The Subvisual Way

[00:00:02] Speaker A: 1, 2, 3, 4. [00:00:12] Speaker B: Here we are. We look like two wise men thinking backwards how on how to build startups and well, how to roll this as if we game as if we knew. And drinking water, the conversation doesn't match the drink. So yeah, but eventually I think it's good to know every now and then to stop and look backwards and try to compile some of the learnings here and from all the companies or all the ventures that you've been working with, which one would you choose as a good one to walk a person through this process of venture building? [00:01:04] Speaker A: Yep, I think that's a really hard question because I don't know if there is a right answer in the sense that this is a perfect story or this is how it should be. The best way that I can have to answer that is potentially what I enjoyed the most. And there was a company that is very well known in Portugal called CoverFlex. I think we a lot of people eventually are going to to know about it because they also pay meals with it. And I really enjoyed the whole process of how it started and how we went on to make became one of the most known startups in Portugal and now already in Spain and Italy. And the early days were very exploratory. I remember when Nuno first told me about what he wanted to build, his background in insurance and the fact that he wanted to build a product to serve insurance to companies. And now CoverFlex is more known as a benefits company. So it changed a lot. But early days were all about experimentation, having long sessions of thinking about the problem that we're trying to solve. Nunu always trying to find validation from the market from the early days. And then one of the most interesting processes into what happened with Coverflex for me was the process of building the founding team, which I think is potentially the main ingredient to have success with a startup is the founders, they make it or break it. And the fact that then Miguel joined and Ruiz joined and other ingredients came together to make the perfect recipe as one great founding team that they have now and even people that joined and then left, which is something that I like to mention a lot to other examples that not just the fact that you join early doesn't make you a great founder for that company. Sometimes another person in that position can make a better job. And I think Coverflex went through that process. And with the founding team being formed and shaped and the product, the vision also being formed and shaped, I really liked that experience and being part of that. I remember and actually the first retreat Leadership retreat from Coverflex was nearby. The place we are right now was, I don't know, potentially 200 meters from here. We spent two days here. I was with them. And shaping the initial values principles for the company was a very interesting process. A lot of challenges, like the fact that I remember going with Nunu to one of the first companies that interviewed and did some customer validation and having like that punch of this is not going to work, this is not the way to go to market like selling insurances, because potentially every company already has a mediator or someone that they really trust and solves that problem. So it's going to be an appeal battle to go to market this way. And then finding about the mil card and the benefits and all that could be another entry point is always interesting. [00:04:46] Speaker B: Because it starts on a conversation. So you were there to validate an assumption and suddenly you came across with this additional topic and something interesting there and remarkable actually is that those founders had the ability to integrate that feedback and not to be too passionate about their early concept. How was that conversation in the car, leaving the meeting afterwards, actually we walked. [00:05:19] Speaker A: Back to the office because it was nearby the Braga office that we have. And it's a moment of reflection, like first and every founder relates with this. You kind of feel that the world is against you and you are trying to build something and you always get no's and you need to, maybe it doesn't make sense, maybe I'm shitty, I'm not a good founder. So you have to fight that imposter syndrome all the way. But in that case, what I remember the most was that the resilience was always there and was like, we have to find another way. So if this is not the way, we had to find another way. And there was a specific session that we get together, we got together in our Braga office where Miguel even flew from Lisbon to Braga. And I think that was the moment where we talked about the mule cart as something that was really bad in Portugal and was like an easy entry point. And as founders they were very good at recognizing opportunity, not being too passionate as you mentioned about. But we were an insurance company. Now we are getting to a space that potentially is not as sexy or it's more boring or they were just focus on this is the problems that we want to solve and we need to find the best way to get into the market, convince companies to use us and to build like a sustainable company that can grow. And you touch on a point that I also find very interesting to talk about which is the duality between having a vision and focusing on something long term and having the capacity capability of changing the pieces below that vision. And not all founders can navigate that. You also have a lot of experience with that from acceleration programs and stuff like that, where sometimes founders get into that mentor madness of getting so much feedback from a lot of people and they get lost. [00:07:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that is super easy to see happening. In fact, in my experience, something weird, it's not really a statistic, but a prejudice. If you are really smart in academic terms, you tend to be more stubborn