Hi founders and fellow VC Friends!
Each week we deliver one awesome person to your inbox. These are the people you need to know—the marketers, sales gurus, engineers, ops wizzes— who give your startup superpowers 🚀. The best part is, everyone is hireable on an interim basis.
Please meet Ashish Bhatia, your go-to eng advisor for Web2 & Web3 🚀
Ashish spent 6+ years at Google and WhatsApp as a software engineer before jumping into crypto. In 2018, Ashish joined Celo, a mobile-first DeFi platform (raised from a16z, Polychain, Coinbase, and Naval). As an early engineer, he helped build out their blockchain infrastructure.
Now, Ashish works with CTOs and advises companies like Joveo (Series B SaaS co) and Azteco (a platform to buy Bitcoin). Ashish also angel invests in startups like Hypersonix.ai (an enterprise AI platform for commerce valued at $200M) and works on side-projects like autosnoozer.com (a productivity tool to declutter your email inbox).
Fun fact: Ashish loves owning music. When Google Play got the 🪓, he built MusicSync. You can discover all the tools Ashish has created here.
You can hire Ashish as a technical advisor, blockchain expert, or senior software engineer.
Want an intro to Ashish? LMK and I’ll connect you!
Since a lot of awesome people are crypto-curious, we’re doing something special for today’s pro-tips section
I asked Ashish to highlight the biggest differences between building in Web2 vs Web3 🦄
I highly recommend reading this, regardless of whether you’re building in Web2 or Web3, since it’s super interesting 🙏
1) The blockchain unlocks new products that we can’t even imagine
Each new technology inflection point leads to breakthrough products. Let's look at an example from the Web2 days, Yelp. Initial attempts to build the Yellow Pages online looked very similar to the physical Yellow Pages. But unlike the Yellow Pages, Yelp was web-native. Yelp took advantage of the interactive nature of the web and differentiated on reviews.
Tinder, Uber, and Instagram were all mobile-native products. These products were made possible by widespread smartphone adoption and the location and camera features.
Now let’s look at Web3. P2P (peer-to-peer) loans existed before crypto. But decentralized finance (DeFi) wasn’t really possible. DeFi helps people borrow and lend crypto short-term. In the “real world,” lending involves significant paperwork and identity verification. Many people aren’t eligible for P2P loans and the rates vary based on your risk profile. In DeFi, on-chain verification and collateralization make short-term borrowing and lending accessible to everyone.
The question still remains: what other products are feasible on-chain that were impossible or harder in Web2? We’re still at the beginning and will see more hyper-growth category creating projects.
2) Building on the blockchain has 3 big backend differences
Security matters more - In Web2, your company code is deployed on your servers and you can monitor and control for unexpected usages, like security breaches and hacks. In Web3, your code is public on the blockchain. Anyone can see and interact with your code. You have to prioritize security because the consequences can be grave.
On-chain development unlocks new features - Decentralized apps (dapps) are deployed on-chain vs on servers. The frontends may remain similar to Web2, to preserve familiarity. For example, Opensea, the largest NFT marketplace, feels like another consumer marketplace. But the backend is built on the blockchain and allows you to transact with your ETH wallet vs. paying with a credit card.
Efficiency is key - Your code needs to be super-efficient since on-chain transactions expensive. Each transaction and function on the blockchain has a “gas” price (aka the price per blockchain transaction). Ongoing gas prices fluctuate. High gas prices have led to creative gas hoarding ideas as well. Other chains like Celo and Solana are designed for higher throughput and are more efficient.
3) You need to prioritize your users
Blockchains are only valuable if they are used (to be fair, this is true of any product).
Always think of your stakeholders in this order:
Users
Developers
Investors
If you fail to get actual usage, you won’t be able to attract third-party developers. It doesn’t matter how cool, functional, or technical your blockchain is. If your users don’t love it, it doesn’t matter. This is why investors are increasingly focused on transaction volume, usage metrics, and the number of new projects launched on each blockchain.
Want an intro to Ashish? LMK and I’ll connect you!
As always, let me know if you have any questions and if you want an intro to any of the folks in this email (including the PS section 🎉).
Stay awesome,
Founder of Awesome People Ventures (join the syndicate here)
If you liked this, ❤️ it below. If someone forwarded this to you, sign up here 💌
Awesome People Continued 🥳
Most recent features
John-Henry is your SEO & digital marketing expert. Hire him to map out your entire buyer journey to content and keywords, develop your SEO & content strategy, and build collaborative processes for content ops.
Adrian is one of those unicorn engineers who can code, has product sense, and has led teams. He founded Chilipepper, a tool to create beautiful Notion forms, and Parretir, a natural language processing tool to analyze SEC filings. You can hire him part-time to build software or help define and manage products, including the initial discovery of customer problems.
Alex is a founding member of Tack Advisors, a recruiting and career development firm that specializes in administrative roles. She leads biz dev and client strategy. Throughout her career, Alex has built and launched several communities including a community of 30K+ administrative professionals at Tack.
Want intros to anyone here? Lmk and I’ll connect you!
Quick Ask — do you know any awesome freelance product designers? Lots of awesome people need product designers right now (SaaS and productivity startups). Moonlighters welcome 😉
❤️