‍Jonathan:Selling to a voter is very similar to selling to a software company. You haveto make a compelling value prop. Sometimes you're gonna win something. Theother thing about working in government is that so much of Web3, the majorfriction point is not technology it's regulatory and it's frankly, compliance.

Julian:Hey everyone. Thank you so much for joining the Behind Company Lines podcast.Today we have Jonathan Padilla CEO and co-founder of Snickerdoodle Labs.Snickerdoodle Labs is a transformational data company that's bridging the gapbetween Web2 and Web3. Jonathan say thank you so much for, jumping on the showtoday.

I'm so excited tochat with you, not only because of, your background experience, and I knowyou've touched a lot of different industries, but also more recently withinWeb2, Web3, which you're working on at Snicker Do Labs is so fascinating inhow. Consumers are gonna have such autonomy and, and really agency to kind ofplug in and plug out of different platforms and websites and different productsand applications.

It's gonna be sointeresting to see how that kind of transforms the consumer company and addynamics kind of all in one. But before we get into all that good stuff withSnickerdoodle Labs,  

what were you doingbefore you started the company?  

Jonathan:Well, Julian first, thank you for having me on the show. Happy to be heretoday.

I mean, my careerwas a bit securous in the sense that right before Snickerdoodle I was atPayPal. Yeah, and I was brought in in early 2020 to help build the blockchainstrategy group at PayPal. We did a lot of work behind the Venmo and the corePayPal apps. Did a lot of work on, PayPal, stablecoin project and yeah, insupport of PayPal Ventures as they took their first four ways into into crypto.

So that was what Iwas doing immediately before Snicker dle. It was a great role. I think the teamthat. Jose has built at PayPal is one of the best in the industry. Ands a lotof respect for Jose and his, his team there, Edwin Aoki and Paul bcis. But Ithink it was time to try to go build something as an entrepreneur and that wasreally what got me excited.

And, and beforePayPal, I was overseas for a couple years in between Africa, China, and, andthe uk. So it was. Very, very different. Like my, my core career before thatwas in government and I did everything from speech writing Yeah. And working inthe White House under President Obama to look working in local government.

So it was Kind ofan interesting seven year period, just doing the shift indirectly.  

Julian:It's so fascinating. Thinking about the different dynamics too.

Did what translated over from going fromgovernment and going, working with those and types of individuals to kind themore startup and, engineers and kind of that focus.

What were some of the differences you saw inthat transition at the time?

Jonathan: Imean, I think it comes down to like, on a campaign, everything is veryfrenetic, right? It's, there's a crisis that has to be, a fire that has to beput out every day. And I think everybody is working with too much to do and toolittle sleep.

And you have tokind of make it work and present a very polished, pristine, perception outthere for, for, yeah. In this case voters and voters are a lot, like selling toa voter is very similar to selling to a software company. You have to make acompelling value prop. Sometimes you're gonna win something.

Sometimes peopleare just not in the right market. Yeah. And so you have very similar skillsets.And I would think the, I would actually say the other thing about working ingovernment is that so much of Web3, the major friction point is not technology,it's, it's regulatory and it's, it's frankly, compliance.

And so having theability to understand how a government actor will operate Yeah. Offers a lot ofinsight in how to build a product that will frankly pass muster under the eyesof regulators. So that's a, I think that's also a pretty valuable skill, skillset, being able to speak government when we engage with regulators and peoplein that type of space.

Julian:Yeah. Yeah. I, I didn't even think about, kind of having the insider, I don'twanna say insider, but the.

Kinda having the different perspectives,seeing how the relationship is between, government and agencies and, andtechnology. And what is that relationship like when you know there is adisruptive technology that is gaining a lot of traction?

When does it startreally obviously I think Web3, cuz it has a huge financial component. It's like,that was about time, but. There's been other, recent technologies that havejust kind of captured either attention or, people with the perspective, what isthat relationship and how does that vetting process happen when governmentsstart to get involved and, and when is that time that they do?

Jonathan: Ithink it comes down to the type of product you're offering. And right now Yeah.You mean, you said it a couple seconds ago that so much of this space has had.Actors that touch finance and unfortunately we've had a lot of bad actors inthe space that have taken advantage of, of investors who may not have thesophistication you would expect for, for these types of products, and that'sled to really, really bad outcomes.

And so it'scompletely understandable why. Regulators from the SEC and from other bankingorganizations have wanted to basically get a handle on crypto and betterunderstand it and frankly make it conform to products and regulations that havea more comparable, pattern that you would expect in Web2.