in your vision. So I did a lot of work with say PhDs or very high intensive industries and people were constantly looking for the right answer and there's no right answer. And you need to have this broad scope, a very even fuzzy vision on what sticks, what resonates to people and that balance, that flexibility and you know, going to a meeting, pitching insurance and leaving the meeting, oh, perhaps a milk card is something that I should be doing and walking or processing this idea into a new vision for the company is really actually perhaps one of the skills that successful entrepreneurs have and master because the whole process works that way. You mentioned, for instance, bringing new team members, hiring, finding the right role. When we are starting a company, I don't know, you think you're going to be the CTO and I'm thinking to be, I don't know, the marketing guy. And suddenly we are starting to find a way to make things work. But eventually we start finding that I'm not that good and perhaps we should go and hire an expert or that my best contribution to that company is in managing the team or perhaps why not be a non executive board member and just finding another thing to do, but still heading to the structure, strategy or the vision. So this flexibility, this volatility and what comes to find the right approach that works on a timeline or until a certain milestone is something that definitely I pay a lot of attention when meeting new teams. You were in fact previously alluding to this thing of hiring the team and starting to scale the operations internally from that vision on when you started to commit with this idea of the milk card, what was the process like? When did you decided to commit to that vision and to start working on an MVP and fundraising and bringing people to align on that vision. [00:10:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's. It was an important moment where it started to make sense the narrative a lot of people talk about. Founders need to be very good at storytelling and I think that's really true for internal Purposes and external purposes. You have to tell the story very well to yourself. And this makes sense, I believe in. [00:11:02] Speaker B: This, in the sense that we need to be good storytellers to push our vision to the market, but also to capture from the market the vision or the narrative that they are. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. [00:11:15] Speaker A: Yeah. And so after all that iteration, not just with the milk card, then there was a lot of talks about the economics of that and if that made sense. And then I think that was the moment when benefits were started to be talked like this is another layer when the economics can make more sense. And I think that was the trigger when all, all of that made sense to now. This is a moment where there is a fundraise that could be done in a way that we have the funds and the structure to build something like this. That's another really important moment. You can have the right narrative, the right story, the right founders, but then you need the dough to make the pasta. And that's a moment where you need to convince people, either customers that could pay you very early on and you have money. That's the bootstrapped option, which is not very common in startups or fundraising from investors. And even that process of getting feedback from investors, it's really hard to navigate because you get a lot of noise from investors, sometimes even positive noise, in the sense that they like what you are doing, but they don't understand what you are doing, which can be misleading as well, of course. So that's the importance of finding very good investors that really know what they are doing and what they are telling to the people that are pitching to them. But getting that moment where there was the fundraising going on and then start building the product, actually. [00:13:01] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we should pause and send props to investors that actually say, we won't invest. [00:13:10] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:13:11] Speaker B: Because that's really hard for an investor. [00:13:13] Speaker A: To do, especially in Portugal. I think it's a very Portuguese thing to say. [00:13:20] Speaker B: I met the classic investor in Portugal that told me, oh, we have a. A sort of internal book that is something like a thousand ways to say no. And that is really important, actually, because sometimes they don't know if they should invest, so they try to nurture the lead and they entertain the founders and that's some sort of fake validation. Yeah. If you don't have the expertise or the background to understand what's being said in that weird way, you might feel that you are almost closing around, whereas that investor was not actually that keen on moving forward. So, yeah, my best compliments to those. [00:14:18] Speaker A: Investors that actually I noticed that when we started working with companies that were raising more money or mainly raising money outside of Portugal, how different it was and even you could pinpoint it to geographies and the way that people are like if you are from Netherlands or uk, it's a simple reality. Like the culture that you have allow you to say no in the face more directly than not. And. And I think that's really important what you mentioned and finding the right investors is really important for the success of a company. [00:14:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Because not all money is equal and this has nothing to do with equity stakes or the cap table per se. But actually doing a startup with money from the right investor is quite different from doing the with someone that only has money to put into things. Can you explain why is this different? [00:15:22] Speaker A: It's for a lot of reasons. I think there is personality reasons like depending on investors that