Julian: Hey everyone. Thank you so much for joining the Behind Company Lines podcast. Today we have Mark Lurie, CEO of Shipyard Software. Shipyard builds elegant decentralized exchanges for specific types of trades, traders, and instruments, starting with Clipper, a decentralized exchange with the best prices anywhere on retail trades.

Mark, I'm so excited to chat with you, not only as a fellow podcast host, but also as someone who's. Can I fully integrated in the Web3 space? And not only have you been working on Shipyard, but I know you're working on other companies as well and kind of fully emerged. So I'm excited to illuminate a lot of not only, you know, ideas and philosophies, but also the mechanics of Web3 and where, how it's running now, but how you kind of envision it running in the near future.

Before we get into all that good, What were you doing before you got into crypto and started, you know, dabbling in the centralized exchange DeFi and everything that's you know, related to DAO?

Mark: Sure. And thanks Julian for having me. And nice to meet everyone who listens to this podcast.

So I first got into crypto in 2018. I did a early NFT protocol and we didn't really call them NFTs at the time. But I knew there was something special because I had spent the last several years running startups in the art space. So I did a end-to-end expert vetted online marketplace for art and collectibles which I sold in 2016.

And so that's kind of how I, I got into crypto. But I always was interested in economics and finance. I studied economics under. I worked in venture capital and so crypto is a very natural place to get into. And so, you know, ever since 2018, I've been deep in the space and excited by everything happening in it.

Julian: Yeah. And I was reading about your your previous kind company in, in the art space, and I'm curious what's your, whether it's uh, nft or physical piece of art, what's your favorite piece of art that you have?

Mark: I like maps, old maps.

Julian: Yeah. . What is the map of, of cities of it?

Mark: It's a, it's a map of the new world.

Before they knew what the new world actually was. Wow. And so obviously, like the proportions are all outta whack. Yeah. You know, there's like, Demons here with monsters kinds of things. And so like, you know, I just think that is a really interesting, it's artistic. It's a little more collectible, but maps used to be works of art.

They took a lot more work and you know, it just says a lot about how the way we imagine the world is actually a function of time and place and knowledge.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it's uh, yeah, no, it, it is interesting also because just making the connection to, to Web3 and crypto, I think a lot of us kind of have an old world map sense of what's going on.

But I think, you know, as time evolves, it becomes more sophisticated. It becomes more regulated and regimen. , how has, you know, in the last couple years and, and maybe in the near future, , if you have any projections, has the landscape of Web3 changed in terms of a compliance and regulatory standpoint that, you know, we don't see us as end users, but a lot of companies are having to accommodate to, or adjust to while they're building products? How's kind of the compliance regulations changed?  

Mark: It's changed a lot, but I would say it's still very much in flux and not yet mature. But the way it evolves is not surprising. Yeah. Having spent time in venture and, you know, been doing the startup thing for, you know, close to a, I guess a couple decades now it's really clear that crypto is evolving in the exact same way.

Traditional financial sectors and the venture space has evolved. They're just doing it faster because the market cycles are faster. Yeah. And so they're learning the same lessons. And so, like for example FTX Right is a recent big event and Right. The conclusion from FTX is like, Hey, maybe the person running the centralized exchange shouldn't be the person also holding customer money because there's a natural conflict of interest.

Right? Yeah. . That's why there's regulation in the traditional markets where like the New York Stock Exchange doesn't hold your money. A brokerage holds your money, right? Yeah. Right. And so like a lot, just learning a lot of the same lessons . And then I think a lot of people are realizing as enforcement catches up from the SEC and other regulators that like the old laws often still apply and it's not gray, it's just that people don't like them , but like, yeah, yeah.

As enforcements come, they're starting to pay attention. And, you know, and, and so it's just a process of maturing, but in general the good actors are gonna be fine and the bad actors are not. And yeah. At the end of the day, that's the point of regulation.  

