Marketing With Mansoor Madhavji Partner-Blockchain Founders Fund

Welcome to the Blockchain Marketing Podcast, your go-to resource for tried and true crypto marketing strategies. As passionate marketers and communication specialists in the space, Simon Moser and Jonathan King of Polygrowth PR bring you the latest trends and techniques that are working right now for their agency's clients and share exclusive insights from special guests who are successful innovators in the industry. So grab your notepad and set your stop losses because you won't want to miss what's next. Here are your hosts, Simon Moser and Jonathan King. I'm excited to meet up with some friends, but before we do that we have a special guest. And really honored to have him. So we're very lucky to have him on and I want to introduce him. And I think this is going to be a very valuable conversation especially at this time where the market's going, where the industry is going, everything. So Munsuah, welcome to the Blockchain Marketing Podcast. You are a partner, advisor, mentor, global citizen. You love to travel. Change creator and an impact-driven leader and a lot more. And today you are representing the Blockchain Founders Fund and we're just really excited to have you on the show. How are you doing? Hey, Simon, hey, Jonathan, thanks for the warm introduction. I'm doing great and excited to be here. Excellent. Well, man, we really just would love to get started with a bit about your background. You've got deep roots in marketing before shifting over into finance and web three. As I mentioned before, you really work with a lot of projects around the world and are creating impact within these organizations. So how did you get into this? Yeah, so that's a long journey. But back in the day, I was at a boutique investment firm trading derivatives and wanted to start something of my own. And so I partnered up, found a co-founder and we started a marketing tech company which grew really fast, 24 people across Canada, Philippines. And it was a time where a lot of what I would say is commonplace in the realm of marketing when it comes to digital didn't exist back then. So it was still a time where Facebook had a stance like we will never allow advertisers on our platform. Of course, after that, they went public. That all changed when they had to start making money. But timing wise, we had an opportunity to capture a big client base and start digitizing on a lot of their marketing, getting them involved into social channels. And in 2014, we exited that company. I'm still like, I remember doing a lot of the sales, getting companies using our products like there was a lot of education, right? Like a lot of companies, even though we say like now when we look back, we're like 28, 29, 2010, 2011, 2012, these years, like people knew about all these digital solutions but a lot of companies weren't digital yet. Like sure, some of the biggest ones had websites and things. But it wasn't to the level where it is today where companies know everything about you. They know what you're thinking about when you're sleeping. So that level of data wasn't there, right? And companies were just trying to be like, we need to make social posts or we need to figure out how we can tap into data and information about our customer, create a more direct engagement with our customer. So these sorts of things, which it was very nascent, right? And so times have changed a lot since then. But anyways, so after doing that backpacked for a year in 2015, so went to Europe, went to India, went to Southeast Asia, and then 2016, alley, my brother and partner on blockchain and founder's fund, he started a crypto exchange. And so again, he asked me if I would help them on the crypto exchange. So we worked together, grew really fast, and then eventually India bands tap and which essentially forced an overnight shutdown. And we had an opportunity to exit and sell the tech. There was this period where everybody wanted me to start a crypto exchange. And so that's kind of at the tail end of 2017 there. That's when we started blockchain, founder's fund and starting investing in early stage blockchain and crypto companies. And then fast forward to today, we've raised another fund with external capital. And we're typically investing between three, four, five deals per month and so we're very active in the space. Excellent. And so that is a very impressive background. And I love that journey and I love to hear it because you started off exactly where the founders are. We've had a lot of experience talking to either different funds and they've often had to bring in outside advisors of people who have gone through that journey of starting something from scratch and then being able to exit. And so you are really able to mentor these projects and mentor these founders in a different way that I know creates a lot of value there at blockchain founders fund as well. But that's incredible. >> Yeah, I'll just jump in there, right? Really quickly, a little point. But I always believe in that hustle lifestyle. If I'm investing and BFF, we're investing in a founder, we want them to be hustlers. We want them thinking how they're going to grow the business from zero to one in a shorter amount of time than people would expect. And I only see it as fair is if we're demanding that from the founders we're investing in, we should also have the illness to do the same thing on our side. And so we're also hustling four founders trying to figure out what are the key pain points and how we can work with them to solve it. And in many ways, I don't even look at it as like, we're trying to mentor these founders. In many cases, when we're investing, we already believe in a founders skillset and in many occasions, they have previous entrepreneurial experience. And so maybe there's an element