"Can't Force Loyalty" with Alina Guidu and Saleha Jaweid

Today I’m thrilled to be joined by two guests as part of our Founders & Friends series! For these shows, we encourage a member of our network to extend the invitation to a new friend to hop on the mic to talk about their founder stories and get their take on building a successful startup in today’s market!

Joining us first is our friend Alina Guidu, CEO of Muze, a platform that enables Independent artists to release music and connect directly with their fans, bypassing the traditional gatekeepers in the music industry and ensuring artists get access to up to 90% of their work’s revenue. She’s an experienced entrepreneur with a demonstrated history of driving success in the media and Web3 industries, and I’m excited to learn how she’s putting these skills to use disrupting the way music is shared in the twenty-first century.

Joining Alina and me is Saleha Jaweid, who is a Toronto-based IT Operations Rockstar with a wealth of experience driving innovation across Canada, where she’s focused on creating highly productive technology teams. She currently leads IT Ops at Topl, the world’s first blockchain built for tracking, tokenizing, and monetizing positive impact. She has worked with many different companies and startups as both a tactical team member and funder, helping them become operationally savvy and inculcate a Lean-Agile mindset.

For both Alina and Saleha, there is a lot of R&D and innovative tech involved in their current missions, and I can’t wait to learn about what they’re working on today, how they got into the startup space in the first place, and their goals for the future!

Boast AI accelerates the success of innovative businesses globally with software that integrates financial, payroll, and engineering data into a single platform of R&D intelligence.

Visit Boast.ai, sign up for our Blog newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn for weekly #InnovatorsLive sessions and the latest news to fuel your growth.

Intro and Outro music provided by Dennis Ma whose mixes you can find on Soundcloud at DJ DennyDex.

Transcript

Paul Davenport:

Hello and welcome to What The Tech? From Boast AI, where we talk with some of the brilliant minds behind new and exciting tech initiatives to learn what it takes to tackle technological uncertainty and eventually change the world. Today I'm thrilled to be joined by two guests as part of our Founder and Friend series. For these shows, we encourage a member of our network to extend the invitation to a new friend to hop on the mic and tell us about their founder story and get their take on building a successful startup in today's market.

Joining us first is our friend, Alina Guidu, CEO of Muze, a platform that enables independent artists to release music and connect directly with their fans, bypassing the traditional gatekeepers in the music industry and ensuring artists get access to up to 90% of their works revenue. She's an experienced entrepreneur with a demonstrated history of driving success in media and Web3 industries, and I'm excited to learn how she's putting these skills to use disrupting the way music is shared in the 21st century.

So joining Alina and me is Saleha Jaweid who is a Toronto based IT operations rockstar with a wealth of experience driving innovation across Canada where she's focused on creating highly productive technology teams. She currently leads IT ops at Topl the world's first blockchain built for tracking, tokenizing and monetizing positive impact.

She has worked with many different companies and startups as both a tactical team member and a funder, helping them become operationally savvy and inculcate to lean agile mindset. So for both Alina and Sal, there's a lot of R and D and innovative tech involved in their current missions and I can't wait to learn more about what they're working on today, how they got into the startup space in the first place and their goals for the future. So without further ado, welcome to the show.

Saleha Jaweid:

Hi, Paul. Thanks for having us.

Paul Davenport:

Absolutely.

Alina Guidu:

Super grateful to be on the podcast. I know this has been a long time coming, so super excited for this conversation with both of you.

Paul Davenport:

Absolutely. I'm so happy that you both were able to join me too. And for a little context for listeners out there, I first met Sal and Alina back in August. We had so much happen in the time since we first chatted to when we were going to push it live that we needed to hop back on the mic.

So while the intros didn't change and I think that the actual bona fides that you guys boost are still one-to-one, I'd love to hear what's going on in your worlds. But before we dive into that and to learn about how the last six months have been impactful for your teams, let's do some intros. Alina, I'd love to start with you. Could you tell me a little bit about where you're based, what you're working on today, and just how you got into the startup scene in the first place?

