Episode 96: The Network State and Digital First Communities with Angelo

[00:00:00] Ben: Welcome to the Alt Asset Allocation Podcast, exploring alternative investment opportunities available to the everyday investor. Here's your host, Ben Lakoff.

Hello and welcome to the Alt Asset Allocation Podcast. Today's interview is with Angelo on the network state and digital first communities. Has been on the podcast circuit around his book, the Network Stake, and honestly, it's sent me down a pretty fun rabbit hole with Angelo.

We chatted about all things network states and startup communities, what they are, why they may be important going forward. I think the key here is that these online communities are growing these global, online digital first communities, access to the. Has allowed talent knowledge and then crypto democratize access to capital and coordination globally at a scale we've never seen before.

Eventually, these digital first communities will need to go. I r L. Part of the network state is eventually having diplomatic recognition, and I really love the idea of how build cities, what Angelo's building is helping these communities go from U R L to i r. Love that before you listen. Please don't forget to like or subscribe to the podcast or even better leave a review.

I really appreciate all these things.

All right, enjoy this episode with Angelo.

Angelo, welcome to the Alt Allocation Podcast. Excited to have you all.

[00:01:33] Angelo: Thanks for having me, Ben. I've been looking forward to this and happy early than. Yeah. Early Thanksgiving.

[00:01:39] Ben: Indeed, indeed. So the different background is because I'm at my parents' house right now.

Right. Which is great. Also don't have my podcasting equipment, . It is what it is. We've been I think rescheduling this for probably six months now. One wanted to make it happen even though it's kind of like a shorter work week for most people before Thanksgiving. Thanks for doing it on today Anyways,

[00:01:59] Angelo: yeah, happy to be here.

[00:02:01] Ben: So we chatted a bit before we started and I think all Facet allocation podcast is about investing in alternative investments and. What I'm thinking with this one is network states, startup communities, all of these things are like new emerging trends within the future of work and the future of potentially lifestyle and how people communities form.

Wanted to have you on to talk about these things. And then investors can think about. Potentially positioning their, their portfolio accordingly. Whether this means adjusting current allocations or thinking through potentially future a app allocations and like ways to allocate money funds within this emerging space.

But

I wanted to start off, well, let's start off actually with you, your background, how you got interested into this at a short background, and then we'll, we'll jump right.

[00:02:54] Angelo: Sure. Yeah. So my background, so born and raised in San Diego went to undergrad. Their commissioned into the army for four years engineer officer which was a, a great experience.

Transitioned out I think probably from the Army. That's where I learned to make the most kind of make, get really comfortable making decisions off of incomplete. , which I think kind of translated really well to startups, really. So transitioned out the Army to go to business school in, in New York where I don't even know what a startup was before, kind of moving there.

But immediately kind of got the bug pretty quick and just found it, you know, intellectually fascinating that you could take any given interest in the world and. Somebody's probably building a business out of it. So worked so, so joined a YC company. They were doing HR tech. It was basically like a LinkedIn for the hospitality industry led product or to product management there for a little bit.

And then joined a Techstars company as the first employee leading product and growth. We actually built a. AI chat bot that automatically negotiated bank fees and interest charges on a user's behalf. So yeah, kind of, you know, fighting that fight to, to, to kind of get money back for consumers for all the things that we probably complained about for on big banks in the, in the crypto space.

So, ended up scaling that to get over 6 million refunds for customers. Over the course of two years. We got acquired by Acorns. in February of 21. And so, so that was, that was great. I worked there for a little bit, but in the background kind of like probably where the, where this started to, you know, the raw ingredients that kind of put together the, the image for build is you know, I had always, you know wrote an article back in 2018, kind of, it's called Putting the Venture into vc and it was really just kind.

Just downloaded all the CB Insights data, looked at the geographical distribution, at least in the US of, of VC capital, and looked, you know, There was, the city list was, you know, easily over 400, but it was obviously concentrated in these major areas and it's, so, it's kind of like, hey, there's a lot of local problems.

And I met a lot of local entrepreneurs who were coming to New York or to these hotbeds of capital and but their problem existed back where they were at, you know, like met an Ag tech entrepreneur in North Carolina. Should not have been in New York to like, get, just to get financing, to get, you know, to to, to kind of bring that back to his project there.

So I think that's kind of where a lot of the impetus started. And, you know, I don't wanna get too far into build. I can kind of keep, kind of keep going to the rabbit hole there. If you want me to pause, we can kind of stop there. But that's, that's my bio in a. No,

[00:05:29] Ben: I think that's great and we'll get into build,

Which is your startup in greater detail later.

