E46: Avalanche CMO: Crypto and music are connected!

0:00When people asked about expertise, about Bitcoin and then Ethereum, I was the only person in the whole floor who could articulate it better than anyone else in that building. Our guest today is Jay Kurahashi-Sofwe, the CMO at Ava Labs. He is a professional street photographer and a previous electronic music DJ and festival organizer. What's one of the biggest learning that you learned in all these years in the crypto space? I would say yes to everything. When I was in high school, early college, I realized, hey, I'm not actually doing any of these things that well. I started to kind of step back and say, okay, what are the actual priorities?

0:32How should I actually maximize this? What helped is I can get the lay of the land and really understand, okay, this will probably reap a ton of benefits. This probably won't. Put like 3K into that. The thing went so crazy in three days. The meme coin itself became 100 ,000 bucks. What's the thing that you decided to prioritize? Marketing profession, music, a little bit of DJing, photography. In 2017, I ended up getting hired as a head of marketing for a company called Fluidity. Why marketing if you're a nerd? Yeah. Okay, so. Because I grew up with really bad sleep problems. I always thought, oh, well, it's just part of my life and I can function anyways.

1:06which is kind of a backwards way of looking at it actually. I don't understand why people give so much importance to money. Money is just numbers on a screen. Crypto is like a lottery. You're winning a lottery ticket tonight, so you made it. And the day after, you lost the ticket, so you can't redeem your money. Numbers on a screen, we as humans can't process that. It just looks like a game because it's not real. What does the future of Avalanche look like?

1:32Yeah, 7 Podcast today, podcast number two. have to see it as a as an after-hour dj session which reminds me but that was a long time ago i was djing when i was 16 to 21 years old now i'm 31 prime years for for after hours but the thing is like to do that every weekend like you need to be young otherwise pretty much it's impossible now i'll go out once and i'm dead for three days yeah so but i remember going trying out I did three times going to multiple locations in one evening. But obviously I was doing intros for like Avicii and a few DJs, but I was not a big DJ, you know, so I was taking my car.

2:13Right. And I was barely 18. I was taking my car, going from one place to another. Like I remember one time from the second to the third location was probably 3am on the highway with music super loud, like open the window. So it's a bit more cool, but I was like falling asleep like you know and um that that day i realized oh man that's not good that's not good like i'm not gonna do that anymore because it's too risky and also i don't have any pleasure doing that it doesn't bring me any joy you do you do one thing bet at your best instead of like trying to do everything and trying to get money there and like kind of fomping into things same thing in crypto you don't want to fomping into 50 different projects but you gotta i feel like you have to experience that firsthand in order to kind of save yourself a little bit right absolutely not to max out too too late in the game you know some people don't see that in the beginning and they're like max max max let's go let's go let's go and and you burn out everybody does that yeah do you have some examples i feel like i i mean i kind of have similar examples with with music a little bit maybe photography i used to book gigs back to back to back to back and was it because of the money or because of like the formal like if i say no to this one I'm not going to be able to get this chance ever again.

3:27It wasn't about the money, but I was just an opportunist, right? And I think that's with everything. So it's like, I would say yes to everything when I was in like kind of that age, late high school, early college, and then right after college, probably a little bit. And then realized, hey, I'm not actually doing any of these things that well. I'm doing all of these pretty mediocre. And then that's when I think I started to kind of step back and say, okay, what are the actual priorities? How should I actually maximize this? what helped is I can get the lay of the land and really understand okay just by looking at it this will probably reap a ton of benefit this probably won't and so now you know 10 10 15 years later I'm looking at things and I'm like don't even have to try it I just know okay let's just not deprioritize let's prioritize this so what were these things that you were doing at the same time and what's the thing that you decided to prioritize yeah so the main things that I think there's all these different categories.