Alina Guidu:

For sure. I got into the startup space many, many years ago when I first came to Canada, originally working in the entertainment industry and building concerts here in Toronto, building all the different productions for festivals. Some of you may have gone to Digital Dreams build and so on and so forth. After that, got into marketing and branding.

I've had my own startup in that space for about 10 years now and by means of is how I got into Web3 with the original project that was called SMART Refer, where we were able to build something on blockchain back in 2016 and have the ability for users to refer their friends online to job opportunities. That was my first taste of Web3 at the time. I was very new to the space. And obviously this was still very much ahead of the curve considering the adoption was still minimal at that time and at that point in time.

Then moved into the collectible space in Web3, worked with Logan Paul and a company called Liquid Marketplace where we were tokenizing high valued collectibles. Again, if you're a trading card player, perhaps you know the Charizard, the $5 million Charizard that was the Guinness record.

We tokenized it and we allowed for users to be able to own parts and pieces of it to be able to create communities of people that really care about specific items. Worked on that, really learned and honed in on the technical aspects of building startups and not building technical stacks and just using Web3 as a means to innovate the traditional school of thought. After that, decided to kind of bring my love for music and tech back together and created a company called Muze and that's what I'm a founder of currently and super excited about that.

Paul Davenport:

That is fantastic, Alina. I do want to call back, this is a second time in as many days that Pokemon have come up on the podcast. I was talking to our friend Tarig, who runs Arctech Accelerate and he was saying how he got a taste for being an entrepreneur by trading Pokemon, honestly when he was 11 or 12, and that salesmanship has stuck with him ever since.

And it's just really funny the connections that we get having these conversations. I know it's not a one-to-one, but I wish I could have told him when we were talking yesterday that you had a hand in the $5 million Charizard because he definitely knows about this.

Alina Guidu:

I'd love to chat with him outside of this. Thank you for bringing that up.

Paul Davenport:

Absolutely. I will connect you both. Now, there were a lot of things I'd love to dig into, but before we get ahead of ourselves, Sal, I'd love to get an intro from you too. Could you talk to us about your background, where you're located and how you got into the space too?

Saleha Jaweid:

So I'm Saleha Jaweid. I'm based out of Toronto currently and since last we spoke I've actually I guess, had a little bit of an upgrade in terms of my role at Topl. I'm now the director of operations there. Topl is a Bitcoin L2 that unlocks functionality for Bitcoin beyond existing client side protocols and thus so with lower fees, higher throughput, foster finality.

I'm also a co-founder at F3 Ventures, which is essentially a movement aimed at creating increased financial professional and educational opportunities for female founders in Web3. How I got into the startup scene? So I've had a 11-year career in technology and I've worked, in that time I've worked with a lot of executives and managers to help them develop systems, frameworks which allow them to scale businesses effectively at different stages.

And through this I discovered similar patterns and problems that these entities share despite the differences in scale. And to that end, developed workshops in both group and one-to-one formats. Also working with them to build teams, create greater enterprise strategic alignment and creating operational structures that minimize risk and help businesses organize around delivering value to end users.

So I actually really enjoy that aspect of the work that I do by interacting with startups both in a professional capacity as well as through F3 Ventures. In terms of what my passions are, so I'm very, very interested in impact driven product development, which we try to do when we are building our protocol at Topl, but also just generally looking at the high-tech startup scene.

So that would include core AI infrastructure or low-code blockchain tooling, robotics, mechatronics for healthcare or even quantum technology startups that are cropping up. Because I have a background in physics so I'm really, really interested in that space. Yeah, and that would pretty much be a nutshell.

Paul Davenport:

That is a big nutshell, but thank you so much, Sal. Couple things actually that again resonated from conversations we've been having with folks on the show. First up, quantum, I'm glad you came in with that at the end there just because talking to Tarig and even talking to Roy Pereira this morning, quantum is huge, specifically in Canada, especially in the Waterloo area, I know that Ontario is actually, is providing government funding for a lot of quantum computing programs.

So I'd love to pick your brain on that later on in the conversation. But I also wanted to come back to that point about delivering value in the work that you're doing at F3. Like I said, I was talking to Roy Pereira earlier and he mentioned that in his experience as being a four time and counting founder, delivering value has to be at the core of everything that you're doing.