So that's, that'san interesting scenario. I, I, and the difficulty is, I think Web3 really can'tbe fit into the regulatory structures of Web2. And I think most people wouldagree with that in the space. Yeah. And so we're in a really, really toughpickle where the government wants X, the industry wants Y.

Yeah. Consumerswant Z and we have to find a happy medium to kind of bring it all together in away that makes it work. And we haven't found it out yet. Yeah. I think justlooking at what chairman Gensler from the SEC has been doing. You can make thecase that it's trying to make the, the safe, the, the space safer for folks.

But I wouldcontend, I think a lot of people in the space would contend I. He fundamentallyis making the US less competitive to peers overseas. Yeah. In both Europe andAsia. And that threatens us economic strength over the next 25, 50 years infrankly decentralized finance and Web3. So there's a much more we could talkabout there, about everything from de dollarization to frankly just, coreeconomic competition.

But I think justthe, the, the short summary is, We have to find a, a better structure. I thinkthere's a lot of people in Congress who are doing that better than theregulators at the SEC. And I would just reiterate that I think Chairman Gensleris wrong. I think he's bad for crypto. I think he's bad for economiccompetition, and I think he's just out of touch with the entire industry.

Julian:Yeah.  

And why would yousay, it seems like a lot of that from what you've said is just likemisunderstanding or not? No, it's like miscategorizing of trying to fit Web3within Web2. And why can't it fit? I mean, describe some of the reasons,obviously I think mechanics of it, that, that whole decentralized approach.

But I guess in, inyour opinion, in your own words. Yeah. Why can't it fit?  

Jonathan:So maybe to step back is you have to look at the perspective of like, why.Chairman Gensler would wanna call something a security. Mm-hmm. And he, he runsthe Security and Exchange Commission. And so it is a governmental body, aregulator that is designed to regulate securities.

And in order.There's a notion in Washington, if I put my my old government hat on, there'ssomething called a turf battle or a turf war, and this turf battle overjurisdiction. What means that if it is a of a digital currency is a security,he would get to regulate it. Now, it is a commodity. There's an entirelydifferent body called the Commodities Future Trading Commission, the cftc.

That generally hasbeen seen as more favorable to crypto, and most people see Bitcoin as acommodity, but they see, other assets, potentially securities, and there'sdifferent. Regulatory regimes and we can get, get into minutia. But the keytakeaway is by calling something a security. Mm. The s c gets to regulate it,which means the jurisdiction extends to them.

Yeah. And so thatis, I think, a perverse incentive for the SEC to call something a securitybecause they then get to regulate it. Yeah. Versus, and you're making somethingfit into. A regulatory definition that goes back to the 1930s. Literally thecourt case was on, orange Futures in Orange Grove.

So that doesn'tseem to probably make the same framework for digital currency. It's acompletely different paradigm. Yeah. As requires a new set of regulatorystructures or definitions. Yeah. And maybe the ICP regulates, but it's adifferent type of, of product than, than a security. So, I think a lot of it ispolitical.

I think a lot of itis jurisdictional who can have the most power in Washington, and I think theonly people that win there are regulators and the people that lose areconsumers and frankly entrepreneurs who now you know, are less able to compete.And you're stuck in a situation where there's this term called regulatoryarbitrage, where firms will leave the US and go overseas because of morefavorable conditions and how they can run their businesses.

Julian:Yeah.  

And it's, it iscrazy to think about how much, this whole categorizing impacts the overall kindof regulations around Web3. And, and if you were to, point out maybe a fewpeople you mentioned earlier, you're like, I think there's some people withinthe government that are doing a good job, or at least managing the, the growthof Web3 and crypto and, and really expansion of a whole different way.

Consumers are gonnatransact, businesses are gonna be created, people are gonna be reward. It's sodifferent in so many ways. Who is kind of leading the way and what are theydoing that you think is pushing, or at least in the right direction, becausecrypto's gonna expand right? Globally. And like you mentioned earlier, if we'renot in the race then we we're pretty disadvantaged.

So yeah. Who, who'sout there doing the right things and what are they doing?  

Jonathan:So, I mean, I think Senator Loomis from Wyoming is probably a good example ofsomebody who's really trying to doubt, dig deep and make good policy. I thinkCongressman DeSoto from the, from the house side is probably another example ofa person that is trying to work to make this space.

