3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform

0:00crypto not crypto blockchain is a fantastic solution to the idea of how do you enumerate value on the internet and Trust for it in a way that is just by science a trustworthy and I think that that ultimately benefits the receiver of the value that you're creating online and you in a in in in an open market that people can in transparent way acknowledge each other's value and Trust and that's that's the layer that we're missing on the on the internet to take it to to a to a place where um a c value by individual is much more transparent and efficient and the products we're

0:42getting for people are better because there is accountability because when you make money you want to make the product better you want to retain your customers you want to make sure that they're happy you want to make sure that they're coming back you want to make sure they get a V2 and a V3 and a V4 and you are much why because when you do that you make more money you know so I want to summarize our entire conversation in four steps so this is what I've learned this is what I've learned from this conversation how to create a product people want number one [Music] find okay so Ben Ruben live from Soho

1:29Ben is the guy that I call if I have a big idea he kind of he always knows it feels like he always knows where things are the direction where things are going so if I ever need a gut check text Ben hey I'm thinking about this big idea what do you think he's sold a company to Epic Games house party he started mircat which was a live streaming it was IG live before IG live was a thing and now he's working in the crypto space and building well we'll talk more about it but he's building kind of community infrastructure for the crypto web um so

2:14when when Ben talks I listen and he's got a ton of crypto ideas that he came prepared with and I know people some people are listening to this and I would say 93% of our audience isn't in the crypto world so their their guards are up to be honest I'm um I I I studied architecture school and I still build digital spaces and I mean the crypto side of you're right I am I am backed by crypto investors and I'm I hire crypto engineers and we are in the crypto industry but by all accounts the job of what we're building is to build intimacy uh in the internet without making it

2:58smaller and blockchain is just a is just a a technology that we're using to create a set of communities that are permissionless meaning anyone can join but they organize around a new type of graph that is is trust and we'll get into this but you know I just wanted to jump in and say like you know that that's true that you know if it's walk like a dock and it talks like a dock it's maybe a dog and it quacks like oh whatever the saying is um but we we fundamentally see our job as here in what we do is how do we create a more intimate space and

3:38blockchain just just is is a is a way to get people to trust that the other side of the people on the keyboard actually have the same things to lose and the same things to gain by the information that they are sharing together um and I think that's that's where the internet is going and where it's it's uh and where a lot of value is going to come especially as it's expanded in the speed of light and with AI like in 10 years from now it's going to be really important to know is this person on the other side really did what they do or do

4:09they really have the same amount of you know podcast listeners do they actually live in Miami did they actually go to the school do they actually you know all of these things are going to have some sort of um way online to verify that they happen and I think that that brings a new type of graph uh that uh uh it's it's it's important for us as Builder to be curious about and see can we create a better internet when we are not organizing People based on self- attestation but actually based on the things that they have done and experienced and can we create better conversations like this and much more

4:48grounded conversation so short stories yes I do a lot of things in crypto but I'm definitely not motivated uh the motivation is not crypto by self the motivation is how do you create a group of 10,000 people or 100,000 people where they're there because they have the same things to gain and the same things to lose uh and that's the kind of conversation they have and I think the internet become much more powerful like this the other thing I think is really interesting about building in crypto right now is if you can if you compare crypto to let's say AI there's way more competition in the AI space like building on top of you

5:32know building gbt rappers and stuff like that everyone's trying to do that but with crypto because it's it hasn't hit you know the mainstream adoption and there's PE you know but it just feels like there's less competition so there's opportunities for people to see what are the new protocols coming out how do I build something on top of it that's actually going to create value and as the tide shift and as the industry matures you know you end up swimming Downstream instead of upstream and it's just there's less competition so um I always try to look at like what are things that are low status right now or

6:12medium status and not high and that will be high status in two or three or four years because that's where the Arbitrage is and I think that's where we're at with crypto and to your point everything exists in IM balance so when you look at the things that are like um you know not not the hottest things right now you have to ask yourself okay how do they compare how do they and if at all are they in dialogue with the thing that is hot and what what is the kind of energy that is balancing in it because you you can think about it almost like as one of one

6:51of the most interesting things as an observer and builder in the space and you know you and I been around the block I don't know for 13 years more doing doing what we do and um I I find it so interesting that AI is this let's let's think about the motivation of AI the set of ideas that it is it's it's highly centralized you know in order to run a service like open AI quick ad break let me tell you about a business I invested in it's called boring marketing.com so a few years ago I met this group of people that were some of the the best SEO experts in the

