Julian: Hey everyone. Thankyou so much for joining the Behind Company Lines podcast. Today we have IvanYang, co-founder and CEO of Moss, a company helping brands maximize theengagement of their Web3 customers. Ivan, I'm so excited to chat with you as Iwas talking to you pre show, not only about your entrepreneurial journey, butalso with this whole Web3 ecosystem kind of changing molding and, and I mean,it seems like there's always some kind of new engagement and, and new way thatcustomer.

Are gauging with the, not only theprotocols, but the different technologies people are building, the differentapplications. I mean, there's so much that's involved in these communities nowis becoming it in its whole ecosystem. So I'm interested in organism actually. ButI'm interested to hear your take and what you're working on at Musk.

But before we go into that, what wereyou doing before you started the company?

Ivan: Yeah, so I'm currentlya MBA student, a business school student at MIT Sloan. Prior to school I was aninvestment banker for four and a half years, so I worked at Goldman Sachs, bothin Australia where I'm originally from and in London as well.

So yeah I guess like not the mosttraditional backgrounds, at least founding a company, but I'm here none.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. And thinkand just describe to us what got you involved in Web3. What in particular wasexciting about whether it was the technology, the community aspect, what inparticular while you were going through and, and, and I will say maybe not thatmost traditional, but in terms of, a lot of Web3 and, and blockchain and, andthose types of founders.

It's always kind of finance adjacent. Soit's funny, I, I feel like everyone in that, in the industry are, most peoplewho saw blockchain coming, kind of had an almost like a preview to the, whatwas gonna be the transition kind of long term, but what got you excited aboutwhat three in the technology and, and everything around the, the building ofdifferent currencies and things like that.

Ivan: Yeah, I'd say likeeveryone else, it's finance adjacent. So at least when I was at in finance,What happened was that you can't invest in equities or anything else likenormal people. So you're so forced to think about what other asset classes canyou invest in. And for me when I started work, that was cryptocurrencies and,and the whole, and the whole ecosystem there.

So because I wasn't allowed to invest inanything else, I got started to get really deep into the cryptocurrency sphereoriginally. Again, like you mentioned, finance adjacent, so doing things likeyield. Yield hunting back in, yield, farming back in the day when that was thething. Trying to do some arbitrage plays, just trading coins and doing thewhole, whole, whole lot there.

But for me, like once I started doingthat, I found it less interesting in terms of the actual cryptocurrencies and,staking money and liquidity pools. I was. Well, that was great to make money,but it wasn't, what was interesting for me, what was really interesting was, Iguess in 20 20, 20 21, when people started looking into DAOs and startedthinking about what does community look like in this new age?

And that for me was, light bulb momentwhere I went, this was, this is something that's really, really cool. So Istarted going down that route instead. I was never really that interested inthe NFT route per se, or at least the NFT route. The boom time because a lot ofthat was again, finance adjacent and the people were trying to find Alphatrying to flip, get, whitelisted and allow listed and flip, flip NFTs.

That wasn't that interesting. It was allabout the community aspect. So that's what I really got into. And then where wegot into MOS and how we got into Moss was. I was part of a lot of these communities.I thought, they're awesome. A lot of these Dows are really awesome in thecommunities, but I just couldn't keep up to date with them all.

My Discord server, like I'm sure likeeveryone else's Discord server is just, it's mental. And I was like, there mustbe a better way. Like it can't be like this. So, That's when we first startedMoss is when we wanted a better way to get information that is not in a linearformat like it is on Discord, yeah. It's, people were saying gm, GNS stats sortof has the same priority as, really important announcements. People might beable to have different channels, but at the end of the day, I just muted thewhole server. So that's how we started with Mo. We were trying to fix thatproblem, but the more we dove dove into it, what was even more interesting wasall these other, traditional brands that you've heard of, supermarkets recordlabels, all of those different types of brands that and love and you hear aboutevery day.

Yeah. They were, they were seeing Web3as a way to sort of refresh their better end as a way to engage, reengagecustomers. So that's how we pivoted and sort of got into the space.

Julian: Yeah, it's incredibleto think about, seeing the opportunity at the time, and obviously I, I am inagreement with my discord surfers or out of control.