4:20So it was like marketing profession, music, a little bit of DJing too, photography for DJs, producing events, and then probably like friendships, relationships, all these things. And sometimes sleeping. Yes. And I wasn't thinking about sleeping because I grew up with really bad sleep problems. Okay. And so I think I always thought, oh, well, it's just part of my life and I can function anyways, which is kind of a backwards way of looking at it actually. Did you solve that? Yeah, I don't think I solved it completely, but I have ways to cope. And I think I have a much more healthy outlook of sleep and rest and preserving that giving it its space right how much of a pillar it is in your life basically it's a basic it's pretty important yeah if you don't have that kind of under control the rest is gonna pretty much can compound positively yeah when I when I'm at home it's it's perfect almost it's really good like I don't get like too much sleep to be honest but I get more than I used to what do you get I used to get like four or five now I get like seven probably that's good consistently yeah and and what do you do that like complete darkness darkness white noise machine okay like kind of like minimize uh electronics before uh and even after when you wake up too just to like have better hygiene that's not perfect we work in cryptos it's not always perfect but it's better than before um I feel like also like I don't drink nearly as much I'm not a huge drinker really and so kind of like just being very mindful of the hygiene and and before it was again just like sleep didn't have a pillar so the way i've now categorized the pillars is i have three focus areas one is work right we have to eat that's the idea so work for us or for me in this case is is marketing and crypto that's kind of the main thing i'm focusing on right now and that is work number one or is sleep number one sleep is kind of it sleep is number one okay but it kind of sits underneath everything so if sleep's not addressed then none of the three priorities might have to name it's like a layer zero yeah no it really is and then the second piece is creativity because i've realized i am super typing i like that uh kind of more left brain focus but i also need kind of the creative focus as well for happiness yeah just for fulfillment happy and yeah okay so that's kind of uh for the last three four years of photography and i kind of deprioritized music because you can't do music and photography both well music has a much steeper learning curve in my opinion photography is still insanely steep but at least i found a lot more success there and i'm i was like okay let's just focus on that and and continue to go level two level three level four and then the last focus is really well i'm extroverted so i realized where i get energies from people and so intimate relationships uh just friendly tonic relationships professional relationships kind of get all get bucketed in there and it's kind of a push and pull right so if work is really intense then i gotta be really mindful of pulling back down on the other two because it's all pulling from the 100 pool and so if i'm pulling again like full stops which i have done before then the layer zero gets totally screwed and and same with the reverse is true so like even the last few years i've been much more focused on crypto i've kind of started to try to buy back that time a little bit more but even in that two or three year stint i was thinking to myself okay this is short term that's okay I'm gonna make that sacrifice and maybe the creativity or the relationships thing will kind of take a second second seat but um I know it's short term and that's where I'm a little bit more healthy about it if it's not short term then that's a problem because then I'm not balancing my life properly I think thank you we have these uh cycles bull market bear market where we're kind of forced to get back to a normal life because the bear market is boring as fuck and depressing So you need to find happiness and the dopamine, the healthy dopamine and endorphins from other things than crypto.

8:11Right. Well, that's kind of why the balance is important. And I think it's worked so well. Like I've kind of stuck to the system for the last five to seven years, not too long, but long enough. Before that, it was great. But again, I saw like things deteriorating my health or whatever it may be. Not in like extreme ways, but ways where I was like, okay, I'm not happy with this outcome at all. Let's figure out how to fix it. And at the end, it's always a priorities issue, right? And so now moving forward, next five years, I might be looking at, okay, maybe I want to focus more on a creative endeavor.

8:37So I want to juice that up a little bit more. Maybe because of the bear market too, it might make sense to focus on that a little more while I also still focus on crypto and marketing, of course, but find ways to kind of balance. And maybe you can also kind of cheat your way to balance that a little bit by asking for help, getting more resources. And so I think there's ways around it. But it's still, again, very, very straightforward of there's a whole pie you kind of have to take down from that. And if you try and seek more, that's when you're going to start to stumble. So you said you had all these different priorities at once, which was way too much.

9:10And then you said, I'm going to focus on work. I mean, obviously sleep, work, creativity, but the creativity will be more photography than music. Yeah. Right. So now it's mostly photography. I mean, sleep, photography, work. And work is crypto. Essentially. Essentially. I've kind of even let a little bit less of a focus on photography these days and then kind of pushed more on some of the side endeavors that are part of work a little bit, but not really. You know, it's kind of this own pillar of like doesn't pay the bills, but could and still kind of early ideation. For example. So I've been really interested in this idea of opening up a music venue in New York.