you get, you can have someone that really gives energy to the company. And there are a lot of investors that suck up energy from the company. And I live both realities where having that investor was like painful and every meeting was like pushing you back instead of allowing you to go forward. And on the other, you don't need to drop names. [00:15:55] Speaker B: No, only if you want to. [00:15:56] Speaker A: I will not. But I'm sure that if I share, they will not listen this because the feeling probably was mutual. [00:16:07] Speaker B: After the experience, we can just say random names and all. They will put dark pain. [00:16:14] Speaker A: Yeah. But on the other side are investors that are amazing, that really drive a lot of value. And a lot of times it's not the main investor. It can be a small investor, but they give a lot of energy to the founders. They are supportive, they teach, they share experiences. Mainly if they were founders before and I've lived that myself and it's really amazing. The other way is what type of fund is investing in you? Is it a fund that just deploys capital and never comes back to you? Sometimes they have like a operating team that support the founders through contacts to other investors for further rounds. So knowing what is the structure of the fund is really important. Also the stage of maturity of the fund, if it's ending, if it's starting, if they need you to raise another fund and they need to make you a success. So there is a lot of nuances there. And then you have just people that add a lot of value. They know what you are doing because they have done something similar in the past. They know the market, they have the connections to open doors and those are the best. And sometimes Those are just angel investors. A lot of times they really love what you are doing and they just send an extra member in the team that it's on steroids helping you. [00:17:48] Speaker B: When you started coverflex you had the advantage because most of the founders or actually all the founders were second time entrepreneurs or serial entrepreneurs themselves. [00:17:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:00] Speaker B: So they already had the network, the expertise, they knew the names, they knew the map that they should pursue. So how was that experience different being then again an experienced entrepreneur from first time founders that you have been meeting all along. [00:18:19] Speaker A: The founders from CoverFlex, I think it's tier one founders. They are the best that we have around us. Like they had a lot of experience. Like the small support that's a visual share with them. And myself being the beginning was incomparably small to what they had in their baggage already. So that was very easy to work on. First time founders, they need to learn a lot and it's not that they cannot be also easy to work with. But sometimes there's a trait in founder that sometimes ego is there and plays a role and it's a good thing, but other times it prevents them from learning. [00:19:08] Speaker B: Provide examples of that. Ego thing is very common. But when we say ego, there's a very. Well, the red line between charisma and ego. Being the enemy is very thin. Can you name examples of how ego becomes an enemy and being a founder? [00:19:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I can give you again, I will not drop names. [00:19:41] Speaker B: It's a pity though. You can DM me afterwards, I have names to drop. [00:19:48] Speaker A: I can give you a very good example of when ego. Because you are totally right. Ego. We all have ego. The problem is what are we preventing from hurting our ego? Is it fear of losing our position? Is it just the fear of being looked as inferior to others? There's a lot of nuances there. The example that I can share is that it's basically, it's a very common one where we got to a stage where it was noticeable that the founder was not the right person to be in the position that he was. And we found an alternative to hire a person that could do that job. And that founder basically said if this happens, I'll be public about what we are trying to do. So he puts himself in the first position and not the project, not the company and we end up not hiring that person, which I think could have made a lot of difference, even though I'm talking about the project that had a lot of success. So it's not that if those things don't happen, the Company is doomed or the startup is doomed. It's just you are fighting for survival and you are trying to increase your odds of success and you should try to do the best for the company. I think in that case, for example, was a good moment where that father could say what you mentioned a little bit earlier, maybe I'll do this instead. And this person is exactly the best person to do the job that I was supposed to do and that was the best thing for. [00:21:40] Speaker B: Do you feel that we are already normalizing the thing, that it's okay to be a founder of a startup and not be the CEO at the say later stage? You did something very interesting at Utrust, which was at some point in time, please walk us through. How did you find that it was important or tactical to bring new leadership, new experience to the company? You started hiring a CEO and new, say C level roles. What was the, the thing in your roadmap, the milestone, the red flags that you started noticing that was important to bring in a certain subset of new expertise or even experience in some industries like payments, that you felt that you had to leverage hiring as a solution. [00:22:44] Speaker A: That's an amazing example. So Utrust is a project that I was highly involved and as a co founder, very different from CoverFlex. And there we were four co founders. And I think it was a company that everything happened so fast in the early days because we was the early days of the ICOS and the blockchain boom with the Ethereum popping