But I wanted to kind of like double click on that with you know, the Ag Tech person that's in New York, strictly because that's where access to capital is presumably. So. I'd say this probably is a good lead in to startup communities.

[00:05:48] Angelo: So Brad Felds book.

[00:05:50] Ben: Yes. So let's talk about that and kind of how, what, let's first start by kind of introducing startup communities, what it is, what the flaws are, and then we'll get into a little bit more with network

[00:06:01] Angelo: state.

Sure. Yeah. So and I had just recently, you know, read startup communities after kind of hearing about the network state and reading about it and thinking about it. But startup communities, you know, in a nutshell it was all about Brad Felt's thesis on how he made Boulder a startup ecosystem and really activated the startup ecosystem there.

And you know, how that kind of philosophy manifested itself in Techstars. Where they, you know, very much different to some of the other kind of accelerators. They kind of have a differentiated geographical footprint. and a lot of times in these longer tail cities. And so you know, it goes into like, you know, how to, how to, you know, it's a very, it's a very high touch process right in, in activating startup communities.

It's face-to-face. It's, it's, it's not something that can be easily processized, but that's essentially what he tried to do is kinda create this manual and be like, Take this playbook, run it in any city around the world, and you can kind of start to activate the ecosystems there. So, you know, that's kind of the bottoms up, I think, philosophy that, that we're thinking a lot about at Build where.

you know, we have contributors from from Legos, from Brisbane, Australia. Just got off the phone with someone from Tunisia and all just brilliant people, right? Brilliant people who have great ideas, but may have you know, may have, you know, obvious jurisdictional barriers or just access to capital network, et cetera, et cetera, where these ideas just aren't really getting off the ground.

And then, you know, on the flip side from the technology side, you. This, you know, crypto technology, which is essentially is what I kind of view as a giant irrigation system to these, to these areas that just never had access to it before, where it's really, it's really getting, you know, kind of laying the capillaries of, of both capital talent, coordination in a way that it can reach these area.

And, and kind of activate these ecosystems where that's when it starts to kind of get into this, you know, network, state territory of like you know, and again, it's, it's, it's a long bridge across between, you know, startup communities and, you know, a grand vision of a network state. But there's, there's definitely a, a connective tissue there.

[00:08:19] Ben: Yeah, and I think that that it's same with like Bitcoin, right? It wasn't just like a, it appeared as a image. It was like an aggregation of. Picking things that worked from a number of these different things, like bit gold or whatever. And, and putting it together in something that made sense. But like, I think you bring up a good point.

This access to internet globally has changed so many things. So internet provides talent, access to knowledge, and then crypto has democratized this access to capital. And then even coordination with people you don't know or necessarily trust, which is, which is super, super important.

This, like what Brad Feld was thinking about with startup communities have certainly been there's been a little bit of rocket fuel, I think with Covid and like remote work e accelerating this and that kind of catalyzes with. What Balaji has been talking about, and for people who don't know, ball is a ex CTO O of Coinbase, and then Rand Coinbase earn, I think. But he is,

He hits the podcast circuit hard, like real hard and some of his earliest ones with Tim Ferris, and I'll link these in the show notes.

Were really, really good on like this philosophical approach to why crypto matters. and now every, all of his messaging has like shifted to, you know, the network state. He has a book. It's available, the

networks. The network state.com. You can also get to it from 1720 nine.com as a redirect. But yeah, I wanted, that was a long-winded intro to algae and the network state.

But let's start off with Angelo's description of what a network state is and why it could be important.

[00:09:58] Angelo: Yeah. And so I will, I, because this is also a, a very new concept. I mean, I think what the book released in like early July but still a lot of early kind of you know, the plenty of essays, podcasts, you know, kind of leading up to this, this conclusion about the network Say, so I wanna do service to that definition first that he created.

So he has it on the website. You can see it in. In one one sentence, one longer sentence and one image. So I'll just go on the one kind of short sentence says, it says, A network state is a highly aligned. Online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfund territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from preexisting states.

So that's the definition that he kind of anchors on and, and sets out on. I have I couldn't give you the, the, the one liner of what I, kind of, my definition. What I think it, it, it is, but it, it, you know, there are some, there are some differences and I think the way that you know, it can be approached Vitalik also wrote a kind of, not a, not a counter essay, but like, just like a, a spin on, you know, kind of his analysis of the book and some of the major differences that he points out.