Former regulatorslike Chris John Carlo, who's formerly head of the C F T C also highlight peopleBrian books in a similar spot from the O C C. So there's, there's a number of,I think, good actors who have been in and outta government who are trying toput out frameworks. It's become very political where,  

Julian:well, what are they doing in particular, when you talk about frameworks, likewhat are these frameworks that are beneficial?

Jonathan:On, on people who are in congress now or advocating actual legislation?

And it comes downto core pieces that will define everything from definitions to frameworks, totaxes. And I think people want clarity. The thing is people want regulatoryclarity. I think it would be good for the country, good for the industry. It'sjust making sure that the new regs are not draconian and don't stifle outinnovation.

So it's findingthat balance, and I think the, the folks in Congress are doing that in a waythat listens to people in the industry in a much more real perspective. Andpeople that are former regulators, like Brian and Chris are advocating usingtheir body of knowledge from having run these agencies.

Yeah. To really beadvocates and lobby for good for good policy. I think it's, it's that simple asconcrete things.  

Julian:Yeah. Yeah.

How does the Fed Now program impact. Web3, andis it, is it completely, are they completely unrelated? Is there, are bankshaving that ability to kind of, not only have that, that, I guess I don't evenwanna, trans not, not transparency, but I guess just ability to, to, controlor, or access does that, does that impact crypto?

Jonathan:So it's, it's adjacent, but it doesn't really impact crypto. Mm-hmm. I mean,this has been a project from the Federal Reserve for the better part of 10 to15 years on upgrading basic interbank transfers and payments. So it's way moreefficient than ACH in the, the kind of current system now. And it's designedto, to really have this near instantaneous kind of next day settlement, whichis, Which I think is good, but it's not really Web3.

It's not reallydigital dollar. Sure. So, it's a very different thing. It's kind of an applesand oranges comparison, but one that I think is a good piece of financialinfrastructure that will make everything from disbursement of funds. If youthink about like a use case, this type of infrastructure would've made.

Stimulus checks orcovid checks happen much more quickly. Very sure. Yeah. And that would begreat. Instead of people waiting six to nine weeks for that, for that cash,which was a lifeline for a lot of people during Covid. Yeah. I think thedifference between that and say a digital dollar is that if Fed now is gonnaallow much quicker transfers of of value.

A digital dollarwould not only have that, but the ability to kind of bring in that data layer.Mm-hmm. And then begin to slice and dice so it's not just, fed. Now you get$1,500 within a week digital dollar, you'd be able to get $1,500. But thegovernment could also more easily targeted and say your income is this andyou're in this jurisdiction.

It means maybe youget a little bit more, maybe you get a little bit less. Right. You can begin tohave scalpel like precision and you still don't have that with the Fed Nowsystem.  

Julian:Yeah, yeah. We talked a lot about obviously the external impacts of, of crypto,government influence and that relationship.

But shifting kindof on a more personal note,  

when did you first,get involved with crypto and, and Web3? And what about the technology really, Iguess, triggered this excitement to, to then start snicker doodle, but work onall these projects that you know, and PayPal and, and all these other companiesthat.

Really pushed theability for this technology to move forward. What, what was that, what wasthat? Was there a story involved there? Did you know you stumble upon it orwere you always listening to it and, what, what was that experience like?  

Jonathan:So I got involved in late 2016. A classmate of mine when I was at Oxford hadworked for Ripple Super, super early on at Ripple.

And so he gave methe ins and outs when we were overseas in the uk. And I think it was talkingwith him and getting his perspective on the industry that it was more than justBitcoin. You could build this programmability aspects I thought was really,really interesting. From the use cases you could have in the governmentperspective.

So that for me wasa super compelling kind of rabbit hole moment. And the funny thing is like therabbit hole moment took place where the original rabbit hole was. I remember wewere over by Christchurch Meadow in Oxford. Which is where they had the AliceAllison Wonderland story base where you get the rabbit hole.

So it was about ahundred meters away from that, that we had this conversation at PembrokeCollege. So, that was 2016 and then wrapped up at, at in the uk. I wrote my, mymaster's thesis there at Oxford about how digital transformation and blockchaincould be. Super critical for electrification in Africa.

And then I went offto China. Yeah, and that was 2017, 2018. And that was a great time to be inWeb3 in China. This was right before the big bands took effect. The industryand the sector there in Beijing was super, super concentrated in focused, andpeople were building like crazy. There were tons of events and so it was areally great time to be in Beijing.