up in 2016, this was 2017 and we found ourselves in a place where we had after a few months, 50 people in the company to manage a lot of pressure from a public token that was tradable and people wanted the price to go up and you just getting to a stage where you try to make it work by not stopping and thinking if you are doing things right. So the funnels were doing the best that they could. We took hats that potentially we were not the best ones to do it. But Nuno, the CEO and founder and the guy that came up with the idea is that type of guy, he's a visionary. He's always thinking of new ways to solve stuff, to bring new ideas, to do something different in the world. And that was one of the reasons why he came up with Utrust. And while at Utrust, he was always the guy that came up with new ideas. Let's do this, let's do that. But utrust, after two years in the payments market in blockchain, which is very challenging, like was not a lot of people paying with crypto. Nowadays, there are still not a lot of people paying with crypto, but was very, very different in the early days. We got to a stage where we needed more leadership, more experience. And we hired Sanya that was working at PayPal and she had an amazing experience. PayPal was actually our arch enemy. When we started Utrust, we always said bad things about PayPal, like we were going to kill PayPal, naively. But we brought Cyane in to be our VP of partnerships and to lead that effort of increasing our market dominance and bring more merchants and all of that. And she was amazing. She was doing a great job, closing a lot of partnerships, being a face for the company that people were starting to recognize. And Nunu felt that maybe there is a person here that can do the job, that I'm doing a better way, that she can be a better CEO than I can be right now for the stage of the company that we are right now. And we talked with her, she accepted. And Nunu became more like what he was doing, like a chairman visionary. I don't remember exactly the role that he took, but it was like shift the strategy officer or something like that. And yeah, that was exactly what he was good at doing. And Sanya was good at being the CEO at coordinating the team, etc. [00:26:12] Speaker B: Because when you launch a web free company with a token, at some point in time, the founding team, well, let me rephrase it. What was the amount of time and, say, energy resources that you had to allocate to, say, managing the token community? The token value and all things considered, token compared to managing the team? Because you said that as a small detail. Suddenly we'll launch an ICO and in a couple weeks we go from four founders to, I don't know, 40 or 50 people working on an office. It sounds like a detail, but Suddenly you have 40 strangers in an office and you have to organize the whole thing. In the meantime, you have a huge community of people asking questions, demanding attention on the token. So was the token also, or the token energy demand that triggered part of this conversation that we need, were needing a new leadership layer so that you could organize or reorganize the operations there? [00:27:34] Speaker A: I don't know if the token had a role in that per se. I think what we knew is that the company grew to a stage that having someone that could be have more experience at managing people, defining strategy and coordinating that across the teams, someone a little bit more operational, made more sense. I think that ended up freeing Nunu to be more focused on what you are saying on the token side as well. So maybe not directly, but indirectly had a role there. I also would like to say that and moving forward to now, to where I see things now and providing that knowledge. I think 2018, 19, the ways that companies, web3 handle tokens and that community is very different from now. The pressure was much higher. It looked like almost like a thing of life and death. Sometimes if I don't do this right, these people are coming to kill me. It was not exactly that, but it felt like that a lot of times. And right now I think the market is much more mature. Founders have a lot of accumulated knowledge from previous experiences and and even from people that had those experience before to handle all of that process in a much healthier way. I think you were with us in a lot of leadership sessions that we had at GTrust and I guess that potentially the token strategy or conversations took like 25%, 30% of our time. And right now I think companies are much more focused on what we need to do is working on what we are building on solving a problem. And the token will reflect that. And I think that's the healthier way to do that. [00:29:44] Speaker B: Yeah. Looking backwards, if you had to compare to recent founders that you are meeting nowadays, do you see also that evolution that you notice and the say overall crypto maturity market or crypto market maturity, do you feel that also the new founders that you have been talking with bring a new, more updated approach to how to build a startup and more in sync with this, say professional, I'm not sure if the right word actually, or more complex way of building a company around an idea that they want to test. [00:30:36] Speaker A: I think it's a good point. You have been in a lot of these conversations with new companies that we've been talking and what we feel is that the reasons why people are starting companies in web3 is very different from certain stages of the past. And I'm being very cautious with the certain stages because usually in web3 that represents the cycles of the prices, the fluctuation of the prices. When a lot of people are making money, you get a lot of people starting companies with the wrong reasons because they see people making money around them to reflect that. What I see now is that people understand more the technology. They understand the impact that can have in the world and