7:31world they were behind getting some of the biggest companies found on Google and the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and AI that could help you outrank your competition so for my own businesses I wanted that I didn't want to have to rely on Mark Zuckerberg I didn't want to depend on ads to drive customers to my businesses I wanted to rank high in Google that's why I like SEO and that's why I use boring marketing and that's why I invested in it they're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30-day Sprint with 100% money back guarantee who does that nowadays so

8:09check it out highly recommend boring marketing.com but like all of the all of the the those companies need to be massive and hold a a huge amount of information right not only that it is also creating the type of content that is looking back and replicating itself to create above average answers right so AI is this kind of like oh the internet got to the place of maturity both on the computation level and the centralization level that it can actually become its own being and self reproduce and on the other side you have crypto which is actually working on the opposite direction which is how can you

8:55enumerate identities and make proofs and you know as you think about what's going to be the balancing act when somebody can load up all the content of G Greg Eisenberg all the voice of of Greg all the photos all the things that he wrote everything and create something that is you know can maybe even create podcasts you know and do this interviews right and like uh and and and and and even with your permission even with your permission Greg just like extend yourself 100 times or a thousand times that is almost um that that is almost it bags the question of like okay so when do I know

9:44though this is the real Greg that I'm talking to the real Greg and what are the ways to prove online that I'm talking to the to the actual guy and another thing that it's is interesting to consider is that I don't know why but I have this instinctive belief that all derivative assets eventually um increase the value of the original asset meaning uh in a way pickle ball just the more pickle ball is out there the most the more the value of 10 is going up the more you know the more the more there is uh you know ERC 20s coins the more the value of of ethereum goes out uh the

10:29more knockoffs to Prada the more the value of Prada goes up you know lvmh doesn't exist without theara and H&M and things like that right um Manhattan doesn't exist without uh the the Bears around it you know so derivative assets when they go up they fundamentally increase the the the value of the the original asset so now you have to when you think about about Ai and replication and replication in the speed of of computers which is what AI is doing and and you have to ask yourself what is if things are going to move so fast these derivative values what are the things that are now going to be exponentially

11:11more valuable and I actually think it's like two friends holding hands you know looking at Sunset having coffee like that is the derivative value that that is the original asset sorry that all these derivative assets so I actually think that actually having time with Greg one onone with Greg Eisenberg one one or online but with the real Greg it's going to grow exponentially higher when when the image and replication of Greg 3i is going you know THX and those things need a way to be identified on the internet right so blockchain technology is a way to enumerate and verify things on the Internet is actually a very interesting

12:01counterbalance to what AI uh uh the power uh of AI you know and how we as human understand how to navigate between what's real and what's a replication yeah I love it I think I think you're on to something agreed obviously like if there's millions of pieces of content like you know myself right let's just say right now I create 20 pieces of content a week with AI in a year from now I might create 300 400 pieces of content so and we just need to know like who's Greg who's not and and sort of verify that so yeah I think that's where blockchain comes in you've

12:41got a lot of ideas on this list and I want to get into some of these ideas that speak to a lot of this stuff and you're giving these away I want to start with um I want to start with the first one the dating the dating idea yeah if you know mine I do not mind okay let's let's let's let's jump in one of the fun things I get to learn as I started you know exploring how models of communication and the idea of of a trust based graph I call it motivational graph but I don't know if it's going to stick but I feel like capturing through

13:22blockchain like what the user has done done offchain to onchain is almost like capturing the motivation and we couldn't really capture motivation uh before we just like had people to say like oh I got you know Ben's number therefore I should see him on WhatsApp or I have this person's username therefore I should follow them or like I self-identify as somebody who go to this class in this college so I should be exposed to this uh group of people but it's really becomes interesting where you actually need to do the action in order to to facilitate the relationship so one of the fun things that I've learned is there

14:02something called poop which is actually a a way to in person verify that you have been somewhere and I do think that putting like a reputation graph for for dating where and it sounds I think like there's a part of me that's like is just like a revolting against this idea um but I also hear the most insane horror stories you know between people who go on dates and maybe it's just like a a New York thing I don't know but you know we don't have enough accountability I mean and maybe that's the point of this entire part of my journey in my career right now in how I want to you know uh