of mentorship when it's something very specific or nuance that one of us might have better experience on. But in many ways, I look at it not so much as a mentor, a mentee relationship, but more of as a team relationship. Where we're working together to achieve a set of outcomes. And so in that way, we actually attempt to be very involved with trying to deliver big strategic kind of partnerships or figuring out things that are going to significantly improve product distribution, things like that. I love it. So you guys really get down into essentially a focus on being a partner. How can we really help you in that? That's a cool thing. The other thing that you guys do very well, and I'd love and I know our audience would love it as well, is to get your advice on marketing yourself. So blockchain founders fund, I've seen Tobias out there everywhere on the speaking trail as well. And just have really seen a presence from you guys. Lots of PR, lots of news. I'd love to understand from your perspective, what is a good way for a founder and a project to market itself as they're going into a season of fundraising? For example, they don't have a very large budget, but how do you get these funds and how do I get as a founder that your attention, what are you guys paying attention to and what's the best way for them to market themselves to get the attention of a fund that they want to invest in them? Cool. Yeah. So to answer your question, right? And there's a couple of parts to it. So I think first, I really believe that we want the founders to have credit in a spotlight for their accomplishments. And so in that way, our companies that we invest in to have the spotlight as opposed to news or whatever coming out from like us as a investors and as a fund about the companies and founders that we invested. One example I kind of see a lot on LinkedIn or other social media is almost like the investor kind of saying like, you know, proud for our company, our portfolio company to have achieved so and so. And I'm sure like we also have posts like that. But that is something that like we're very conscious of it and aware of that we try to make sure that it's the founders that we invest in that have the spotlight. They're the ones putting in the hard work and we should be kind of unnoticed in behind the scenes. But again, it is a balance 'cause we need other founders and companies to notice us and want to work with us and want to take investment from us. Then on the other part about like founders fundraise and are wanting to invest in a founder. I think like there's a couple of things and one thing that I think I see quite commonly in the crypto space especially is sometimes too much focus on like community and don't get it wrong. Communities extremely important. But if someone comes to you with a pitch deck and you know you ask them about traction or you pull up the traction slide and you see like 12,000 discord followers, 20,000 Twitter followers and you think to yourself, like well how does this translate to anything meaningful in terms of like users on the product monetization? It leaves a lot of question marks and sometimes it presents an idea of like is the founder focused on the right thing or is it just a vanity metric? And so I think like that's sometimes one where where like you have an opportunity as a founder I think to demonstrate like what have you actually accomplish in like the time that you've been working on this project and how you've essentially driven results with any other previous funding that you would have received. And I think at the end of if what you're gonna point to is like you know community numbers and for some projects like yes, the community does make sense. But in many cases it doesn't right? And so I think sometimes that's maybe something that's overlooked or maybe not given enough consideration. But I think the projects that we end up investing in we find like a strong belief in the founders, right? Of course I think at the stage that we're investing very early a key thing is I do believe in the founders their vision, like their ability to execute. And oftentimes it's gonna relate back to some indications of success in like their career or earlier in their life, right? And I think that's sometimes maybe one of the most critical things that we will look at. So whether it's like you know how to preview start or how to preview this exit maybe was in a corporate but you know in a senior position managing like managing a big department or PNL could be it. Maybe it was you know they were an athlete and a champion or something like but something that can indicate success, right? So that's like I think the first part and obviously a trust and belief that they can accomplish their vision. But then the second part I think is you know the market and what they're actually trying to accomplish and then the progress over time, right? And like if the founders have worked on some for three years and it hasn't really gone anywhere, then you have to really question like do you really see it going somewhere in the next one or two years and of course I get this industries early and so it may and in many cases like it's guys like that that hustle you know have their heads down for a number of years and build something but it does introduce question of like is this investible from like a venture perspective as like we have like a finite timeline on the fun life. And so if we think something might you know be a good investment but it doesn't really match the investment horizon then that's also another problem, right? And so that's maybe a high level overview of course. There's many other factors like internally we have about 80 different things that we end up checking but like these are maybe some of the key things and of course many of those are sub points within those