There's no rhyme or reason to them, and,and I feel like I'm always behind, but but, but still, and I'm sure you canagree it's still valuable information or announcements and. There's a communityaspect to that. Kind of jumping into Moss, what was the first kind ofiterations of the product was was it always the same way?

How did you kind of first try toconceptualize bringing all this information that was distributed linearly in aneasy to digestible way? How were you able to kind of communicate that valueand, and communicate to your customers through that product? What did thatproduct look like? And also how has it changed over time?.

Ivan: Yeah, so when we firstbuilt Moss, the Emphasis, and one of my co-founders, Sean, he is he used towork at Microsoft as a pm so he was building world class consumer UX tools, atool that's used by billions of people every day through, windows 11 throughbeing, I, I dunno about Bing how many people use, been compared to, to Google.

But I know that's something that'swidely adopted and for us, that was always very important. Even from day onewhen we were doing the wire frames and doing the Figma, is that this wasn'tgoing to be, a lot of the emojis and a lot of the stuff that defined Web3, likethings are sort of hard to follow and very, I'd say non-inclusive in thatunless you knew the lingo, you knew the acronyms, you sort of wondered why holdor spelled wrong, things like that.

We were like not that interested. Well,we're trying to make a product and Sean likes to say it's something that, he'smom, his mom can use, or he can explain it to his brother, and it's somethingthat's just very, very light. A lot of negative space, something that's focusedon the user and making it as easy as possible for them to keep up to dateversus trying to make it in a exclusive.

So from day one, that's always been thefocus for us. I guess how we get, how we came to get information onto theplatform has evolved. So when we first started, we were think experimentingwith things like discord bots, telegram bots that would scrape announcementchannels and they would sort of aggregate a lot of these, a lot of theinformation into one place.

That became very hard actually, we foundpurely because a lot of. Because Web3 native communities, they live and die bythis court. And that's why they're such a big it's so hard to get thatbehavioral change because, rightly or wrongly, they're judged on how active theservers are. And if you try and move people away from that server, that couldmean the end of that project.

Yeah. So that's why we shifted our focusto, think about these brands cause trying to build community, but also tryingto be inclusive to the next billion. They're coming to Web3. Yeah. People thatdon't necessarily want to be in discord all day, every day interacting, butnonetheless want to participate.

So we sort of narrowed down on thissegment.  

Julian: Yeah. what ways areyou able to kind of connect, describe the product a little bit more from thebrand perspective in terms of now that they have kind of an initiative and, andwant to, track or, or, and, and communicate more with their customers, makethat connection, continue fostering that.

How are you able to do that? How are youable to kind of allow this experience and what kind of power do you give backto the, the brands and, and what kind of value are they able to add now thatthings are in, in a little bit more of a structured format in, in ways that theycommunicate?

Ivan: Yeah, I think there's2, 2, 2 areas that we are really focused. The first is the analytics componentof it. So, all three of us were all three co-founders were at mit, so data'salways been a big thing and everything we we're taught. So in Web3, the, thebig thing is that there's no data. A lot of these brands are shooting in thedark when they launch any Web3 projects.

So, you hear about the recent launch oflike, That's a show in the dark. They might have some hypotheses and they have,they've had a lot of money for consultants to work out who's buying their NFTsand who's, collecting whatever they call it these days, digital assets. But atthe end of the day, they don't really know who their customers are.

So even if we're able to gleam a bit ofinformation around, what's our wallets are buying NFTs, how often they transactin Web3, are they new to Web3? And more importantly, what else do they like?What other tokens. Assets under their wallet. That is just a big part of thebrand's arsenal of tools.

The second part, and this is, goes backto the information component. We started off as a information aggregator. We'rethinking about making information easier to read, but it's become a lot morethan that and we have a lot of different visions as to what this can be. Sojust to gimme an example the next thing we built after information flow wasjust an advanced Cal.

It sounds super simple, but you thinkabout all the different events and things happening in Web3, there's no actualplace that that's aggregated, and that's just a very simple ui ux tool thatmakes the experience better. Where we're going in the future to give power backto these brands is our hypothesis is it needs to be something that's unique andsomething that is, uniquely.