Julian: And discuss a little bit more about the exchanges and, I, I think for those who, aren't trading or maybe trading and, and have some say, you know, eat tokens or, or you know, Bitcoin and, and they're kind of using those different exchanges.

But now we're, we're in incorporating a lot of NFTs and, and different types of smart tokens and, and so many different, I guess, aspects of, of blockchain that is being traded and, and utilized. Where do exchange fall into place and, and describe what a way a decentralized exchange does from a mechanical point of view?

Mark: Sure. So the kind of core infrastructure for any market is a, a marketplace where you can go and buy and sell things. Yeah. Right. And and so, you know, traditionally we kind of think of like the New York stock change as a place where you could go, right. And and you show up with your money and you bid and buy things and you know, you can get other things.

So that needs to exist for crypto and crypto assets. But these assets are digital in and of themselves. And so you can, and the blockchain enables you to do the exchange with code intermediating the transaction instead of like some escrow agent or, you know, yeah. Custodian holding both people's money and then swapping it.

Right? And so because of that, you can have these exchanges, which are a little more peer to peer and don't require a financial intermediary. Whereas in the traditional markets, you need an exchange that, and, and, or a custodian who is the financial intermediary. So that like, you know, you know, when you send the money to someone else, they're gonna give you what they said they'd give you.

And that's why like decentralized exchanges are so interesting because you're dealing with digital assets and the exchange process can happen digitally , which means you can remove one person from the equation and you don't really have to trust that person or anyone in particular, and that that is just like a very fundamentally.

Yeah. Exciting thing.  

Julian: Yeah. And, and how do you kind of extract the intermediary is, and, and what's involved? Is it, you know, certain types of technology or code or what in particular is allowing you to take out the intermediary but still trust that the exchange is either gonna go through or that the, you know, the, the person on the other side's, a a good actor, not a bad actor.

What is, what is the technology that's involved that allows to take out that, that middle person?  

Mark: Sure. So, There's a new modality for exchange in crypto called the automated market maker. And the way it works, just to contrast this, like in the New York Stock Exchange, there's you put in bids. You know, and offers and and then they're matched against each other and they clear and there's like thousands a second.

Okay? That's how that exchange works, right? That doesn't work in crypto cuz the blockchain is kind of slow and like expensive to run. So instead there's this modality called the automated market maker. What happens is there's a pool of assets, call it Ethereum and USD Coin, which is one to one backed with a dollar.

Okay? So you put. So various people called the liquid providers put in, you know, let's say $500,000 worth of ETH, $500,000 worth of USD Coin. Okay? And this is like, it's deposited into a piece of code that runs on the blockchain, like in a, an account on the blockchain, okay? It's not deposited into anyone else's wallet.

Okay, so then you have inventory, you have two assets. Now traders can come to that pool and they can swap one asset for the other. The price is determined by a bunch of things, but one of them is the ratio of those two assets. Yeah. And so, and so there's a formula that everyone knows and everyone can see working the blockchain, that that determines the price at which these assets will be traded.

Now traders also have to pay a fee on top of that, and that fee goes back to the people who provided those assets into the pool in the first place. And it's like yield. . Okay. Right. That's that. That's what financially motivates them to put their assets in the first place and make it available is inventory to traders who wanna swap one to the other.

So that's how an automated market maker works high level and you know, hundreds of billions of dollars are trading through these things today.  

Julian: Yeah, I think it's incredible to not only to see the mechanic behind it, but also the sheer volume. You know, not only individuals are trading with, but also institutions.

And I'm always, I guess, conflicted in terms of this. And, and I guess, you know, it probably happens it does happen already in, in the Kne stock exchange, but within, you know, crypto in particular, well, how, how do retail traders and institutional traders trade not only with each other, but with, with themselves and also what are, what's in consideration that's different from, say, traditional stock market trading that, you know, you have to think about in DeFi trading amongst these two pardons parties.

