Startup Spotlight #196: Big Whale Labs
Big Whale Labs is a Web3 startup building at the intersection of zk, social, and crypto.
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I got the chance to speak with Jason Kim, co-founder and CEO of Big Whale Labs, about what he’s working on at his startup, and any advice he has for emerging entrepreneurs.
Big Whale Labs is a social protocol startup building the future of pseudonymity through zero-knowledge and crypto. Their mission is to build a world where privacy and identity are owned by human, not the corporation. Their protocol SealCred is currently in alpha and test net which allows people to create pseudonymous identities through anonymous but verified NFT credentials powered by zero-knowledge cryptography. They’re backed by many crypto veterans like Road, M13, Slow Ventures, Balaji Srinivasan, and more.
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Startup Spotlight: Big Whale Labs
Problem: Pseudonymity and identity privacy, which allow people to create pseudonyms that are not directly linked to their real-world identities can help protect users from identity theft, unnecessary reputational risk when sharing ideas, and different forms of attacks. This is even more relevant in web3 as with blockchain, identity, social, and professional data get mixed with financial data leading to more risk and attack vectors for users.
Market: In the near term, we’re going after crypto-native folks. There aren’t many of them right now as there are only 30M MAUs for Metamask today (as an example of a data point), but we’re confident that the pie of crypto and dapp users to grow rapidly over the coming months and years.
Solution: SealCred allows you to experience the world pseudonymously with verified but anonymous zero-knowledge credential NFTs or badges. Being powered by zero-knowledge cryptography means you can gain access to your social capital like NFT ownership, school affiliation, work credentials, etc, without being doxxed, which is a powerful primitive.
Team: My co-founder Nikita and I were in the same dorm in 1st year of college where we worked together on iOS apps and development (including bitcoin trackers). Our founding team comprises amazing engineers, builders, and designers who’ve built amazing products for Ro, 1Inch, Amazon, YC, Wework, Tesla, and more.
Recent Success:
Kim: We’ve been successful at building and iterating on our early product with our team. At Big Whale Labs we build and iterate on ideas really quickly. I’ve never worked on a team with such a high speed of testing ideas. I think the speed of execution is one of the most important leading indicators of successful teams.
Recent Struggle:
Kim: Building a community that’s not just value extractive. I think too many crypto companies treat their “community” as a source to extract value from instead of thinking of their community as a genuine partner and stakeholder in their product or protocol. Additionally, it can be difficult to keep everyone happy all the time - there will always be someone who isn't satisfied with the direction of the community or the level of engagement. It's important to strike the right balance so that the community is sustainable in the long run.
Founder Advice:
Kim: Stop getting stuck on analysis/paralysis. I’ve seen so many founders that overanalyze and wait to collect a ton of data before making a decision. This is smart in theory but does not work in practice as the most amount of learning is done through building. Also, startups are a game of levels, obviously keeping a long-term horizon is important but no need to fuss about level 10 problems when you’re stuck on level 1.
Two Cool Founders You Should Know About:
Kim: Here are two founders you should check out next!
Arnav Bathla, Founder of Coinbooks: Coinbooks is Quickbooks for Crypto.
Charles Bai, Founder of Paces: Paces provides actionable data and analytics for green infrastructure developers, operators, and investors to understand what and where to profitably build.
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