all problems that they identify in their days or to the work that they do can be solved using the technology that is behind these things. And they come up with ideas to Use that technology to solve problems. And the way that they think about that is, okay, I know that I can build this with this technology. I need to work out the incentive layer. And somewhere along this, along this thought process, they need to include the token a lot of times, and it's not easy all the times. And then comes the fundraising side in webtree, where a lot of times you have to fundraise using a token. And sometimes a token is put in place to the fundraiser to solve a problem. And later on you need to reshape that to make sense. But I think, yeah, I think founders are very different, are much more mature. It's like they understand they have a lot of examples to follow. I think in 2017, until 2022, even that you work an experienced, experienced founder starting a Web3 company, you didn't have a lot of examples to follow. Now it's different. [00:32:52] Speaker B: Yeah. And there's even a subset of founders nowadays that are very, very experienced people, often former executives at big companies that left and are starting from scratch a new project. How do you see that evolving and what kind of impact do you think this is going to have? [00:33:14] Speaker A: I think it's very good. Even a lot of these large companies, they have internal projects around blockchain, which allowed people to learn about the technology, experience with it at a large scale, and then they can get out and build something their own. So I think that's very interesting. And I think it's a lot of projects that are coming up now with a lot of potential. It's from people that had that pedigree, that experience. Even though some of them naively jump out of the corporate world into this still a little bit crazy web3world. And they have hard time navigating that, but that's where we can help. And a lot of people are helping them. If they get the right support, they'll do good because they have the experience of building great things. [00:34:15] Speaker B: So visual as 13, 14 years. [00:34:19] Speaker A: 13. [00:34:20] Speaker B: I'm old as a teenager already. [00:34:25] Speaker A: We have to have the sex talk. [00:34:28] Speaker B: Yeah. We need to talk about family planning. How has the support staff system that we often create around entrepreneurs be updated to the current needs that these new founders look in companies like Sub Visual. [00:34:52] Speaker A: Yeah. So the model, the venture studio model that has been around for a lot of time has a lot of different nuances. Like people do this in different ways. The way that people build venture studios is different. The model that we are trying to follow is where we expect founders to come to us and we help them with certain parts. Where they are lacking or less mature in their founding team or in their early days. And this is not something that we. We didn't start doing this. We matured into this. So initially the process was much more direct to product. Like people wanted to build a product and we helped them build the product and that was it. What we found is that and to our sadness is that most of the times what we build doesn't matter at all. We can build the best product ever. If it's it doesn't sell or people don't use it, it doesn't matter. So the support that we give right now, I think it's also through the accumulated experience of helping create dozens of companies. I think we helped by now Launch More than 200 companies is finding where they could fail much faster than let them fail by their own. Even though sometimes that's really hard. But having the experience to say that's not the way because I've seen that way playing out seven times and always ends up in the same situation, which is failure. I think that's the. If I could select one thing is that and the coaching like helping the founders navigate this process. Because all of what we were discussing before the psychological drain for a founder, it's amazing. I don't know why any healthy people will start a company. That's first thing. It's a painful process and you have to navigate all of that. And even as a group of founders doing that, conflicts come up when shit hits the fan. It's always hard to navigate that interpersonal relationships sometimes because they are friends or colleagues for a long time. So we can play a very important role there, navigating that process, helping them stop and think and come up with a plan telling what is the best way to fundraise in in a certain market. So that's all. There's a bunch of things that I believe that right now Cell Visual can support founders more than just the product. But it's also important to say that I think with the amazing team that we have on the product side with engineers, some of them with probably the engineers in Portugal with more experience in blockchain, that can make a huge difference because you still have to build a product. Even though I said that the product is not the end of it. If you don't have anything, if you don't build anything, it's difficult to have success. [00:38:26] Speaker B: And it's funny because you never mentioned money, having access to money in the sense that obviously getting your project fundraised is really hard and important, but it's not an end on itself. And that is interesting because we've all also worked with people, founders that were dwelling with this idea that I have fundraised, I have a ton of money right now, and this doesn't match what the market is telling me. I don't know how to build this. [00:39:08] Speaker A: Scariest moment. [00:39:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's even scarier if you have the money on your side because suddenly you have the responsibility you were supposed to build it. So, yeah, that's an interesting experience. [00:39:24] Speaker A: I think it's hard for a lot