From "Tezos Lady" to Launching a Web3 Venture Builder: Katherine Ng Discusses Her Journey & Vision for Katashe | Blockcast 21

Hey there Crypto Curious Gang, it's time to plug in and play with the blockheads at Blockcast. Strap in for a weekly whirlwind tour through the blockchain jungle, where NFTs, shiny coins and crypto titans tango. Serve that with the side of spicy insights and the crunchiest bits of the digital sphere. Let's dive into the decentralized deep end. Blockcast is live in 3, 2, 1. Welcome back to another episode of Blockcast. I'm your host for today, Cohan, co-founder here at Blockhead. I guess today is Katyn Ung. Many of you might know her as that Tezels lady from her three years as managing director at TZAPAC. But now she's moved on to even greener pastures, starting her own company Katash Studios last year. As part of her venture building portfolio, she is now serving as CSMO at Phil Liquid. Katyn, thanks for joining us today. Thanks for having me. So before we get started, let's get the elephant out of the room. How did you become the Tezels lady? I really love it when you say it's so funny. I actually find it funny and actually quite complimentary because I guess I've built a brand that people associated me as that Tezels' ecosystem lady and I think that's a testament of, okay, this is how people view a personal face to the name and from then on, I actually started in crypto way, way back like seven years ago. So my first project was actually an academic blockchain capstone project and it was on provenance of goods on chain and then I ventured into crypto full-time with a role in Liquid, which is a crypto fiat exchange regulated by the GFSA. So I was the global marketing head for them for three years and then eventually I moved on to the Tezels' ecosystem. Then you mentioned leading the marketing and operations after it out here in APEC and then eventually becoming managing director and I was there for three years. So there after I got married last September and then I founded my own venture builder called Katash Solutions with my husband and it's been it's been super fun like basically what Katash Solutions does were dedicated to transforming innovation into impact and we partner with Institution, startups, investors, policy makers, media agencies like Blockhead. We want to focus on strategic ecosystem building so it could be active investments, it could be strategic advisory roles, it could be ecosystem growth initiatives and we support founders and startups SMEs, new ventures across various growth stages from fundraising is where I'm at with Phil Liquid, product launches and digital transformations for Institution. So we believe in building that vibrant strategic ecosystem across multiple chains actually to create valuable networks that we see today that amplify our collective impact. So that's that in a nutshell. What was it from being the Tazzles lady? What skills and whatities do you feel they built to make you qualified for building Katash? Yeah that's a good question. Like being a crypto native and being an entrepreneur in a relatively mature layer one ecosystem I would say enabled me to see okay this is how to build an ecosystem inside out with support from the founders like so Arthur and Kathleen Brayden made a built a really amazing protocol and they were pioneers in in proof of stake technology so yeah I have a lot gratitude for them to give me the opportunity to help them grow the Tazzles ecosystem together with the community and when you're in it become like a multi-hyphenate of source like you do so many different things in a day to day it could be anywhere from yes of course you have these like strategic planning meetings you also work with startups on the ground to make sure that okay this is how you can onboard to the Tazzles ecosystem make it as user-friendly as possible it could be community growth initiatives like Tazzles was a very strong player in the NFT arts scene yeah and also like educating that the education and awareness part like how do we move towards like mainstream adoption in wetsri because I believe like all these technologies that we're R&Ding and innovating on right now they're eventually gonna you know maybe 10 years of 20 years become like the infrastructure that we use day to day without even thinking about it right so what was the main gap that you felt you saw during your time there which catashes trying to fill yeah so my heart has always been in building businesses that I love and scaling them so even way before crypto I was already scaling startups in southeast Asia so I was with grab a Sephora with ericisio office and that was enough yeah the web too realm and it always had the element of building that symbol of an operations of a business that I back and support vision wise mission wise and how it serves the community so with with grab and ericisio they were like enabling mass transportation at scale and also bringing people together so that was an improving safety of like people taking transportation for example on the streets for grab especially it was how do you make it safer for women to take caps on yeah so that was a big thing for me and then with Sephora it was like okay empowering beauty like making beauty accessible so that was really fun as well to build and taking the same ethos into web tree how do I support and build with founders that I am passionate about backing and do it in a way that is multi-chain as well because I believe in collaborative venture building so it spans yeah beyond just one ecosystem right many ecosystems coming together exchanging ideas different founders from different backgrounds all walks of life yeah coming together and aligning around like a common vision so I see like you know really cool areas of interest across the web through media across the DeFi gaming etc like digital transformation and