Mark: In traditional exchanges you can, like, you know, you have a bunch of orders flying back forward and you match them and to get better prices for retail, you might want, you might want institutions who will always provide at someone called like a market maker, which is often a fund or high frequency trader who will often like Take who will are makers and who will always trade when a retail trader is there? So a retail trader always has someone to take the other side. You really want as many participants as possible. In DeFi, it's asynchronous. You don't need multiple people there at the same time, the liquidity providers put in a bunch of capital and just leave it there.

and there's a formula which decides the price. So you don't need a buyer and a seller there at the same time. Yeah. But what does become important is what is that formula? Yeah, right? What kind of prices does it produce? And it turns out that some formulas produce better prices for small trades and worse prices for large trades.

Other formulas produce better prices for large trades and worse prices for small trades. And you know, it's a bunch of like design trade-offs. Who are you targetting? And so what kind of formula do you use? Yeah. And what tweaks do you wanna make to the architecture of your automated market maker such that it's optimized for a specific type of user?

Yeah. And so, you know, for Clipper, like institutions don't use us and that's okay. Whereas in traditional markets, you kind of want as many people as possible because it's very synchronous.  

Julian: Yeah. it's so fascinating the, the technologies and, and how the formulas are, it's just fundamentally different in certain areas, but also they kind of, enlighten this cooperation and, and you can kind of see through the, you know, I guess not even, I guess the actions that, that both parties are taking. What in particular, I guess, gets you excited?  

Mark: It's really, it's like, it is quite hard to explain. It's kind of like, explain. Napster and file sharing to people who are used to buying CDs. You know what I mean? Like, yeah. Yeah. At the end day, you're getting your music, but like one's actually peer-to-peer, right.

Or bit torrent or Limewire. It's peer-to-peer. Yeah. There's no one person you're trusting, you're downloading it from everyone you know? And, and that's a, that's a, it's just a different modality for how to access files than. People are used to when they're buying CDs and so it's, it's, it's really tough to shift your thinking.

Julian: Yeah. What in particular, I guess is Shipyard? How is it kind of one of the leading decentralized exchanges? What allows it to, I guess, kind of be better than the incumbents and what are some of the incumbents missing that, you know, Shipyard kind of makes up for and is continuing to evolve, to improve kind of the, the process?

Mark: So, Shipyard develops the software for these decentralized exchanges. Once they're deployed, they kind of like run on their own on the blockchain. Yeah. You don't necessarily need to do, have any individual do work to keep them going. So, the way we design is very intentional. Most designs that exist today are try to appeal to all people.

Okay. And it turned kind of like Craigslist was meant to be used for anything. Right? And honestly, the, the real thing is that we say, okay, let's focus on a specific type of user and design something which makes trade offs for them, and then design a product which is going to be optimal for them and not for other people.

And cause of that you end up being better for some people, right? If you design for all your best. . And so you can kind of like do a set of things that's better for a specific user. The same way that like, turns out Airbnb has a bunch of features that makes it a little better than Craigslist for renting property, right?

Same for used car marketplaces versus just using them on Craigslist and slowly Craigslist gets unbundled. And so, so we kind of like verticalize these. Now there's a following question, which is, okay, what are the trade-offs you've made? So that clipper. This deck actually has better prices for retail traders, and I'm happy to address that. But that's, that's the kind of like approach.  

Julian: Yeah. Des describe what you, you're talking about for Clipper.  

Mark: So, there's a few things. One is you know, the largest tools in these automated market makers have like a billion dollars. They're like an enormous. , what we call liquidity or trading inventory, right?

Yeah. The traders can swap one for the other. That's enormous, right? Yeah. And to support all that, to motivate that capital to come in and sit there, fees have to be quite large. Yeah. So what Clippers says is, you know what, like maybe we're okay with just a smaller amount of capital. We actually. The amount of liquidity that we allow in at, let's say, you know, 10 or 20 million.

