In an exclusive interview with cryptonews.com, Sandy Carter, COO of Unstoppable Domains, talks about delivering user-owned digital identity to every person on the planet, and how Web3 domains provide the infrastructure that allows people to own their reputation and data.
About Sandy Carter
Sandy Carter is the Chief Operating Officer and Head of Business Development at Unstoppable Domains, a platform for user-owned digital identity. As COO, she is responsible for driving growth and developing business strategies in pursuit of the company’s mission to provide a user-owned identity for the world. She also drives partnerships and integrations for Web3 and the Metaverse. Prior to Unstoppable, Sandy was a VP at AWS, where she created and grew businesses in emerging tech, leveraging AI, blockchain, and AR/VR. Before that, she was a General Manager at IBM and a Silicon Valley start-up founder. Sandy also recently published a new book on Web3 and AI called “The Tiger and the Rabbit.”
Sandy Carter gave a wide-ranging exclusive interview, which you can see below, and we are happy for you to use it for publication, provided there is a credit to www.cryptonews.com.
Highlights Of The Interview
- Delivering user-owned, digital identity to every person on the planet
- Unstoppable rolled out Unstoppable Messaging, a new way to build connections and community in Web3
- Web3 domains provide the infrastructure that allows people to own their reputation and data
- Giving people the power to own their data will drive equity, privacy, and empowerment for billions
- Blockchain x AI
Full Transcript Of The Interview
Matt Zahab
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Cryptonews Podcast. We are buzzing as always, and I’m super pumped to have the Human Energizer Bunny on the show today. Sandy Carter, the Chief Operating Officer and head of Biz Dev for the one and only Unstoppable Domains, a platform for user owned digital identity. As COO, Sandy is responsible for driving growth and developing business strategies in pursuit of the company’s mission to provide user owned identity for the whole world. She also drives partnerships and integrations for Web3 and the Metaverse. Prior to Unstoppable, Sandy was a VP at AWS ever heard of them? Where she created and grew businesses in emerging tech, leveraging AI, Blockchain and AR and VR. Before that, she was the GM at IBM and a Silicon Valley startup founder. She’s done it all and she recently also published a new book on Web3 and AI called “The Tiger and the Rabbit”. It’s been a hot minute. We’ve been going back and forth for a while and I am very pumped to have The Human Energizer Bunny on the show. Sandy Carter, welcome to show, my friend.
Sandy Carter
Thank you, Matt. Wow, what an intro. I really appreciate that. It’s such an honor to be on your show and to be here with all your listeners. I can’t wait for the conversation.
Matt Zahab
We’re pumped to have you on now. Now I love the term and I’m often called a Electric Factory. I think it’s great. I’ve tried to snag all the Electric Factory domains, but someone’s got them all. Someone’s got the Energizer Bunny domains as well. It’s probably the one and only Sandy, but I got to ask, where did that nickname come from?
Sandy Carter
For some reason, I have a lot of energy and so I like to do a lot of things. So you just talked about I wrote a book. I speak, I run part of the company for Unstoppable, I’m on a board. I just like to do a lot of things, and it keeps my mind really active. And so people just started calling me Energizer Bunny. They started giving me the little Energizer Bunnies. Then they started giving me everything pink like the Energizer Bunny. And so it just kind of stuck. And so that’s kind of how I got my name. And I just keep going and going, I guess.
Matt Zahab
I love that. That is a pretty sweet name to have. Before we get into Unstoppable and all the fun stuff, tell me a little bit about your past. You’ve done a whole lot of everything. You’ve held very high positions at some of the biggest, most reputable companies across the country, and then you jump to Web3. Let’s go back to square one, where’d you go to school, what happened after school, and sort of walk us through all the way to present day.