Problem solving has to be at the core of everything that you're doing. A lot of founders think, "Hey, I have a tech that aligns to the latest bugs word." A few years ago and still today, that might've been blockchain or Web3. Now it's probably AI. But what is your tech actually solving? And I think getting to the heart of those issues is something that founders need to put front and center and it can't be about tech first, it has to be about that solution.

So love to hear that that's the work that you're staring over there at F3 and at Topl and everything that you guys do. I'd love to know, I guess bringing it back one-to-one on your current projects. We got all the background, but Alina, I'm going to send it back to you. Tell me a little bit more about Muze. I know you had mentioned just the story a little bit, but what has changed I guess, since we last chatted? What are you most excited about from news over the past year and what do you have on your roadmap that you'd like to share with the community?

Alina Guidu:

For sure. I think first and foremost as a founder, and I'm sure a lot of people can relate to this, we come up with an idea for products and that changes so drastically over time, mostly because of market research, but also user personas and user fit. So that's kind of the biggest change we've had and the pivot we've had recently based on just the feedback we've got from both artists and users in what was the most important. What, back to your point, what was the problem that we were trying to solve?

And two key problems really came up from two sides, obviously for the users, for the fans, the main issue that a lot of people brought up was the fact that music has lost its value. Music has not been seen as a collectible anymore. I'm sure we can relate, and I'm going to age myself in saying this, but back in the day when the albums used to first drop and that vinyl used to first drop and we used to line up to get that vinyl, there was that sense of ownership that came with that.

The ability to say, "You know what? There's this crazy amazing vinyl that only I was able to get because it was one of very little amount of copies and it was very scarce." And obviously with onset of DSP such as Spotify and Apple and [inaudible 00:10:28] and every DSP that is out there, the music lost its value because that idea that you can now pay $10 and access every artist in the world took that away and it became more of a utility rather than a collectible.

So with Muze, one of the main things that we're solving for the users is bringing that value back to music, bringing that aspect of collectibles back to music, the ability for you to own something and a piece of an artist's work that only you will be able to get. And for the artist side, one of the biggest concerns that we've heard, and this is just not just recently but over time of me working with artists is it's a pretty number that you have on top of your artist profile where you see five million users, 10 million users listening to it.

But if Spotify or any other platform was to go down tomorrow and that number would turn off, you'd have no way to know who your fans are. Same way how you have know your clients in many of the platforms that we use nowadays, we wanted to introduce something where you can know your fans. You have a tangible way to connect with them, but also know who they are, what they think, and build real communities around artists where they can communicate with them, whether they can get real time feedback, where they can involve their communities in let's say their teams and how the project is being rolled out and built.

And that's what we've pivoted to with Muze, really focusing on the knowing your fans, knowing exactly who they are and being able to connect to them real time. And I think that that's the biggest differentiator between us and any Web2 musical platform. It's that knowing that whatever you do, you'll have your fans with you always. And part of that was the ability for artists to also export and be able to leave our platform, which was a difficult decision to make, but at the same time I felt like it lined up with our ethos perfectly.

If we're creating a product that doesn't need for us to force loyalty, people won't leave. But we want to make sure that artists have that sense of, "I can breathe good now because even if I don't like this platform, I don't like how it functions, I can take my fans with me." So that's kind of the biggest parts. We've also started to go in and to figure out how are we going to be the main distributor of music in Web3. So that's on the way. And I think that those three are the main pivots, quite large pivots, but good ones nonetheless.

Paul Davenport:

Oh, absolutely. I'm actually thinking, again, I know it's just been me going through the Rolodex of past interviews, but when you're talking about how, for instance, artists coming off of the platform for instance, but it was the best thing for what you needed to do. We had a conversation with SilicoLabs a few weeks back where they were talking about how don't be afraid to kill the baby. I know it sounds drastic and it sounds grim.

We could probably come up with a better cliche to use in this scenario, but I think that if you're so, it speaks to that tech shiny object thing. If you're not solving that solution, then you don't have a valuable product. You don't have something that people can derive value from. So you got to iterate, you got to pivot.