14:49build the the communication well you know World Of Products that I want to see in the world he like we don't have enough accountability and and and owning up to the way we communicate and interact online and this is not to say that we need to punish people for be behaving badly but I actually think we need to reward people for being good stewards of healthy and nuance and mature conversation that that that that holds opinions and is open to to to feedback and to give feedback right I'm I'm I'm recently single after 10 year relationship and I've started to be out there go on dates and and you know some

15:35pieces of the puzzle of all these um feedback that that that I'm hearing uh not feedback but I guess like you know your friend your single friends are saying like oh dating so hard and online dating so hard and and and I start to see some of the behaviors that they talk about and you know I have arrived to a conclusion that I think I would have been a better um participant in uh the dating uh Market I guess uh if I had fewer choices that have reputational uh outcome and I think uh the same way to to to other people that I've engaged with and I think that if we

16:22can create the kind of um data set that is rewarding people people for being more intentional with the connections that they're making and how it gets uh uh uh manifested in in an actual date and then that goes back onto this open protocol uh and and there are ways to like uh with keeping privacy you can still show different kind of proofs uh of the type of behavior and the type of connections that they're making um I actually think it's it's kind of powerful and I know it sounds super geeky and like dystopian but I'm really coming to that not from the point of like we should be walking around with

17:06like a score on our back but more like how do we feel much more uh comfortable knowing that this is going to be a great date this is going to be a good match this is going to be something that's worth my time this is this is going to be something that I do not want to dishonor uh the uh the commitment that I made to you know see this person tonight or whatever and that that I I actually think that as humans we work really well when when there's structure and accountability for the most part even if it's just like self-imposed and and and and I actually think that there is and I

17:50might be just like projecting a lot of things here but I think that there's an opportunity here to do to do the same thing to create a a dating in back end if you will with with some sort of a a client that actually allow people to connect get together and leave a sort of footprint with protecting their privacy uh that can then infer and then can then other people who are building clients around it can then infer and use that whether for other you know dating ideas and as the as the backend graph for it or actually for other types of connection that manifest in different

18:31ways so is this what you're saying so basically dating kind of sucks right now because people are going on dates and a lot of the dates are low quality people are wasting time they're wasting money it's frustrating for people so you're saying what if we had some sort of scoring system basically that allowed reputation to exist on chain so so that um I guess like both parties or potential parties could trust this source of data and yeah and and just to Nuance this so it's not like I don't think people I think it's so emotionally noted so I don't think people should score other people but what I do think

19:18is like if there was no way for you to uh expose uh from privacy everything is hashed and it's just like there technology called Z proof but like let's just say that the user doesn't doesn't see what's happening in the back end and and their privacy is protected but you can tell that based on your previous matches the likelihood for this person to respond in general or in this case is 10% and not 80% the likely what is the likelihood of this person to actually go on a date on the second date on the third date you know this is not we scoring one another but this is just

20:03data as it is time to reply time to follow up time to uh uh the likelihood to do a first date and a second date and actually allow local computations on a client based on other proofs to say look Greg here are here are 10 matches like we nobody no human ranked them this is just based on the matches you had before and you went on date and the matches they had before and went on date the likelihood of you going to a second date with this person is 5% and this other person actually if you have a first date then the likelihood of you going to a third datee is 90% where do

20:50you start you know and and I think this is not even one another just um given giving some rank ranking to one another this is just here's the data you know and just putting that data uh online I think is is interesting if you can keep you know the Privacy you can protect the privacy of the people and I think you can so dude let me tell you a quick story so literally an hour ago less than an hour ago I got a text from someone we both know okay and she says that her and her boyfriend broke up okay they met on a dating app they met

21:31on a dating app and they broke up and she was you know she's obviously super upset about it and like her you know her tldr of the whole thing was uh I have to pick better and prob go a lot slower so yes that's what you're saying right what you're saying is that's what I'm saying yeah what you're saying is when you go on a app today the profile which is essentially curated by the person AKA it's biased by definition um it's biased yes and so there needs to be some and it's okay for it to be biased by the way we're all biased but it wouldn't it be interesting

22:18to get the dimension of like based on your matches and their matches and the people that you went on the first date and second date and third date and the people that they went on through app on the first and second date the likelihood of you going to a first date is 10% the likelihood of you breaking up in three months is actually 90% like and and the reason I bring reputation and open protocols to this is because if that's a standard that other dating apps can write into it doesn't matter if you're on hinge on Ria on Tinder or anything right it's just like it's a set it doesn't matter where you