If you were keen onWeb3. And I think that was a, that was a catapult to really transform this froman academic interest to a professional passion. Yeah. And at the course ofthat, I wrote my master's thesis at Qoa focused on transnational regulation ofdigital assets. And that was used by the Financial Stability Board as they startedto take a look at regulation, how to model this, and from that I was able toset up an academic research lab at Stanford that still exists.

We're so activewith that. Yeah. And that led to my work at PayPal.  

Julian:Yeah. It's so fascinating, thinking about the experience, when not only.Building within the space, but how the space has changed over the years as welland, and how much more capability, we have to actually create products out ofWeb3.

And when,  

when did you reallystart to see not only DeFi Web3 apps and, and all these pro are these d andthings like of, of this nature really start to come about and have real, realuse cases? And I obviously want to jump into Snickerdoodle because Yeah. Ireally am passionate about, the space you're working on, being that and kind oftake that agency back in, in our own.

Data and privacy,but you know, when did you really see apps start to come about and, and whatwere the common use cases that they're being solved for and so forth.  

Jonathan:So this is an interesting question. I mean, my honest, my honest, direct,candid answer is we still really haven't seen them yet. Yeah. We've seenpeople, if you look at finance and there's a ton of applications within DeFiand in financial applications, which I think are really interesting.

I think I. Thatspace will be challenged for a while as long as interest rates are high. Yeah,and just think about it. When DeFi summer happened, interest rates were quarterpoint, half a point in some places in Europe, negative. And so people werechasing yield to make money on, on, on their dollar, their Euro or their SwissFranc.

Now you haveinterest rates that you know are 5% above. Why would you put a hundred dollarsin a DeFi protocol? Versus getting a hundred dollars in a US Treasury if thegain and return is gonna be the same. In fact, it might be higher with thetreasury cuz it's tax free. That that's a real issue. And so as long asinterest rates remain stubbornly high Yeah, you're probably in a spot.

Will DeFi willsuffer. Hmm. So there, there's a bunch of other applications there on the, onthe finance side, but, but my honest. The answer to your question is blockchainstill kind of sucks. Yeah, and what I mean by that is the UX UI is not where itneeds to be for mass adoption. There's still too much friction in the space.

And while a lot ofus in the Web3 space I think are willing to deal with friction, most consumersare not. And so I think the last 12 to 18 months, you've seen people that arereally focused on. A delightful user experience and user journey. Yeah. But westill haven't seen a ton of use cases and applications outside of Web3 thathave really scaled, and that's the honest answer.

It's like, I'm notgonna come and tell your listeners I. Something that's not true. Sure. And thehonest Andrew, we haven't seen that mass adoption curve yet. I think we'restarting to kind of see the beginnings of that. And hopefully when this wintercomes to a close, the people that have been left and have been building will bein a spot to really address that.

But maybe to thinkabout it I think people really need to have this perspective of like theblockchain grandma in mind. Yeah. Where. If your grandmother can use theproduct, you're gonna probably be okay, but build something and designsomething that your grandmother can use it. Yeah. And right now most Web3companies are not doing mobile where most consumers are, and it's still tooclunky and cumbersome and just not.

Not a fun time ifyou're doing this even as somebody like you or myself with a meta mask orsomething.  

Julian:Yeah, yeah.  

And thinking aboutSnickerdoodle, what, what inspired you to tackle this problem with, trackingconsumer data and monetizing consumer data? Where, where did that inspirationcome from?

And, and, what haveyou found along that journey? Is that, is that what you started initiallybuilding the onset or did you come.

Jonathan:We need to talk about that. So when I was at PayPal, we would. Like my team, wewould go talk to Jonathan Auerbach, who's chief growth Officer, and we talkedto him and we talked to other folks in leadership and we would always give themthe updates and basically ask for resources.

And they wouldalways ev eventually give us the resources to build, but they'd always ask,where's the data? What backs up this kind of assumption? And our response was,we don't really have data. We have really good guesses, but the, there's very,very little data available on consumer. Outcomes in consumer choices in Web3.

You gotta thinkabout it from the perspective of in Web3, you're effectively operating with WebOne tools, maybe even pre web one Tools. You have a sales front in terms of ifyou sell NFTs or products, you can basically track how much you've sold. Youhave customer surveys, and then maybe you have discord and literally, Some ofthe bigger projects will pay an intern or pay somebody to go in there andmonitor a discord to figure out what sentiment is about the product.