So there's no point in just, if I'm justgonna do a newsletter, why does it need to be on chain? You can just send anemail. But if you can do things like Quest, you can do things likecollaborations. You can do things like scavenger hunts or fidgital rewards.These are also unique experiences unique to, to blockchain and you need toWeb3.

So we are creating that suite of toolsor brands to create these experiences that their customers will value.  

Julian: It's so incredible tothink about like the new kind of creative ways that cus or, or brands areconnecting with their customers and, and describe, for, for audience. I mean,there's so much talk about community.

There's so much talk about customers andit's not necessarily say a new thing people or companies are, are focusing on,but it's, it's one that they're focusing more attention on. And why is that?Especially within web. If you wanna describe it to the audience, why is it soimportant to connect with your customers, have this cohesive customer base, andalso, connect them on these different projects?

Why are projects so reliant on theseindividuals who are, whether it's, involved in the, in the, the buildingprocess, or I guess better, better yet for you? Why are they so important andhow are they involved in, and why are they so critical for a lot of thesecompanies? And a lot of these.  

Ivan: Yeah, that's a greatquestion. I think that goes to ultimately the premise of Web3 and what peoplewant from their customers in Web3. So that's about ownership and people feelinga sense that they belong and own. The brand or own the community. And when youthink about sort of like the engagement, for example, a really great successstory is Starbucks.

And that's been all over the years, theOdyssey program. Right. And when we speak to a lot of people who are part ofthe Odyssey Rewards Program, what's important to them is not so much the, Whatthe, what the NFT they get is, but the fact that they own a badge that showsthey're a top fan, they're someone that really is part of the ecosystem.

Same with Nike. They've done really wellwith other fact and dot swoosh because people feel like they're co-creating,co-owning Nike. So a lot of these brands, when we speak to them, want toachieve something similar. And like granted, Starbucks and Nike are, black SwanEdge cases because their brand was very so strong.

Yeah. If these brands can just capturesome essence of the ownership and the loyalty of these, to, to turn thesecustomers into fans and followers, that's something that's very powerful andthat's something that they're all trying to do. Because quite frankly, if youdo web two marketing, so I say web two, I mean, so Facebook marketing, socialmedia, email, that's very saturated.

There's yeah, only so many influencersyou can pay. There's only so many Facebook ads or Instagram ads. You can. Butif you can sort of capture people who truly feel like they're part of yourbrand, these are the customers you want coming back, and that's where you see,really high ROIs in a time when a lot of these companies are clamping down ontheir marketing budgets.

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. It's sofascinating thinking about, the whole ecosystem around in customer engagementand, and what essentially are the benefits that, companies receive and describea little bit more of those. I know you touched on a, a few of those, but notonly connecting with brands, not only creating more of a brand and and customerrelationship, but what does that mean for the long-term evolution?

Or what, what is your prediction? I'm,I'm curious to hear in terms of the long-term prediction for, how. Relationshipbetween customer and brand is gonna continue to evolve. As, as CU brands arebecoming more engaged. Customers are becoming more aware of the things thatthey're doing and more up to date on, I mean, things people are thinking about,companies, esg, the sustainability impact.

And more so than ever nowadays. But youknow, more so than that, it it's how the company's building, it's how their,their product is coming out. It's the, the the, the presence. Right. And theperception of that brand. People are kind of tying to it. Is that gonnacontinue to evolve where this, this cohesive company and customer experience isgonna continue to mold together?

Is that what we're seeing? Or is thatsomething that's just trending right now?

Ivan: I think there is afundamental shift. So there, there is a fundamental shift in the way thatcompanies the brand and the companies have their relationship. There'ssomething that, customers want to own their relationship with the brand.

Right now, for example, if I haveloyalty with a certain coffee shop, loyalty with an airline, the airline ownsthat, or the coffee shop owns that, that's on some spreadsheet somewhere. Butas a customer, I want to take control. I want to. I have a brand, I have arelationship with, let's say Starbucks, for example, and I want to be able totake that out and show it to the world that I'm a Starbucks fan.