9:50Oh, nice. And I think you would relate to that. But I want to do it properly. And I want to do it where the loose theme that I've kind of been talking about is I don't want capitalistic pressures to have to force this environment, this experience in a way, in the direction that most New York venues kind of steer towards just by kind of the essential economics of the whole thing, right? Especially in the creative industry, you can feel it directly. Yeah. If the priority is great, obviously the thing needs to be profitable at some point, but you can feel if the place has like culture and where the key spot is for creativity and culture and music in this case, or if it's a money-making machine.

10:33You can feel it as a customer directly. Exactly. And I feel like to start, I don't really care for the money-making machine side, which is an amazing place to be. Yeah. But there has to be other mechanics to kind of keep that culture alive. Because at the end of the day, success kind of brings on that capitalistic pressure. And it's hard to sometimes kind of push it away. And that's where I think you kind of have to make a common purpose for the people that are attending. And eventually, I think the rest will follow is what I'd like to think at least. Maybe I'm simplifying it too much. Why would this place look like, this venue?

11:08Would it be like concerts? Would it be DJ? Would it be electronic music? Because I know you love electronic music. Would it be a variety of different type of music? So far, pretty open. I think it'll probably stick to underground electronic for now, just to give it that space. I really take a page out of the Berlin night scene. They do an incredible job. Think about, you show up to any club in Berlin, you pay 10 euros max, and that's always what it is. And there's still a five hour line. In New York City, there's a five hour line because no one can afford the$5 ,000 tables. It's a two different outcome, two different very very unique outcomes right one is again driven by money and the other is driven by culture by FOMO there is obviously FOMO on both sides but in my mind I think the cultural FOMO is much better than the capitalistic one so an opening night with the Martinez brothers maybe even then like I kind of want to keep it even lower key for now because I want what so there's a club called Sisyphus in in Berlin I know I've been there for actually I've been there for new year's eve 2013 magical place is is the place with the multiple yeah it looks like a you get lost it looks like a western saloon kind of like a u.s like like american kind of old western exactly all would and then you go outside you go to this other place and then you go outside there's these different houses and you're just there like where the hell am i like i don't even know yeah like i'm lost in this little village yeah and and and djs will take bookings like $1 ,000,$2 ,000 or 1 ,000 euro, 2 ,000 euro booking fees or sometimes they play free because it's such a coveted place to be.

12:39Like the big DJs, they go there and almost, that's amazing. And then also think about the attendance. When you show up, you have no idea who's playing. You just know, hey, I want to be at Sisyphus or whatever. Other clubs in Berlin have this too, but this is one. Branding of the club versus the branding of the DJ or the artist. Exactly. And if you create a safe space, an environment that I think the core community people or the core evangelists want to be a part of, then it gets protected. And then all of a sudden it's like, there's this snobbiness to it, of course, right? Cultural snobbiness, which I'm kind of playing into, but hopefully it doesn't get too carried away.

13:12That's the whole idea. So I think experientially it is open for anyone who doesn't necessarily like underground music, because I think that's a little bit prohibitive. Not everyone wants to do like 125, 130 BPM with no lyrics and whatever. So there's a space in New York called Public Records. They actually do an incredible job. It's kind of a similar model where there's a musician involved in the partnership. There's like a kind of a capitalist involved as well. There's also a bunch of cultural advocates involved. There's all these different types of people. And so it's welcoming to the everyday.

13:42But if you want to go to the back room, which has like a four-point sound system, incredible sound system, all the super intense music heads will also find a home. So you can kind of step in, step out. And so when I go there, I go, I can bring my friends who have never listened to techno ever, maybe. And they might also find it interesting and not super overwhelming. But also I can bring some of my, you know, super club head friends and they'll also have a great time. And so I feel like that inclusivity, it's like 300 person cap capacity, not too big, super intimate. That has a lot of legs. The minute you open it up and you go, okay, we're going to pump 30,$40 tickets, it's over.