categories. - That's really insightful. I mean anyone who's looking to get a partner like you they should just listen again and again to what you said and prepare themselves for that. I didn't even know that you know it's such a complex process to choose these projects on so many different points. But what do you think? Yes, sir? - Oh, one thing I was gonna add that I love when founders reach out and you know are not necessarily raising investment but they're kind of coming from the lines like hey we're thinking about raising around in two months, three months, six months, whatever timeframe it is or even hell if it's like I'm starting this company like next week and I'd love to get some thoughts on like how we should form like some thoughts on the market. Like and I'm not necessarily saying like hey just give me a call 100 people and then like I'll jump on a call with everyone and you have advice like that's obviously not feasible but generally speaking like you know building that relationship with a founder before their fundraising is actually very nice because you know like think about it, you know put yourself in like the investors shoes, right? Like they're giving you money and then they're trusting that at some point in the future you're essentially gonna give them more money, right? And that conversation that you have or those few conversations that relationships you start building with them before they have to make the investment decision, goes a long way and actually shrinking the timeline that they'll need to make an investment decision, right? And so like because in that relationship say it's like three, four months before you're seeking investment, you're keeping that investor updated on what's happening in the company, giving you know giving them the news, things like that. And so when it comes time to make the investment decision, they already know like what kind of growth you're having. They're already knowing what challenges you're having and they can already see like themselves like does this make sense for us or not? And there'll be much quicker at giving you a decision. Of course like building that relationship you know to do that you have to be like you know planned in advance, right? You can't be three weeks away from going bankrupt and then being like I'm gonna build a relationship it doesn't it doesn't work that way, right? So you need to have like time on your side and need to plan ahead to be able to do that. But I love when founders like reach out with like those kind of conversations like before they're fundraising. - Awesome and Mansoor do you also consider the different sectors of the blockchain industry when making investments like for example, I think we all can all agree that AI is a really strong narrative in this environment. Is that a concern for you? Are you just looking at the founders and how they are running their project? - Yeah, so there's a gap. Like a couple parts that question, right? I'll first of all you start with like what will look at investing? And so for us like you know given the size and the number of investments that we're doing we're comfortable involved in we're comfortable investing across the entire spectrum of the blockchain industry, right? So all the verticals. And so that can be you know companies that are using blockchain but not really using crypto so this could be maybe more of your B2B solutions, maybe private blockchain related stuff, things like that, right? Then you have like a lot of like crypto specific stuff where there's like tokens involved whether they're stable coins, utility coins, security tokens like which cover like a lot of the RWA's that are a hot topic right now. And then you have other businesses that might not be using blockchain or crypto but are servicing the industry in some way, right? And so this could be things like exchanges. I know like Dexas they'll use blockchain as well but like things like exchanges like different kind of settlement businesses like Primes like the core business doesn't use blockchain but their core clients are you know blockchain and crypto companies and they're facilitating transactions for crypto companies and so like this category as well, right? And so we're comfortable investing across that entire spectrum. And then when it comes to like vertical specifically so whether it's like you know supply chain or AI or RWA's again, same sort of thing, right? Comfortable investing across any kind of space within the industry of course, like we would have to see a thesis like internally that we believe in a certain vertical and that there's an opportunity there. But you know, given that, we would invest in any vertical in the space, right? And I think because this space is so nice and there are so many so many products, so many technologies that need to kind of get built for the industry to like work efficiently and kind of not just like mirror the, of the financial system, but like improve upon it. And even other kind of service, not just the financial system, there's a lot of stuff that needs to still come to market. And so there's tremendous opportunity. And then it's just a question, well, like, do we see it as a fit in our realign on that kind of underlying thesis that the founder has and then kind of going from there? - Excellent. That is great. Just additional feedback for everyone. Man, I actually want to get into some of the projects that you guys may be excited about. The Bitcoin has consistently been going up recently in the last couple of weeks. And we've seen a great market shift. And I think people are really excited about where we're headed. One, what are you guys excited about? And then are there any projects that you've invested in? Splinterland, for example, that you may be really excited about as we are looking like we could potentially enter into the