of funders to, to hear this, but the money, it's one of the easiest parts if you have the rest solved. Like if you have an interesting product, if you have an interesting team, a very good team, and if you have experience, it's kind of easy to get the money part. And we talked about different kinds of money. If you want dumb money, it's even easier. And even now in Portugal, with certain incentives that exist, it's even easier to get the money part. What is hard is to make that money work, to have success and to get you to the next stage. And I have a lot of experiences with that as well. So we raised a shit ton of money with Etrust and was like, after we raised the money was really scary. [00:40:20] Speaker B: Like, yeah, what the fuck? [00:40:21] Speaker A: Now you have 12,000 people that invest in our ICO and they expect us to do something with this. And in the middle we also got some messages like, I'm getting a mortgage in my house to invest in you, so please do something with this. And that's fucking scary. [00:40:44] Speaker B: Those are the things that keeps you awake. [00:40:46] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly. And also there is this end of a cycle when you fundraise. It's a long process and sometimes also hard. And you get there and then, okay, the dopamine ends and you have to build and to get something to the market. [00:41:06] Speaker B: And there are founders that are sort of addicted to that specific period. When you finally have all the conditions to start building, it becomes somewhat boring for them. So it's a different profile. [00:41:24] Speaker A: Yeah, another. Another experience that I had was very interesting fundraising. Then building was. I'm going to tell this story because it's a very positive one was desipad. So I was co founder of desipad with. With Nuno. I'm a co founder of Deciped with Nuno. Jov and Pedro, two amazing professionals, different profiles. Pedro, one of the best CTOs that I've seen. Nunu, one of the best business oriented people that I know, and razor sharp executor like very, very good. Like, the fundraising process was super easy. We fundraised, we raised 5 million in weeks. Was like with a notion page, not even a deck. And it was the first time that I also saw a founder firing investors in a call like, I don't want your money, let's go. Nunu is very good at that. And when the money was in the account was a very, very fast process. The company went into a now we need to be super efficient and just build. And the product SE pad is a notebook on steroids to make calculus there and you can program it. It's very complicated product to bring to market. You can think like it's a notion with a spreadsheet capabilities inside. Very hard to build. We knew that it was going to take like two, three, four years to build an ndp. This will scare some product managers out there. But we got into a process of now let's find the best process we run like sprints and all of that. It was very, very good to go through that process. Like the next six months were super intensive and everyone was like, I think for me and the others were feeling the same, having the best time of their lives building that. And I think that for me was really interesting. And to build on what we're discussing, there is also that formula level where you fundraise, you check that was important. We needed money to build this. But now we got the interesting part, which is building something that people will use. And I think that was a very good case. [00:44:02] Speaker B: And also with Utrus, for instance, you had cherry on the top of the cake, which was going through the process of exiting a baby that you also co started. And what was that moment like? Because it's something that when we think of creating a project, when we wander around with visions and ideas and fundraising, we always somewhat dream with this El Dorado of an IPO or an exit, whatever. And it happened in this case, what was it like? [00:44:41] Speaker A: Yep. So when Utrust was sold, I was already in the stage where we and the subvisual team had hand off from the project. So was four years after we started. And I saw the whole process a little bit from the outside, even though I was part of the whole thing, the whole discussions. And I think we already mentioned that payments in crypto is really hard. So the company was going well, had money, was growing in terms of market like processing more transactions, adding more merchants. But we knew that to take it to another level, either we raised a massive round or we needed to find another alternative. And at that time we were approached by a company to bias and we're not thinking about it. Like, I don't think anyone was. Sorry. Thinking about selling the company. [00:45:43] Speaker B: It was their initiative. [00:45:44] Speaker A: Yeah, they approached us. I was like, maybe. Let's see. And the conversations went on in the end. And after like five months of having these conversations, MultiversX came along and said, oh, you guys could be interested in an acquisition. And we're like, yeah, we are talking with someone about it. We are not super into it, but yes, we can talk about it. So MultiversX was actually the second buyer that approached us. And by then we decided that. And it's important to Mark to mention the moment. Like, it was 2021, the market was going up like crazy. So we also thought that it was a good moment to potentially seek this exit because everyone was extravagant, bullish, and the prices that they were offering was. Were interesting. So we. We thought that could be a good opportunity. And also the project that MultiversX was building and presented to us seemed like a good exit for the team, which was also important to us. By then we had a large team that a lot of these people were trained by us actually something that we can go after this, which is the talent that we helped create. Like the person that is now