That's not scalable.It's not scientific, it's not really quantifiable in an easy way, and so we setout to solve this issue. If you have a firm like Nansen, they're doing data fortrading and exchanges. Great, awesome use case. We're not doing that. You havefirms like TRM Labs or Cipher Trace or Ching ssis.

They're doingforensics to make sure that you and I are not, terrorists or money launderers,great use case, super valuable. We're not doing that. There is this completedearth, this complete lack of, of ability to understand what an end consumer isand what that consumer is doing. And not just that, it's the, the end consumer,because most people who look at transaction data from Web3, you're looking at awallet.

We're, we're notreally interested in the wallet. We're interested in the individual. Mm-hmm.How do we construct a data profile that allows us to understand the individualand the body of data between Web2 and Web3? And do this in a way that franklyis privacy preserving. The big, big paradigm shift in Web3 is privacy is kingand people in a Web2 model.

It's really been,frankly, very extractive. We wanted to not do that, so we've put a lot of timeinto build infrastructure. We're structure where snicker doodle mean. Our valueprop for our business is we can help you understand your end consumer, theiractions from wealth Web2 and Web3. And we do it in a privacy preserving way.

The neat thing forus is that this means that there's no compliance risk for the business. Theydon't have to custody data, which is a huge issue for gdpr. It also means thatthey don't have to worry about being hacked. It also means that for us, thedata we collect is feature proofed against zero knowledge proofs.

Our data isaggregated client side at the end individual. And that means we don't have toworry about G kps. Now, the neat thing for the individual now is that in Web2,the paradigm has been you go to Google or Facebook or any of these big sites,and they're the best repositories of data. Yeah. Now the the inversion, theflip is now Julian or myself, or your brother or your sister type of a thing,they are the best and final source of data on themselves.

Yeah. And thatreally, really empowers the individual to control and own their data, to derivevalue from it and determine their kind of own self-determination when it comesto who and when and how people see and use their data. Yeah. So that's, that'sthe shift of, of what we've done, and happy to talk more about how we do that.

Julian:Yeah. Yeah.  

One thing I wasgonna ask is, is it, is it a monetized model? What are ways that you drivevalue and, and kind of affect consumer? And, what, what kind of structure doyou have set to kind of, continue, not only building trust in this relationshipwith your customers, but also get them onboarded onto, cause I feel like thatwould be a huge, a huge concern of mine would be just onboarding as many usersas possible to have a pool of, of data to then.

Ideally go and,sell to, or tell the opportunity to. And yeah, I'd love for you to expand onthat.  

Jonathan: So,good, good question. I mean, we think about it in a couple ways. Like one,let's maybe start with the onboarding and we'll go to the value. A big issue inWeb3 is that most wallets have not been able to monetize and they have not beenable to figure out a repeatable revenue stream that is not dependent uponswapping crypto.

And so in a, in a.Bull market, that might be a good sum of money, but you're probably onlytouching a very small fraction of your user base. In a bear market. That userbase probably goes way, way down. And we know, even from talking to people inthe industry, people that were dependent upon swaths have taken a huge hit.

Yeah, the last 12months. So like we start with that, like our go-to market and it's kind offunny, we've built a browser extension, so. Get downloaded in the Chrome Storeright now. We've also have a mobile app, both iOS and Android. The truth is weactually don't think most people will ever download our app, and we're okaywith that.

Yeah. Because we'vedesigned this to be an SDK with four lines of code. We can inject this into anyother custodial or non-custodial crypto wallet. This really positions us tohave. A very effective go-to market. It's also why we've built the product notto basically compete with them. Yeah, we could have built our own wallet anddone crypto custody and things like that, but for us it was more important tobuild a product that could scale with these types of partners.

As opposed tobuilding a complete soup to nuts, which would make us competitive with otherpeople in the market. So, so does the,  

Julian:sorry, don't mean to interrupt. So does the, the product essentially works withthe wallet, is it almost act as like a filter or mesh or medium or membrane tolike, filter we through?

Jonathan:It's. Own purpose, purpose built data layer. Mm-hmm. And this adds a ton offunctionality where a wallet can then integrate this and they get analytics ontheir own user base if they're non-custodial. Right. And they're able toderive, real value from this a across a super big medium. Yeah.

And so this, this,we think about it as referral fees. Advertising royalties and data queriesbegin to build a long-term value proposition for this wallet that becomeslong-term revenue. And then the user gets the functionality to own and controltheir data in a, in a very familiar use case. And it doesn't have to be acrypto wallet, it could be an iot device, it could be a Web2 application.