But, you know, in, in essence what I kind of, you know, really just kind of giving it a compressed way to think about is like, You're forming a new, you know, call it country or organization or society, probably a society as an, as an earlier step point to think about it. You're starting a new society, simply internet first, right?

You're simply just starting it with internet, digital first infrastructure. Whereas before, you know, cities typically formed around like some economic. You know, resource, strong point in a given area, or you know, you can, you can list countless examples there, but now we're in this world where it's like, okay, we're, we're untethered.

Well, at least people who do work in tech or remotely are untethered from the need for some economic, physical resource. And so I think that's kind of the this definition is kind of coming out of that void to kind of think like, You know, we're not necessarily tapping into to, to resources, to, to kind of generate our living and our lifestyles and our, and our, and our friends and family, et cetera.

But it's you know, it's from the internet first. And so I think, you know, and why this is probably getting more attention now is like, you know, now you know people, you know, he is obviously had this thesis for a while, but I. only since Post Covid has the normalization of online to offline relationships really hit home.

So like before Covid, like the main bulk of online to offline existed, like primarily in like dating apps, like eHarmony, you know, that just kind of like core. Maslow need or whatnot. It wasn't every day you were like, oh, I met my best friend on Twitter and we, we hung out. Or, or wherever. Post covid though, that's very much normalized.

Like you, I think you definitely hear a lot more people like, oh, I meet great friends all the time from Twitter first, and then we meet and connect and, and you know, again, especially in crypto, it's, it's discord first. and I, myself, I'm sure you yourself, like, you know, we've, we've met like I've met really, really good friends that I consider, yeah, like lifelong friends now that was online first and offline second.

And I think that's, that's the real big tailwind for a lot of this stuff. Cuz you can find that alignment, you can find that values alignment first and kind of. It's almost like, it's almost like you're skipping the, it's almost like you're skipping the the pleasantries of like, you know, forming relationships and getting to know someone.

It's like, no, you, people are putting out their, you know, their values, their, their heavy, you know, their heavy thoughts out there already, and then you're coming back to kind of like, Hey, let now let's grab a beer. And, you know, I already know where you stand on on certain things. So yeah, that's, that's a, that's a huge tailwind for a lot of.

Yeah, no, I

[00:14:01] Ben: mean, I love it. Like you, you used to grow up in a small town and you were kind of like constrained to the people that you would meet and interact by, like the people you'd bump into or go to the same church or social settings or whatever. But with the rise of like the interconnectedness of the world, you kind of have this like values first or interest first groups that organize.

So the way that I think about it is like, This internet community online organizes around these values or these interests, and then the idea with the network stake. You know, you're already close friends from this online community. Eventually you. Like end up being in this physical realm and even try to negotiate for some sort of status politically to actually be a state or a

[00:14:43] Angelo: recognized state,

[00:14:44] Ben: which is such a bonkers way of, of thinking about this, but, , you know,

versus a war where we draw these arbitrary lines and tell people what country they're in because of them also doesn't seem like the best way to determine these things.

Right. It with like ball's book or podcasts or like his, his thinking of this, does this, Like properly cover the way that you think of network state? Or is there any area where you like significantly disagree with kind of his, his concept or thoughts around what the network state is? .

[00:15:19] Angelo: Yeah, there's, there's a few things.

I mean, you know, the book is brilliant. Like, it's the podcast, like everything, you know, it's just like, it's just like sheer just brain fuel, like listening to the stuff or, or reading about it and just thinking about things in this way. But, you know, when I, when I take a step back, I think probably one of the main differences, and, and Vitalic covers this in his essay essay, but I think I think there's almost a, and maybe so I think there's a, a little bit too much focus emphasis on like the, there, you know, he brings up this concept of like voice versus exit.

So the idea that like, you know, and there's a book Exit. Exit or exit Voice and loyalty and I can't remember the off the, off top of my head, but if you Google that, there's a book specifically on that. But it's basically like and you know, in the line of like consumer preferences or, or I think that's kind of where it primarily borrows from, is like, Hey, I wanna voice my concern about this product to service.

You know, you could take the DMV or, although you can't really exit that, so we'll take something a little bit more low stakes, like, I'm gonna Voice, my opinion about this SaaS product that I really need to improve for my needs or whatnot. I'm gonna keep vocalizing it and it doesn't get met. I'm just gonna exit and go to another competitor or whatnot.