Sandy Carter
Well, I went to Duke University, where I love Duke. I studied computer science and math, but little known fact, I also was the tutor for the Duke basketball team. This was when Coach K had just come in, and we just started getting some wins on our belt. So I really pride myself in knowing some of those guys and helping them get through their math. And actually, computer science was one of the prereqs for freshmen, so I helped a lot of those freshmen get some of those prereqs under their sleeves. I then went to work, and then I was able to go back to Harvard Business School, which another school I absolutely love for completely different reasons. You know, the basketball team is different than Duke, which has a phenomenal team, but Harvard Business School is all case study, and it was very different for me coming from math, computer science. So I love that I learned so much and then just made these great connections with so many different people that have now done phenomenal things. And then fast forward, I’ve done multiple roles marketing, engineering, business development, strategy, sales for lots of companies. Always using my technology to help really propel forward where we’re headed or what we’re doing. Usually looking at emerging tech, you know, when Spatial computing just came out or when IoT just came out, or Cloud. Like now Cloud seems like an old tech, but when it was a new technology, that’s really what I like to focus in on. I was at Amazon, and I love Amazon by the way, if ever have a chance to go work for Amazon Web Services, do it because you learn so much about how to have leadership principles that you really live by, not just sign up on the know how to build businesses, how to think about businesses. And while I was there, our team started seeing a lot of these emerging tech. So they’re like, well, Sandy, go look at what these companies are doing with Blockchain. That was like my first request because it was an emerging tech. These are all Web2 companies, banks, hospitals, using it for supply chain. And I really just went down the rabbit hole. I’m like, this is really cool tech. Like, blockchain is really awesome. I love the programmability about it, how it really decentralized things, but made things easier cutting out that middle person. And so then we had a lot of our customers using Spatial for education and learning, which was the foundation for the metaverse. And it just so happened I fell in love with it. I started doing lots of side projects, buying some NFTs here and there, building out some different apps with Blockchain. And about that time, Matt Gould, who’s our CEO at Unstoppable, came up to Seattle and said, hey, let’s go do a dinner. I was, ah, why don’t let’s go do a dinner? And he talked to me about the digital identity platform and kind of the rest is history. Here I am. I’ve been here for almost two years.
Matt Zahab
That’s incredible. A couple of points we got to touch on. When you were at Duke. Also go Blue Devils. Did you tutor anyone who is now playing or I guess back in the day, who now or did play in the NBA, any of the big dogs?
Sandy Carter
Let’s see. Well it was a pretty good while ago. So you know what? I tutored Johnny Dawkins who is now a coach. Tommy Amaker who is now a coach. Johnny Dawkins did play in the NBA. Grant Hill who played in the NBA and got hurt. So some of the guys from a long time ago, probably even before your time, but yes I did. And the one really cool moment, I have to tell you, I’m a huge Michael Jordan fan even though he went to Carolina, which is like that for but I still remember meeting him and being impressed even when he was just at UNC. Being so impressed with who he was. And I remember telling at that time, my best girlfriend, that guy’s going to do something really special.
Matt Zahab
And what was it about him? Did he just have that aura, that same killer drive?
Sandy Carter
Yeah, he was just really smart, you know his comments. I expected him to be almost like just a jock but when we were chatting because I was doing something with Johnny Dawkins who was a friend of know he was just really smart, intelligent and insightful, like really insightful. So I just knew he had that good business sense. I also really liked it because he was very grounded in family. He’s very close to his mom and I always thought that anybody who is going to take care of their family, do the right thing by their family is someone who’s going to be very successful because I think that’s really important, having that good support structure. He’s become obviously a superstar.
Matt Zahab
The GOAT. The one and only.
Sandy Carter
Yeah the one and only. That’s right.
Matt Zahab
How can you hate MJ and the last point before we get into some new fun stuff here the AWS, I’ve read the Jeff Bezos books. I’ve seen the Amazon leadership. It is world class and they just groom incredible people like you to become even more incredible. Did you ever have to implement the infamous Pizza Rule where you cannot have more than every person at the table must have two slices of pizza and that is it. Was that a rule back then, when you were there?
Sandy Carter
Absolutely. It’s real. I mean, if you think about it, Amazon is like the largest startup you’ll ever go to and so that’s how they keep it small. Like your teams have to be really small. And that’s the cool thing about Amazon, is the Two Pizza Rule. Making good decisions, strong decisions, diving deep, all that stuff. We lived it every day. It wasn’t just something in a book or on a poster. You truly live it, for sure.
Matt Zahab
Yeah. Wow. The economy in the world can definitely learn a hell of a lot from Jeff, and everyone at Amazon. And present day, you are at the one and only Unstoppable Domains. Everyone in crypto knows about Unstoppable Domains. And I feel like it’s one of the Web3 companies, mind you guys, aren’t just Web3, Web2 and Web3, but one of the companies that a lot of Web2 folks are cognizant of as well because of the use cases. Because I feel like user identity, digital identity, is one of those things that if you don’t understand crypto and blockchain you can still sort of put your finger on the pulse of that and how much it matters and how we’re becoming more and more integrated with digital tech and more anonymous. And being able to have a domain that’s not just a website is pretty frigging cool. You can obviously explain this much better than I can. I’m going to throw the ball over to your court Sandy. Give us a quick sort of elevator pitch, TLDR on what exactly Unstoppable Domains is, and then we’ll get into some of the fun stuff.