Yeah. What that does is let us drop the fees because you know, we only have to pay yield to, yeah. 10 million capital is at a billion dollars in capital. Okay. 5% of 10 million, way less than 5% of a billion dollars. And you know, and, and that has a trade off, which is. When you have a large pool, you can make really big trades.

When you have a small pool you can't make as big trades or the prices get worse. That's how the formula works, right? And so the result of de capping the amount of liquidity we have means that we can drop fees and that results in overall lower prices for small. Big trades end up with worse prices because there's not enough liquidity.

The small trades end up with better prices, and that that capping of liquidity is really the core insight of how we design for smaller traders and end up with net net better prices.  

Julian: Yeah. And what is the, I guess, the company effects that that'll have on smaller traders? Will it get more traders involved?

Will it allow them to trade in higher volumes or, or more, more effectively or quickly or efficiently? What does that do to the exchange? When you allow the capability for these individual traders to, to do so without, having. Either huge fees or these barriers to doing. So what does that do?

Not only for the currencies, but also for individuals who are working within or I guess retail trading.  

Mark: Yeah. I mean what it means is more money in retail traders pockets. Yeah. Right. When they use other exchanges, they're paying too high fees. They're getting, they're getting botted.

They're just getting kind of screwed left and right. Yeah. When they use Clipper, they're getting the most, the best prices for their trades, right? They're selling stuff for the most amount of money, and they're buying stuff for the least amount of money. The and that is like kind of the what they want.

That's the core product that's being sold, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, and the way we actually reach people is, is, is through this thing, these things called Dex aggregators. You can think of like kayak.com and airlines. Let's say you were starting a new airline and had better prices in economy, but like worst prices for business class.

Okay? Maybe you didn't even have business class. You were like, you're like Spirit air. Okay? You're like lowest prices. How do you get users on day one? Well, you like plug into kayak and then when people say, how do I get from point A to point B from like St. Louis to Boston, you're, you come up top cuz you're the best prices for the seat, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And so instantly you'll get a bunch, your planes will fill up and that's a similar dynamic in the crypto space. You know, we, we've lived in index aggregators where people go say they wanna do whatever trade. It compares all the places they can do that trade. We have the best clipper has the best price, and so, you know, so that's how people find us and then they realize, Hey, I should just start trading on the place that prioritizes me as an individual. Yeah. Instead of other people.  

Julian: Yeah. And I'm always curious how does a company like, you know, a decentralized exchange make money? Are they, you know, taking a part of the transaction or are they yes.

Have some other way to, okay. So, and, and describe kind of how, how the transparency works with with the dynamic between you and your customers, and how do you kind of maintain the trust, especially after, the FTX kind of fiasco. How do you educate your customer? Where do you make your money and how do you communicate that you're still acting in their best interest?

Mark: Yeah. Good question. So, essentially half, so, so fees are paid. By traders into this pool of capital, which essentially appreciates. And so the people put in the capital, the value of that appreciates, that's why they put in the capital, right? Half of the appreciation gets paid out. That's essentially the revenue for the deck, for the exchange.

that's the revenue model. Yeah. And it's kind of like carry on a fund. Maybe you could say it. Yeah. But so that's the answer to how it makes money. But I think the, the deeper question is like, how do people trust it? And, and that's what's really interesting about a decentralized exchange versus a centralized exchange like FTX.

Okay. FTX worked like the New York Stock Exchange. Yeah. You gave your money to Sam. You used Sam's product and traded for something. Someone else, with someone else who also gave their money to Sam. And Sam just ran away with that money, right? Yeah. There's a lot of complexities there, but that is basically at the end of the day what happened.

Okay. Seems to have happened in a decentralized exchange you're not giving your money to a person. Right. You're putting it into a, a code on the blockchain. It's living on the blockchain. No other person can take that money out. Yeah. Okay. Only you can take that money out. And when a trade happens, like the code executes, it's like if person A sends money in, then send person, you know, send person B'S money.

