Edul Patel - Co-Founder & CEO Of Mudrex | The Future of Crypto Investments

Welcome to success story, the most useful podcast in the world. I'm your host Scott D. Clary The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network and the blue wire podcast network The HubSpot podcast network has incredible podcasts like my first million my first million is hosted by Sam par and Shawn puri They feature famous guests They discuss how companies made their first million and then some they brainstorm new business ideas based on the hottest trends and opportunities in the marketplace Here are some of the topics I talked about if you like any of these you will love the show Three profitable business ideas that you should start in 2022 drunk business ideas that can make you millions Asking the founder of Grammarly how he built a 13 billion dollar company or SaaS companies that anybody can start if these topics are up your alley Go check out my first million listen to it wherever you listen to your podcasts Today my guest is Edel Patel. He is the co founder and CEO of Moodrex Moodrex is a why combinator backed crypto investment platform He brings over 10 years of entrepreneurial experience finance experience He is built multiple tech driven applications. He's been a founder and an entrepreneur. This is his fourth venture He graduated in 2011 from India's most prestigious school of engineering IIT Bombay He joined Deutsche Bank as a senior business analyst post graduation. He worked in FX risk and Margining desk and led the product management as well as business development wings of a real-time risk management portfolio He previously co-founded Niffler a one million dollar funded started by safe partners Niffler was acquired by TAPSO where he led the product team to build out TAPSO's core infrastructure and app So he has built several tools his experience spans finance and tech we spoke about what he's doing at Moodrex We spoke about his passion for helping people achieve Their potential by allowing them to achieve financial freedom and him and his co-founders have bought into the idea and evangelize the idea that crypto DeFi web three those are the ways to get there. So they built Moodrex as a way to help people Achieve that financial freedom Moodrex basically solves for the investment risk and the investment Barrier to entry and crypto investment by bucketing different asset classes so you can Invest in buckets of crypto in buckets of NFTs in buckets of metaverse projects top projects So that it removes a lot of the complexities in terms of investing Hopefully if you remove the complexities then of course you can invest easier So we spoke about his backstory his origin story some of the reasons why he founded Moodrex some of the things that he hopes to accomplish with the platform We spoke about building trust. We spoke about his journey through YC We spoke about building the business in a very competitive and constantly evolving market Then we spoke about some crypto topics. We spoke about the future of crypto the future of NFTs The applications of tokens whether or not NFTs are just a fad we spoke about new use cases for crypto blockchain technology that haven't even been explored yet So a ton of great business lessons in a blue ocean emerging ocean highly innovative environment a highly innovative industry as well as some great Crypto topics from somebody that's lived in it for several years He has a copy of the Bitcoin white paper right beside his desk So let's jump it into it. This is Eduel Patel. He is the co-founder and CEO of Moodrex Okay, so I graduated from this school called as IIT Bombay In the sort of India it's like 30 year one educational engineering University Graduated in 2011 post that winter Deutsche Bank worked over there for a couple of years in the trading industries Did a lot of work with the US and India desks worked on disk management And and also saw a lot of the banking side of Deutsche did that for a couple of years Then eventually left at to start my first company called as Niffler We were building a hyper local deals and discounts app something like a group on for India Did that for a couple of years raised a million dollars from tier one BC fund Builder office in moment who may hired 30 40 odd people Eventually got acquired by this company called as Tabzo, which is building like a Vchat for India And over there joined in became head of product did that for three odd years Tabzo eventually got acquired by Amazon and is now part of the Amazon pay ecosystem in India and As for me, I couldn't see myself go and work at Amazon So definitely decided to you know go back and start thinking about Yeah, of course, okay, gosh So so actually In fact, and now as I learned in 2017 we started with Rex and we go deeper into and talk about Rex a bit But to be honest as myself I've always been like a builder Throughout like even even in school did multiple things and then when I was in university Did a bunch of startups over there, you know small small things that you would try out for three four three four months Did a lot of work in core So my background is material science engineering So did a lot of work on on nanotechnology on shape memory alloys and eventually realized that all of the research was nice and cool but But but definitely wanted to do something that was more real-world and add some real-world applications So as a result, you know just drop dropped into doing this Okay, so so you You so this is you know like A moon tracks like it's been how many startups before you you started this venture It's been a few obviously. Yeah, but Rex was number four Number four. So this is not your first not your first rodeo at all Why so let's talk about let's talk about why you wanted to build this particular product this particular company And also like and walk me through like the origins of the company because I think that's also very interesting because you're I think you're I'm just looking on crunch base now So obviously you've raised a few you've raised some money You're wise you're a YC company as well. So walk me through like where your head was at That that prompted you to go into and and actually let me also ask this how do you classify moon drugs is it like you classify it as Like a crypto and investment tool like what is your classification? What's your category that you If there's a crypto investment. So so my next is a crypto investing platform and Yeah, when I say crypto investing platform, you know You're not like the the products that help you just buy and sell Bitcoin and Ethereum Propheed on as we created you created like a mutual fund style layer for investing in crypto of Over the course of the last few years the number one problem that we realized That retail investors had was there there were like too many choices and there was just too many tokens coming in and this coming in and