Sandy Carter
Yeah. So Unstoppable Domains is a digital identity platform. It is the way that you log in and collect data about yourself. So unlike Web2, where you go to log into, let’s say, Google or TikTok or Instagram, where use a separate username and password, anytime you use that username and password, all that data being collected is collected and used by that company. And we know this for sure because we know Google and Facebook or Meta just made $100 billion selling our data. So we know that they’re collecting and that they’re using it. We also know that your user ID isn’t yours. We just saw with X when the rebrand happened, that X was taken away from someone and given to EIon, because now X is his brand. And so in those scenarios, your digital identity, as well as your data, is not yours. It belongs to the platform. Well, in Web3, everything changes, because in Web3, that digital identity is owned by you as well as all the data is yours as well. And so you can monetize it or get rewards for it. You control it, and because it sits and lives on the blockchain now, that data belongs to you, and no one else can take it away from it. No one can remove your just like we talked about earlier, right? You were like, I want Matt.X. Well, I can’t go take Matt.X from somebody and give it to you because it’s theirs. They own it. And the data that you have stored about you is your data, too. So if you decide to share it with an application, then you can do that. But if you decide not to, I can’t override you and share your data. So I think it really changes and disrupts the whole model that exists out there today in Web2. And it makes it more powerful for us as individuals to be able to own that data. And I think that’s important for us today, but it’s more important for that next generation. Like, I have two daughters and they won’t share their data. Like their data is their data. They’re both on Roblox, which in ables them to build all those digital assets are hugely valuable to them. In fact, my daughter just had a birthday and I was asking her what she wants. She doesn’t want anything in real life. She wants Robux so she can go buy digital assets. So that next generation coming up. I mean, this whole transformation is in motion right now. And I think that next generation understands the power of a digital asset and owning your identity.
Matt Zahab
I love the point you brought up with your daughter. And I’ve said this many times on the pod. This is going to sound like beating a dead fish here, but one of my favorite sort of studies and really just a study every year that happens is when they ask American students what you want to be when you grow up. 30 years ago, it was astronaut, firefighter, lawyer, banker, doctor, professional athlete. Now it is YouTuber, professional streamer, professional Roblox player, eSports, TikTok influencer. It’s a whole different world out there.
Sandy Carter
They want your job, Matt. That’s what they want. They want your job.
Matt Zahab
The young kids get it right. But, you know, what do you and the team say when you’re trying to pitch someone? Like my parents, right? Like the baby boomers who wouldn’t get the importance of Sandy.X. But I see that right away and I’m like, Damn, that’s sick. And then I go to look for Matt.X and then I find out that your CEO, who has the same, insert basic Catholic name as me also has that there’s 6 trillion Matts in the world. But how do you pitch that to a baby boomer and sort of get them to understand the importance of digital identity?
Sandy Carter
Yeah, first of all, I would say it takes a lot more time. I’m an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon, and I was teaching students who are going through computer science class how to set up their wallet, how to get their own digital identity. It took me 20 minutes Matt, to do that. I was also asked to teach that same class to chief digital officers of major Fortune 1000 companies. Now, these are super smart people, right? They wouldn’t be a chief digital officer if they weren’t wicked smart. And they have technical expertise because they’re digital. But it took me two and a half hours. It was really hard for them to grasp the concept of too much friction. And so it is really hard talking to a baby boomer about the power of what this is. And typically, we’ll talk to teams, and they’ll get super excited in Web2 brands because they’re that other generation. And then they go up a level to talk to their boss, and they’re like, I don’t get it. Now, the way that I typically have been talking lately is all about business, right? So if your technology can have business done better, then you can get an audience. So, for example, let’s take loyalty. If you think about loyalty, loyalty today is super inefficient. A lot of companies still have, like, a paper passport, and you get a stamp when you do something, and then you get rewards for that, right? I know we just went into a shoe store because my daughter wanted a new pair of shoes. They gave me this paper card with a stamp on it. I’m like what? I’m going to lose that, like, in a nanosecond? And it was so very inefficient. So think about it on the blockchain. Like, if you could store those stamps as NFTs. And they’re living with you, you can identify that person. You can make it a soul bound token so it couldn’t be transferred. So you know that you’re giving a reward to someone that really resonates with that next generation, because that generation understands how to make money, how to become more efficient. Those are things that are important to them. So those type of use cases really has a big impact on a Web2 brand.