Either that code executes or it doesn't. Yeah. And so you're never having to trust anyone. And, and, and you know how it works because the code on the blockchain is all public, all code on the blockchain and all transactions on the blockchain are public because the whole blockchain's public. And so you can actually see exactly how it's coded.

You can go and read the code and see how the money flows, you know what money's taken out by who. And so you don't have to trust anyone. You can see for yourself.  

Julian: Yeah. What? I'm always, because, you know, you had experience kind of building companies with, within the art world and and, and now just focus on, you know, Web3 and decentralized protocols.

What's different about building within this space versus building in a traditional kind of, you know, customer oriented model? How is your customer different? And also what are the mechanics that, that make it so nuanced in the space?  

Mark: I, I would actually say there's not a big difference really. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Like people, crypto is a different way of doing things. Yeah. And it enables different features. Yeah. But at the end of the day, people use things. Yeah. . And when you're designing a Web2 product or an art marketplace, you're just saying, who's your user, how do I use the technology at hand to deliver something they want.

In crypto, like it's the same thing. Yeah. And anyone who tells you differently is probably making it more complicated than it need to be. Yeah. There's just a new technology which enables us to say like, Hey, like why would you ever use a centralized exchange like FTX when you don't have to trust someone with your money?

Yeah. Like it's crazy. Right. And so like, that seems like a better product to me. Yeah. . Yeah. And, and I think that's the way you need to think about it in order to cut through the noise of crypto.  

Julian: Yeah. Tell us a little bit about the traction with Shipyard. You, you mentioned you build, you build the software, the technology that enables these solutions.

And how many solutions are out there? What are you building and, and who are your partners?  

Mark: Clipper is the first exchange we've developed. We have three others in the works, but they haven't launched, so I won't mention them. Yeah. Clipper has done about 2 billion in volume. It's yields range from, you know, 10 to a hundred percent depending on the week.

Wow. And the net trading gains. The providers of liquidity get is usually like several percent annualized. Which is actually quite high because Yeah, most indexes kind of lose money and, and use like their own cryptocurrency and token to kinda like juice yields and, you know Yeah, buy attention. We, clipper doesn't have a token, doesn't do anything like that, and so it's, it's really just.

A model that works. Yeah. And Makes money for everyone involved. And that's why we've gotten the traction we've done and that's why we told the yields that we, we have. Yeah. What other  

Julian: products that you, if you're uncomfortable naming, I totally understand, but what other products or, or I guess, stakeholders are you looking to start working with?

You know, obviously it sounds like Clippers for individual traders and kind of making it just a better experience overall. And one that's just a little bit more fair and. In, in line with their motivations as well. But what other products kind of get you excited in, in areas and stakeholders?

Are you looking forward to working with or, or are, are in need of disruption within the current technologies that are out there?  

Mark: Sure. So, we're Shipyard Software and each deck is named after a ship. Clipper ships are, you know, were used in America. With smaller cargo capacity, but faster. Yeah. So they're more profitable routes.

That's clipper. There's decks that we'll be launching shortly, long ship that is that allows people to take leverage. So 20 to 50 to a hundred x long positions if they, if they want to speculate or if they want to hedge another position. Yeah. And it's different from. Exchanges like that because it doesn't have this weird like funding rate Yeah.

Thing, which you may not be aware of, but is an annoying, confusing thing that is used for existing perpetuals. There's another exchange which is focused on large traders. . And those are probably the ones that are most relevant.  

Julian: Yeah. What, what are some of the biggest challenges that, you know, Shipyard and clipper?

I, I guess anything that you kind of, you're working within the, the Web3 space. What are some of the biggest challenges you face today?  

Mark: The biggest challenges signal cutting through the noise. You know, whenever you have a. or you have markets that are like not quite rational yet. Yeah. There's a lot of like, things that don't work that get a lot of publicity in play.