that coming in and as a result They wanted to really create long-term wealth. They weren't they weren't able to find products to invest in and that's where Next comes in Um and and that's that's see the app the app to our music that you see right now But of course there is a long backstory To all of this so yes Yeah, yeah, and and and you know I can I can start with There's literally right over here and at the side of me is a is the bitcoin white paper. It's a large huge Uh frame that we wrote of the bitcoin right paper right next to me and Actually then that white paper first in about twenty eleven right right after I got it from college And at that one time to see cool and interesting and then some some something unique that a few nodes were trying out uh The second time I heard about bitcoin was 2013 And then this time I was in Deutsche and and this is the first time, you know BTC had cost about a hundred and me and a couple of my friends were discussing whether we should buy btc or not uh to be honest We did try a lot but there was really no way for us to purchase btc like like crypto was was way hands-off There was no no easy way to buy our first crypto. So we let it be uh and and and and missed missed out on that boat uh in 2015 uh BTC touched about I think I think it has thousand momentarily for the first time and that's when Me and a few of my friends started a thread and an email thread that's still alive and kicking that says Are we too late? Have we missed the boat question mark question mark question mark and and every single You know your whole bunch of people joined in and they started So, you know post their comments and and and and now it's kind of sort of become a yearly ritual Where every year someone or the other posts on that thread again saying that have we missed the boat question mark Question mark question mark or is it to every year every year every year every single year right Uh, but having said that uh 2017 is when you know things started to change a lot for me in crypto Uh at that point I was deciding to leave uh Tabs of start my own and me and my co-founders we were looking for You know we were looking for we were looking at the investing space Uh kind of in and the wealth tech space very closely from an India perspective as such back then And and you know are a general broad vision was that we wanted to get we wanted to help people get to financial independence faster and That that kind of sort of came from the thought that see at the end of the day, you know all of us know This this mask was hierarchy right where rather lower and you got food clothing shelter all your basic requirements So, only after those things are satisfied is then is when you can actually realize your human potential and and build out and do things that are really creative and that That will help you go ahead and that will help the human race Advant right so that that R&B well that for that base to get done people wanted people must get to financial independence first Because if you're worried about money to help get you food clothing or shelter or or some of the other needs Then you'll ever be able to focus on on that so Our over-arching mission was to help more and more and more people get to financial independence And really the only way that that that you can you could do it is that is if you could help people manage their money better And you could help people you know Reinvest their funds make their assets liquid make them available When it's required and so on and so forth like do all the financial engineering and make sure that Their funds are available when they need it and if they need it more than they could like access credit and so on and so forth very easy And to be honest, people looking at different different ways to do it and that that's when we stumbled upon crypto I think for the fourth time in my in my life and and by that I was completely sold On crypto right I I went on white paper I went on and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and all of that and by then I was completely sold and the reason I was completely sold was because crypto made money fungible and it helped us move money around in a way That no other kind sort of financial Framework in the past did and it was simply because of that that I felt like Okay, if this is going to happen then it is just going to make things more seamless and more efficient It's going to make things more seamless and more efficient eventually the world will move over here So so back in 2017 like we were four founders all of us had Eventually came with this conclusion and at this very strong belief that Crypto is the way the world will will end up conducting five 10 20 years down the line and and if we and we felt that If anything and if we felt that if we could do anything to make people get to financial independence faster than crypto The technology behind it would be the fastest way to get people there and and then she said that okay Let's just directly jump right in and and make that the mission of our lives So that's what we you know decided to jump into and start doing and and effectively With the vision of getting people to financial independence the goal was that okay Crypto is the way forward then let's try and get more and more and more people into crypto The the problem with that is that of course there are a thousand challenges, right? Like it's an asset class like like no ever. It's it's regular time Yeah, there are regulatory appliances user-adoption problems technology problems user interface problems Just just getting people to convert that USD or INR or GBP into Bitcoin is like a massive overhead, right? And and we started to solve those problems one by one by one And and take it ahead And and and today moderates is a is a product that serves over a hundred thousand users. We've got users from close to 80 different countries US Europe Southeast Asia and so on and so forth being some of them We are working very hard with regulatory With the regulators around the world to try and get compliance is ready Of course, we built our own on-ramp players and on top of that we built our own investment products These baskets that users can invest in and we'll go deeper into investing and and and what people So first of all, I have to I have to say like just off from your story I love that I love your vision and I think it's a very noble vision And I think that that's something that regardless of what business or or thing you're building like how Mission driven your company is is something that anybody can learn from because I think a lot of entrepreneurs don't think at that level Like the fact that you are thinking at the level of I guess it's a macro vision But it's such an important vision like you want to Enable people financial dependence, but you want to allow them to fulfill all their needs and all their basic requirements