14:15So kind of that balance.

14:20so sort of letting down a bit the electronic side creative i mean electronic music side to go to photography to now going back to music yeah kind of yeah and the entire time it's like i can you know i i feel like i mean it's all linked also yeah exactly you can you can i mean obviously like all these events you want to show them somewhere and like the better you are at production and photography yeah like actually today photography and production and this type of stuff is like the the new way to market things exactly so i can from the photography side i have much more empathy with the designers the creative directors i can work with them much more closely i always come to the table and say hey i'm an i'm a fellow artist as well i understand this and so i'm not going to be that helicopter marketing leader who is saying hey this has to be like this, this has to be like this.

15:12We can make it more of a collaboration. On the other hand, on the music side, we've been producing a lot of events for Avalanche. Basically all the past contacts I've made in the music, in my music life have kind of come back and I'm going to go up to them and say, Hey, by the way, we're doing an event in Korea. We're doing an event in Barcelona. Do you want to play it? And they come to me and say, Oh, interesting crypto event. You want like an underground DJ? I'm like, yeah, now here's why. And then kind of that's where the stage. And then you can link smartly, which we've done already because one of your friends is Blondish.

15:41So you can link. You can say, okay, come play at my event. But then you can say, hey, you're an artist. There's this NFT stuff that's going to be something big. And hey, here's a way you could leverage NFTs or crypto. You think you're just coming to play here, but I'm going to explain you how crypto can help you in your artistic career. Can you give an example with, for example, blondish or other people you know that you basically matched with blockchain to try to do something that's better for them their brand and their community yeah so funny enough viv is like super into crypto so that was less about like me saying hey this is something interesting you should check it out she was already already like at an insane expert level which is why i think we we kind of have meshed pretty well over the last few years there are a few other artists um i would say it's less about like hey this is the new thing but it's more like hey this is what we're working on and here's why avalanche might be better than the use cases that you've seen and and also instead of saying hey this is the solution for you it's more like this is potentially the solution for you is there something we can work out is there something we can maybe pivot or flex a little bit to make it work for you and so you actually get right in front of the customer right and you go hey music nfts bs or not is it pfps bs or not And instead of minting it or going through building it out and selling it and seeing if these artists come on board, you can actually start to validate or invalidate your product direction way before it's even public.

17:11And so I think that to me has helped so much, not just in product development, but also investing, understanding the market, where people are. It's just really all about information gathering and trying to get as many touch points as possible so you can make an informed decision, whichever direction you end up going. How has the product roadmap changed regarding these feedbacks? I think one of the programs that we launched early this year, it's been kind of in the works for almost a year now, is this program called Avastans. I think we might have talked about it before. And it's an artist grants program bare bones.

17:48But when you actually lift it up, it's focused on up-and-coming artists who really want to try blockchain technology but don't really know how. And so you have people – so there's kind of the same friend circles as Viv, but there's a friend – I have a friend. His name is Gio. He's deeply in the music space. He's also deeply in crypto. He was one of the leaders and he's basically picking a handful of grantees effectively and saying, I'm going to teach music curriculum. We'll go from zero all the way up to one, two, three, four and go up the level. And hopefully by the end of the program, you'll have at least a few or even just one artist saying, hey, by the way, this whole program has helped me shape the direction that we go in.

18:27And so to your question, the way that's shaped our direction is we've worked so closely with these artists to say, hey, what's your ideal program? And everyone is fascinated, super bullish on this. And so there's not really one particular thing I could say that it changed. It changed the whole program. But the outcome that it enabled us to do is a much more successful outcome. because now you have all these OG legit artists that are saying, hey, these guys are not just here for the quick cash grab. They're willing to sponsor us even to make our dreams a reality. And then in turn, the people that follow us that look up to us can also have their dreams come to fruition.

19:02And so that's kind of the collaborative spirit that I think we've really harnessed, which I don't think really was there before as much, I think. How do you think an artist who is interested by this crypto blockchain NFT stuff. Okay, maybe not this year because last year was not great, but it's going to happen again next year in two years. How do you think they can, especially if they don't understand crypto? So let's say they're not a crypto DJ. Yeah. Which a lot of DJ, if you look at a bunch of DJ, even the DJs I used to like kind of follow 10 years ago, a lot of them in crypto, you see them like crypto DJs.

