The Brave Technologist

Winston Zhang, Co-founder at Cega, shares how they're preparing for their upcoming mainnet launch. He discusses the marketing strategies they're working on, including an NFT collection, and a major risk they took by differentiating their visual branding. He also educates us on the benefits of exotic options, even in a bear market.

In this episode we discuss:

• How to increase mainstream of adoption of your products
• Focusing on your customers instead of your competitors
• Differentiating through your branding and marketing aesthetics
• Why crypto marketers should cut the jargon
• Creating FOMO when fundraising and pitching VCs

Guest Bio:

Winston Zhang is the co-founder of Cega that is building the first decentralized exotic options protocol in Web3. He was previously a founder in Y Combinator's Winter 20 batch and before that, a product manager at DoorDash. Fun fact, Winston is Canadian and has a twin brother!

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About this Show:

The Brave Marketer podcast is hosted by Donny Dvorin, VP, Head of Sales at Brave Software - the makers of the privacy-respecting browser with a built-in ads platform that rewards users for their attention with the Basic Attention Token. Brave is at the forefront of a new online privacy frontier and has unique insights into the future of marketing and advertising in a cookieless world.

Music by: Ari Dvorin

Jay Kurahashi-Sofue, VP of Marketing at Ava Labs, discusses how his team disrupted the traditional event experience with their recent Avalanche Summit in Barcelona, along with some of the risks they took that really paid off. He also shares the biggest opportunities for crypto marketers across all stages of the funnel.

In this episode we discuss:

• How optimizing for speed and cost impacts blockchain adoption and attracting crypto traders
• The challenges crypto marketers face when advertising on social media channels
• Upper funnel activations and ways marketers can get more comfortable going horizontal with their channels
• how user research can play an important role in meeting users where they are, and creating effective marketing strategies

Guest Bio: Jay Kurahashi-Sofue is the VP of Marketing at Ava Labs, a Web3 organization building Avalanche. Prior to Ava Labs, he was the Head of Marketing at Fluidity and AirSwap and also was a strategist at Ogilvy, where he co-founded its first blockchain marketing group. Jay is also the co-founder of BlockMarketers, a virtual and in-person community for marketing executives in the blockchain industry. Outside of Ava Labs, Jay is a photographer and music producer.

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About this Show:

The Brave Marketer podcast is hosted by Donny Dvorin, VP, Head of Sales at Brave Software - the makers of the privacy-respecting browser with a built-in ads platform that rewards users for their attention with the Basic Attention Token. Brave is at the forefront of a new online privacy frontier and has unique insights into the future of marketing and advertising in a cookieless world.

Music by: Ari Dvorin

Brad Michelson, Head of US Marketing team at eToro, discusses the unique social features their platform offers in an effort to reduce intimidation and attract new investors into crypto trading. He also shares his thoughts on the biggest challenges with crypto marketing and the effective strategies they've implemented to overcome them. In this episode we discuss:

• What makes the eToro marketplace different from any other crypto trading platform on the market
• CryptoBowl: how brands like eToro and Crypto.com took over the Superbowl this year
• The clever way eToro used Twitter and its integration with Giphy to increase the performance of their ads
• How to leverage online communities like Discord, Telegram, and Signal for crypto marketing

Guest Bio:

Brad Michelson is the Head of US Marketing team at eToro, a global social trading platform with over 27 million global users. He is a digital marketer with over ten years of experience taking finTech and e-commerce brands to market. Previously, Brad worked as the Director of Marketing at BlockFi.

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About this Show:

The Brave Marketer podcast is hosted by Donny Dvorin, VP, Head of Sales at Brave Software - the makers of the privacy-respecting browser with a built-in ads platform that rewards users for their attention with the Basic Attention Token. Brave is at the forefront of a new online privacy frontier and has unique insights into the future of marketing and advertising in a cookieless world.

Music by: Ari Dvorin

Aaron Schneider, Business Development and Partnerships at Bitpay, discusses ways that crypto can become more useful in order to maintain its relevance into the future. He shares what Bitpay is doing differently to solve this with e-commerce, along with the challenges they're up against in transitioning to crypto as a mainstream form of payment. In this episode we discuss:

• Trends in fintech marketing and how to attract millennials and gain production adoption
• Launching Lamborghini's first-ever NFT collection
• The benefits for merchants in switching over to crypto as a payment method
• How "accepting crypto" is a marketing opportunity for brands and examples of how brands like Newegg took advantage

Guest Bio:

Aaron Schneider Business Development and Partnerships at Bitpay - the largest cryptocurrency payments gateway. Aaron has been in the eCommerce, fintech, and payments industry for over 22 years. BitPay is compatible with 95 crypto wallets and 13 cryptocurrencies and enables merchants to accept crypto payments with no volatility risk. BitPay also helps merchants with crypto disbursements/payouts/crypto rewards programs. Aaron is also co-author of the Better Business Book Volume 2. (available on Amazon).