Yeah. And it makes it hard for things that do work, to cut through and be appreciated by users, by investors, by partners, et cetera. That's the biggest challenge. And you know, , but, but eventually that Right. Sizes itself. Yeah. And so, you know, in a lot of ways the crypto drop in crypto winter is a step to helping that happen, which is, you know, I think can be net net a good thing.

Julian: Yeah. What's particularly hard about your job?

Mark: Hmm. Well, there's never enough time in the day. Yeah. . And hiring is always the most important thing, you know? Yeah, yeah. People are constant, everything else is variable. Yeah. And You know, for, for us, it's, it's you know, we're in a price war with other Dexes mm-hmm. who have tokens and are using them to subsidize Mm Yeah. Uh, Their returns. And so it's difficult to fight that price war. When with pe with people who are willing to lose money. Yeah. And that's, that's the toughest thing. And like, you know, we're doing it, but it's it's, it's a grind. It's tough.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. For, I guess for your customer base, what would you say is the biggest or, or not the biggest, but I would say the most compelling reason to use your technology versus who has a Coin who's subsidizing the, the trading? For me at least, just kind of listening to how Clipper works versus how other, other companies work or other exchanges work, I would feel way more comfortable knowing that things will be kind of managed by technology and there's more, there's less kind of, I guess interference in that distribution.

But what in your kind of mind is most compelling for your customer base about using a decentralized exchange like yours versus one that's, you know, minting coins and using them to subsidize?

Mark: Best prices? Full stop .  

Julian: Yeah, yeah, yeah.  

Mark: Exchanges that are minting coins are not usually minting them to traders. They're minting them to liquidity providers. That's how they get a billion dollars in capital and even with all that combined, like even, even with that, clipper has best prices. Yeah. So if you like better prices, then you should probably trade a clipper and I'm not sure what other feature matters really

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Between decentralized exchanges and. . And so that's, that's my message. . Yeah. And, and if you're a liquidity provider if you're a liquidity provider, like, there's hidden costs in a lot of these other exchanges. They incentivize, they use their tokens to incentivize because you're actually losing money from something called a permanent loss.

Don't be fooled. If you come to a place without a token then, like, you know that you're gonna be making money because it doesn't have to give you a token . Yeah. Yeah. There's no hidden losses.  

Julian: Yeah. If everything goes well, what's the long term vision for Shipyard and, and the solutions that you create?

Mark: I think the, the, I think lots of finance moves to the blockchain so it can be done in non-custodial fashion. . Yeah. And I think crypto as an economy of its own grows really large. And, and like in the traditional economy, about 20% of Main Street you know, has to be about 20% of the economy has to be financial services that serves Main Street.

So, it's gonna be an enormous market and I think it's going to be won by a bunch of specialized DeFi exchanges which we wanna build instead of one exchange that's trying to do everything. Yeah. And so in a lot of ways we're trying to build the, you know, exchange group for DeFi.

Yeah. Just like New York Stock Exchange is an exchange group with many different markets or intercontinental exchanges. Yeah. And I think by doing that, we can make DeFi and finance accessible to a lot more people who can now trade in free and fair markets. When now, and today they can't. Yeah. And that's really the, the vision.

Julian: Yeah. I always like to ask this next question, not only for selfish research purposes, but for my audience as well. Whether it was early in your career or now, what books or people have influenced you the most?  

Mark: The most are Carl Young and Joseph Campbell. Oh, really? , yes. sales is the most important thing because you're always convincing someone of ev anything and sales really comes down to storytelling.

Yeah. Cause that's how we consume information and change our minds is through going through a, a, a story in which we're the protagonist and stories not an art, it's a science. And that is a psychological science. Yeah. It's an evolutionary science about why we evolved to think in stories. . Yeah. And Joseph Campbell wrote this book Hero With A Thousand Faces, just Colloquially know in His Hero's Journey.