The, the SDK can beinjected in about anything, and that allows a lot of flexibility for us to goafter. Web2 clients and Web2 data just as well as we can do Web3 clients andWeb3 data. So it is very, very flexible there. And the engine we've builtallows the value to be Web3 and Web2 for the end consumer.

Yeah, so it couldbe a transfer of U S D C, it could be an N F T, it could be an in-game item. Itcould also be a Web2 claim code. It gets you 10% off in order. It's just, it'svery varied that way.  

Julian:It's so brilliant. The, and I'm guessing it was purposeful, obviously to buildthe extension or the piece that, that worked with the wallet, rather thanbuilding your own wallet or building its own mechanical device.

Is that just forspeed to go to market? Was that kind of behind that decision or adaptability?

Jonathan:It was both seen in realization that, Having this integration with other cryptowallets would, would be a massive Yeah. Way to boot or go to market andfrankly, align value across the industry. Yeah. Versus asking everybody to justdrop their current wallet infrastructure.

And I think thewallet space is pretty red ocean. Like we didn't wanna compete in the red oceanmarket. This really is more of a blue ocean market for us and is providing apathway to the, frankly just aligned value for the ecosystems.  

Julian:Yeah.  

And how does thischange how brand, content and, and your strategies or how, how does that changehow they're going to camp campaigns?

That's the word Iwas looking for. How, how are those campaigns gonna change and have you alreadyseen brands. Making a shift versus, typically it's like, Hey, this is whatwe're doing. If you like it, come buy it and we'll drive traffic to us. Itseems like it's a way more collaborative experience with, within the Web3ecosystem if you wanna do it well as a brand.

How, what changesin those campaigns  

Jonathan:for the campaign perspective, you're now able to basically marry like Web2 datawith the Web3 data. And we do this in a way that's anonymized. So even though Imight know, Julian, that you're say 25 to 30. Hispanic male, I'm not gonnaknow. Or actually you, I'm not gonna know.

Like your cityyou're in. Sure. It's anonymized so that we protect the privacy of theindividual at a cohort basis. So that we think is super important forprotecting Web3 users. And, but it gives the brands the ability to have verytargeted precise ways to reach those users. And so you can begin to kind of.

Extrapolate. Well,if Julian is a fan of Nike and he's a fan of Mercedes was doing that with a bigNFT push, you can begin to figure out co-marketing and maybe you follow certainInstagram or TikTok influencers, right? Able to bring in that type of data aswell. And so you be, for a brand, you're able to get the targeting, growth andretention metrics you would expect in Web2, but it is not available in Web3.

Yeah, and thatallows us to have next generation, basically campaigns. The other thing is, asyou think about airdrops, even if you're doing, you could do airdrop as anadvertisement, but even if you're a project and you're doing an airdrop, yeah,most of this has been spray and prey and you hope you're not getting hit by toomany bots.

We can have realperson qualifiers so that you can have smart airdrops, and you really begin togated by geography and gated by certain other features. For both a regulatoryand a market growth perspective to optimize, every finite penny. Yeah. To getthe best value for your dollar. And that just doesn't exist right now in Web3.

Yeah. There's a lotof folks who are now trying to do attribution, but they're doing it in a waywhere they're effective. They're effectively just data harvesters. And they'renot respecting the privacy of the individual and like that's gonna work forsome, I, I totally get it. If you don't care about privacy maybe you should gowith them.

But if you do care,care about privacy, nobody does a better job than Snickerdoodle. And on top ofthat, because we're marrying this Web2 and Web3 data, the data sets we'll haveare gonna be richer when with that Web2 data than anybody else just scrapingstuff from the internet. Which is most of the other projects out there.

Julian:Yeah. It's such a huge value add to the brands. Right. And, and because you,you think about how much, especially sustainability is becoming way more in theforefront, and it seems like Web3 and sustainability, obviously, that therehas, it's, it's It, it, it's usage of energy and all that, but in terms of howit can impact how much companies are making, how people collaborate, see and,and just overall be more sensible about, the campaigns more intentional about,the products that are made and, and distributed into the world.

It seems excitingto, to have that kind of relationship and, and, and have that cohesiveness.And, I thinking about your business, whether it's external or internal,  

what do you view assome of the biggest risks that your company faces today?  

Jonathan: Imean you talked about it a little bit earlier, it's making sure we can hit thegrowth curves on onboarding and like, that's the challenge.

