kind of a quick aside question, but you know, I, my fun is we are typically enterprise SaaS, but we're almost, we're exclusively around future of work technologies. It seems like the, the blockchain has huge implications when you're talking about kind of future of work sort of topics, right? Recruiting higher, you know, just sort of the ability to kind of move your own data from one, um,
Peter Dean (21:18.67)
Hmm.
Greg Moran (21:27.503)
you know, one employer to another, things like that. Are you seeing that as also a kind of an area of emergence around the startups you're looking at?
Aly Madhavji (21:37.924)
We are seeing this as an interesting area. I think maybe as part of that, maybe a bigger broader part of that is, you know, cookies are getting phased out starting 2024. And this is impacting a lot more, like this is essentially impacting everyone, right? Every major business we can even think of, you know, that based off of advertising revenues, is essentially based off
Aly Madhavji (22:05.732)
really interesting opportunities here when you talk about the data and being able to own data, be able to potentially aggregate data more effectively and have it go to certain parties that can use that data. I think that this technology will be required. The world could move in a very different way, but I think Europe and the way they've sort of put their organizational lines with data is people's right and they own their own data and I think that's fine.
fairly well with EOS in the way that a lot of people in the web 3 space have been thinking. So if the world moves more towards that European standard, which it seems like has been to some extent, then I think there's a very strong use case for this technology and it would win in that scenario.
Greg Moran (22:53.271)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Go ahead, Peter.
Peter Dean (22:55.798)
That's cool. I just want to take it a different in a different direction. You talked about kind of leveling the playing field and really interested. It seems like you really passionate about that. So I know you're doing work with INSEAD and the UN to kind of look at using emerging technologies to alleviate poverty and for other things other than just jittering revenue or kind of solving that problem. What are some of the things that
You know, you've seen tangible impacts or things that you're hoping to see.
Aly Madhavji (23:28.1)
Yeah, so I mean, the way I look at it is to have sustainable impact, it has to be a social impact. So it has to go with revenue or has to make profits, but you can still do incredible good in the world, right? And my biggest frustration oftentimes is we build a system that just leaves a lot of people out. And it's part of the system and we seem to be okay with it.
Peter Dean (23:38.967)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (23:50.42)
Yeah.
Aly Madhavji (23:55.748)
When we look at it, we've left a billion people out of the financial system that are unbanked, that don't have access to entities. And these are major problems. When you think about this technology, we have the financial ability to solve borrowing and savings problems in a digital world, being able to also even leverage like peer to peer or other solutions that can actually solve this quite effectively, we're not there fully yet. But when you think of even like...
Peter Dean (24:21.488)
Mm-hmm.
Aly Madhavji (24:22.82)
any wall instantly you can create without an identity, you already are solving potentially that like savings or like, you know, checking, you know, account problems, then like savings is being yield off of it. And then like lending and borrowing are obviously very critical part of society's work and how you can unlock growth. And so we need to be, you know, make major progress on these.
regulation comes into play and we've got to figure out what's the balance, right? Because I don't think it's okay that our existing system cuts out of the people. Having said that, there's reasons for some of these things, right? We want to see, need to be conscious of like, AOL and CFD, making sure money's not in the wrong places and used for the wrong purposes, et cetera. So there are reasons for some of these rules and regulations, but we've got to figure out where is that balance? How do we make this work? So. There's a lot of.
really, really cool applications right now that are happening across, you know, Latin America, Central America, take Sub-Saharan Africa, where this technology is making a real difference. You know, even when you think about, and this is not a problem that we think about oftentimes in the West or more developed countries, but when you take problems of like instability of currencies, you have, you know, an inability to trust either your banks or your central bank. Like these are problems that...
countries. Take Nigerian as an example on how big of a threat there is in the central bank rate to the black market rate, even of the Naira. These are very big problems that we might not think about every day or even ever in our part of the world, but oftentimes this is what they're thinking about every single day. Being able to create and access financial systems more effectively, being able to create...
an alternative credit system because their governments may not be effective in doing the things that we would have here in America or Canada or other countries are things that need to solve. And so we've found all sorts of companies. We just did a couple new investments in South, South Africa. We're doing one right now in Central America and Latin America. How do you move money effectively? How do you actually do cross border payments?
Aly Madhavji (26:43.46)
solve challenges around credit. We just backed a really cool company in Nigeria called Crite, which essentially has built a couple of really cool things, but one, the ability for microfinance banks and banks to be able to issue loans more effectively. And they've helped drop non-performing loan ratios for these microfinance banks and banks from 30% to 10%, which is incredible. And they also built a...
Peter Dean (27:03.201)
Bye.
Greg Moran (27:05.811)
Mm-hmm.
Aly Madhavji (27:08.836)
It's like a plight for Africa. So you can essentially connect in your bank, share all of your transactions. This gives a lot more detail for a lender. It also allows you to have this credit more effectively now. And that might not be that you're doing every day in Africa because you've got maybe a more effective credit scoring system. But in other parts of the world, it's not as effective. But even the time to update the credit score, credit bureau in some of these countries take, in this case specifically, it can take up to one month, one and a half months.
Greg Moran (27:24.871)
Oh
Aly Madhavji (27:37.764)
credits help reduce that to 17 seconds. So like a lot of really, really cool, changing that I think are gonna even help some of these countries leapfrog potentially the systems we have here, because a lot of our systems are then gonna be, you know, 20, 30, 40 years, and they're gonna be innovating to what's, you know, at the cutting edge.