So so they can like reach their maximum human potential like that's a that's a really interesting And that's a really it's a really noble thing that you're doing and now you just sort of build After you have that thing that drives you Then you build the thing that's going to allow you to facilitate that and that's what that's what you've done And I apologize. I cannot roll my Rs like you can so I keep saying mood wrecks like I you say like I can't say like that. I can't roll my Rs However, however you're saying it's perfectly fine Very kind Um, so so there's a very interesting story behind why we named it So so yeah, look okay, so why so and also so the first version of so you you had this vision You understood that crypto you bought into crypto as as a construct as something that is going to move the world forward Now you're trying to figure out how to do that exactly and through like these bucketed simple Investment options, but anyway, yes, go ahead. What's where does the name come from? Yeah, so so So going back again to 2017 again, we have a bunch of four founders who were focused on building something in India So I said, okay, let's let's try and first solve for this problem in India and then we'll take it to the world Right and and because we we were going with that focus Mudrax is comes from two words. It's Mudra exchange Mudra literally means currency in Sanskrit. So so so Mudrax literally translates to Like currency exchange for all practical purposes But yeah, the third process was that okay, let's let's start small Let's start with the jurisdiction that matters the most to us which is which are the folks around us And he said that we will not occur currency exchange in India So we literally started building the coinbase for India in January 2018 um, so like almost four years ago now and uh, you know, build out Bill out our app build our order matching engine build everything from scratch and we're just about to Launch to our beta users. So we we launched to our alpha users in March 15 2018 and we're just about to launch to our beta users And literally one week before we could do that the central bank in India comes in and banned scripted trading in the country and And effectively with our product ready our users ready. We just couldn't launch right and and and then when that happened We started to go back to the drawing board. I said okay If the central bank is not going to be open and not going to allow this immediately How what what do we do what kind of product do we build out and and that's actually In hindsight, that's one of the best things that happened to us because at that one time we said that okay Let's focus on the trading and exchange side but while doing that process. We realize that okay trading and exchange and traders are Just a very very small set of the entire ecosystem When we are looking at retail investors. They are looking for simplification of a lot of things And the problems that we saw people who are facing in India were the same problems that people who are facing world over Globally right so so we decided to instead of building out an India focus product Just scale it up and do it slightly more globally Now as a result of that we we reconfigured Set up our hq in Delaware And and with this vision went to y-combinator I see of course accepted us and so we we were part of the y-combinator 2019 winter cohort Launched out our alpha version of the product then and and did our first kind of a Kind of sort of angel round with yc when we raised 500k After that did like a seed round in 2020 where we raised sorry you pre-seed round 20 Where we raised 250k then a seed round Earlier last year in in August 2021 and now we just closed the pre-series as well Have like Yeah, congratulations. That's amazing Thanks a lot right It's actually great to find believers in your vision who are well aligned and and with you over close over four years of now Executing relentlessly Add this problem one after the other after the other I think I think that confidence clearly shows and other folks By the way, are you building a room? Are you doing a Rubik's cube while you're doing it? Here's smart guy. Yeah, I would be so distracted. I would not do that Okay, so as uh, you know, you go to yc and and I'm actually curious about this because Obviously, there's been a lot of money in the space and there's been a lot of companies that are trying to figure out and actually I'm curious as well because you know the landscape When I see crypto and I see crypto companies. I feel like there's a lot of companies trying to do what you're doing but I also feel like a lot of them May have not done it properly for security risks Uh, a lot of security risks to see a lot of hacks. You see a lot of compromises So first question is how did you solve for the security component and then second question You can answer them with whatever order you want really. I'm just curious um How did yc pick you at a probably the million other crypto projects That approach them because yc are very smart investors. They're very smart groups. So they don't they don't bet on All I'm assuming like 99% of the crypto projects they probably approached them over the past few years So speak to that So, so let's actually take a step back and first talk about what mudregs does and and and and and what's our vision? How are we solving this problem? So and how are you different to as than others? So so when we talk about the world of investing The entire world in messing broadly three kinds of products Of on the one end there is the fixed income product Which is like the savings account in your bank that you know gives you protection of capital But a small interest you don't talk right like for the US that's close to zero But for the rest of world there is still some amount of bank savings that you can get right Of that that's that's typically where the most number of users in the world are like everyone has a bank account Everyone gets a small yield And everyone is kind of happy with like okay with that like not really happy but okay with that Then the second kind which actually has the most number of users in the most number of a UN is the market linked Returns kind of products which means that you are putting in money in index funds in mutual funds That that are growing as the market grows and of course they fall as the market forms Right and then on the other end there is a third side which is a market hedged products Which are essentially hedge funds that Only the ultra rich have access to and that part is is something that a lot of people aspire to get to But never can because either they don't have the the financial limitations or or there are some investment amount requirements Or to be honest those products are very sophisticated for the average retail investor where the average Where the job of hedge fund actually to reduce your risk while