next bull run. - Yeah. So obviously, I don't want to like, jinx anything, but over the past month or five, four or five weeks, it seems like sentiments and picking back up. Bitcoin's been on a little bit of a run. Of course, there's been some, with the news of finance and CZ, I would say some negatives, depending on your perspective. But obviously that was big news and him stepping down. And so maybe one way to look at it is like, okay, all the big fish are caught. Now there's only up to go in the market. So hopefully that's it. In terms of some of the verticals that we like a lot right now. So definitely very interested in the RWA space, especially when stuff is direct exposure to assets. So things like that can get direct access to different financial products, whether it's like asset-backed securities, rather fixed incomes, or even like invoice financing or asset financing, stuff like that is very exciting. Just because I think like, right now interest rates are high. And like, there's projects that have launched off, putting capital toward like a T-bills. But I think from a treasury management and allocation perspective to prudently manage large treasuries, you need more than just T-bills, right? And I think like having access to other products on-chain is a great opportunity. And I think as kind of the industry gets more evolved and as institutions come in more, there is also an opportunity for like the on-chain side of things to happen more directly, like changing the method of issuance to be directly on-chain, bringing like additional liquidity, transparency to number these markets, right? But of course, that's like the long road. And right now maybe these on-chain solutions are more geared toward like companies that don't have access to bank accounts, Dow's like, or companies that don't want to offer them essentially as a starting point. But I think that the efficiency in on-chain like can create an advantage for institutions as well. So I think that's like a big one. We've also been looking at like intent-based trading infrastructures as something interesting as well. There is, I feel like there's been a lot of buzz and talk around it. I'm not necessarily certain if like I think that everyone's going to start trading on a intent-based kind of trading style. But I think it's an area that we're looking at. Of course, like still looking at other infrastructure stuff, still looking at like deep in, I think deep in is really exciting, especially with like helium. And then there's probably a few others like ZK, I didn't even talk about ZK, but I think ZK is a very, very unique technology. I think there is tremendous improvements, efficiencies, in terms of privacy that can be gained from using ZK. And I think like the challenge is partially twofold, like one is getting solutions out to market where they actually work. And then the second part is like for institutions and stuff to maybe adopt those. But I think for that to happen, there's got to be like some changes in terms of compliance requirements, because larger institutions think banks and whatnot typically have to have copies of like identity and verification documents on hand. And so like ZK probably doesn't work for their needs, but maybe that's something that changes in the future. So let's see. And then the second part of your question on some of the projects that we've invested in that are very exciting. And I know you mentioned splinter lands, which of course I think is extremely exciting from a gaming perspective of like they've built a great community. They've just launched a new collection, which has been very hot. And I think like the gameplay, with all of the different kind of NFT assets and cards, the land that they've introduced, like the guild mechanics and all the reward and tiers within the games for participating, has been kind of very, very good in keeping users on board and keeping them engaged. And then additionally, I think one of the key things that they've done to innovate is launch like the NFT rental markets, which I believe at one point, in the end of the last bull run, they were doing close to 2 million rentals a day. And this allows players to access like the game without having to incur a huge upfront capital requirement for purchasing NFT assets, right? And so they can lend for a day for fractions of a cent, depending on like the assets they're trying to rent and use. And then they can participate in the ecosystem. So it brings the cost and barrier to entry down significantly. Another one that I think is very interesting is from a developer's standpoint, Uniblock. The Uniblock is a unified API, which allows like, you know, developers, engineering teams to access all of the underlying tools that they would need for APIs to integrate into their own products. And because it's truly unified, you don't need to set up accounts with 20 other services and then transfer over API keys. You can manage everything from within Uniblock and allows you to have like a unified billing with all of the different services that you have, which would be significantly discounted than compare to paying for each bill individually, right? And so that's kind of what they do. And some of the other features that make it very interesting because they're unifying all the APIs, they're able to enhance like the load balancing and create redundancies to allow for swapping of data sources should like one of the data sources for an app or project go down or be temporarily unavailable. And so I think that one's been really strong with a number of developers coming on board and using the product trying to think, I think those are a couple of the big ones. I mean, we did a couple others that I've also very excited about, resident securities. So they're building a smart contract monitoring, you know, software. And so what