And also, I love that you talked about listening to customers. I think that customer research phase, it really gets passed over sometimes. I think you think about the theoretical and then when you have to actually get out into being in a market, any market, you don't have those proof points if you're not actually building that customer base before you're even operational or before you're even productionalized.

Alina Guidu:

And that's one of the things too, to touch back a little bit about what you said is I think as a founder it's important to understand that you have to earn the loyalty, not force the loyalty. Not that I didn't know that, but really understanding what that means when it comes to your product has been the biggest mind change and that switch of direction for us that that's what caused the pivot.

It was the ability for us to be like, "You know what? The product is great, but we're not going to force it. We don't want exclusivity. We want to be able to give people a choice," which is what Muze was going to be about from the very start. It's giving the power back to the people and one of those things is the power to choose.

Paul Davenport:

Absolutely. And I think too, a lot of the folks who I talk to on this show, they're not necessarily in the consumer space like you are and the challenges there are manifold in areas that I cannot even begin to understand. But it really does coming down to understanding what the consumer wants, what they're going to value. And that is a moving target and it's a tough one, especially in today's market.

And I actually would love to talk about the Web3 of it all too because I think I had mentioned when we first chatted, I never thought of Web3 as anything outside of blockchain in the headlines and what you see out there. And Sal, this is how I'm going to tie it into Topl and what you're doing over there. We had a customer on the show who was doing blockchain for energy credits, basically being able to powerfully actually track the outcomes and build up a portfolio for yourself.

I need to check back in with those folks actually, because it was a really cool solution when we talked to them about nine months and I know that they were a post customer and I'd love to know how their SR&ED went. But I had never thought of blockchain in that regard, even as, sure, record keeping, that's one thing, but... And actually driving new value. So cool.

And then when I talked to you, Alina, again, what you're doing at Muze, it's not a use case, I would've thought out the box, but that is the kind of unique innovation too, that governments want to fund, that governments want to at least give you that innovation tax credit for. If you're working on the R and D for instance, especially in the Web3 space, sure, a lot of folks mentally have moved on to AI, but there is a lot of practical use in the Web3 space that compliments the work happening with AI.

So before I go on my soapbox, Sal, I'd love to hear about what you guys are working on at Topl. We can dive deep into the Web3 conversation and the blockchain of it all if you'd like. But first of all, congrats. I am so happy to hear about your promotion since we last spoke. And I'd love to just know what are you working on today, what kind of innovation is Topl driving and just tell us about your experiences since we last talked.

Saleha Jaweid:

Yeah, so actually we had a little bit of a pivot at Topl as well. We went from a purely infrastructure L1 startup in the blockchain space to a Bitcoin L2. So what that means is that the token that we are hoping to launch in Q2 of this year will now be a wrapped Bitcoin allowing users to tap into the Bitcoin economy. One of the major reasons why we decided to go that way was firstly because of what you said, that were we solving a real problem in the previous mode of operation and we realized we weren't.

So what we decided to do was take our infrastructure, merge it into the Bitcoin ecosystem and then sort of cater to our central theme of serving emerging markets and the global South through that. So we still have the defi aspect of offering users choices in terms of gaining financial autonomy through Web3 and blockchain. But we are doing it through giving them access, greater access to building within the Bitcoin ecosystem.

To that end, we have a lot of custom protocol side features that we've developed in order to make it seamless, give greater interoperability with other client side protocols that work within the Bitcoin space and then just offering them our consensus, which compared to the Bitcoin consensus is more environmentally friendly because it's based off of proof of stake and Bitcoin is proof of work.

So just take our innovation and meld it into the Bitcoin ecosystem. We also had a fairly successful beta launch in November. We are continuing to test, but everything looks good so far, nothing that requires a major reorg, so that's always good and great to see. So from that end, yes. And then in terms of projects that I've worked with, so I'm super proud of the fact that we have our own consensus, which not a lot of blockchains can boast off and our consensus was scientifically published and accepted.

We're super excited about that. What it basically does is that we aim to solve the long tail problem in Nakamoto style consensus. That's a little bit high-tech, I know, I'm sorry for that. But what that means is it actually ends up creating network stalls and block irregularity in chains that use Nakamoto style consensus.