So that's really just kind of talking about market dynamics. And he kind of applies that to you know, 10 Nation, 10 Nation states, essentially like government. Looking at government services is something that is supposed. Primarily, you know, serve our needs and we're gonna keep vocalizing our concerns about something that we don't like or, or this, or we're gonna exit all together.

And so that's where he is kinda like, you know, embrace nomadism to kind of, and again, I, I, I love traveling around just as much as the next person, but I do think. I do think that philosophy falls a little short when it's coming to like building a country, especially if you're starting from digital first.

Cuz the local infrastructure is what, like we all still need a physical. Place to really, you know, be. And so, you know, I'm in Houston now. There's a, you know, department of transportation, sewage infrastructure, all this really, you know, heavy, heavy stuff that you can really only improve if you're here for a while.

So Vitalik actually, he, he kind of compresses in one word, he is like, this is kind of like an exit autocracy. So it's basically saying like, if you have people just kind of like leaving when they're not satisfied with the certain conditions or whatnot, then that local infrastructure kind of just falls apart.

And you kind of saw this, right? Like, so, you know, he did a talk on Silicone Valley exit where. , you know, basically everybody would kind of like leave Silicone Valley into the cloud and remote work and whatnot and kind of disperse around, which pretty much happened post covid. And then, you know you know, you can kind of s like San Francisco for, you know, at least from everything that you would kind of read about or hear about anecdotally.

Like there was a large kind of collapse in society there, or infrastructure, whatever you wanna call it. And so I think that's kind. The cautionary tale with emphasizing that approach too much. So the main difference, that's where the main difference I kind of think about is, and, and so I'm writing a piece now about localism in the network state where it's almost like, Hey, the network state should really be in service of localities as much as possible.

Where that is really the, the, the centerpiece is like, Hey, like we wanna support the locals, we. Really just kind of drive activity that supports that local environment. And so and it's funny cuz if you read Rad Felds startup communities, he actually says like, if you wanna build a startup community, you have to be thinking on a 20 year time horizon in the same city that resets every day.

So he's, he's kind of basically, you know, mentioning. , you need to have a lot of conviction in the area that you live in, or at least somebody lives in the, you know, some, some, some local leader that, that kind of has that conviction and commitment and, you know, compassion, love for the region. There's a reason we don't like elected officials typically are, or like mayors, for example.

It's probably our lifelong residence of that city.

[00:19:33] Ben: Right. No, that, that totally makes sense. In the book, I'll, I'll link it in Mr. Notes as well was e Exit Voice and Loyalty is written in 1970 by Albert Hirschman. Yeah, though good,

good, good reference there. The, the whole like e exit photocracy idea of voting with your feed.

If you don't like it, just leave. That's a really, really good point and I think it almost comes from this like, This is the approach of most digital nomads, and I spent some time doing this a number of years, but it's. You know, you have the, the whole world at your disposal. So if you don't like certain aspects of a place versus versus digging in and trying to improve it, you're just like, yeah, exit stage left and go to another place that treats you better. I like that 20 year time horizon that resets daily or, or kind of digging in with localism.

[00:20:19] Angelo: As, as a piece of this. Yeah. And it's not just so you can't accommodate both, right? Like I've Correct. I've done a lot of travels, like I've been to areas that I don't, I don't have the bandwidth to like, wanna improve or can or, or whatnot.

And I think that's, you're gonna see that kind of mesh, right? Like where it, where it can accommodate both. But it's al it's, it's kind of like, you know, you're going over to somebody's house, you're gonna go by the rules of their house and you're gonna respect the rules of that house. and that, and the, the host who is, you know, should be somebody that's probably, you know, been there a while, but, but but yeah, I think it can definitely, maybe after time you could

[00:20:55] Ben: work with that person to like change the rules of said house,

[00:20:59] Angelo: but Sure.

[00:20:59] Ben: It totally makes sense. You have a pretty good finger on the pulse of like, The network state startup community ecosystem, what are some good like actual early stage network state examples of organizations that are working and then kind of how do you think of phases?

Because obviously at the end of the like network state timeline, you're kind of recognized as a nation state by political organizations around the globe. I guess talk about good examples and then phases in general or timelines of these.

[00:21:34] Angelo: Sure. Yeah. So cool examples I've seen, and again, you know, this is, this is new.

We're all relatively early, but let me, let me, I'll even back up to say, you know, there's, there's kind of product ties, versions that are, you know, there's a dashboard on the network state.com. I think there's like 26 listed projects we're on there. A lot of other cool ones are on there. But even, even looking back, you know, Like kind of historical presence.