And I think we havea compelling value prop and we're working towards addressing that, pendingthat. Obviously regular regulation is always out there. We think we've done apretty good job to make sure that we're compliant and that we're futurethinking in this space. I mean, I think those are probably the two biggest riskpoints we have.

Yeah. And then justyour macro crypto climate, like we've, we've been very conservative in a lot ofways. We've thought about this. Un like a lot of companies in the space, we'vehad to lay people off. It's never fun. It's something, something I enjoy. It'ssomething I feel, not great about.

But when it comesto making sure that we can be lean and nimble and preserve runway to make surewe get the best chance at this, we're doing what we need to do. So we, I feellike we're in a good spot to get this done, but it's, making sure we buildsomething that's easy to use and frankly have the resources to.

Sustained to bettereconomic climate. And that's really the, the difficulty, the chasm in front ofus.  

Julian:Yeah.

If everything goes well, what's the long-termvision for the company?  

Jonathan:Well, I mean, I think the interesting thing for us is with enough people in themodel, we can begin to discreetly price data.

Yeah. And thatbecomes really compelling because if we can discreetly price data and say, thevalue of my data is a thousand dollars, maybe your value is true, is $2,000 foryou. We can begin to build financial products around that. And so if we thinkabout DeFi, DeFi has been very exclusionary. If you're using mainline Ethereum,it's incredibly expensive to put money on.

No one's gonna goput a hundred dollars on Ethereum and DeFi. If you're spending $20 to put onand $30 to take it out. It just doesn't work. No for us. We think that there'sa future when this system is more on apex, where we can allow people to dothings like collateralize loans with their data tank up sums do things thatthis in some ways becomes a private sector, universal basic income.

Yeah. And that's avery, very interesting value prop that is still probably five to 10 years out.Yeah, but you know, if we can get this thing going, there's a lot of realpotential there that I think is super exciting and goes to beyond just abusiness, but generally doing good for society. And that's, that's a superexciting proposition.

Julian:Yeah. I agree. Yeah. I love this next section I'll call my founder faq. So I'mgonna hit you with some rapid fire questions and we'll see where we get. So,always like to open it up with

what's particularly hard about your job day today.  

Jonathan: Ithink like in the last couple months it's been working through fundraising,like a challenging climate, we have a good product.

Yeah. And numbersto back it up. I think people have just been, harder on crypto and that's madefundraising tougher than it has been the last couple years. So now I'll, I'llsay that one. That's just been a, a tough go the last three, four months.  

Julian:Yeah.  

What's somethingthat, you do, or maybe what's something that you're, you're good at now as afounder that you wish you were better at earlier on?

Jonathan: Ithink I've grown in making this tougher business decisions, and I think youhave to develop the thicker skin in terms of looking at, a financial statementand cashflow perspectives and realizing what is a priority and what's not. Ithink honestly, I've been better at saying no, and being able to say no moreeasily is.

It is always adifficulty thing, but I think that's gotten easier. And then being able to maketougher financial decisions where, I liked the people we had that we had to letgo last week, and it was a matter of making a very clinical business decision.Yeah. Trying to take care of our people, obviously with severance and things,but making the clinical decision that we had to do this to ensure the numbersmade sense to investors.

And that we had therunway to execute.  

Julian:Yeah. Yeah. It, it's interesting cuz a lot of people don't see the other sideand, what do you do to kind of decompress or, or kind of get away from, justthe harsh reality of, of the impact and the weight of a lot of decisions that,founders have to make because we're all, we're all in similar seats and, and noone's there to, work along with us to really, take some of that burden.

We all kind of takeit to heart,  

what are somethings that you do to, that other founders could do to kind of, decompress alittle bit?  

Jonathan: Ithink it comes down to finding like a cadre of people, and it could be family,it could be friends outside of work, and yeah, snicker doodle. I've had the,the pleasure and benefit of working with very close friends when we started thecompany.

That also madesometimes making business decisions a lot more difficult because it's crowdedby, in something like one case, more than a decade of friendship. So I thinkfinding people that are not related to work and finding things that arecompletely divorced from work. So for me I spend a lot of time with my dogs.

Dogs are, dogslisten very well. I'll put, I'll put it that way. They may not give a goodresponse, but they listen very well. And it's good to spend time just not thinkingabout work for a couple hours a day. I think I've also become a little morereligious about taking time off on the weekend and I'll and invariably work atleast 12 to 10 hours, 10 to 12 hours on a weekend.