So what we did was we came up with a way to normalize this distribution and regularize block production rate, which then shortens the tail of the block production distribution and improves throughput as well as network availability. So in terms of that, we've been pretty successful. We are continuing to develop our protocol. So eventually our consensus will be a hundred percent exactly what we theorize, but yeah, we're getting there. Academically, at least we've gotten there.

So that's kind of what we've been working on. We are also developing a flexible fungibility scale within our SMART contract system and our asset creation system, which allows users to be able to build custom assets. And a lot of times they don't even need SMART contracts to do that because we have our own domain specific language which allows users to build assets fairly easily and without any specialized SMART contract knowledge. So yeah, that would be the core things that I want to focus on for the users listening to this podcast in terms of what Topl is doing.

Paul Davenport:

That is so cool, Sal. So again, you're right, a lot of that was deep tech, but what I kept hearing throughout all of it was the value that you're deriving from it. So again, like Nakamoto, I need to Google that after this call, but I hear just ease of use. You've lowered the barrier to entry to actually take advantage of this and actually get value out of all of that. And that's always kind of been my big question around Bitcoin to be honest, is just like A, I don't know where to get started.

I feel out of my depth even trying to. I'm also not in the global South, I'm not necessarily your target audience for all of this, but again, from a pure consumer perspective to that meaningful outcome world bettering perspective, you're hitting on the right points and it sounds like you guys pivoted in exactly the direction that you need to go to accomplish all that, so.

Saleha Jaweid:

Right. And from customer feedback, just to follow up on that, one of the things that they have really responded favorably to is the ability of our blockchain to allow them to build custom assets and also add metadata to these custom assets. So that might be a little bit easier for the audiences to digest.

Paul Davenport:

Those are words I know and I can wrap my head around, so I appreciate it, Sal. That is so cool. And yeah, I wasn't expecting the theme to be so centered around community and getting feedback and I think really treating your customers. Like you had said earlier, Alina, I'm going to butcher it, but earn the loyalty, not force the loyalty. Don't take it for granted that they are going to be loyal just because you got something cool, communicate that value to them and then if that's not landing, find out why your communication isn't getting across and then pivot accordingly.

It's as simple as that, listening. It even ties back to that Pokemon reference I made earlier with Tarig, salesmanship isn't necessarily about just talking to somebody until they're exhausted and they want to give up on it. It is about listening and figuring out how you can communicate the value that you're trying to give them. And sure, it might sound a little slimy when you put it that way, but I do think it's something that founders should embrace in terms of just not being shy about salesmanship in that realm. If you're an entrepreneur, you're selling yourself.

Alina Guidu:

And to add to that too, on just a basic human level outside of tech, I think you have to listen to understand, not listen to respond. I find that the best times that I've had with my teams or relationships or anything else was listening to understand. Really taking it all in, processing it and not just having a conversation where it's a back and forth tennis racket play, but there's not actual solutions that come out of that, right?

Paul Davenport:

Oh yeah, you can totally tell. I know we've all definitely been there where you hop on a call and you can see them reading their script in the background. And it's just like, "Okay, they're just waiting to hear me say this one point and then their Gong recordings going to feed them the next line." That's not helpful and I really appreciate you adding some flavor there.

So on the topic of community, I'd love to learn again, you folks are friends of ours, we've invited you on the show again and I'm so happy that Alina, you've introduced me to Sal. I've mentioned a ton of folks that we've had on the show who are our partners here at Boast. Tell me about the partnerships that you guys have leveraged to build Muze, to reposition Topl, to actually drive that innovation and what do you look for in partners?

Saleha Jaweid:

So for us, we did have a bunch of hackathons that we did in India and Vietnam because our commitment has been to foster a community in the emerging markets. So that has been very important for us. But in the United States and in North America, the way that we've done it is just by attending different events as sponsors, as contributors, doing a lot of hackathons on virtual as well as onsite.

Just getting the face of Topl out there at different events that are catered to the Web3 space has been a great way for us to do that. Discord again has been another useful tool for us to grow our community, our online community and to retain them to basically keep them engaged with Topl and the updates that are taking place there. In terms of other types of partnerships that we've done, so first our focus was mainly on the impact space, so working with Grameen Foundation or other impactful companies like [inaudible 00:25:07] and so on and so forth.