19:37But if they're not, and if they're not DJs, but like artists, they want to experiment with NFTs. How do they do that without damaging their brand? Because at the end of the day, it's very risky. And that's why a lot of influencers, I mean, influencers, artists, 2021, they came and then they tried something. A bunch of them probably won't realize, oh, I can make some money quickly. Yeah. But probably most of them, I would hope, have their communities or fans' best interest at heart. And didn't want that, but realized, oh man, I launched this thing, but like, I didn't even have time to build some inherent value to my community, my NFT that the entire thing crashed and now everybody got wrecked.

20:24And I look bad, right? So how can an artist experiment with NFTs without screwing their own funds? You kind of mentioned it while you were even phrasing the question. It was really about get rich quick schemes. If it feels like that, it's probably a red flag, right? And as much as it is tempting, you have to really understand you're going to burn your whole fan base and you might even take one whole step back or a few steps back. I feel like there are a ton of artists that have gone through that path, of course. But there's also a ton of artists who may have considered that, but also then realized, okay, like the rabbit hole analogy, right?

21:04They went down the rabbit hole and realized, okay, get rich quick was really what captured my attention. But there's so much more than that. This is a classic in crypto, actually. you see the price of the coins go up that's why you go in there you're like oh i'm gonna become rich overnight yeah then you get wrecked overnight and then you look into it ah this is interesting actually no so i mean that's how it is right you gotta you gotta just get in there deeper than than being on the surface layer so if you don't understand what you're doing look into it a little bit more and i think that's a check for everybody even even me even you right and so that's kind of where i get to find a little bit more depth and then get into it right if if you're picking anything else in the world if you're about to let's pick f1 because it's this weekend if someone's like hey you want to drive this f1 car you're not just about to floor it right no one's ever going to do that you might actually look into you might ask questions you might ask professional drivers being like hey how do i actually quit myself so i don't totally wreck this multi-million dollar car it's the same idea but unfortunately i think numbers on a screen we as humans can't process that it just looks like a game and and you don't really feel anything from it as much because it's not real Yeah, it's not real.

22:11That's very, like, physically real. It's not real. No, that's very important.

22:18I forgot what I wanted to say.

22:23I mean, regarding the it's not real, like, I remember 2022 before Luna crash. So like, I remember telling, I remember being skiing in Switzerland with my parents because I'm from Switzerland. I would go there, you know, living the life because everything was up like crazy since two years. And I remember telling my dad, man, dad, I don't understand why people are so, give so much importance to money. And he's like, what are you talking about? And I'm like, yeah, because at the end of the day, money is just numbers on a screen, right? It's stupid. It doesn't make sense. because it's just, I have more benefits in life and I'm more important and I'm more powerful because I have more numbers.

23:13I have one additional, 10 additional, zero on a screen. It's nonsense. And then you think about money printing, the fact that banks can also basically print. It makes no sense. But you were saying to me, Kevin, like you're basically completely connected to reality. This money, these numbers represent something in reality. Like with a certain amount, with 10 bucks, you can buy a pizza. With a hundred bucks, you can buy 10 pizzas. And that's the problem. The thing I hadn't realized. I was like, I was like, yeah, no, no, I still don't understand. It doesn't make sense, et cetera. Then, as you said before, these numbers are not in crypto.

23:47They're not real because they can, they can. I had a guest the other day and he was telling me crypto has been in crypto like you since 2013, or I think maybe you've been even before. We'll talk about that later. And he was telling me crypto is the best analogy is like a lot lottery, you're winning a lottery ticket tonight. So you made it. And the day after you lost the ticket so you can't redeem your money. Yeah. Basically, you know, I was like, oh man, that's how not real it is, you know? Yeah. So it's the guy who is co-founder of GSR. Okay, cool. And Alexei. And anyway, so like a very good analogy.