maintaining returns Mutual funds and so on as opposed to continue to just give you returns along with the risk within right So broadly that's the spectrum of investing right and and if you if you think of how Most of the current crypto companies are positioned that they are saying that coming in by Bitcoin coming in by Ethereum Coming in by Solana and so on and so forth right which is effectively like saying come in by Apple stock Come in by Google stock come in by Facebook stock and like it's very well understood now over the Over the last 40 50 60 years of of investing landscape that that's that's grown That single stock picking is actually the worst thing that you can do like the best thing that you can do is Investing in a diverse index doing that regularly and letting that money compound right and and and effectively What we are saying is that if this is the largest this market link products is the largest bucket So whether what you're looking for is some kind of structured products that users can invest in and effectively those structured products is what So to give you an example Typically a term of people invest in the smb 500 like the smb 500 is the most invested index in the world And an smb 500 is basically a simple rule that says that pick the top 500 stocks Way them by market cap and put in your money in that weightage in the top 500 ones What we've done is we've created a similar basket for crypto called as crypto blue chip We have the top five crypto tokens by market cap in proportion to market cap. We call this a coin site Just like how there is the smb 500 there might be Let's say a bank Bank index that just talks about banks that you get in essence, right? We created a similar DeFi index on the next There might be a pharma index on on on on and see that all on the Nasdaq that you might want to invest in We've created a similar pharma basket on the next so what we've done And then we've created these baskets that make it very easy for you to invest So now when you come to bundles you no longer click on and say that I want to buy Bitcoin You say that okay, I want to invest in crypto in general And if I want to invest in crypto in general the new crypto stars or crypto blue chip are the baskets that I actually invest in Or you say that I believe that metaverse is going to be the next big thing in crypto So there's a metaverse basket that you pick and choose that you invest in right once you do this once you do this The first thing that you do is you remove the overhead of decision making from the user and and and very few people understand Is but the reason why retail investors hate doing stock picking is because they need to go back and decide every single time Whether it's the right time to enter is the right time to exit is the right time to rebalance And let's be honest most people don't have that ability and if you look at one term that's very popularly thrown around Encrypto it's called as dy or do your own research like come on guys Let's be serious if someone had the ability to do their own research and invest everyone would be millionaires Like the fact that That's inhibitor that's that's like exactly that's a gatekeeper in the crypto and that's a stopping you know your grandmother from investing exactly Exactly and and that's why once you once we simplify and create these baskets You now no longer need to go to the research about the tokens behind it What what you need to do is directly make a decision like and at the end of the day picking all stocks is broadly just placing a bet You'd directly need to take a decision whether crypto is going to go up or not meta versus going to go up or not NFTs going to go up or not and then accordingly place your allocation that everything else mudrex takes care of At the back end we rebalance them on a monthly basis You make sure that the right tokens come in and the right tokens without and the best part is the custody of all the tokens is always in your wallet So it's not like we are pulling money take it in and taking it and putting it our account and then doing all the transactions here All the tokens are always in your custodial wallet that we have with mudrex so That part actually makes the entire journey super super seamless So that's that's the security the security part too if if so correct day okay I understand so people are actually owning and holding their own tokens. So when they make an investment They're actually purchasing those tokens. So they have like the keys to those tokens that are sitting in their wallet They don't have the keys to those tokens directly the tokens themselves are stored custodially in the background They can access them by the user name and password deposit and withdraw it anywhere Because the user because those challenges are also significant challenges like the reason my my grandma can't invest Is worse she doesn't understand with the fuck a password or a secret key is that you have to put into to get access to your ethereum wallet Like those user interface challenges are are are problematic. So So those are some of the problems that that we are trying to we are trying to solve and saying that okay This is the first product that we've started with in that's bang in the middle Which is market linked products and from here we want to venture out either side on on the one end We are launching a new product called as Called as Mudrax in red Mudrax interest account. We're just similar to block five next So but instead of actually giving money to centralize entities at the back We use all the power of defy all the power of yield farming all the power of of of of yield accruals over there And have packaged a product that will try and give users 14% interest across all their So if you've got btc you get 14% interest on your btc value you've got ethereum You're a 14% interest on the ethereum value All interest accrues on a daily basis directly into your On Mudrax crypto wallet and and we think that that can itself be a large game changer In parallel on the market hedged side we are working with large institutional clients Of and and you know family offices and etch and eyes to try and help them figure out how they can invest in crypto without the risk of crypto And over there we are working on a separate project and product with our in-house quantum team That tries to give you bitcoin returns at one fourth the volatility of bitcoin So so effectively that's how we see the the landscape of of of investing that is market There's kind of fixed income market linked market hedged fixed income and market link that broadly what all of retail is after We started with market link that's that product is essentially exploded We've been growing at about literally about a hundred percent month over month since the last eight nine months That product has been out in life and then of course this new fixed income product is you know