Matt Zahab
That’s a great point. So you go the business angle just so, because again, the boomers get business. Once you show them some business, it’s like anything else in the world. It’s usually money which makes the world go round. And you can business is synonymous with money. It incentivizes them and then they finally get it.
Sandy Carter
Yes, you got it. As well as the engagement. The interesting thing is all these companies too are trying to figure out how to reach that next generation. So if you’re trying to reach my daughter, you’re not going to do it with a paper ticket. You’re going to do it with instant messaging or even Roblox. If you consider Roblox. I don’t really even consider it a Metaverse or Web3, Web2.5. It’s a social platform. I mean, people go out there to make friends and to talk. That’s what that platform is. It’s all about engagement. And that’s another, I think, great way to present that. This really enables engagement. And some of the new announcements that we’ve just recently made also are really important for amping up that engagement with users as well.
Matt Zahab
That is a great point. And speaking of announcements, we are going to get into some of these big boy and gal announcements right after we take a quick break. We got to give a huge shout out to our sponsor of the show that is the one and only PrimeXBT. Longtime friends of cryptonews.com and longtime sponsors of the show. We absolutely love them and their team as they offer a robust trading system for both beginners and professional traders. It doesn’t matter if you’re a rookie or a vet, you can easily design and customize your layouts and widgets to best fit your trading style. PrimeXBT is also running an exclusive promotion for listeners of the Cryptonews Podcast. After making your first deposit, 50% of that first deposit will be credited to your account as a bonus that can be used as additional collateral to open positions. The promo code is CRYPTONEWS50. That’s CRYPTONEWS50 all one word to receive 50% of your deposit credited to your trading account. Again, that is CRYPTONEWS50 to receive 50% of your deposit credited to your trading account. And now back to the show with the Energizer Bunny, Sandy. A couple of these big announcements, two big ones that just popped off again. This episode is going to air early September. Let’s start with XMTP. We had these guys on the show. Incredible team, XMTP offers fully integrated, decentralized messaging platforms. And the best part is you get your own domain, similar to Unstoppable. Of course, that’s where you guys partnered with them because now you are giving them the optionality and the accessibility for the domains. This is a huge partnership. They’ve also partnered with Coinbase, Wallet, Lens Protocol. This seems like a no brainer. How big was this for you and the team?
Sandy Carter
Oh, this was amazing. So I first want to back up and tell you how we got to this concept of messaging with a domain. So simply messaging with a domain means that if you had Matt.X, I could take Sandy.X and message you. And that really increases engagement because now you’re able to reach out to somebody through that domain, which gives you tremendous access. But in addition, that message is decentralized and encrypted. If anything did happen to Unstoppable, you can still get to your messages. Those won’t be taken away. You still have all of that data. So what I love about this story, going back to Amazon Web Services, one of our big things is working backwards from the customer. Never starting with Tech, like, oh, messaging is cool, let’s do something with it. But trying to figure out what our customer wants. So a lot of our partners, like Polygon, for example, kept coming to us and saying, you know what, we need a better way to engage with everybody who holds a Polygon domain. It would be great if we could message all those people who hold the domain. And so we started working backwards from that and we ended up with the messaging with XMTP for P2P. And we use Push technology for business to user messaging. Why did we use two separate protocols? We did that because we want to make sure that we’re Switzerland. Like we’re ensuring that whatever you use right, whether you use XMTP or whether you use Push or whatever you choose to use for messaging, you can do it with an Unstoppable Domain. So the announcement with XMTP was exciting because it enabled person to person messaging through a domain. Which also means, because Coinbase orchestrated that with a wallet, now you could go from a domain to a Coinbase Wallet or to a Lens profile as well. So it really opened up. Now you’re not just messaging with 3.8 million Unstoppable Domains, but you also now have the capability to message with a Coinbase Wallet message with a Lens Protocol as well, which gave it so much power. The other really cool thing we did know, part of being COO, I also own community and support. And so we, you know, today our support comes in through Discord, Telegram, email. What if we allowed customers message support? And what a tremendous reaction. So we were drinking our own champagne, as I call it, and we built an app on top of XMTP to do that customer support. It has worked out fabulously because people want a quick answer. They can just message us. It’s very friendly, very engaging. If someone has a really big, tough gnarly problem, we send them to email to write it out. But normally we can solve problems really quick and fast. And in fact, it’s so cool, Matt, I’ve already had six partners reach out to me saying, can we buy that customer support application from you? We really like that. So it’s really neat, right? It’s great when you build something for yourself that then others want and then you can sell that too.