And what that could lead to is a numberof different things. And that's what's really, really exciting. Think about,what open banking data has done for FinTech now that you can port yourfinancial data, you know your repayments, your loan history, import it todifferent banks, and you get better terms and deals.

We see something similar. We in the, inthe brand consumer relationship. And that means I as a, I can say I'm a great,I'm a great Starbucks customer. I can take that proof, which is on chain andtake it to other coffee shops and say, look, I love coffee. Treat me in abetter way. And that could be a really awesome use case, but it's not all forpeople.

Go, okay, then what's in it for thebrands? Because then you are just giving away all that power. Sure. It's notall doom and gloom because what we're seeing on that side and what reallyexcites a lot of brands, The chance to collaborate. Yeah. Then that's huge. So,being, being doing a collaboration deal between brands right now as anightmare, you need, the CEOs on both sides to negotiate, a memorandum ofunderstanding and then you have to sort of work back and forth to get somethingagreed upon.

But you can go on chain and go, Hey, Iown, company X's nft, and you can go on chain and see, okay, who holds companyX's nf. And what if 70% of them also hold company wise, NFT, then you can seethere's room for collaboration and room for sort of cross pollination of thecustomer. So that's what's really exciting on the, on the brand side as well.

So fundamentally, as this data becomesmore and more public, we think that there's all these new possibilities areopen and that that's super exciting for the way commerce.  

Julian: Yeah, it's so think afascinating piece right there is the opting in your data into certain, whetherit's communities or certain websites or what have you, and, and the ability,you're not the only Web3 focused company that's been really excited about thecollaboration piece because of the possibilities, knowing the customers more.

You have the data, you have theinformation. It's kind of all. And, and a lot of times I think early on peoplewere thinking that because you can opt in data, there would be less clarityinto, who your, who your you know who your customer is. But because you almosthave more of, of an incentive to get people on, it's like you understand them alittle bit more rather than just trying to get eyeballs or all this kind ofshallow engagement versus people who are, actually active in communities andpurchasing the things that you're building.

Back to Moss, but describe a little bitmore about the traction. We'd love to hear a little bit more and about, howmany customers you have. What's been exciting about, kind of not only therecent traction you've seen, but also the future. What are you particularlyexcited about in terms of the next phase of Moss?

Ivan: Yeah, so that's agreat question. So for us, the traction has largely been, we've been pilotingand partnering with. Big global corporations. I, I can't disclose them yetbecause we're about to launch in the coming months, but we're working with themas partners and very closely to launch on Moss. So for us that's been a greatway to just get insights into what's important to a lot of these.

Brands. Right now, for example, a lot of'em are experimenting. A lot of them are wanting to work out what exactly isthe remit of went through, what can you do, what can't you do? So being part ofthat journey is very important to us to be able to shape our product, to meettheir needs. So that, that's the main thing that we've been working on andfocused on.

Besides the, the main two pilotcustomers that we're working. We have been speaking to a whole pipeline androster of different companies that are both either already in Web3, they'velaunched projects, looking at launching projects imminently, or just want to,get educated about it.

And one thing that's really excitingfrom speaking to all of them is that all these brands are very different. Someare, conglomerates like, FMG FMCG conglomerates that you, you'll think, oh,this is interesting that damn Web3, some are, really cool music talentagencies.

Some are just, sports franchises and allof them see the same potential, but all slightly, obviously, slightly, slightlydifferent ways than slightly different use cases. But what's awesome and reallyexciting for us is that. All these different brands are thinking about it andwhat they want to do is fairly aligned.

It's all about the customer now. Theywanna offer really, really different experiences, and that has really helpedshape the way that we're building the product. That it's not just about,getting people on chain, launching, minting, NFTs, because that's sort of oldnews now. There's a lot of work still to be done there, but that's not the hardpart.

The hard part. Okay, now that I havethis NFT as a customer, it's in my wallet. I've gone through all the effort ofsending up a wallet, what do I do with it? And that's the key sort of piece ofitem that we've garnered from speaking to a lot of these brands. They're tryingto work that out, and we're sort of with them every step of the way.

Julian: Yeah, it's so excitingto think about what, how can you expand and how many partnerships And, and withthe collaboration, it seems like you're on the crux of a lot of differentopportunities. And I'll be curious to hear more about how you kind ofprioritize what, what the ideal, whether it's feature or product roadmap thatyou wanna focus on at in particular time.