You could look at any ethnic or religious diaspora almost as a network state in a way where the borders are, you know, those ethnic or religious lines, right? Where it's kind of like, you know, it's almost like starting with that question or assumptions, like what is, what does a, what is a border? And of course you can get into like, yeah, the ability to kind of.

You know, arms that back up, the sovereignty of that area or whatnot. But if we're thinking along ethnic lines, religious lines, or, you know, there's other examples of diasporas, but like those are kind of, you know, those are kind of the semblance, or at least the union, kind of this prerequisite where it's like, Hey, what if we gave these existing communities the tools and, and.

You know, legally enforceable, smart contracts and, and you know, crypto financial infrastructure where they can still operate and do everything that they're doing already. But you know what, if you wrap that with you know, primarily, you know, crypto infrastructure that can kind of accommodate a lot of those pieces you know, what would that look like?

Could that, could that be a network state today, tomorrow? I, I think so. I mean, I think those are really good examples to look. From like a historical precedent, whether they're thinking about it or not. I mean, you could even look at, like, you could even look at you could even look at, you know, Elon Musk, you know, Musk's ecosystem.

Like he, you know, star based Texas. There's, if you, you know, there's a promo video and like a month or so ago on his, on his Twitter or whatnot, and it's kind of, you can, you can basically see like a city starting to form. Just rocket launches to space, right? Like there's a, there's an element there. Whether he's read the book or, or thinks about this, it's not, it's like, hey, there's, there's, there's something here.

A mission that kind of transcends typical geographical borders. And, you know, you're even seeing it play out kind of on the frontiers of, of, of space venture and, and obviously thinking about Mars and whatnot. So there's a lot of cool examples today that maybe. Even ascribe to the definition, know about it, but a lot of the ingredients are there.

And then, you know, there's ones that are kind of intentionally you know, going about it or, or at least getting kind of grouped in this, in this realm. You know, I was just talking to one the other day called Kift. and it's basically a, a it's basically a collective of people, nomads with van, with like van, like van life.

So they, they have vans, they have a network of physical real estate properties right now around the us. I think they might have one in South America where, you know, these people are on the road permanently, like, or at least for their foreseeable future, and they're kind of going between these different area.

They have a, you know, they have a common discord group where they're all kind of communicating and, and, and facilitating that social interaction first, where it doesn't just look like a transactional. , you know van Park or whatnot. So that's an interesting one. You know, there's, there's cabin do, there's city Dow they've, you know, bought, bought bought land on chain Praxis.

You know, there's, there's definitely a lot of early inklings that are, that are kind of working on this stuff. And then you know, not to plug ourselves, but. We're kind of building a, you know, an infrastructure layer to, to, to kind of help these, these communities, but really any existing community to kind of you know, have the tools to start to start thinking in this direction.

And even before, like networks say, it's really just, you know, we're, we're kind of focused more on the, on the logistics piece of like, hey, crowdfunding land is a very. Complex tasks. You know, when you get the weeds on the, on the legal, the compliance and the, and just the coordination of capital how to do it safely, how to actually, you know, intermediate between the crypto transaction happening and like, you know, going to the, the local recorder's office and saying like, Hey, , this, this belongs to this Dow.

And they're just like, what are you talking about? So there's a lot of, there's a lot of pieces there. That you know, we're excited to kind of piece together and, and, and, and, and and help these communities out with.

[00:26:06] Ben: Yeah, and I think that's a great segue into build cities and kind of digging in a little bit more on what you're doing.

So we talk about network, take what they are, why they could be important, how they form, but. And eventually these things will start springing up and they need the infrastructure. So like crowdfunding land, you know, there, there, there's like a template and a process to have all of these. Little network state communities doing it differently or figuring it out on their own.

One would think they would benefit from like a standardized process that has already thought through all of these, because the legal shenanigans that you have to go through to do these things correctly, you could do them. Yeah, just, you know, it's a, you do a botch up job of it, but to do them correctly takes some time and effort.

So let's start off what is that build network, what are you doing? And then kind of what is your target customer struggling with and kind of that you're looking to alleviate from them?

[00:27:03] Angelo: Yeah, so so the short one-liner is we're a protocol for startup cities. And what that functionally means is we're looking to translate digital communities from, from cloud to land, right?