But I'll try totake one day off. Yeah. And not do work stuff just to, to make sure I havesanity and I can be as sharp as possible in those other days.  

Julian:Yeah.  

Thinking about yourproduct and, and what will propel your product to really kind of take on thatadoption curve? Is it, are you building towards this eventual product that youfeel will have, really strong product of market fit?

Is it a partnershipthat you think, if we partner with X company and offer 'em to their, group ofcustomers, we really think we could hit this curve and, and get mass adoption,get other partners involved. What really propels this thing forward foryou?  

Jonathan: Ithink it, it comes down to partnerships and yeah, there's smaller cryptowallets.

We're in theprocess of getting our data wallet sdk deployed to, and then that sets us up tobigger conversations with companies like Meta Mask or Phantom or bigger wallets.And so it's, it's getting that initial proof point in product market that wassmaller actors. Like, whoa, okay. We're, we're getting real data.

We're getting realvalue. People are using it. They like it. That opens up this bigger and biggerpartnerships. And the nice thing is the, the fee splits all done at theprotocol level. Yeah. So you don't have to trust Snickerdoodle that you'll geta cut as you're, if you're an integrator. Yeah. You can just have to trust thecode and it's all there.

It's auditable. Andso that really begins to open up a true hockey stick in terms of adoption. Isthat data wallet integration plan, which, is our core go-to market strategy.Yeah. So we, we feel pretty strong about that.

Julian:Yeah. I always like to ask founders this question because I love how, allfounders kind of get knowledge from all different places, whether it's books,people, podcasts, if you were to think about something that's had a lastingimpact on you, what books or people or material out there has really kind oflasted, and had a lasting impact.

Jonathan: Ithink, I try to read as much as I can. If you read one thing every week, justread The Economist. It's a nice concise way to get a perspective of the world.What are trends? And that impacts everything from culture to business tofinance and government. I think that's a, that's a must. And I think it'sfinding this notion of like a personal advisory board, people you trust who areinvested in you.

And you can go toonce a quarter or once a month, whatever the, the timeframe is right. And gethonest feedback and yeah. A lot of people I think right now are frazzled whenthey get negative critiques and you get challenged and I think. I think franklythat's, you need that. I mean, we can't live in a snow globe with snowflakes.

Yeah. Yeah. Thereal world is super tough. People are gritty and you have to be able towithstand real criticism. It's the only way you're able to grow. Yeah. And.Somebody who there to give you a pep talk, okay, maybe every once in a while,but somebody who there and says, these are the things that need to change toget you to be a better version of yourself.

That is invaluable.And I think most people. Don't have somebody in their life who's gonna givethem a hard reality check. Yeah. And that is I think every founder needs that.And I think every, frankly, every person, even if you're not running a companyor being an entrepreneur, if you wanna have a growth mindset, you're gonna haveto face tough decisions, sacrificing realities, and it's not gonna be handed topeople on a silver platter.

Julian: Icouldn't agree more. Jonathan, it's been such a pleasure chatting with you. Iknow we're at the end of the episode here, but last little bit. Obviously I'llgive you a chance to give us all your plugs, but is there anything that wedidn't, if there, is there any question that I didn't ask you that I shouldhave or anything we left on the table here today?

Jonathan:No, I, I think this was pretty encompassing. We talked about Snickerdoodle andWe probably could do more on like government regulations stuff, but maybe wesave that for another show.  

Julian:Absolutely, absolutely.  

And last little bitis where can we find you? Give us your Twitter, your LinkedIn, where could webe a fan and support what you're doing?

Jonathan:Well, if you wanna check Snicker out mean we're snicker dle.com and you candownload our data wallet. On the Chrome Store, iOS or Android. So check us outthere, download the application, we'd love feedback, and then follow us onTwitter at yo Snickerdoodle and we'd love to, to have your support and, andhave you along for the ride.

Julian:Amazing, Jonathan, it's such a pleasure. Not only chatting about your earlycareer and kind of, the relationship between government and crypto, but reallykind of the, the more exciting piece is, is really, what you're building atSnickerdoodle, what you're allowing consumers and companies to really rethinktheir relationships with, how they, how they do, brands and collaborations.

It's so exciting tosee where this thing's gonna go. And yeah, if we have you on on the show again,I'd love to see where it gets to. But it's been such a pleasure and I hope youenjoyed yourself on the show today.  

Jonathan:Right. Thanks for having me and thanks for listening for those at home.  

Julian:Of course.  

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