poised to make us really faster So but still so so walk me through the experience with YC So how did you how did you you obviously you differentiated yourself in in major ways but There was still probably a massive amount of due diligence that YC did and the reason why I just think it's so interesting Is because I know a lot of crypto companies and I know a lot of them aren't going through YC Right they're raising money alternative methods like they're not going to traditional seed like I You lived in this landscape so you know all the different funding methods that people have gone through to try to raise money for their companies So how did you get into YC and and also Why did you choose to go this route because I'm sure you could have found money other places too correct, so you know let's just This let's this rollback and imagine the the time period that we were in right so when we applied to YC This was august 2018 so four five months after the btc crash When everyone who had come in into crypto was already wiped out what we called now as the winter the crypto last crypto winter Was was completely there the I say just started to come and and everything was frozen over and And we had just launched our product right and and we were speaking to individual users and every user that we spoke to went and Like our first hundred our first thousand users were literally individuals that we spoke to on discord channels on dreaded groups Where we saw what they were the what issues they were facing message them and saying that hey This seemed like a problem that we can solve why don't you come and try out with the next and give us feedback and so on and so forth About 90% of those first hundred users The the reply that they would give us is how why do I trust you why are you not a scam? Yeah Yeah, it's an obvious thing right Yeah, it is because there's so many scams and you layer on investment plus plus crypto It's like people. It's like red flies going up everywhere exactly right and investment and crypto and there is this new startup that a bunch of guys Staying far away from here doing and like it's all very weird right and this august 2018 when I see those were crashing day after the other and there was scams everywhere And so on and so forth right so so we realized very early in our journey that at the end of the day when you're asking someone to invest in a product that you created Basically, what you are saying them? What you're saying that is that hey boss listen trust me. I will take care of your money So at the end of the day you're not in the investing business. You're actually in the business of building trust And anything in everything that you can do to build more and more and more trust with your client and with your customer That will help them build more confidence in what you're doing and as a result of them invest more in which case you'll be able to help them grow Their wealth more and get them to financial independence faster right so so the game at the end of the day is that you need to build trust now Trust unlike most other things in life Can't be built with money is extremely long term to build and extremely easy to lose right and the only way that you can really build trust is by A providing a world-class experience Be affiliating with entity is that other people trust and and see of course making sure that you are consistent reliable transparent and you know all of the other base filters So so the first thing that we wanted was that if for people to trust us We very quickly realize that if people have to trust us then need to be some large entity that they trust in general And we should be affiliated with them and as a result we applied for you know, YC and textiles and multiple of these accelerators Now the product that we were building and and the kind of team that we had We're so unique. So just to give you a background. I told you for me. This was my like with it. It was my fourth startup, right I have three other co-founders and actually this was their second third or fourth startup as well And all of them come from a very rich history of building consumer tech products in India and group for example my CTO Alankar He was a he used to work in the security team and in the infrastructure team at Twitter Help scale that up came back to India started a credit lending startup scale that up Sold that business started and then started moving next my VP of DeFi and my VP of engineering row with them prince both of them have started multiple startups in the past So like we came we came with like really tier one pedigree and that of course help apply for YC The product and our approach and and our vision was was very unique and very different from most other people were doing And as a result also that had applied YC and for us it was a win-win right because once you get affiliated with YC We get the trust and and and effectively that label saying that Why combinator back Madrex essentially solves for most of the trust problems So just to anecdotally tell you it's true. Yeah. Yeah, I just anecdotally to tell you before Getting into YC as I said 90% of people who tell us are you scamming me? What is the guarantee that you will not run away with my money after getting into YC 90% of people were actually more than willing to try the product house and give us feedback Because they clearly saw that okay these guys are doing trying to do something cool So the mentality completely changed and that faced transition I think it was the most important thing that happened for us We could now suddenly rub off the trust of YC into everything that we would do And that's very smart I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot Now as a leader you're always on the lookout for more ways to arm yourself with knowledge The books the seminars and most importantly the podcasts that help you make the best possible decision for you Your company your customers because when you know more you can apply more and you can grow With HubSpot CRM platform you can store Track manage and report on all the tasks and activities that make up your relationships with customers With the birds eye view over all your customer interactions HubSpot and powers your decision making like never before So you can give your business and your customers all the good you've got learn how to make your business grow better at HubSpot.com It's very very smart now Even after you get the trust in YC There is a lot of there's a lot of money flowing into crypto and obviously you sought to differentiate yourself So how did you differentiate yourself and sort of stand out because you have the trust of people who know about you But how do you stand out and how do you track new users that are early crypto adopters that are just purchasing Individual stocks or coins per se like that's like how do you target the and how do you track the People that aren't