24:29You've been in crypto since 2011, 12 yeah more or less i feel like i really started to work in in 2015 okay yeah but you discovered crypto before that yeah can you tell us about your journey yeah so how did you end up even start there like especially as an artist yeah someone you're not a mathematician or well weirdly i wasn't even i wasn't even doing the creative stuff back then it was 2011 ish and just a huge nerd i've always kind of distilled it down to that everyone's always like how do you know this i'm Like, I'm just a nerd. And the computer and the internet has allowed me so much information.

25:06It's incredible that if I'm curious about one thing, I could pretty much learn the whole concept if I just sat in front of a computer screen for however many hours or days, right? And Bitcoin was kind of coming up through kind of the underground boards. And you start reading about it. And I just thought it was, again, like money printing. And I was like, oh, it's kind of a scam. I don't really understand. And then I used it once to buy. I was in high school, so I bought fake ID. And that was how I bought it through the Silk Road. And it was early, early days and had a bunch of Bitcoin left over in a wallet and then forgot about it.

25:43And then six months later, it appreciated to however many dollars. And at that age, I think I was still 18 or 19. And I was like, whoa, what was this? Is this like, is this it? And then it crashed back down. And then it kind of kept going. And really, I started to just trade it, and it was purely speculative. But about 2014 came around, I think, and I feel like Vitalik started to talk about Ethereum a little bit more. They talked about applications. And to me, Bitcoin didn't make any sense because I didn't have a traditional finance background at all, of course, at that age. But applications made much more sense.

26:16I think kind of the nerdiness and also just growing up in the digital age of internet, mobile, all these applications. and just the simple narrative of let's remove the inefficiencies of the middleman, right? And from there, I really started to see a lot of these Fortune 100, 500 clients. I worked at a major agency in New York, and they started talking about it. That legitimized it in my head. And I said, if the grownups are talking about it, well, then I think I might be onto something. And all of a sudden, one thing led to another. And when people asked about expertise about Bitcoin and then Ethereum a few years later, I was the only person in the whole floor, maybe even the whole building who could articulate it better than anyone else in that building.

26:57And that to me was even a bigger signal and kind of chased that. And I was in a marketing function and then was at the agency and kind of worked on a little bit of blockchain and crypto marketing there. And then in 2017, ended up getting hired as a head of marketing for a company called Fluidity. And that's some years. Yeah. Yeah, Absolutely. Just before that, why marketing if you're a nerd? Yeah, huge. Okay. So marketing, actually, the part that I skipped was I ran a music publication. And that's kind of where this all kind of comes together. The reason why I ran it was I worked as a golf caddy in where I grew up in New York.

27:35And I was basically a rich people's bitch the whole time. And I was very good at it because I think my Japanese tiger parents like taught me to take things seriously no matter how small or large, right? Yeah. And I was pushing so hard. I'd go to the golf club at like 5 in the morning, leave at like 8 p.m., do like three rounds. And then I realized I was capping out. I was capping out at the time spent and there was no other vertical movement beyond what I've already done at 13, right? Age 13 to 18. I got really frustrated one time and I thought to myself, well, internet businesses probably has a higher ceiling.

28:11So let's try that. I saw all these college guys writing blogs. And so I just booted one up overnight, wrote one and just started writing. Started to see it through friends of friends. It was kind of the boom of social media. And all of a sudden, two, three years later, I had a million readers a year. When I look back, I was like, what led to that? Well, there was a few complicated things. There was one where the servers got dossed. I booted up wrong, like all this kind of like early mistakes. which was traumatizing at the time, but I'm over it now. But effectively, I looked myself in the mirror and said, what led to that success?

28:45And it was really a lot of science pointed to digital marketing. And then I was like, oh my God, so cool. If I could kind of accidentally stumble into success almost with social media marketing, what else could I do with this? And then realize there's all these different channels. There's actually strategy underlying instead of me just posting tweets or me posting Facebook posts without really knowing what's up. And then that's basically what led to marketing. Absolutely. You know, actually for this podcast, we are, I mean, everything is a science. All these social media is a science and we're using AI and data analysis to help us script podcast questions.