Like, Let's get 'em outta the cloud. Let's get 'em talking, let's get 'em meeting up and let's draw that connective tissue between, you know, kind of our U R L and and i r l lives. So what that looks like today and the infrastructure we've built is you know, going back to some of the, these earlier prerequisites about like, Hey, people have more alliance or.

Kind of affinity for a lot of their digital communities than they have necessarily with their local ones. So what we have people do is, is log in with their digital communities, right? And we have them select their top three. It's basically like, what are my, yeah, what are my top three digital communities?

We then overlay that with existing cities. So we have 50 cities to. And we're gonna be adding more probably every month in 2023. And then each one, you actually start to get a directory of like, Hey you know, Ben and I are in the alt asset allocation community. Looks like we're both in New York at a certain given time, or we're both based in you know, wherever.

And you could start to see that city directory with that extra dimension of what people's digital, you know, network stack is. So you'd be able to filter by community and see and start to kind of basically geographically segment you. Where our, where our, you know, where our digital tribes are, a around the world.

And so what that'll enables us to do as well is is for each directory, as those cities start to fill up, we'll actually start to, you know, for those who connect with our wallet, we'll actually be able to see like, Hey, this city as you. X amount of crowdfunding potential based on the on chain, you know, the collective on chain assets of that community or that city itself.

And so that's kind of step one is just like painting the picture for what this can start to look like. It's very like discovery based. You know, there's no engagement features yet. , but that's kind of like the step one that we've kind of pictured out. There's actually a, a dashboard picture in the network state where he says like, what's the network state in one sentence, one longer sentence and one image.

And it actually, you know, we definitely got a lot of inspiration from that image. And with the, with the kind of main difference that this is tooling to help existing communities rather than necessarily. You know forming our own like naturally we're gonna form our own community as well, but it, it's more in service of, of those that are existing out there,

[00:29:39] Ben: curation and discovery for these existing network dates.

What's, what, what's the bull case? Here is like millions of these. The u r uRL to I R L by the way, but millions of these URL online communities. Supporting over to having physical locations and, and using build network for like curation and, and looking up different members in these different towns as you travel around.

[00:30:05] Angelo: Exactly. Yeah. And, and so, and key difference, so it's, it's, it's, it's just digital networks right now. So we don't even, we're not like calling out to all network states or people who wanna be network states. It's literally just so, like we have crypto punks on there, we have over 375 networks in the, in the network directory.

So, you know, There's Bankless, there's, there's Crypto Punks, you know, anything that's a Discord server. It's, it's on that it's on that platform as people log in and we kind of create this directory. And so it could be because we're just focused on those kind of initial logistics. It could be just as simple as like, Hey, Bankless wants to get a footprint of, of of physical hubs where Bankless members can kind of meet around the.

Let's provide those services just to get that they have no intention of, you know, creating a, a, a new network state or, or, or whatnot. Or, you know, it could be the same for crypto punks, any given community, really just making that process easier for them and even, and even cross community as well. Right. So because in each city you would be able to see the, the different kind of network composition of, of, of these different networks.

It could be a group that's like, . You know, let's say Houston is made up or is made up of primarily three different communities. They could all kind of group together and essentially crowdfund a co-working space or, or a co-living environment. And then, you know, extending that further, like. Then it starts, okay, we've done one, we've done one, we've done one piece of real estate.

Let's, let's look at another one. Now I'm kind of threading together multiple different properties in these ecosystems. We've even funded we've even financed like what we view as like a very small pilot, but energy infrastructure. So we. We did a pilot on on Bitcoin for our, we have a co-founder in, in Legos who one of the main issues for developers there is they have a collapsing electrical grid.

So they, it's like on average four hours electricity per day, per household. They have to they have to basically you know, use generators to offset that, you know, to, to offset that issue, which. Then you got a pollution problem. It's like two times more pollutive than the average kilowatt hour of coal.

So just a ni total just thing that shouldn't be happening. And these are, these are developers who are just trying to catch up with the digital economy, right? They wanna, they wanna develop, they wanna participate, and they're getting, you know, they're having to worry about electricity. So we crowdfunded seven residential solar systems for those developers.

that they were then able to be insulated from the grid entirely. They have, so now they have 24 7 access to the digital economy. They're able to sharpen their skills faster. And so we kind of view that even though it's a very small scale, as like that's core infrastructure that benefits this ecosystem.