And it, it looks at all religions, across cultures and times and says, here's how, which are all communicated to stories. Yeah. Right. Religion makes people do some some crazy things. Some great things and some crazy things. Yeah. Yeah. So like that, you know, is a story that. Yeah. And and you know, it turns out all these religions and all their myths follow a common story architecture.

Yeah. And Joseph Campbell lays it out. And then you can use that in the stories you develop. Yeah. And he really modeled that off some Carl Young's psychological insights about you know, kind of instinctual. characters that are in our minds.  

Julian: Yeah. It's so fascinating. You're not the only founder who's kind of, they're called archetypes.

Yeah, yeah. The whole story concept is, is so powerful because, you know, oftentimes the story might change on, on why you may or may not want a product or why somebody's selling it, why something's valuable. But the essence of, of each story for a certain topic is really is, is to communicate not only your internal feeling, but kind of having someone step in your shoe.

I think you used the word, you are kind of being a protagonist in, in that story when you're being told it. And it's so exciting to hear how different founders kind of view. their products and the stories behind them. And formulating, you know, not only myself with, with our product that we, we service but also other founders listening to this podcast to kind of learn more about ways that they can communicate value and, and also think about conceptually that it's not why your company's valuable, but why it would be valuable to someone else.

And it's a hard shift in your mind. But, but once you get it it, it's, it's way more compelling than any way, any other way to communi. You know, a company of product of value and and I've heard that book before, but I now, now I need to put it on on YouTube and, and get the audio version for free.

Mark: Yeah, it's a bit dense, but it's worth it. Yeah. And you know, and I think you're exactly right, right? Like there's usually only one hero in a story, and if you're the hero in the story, then your customer is not, yeah. So, that's not gonna sell. Yeah. They're the hero and you need to be the guide. Right. They're the Luke Skywalker. Yeah. And you are the OB one Kenobi.

And I think if you think about it like that, then things fall into place. Yeah, yeah. When you make your company the hero you know, you're competing with the user, but the user's the hero.  

Julian: Yeah. That's super. I'm just thinking about the ways I communicate our product and how I can change that.

Man, that, that's a, that's a good one. I know we're coming close to the episode and, and that's something I definitely wanna chew on for a little bit. But I, I always like to ask this question. Is there anything that I didn't ask you that I should have or you would have liked to answer?  

Mark: I think the storytelling thing is the most interesting and the most powerful.

Yeah. Tool and tip. You can learn as an entre. Yeah. Aside from the ability to tolerate self-doubt Yeah. over long periods of time. Yeah, yeah. How do you, how do you tolerate it and what, what do you do to tolerate it? Acceptance that it's just always a low buzz there. Yeah. And that's okay. And like Yeah. Kind of noticing that, like, oh, that's just like the voice in my head. that, you know, that's like, that's the self-doubt voice. Like don't pay attention to that voice. That's just silly. Yeah. and not letting it consume you.

Right. Which I, I think it kind of takes a couple of startups to to really figure out your personal way, your personal path to emotional regulation. Yeah. For those. that issue in particular because, you know, it's a tough one. You're wandering in the desert and , you gotta be confident the whole time.

Julian: Yeah, yeah. Well, mark, I I, it's been such a pleasure chatting with you about, Web3, kind of what you're doing in terms of not only philosophically, but mechanically with, with how your technology works and and how you also view, I love the storytelling. And it sounds like throughout each question and, and each iteration of companies that you've worked on, you've kind of kept that philosophy.

And I'm excited to share this with my audience for those who may be focusing in a different way and, and having a different perspective. Cause I think it is a valuable hack and, and a valuable way to kind of look at, at your customer and also their journey through your product. So, I hope you enjoyed yourself, mark, and thank you again for joining the podcast.

Mark: Thanks for having me. And thanks to everyone for listen. Hopefully it was at least partially helpful.  

Julian: Yeah, . Awesome, mark. Thank you.