comfortable crypto and how do you educate them and convert them over into investing in these in these buckets What's the business strategies? Yeah, so to be honest Till last till about November We won't do any marketing like we got to about 85,000 users with zero dollars in marketing spend almost every single one of them Coming via reference or via a lot of the content initiative So we clearly understood two things were important firstly a phenomenally good user experience was important and if that coupled with study consistent safe way of You know growing your well Happened with users they will automatically refer people right because investing has if you if you go back and think about it Investing has always been social like you learn about which talks you invest in because your friends are talking about it Or someone is saying that I invested here or I invested in this mutual fund or your uncle tells you that this is This is what I have been doing with my money and so on and so forth. So investing has always been usual Always been social and people talk about the products that that they use if those products helped them out So our first focus was always making out that our product needs to be really rock star So that our users really love their experience. So they go out and tell their friends about us So about half of the users that we acquired till date are purely through referral that that people tell their friends about us And that's how we got this large organic spread and the second thing that we worked really hard on was as you rightly said educating people about Crypto about investing and so on and so forth. So we've created our own Our own block series called as number x academy where we we kind of sort of showcase and highlight What what should be our investing journey? We've done I think now close to a hundred youtube videos where we partner with different different different youtube influencers and and and we work with them to create content By the way, none of those like At least none till October were actually paid content those influencers agree to work with us simply because they love the product that we are making And they were they decided to work on like a referral basis that they said that okay if someone joins using my link I'll get like a referral commission, but otherwise it's it's completely fine and there's so many exchange right so So All of that was was really critical while we were you know ramping up But now that we've got the product we know we've got great product market fit and and and I know we've got great product market fit Because we were like really really high retention like 95 over 95% of users who use mudrex and month one end up coming in one two and one three and so on That that's really great our user acquisition costs are really low our sign up rates are really high So now that we've got that part we are now really pushing the pedal hard And and I think the first place that we are going back is going back to the same philosophy with which we joined by combinators We are saying that if we want people to invest in us We would want to go to places that they trust and and today people trust YouTube channels that they follow they Trust Twitter influencers that they follow They trust communities that they are a part of so we are working with YouTube influencers with Twitter influencers Communities they are a part of to do Kind of sort of giveaways to educate the to educate the community to tell them about our product and scale up from there So that's our that's our approach right now No, I'm looking so I'm looking at the site as as we chat and I just find that The even like the onboarding and like finding portfolios and like the little questionnaires that you do It's very very much in line with what I usually experience when I'm trying to figure out like my risk tolerance for like a traditional stock picking or bucket picking tool So like the you the the UX user experience is very similar. So it makes it very comfortable In fact, just just actually just last one we launched the portfolio manager product as well That or actually I should fully manage the portfolio recommender product where you come in You literally just fill out the four question questionnaire and then we give you some suggestions Uh, that okay based on this your risk profile is this and as a result these are the products that will suit you best So I don't you try them out and it's it's you know the smaller things like this To give you another example one of the other things that we do to build trust and this is something that we realized off-late is that No matter how seamless a journey you make Some amount of human touch always helps. So as a result of that we organize almost six webinars every single week Uh across different different time zones where there is a representative from Mudrax trying to help people out Get get getting on a call answering questions about crypto about investing about these baskets with our users And apart from that we were a one-on-one help service as well called as Mudrax select where if you if you done your onboarding journey And you're looking for places that you want to invest in or you're not really sure how to get started We help you out uh and and and people as young as 15-year-olds to as old as 78-year-olds have used that service And and that's how we you've gotten them on board so they said so I think all of these small small things You know that we've done have really helped us scale out the product Amazing um and I'm curious because you're living it and you're in it so much when you look at all these new I guess asset classes, but also like if I if I what I mean by asset classes It's maybe not be the right term, but you have like you have crypto And then you have like web3 projects you have d5 projects you have metaverse projects you have NFT projects Do you feel like and this is probably something like you know This is like more of a personal question Do you feel like these will all maintain the same momentum like do you feel like metaverse is going to maintain the same Metaverse investment and projects are going to maintain the same momentum as NFTs And they're going to maintain the same momentum as crypto and like there's so many different things Like that even you've captured on on on mudrex, but that people can now put their money into It's it's becoming a different set of confusing right because if you think about it It's It's almost like when you are investing in stock buckets and you invest in different groupings of stocks right like and you can invest in tech stocks You can invest in like you know global stocks or or or North American and you can set your risk tolerance, but There's so many different things now So do you see them all being around in the next 10 years like not even just profitable But do you see like metaverse always being a thing NFTs