How to Create Your Own Startup in Web 3

Top tips from the Co-Founder of Fold, Thesis and Scholarly

NEU Blockchain Organization
3 min readMar 9, 2022
Thumbnail from YouTube

For all the entrepreneurs out there, we invited Corbin Pon, Co-Founder of Fold, Thesis, and Scholarly to enlighten us with his knowledge on how to create Startups in Web3.

You can checkout the recording of the event on our YouTube channel.

When to use a blockchain in your startup?

Use blockchain in a antagonistic space or solve a problem that currently is antagonistic in the sense that it is a zero-sum game and there is not a lot of trust between stakeholders.

Use of Interdisciplinary or non-tech skills in Blockchain

Blockchain solves problems related to policies, security, ownership and has found it’s use case in many industries like healthcare, economics, finance, tech, and more.

Find a tech co-founder if you are not well versed with tech. Try to find someone in college, if not, attend many local meet-ups

Should you worried about your idea getting stolen?

No, not unless you are in bio-tech, or it’s a very niche solution to a problem.

Programming Languages you should know

Python, Solidity and Go

Accelerators or Resources

Use accelerators if you know exactly what you need and the accelerator is providing that. But accelerators like Y Combinator do provide advantage in funding.

Most Valuable Skill

Telling the story. Communicating things clearly and concisely.

What is the hardest problem you have faced?

You are always failing until you are not while running a startup so always expect failure. Comfortable with doing the hard work and stick to it. Hardest problem is to find if your product works like it’s supposed to and users would pay for it

Problem with Token Launch

Hard to make early decisions since you get a lot of noise from token performance and the community.

Problems when moving from web2 to web3

It is important to realise that your Token is your product as much as your product is your product.

Crypto Regulation

We can’t ignore regulation since most money is regulated

Are we in a bubble

We might be but there is nothing to worry about. We are beyond the narrative that crypto is used for money laundering, terrorits etc.

What would you have done differently if you could start again

Be more dogmatic about things and more realistic. In the early days of Fold, they were more focus on the self-sovereignty side of blockchain than letting users use debit cards.

Marketting in web3

You need to know exactly the problem people are trying to solve and deliver to it. Everything else would come naturally.

Should you focus on educating customers about your product

If your product is not particularly educational focus than it might not be worth the time and effort to educate users, at least, as a startup.

--

--

NEU Blockchain Organization

A student-led organization dedicated to advancing blockchain education, development, and research.