leaving X Money, which is Utrust, is Martinho, which someone that started at Utrust with me as an apprentice and grew until is now the leader of that company. Which is an amazing story that I'm really proud of. So, all in all, we thought it was a good moment and the money part made sense. The future for the team made sense, was a good story also to close the loop. And I think the last part that I wanted to mention was that you mentioned the baby part and e trust. For me personally, I think the other founders and a lot of people that work there relate to that was like. It was a very intense experience. Very, very intense experience. So there was a lot of scars from that process and was not easy emotionally. But also having the opportunity to close the loop in a good way felt right. And I'm really glad that we went through that. [00:48:30] Speaker B: Yeah, it's great that these things generate money, right? But what makes your heart tick, isn't it this experience of helping Martinos and other people find a way find a career and suddenly be on by their own merit, of course, but and work be on a leading position and suddenly we start learning with them too. What is it that makes your heart tick off? Of course generating money is cool, but. [00:49:06] Speaker A: It'S a Bright product for me. It's definitely, and I think you are making this question for podcast purposes, because you know the answer. [00:49:18] Speaker B: Spoiler alert. [00:49:20] Speaker A: It's definitely this. Working with very smart people and help them by their own merits grow a lot. It's the things that if I look back in these 13 years from people that we have in our own team, from people that worked in startups that we started or startups that we invest, from founders that we knew that were just either kids or kids, young people starting a new company, having this opportunity to work with them, learn, seeing them grow. And I joke with this with several of several people that went through this process, that Martin was one of them, that it was starting with me. And I told him, like, you seem like a guy that I'll be happy one day to work for. [00:50:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:50:10] Speaker A: And that's exactly what how I feel right now. If I end up working for Martin, I'll be happy. He's an amazing guy, very smart, he's good leader. [00:50:19] Speaker B: That's a good way to put it. [00:50:20] Speaker A: And it's definitely something that I think it's not just a personal thing of me. It's also something that inside Sub visual we value a lot. And we have a lot of programs, apprenticeships and internships and grants and a lot of ways for new or people are transitioning careers to start fresh and learn with us. And it's one of the pillars of the company. [00:50:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't plan to over romanticize the process here because you mentioned the scars of building companies and I think it's important to talk about that on a positive way because scars are part of the game and sometimes we don't persevere enough or we tend to be pain reluctant, which is okay. But some sort of pain exposure so that we can collect scars is also part of this venture business. What kind of scars do you recollect from these experiences? [00:51:26] Speaker A: I have so many scars. [00:51:28] Speaker B: Bring the tissues. Bring the tissues. [00:51:32] Speaker A: I think every moment that you get one of those cars, it's a learning moment. I think that's the crucial part. You need to learn from that. If you don't, you are losing out. But I can reflect on a few moments. Like when we started the company in 2012. We were kids getting out of college, but we already had this idea that we wanted to start companies and startups, which was a very novel topic. And I think one of the first scars was that we didn't know shit about starting a company and starting a startup and we failed like massively with the first projects. That we tried something like. One was called Cool Hive, another one in space jobs, stuff that we started. [00:52:25] Speaker B: Both still make sense today. [00:52:27] Speaker A: Exactly. One was a platform to managing co working spaces and the other one was a job board for the space industry. At the time there was not a lot of talk about space exploration. But we failed massively. We didn't know how to build that. And as someone young that was trying to do stuff, you get some scars from that. But you learn a lot. You learn that building a product doesn't matter if that product doesn't see the light of the day or people using it. So there was a lot of learnings there. Another one was not getting paid. That's also a very interesting scar. People owning you money and you learning through that. Especially one that make that money. [00:53:26] Speaker B: We're finally dropping names. [00:53:32] Speaker A: I can drop the professional, the profession from the first and I think he's a priest in the US right now. [00:53:40] Speaker B: Makes sense. Makes sense. [00:53:43] Speaker A: But having that first experience where someone owes you a shit ton of money and you need that money to pay salaries. One thing is when someone owes you money but you don't miss it. Like it doesn't make a difference to you. But at that time made a lot of difference. So that was really an important scar and made me understand a lot about what kind of people I want to work with. What kind of people founders we want to back and be behind. I think that's the main things that we got from that learning. And later on I think fast forward to this web3world. You can, you can do a lot, work a lot. But there is a component in this market in a lot of places where you, you are in a volatile market and, and you get a lot of scars from that. Like you are building something. Everything is going very well. And I know a lot of founders that either we invest or work with right now in webtree that also share