22:58profile it's it's just a set that says time to reply time to go on date likely the first second third date on Ser committed relationship broke up you know no scoring just looking at the data based on on on actions you know yeah and and that is I think so cool yeah I also think that I mean you can make some of those some of that data free but you can also make some of it premium data that if you know I want to see Ben's like I would pay so much money to know that information yeah because like you know four dates are costly in New York

23:41yeah they're costly also just from like um a mental St time time mental yeah absolutely yeah so absolutely yeah you can do like a tagline like something like you know heartbreak cost an arm and a leg or something like that yeah yeah exactly okay so if you wanted so I I buy the idea that this would be valuable so Ben how hard is it to uh to build something like this and can you give us like a step by step on how you'd build this proof of concept for proof of concept I would start with just a set of smart contracts that is on an on an on an L2 basically on on on it

24:29lay layer that is much cheaper on top of ethereum where you can actually create this protocol like just exist on ethereum and without starting a whole new backend infrastructure and I think you can actually P it you can actually POC it like that you will you will have to be somebody who knows how to do an SDK and publish it but I think if you can do if you can build an SDK from uh a toz you know and publish it that and and curiosity around the the the web3 space I would build an SDK that essentially all it does it helps other developer integrate it to the actions

25:06that users are doing uh on their clients you know on their Tinder or any other and when an action happen verifiably locally uh your SDK uh gets the kind of confirmation that it need one of the interesting thing is integrating it with Pas keys right you got pasis on the phone you can store locally in the in the local encrypted uh uh drawer of the iPhone that you can only open with your face you can store there the key that allows for the signature for the local action right so you can you can actually almost verify that an action has happened with somebody's face which is

25:48kind of cool go and sign that uh uh uh transaction on the back end on uh the the the the that that protocol that you created that is a smart contract and now all of the sudden you have this permissionless open set of encrypted uh uh uh users and like hashed users and hash action uh that uh maybe on the hash action only uh the developers of that implemented have the key to understand what is the action and uh for the hash users only the user have the key to know that this is who they are and um that that way you kind of keep everybody

26:31shielded but you also create this great database of action that actually happened locally and uh the likelihood of the second action to happen and and I think that's that's that's great you know that's that's actually something one person can do it's something one person could do and you kind of it's one of those ideas where you don't know where it's going to go in which direction so it's kind of it's kind of fun it is fun cuz like if somebody's selling ads somewhere and they're like wait wait wait can we pay can we pay to know like if somebody saw that ad and we we think like what's the likelihood of

27:09them doing something completely random something else somewhere else they will pay also for that kind of information yep so I want to go over two more ideas today um the next idea I want to go over is the watch Marketplace idea and then I want to end with the teaching and tutoring business idea um the watch Marketplace idea do you watch like watch talk like with all these influencers do you want just be honest with me I don't because I'm trying to protect myself okay well it's too it's too I'm a big I'm a big Cartier Santos guy I'm a big like I love the I there's a specific

27:56type of watch that the story and everything around it I like I'm I'm very fascinated about it and the history of it and I own three of them of those and every time you know every time I buy one I'm like yeah you know and so I'm trying to I'm trying to take it slow so so I mean you're talking to a guy who's wearing no watch and uh a $44.50 Kirkland t-shirt so I get it but I for whatever reason on my Tik Tok feed I get a lot of these luxury watch people trading un because you're lookalike probably the lookalike based on the no

28:36look like on the graph no for sure like like yeah so I there is a situation some of some people probably even know the situation where there's these two guys on watch talk there's this guy named vkim who has like millions of followers or something and then there's this guy named Manny okay now vuk and and his partner um what the hell is his name Buckley okay these guys are like the kings of watch talk and Manny is is now like accusing Buckley of just being like you know he's out there selling you know saying he's selling $100,000 roxes but this is like a what does he call him he calls him a

29:28battery repair man all he knows is to repair battery who is this guy and then and then you have Buckley creating videos being like Manny they're selling watches with batteries that's not real watches well that's that's Manny's point right Manny's point and and maybe we could include one of the videos uh so people could see it but the point is there's a a lack of trust like both of them are trying to create absolutely a lack of trust in the luxury Marketplace so tell me I just want to set the to set the stage with that tell me about your watch Marketplace idea and why trust is

