Ross Mason of Dig Ventures on Going Down the Crypto/NFT Rabbit Hole (EP.205)
My buddy Ross is back for round two of Panic. He’s the open source guru who started Mulesoft – which was well covered in our previous interview (EP.103) – but today we’re going down the crypto/NFT rabbit hole. And if there’s anybody outside of Fred Wilson, Chris Dixon, and the people at Multicoin I’d trust on this topic, it’s Ross. That’s because he’s the king of open source. A crown I’ve bestowed on him, mostly because he’s the only one I know in open source. Not only is Ross a unicorn founder, he’s also a seed investor in a unicorn through his fund, Dig Ventures. He’s been on both sides of the table, which is why I brought him in as a board member for $SLAC the SPAC. Nowadays Ross splits his time between Switzerland and Amsterdam, one of my top five favorite cities in the world. I’ll be catching up with Ross in Amsterdam this week! Be sure to follow along on Twitter. Guest - Ross Mason, Founder at Dig Ventures howardlindzon.com, dig.ventures Twitter: @howardlindzon, @rossmason, @dig_ventures, @PanicwFriends, @knutjensen linkedin.com/in/ross-mason #fintech #invest #investment #venturecapital #stockmarket #finance EP.103: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4Hq5nGVsLmLepCIRfSGHWr Show Notes: Introduction. (00:39) Welcome Ross. (05:51) Best cities in the world. (06:04) Leaving Mulesoft for good. (08:34) Leveraging the social networks (09:06) Digging into web3 whitepapers. (10:07) The Holy Grail of Open Source. (12:24) Down the crypto rabbit hole. (13:24) Crypto’s gaming angle. (15:10) NFTs as assets. (16:33) You’re going to get scammed. (19:17) Manufactured urgency, but it’s fun. (22:49) Living with the drawdowns. (23:41) The thesis for minting your own coin. (26:03) Creating a ‘carry’ token. (27:40) Can centralization fix the scams? (30:49) Build your community the correct way. (31:48) Helping founders (33:52) Public tech meltdown (38:47) Long bitcoin and ethereum. (39:52) The need for middleware connections. (40:34) Amsterdam's web3 culture. (42:19) The thing about FIFA. (46:07) Wrapping it up. (47:39) Closing thoughts. (49:12)