always being a thing that our people are going to invest in or do you see this to be more of like a It's relevant now. It's it's it's something that's hot now, but In five years from now, we're just going to be really focused back on crypto again Is it something that's short term or long term as I get my question? So so I think the theme will stay But the players will change so NFTs will be there, but but the current projects doing NFTs might change Right metaverse will be there, but the current popular projects and metaverse will change and in fact I shouldn't say might they will most likely change because such is life right like like like yeah like 90% of of Of companies that were in the S&P 520 years ago on that day course and and that's a reality Having said that the S&P 500 is there and which is which again goes back to our argument of why Thematic baskets are important because like a basket helps you bet in an idea and an order particular project right so the constituent of that Of that basket might continue to change over time, but the idea still remains so metaverse as a sector will continue to grow NFT as a sector will continue to grow, but whether the individual constituents of NFT and metaverse will grow or not But that's of course dependent on what those individual projects end up doing was that life cycle how is competition and and so on and so forth See what always mess with me is I understand Utility of crypto. I understand the utility of web three projects and even some defy projects There can be like actual utility when I look at Metaverse I could see utility as well actually NFTs in particular. I find it. It's hard to tie utility to NFTs like it's like even more of And maybe you can speak to some projects that you've seen that are counter to what I'm saying because I'm sure there are some and I know that for example Like okay, we're just gonna use like cliches like like Gary Vee is is very big on NFTs And he speaks a lot about how you tie like NFTs to Like actual tangible like events that you you know I think if he sells an NFT he gets at people who buy that NFT get access to his conference for example So there's like an actual tangible thing tied to it, but I see a lot of NFTs are are more like an art market, right? So there isn't a lot of tangible items tied to it. Do you feel like that could be a detriment to To the growth of NFTs in particular or do you feel like more NFT projects are starting to try and find ways to actually tie A tangible valuable item to the purchase of artwork So so I genuinely think we haven't even scratched the surface of what NFTs are and let's find for a second Just talk about what what what an NFTs right like as the name suggests non-fungible tokens means that it's a token That's unique and and if you look at our real world there are actually more things that are unique Then there are generic right like for example the books that you have behind you are fairly unique Like the property that you own is fairly unique the phone that you own is fairly unique and for that matter Your resume is fairly unique like your identity and and your status hierarchy in your Let's say organization is fairly unique and and all of these things are fairly unique and today The only unique things that we kind sort of set up and got ready in the NFT world Essentially art. So we just literally look at one small part There actually doesn't affect the vast majority of people So let me let me give you an example of how people are thinking about NFTs So there is a there's a friend of mine who's building a project out In the Dow tooling space by by that what I mean is that they're helping Dow's Figure out how should they get their contributors to work together and one interesting idea that they are working on is that how can they create An NFT resume of everyone which means that it's a it's an on-chain resume that has these 15 different properties And let's say let's for the sake of simplicity simplicity. Let's say that on that resume There is a property that says tech and in that tech part you have Some skills for Python some skills for Java some skills for front end and so on and so forth So they're trying to figure out a way as how can they create This resume using NFT rewards that individual Dow's can give to their to their contributors and scale up from there So effectively how do you kind of attribute unique Properties unique contribution that you give get that on-chain and make sure that cemented and stays there So from the NFT specific perspective. I think we are literally just scratching the surface and as time progresses All the things that we felt were unique goods or services in the real world will probably continue to move towards The internet and the digital world via this now of course a lot of these might become completely useless for example Of a ticket to a conference can be made in NFT But once the conferences done that NFT is basically useless like what are you going to do with a with a ticket stuff And that's perfectly fine, right? So as a result What how does that NFT have long-term value is a separate problem and things like art do have long-term value Things like a particular project that you did for a particular company on your resume It does have long-term value, but a ticket stop to a conference does not and we should be okay with that That different different purposes for it What I think was interesting was I always found the tokenization of things to make sense tokenization of of unique IP to make sense But then it seemed like NFT became synonymous with art for some strange reason Just because like you're saying it was like the first iteration of NFT It's just scratching the surface, but there's so many other ways that tokenizing something so that it can be transferred and not duplicated and tracked can be a very useful mechanism Absolutely if you 100 percent, but I just I just I thought it was strange that there was blockchain companies that were trying to tokenize different things records like all these different items like fixing supply chain issues And whatnot like through tokenization of data points almost and then it just turned into like A bunch of artwork, which is just strange Yeah, well think of it think with this right pets.com Went bust in 1999, but there are there is an entire gamut of Online pet companies now that are thriving and growing rapidly So it's not necessary that the first iteration should work out right like it's the attempts that people are trying to do and That's why this space is so so hot right like the smartest minds of our generation today are saying that The world and and how are essentially coming back and saying that how the world is evolved over the last 300 400 500 years Fundamentally needs to change if you want to move more and more and more towards the internet and web 3 is all about Capturing attributing and transferring value