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About this Show:

The Brave Marketer podcast is hosted by Donny Dvorin, VP, Head of Sales at Brave Software - the makers of the privacy-respecting browser with a built-in ads platform that rewards users for their attention with the Basic Attention Token. Brave is at the forefront of a new online privacy frontier and has unique insights into the future of marketing and advertising in a cookieless world.

Music by: Ari Dvorin

Dylan Dewdney, Co-Founder and Lead Initiator at NFT3.com and Kylin Network, discusses the world of DIDs (decentralized identifiers) and some of the future use cases, along with how Web3 will change the way data is handled. He also talks about the changing relationship between marketers and the data needed to optimize their businesses, and why privacy is often highlighted but becomes compromised in an effort to track results.

We also discuss:

• How data ownership will impact the ways in which consumers interact with the internet and view their personal privacy
• The ethics and security considerations for sharing your data in a web3 world
• The lifetime values of our personal genome data and how much we should or could be paid for sharing it along with ways that large multinational companies can monetize idle data sets
• Importance of appealing to human emotions in marketing and committing to a particular position or belief.

Guest Bio: Dylan Dewdney, Co-Founder and Lead Initiator at NFT3.com and Kylin Network. Dylan is a longtime crypto supporter and enthusiast dating all the way back to 2011. He has consistently been at the forefront of the intersection between society and technology and has appeared alongside such luminaries as Edward Snowden and Gavin Wood.

Dylan is an investor and advisor to a number of crypto projects and has been building in the space since 2017. His most recent interests and pursuits are in the fields of decentralized data monetization and decentralized identity, respectively, as co-founder of Kylin Network and NFT3, respectively.

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About this Show:

The Brave Marketer podcast is hosted by Donny Dvorin, VP, Head of Sales at Brave Software - the makers of the privacy-respecting browser with a built-in ads platform that rewards users for their attention with the Basic Attention Token. Brave is at the forefront of a new online privacy frontier and has unique insights into the future of marketing and advertising in a cookieless world.

Music by: Ari Dvorin

David Feinstein, Head of Partnerships at SuperRare, discusses the economics of digital art and how valuing NFTs compares to the traditional art world. He also shares how luxury products, designers and brands can get into the Web3 game via the SuperRare marketplace.

We also discuss:

• How SuperRare is creating marketing moments that go viral while also empowering artists
• Digital scarcity and levers that drive the price of crypto art and NFTs
• Social media and crypto: why Twitter is SuperRare's top channel for driving new business and how they measure its impact
• Ways the fashion and entertainment industries can leverage crypto

Guest Bio:

David Feinstein, Head of Partnerships at SuperRare – the premier digital art marketplace in the NFT world that is often compared to the new aged Christies x Sothebys for the traditional art market. David leads their partnerships and works with top brands and agencies to bring NFTs + cryptoart to the masses and through empowering the artists and collectors of the SuperRare community.

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About this Show:

The Brave Marketer podcast is hosted by Donny Dvorin, VP, Head of Sales at Brave Software - the makers of the privacy-respecting browser with a built-in ads platform that rewards users for their attention with the Basic Attention Token. Brave is at the forefront of a new online privacy frontier and has unique insights into the future of marketing and advertising in a cookieless world.

Music by: Ari Dvorin

Duke Kim, Director of Crypto Partnerships at The Giving Block, educates us on the benefits of crypto philanthropy and the work they're doing to connect donors and nonprofits, along with ways that companies can create corporate social responsibility programs to make and impact. Discover why donors should donate cryptocurrencies versus dollars, and the associated tax implications to consider.

We also discuss:

• The rise of NFT driven donations (Care.org, Jack Butcher, Twitter)
• The goal of Crypto Giving Tuesday and examples of fundraising campaigns that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars for charities
• How Brave users can donate their BAT, Bitcoin and ETH
• Case Study: How Nexo and The Giving Block raised $25K for the 'Save The Children' campaign by using Brave Ads.

Guest Bio:

Duke Kim Director of Crypto Partnerships at The Giving Block, an organization makes it easy for nonprofits to accept cryptocurrency donations and for users to donate in a more tax efficient way.