And they are still continuing to build on our ecosystem. However, in terms of partnerships, we've kind of had a little bit more of an expanded view on what encompasses as a potential partner for Topl, where we're now looking at people who are interested in the Bitcoin space as well quite a bit, so that's not necessarily the same community. So it's been challenging to kind of balance that messaging a little bit, but we've stayed true to what our commitments have been while we go through the transition and the pivot and then just build an organic community around that through that.

Paul Davenport:

That's I think the key point, organic. And it sounds like you are meeting that community on their terms. I was so curious when you said Discord too because I just wrote that down to flag. I'd love to pick your brains just as a marketer in a separate conversation on how you optimize that channel to actually engage with folks. I think the hackathons too, in person and online, you're meeting them on their terms.

That's something that developers want to do, that they want to dive in on that. It's a challenge that they relish doing. And again, my mind veers towards the marketing of it all and I'm like, "This is perfect. You're exactly where you guys need to be to learn and listen while you're also engaging those customers." So that is so cool to hear, Sal. Alina, I love similar question. I know we've talked a lot about the artists, a lot about listening to your customers too at the end of the day, but tell me about the members of the community who you really if not leaned on, appreciated having access to help get news going.

Alina Guidu:

For sure, and obviously to that question, the answer is artists. There's no better way to understand how to better serve them than actually speak to them and understand what their needs are, especially when we're talking not the Drakes and Taylor Swift and Beyonces of the industry, but people at the ground still trying to make it to those stadium tours and understanding what parts of the industry are their teams most rely on and how we can improve that.

But to your question about partnerships in general, what I've learned in just being in Web3 for a long time is sometimes the partnerships that end up being the best are the most unexpected ones. And when I say that is when we come together to work on something, how can your partners change your perspective or innovate part of your tech stacks or innovate the way you approach different markets?

And that's kind of what I look for when I think of partners. Because of that, we actually recently pivoted a little bit in terms of opening a part of the company in Dubai. And part of that was because we had one of our advisors speak on the different climates of music industry in the Middle East, but also speak on the lack of infrastructure, but the understanding of Web3 being so much different in Dubai.

I went there recently to have a few meetings and just understanding how much more forward-thinking they are when it comes to Web3 allowed for us to understand that we, our MVP can be specific to every region. So what we are launching in North America will not be what is going to be launched on the other side of the world simply because there's more freedom for us to offer features that at this point in time, unfortunately because of the gray area of North America with the relationship to Web3 and crypto, might not be possible.

But I think the use cases that we can achieve in different markets and bring it back here would be crazy. And so it's understanding that certain partners can open up your minds to different ways of even going to market with them. And the ability to learn that in such short periods of time has been, in my opinion, the most fruitful for Muze. It's that ability to speak to our partners that are not in the same space, not in the same way of thinking per se.

Paul Davenport:

Absolutely, and I think that actually ties back to some points that Sal was making too about meeting them on their terms. Sure, we might not have the friendliest market locally in North America to get some of these ideas going, but there are people who are going to see that value elsewhere. And when we're all more or less remote, I mean, none of us work in standard corporate settings, so I think we all get to kind of make our own hours at least in this chat, but you have access an entire planet.

I know we talk a lot about R and D tax credits as they relate to US and Canada, but don't put blinders on just because you're thinking about the dollar signs that you're going to get back for it. If you actually want to drive innovation, you'll get that funding eventually. You might not get it because you're not working in Canada today, but you're getting the information you need to make a valuable product, to make a valuable solution.

And again, meeting those targets on their terms, meeting those customers where they are, that is awesome. Now, I know we're getting close to time, but I'd love to know, we talked a little bit about what you guys both have upcoming and what's on the roadmap. I'd love to talk more about that, but before we dive in, for our listeners in the room too, what are some, if not pieces of sage wisdom or advice for folks, just some takes on the current state of the startup market and maybe strategies that you've seen others in the community take to drive success.

