#4 Why did I decide to join Coinbase ? (A Web 3.0 company)

The Covid-19 pandemic provided quite a huge change in user behaviour and which marked a very distinct change in the era of the startup ecosystem. The reason for my move to Coinbase lies deeply in the changes in the major technology trends in the Indian startup ecosystem. 

Pre Covid Era(before 2020) - Age of Convenience

Earlier the fastest growing startups were in the convenience category & services space. These were startups which were providing digital platforms to represent a physical transaction. (Eg : Ola - transporting people, Swiggy - food delivery etc). Reason for their unprecedented growth was lack of trust of consumers on the internet and they required physical tangible proof of the transaction and a lot of discounting money was spent to achieve this growth.This period enabled gradually improved the willingness to pay for consumers on internet enabled products. 

Covid Era (After 2020) - Age of Money

Previous events such as demonetisation and UPI launch had prepared solid grounds which had armed consumers with means to spend and improve financial inclusion through easy to use financial instruments. Covid provided the grounds where these technological developments can start the age of money as the pandemic started. The key characteristics of this era are as follows :

• Consumers were willing to pay in 100% virtual services with no physical leg of the transaction (eg : edtech, fintech) where everything was done online.

• The rate of growth of these startups was significantly higher than convenience startups (e-commerce and grocery delivery blossomed after the pandemic) because convenience startups were always constrained with physical aspects such as delivery fleet/cabs while the age of money startups can expand fast like wildfire because of lack of constraints.

• Thee key sub sectors emerged in the age of money startups which was edtech, fintech and Web 3.0

With this background in place I performed research about which sector to choose as my next stint after spending close to half a decade in product roles across convenience startups such as Gojek and Swiggy and Web 3.0 caught my attention and I started to read further about it.

What is web 3.0 ?

Every 10-12 years there is a major shift in technology which changes the way the internet works. The internet has evolved 3 times during the past 25 years and we are at the cusp of the 3rd change.

Web 1.0 (2000 onwards) - This was the dotcom era and the primary capability of the internet was READ where users can consume content from the internet.

Web 2.0 (2010 onwards) - This was the age of social media (twitter, facebook) and commerce where users can not only READ but also WRITE and all data was owned by these centralised companies.

Web 3.0 (2021 onwards) - The primary feature of this version of the internet is ownership. Apart from READ and WRITE users can also OWN their content/assets unlike Web 2.0 where it was owned by centralised companies. This version of the internet is powered by a technology called blockchain and the biggest use case of web 3.0 currently known to the masses are crypto currencies which is a subset of web 3.0.

Why join a web 3.0 company ?

In order to make a decision one has to evaluate the pros and cons of the decision and optimise the objective function while trying to minimize the risks of taking that decision. I had opportunities to join multiple web 2.0 companies but here are the factors which I evaluated before making a decision :

Let's take a look at the pros :

• Early adopters are always rewarded in the medium/long term : Historically some of the biggest names in the Indian startup industry had been early employees at startups such as Flipkart and Ola because as the demand for web 2.0 startups increased these folks had the relevant skill and experience to provide leadership in the new startups. Web 3.0 is starting up and is the wild wild west of the internet and hence the opportunity is huge from a career perspective.

• Working on cutting edge tech in the world :   Most of the web 2.0 companies have been clones of a successful model in the West/China. There have been very few companies who have been leaders in global innovation from India. Web 3.0 is a connected world and is instantly scalable beyond borders and hence in order to win here one has to be a global leader in innovation and the lag period is negligible due to the fast paced environment. Remote working has opened up amazing possibilities of working in global companies sitting out of anywhere in the world.

• Opportunity to learn web 3.0 products by investing :  Currently the most important use cases of web 3.0 is around finance and working in a web 3.0 company gives you access to community access where folks learn web 3.0 by exploring different financial products enabling you to discover investment opportunities. There are always high risks associated with that but one has to do proper research to minimise risk and working in a web 3.0 company enables you with better understanding to do research.

• Zero resistance path to your own startup :  One of the key characteristics of web 3.0 companies is the encouragement to open your own startup. Also working in web 3.0 gives you great insights into problems since it is at its nascency, it is a great opportunity to start your own venture.

Let's take a look at the cons :

• Web 3.0 failure - Most people believe that the fundamentals are not solid on web 3.0 and especially crypto currency and hence high risk of failure of this industry.

• Government Shutting down Crypto Startups - Another high risk factor if the government of a particular country shuts down crypto startups due to creation of a new financial system.

How did I made my decision to join Coinbase?

For the failure con my logic was even if web 3.0 fails, I will not be failing as the sheer experience of working on cutting edge tech is unparalleled and will always be valued in a non web 3.0 world. Also one or two use cases of web 3.0 might fail but the tech is powerful enough to be used in multiple different use cases. Also in order to minimise the government risk I wanted to work on a global product and Coinbase perfectly fit into that use case. Also the government in my opinion will regulate crypto and not shut it down.

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