And you know, in every ecosystem there's kind of a different probably a different That you know, we view could be crowdfunded and right now it's all like primarily grant-based, but the idea is like, take, you know, we're kind of calling the category of of, of municipal defi, right? So like take, like what does a crypto native municipal bond look like, right?

Like, and I'm not, so there's, you know, general obligation bonds and revenue bonds. I'm not talking too much about general obligation, which is all like tax based and, you know, we're not really thinking about that yet, but it's like, hey, what infrastructure could be financed? Kind of agnostically in every region that, that accommodates that locality.

But then still generates you know, some, some long-term revenue for the, for the, for the product, for the protocol as well.

[00:33:46] Ben: That's, that's a fascinating idea, actually. Thinking, thinking through that. Before, before I go into that though I think of like, Online, very strong communities. And like you said, Bankless is like the first one that comes up, but also F W B.

Sure. So I'm thinking these organizations, these Web three communities are doing this probably already, albeit Sure. Quarterly, just with Discord channels, like I'm in the LA one or in the Houston one. But like the difference is this doesn't cross communi. So you're like in the bankless one, in the LA one to see, and then you're in the F W B one LA one to see, and you can't see like the people that are members of both that are in LA or, or coordinate something like that.

Who? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So who, who else is like trying to solve this community? Online community mapping, i r L. And I know this is just one piece of like where you're going with build networks, but this seems like a, like a pretty big problem. And this is just us looking at this small corner of the internet.

Sure. Which is online communities around crypto. Right?

[00:34:52] Angelo: Yeah. Well, I mean, to be frank Discord. definitely has, definitely has, you know, probably a lot to say and, and insights on this. And you know, we're, we're using the Discord Ape, so that's, it's a login with Discord app. And realizing that that is right now and maybe just will be the standard.

Kind of community, community hub, community developer. Yeah. Right. Because, because and we, we, we made that choice pretty strategically cuz it, it really is, you know, we could have done sign in with Ethereum, but then that doesn't allow us to do. , you know, all the salon ecosystem or polka.like dis 90. I, you know, I don't know the exact number, but I would be willing to guess 90 to 95% of crypto communities are using Discord as their community tool essentially.

And so so yeah, so we, we kind of surface, you know, a small fraction of each person's favorite ecosystem and, and people can kind of see cross community like what the composition is. So, Obviously, you know, short answer, like they definitely have a lot of insights. I, you know, I know there's some others that kind of you know, are kind of mapping, you know, maybe specifically on the Dows themselves.

I haven't seen. And, and you know, you see a lot of the, you know, you've seen Twitter just launched communities, for example. Telegram doesn't have it. Reddit, I mean, subreddit. I'm actually more surprised that we don't see. Kind of like, I, I just don't think the tools are there, but like, Reddit should, I think, theoretically be like a very strong first point.

Like, cause it's, it's also not as noisy as Discord, right? Like a subreddit is still, it's kind of like this cross between discourse and discord. And it would be a great platform, I think to kind of like manage communities there. And you could token gate 'em and everyth. And they have the login feature.

So but as far as other kind of upstarts, I, I, I'm not, I couldn't name they're all kind of taking a different piece of the pie, I think. Right, right.

[00:36:50] Ben: So I mean obviously this directory in mapping is, is one key crucial piece, but like, what's the piece of Build cities that gets you most, most excited where you.

Like the core infrastructure piece that you think these network states need the most? Yeah, let's go like near term, you know, like the first kind of one and then like the long term, the, the big killer app here.

[00:37:13] Angelo: Sure. Yeah. So I mean, and I'll just give personal anecdote like my, my favorite part about this is that I.

Get to like meet. Cause since we are global, first I get to meet people from all over the, like, I felt like I've traveled more in the last six months working on this over Zoom calls. Like learning about the local environments, learning about, you know, the different people there from, from all these different cities.

And and I think, you know, I kind of wanna. Replicate that a little bit where it's kind of like, Hey, I'm going to be, I'm going to look forward to the trip to meet our designer in Belgrade one day, or to meet, you know, the next time I meet co-founder in, in, in Legos. Where you can kind of, again, bridging that U R L and I R L components.

So we actually have, you know, roadmap for 2023 primarily looks to optimize for that. So, right. , you have the directories. You can see where your digital communities are in physical cities. The two primary levers we're gonna kind of work on next is like, okay, now let's start to like engage them so that we can accelerate their transition for you know, meeting up offline.