30:03really important in in the space what one of the thesis behind the the the protocol and the and the the client that that we're building or the protocol that we're building called River and um the idea is to create an endtoend encrypted social um messaging protocol that is um essentially built on the graph of trust or the of motivation uh and the bet is that the more there is offchain thing proofs that are going onchain the more we can validate online uh in a way that is open and uh uh trust less I guess uh that somebody did the actions that they said they did the more

30:49that we creating a new graph that is around motivation and alignment of interest of what we stand to gain and lose and that warrants a new type of uh communication product that is not organized around I'm a watch uh salesman I sold a lot of watches and you're like I'm a watch buyer I bought a lot of watches therefore we should all come to this form and engage which is not a good idea because one of you is going to lose their pens right um so in the kind of work that we're doing now which is to build this kind of digital spaces of communities that are

31:28permissionless and people can come and trust that the right people are in the right place and other the the wrong people are not in the in the in the in the place um it it provokes the imagination of what kind of community uh that is permissionless that everybody can join is organized around the idea of trust between sellers and buyers specifically of luxury goods that have an enumerated or like a um an identifying uh uh ID in that case you think about luxury watches each of them have uh and even even Prada today have rfids on all the clothes right you can actually scan those things uh I've been

32:16playing around have you ever seen this thing called flipper no what is it is this thing recorded like with a video can I can bring it here show yeah yeah well basically flipper is a per Poise it's a per Poise this is this s some people use it for uh nefarious stuff but it can scan all of those RFID stuff you know RFC RFID all of those and it can scan it and then replay it so you can actually um you can go to my fob of my elevator and copy it and replay it on that and write it somewhere but what's interesting with this and those readers

32:56is like you know you can basically verify that this is the because prodct shirts have now rfids right and um some watches have have rfids you know those things don't need batteries um and there's no way for you to read that signal without without like you have to be next to it to read that signal so that means that you can create the type of backend that verify that somebody has a certain watch next to them not only this you can enforce the existence of this item as a as something called as as as a basically call it like an nftd I'm sorry for I know that world that word has a lot of

33:43bad baggage but just think about it as as a piece on the internet that is tied with that item that cannot be replicated and for sure in a mathematical way you can prove that this is the one and you say hey like in order for me to buy it from you this is going to go to an escrow that also exists in a permissionless way with my money in a permissionless way when I get it the only way for me to get it is when I get it in my hand the only way to secure my reputation is to release the funds from the escrow to the seller and

34:22receive that that NFD sorry again for the for that word but like we release that that Digital Image right no because I feel like digital image that is verifiable to me and in that way I have um didn't lose any of my reputation as a buyer and the seller didn't lose any of the reputation of uh the seller not only this maybe we can both uh uh rank one another right and how good was the just thumbs up thumbs down how good was the experience right then all of the sudden you start getting this uh uh publicly available and permissionless and secure database of who has what watches it

35:12includes also the transactions of the uh the money itself so it's highly highly cost prohibitive to betray it right to be a bad actor on it and now instead of going through you know a million different forums and blogs and try to verify who is who and what's what and I'm hearing you know there's like horror stories where like some some of those not horror stories but like some of the uh uh people who sell online have great reputation in a specific site and some have in another site but they not share the same inventory so one will post on behalf of the other in their inventory

35:59to increase you know it's kind of a collab you know and you kind of you don't control that right but it also open another Avenue where like you wanna you have you have a watch that you want to sell to me like somebody but you don't know who they are and what it is okay show me show me your your your show me that watches like uh you know nft and then you can see like okay who owns it it's you what's the what's the credit what's the reputation you know and you can actually feel relatively secure to do this transaction without the because right now all these all

36:40these marketplaces they take Arbitrage to create the illusion of trust right so they take their 20% or 10% of the transaction because they are you know Chrono or other places where people buy buy watches but if you can ver ify that a watch and a seller are in good condition and the seller is a good seller and the watch is in a good condition and there is a good layer of trust there then you can actually maybe make the market a little bit more efficient and remove the third party that I you know so that's that's essentially the idea and then all of the sudden when you tie to like the

37:15work we do with with river and like you can actually put the most interesting watch owners that probably have those interesting watches together in group chat you know people give just them right entitlement so they can trade with one another they know who the other person just for people in listening like how how can they okay so let's say someone wants to go and build this this this watch Marketplace idea take uh you know the The Vig I think as it's called or or the the commission from or or or percentage from 15% from 15% to like a dollar a transaction how do they go okay