Given that all we hear day to day is that it is tough to be a startup, that funding is tight, so don't even try. That's how some headlines I have read have communicated it. I don't think that's the case, but I'd love to hear your perspective on that.

Alina Guidu:

For sure. I think my biggest advice to any startups and any founders, fail faster. And the reason I say that is because often we're very risk averse when it comes to our approach and obviously advice from the team. And I'm not saying don't do your due diligence, I just want to make that clear, but when I say fail faster is you get to learn how to recover faster but also understand where your team needs the most help, where the product needs the most help and it saves you time in going to market almost blindly in some cases.

Again, I'm not talking, I just want to clarify, when we're going to market, I'm talking about beta testing, I'm talking about those kinds of aspects of the product. And the secondary part, the VC landscape, don't be so set on one area. So for the longest time I focused on North America, on Canada in terms of finding funding. There is alternatives and there's always people who will believe in you as a founder and in your project.

And if there's anything I've learned recently is that is the biggest difference between North America and everywhere else in the world. Sometimes we focus too much on a transaction and not enough on the people who are driving the idea. And find somebody who believes in you as a founder, not you're going to be in bed with them, you're going to be married to them. You have to find somebody that will believe in your vision, believe in your goals, and really fuel that.

Paul Davenport:

You said it better than I could have. That is it, it can't be all about the transaction. That's not going to set you up for success in the long run. That is super shortsighted. You can be penny wise and pound foolish if that's how you're looking at it. Sal, I'd love to hear from your take, even just a response to some of the great stuff that Alina said or-

Saleha Jaweid:

Yeah.

Paul Davenport:

... [inaudible 00:32:49] from there. Yeah.

Saleha Jaweid:

Right. So the first thing that I've learned from my startup journey in terms of being part of Topl is you have to be scrappy. A lot of times what happens is that you get this big influx of money and then there's no forecasting, there's no budgeting, no planning, and companies will squander a lot of money very, very quickly. And then at the next stage of fundraising, they're going to ask you that question.

They're going to ask you, "Where did all this money go?" So you better have very, very solid accounting and traceability around that. And then resource utilization. So this doesn't mean that you work people to the bone, but you ask them to be innovative and you ask them to find solutions that they would use for their own companies, right? And that is going to make your employees more resourceful, which is a skill that's going to help them in every aspect of their life.

So there's no harm in telling people to really figure out innovative new solutions and empower them in that way. That's super important in being scrappy. The other thing I would say is, and I think I said this in my last one, was I think it's really important to be selective when you are doing your fundraising and really look whether your VC or your fundraising partner aligns with your vision and your values.

If not, really look for someone who does. Because Google's example is the first one that comes to my mind. I read a book a long time ago, but they weren't really getting the partners that they needed because they weren't willing to budge from this commitment that they'd made early on that, "We are not going to sell our search engine capabilities to the consumer, we're going to give it to them for free." Right?

And eventually they found someone who did see that vision and took a chance on it, and they're one of the biggest companies today. So I think it's really important for startups to be selective. And there are lots of options out there. For R and D oriented startups, there are grants and other sort of awards that they can leverage. So please look into that because the more you can just delay your VC journey as much as you can, that is what my personal belief is.

But there's also one other thing that I want to call out here. A lot of times what happens is that when you have a lot of different individual funders, you don't do the traceability again effectively. So make sure you use one consolidated platform to manage all of these. Just wanted to throw that in there because I have my ops hat on all the time. And then the last one is to build on what Alina said, that one way to fail faster is to have shorter design cycles.

So just make sure that when you are building the product, you are catering to a hypothesis and seeing at very short design cycles and design lens, that cycle lens, that you are in fact delivering value and break your hypothesis down into smaller, executable, SMART goals, all of that. I kind of go through this on a regular basis, so it's maybe a little bit easier for me, but there are resources out there and I'm happy to receive DMs on my LinkedIn if people want because I kind of have been doing this all my life, all my career life, not my actual life, my professional life. Yeah.

Paul Davenport:

I love all of that. Where to begin, I have so many things I could pull threads on. First off, I want to emphasize again, SMART goals, S-M-A-R-T. That's something that I've tried with mixed success to really apply to my marketing approach, but I'm going to do it. I will get there. But that's how we dictate everything, even just live your life that way, honestly. And then again, just to reiterate everyone's recommendations here, fail faster.