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About this Show:

The Brave Marketer podcast is hosted by Donny Dvorin, VP, Head of Sales at Brave Software - the makers of the privacy-respecting browser with a built-in ads platform that rewards users for their attention with the Basic Attention Token. Brave is at the forefront of a new online privacy frontier and has unique insights into the future of marketing and advertising in a cookieless world.

Music by: Ari Dvorin

Aggroed Lighthacker, CEO at Splinterlands, discusses why gaming was the winning solution to support the mass market to engage with crypto. He discusses how Splinterlands massively exploded its user base through word of mouth advertising among hardcore gamers, along with growth tactics that other crypto companies can replicate.

In this episode we discuss:

• Why mass adoption of cryptocurrency can lead to more peace, prosperity, and freedom in the world
• Utilizing community building platforms like Discord to grow an audience
• Creating demand with scarcity and how the economics of NFTs differs to the real estate market
• Ways they marketed their game on a lean budget in the early days
• His predictions for the future of blockchain, gaming, crypto, and NFTs

Guest Bio:

Dr. Jesse "Aggroed" Reich, CEO at Splinterlands, was a chemistry professor before launching a successful career in the educational software industry. A lifelong gamer, Aggroed both played games and created them as a hobby. In 2016, he started using the blockchain-based blogging platform steemit.com to have an immutable place to free write on topics he wanted to investigate.

Together with Matt Rosen, they created and cofounded the Splinterlands game in 2018 which is now one of the largest Dapps in the world.

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About this Show:

The Brave Marketer podcast is hosted by Donny Dvorin, VP, Head of Sales at Brave Software - the makers of the privacy-respecting browser with a built-in ads platform that rewards users for their attention with the Basic Attention Token. Brave is at the forefront of a new online privacy frontier and has unique insights into the future of marketing and advertising in a cookieless world.

Music by: Ari Dvorin

Chris Ghent, Global Head of Brand Strategy & Partnerships at the NEAR Foundation, shares how he and his team are taking a unique approach to making crypto more tangible to new users, along with how Layer 1 protocols such as NEAR can really bring in the masses and remove friction through branding. In this episode we discuss:

• Broader applications of NFTs outside of just art and collectibles
• Opportunities for the creator economy with DAOs
• Using innovation and marketing channels for a Web3 world
• Creative NFT collaborations with musicians like deadmau5

Guest Bio: Chris Gent is an award-winning marketer and entrepreneur and currently the Global Head of Brand Strategy & Partnerships at the NEAR Foundation.

Chris has worked with leading traditional and blockchain brands including Breaker (formerly SingularDTV), First Republic Bank, Harman International Industries, Infiniti Motor Company Ltd, Johnson & Johnson, Keds, Nielsen, Novartis, Prestige Brands, Stanley Black & Decker, and Tezos.

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About this Show:

The Brave Marketer podcast is hosted by Donny Dvorin, VP, Head of Sales at Brave Software - the makers of the privacy-respecting browser with a built-in ads platform that rewards users for their attention with the Basic Attention Token. Brave is at the forefront of a new online privacy frontier and has unique insights into the future of marketing and advertising in a cookieless world.

Music by: Ari Dvorin

Matty Taylor, Head of Growth at Solana Labs, shares how and why community drives the growth of Solana. We also discuss some of the challenges with trying to shift to a decentralized company / model, and why having a great user experience is even more crucial in building trust within a DeFi application. In this episode we also discuss:

• Ways that crypto marketing differs from traditional marketing
• How Web3 is the future of crypto advertising
• Why Matty thinks Crypto is having its 'iPhone moment'
• Market factors in educating consumers and sparking interest in crypto
• Underscoring the importance of the Brave and Solana partnership (announced at WebSummit in Portugal)

Guest Bio:

Matty Taylor is the Head of Growth at Solana Labs, and has been obsessed with cryptocurrency ever since he wrote his undergraduate thesis on the economics of Proof-of-Work consensus mechanisms. Prior to his role at Solana Labs, Matts worked at 0x and Square.

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About this Show:

The Brave Marketer podcast is hosted by Donny Dvorin, VP, Head of Sales at Brave Software - the makers of the privacy-respecting browser with a built-in ads platform that rewards users for their attention with the Basic Attention Token. Brave is at the forefront of a new online privacy frontier and has unique insights into the future of marketing and advertising in a cookieless world.

Music by: Ari Dvorin