37:59they they build this they build it in a month now they want to make it more interesting with river what does what does that mean so so the the fun thing is that you don't they don't need to do a lot with with River so I I'll explain um what the way you should think people should think about when I say River you should think about it as imagine if WhatsApp was an the the back end of WhatsApp was an open protocol that is owned and operated by the groups so anyone can build clients on it anyone can maintain it anyone can build uh can improve it and and operate it that means

38:34you you know you me anyone not not not just us the build the Builders of the port if somebody wanted to create the the a a community of of of of a community a permissionless community where the people who have the most interesting watches can trade them and have reputation and they they they take maybe certain amount of of uh fee just to facilitate it what I would do I would do there's just one thing that they should do is create the smart contract that uh people can interact with and use the uh unique identifier of the luxury item to uh uh uh get receive from the smart contract

39:22uh the uh uh digital representation in the form of NFD that that uh that gives that that that basically says this person actually secured here in an encrypted way secured here uh the the all the information that's needed for some uh as an owner for this Rolex let's say you just do it for Rolex or something like that okay cool now you have this smart contract that produce signatures for it's still prone to mistakes because it's uh self attest however because it's a two-sided Market people can give each other reputation which means that accountability will happen you know if if if you're assuming that people are going to use it right um

40:10like I'm saying I actually I actually have this watch then for me to receive the money from you as the buyer it actually goes through the smart contract and released you know uh uh uh only after you verified that you got the watch and and I and and I received the the digital signature okay great now that you have that uh you can you can say now that you have before you did the sale that you have that digital signature that proves that you have the uh luxury watch you can create a town you can use the river has a as a as a client called towns which is basically

40:50uh you can think about it like a a Discord and slack had a baby and and this is a way of as the Builders of the protocol to uh create like um a business card for the protocol and show people what they can do and you would create a town that says only allow people that have this uh uh uh uh that have the digital signature of the that verified that they have you know that they s attested that they have uh the luxury watch in and only give them uh um a right access into into the group and the way it looks like is that if if you

41:35have a big Community or like you have some followers or you know people who have some followers that are in the watch Community they will publish a link to the town the town is available to anyone to come in if they own a Rolex how do they do that you go to the smart contract that you that you wrote as a builder you put all the information as an owner to receive the uh digital signature the nft and then that gives you the permission to actually enter enter the group chat so you don't need to build a lot you just need to build the smart contract that takes the

42:16uh information that a Rolex owner would have only the owner would have you know and uh uh do the kind of computation needed to create the signature that is then stored encrypted and sent to you uh the NFD with with that with that uh with that item now I wish I wish the watch companies themselves did it I think it works even better with the RFID stuff like things like Prada and other stuff but I think it's a great start because then I I feel like somebody as a watch owner I would go open the box write all the details on on your on your website you know receive

43:03the nftd and that will give me an Access to uh the group chat and now the group chat is like you know bunch of people that you can you know what they own you know you know that they have those those things and I think that's pretty cool and that's a great start yeah so I W to I want to synthesize a little bit what you said for people so yeah I rambled a little bit there no this is what this is what it's why I'm here so because I I think what you're saying is really smart the way vuk and Buckley built their business was they built an

43:38audience up top on Tik Tok and Instagram then they created a paid Community called vkm verified where you have to pay $20 a month and other Watch dealers and watch buyers can buy and sell from each other but there's no real trust besides for the fact that you have to have a credit card that can spend $20 a month what you're saying uh I mean you can still build the audience on these platforms build the audiences on these platforms but create um you know and focus on areas where there's it's kind of there's not so much trust like in the watch industry but basically create a trust layer between

44:14both parties and once the trust layer exists then it's almost like someone gets a badge that allows them to enter to the community as like hey I'm I'm I'm not just just you know there's a difference between okay I went to a concert last night and I this is not a flex but I was backstage and you know anyone could buy notag okay not I I didn't say what what concert it could have been like you know my cousin's uh ukulele yeah recital so let's let's let's keep it at that but you know the idea was anyone could anyone could buy a ticket to the show

44:56but not anyone can get backstage pack passes what you're saying is by virtue of this verified trust layer you actually get the backstage passes and the exhaust so to speak from the the um trust is the ability to have this social layer that's that's what you're saying yes and and even if you take it further you can even say like hey if you already bought a Rolex and you have the details of the Rolex you get in free it's the people that are curious or people who couldn't prove that they already from an EOS perspective believe in the value of watch like yeah they don't have a luxury