Peter Dean (27:47.82)
Okay.
Peter Dean (27:52.022)
can't.
Greg Moran (27:53.948)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (27:57.967)
I was gonna say, I mean, the entire credit reporting system in the US, you could argue is, is pretty archaic, right? I mean, that those lag times are not, are not uncommon here in the US as well, right? When you see, you know, I mean, it's not a common moment that go by.
Peter Dean (27:58.156)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (28:09.602)
Yeah. And I love that. Yeah. And I love the idea and what you said. It's super important. It's not just about helping. It's like enabling it from a profit standpoint, because that's sustainable, right? That's a sustainable advantage that you just kind of intimated that it could be an advantage because they're skipping a step. They're not doing the old thing we're doing. And I saw that the first time I was in Singapore.
many, many years ago, cell phones were, every kid had them. In the US it was kind of scarce, and this is aging me, but every kid had them. And I'm like, what is going on? Why does everyone have a cell phone? It was just like people in business had a cell phone, but that was the infrastructure they skipped to, right? And then it was just mobile was so much easier for them. And try. It was, come on. I'm not that old.
Greg Moran (29:00.531)
Peter, was it cell phones or telephones that were...
Peter Dean (29:08.178)
I would sell phones. But yeah, I love that. That's so cool that. And those are some of the things that you're seeing happen. And those are things that you're investing in too, it sounds like.
Greg Moran (29:11.062)
Yeah, no, I think that's...
Aly Madhavji (29:20.58)
Absolutely. I mean, when you look at some of the biggest problems that you see in the emerging world, it's oftentimes going to be like inability to access credit and lending. And that becomes a very big bottleneck because we might not think about it because it's so, you know, native now to our everyday life. But it impacts every part of it, right? Whether it's like credit cards or even like other financing options when you're buying a car.
Peter Dean (29:32.054)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (29:42.189)
I'm done.
Aly Madhavji (29:50.084)
All of these things are almost like expected. Whereas in these parts of the world, they just may not even exist. Or you can't assess them at an effective rate that would make any sense. And now that's starting to happen, you start adding in technology. Ideally, we can get more international financing that makes, if we can reduce the risk, it allows opportunities for investors globally to earn a high yield, but not take on excessive risk, etc.
Peter Dean (29:53.579)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (29:58.156)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (30:02.207)
Right.
Peter Dean (30:17.77)
Yeah, yeah, that's really cool.
Greg Moran (30:18.575)
Yep. Well, this is, uh, this is really amazing. I think, um, you know, super interesting. I think just to kind of, as we, as we start to wrap up, um, you know, tell us a little bit about what are you working on today? I know you've your writer, you've got a lot of stuff going on outside of, uh, outside of the fund to tell us, uh, what you're working on today. And if somebody has, you know, if there's a founder out there who has a concept that, you know, they would love to, you know, kind of
beat up with you a little bit. What's the best way for somebody to get into contact?
Aly Madhavji (30:51.332)
Absolutely. So, I mean, I love what I do, right? And I think that, you know, for me, the big thing is I see myself as an investor than as a founder, right? And we love to roll up our sleeves with our founders, help them solve problems. We want to be the first place any founder comes when they have a challenge and not be worried about getting scolded, but more around like, let's just figure it out, right? Let's figure out what to go for, let's figure out how to solve it. And the big part of this is we'll also help connect them into who are some of the best.
the world around domains, right? So this is a big thing for us in the way I look at it. And our founders can call me anytime, middle of the night, et cetera. And I love it. And it's like, let's just solve problems together. And that's a big part of sort of how I see things. And so, if you do have a great idea, if you're trying to build something that can change the world or sort of help a lot of people, definitely reach out to us. You can find any of our partners.
team on social media across any of the major ones. You can also just reach out on our website and share with us what you're working on. Actually really cool is we review every single thing that gets submitted to us as a partner group, not an analyst. We review every single company. I think this is actually very important when you're looking at emerging technologies and how the future could be defined. We believe that...
you know, a partner has got to look at this, spend the time, bring in wealth of experiences. And it's the same thing that, you know, when we're working with experienced founders, we want them to bring our A game. We do the same, right? So, uh, would love to hear from, from anyone that's, uh, working on some cool ideas.
Greg Moran (32:31.251)
That's awesome. Website is what?
Aly Madhavji (32:33.924)
blockchainfact.com
Greg Moran (32:36.167)
Got it. And we will, we'll put that in the show notes as well. I'll really a real pleasure to have you. This has been really, I mean, this is just incredibly interesting stuff. I think, you know, it's not, you know, there's just, there's so much talk around emerging technologies and you know, whether that's blockchain or it's web three or it's AI and things like that to try to sort of simplify it a little bit, make sense and really try to help founders really identify where those opportunities form. I think it's great.
Peter Dean (33:03.806)
Just as for the founders listening out there, he just described what good money is. Like, when a company that's gonna do this, that is a good description if you're new at this. This is what you wanna hear from your investors, someone that says exactly what Al said. You know, roll up the sleeves, look at stuff, be part of your team, add significant value. So, really excited to have you in the ecosystem.
Greg Moran (33:09.615)
Right. Absolutely.
Greg Moran (33:27.183)
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much. I appreciate it coming. Yeah. See on the next edition of the founders journey podcast.
Aly Madhavji (33:30.02)
Thank you. My pleasure and thanks from me on.