Alina, I cannot emphasize enough. You guys are kind of, not to say that you've failed quickly, but you're proof and magic in that you need to pivot when the value isn't there necessarily to capture that value. And then eventually, let's be cynical, get paid down the line. It'll happen when you are actually selling something valuable. So that is cool. Be scrappy, I want to emphasize that again too. Again, everyone in this room is on a scrappy team and why I think we have a very scrappy spirit in general.

I think that it's not only more fun, but when you're pushed to have to think outside of the box, it's probably been said on every podcast about innovation or startup life, but some of the biggest unicorns have come out of a crunch, have come out of times of economic uncertainty. And then I really want to hammer home that point about being selective. There are so many flavors of VC, first off, if you want to go that route, that can help you get to where you need in your selective market.

Truly, there are so many. We've had some of them on the show, they're out there, they'll be out there too at various phases. If you're not ready to engage yet, don't do it. But I do agree with you, Sal, delay the VC as long as you can. I know some of the folks who I've talked to on the show who are in the VC space will disagree, but I think again, we've all been so trained by Dragons' Den and Shark Tank to assume that you have to hand over equity, not the case.

Retain as much as you can of your business of your product while you can. I got to shout-out the SR&ED program here in Canada just because I'd miss out if we didn't. But again, if you're working on a truly innovative solution in Canada, the government wants to make sure that you can recoup those investments to double down on that innovation, throw more money into your R and D, do more of that customer research.

And then if you need to, pivot, pivot as much as you can. If you're working on something that is super innovative, Canada still wants you to keep working on it. It doesn't necessarily have to bear fruit as a product down the line, they will still recoup some of those expenses for you. So I will get off my soapbox yet again before I go too long on SR&ED, but this has been fantastic. I'd love to know before we sign off, I'll start with you Alina, what's in store for the next few weeks?

Alina Guidu:

Muze is actually going to be attending TOKEN2049. That really lined up with our Dubai extension of the company. We're also looking to onboard artists here in Toronto. We're finally ready. It's been a long journey and I feel like every founder has a deadline in their minds that is never the real deadline because the deadlines always move.

But we are looking to launch here in Canada. We're looking to launch across North America, but also looking to launch in Dubai and that region. So if you're there at TOKEN2049, I will be there. I would love to meet anybody who has any questions about Muze. And obviously Collision here in Toronto, we will be there as well. So if there's anybody that has questions, you can also find me on LinkedIn, would be happy to answer any of those questions.

Paul Davenport:

Absolutely. And just a reminder, folks, I will have links to the LinkedIn and also Muze and Topl in the show notes here. And Alina, I hope that I see you at Collision this year. I think I'm going to it, but knock on wood and cross your fingers I get that budget. All right, Sal, next up.

Saleha Jaweid:

Right. So for F3 we are going to be representing F3 at [inaudible 00:40:07], where we will continue to shine the spotlight on female change makers and builders within Web3. Follow us on Instagram, F3_ventures to stay up to date with all of our upcoming events and opportunities.

On the Topl side, I would encourage users or listeners to join our Discord server to stay updated on how they can participate in the Bitcoin economy, especially [inaudible 00:40:32] 2024 when we are going to be doing our token generation event. I'm happy to provide you with a link to that, Paul. And I'm also hosting a Twitter space on February 22nd focusing on women in Web3 working specifically within ReFi to build more equitable and impactful communities. So I can share that link as well for listeners to join.

Paul Davenport:

All right. I can't thank you both enough. This has been fantastic. Again, I will have links to everything that we just discussed in the show notes and I'm looking forward to chatting again soon, hopefully in person. I know I've been talking a lot about how remote makes it easy for us to hop on these calls, but I'm itching to meet you guys. It's been a great chat today, last time, and I hope we can keep it going in the future.

Saleha Jaweid:

Yeah.

Alina Guidu:

Thank you so much for having us. This was a pleasure.

Paul Davenport:

Absolutely.

Saleha Jaweid:

Yeah. Thank you so much. And thank you Alina as well.