But thinking about externally andinternally, what are some of the biggest challenges that Moss faces today?  

Ivan: Yeah, I think. I thinklike any technology, and it's not a particularly great market for us right nowit's sort of overcoming some of the skepticism around the space. I think, forbetter or worse, probably it's fair that, the word NFT or the word Web3 has alot of connotations with it.

It's not taboo to, to use that word. Ithink there's a big rebrand going on to digital collectibles, but I think a lotof. It's all, a lot of it's about getting over the stigma of it. Mm-hmm. Because,in 20 21, 20 22 when NFTs exploded, it's all about, trying to make a quickbuck, trying to meet nft, sell as many as possible, get as much hype, get asmuch hype going as possible, and it's making money on it.

And frankly, that's not how it is today.If you see a lot of the different corporates that are entering this space,they're giving them away for free. Yeah. It's not about the nft, it's notabout, Money on it. And if you see what Porsche did recently with airdrop inFebruary that didn't sell out, they got a lot of backlash for that.

And yeah, that's because they're stillapplying the 2021 model and thinking, hey, we can just sell these, rare NFTsand make a quick buck. Right? But what the smarter brands are doing is they'regoing, okay, let's give away these NFTs for free. Because over the long run, ifwe can find the more loyal, engaged customers, that's more.

Than any, any upfront revenue. So that'sthe biggest challenge is that, some brands see this, some brands don't, somebrands are still sort of scared by, what's happened and by the bear marketthat's currently, persistent. So that's definitely the biggest thing thatthat's slowing down to adoption.

Julian: Yeah. And ifeverything goes well, what's the long term vision for Moss?  

Ivan: Yeah. For us, the longterm vision, I think it's super exciting. We want to be at that touch. Of wherebrands and customers meet, we want to be facilitating those interactions. Wewanna be helping, drive that new era, new age of, of engagement.

So for us, we see a similar opportunityto when, when Facebook and other social media, social networking sites came onboard that just connected the world in a whole. We see something very similarhere and that's why it's so exciting for us is that all these other brands arebeginning to see it now, and it feels like we're on the cusp of something.

Julian: Awesome. Yeah, Ialways love this next section. I call it my Founder faq. So I'm gonna give yousome rapid fire questions and we'll see where we go, so, yeah, sure. Firstquestion always to, to open it up, what's particularly hard about.  

Ivan: I think what's hard istrying to sell people a division. I think that's the number one job as CEO, isjust you have it in your head, like you have a million thoughts.

Trying to articulate that and convincepeople that that's the vision. Always the hardest job, but the most satisfyingI guess, when you, when it works.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. Thinkingabout all the ways companies and other ways you're seeing companies be creativein how they're engaging with their customers, are there a few ways that you'reparticularly like surprised or impressed or excited about in, in ways thatcustomers are being, or excuse me, a brands are, are relating or offeringcertain, whether it's activities or quests?

I know you mentioned those, those items,but what's particularly been impress. Or creative or inspiring about wayscompanies and brands are are connecting with their customers that you've seen?And anything come to mind?  

Ivan: I'll say what hasactually been very impressive is the Starbucks of the C app.

So when I go through the the site, it isa very simple experience. It. But you know, you see a lot of these metaverse,like the central land, it's like crazy VR worlds, but the simplicity ofStarbucks and how much attention and how much sort of engagement that'sattracted has been awesome to see. It's like you can do some quizzes, you learnmore about coffee, you learn more about that process.

Yeah. And it just builds this affinitywith the brand that you go, oh, like I feel like. Done some quizzes on it. Ifeel like I'm part of that story and that's just something that's so simple butso effective. And that's sort of where, you don't need to reimagine a wholecrazy way of doing things, but just doing like a quest, like gamified going tothe supermarket.

Yeah, like think about Pokemon Go, likethat's Pokemon's been around for ages and that being able to go to differentplaces and collect Pokemon, that's something that's I think a lot of brands aretrying to think about. And that's something that's the simplicity of it. It's,it's what's impressive.