45:37watch because they didn't do this proof they should they are the one that should be paying 20 bucks to be part of and if you have a watch to sell you just make the proof and come on in and you if you have not if you don't have then put your money where your muet you know like cool okay we have time for one last Quick startup idea teacher tutoring businesses I think it's very similar so it's basically a manifestation of the of what we talked about explain explain what you're thinking here you know it's actually a combo of the two previous idea the dating and because it

46:22is teaching is such a it's like a one-on-one relationship or one to few right and there is something about the likelihood of an action for you to go to the second class and the and the first class in the second class like how consistent you are uh with um with a teacher uh which is kind of similar right to what we talked about with the reputation with dating like arguably without attesting to the quality of Greg you as a person or your your partner as a person I can just say you know that if I had a way to observe how much how many days how many unique days you're

47:08spending time in person and just say what's the streak and how long it's been consistent I if I had this database database on all the uh relationship in the world I will probably just by that can infer what are good relationships and what are not what are ones that are people people um continue to engage it and you're right it's not going to capture all the codependency relationship and the weird ones stuff but it it will speak to some form of quality that keeps both people engaged and my point is that we don't know who's a good teacher and who's a bad teacher but if we could know if we if we could

47:51know that like look according to students that look like you and teachers that look like this person that you're considering there is high likelihood that you're going to retain in this class just by observing recurrency therefore you know this is a good match and I I wrote it here because you know there there's a lot of of of of of people that have desired to receive feedback and be coached and there's a lot of people that uh feel qualified to do that and a lot of people that are qualified to do that right it's not our business to judge or decide for them but I think there is a huge gap in which how

48:47do you know which one is for you and how they're going to get the best out of you and I think just like just if you if you just uh uh implement the same thought that we had with the dating but to recurrence of going to somebody's class you can you can effectively uh um do this for coaches and for the topics in the teacher so I think that's that's interesting this is way yeah well I think so and the way it's like combo with with the luxury stuff is like you can do the same thing where there is like uh you put the money through the smart contract

49:28you you sa it after you watch after you saw after you had the class then there is some reputational aspect and that kind of like it's the combo of like the the goods and and the repetition education and coaching are fundamentally retention businesses your goal is you want the person also relationships and relationships yeah for sure it's relationships and it's retention it's those two things it's it's you know I can even I'm just thinking about like in high school and Elementary School like some of the teachers that made a meaningful impact on my life and it was a mix of like who they were as people how they were able

50:11to communicate but also they were just really good at getting me to retain information um and and stories and stuff like that so what you're saying is is interesting because you're saying like oh with something like this this is going to help like you're kind of gamifying the experience in some way where there's like levels and almost leaderboards um and in some ways right because you're like couldn't couldn't you use this technology to do that and in in which case the outcome is like a high more retentive student for sure and I and I think what what I'm trying to get here what I'm trying to get at is a lot of

51:00bad tutoring is the actual the relationship the fit between the teacher and the student right so now you what you have what we have now because we don't have a way to judge that reputation of the fit because there's no shared open databases that people can make you know uh those products can make decisions or help users make decisions because of that you have an inefficient Market where the most excellent teachers in the world who by definition capture a lot of students because they're the the top of the top now they have much more beaters on their time and the price go up because they have but the argument

51:48here is that instead of Greg going to Tony Robbins and get like you know wal class oneon-one coaching because Tony Robbins you know is you know considered world class my curiosity is this is because Tony Robins regardless of his relationship with with Greg is a you know number one in his field let's call it like this just for the sake of the example the outcome that Greg is getting from having a teacher that is relationship agnostic But the teacher is number one in in the in the in in his in his in in the world I'm curious about that outcome if I gave you a a teacher that is half as good as

52:39Tony Robbins but is world class fit to you yes totally and and that's what I'm trying to say is that we have because we don't have time to to to take surfing lessons yeah from a thousand teachers to find the one that is great from us now the best surfing teachers in that area are getting their prices jacked out because normally a lot of beaters on the this time will just beat more to get in line right but what if we can we can put you in touch with the person that you have higher likelihood to to succeed with even though they might be less of a great