they do, like they're monitoring like the code base and monitoring the audits and finding discrepancies and notifying like, you know, their customers, the clients. So it's a B2B, but they're notifying the clients when there's discrepancies and when new things need to be audited and so forth. And so they're doing extremely well. They just launched a couple months ago, signed a number of clients growing extremely fast. And so those are a couple of big ones. And then stuff that's maybe a little bit more crypto focused and very excited about high below, which is a deep in a deep in play. So what they do is they work with different communities in the deep in space and essentially have a deep in protocol that allows for the mining of those deep ends using like the using the hardware on your local devices or whatever. So you would essentially mining a mix of different deep in tokens. And of course, as we enter the bull run, I think this is a very, very strong value proposition as a lot of users can, you know, make a nice income from just, you know, sharing their, their, their computer resources with the different deep in protocols. So I pause there, like you jump in with other questions, but I'm sure I can go on with like a number of more examples. Well, first, you know, thank you. For that, I think we get excited about any helpful we can get, especially when it comes from people in your position. As public investors, a lot of people don't spend enough time, or I'll use that word, but enough time really researching. And they also don't know what's happening behind the scenes within these projects and didn't these companies. Any advice that gets shared on our podcast, obviously, we treat as gold. So thank you for that. But moving the wrap up and thank you again just for your time today and truly it's been a pleasure. But there's one thing we like to ask anyone in the space and it's really around what don't you like. What are some of these, the marketing moves that you absolutely can't stand and you would advise founders to avoid at all costs? Oh, that's a really good question. It's not even something that I've really paid too much attention or thought to, but I think like an easy one is probably faking followers or faking users. And I think this one's challenging because there's a lot of companies out there that will help you kind of beef up the user accounts and whatnot for your social, your discord, your telegrams and things like that. I think that one's bad because it's generally pretty easy to determine that like 60, 70, 80, 90% of your users or like community members are not really community members in that they're not participants. But in the end, it just makes it look messy, right? Like you're better off having a smaller community that's active and engaged. They'll probably be more likely to kind of support when like the company needs something and so forth. And it looks better, I think like from an optics perspective. So that's probably like one of the big ones that I see. I'll leave it that I haven't thought of any others that I would say like absolutely no go. Awesome. No, and that's a great one because we've, you know, even with the PR agency, you would be surprised at how many people reach out and ask for access to our clients and say, hey, we can get them 10,000 followers tomorrow. And I'm like, that is just the worst thing to do. But there is this social pressure to have followers and have followers and investors or other retail investors won't take a look at us if our community isn't huge. But if they think about it, it's like this industry is small and we are new and like there's not that many people. So no one's going to jump up to these million followers like the Kardashians or something overnight. This is going to take time and people have to understand what's happening. So man, you kind of wrapped it up and hit the nail on the head. That's what we love about this podcast because we are able to create opportunities for people to give the right advice and ending on that note. This quality over quantity, you know, and we had a number of different questions, but we may have to create another opportunity for us to speak again because you've done it. And this has been a really powerful podcast in a great episode. So we want to thank you again, Montenegro. Where can people find you? How can we help you as well? So where can people reach out to me? I would say on Telegram. My Telegram handle is @cryptkey. C-R-Y-P-T-K-Y. And then what can you guys do to help me? This is a good question. I think this is a big help. I really enjoyed having a conversation with you here today. Of course, I was happy to come on at some point in the future and do a follow-up episode. Maybe once the market keeps going up and we know for sure we're in a bull run and see how things have evolved. And then, yeah, I think that's good. If you need anything also from me, let me know. Whether it's intros for guests for the podcast, happy to facilitate. So we can keep the conversation open. Excellent. Thank you so much Simon. Do you have anything else? Oh, but I absolutely agree with an amazing podcast. Really, really useful information. And I'll be super excited to have you on again, Montseure. So hopefully our path crossed again in the future. Yes, absolutely. All right, chat soon. Yes, sir. Thank you so much and thank you guys for listening to another episode of the Blockchain Marketing Podcast. We hope you enjoyed another episode of the Blockchain Marketing Podcast. Make sure you subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and let us know what you want to learn about next by leaving us a review. If you need marketing strategies and guaranteed PR to generate leads for your Web 2 or Web 3 company, reach out to us at polygrowth.io. Join us next time for the Blockchain Marketing Podcast.