that, those cars with us. Like it's really hard. You do everything right or you feel that you are doing everything right and some guy that likes to abuse drugs decides to steal all the customer money like FTX and you are fucked. And the market goes down, everything collapses and you don't have any control in that. So that's, that's also a learning point. Like you don't control everything. You need to focus on the things that you can control and hope for the best. [00:55:30] Speaker B: How do people bounce back from those scars. [00:55:37] Speaker A: You continue building? I think if you love it can be tricky, can meet almost like be perceived as an addiction and follows the Same process as an addiction, any other kind of addiction. But you keep building, you keep building the next thing and you build and you build until you are satisfied. And maybe you will never be satisfied. Which I think it's what is going to happen to me. [00:56:07] Speaker B: How do you look to the future in the sense we feel this trend of transition. Many conversations around what needs to be changing or is there a need to change something? On the other hand, very tactically you see new players pop into the market, say startup studios, ventures studios. I don't know. There's a lot of names, different names for things that are sometimes hard to distinguish. Many Hundreds of new VCs in the specific Web3 industry. Shitload of money ready to be deployed. And yet perhaps the meme coin phenomena got a spotlight that no one was predicting. How do you see the whole combination of these and many other factors setting up into some sort of narrative or aggregated reality for the coming months? [00:57:25] Speaker A: A lot to unpack there, I think on the fundraising side, like what kind of capital is going to be available in the next stages? I think we are facing an issue right now which is the market is stagnant. Like you don't see a lot of exits either through M and A or IPOs. Like VCs are not seeing any kind of returns like those single double digits returns that are important to balance out the zeros. They are not seeing that which it doesn't seem like very promising for the returns of the funds. And if the funds don't return, LPs will not invest more. I don't think we are seeing that a lot in the Web3 space. You still see a lot of funds raising a lot of capital. But because it's a more liquid market with tokens and all. But as the market matures we might see the, the same problem there that is raising space to alternative ways of investing. And a lot of venture studies are pumping up because it's a different way of investing. You have more control on, on, on, on the, the startup. Yeah, but I think it's still early days. We don't know if this is the way. I, I see a lot of people very enthusiastic about venture studios, but I don't think, I'm not sure if this works in scale. Like I don't think if it will replace venture capital because venture studios are also much more hands on. Like yeah, VCs in a way they work because they are relaxed at their homes. They write the check and they make a few intros and it's good, it spins companies and the wheel turns venturestudies. It's very intensive. It's for people that like to build alongside founders. So I don't think it replaces in scale and I see some people saying that it will. I disagree with that. I think it's an alternative way that complements VC. But VCs still need to work in a way. Venture studios need VCs to continue funding the companies that they start. So I don't think it's correct to say that we are trying to replace venture capital. And I'm one of those that believes that we need to make changes. Even it's not up to us here in Portugal, in this small country, but potentially in the us. They need to make changes to turn this more interesting for the venture capital market. Start to run more on the web3space with this. The other part you mentioned, the meme coins, all the market is going. I think that we are all aware that. I think we almost reached the point where it doesn't make sense to build more infrastructure for the sake of it. And we need to break the bubble. We need to get outside. We need to build products that are used by people where they use blockchain. They don't know that it's blockchain. It solves the problem. People are happy. They are using them to buy stuff, to buy tickets, whatever. We need to make real world products that are used by billions of people and not just the same ones. And I think that's a consensus that everyone is getting and I hope that we start seeing more of that also. The intersection with AI is very interesting. So hope to see a lot of products coming out of there. Decentralized infrastructure is also very interesting with a lot of promising products. People are using carriers that are based on blockchain products and don't know about it. And it works. It's amazing. And that's the type of things that I think really makes a difference and can be very interesting. Dol Meme Coins I don't know. I love it. I've been here for a long time. I consider myself being crypto since 2011 through Bitcoin. So I'll always love all of this and I'll buy meme coins, I'll buy NFTs. I'll buy everything they throw at me because I'm a curious person. I like to try out things to leave the culture, the degen culture. I don't see it as a serious alternative for anything. Even though there is some glances where you see meme coins turning to products and products leveraging meme coins so that maybe something is there. I'm not. [01:02:35] Speaker B: I think it's definitely too soon to jump into conclusions. [01:02:38] Speaker A: I have a confession to make. When first I heard about Ethereum, I thought it didn't make any sense. So for a brief period of time, I was bitcoin maxi, which is still all took like two years. So don't take my word as. As something as a certain. [01:03:01] Speaker B: I think this is a good way to wrap up the conversation.