that's kind of like where I want to be I want to be there and take all the experience that I've had in tezos building the team and then also operationalizing their APAC offices and then making sure that of course then when I leave there's a team to inherit what I've built and then moving on to taking my own like growth initiatives to greater heights and really own it for myself yeah okay I know you've joked about it according to tezos lady and everything but it is that something that now moving forward how do you evolve from representing tezos before yeah do I think people withdraw into you for you as a as a person hmm hence why you know we made that link because of being the tezos lady but now that you you have your own brand which is separate obviously it's completely separate to tezos but also somewhat separate to yourself is that yeah so I don't like the struggle there all that's a good question I would say that Katash is my company brand and it's of course incorporated in Singapore and it's founded co-founded with my husband who's my strategic advisor investor mentor biggest supporter it is separate but my personal brand is very much interconnected with it so whatever I do it is for the advancement of the Katash mission and vision so that's kind of like how I see it it's also like my marriage right like in business in marriage in business in partnership like how do we build a safe house that is our marriage and how do we as individuals my husband and I contribute to this like visit to this marriage right which is a separate entity from a status relationship yeah and so that's how like I think I view it as an expansion of myself as in terms of self identity some people tend to view it in black and white it's like oh I have a family now I have mom obligations and so I give up so much of myself to be this different persona but that's kind of self-limiting by we are perspective I think like to have a more expensive view like I am actually growing in different areas of my life so you know it's for me it's across not just tussles lady but like venture building lady like actually venture building lady but but 2.5 venture building lady so that's that's kind of like where I'm transitioning to where it's and growing and also that's also a role of wife daughter yeah and friend so it's it's solemn and compassing too Katash is a mognation of your names right if I'm not not mistaken it's right at what point did you feel it was right to work with your partner like yeah her that it's quite like her yeah it's a risky but you're husband that you felt like at least with this project that you felt that you can what's going on yeah like when we first started talking about it it's like yeah you should you know you've been an entrepreneur intrapreneur for the longest time and you've always had entrepreneurial dreams so my husband actually really encouraged me there and when I was incorporating my company I think I incorporated with 10 million shares or something like this because like you just want to have growth growth mindset for the future and I literally made him like the biggest shareholder and that was how much trust I had with him and him and he's very much pivotal in my day to day and in by way of like being my mentor Yeah, like even before we were like talking together right now Come in like he was like stress testing me a little bit like okay. This is how you should prep You know this is what you say that you know what you know what you have to say so yeah He's he's he's great in that he supports like me as a woman in tech leadership and he also like Supports me as a wife. So yeah, he we I think the good thing about modern marriages today Or even like yeah really modern relationships is that men and women are like kind of Equal more equalized in there are parenting responsibilities like I was in a mall last week for Easter Sunday and then I saw like a lot of Families like an equal representation of fathers and mothers actually tending to their kids during during like Easter Sunday activity So I say hey, this is this representation. It's progress So I feel like because my husband's like super progressive and and he's Very supportive of what I do like this partnership enables a very very like strong partnership Yeah, I think it is actually very forward thinking and I feel like it's pushing boundaries I mean, we're already celebrating like women leading projects, but I think I can even think of another Websy project where husband and wife Yeah, I need any right. Um, well, yeah, Arthur and Kathleen are co-founders and they're also married. Yeah, right. Yeah, it's it's rare But yeah, it's how do you um define your roles in and catash? What do you like what are you in charge of compares with your husbands in charge of I? Basically run the day-to-day. I'm the face of the company. So everything from pitching to client management to like ops Finance it's me and also when it comes to like strategic Thinking about where we want to head towards like he's He's my strategic advisor. So that's he so he's at a very high Strategic level. That's where he comes in because he's not so involved in the day-to-day He he does have a full-time job. So he's in advertising. Yeah So that's that's where we kind of delineate aligned duties and When and responsibilities, I also give him like you know like weekly updates Like this is catashillation weekly update entrepreneur update, then I'll like give him all the to-do's and done doing done Start-up stand-up style. Yeah, and then he'll give me feedback. So that's how we that's how we Divi so far is going going smoothly. He thinks yeah, I think okay So so there's this different work management styles, right? Like I'm the type that I would just like get consumed by work And before I met my husband I'll be like 24/7 work work work and not have boundaries. It does affect sleep Patent I must