Off Balance #35

👋🏾 Hi friends!

It’s been a sunny week in London, though sadly, having been in meetings all weekend I didn’t really get much of a chance to enjoy it 😢 , even more frustratingly, I also managed to miss out on the spectacular light show that the country got to experience on Friday and Saturday evening as the Northern Lights came to the UK. Fortunately some of my neighbours got snap happy, so check out this incredible shot from the weekend 🤯 

I’m well underway writing about all the things I’ve learned from the last couple of decades as founder, CFO and CEO, so sign up for early access to Off Balance - The Book and feel free to share with anyone else you think might enjoy it 😄.

Now let’s get down to business…

In this weeks Off Balance, I’ll be chatting about:

🎙️ Ash Arora, Partner at LocalGlobe on the Nothing Ventured Podcast
🇪🇺 eu/acc - what’s the movement all about?

Why Ethereum is the Hugging Face of Blockchain...

In the latest episode of Nothing Ventured, I had a wide ranging and fascinating conversation with Ash Arora, the youngest Partner at LocalGlobe, a UK-based venture capital firm that focuses on seed and impact investments leading their web3 and blockchain practice.

Before joining LocalGlobe, she was Investments Lead at Polygon Labs leading the $100Mn Polygon Ventures’ Fund where she focussed on early-stage web3 startups with global LPs across the US, and Europe.

Three takeaways from this episode that are worth thinking about:

1️⃣ We are Soooo Early in Blockchain and AI

Ash noted that we are still in the early stages of both blockchain and AI technologies and adoption. Despite the hype and excitement around these fields, there is still a lot of infrastructure work yet to be done. The challenges of security, scalability, and cost have not yet been fully addressed, leading to immense potential for growth.

2️⃣ The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in Blockchain

Ash introduced the concept of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in blockchain, drawing parallels to the famous physics principle. She discussed that in blockchain, it's challenging to achieve security, scalability, and cost efficiency simultaneously. This fundamental problem underscores the need for innovative solutions and infrastructure development to overcome this trilemma.

3️⃣ Blockchain Use Cases and Real-World Adoption

We discussed the importance of real-world adoption of blockchain technology, focusing on practical use cases like land registry on-chain. While the technical aspects of implementing blockchain solutions may be feasible, the legal and regulatory frameworks need to evolve. The intersection of code as law and traditional legal structures presents a complex but promising landscape for adoption.

Beyond this we talked about:

🐇 How Ash went from knowing nothing about VC to going down a 3 month rabbit hole writing a paper on Bitcoin for Citi
🪙 Getting into crypto because she was restricted from investing anything else whilst at Citi.
🤷🏾 How 99% of the crypto community back in the day didn’t know what they were doing.
🎡 Feeling at home in London after landing for the first time for 20 rounds of face to face interviews with LocalGlobe.
🤝 Choosing LocalGlobe having 7 job offers in her pocket and using her 50+ question framework!

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Now let’s get into it.