for the value that individuals are trying to create whether that be the value created via Service whether that be the value created via good or whatever and and and and and and crypto blockchain truly opens that space up right that's It's very unique and that's it's like inherently attractive to so many smart people and and and and just and it just continues from there Um and last question on on this as you see all these different categories and sections like we see like NFT and defy and and crypto and web 3 and and metaverse Are there any Sectors that are not popular yet that you that you you found like what is the future evolution of some of these Some of these sectors that may not be categorized yet that like you in particular are excited about because they're so new Is there something that we haven't heard of correct? So so like and again This is another conversation that I was just having last week with a friend of mine see One one very interesting sector that I really like is that uh is is how are you getting people together and getting them to work? Like all of crypto is essentially Communities coming together working on a small problem solving that problem and moving ahead to the next problem Right like that's basically all of crypto is which means that in the traditional world we had companies now we had communities Now if this analogy is true in the traditional world we had tech Agency's help out companies with their tech we had marketing agencies help out companies with their marketing He had HR agencies help out company with their HR. He had payroll agencies help out companies as a payroll right and If all of these kinds of SaaS services were built out around companies to help them either serve their employees or their customers better I expect all of this to get recreated in the in the community side as well Because at the end of the day the problems remain the same. There's the nature in which they are executed change So communities today need help with how should they get their contributors to contribute more Communities need help in terms of keeping their users sticky communities need help in terms of outreaching to their users in kind of sort of an on-chain Wave without having an email address attached as an associate with them right and and I think this web three SaaS Effective Kind of industries now just going to get kick started off because I think he now reads like a critical mass of Communities and nows where it starts to make sense for me to build businesses and tools that help Contribute and improve the kind of set of thousand and community that are and I think The next couple of years will actually we we we actually end up seeing a lot of companies come out in in this space That you help communities out Smart very smart. Okay. Um, I want to do some rapid fire to close off just to pull out your experience But before we pivot any closing thoughts on on you know on mood directs on where you want to take the company the vision And also where can people connect with you go find out more about the company all the links websites social all that Yes, so so we are on mudrex.com Uh, it's it's fairly straightforward mudrx.com. You can find us on Twitter on LinkedIn with basically the same name I personally and he reached out on edu well at mudrex.com and uh if and and and what what we will do is after this call We will also share like a referral link with you guys So anyone who drives in the get like 25 dollars credit on on on right self. So that should help out Um, and of course with with mudrex we're doing a lot of things especially in the investing space and we want to make this better And we rely on user feedback a lot so so any anyone wants to get feedback that That'll always be great and and I am actually directly accessible to all our users There are emails that go out from my name to all our users when you just get on board it So feel free to reply to that. It's always me at the other end getting back to you Good very good. Okay, so let's do a couple rapid fire um Uh, biggest challenge that you've overcome in your own personal professional life What was that? How did you overcome saying no two things saying no? Okay, that's smart. Why is that explain? Well Like very early on I realized that like like like most other Founders and then folks you just want to try and do more and more and more and more and more things, right? But eventually realize that when I'm trying to do more and more and more and more things None of the things that I'm taking up I'm I'm I'm we'll try and do to the full extent possible So Realize that if I start saying more to some of these things that I don't care about right now or that are not urgent right now Then I can focus on things that actually do really matter and take things up from that and that I think has been really really hard to do Because because the allure of saying yes to something is just so so high Then it is difficult to go back and don't say okay. This is what we are not doing right now So let's focus on just this and move ahead from here Very good if you had to choose one person there's obviously been many but pick one person who's been a major impact in your life Who was that and what did they teach you? Yeah, this is a tough one but But but but I would say that In my previous company I used to work very closely with the colleague of mine While I was at a product use our CPU and he really helped me out a lot and then it was mostly just Conversations and and one-on-one that helped that have helped kind of shape my world view today And have been instrumental in helping me get to where I am as such If you had to pick a book or podcast something that's been influential in your life What would it be? Oh, so so The book influence I think comes first It's a book by Robert Cardini And effectively that's that's my guide that that book is given me a guiding A set of guiding principles of essentially operating in like broadly that these are like the the five six things that you can do to wear it But there are there are a whole ton of books that that I really love by I enjoy reading books and and another one that I really like is Thinking fast and slow by David Kahneman and and the entire The entire philosophy around prospect theory and and everything around it is just so fascinating that that helped me become a better person and hopefully a better product manager And and and a person who listens to the search mode Very good. If you could tell your 20-year-old self one thing. What would it be? Be patient I think I think Patience is is is is is something that It's a long drawn virtue to get to but be patient and easy is something that I would definitely tell And last question what is success mean to you Ah I think just at the end of the day going back home and being happy like I think I'm pretty successful right now because I'm going to go home pretty happy You