say but with my husband he's like very strict on boundary setting So he's like okay like hardstop at this time and we're not gonna talk about work anymore It's let's focus on chilling. Yeah, and I think that's that's actually good to have. Okay Let's talk a bit about your dual roles that For liquid. Yeah, catash. How do you manage your time? This is this is where like I put on the multi-project Elon Musk cat, right? Like I work closely with the fill liquid team to drive their investor growth strategies and also their Engagement with these strategic investors this and depending on their Rolls priorities because we're right now going through an angel round This is where they need help the most so I work with them there closely on that and then within catash It's basically like a synergistic kind of strategy because I as a venture builder want to back projects I believe in founders that I believe in founders that have like court tech capabilities So the fill liquid tech team and one of the advisors contributed to the Call protocol of the Falco in ecosystem. So he's very solid and then With this dual engagement. It's it's a win-win because I'm able to grow catash and take on more projects at the same time Contribute to fill liquid too because to be honest like it's they see this as a Win-win for them too. There's a in-house team. That's already very strong. So I just need to come in and like Provide that strategic advisory that gives them that next push So think on me. It's like that internal like McKinsey consultant or something like that. Yeah, but for what three? Those who are unfamiliar can you give us a quick round down of what fill it with? Yeah, so fill liquid is a defile liquidity protocol file coin ecosystem and Yeah, I noticed blockade actually ran a really good good article on it was fantastic It was really really well written. Yeah on how Falco is leading decentralized store solution For web 3. I think Falco is number one by market cap like 6b in the deep in decentralized physical infrastructure network play so last year the Falco in ecosystem released yeah Falco in virtual machine tech and that enabled a lot of like that Use cases expansion of all sorts of use cases primarily the first ones It got published was like that got pushed to pass that in mean it was defi protocols So fill liquid is one of them because it serves in a liquidity in need for the ecosystem itself when Storage providers aka least node validators want to help validate the network a security network. They actually Have to pledge some sort of collateral in fill tokens. We just donated crypto currency of Alcoin to spin up No, the column storage providers. So this is where some nice thing neat like we have liquidity requirements to Finance there hardware and software Infrastructure and that's where fill liquid comes in to enable that lending and borrowing activity to happen on chain and also connect and uses the retail users to Who are looking for some sort of like incremental income on their gains on their token or add value to their current token holdings in in the Falco ecosystem so they so they bridge that with the fill liquid platform So I think like retail users can land stake earn and then after that like in return they get The fake tokens which is the government tokens of fill liquid and all the liquid derivatives token which is fit I mean it sounds like so is it something very specific? Yeah, like a corner of define everything. So I was wondering going back to Katash How are you able to I'm assuming that fill liquid won't be the first and last right? You imagine you want to take on more more projects. Yeah, how are you capable of having such a Brat's of knowledge about all these areas of web3? Yeah, I think the last thing that comes with building ecosystem is that you get exposed to a large number of use cases across like key adoption verticals so for most like critical layers like L ones altos like you do either service thing like Daps that give you the most activity on chain activity So you're looking at either like gaming you're looking at DeFi you're looking at web2 brands coming in with a web3 strategy like loyalty programs is a very big one Still very at least ages though. So like Starbucks with polygon for example or grab launching its battery wallet with circle and polygon too. So it's a big use cases because with web2 brands They bring in all the users that are crypto curious or never been exposed to crypto before Yeah, and there's a lot of enablement work that comes along with it So having that ability for me not just in crypto right to look across different use cases But that web2 scaling experience I had we're building these startups across a ratio grab and Sephora like I can bridge that web2 world with web3 and facilitate that That transformation. So that's kind of like where I'm placing myself in catash because I see catash as like the first hybrid venture builder across web2 and web3 domains for APAC And that's how I'm like differentiating myself in the market least because you have a lot of product labs like web3 product labs or web3 studios and stuff like that But no one really bridging those two Yeah, or having relevant experience in both realms. Yeah, is there any kind of kind of specific In what see they you're looking for that perhaps fill it with falls under like for your next venture is that and I think you've Got an eye out for I'm actually very interested in the defy space and rw a Enablement so another project I'm looking at because these de gate and also The loyalty space I was mentioning like so this a platform called vself Those founders that I've connected and I want to do most strategic collaborations But the whole community as a service play as well. This is very interesting to me So this art community of which I'm a part of and how do we Actually like move the space forward as a collective