So we have a, we actually have a meetups feature already scoped out and, and read it to implement at the right time. Everything's just kinda a timing. C. , we have a, we have a town square feature that is kind of a kind of kind of a smorgasborg of, of different elements of, of different kind of social apps that, that I think will be pretty exciting for the community and, and, and definitely related to kind of creating things and building things.

So slated for probably q2. And then, So, yeah, so I think, I think the biggest need is really just translating all of their, all of the, just purely digital con conversations to, in real life person meetings as, as quickly as possible and starting to cement those relationships faster. And so that's kind of our key focus.

Primarily for the bulk of 2023 and then 2024 or late 2023 is when we'll start to introduce that some of the small scale financing component as well as adding awesome as well as adding new cities. So one key problem that really, and this isn't just our industry, but like any kind of community-based, any kind of yeah, community-based.

I guess projects really overlook or really just never have a footprint in in overlooked cities or much longer tail cities. So my co our co-founder has done Brad Felds. So we have three, three people, myself, our co-founder of Legos and a co-founder in in Coeur d'Alene. And. Nick and Coeur d'Alene has done Brad Felt's thesis in Coeur d'Alene for the last 10 years.

So they actually already have the real estate, the community is built in and yeah, they're, they're generating some really cool, it's got two times more startups per capita than the rest of Idaho. A lot of really cool things going on there, and I can send the link for the, for the audience to take a look at that after.

[00:40:05] Ben: Please send those and I'll drop 'em in because that's, that's fascinating. And this is the dream with all these like tier two and below cities, right? Yeah. To get this like flourishing startup ecosystem and people with different ideas and coming in. So no, I really, really like that. I'd like to end on kind of like, what's the best argument against what you're working on.

You know, you, you talk to somebody and like they're shaking their head the whole time and at the end they. You know, a non people from the internet don't wanna meet an I R L or like, COVID is this anomaly, , we're gonna go back to the normal and like the internet's the spawn and scene Sure. Or whatever, like what's the, what's the best one that you've heard that like, really has made you kind of go back to the drawing B board and scratch your head a bit?

[00:40:50] Angelo: Sure. Yeah. I mean, You know, we are starting digitally first to kind of, you know, accelerate that to kind of the in real life component. And some could argue, you know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say there's one kind of like, you know haymaker so to speak. But you know, it's, it's, it's you know, kind of, you know how to, how.

How to blend that so that you're also starting from in real life, because there is, you know, there are just organic meetups that happen and then, you know, we chat about the communities we're in and then, so it kind of happens in reverse just as much as it happens you know, online to offline.

There's obviously, and I think this is probably where it gets where it's the least clear to me is like the diplomatic recognition piece. It, like, maybe it's just sufficient enough to just have a network, like basically a giant co-op of managed real estate, you know? So then it's kind of like a cooperative real estate portfolio right.

And then, and anybody can access it and who's in that network? , that's sufficient enough. Right. And I, and I, and I happen to agree for, for, for a lot of cases that that's, that's pretty cool just to get to that level. And and then, you know, but I could also see where the argument comes in for, for diplomatic recognition.

Where, you know, especially in areas where, you know, they may feel more galvanized because of whatever external government circumstances that just don't. , you know, they can't either exit, they can't voice and they don't want to be loyal. So they want something new altogether. And I think there's plenty of instances like that as well where a network state framework can, you know, makes a lot of sense.

So, but again, I think it's very dependent on the case. So yeah, not, not one thing or another. I think there. Too many data points right now that we're just trying to ingest and, and, and, and piece together to make this thing work. But, but I, all these I'm sure will face, you know, plenty of headwinds. You know, as, as we go along,

[00:42:53] Ben: It's part of, part of operating on the bleeding edge, right?

Like everything's moving at such an exponential pace. It's certainly interrupting. Angelo, we're up against the time. What, what last thoughts do you wanna lead my listeners with? Where can they hear more about you? Build cities, wherever you wanna direct them.

[00:43:10] Angelo: Sure. Yeah. I mean check, check out the app.

It's available on desktop, desktop only right now. Build Cities dot.network or.com. It'll redirect you and you can see everything we're talking about with the app and, and hopefully get a picture of where we're going. And then we also, you know, we tweet a lot at join build underscore. But that's on the website as well.

So build city.network. Yeah, check it out and let us know what you. And I'm awesome. Open to send me a, send me a, a DM on LinkedIn or Twitter. My happy to chat about this stuff with anybody and, and, and yeah, it's it's a fun.

[00:43:43] Ben: Awesome, Angelo, really appreciate having you on today. Good to see you.

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