Julian: Yeah, it's incredibleto think about. I mean, yeah, the simplicity aspect, but also the Pokemon Gothing. You're totally right. It's, it's something that's been around foreverand kind of repurposed and reimagined with new technology and being able tooffer some like engagement or activity. I'm always curious just, with whatpeople are building, whether it's DeFi protocols, dabs, or things along thatnature, what have you, what have you seen, just in your opinion is, issomething that's exciting on the forefront?

Obviously you, you mentioned there's abig rebrand of, and the NFTs, I think a lot of people are trying to figure out,not only are they collectable art pieces, but they're used in different waysfor tracking documentation or. Even like birth certificates and things alongthat nature, things you can't necessarily create copies of, right.

You have to have originals of, but whatare some interesting ways or other brands that you've seen in what they'rebuilding and what they're creating? Is it, DeFi protocols adapts? How are theybuilding? What are they building and what are you particularly excitedabout?  

Ivan: Yeah. I'd say there'stwo things.

One is the use cases of NFTs. Werecently got back from East Denver and we met up with another startup. Theyhave awesome founders, Helo, they're, and they're doing NFT credentials. It'snot strictly speaking NFTs, they're sort of more advanced than that. But thinkof it as like a token proving your academic credentials and how you know youcan change the way background checks are done, how you can change the way justlike academic certificates.

I think the way Nick, who's, who's theirCEO explained to me is, we all have a degree at home that you sort of dust offand show to people, but it, it's not being, it's not being used for anything.So having that on chain is such a interesting use case I never thought about.Yeah. The other thing I thought was interesting, I don't have a solution for iswhat's happening with DAOs and how they're gonna change the way communicationand governance is done.

You know what, what? There's still a lotof growing pains in that industry in terms of working out how exactly theyshould do the membership models, how exactly they should communicate things to,10,000 people on mass and keep a community that's purely online, not justactive, but also functional.

I, I don't have that answer for that,but that's just, I see a lot of work being done. I think Fwb, they released anapp recently, try and solve some of these problems, so that's also a superinteresting problem that, that I'm seeing.

Julian: Yeah, it's incredibleto think about, especially the the, the, the school records and, and if it's onchain and, and just kind of pairing it with, with your, with, with what Moss isdoing in terms of engagement, what does that mean for the alumni network andwhat does that mean for the col the association from alumnis and, and collegesand.

And, and so many things that you canhave access to with, this information or this data online and, and on chain.The alumni, the alumni piece is, is great. Cause I think one critical drop offa lot of people see is, is the, is the decrease in engagement after graduation.So that, that'll be an interesting one.

I, I'll, I'd love to kind of see howthat went unfolds as well. Another question for you is, What's something thatyou know you're good at now as a founder that earlier on you, you, youstruggled with or that you wish you were better at? Anything come to mind?  

Ivan: Yeah, I think there'salways, I can always be better at most things.

I'd say prioritization and there's a bitof a cop out answer, but I genuinely. Coming from like a finance background, Iwas like, I could just do it all cuz I'll just stay up all night and just work,work all night. But that's just genuinely not possible. I've, so I've testedthe limits of that. So I think working out what's really important at, at thestart, especially when you're a really early stage startup I think at the startI tended to be a bit, let's get everything done.

Let's do it all. But I think right nowit's just being able to focus on what's really important and what's reallydriving value for customers or for for stakeholders that, that's what'simportant.  

Julian: Yeah. Prioritizing.Yeah, that, that's definitely something that's been echoed by a lot offounders. And I, it, it's funny the testing of the limits is, is definitely, Ithink a common shared experience and realizing that, you know what, I don'tthink the sustainable model just for not only health purposes but also,efficiency and productivity and things like that.

Last little bit, always like to ask thisquestion cuz I, I love to hear how founders extract knowledge from anythingthat they, I. Whether it was early in your career or now, what books or peoplehave been, especially influential or impactful to you?  

Ivan: Yeah, so I, I needadmit, I'm a biography guy.

I like reading biographies, or even ifit's not biography, it's sort of just random, fictional, not, sorry, nonfictiontakes on things so, Just to like name a few, like Shoe Dog I thought was anawesome book. Like, that's been one of my favorites and whenever people ask me,that's my go-to response. It's Shoe Dogs is an awesome book.