is is something I want to explore further with these kind of like founders, right? Roxanna, aroy, etc. So these I would say other means spaces. There's also ecosystem builders that I believe in working locally. Yep in every market I go through in Southeast Asia And then there's also the europe and us ecosystem builders tips at as well that I have connections with. So I see Singapore is just like, hub where by virtue of Changi being the best apple in the wool connects everybody, when he's lying from East and West. Yeah, so I believe in that being that bridge. Yeah. I think like with Falcoin, it's a very, very interesting product. I'm also kind of relatively new to the Falcoin ecosystem, but like I'm seeing a lot of momentum and pick up in the deep in narrative and like how decentralized storage solutions can help power like all our underlying infrastructures. We move towards like a real like seamless web three experience. I think like with DeFi liquidity protocols, it's a necessity. It's like an essential for any ecosystem to thrive, right? And with Falcoin, they have like really interesting like USBs, like their simple fee model. It's that and also they are interested. They are very dynamically adjusted based on the demand and supply of fill. So they're just the API and API in real time. Some protocols adjusted manually. So that's a USB. They have unique risk management protocols in place to ensure that the quality pools are never drained and that customer funds are kept safe. And then they also have this very interesting feature where miners actually don't have to pay more upfront costs to borrow money. The protocol enables miners to collaterize, sorry, storage providers to collaterize existing pledges in a Falcoin ecosystem and use that for collateralization. So I thought that was a pretty interesting and cool as a feature, yeah. What do people have to look forward to for Falcoin and fill it with? Yeah, so the long term narrative that's really trending right now is with the rise of AI data models. And everyone's using AI now on a day-to-day with ChatGPT and whatnot and all the chatbond. So it's very real to us. But AI maybe 10 years ago was quite esoteric. But there's still a lot of innovation are indeed going on. So we're foreseeing, like as these data models continue to develop and grow and more LLMs are being built, there is a need for more data storage that's more cost-efficient and secure and also some AI scientists may want to store the data in trustless infrastructure. So that's where Falcoin, I think, is positioned well to cater to this market need, to help service this long-term demand driven by AI growth of data models, yeah. What are your views on the market right now and how does the boom market-- this incredible boom market affects your business? Yeah, so this boom market has been really positive momentum for fundraising for sure. It's helped put the wind in the sales of a lot of startups. I'd say that, of course, in the crypto markets, things tend to be very cyclical, right? But my hope is that one day we will as a whole crypto economy mature and have whatever you see in top 50 CoinMarker Cap, right? They become like, they evolve not just as speculative tokens or mean tokens, but like, blue chip tokens, like what Fortune 500 companies are. So it becomes very stable. Yeah, so you have the bulls and boughs and whatever it is, but then you'll have resilient tokens, crypto economies that will be able to withstand that peak sense prowess and based on real world utilization and value. So that's where the RWA piece comes in. Yeah, if we can tokenize more doodish companies that we support and eventually have more people deploy capital in the space. How does Adventure Builder like Kutash build resilience for-- I guess you could say-- like you said, it's cyclical, right? So it's inevitable that there's going to be some target he's ahead at some point. How do you prepare yourself for that? I think when we had these DeFi summer and then there was a bear, right? I was found that two projects and the founders that are able to risk manage the runway and liquidity management well tend to fare better in the long run. Like with some other Venture STEM building, same like the Ministry for Good Show I was mentioning to you about. We're very careful about deploying funds in capital unless we see some proper monetization model coming in or like, OK, this project makes sense. Let's then let's deploy more effort in funding there. Yes, we don't mind testing the market and working with vendors and smaller projects out of pocket. But we want to make sure that this makes sense for us and it's strategic. So that's how we do it. Always deploy test budgets a little bit incrementally and then scale up from there. So what's next for you guys? Good one. We're going to be at Southeast Asia Blockchain Week. And I think like Blockade has supporting side event there to catash our solutions and friends will be having a little small side event as well. Shout out to the Charlotte team for putting this mega countries together in Thailand. And I'm looking forward to reconnecting with my thigh friends and a thigh of three community there in Bangkok. It's been a good chat. And thanks for facilitating this. And keep an eye out for more updates from the Falcoin and Philiquid community. We're going to be launching TestNet Phase 2 on April 10th. And that's going to be another major ad drop moment. Yeah, so stay tuned for that. What's the best way for people to keep abreast of Falcoin and Philiquid and catash? Oh, yeah. Social media. Yeah, this catash solutions on Twitter, I'm starting to be more active there. And then there's also Philiquid on Twitter, Telegram, Discord. Yeah, so we'll put a links. Cool. Thanks very much for your time. It was a pleasure having you. Thanks, good one. Everyone listening, we'll catch you next time.