53:21teacher as the other person yes you know that that's the inefficiency that I put it's the same way with with dating I think this is honestly my favorite idea of all of them because it it just it's it's it drives the most amount of impact and it feels like relatively simple to create something to get to proof of concept it I want to summarize our entire conversation in four steps so this is what I've learned this is what I've learned from this conversation how to create a product people want number one one find inefficient markets number number two add a trust layer number three build social and number four don't necessarily

54:11say it's crypto I mean you talked you said the word nft before but it doesn't matter right you don't have to expose doesn't matter guys it doesn't matter and it's it's it's it's it's a shame that um I almost need to feel embarrassed when I speak to people who are not when I speak to an audience that is not necessarily because you know a lot of the because there's so much good in it the idea that the internet was built so fast was built so fast and with the idea that people wouldn't pay for it and now we have groups of people online that are creating value every day and because

54:56because the Inception of the internet was from the state of mind that oh people won't pay for it the people who create this insane value on the internet they work two times harder to repackage some of the attention that they're getting and selling it in some inefficient way where they need to prove that they they're worthy of your your your credit card and stuff and and and I think that that must have been the way we needed the internet to start in order to get a lot of people on board but it is a time for us to say the internet need to be accessible for everyone but

55:34it shouldn't be necessarily free there are people who are honest people who are doing day-to-day uh you know work on the internet to bring value to their community and their job is just you know it's it's not as rewarding as it should be it's tankless it's exhausting you know and they need to almost like hustle to just be rewarded for the kind of value that they're bringing in and you know crypto not crypto blockchain is a fantastic solution to the idea of how do you enumerate value on the internet and Trust for it in a way that is just by science a trustworthy and I think that that

56:18ultimately benefits the receiver of the value that you're creating online and you in a in in in an open Market that people can in transparent way acknowledge each other's value and trust and that's that's the layer that we're missing on the on the internet to take it to to a to a place where um acrel value by individual is much more transparent and efficient and the products we're getting for people are better because there is accountability because when you make money you want to make the product better you want to retain your customers you want to make sure that they're happy you want to make sure they're coming

56:56back you want to make sure they get a V2 and a V3 and a V4 and you are much why because when you do that you make more money you know so that's that's that's my uh romance with blockchain and social now day and why why why why I'm I'm infatuated with with that as a as a medium to work in right now beautiful Ben where could people find more about you and building on top of the river protocol um you uh on me um it's at Ben rbn uh on on Twitter um the river protocol is river. built you can go and look what the protocol there's the AL

57:44the documentation there uh if you're just curious about like oh how can I create simple you know uh reputation smart contracts which is I feel like the the idea with with with been talking about like that that thing is literally a hackaton thing to do the thing that we talked about with the with uh um with the teachers right and then you can just go on towns tos.com which is the the the client that we built for for River and anyone can build a client for River actually and if you created that smart contract on reputation you can create a town that is gating by that reputation

58:20and all of the sudden uh uh now you have uh uh a social place for people who did the action uh and have that kind of reputation of teachers and tutor and and students to have a place to come together and discuss and knowing that you know uh they're talking to the right teachers and the students are talking to the the student talking to the right teachers and teachers talking to the right students and um also um to the monologue that I had right before that about value Corel uh space creators on towns they have ways to uh uh uh charge for that in a way that is transparent

58:59and on onchain you can just say like hey this space is uh cost certain amount of money a year or for whatever you set it and um that's also going to benefit you as a builder and a community facilitator if you choose to do that so you got River protocol you got towns and yeah yeah I think uh if this res if if what Ben was saying resonate with you at all and you're like that's kind of interesting I came into this maybe skeptical and now you know less skeptical I think uh I always like to get my hands dirty and and just try different things

59:41that's why you know when it comes to AI tools I'm always just like hey go and go and play with it try to build something um if anyone you know if you're interested in web 3 like this is a great place to experiment um LCA our Innovation agency actually built something on top of the uh River protocol and it was an absolute blast called propeller do chat and you learn from you learn from this you literally learn from this and it's fun it's it's a lot of fun so it is and there's gonna be some people who listen to this are going to be like you know what like this this

1:00:17doesn't speak to me this doesn't speak to me but there are going to be people listen to this are going to be like wow you know if I could you know add efficiencies to the billion dooll watch Market or um you know I'm really into you know this one tutor in school like made such a big difference in my life and if I could give that same experience to you know thousands of people in the world like I I want to dedicate some time I want to dedicate you know three weeks of time to hack on something so thanks for coming on and uh appreciate you thank you Greg

1:00:54it was a pleasure later [Music]