Recent reads have just been, I like toalso read things out outside because all, I'm seeing all there every day in myindustry zoned in. I like to read what's happening outside and, and just thingslike the books like Empire of Pain, about the Sackler family Bad. All thesethings about what not to do sort of ring truth.

And I think that sort of rings likerings loudly in my head purely because I think, sometimes you'll sort of alwaysset on milestones and reaching the next target, reaching next goal, but at thesame time you sometimes just track of what's really important. And I thinkthose books are good reminders of what can happen if you sort of lose track ofwhat's really, I.

But yeah, those, those are the recentbooks. I, I suppose recently I haven't read anything. Yeah, I did that,so,  

Julian: no. Yeah. Yeah, thoseare great. And I, I love I love asking that question because founders have sucha really cool way to, like I said, not only seek out knowledge, but extractscertain pieces of information and anecdotes.

And it's always so different whetherit's, some people focus heavily on business books or biographies, nonfiction,or fiction to. Get them out of, out of the present, kind of state of mind andthe work that they're doing kind of helps kind of rejuvenate. So it's awesometo hear that.

Last little bit before, I know we'recoming to close the episode, but last little bit is before we get your plugson, on where we can find you, where we can support you as a founder and allthat information, I always like to make sure we didn't miss out on anything. Sois there anything that, any question that I didn't an ask you that you wouldhave liked to answer or that you would've liked to, to kind of bring up forthe.

Ivan: Yeah, I, I'd love tosort of just give a plug out to the team. I think everyone's working super hardand I, I'm on this podcast, but you know, everyone else is still working, so I,I've had a bit of a break. So, I think like the main thing is being able towork with Sean and Nyla as my co-founders has been.

A great, a great experience. I think weall come from very different backgrounds. I think I mentioned briefly to startshowing this from a a technical background at, at Microsoft Nyla was at MassChallenge as the chief of staff building out the global footprint. So we allcome from very different skill sets.

I think that's just been awesome, likethe discussions that we have as a founding team through to just how we approachdifferent problems. So I think there's a bit, a lot of credit due there as inwe. Lots of space and breathe the space. But I think having those threeperspectives is what's made it.

And yeah. Do, do you want me to plug,plug where people can, can find us?  

Julian: Yeah, yeah, yeah.Please do. Please plug not only your, your LinkedIns, your Twitters yourdiscourse, wherever we can find you. Not only be a supporter of you as afounder, but also of Moss and, and even if we're a customer, where can we startgetting engaged with, with the product and, and start connecting with our.

Ivan: Yeah. So we're atwww.Moss.social. We're in private beta at the moment, like I mentioned. So ifyou jump on and log in, you can see what it looks like, but you won't see much.We'll have a form on there if people want to be interested. The brands areinterested and will get in touch. Similarly, you can email us at info MossSocial, and then finally on Twitter, it's at.

S Moss underscore social. I think that'sthe right one, but don't, don't hold me to it. See it all on Moss onsocial.  

Julian: I love that. I lovethat. Well, it, it's been such a pleasure. It is. Moss underscore social, bythe way, so make sure We'll, we'll have that. Still got it. Yeah, exactly.Well, Ivan, it's been such a pleasure.

Not only learning about your backgroundand your experience and what inspired you. You know about Web3, but also, yourinsight into how brands and, and what you're building in terms of how they'reconnecting with their customer base, I think is always fascinating as itcontinues to evolve.

And I'm, I'm particularly excited aboutthe examples that, that you shared and, and how they can engage and what we cando with the brands and, and we have this kind of, Cohesive. I, I don't wannasay it's tribe, but it's, it's like shared experience and a lot of people arefinding ways to to, to even do that for themselves.

So it's not only exciting to hear howyou're enabling companies, but also individuals to connect better with thebrands. So, Ivan, it's been such a pleasure having you on the show today. Ihope you enjoyed yourself and thank you so much for being out. Behind, CompanyLines.  

Ivan: Likewise. Thanks somuch, Julian, for having me. It's been a pleasure.  

Julian: Of course.

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