Matt Zahab
Isn’t that the whole essence of building businesses, though? Like, you build shit that you would use and then the flywheel happens and the rest takes care of itself. That’s what it’s all about.
Sandy Carter
You got it. Love the flywheel, the AWS flywheel. You got it. And then the second thing on the messaging is we announced business to user messaging. So this was really about a partner wanting to message everybody in their tribe, everybody in their community, and make it personal, right? So, like Sandeep, the CEO of Polygon, can message everybody who has a dot polygon domain or who owns more than X number of polygon domains. And so that is really powerful too, having the business be able to message users, be able to reward those users. Back to that loyalty piece we talked about earlier. And Web2 companies love this because think about if you’re like a large company, you may not know your customers, they may go through a third party distributor, so you don’t ever actually talk to them. And a lot of these Web2 companies are dying for engagement with their customers. And so every time I’ve now demoed this to a Web2 company, they’re like, wow, this means I can directly now communicate with the customer, not with a person who sold it to someone who sold it to someone who sold my product, but now I can directly communicate with that person. And so it gets them really excited about this extra lens of engagement.
Matt Zahab
That’s huge because, I mean, Web2 companies. All you written the only two true touch points. Three, I guess, that you have for your customer. Number one being the most front of mind, which is in person, which is very rare and very difficult to do, especially with the provenance of everything being online and being digital now. Number two is your email list, which is really the only thing you actually own. It’s the only thing that someone cannot take from you. And even then, in theory, they could. And then thirdly is the most popular, which is socials. And just like you said about 15 minutes ago, if you own Unstoppable Domains or the Unstoppable Domain at on Twitter, Musky could just wake up one day and be like, you know what? I’m not feeling Sandy and the team, I’m going to swipe this from you and it’s all gone. So having true access, one on one access to every single person in your community is absolutely massive. I mean yes, if you need a new sales guy to come in and push that holler at your boy here, that seems like very low hanging fruit. And I can truly believe that companies are lining up for that. Very interesting. And another partnership that you guys did, and again, this was one of my big questions, where not questions, but concerns rather is someone can hide behind a domain similar to how someone can hide behind at social media profile. And a couple of days ago, on the 22nd of August, you guys partnered with Rarimo, who is one of the leaders in the sort of proof of humanity, which is huge. Another huge partnership by you guys takes away a lot of the bots and more than 230,000 X domains have already been claimed. I absolutely love this. What was the purpose of this? How long did it take to get this going? Tell me more about this partnership.
Sandy Carter
Yeah, this is really important, especially right now with AI coming in. You know there’s so many bots out there right now. How do you know that a person is really a person? And so we’ve been working with Rarimo now for several months and they were building out a way to declare proof of humanity. Now, this is super cool because when you enter, let’s say, an application like Galaxy, one of my very favorites, because it’s Web3 loyalty. Now, you can prove that you are a human. And so they’re not filled with a bunch of people going on these quests that are bots which mean nothing to you. Now, you can get to the real person who’s using it, how many real people are using or leveraging that loyalty and doing your tweets and your retweets as you go along. The same thing is true with Decentraland. When you go into Decentraland. We actually built a headquarters for our Unstoppable women of Web3 in Decentraland. And we had a lot of people who would come in, but they would be bots. So we were like, oh, wow, we had 16,000 people today. Well, no, we didn’t. 4000 of those were bots. And so it just became really hard. And so again through this partnership with Rarimo. Now, if you’re coming into Decentraland, you can use an Unstoppable Domain to declare that you’re human. I think this is only going to grow in importance, Matt, and I think this is going to make blockchain explode once people understand this, because you can do a trust verification of who you are. Do you remember that picture was on Twitter of the Pope in the puffer jacket? And everybody was like, using it, like going, oh, this is so cool. He’s in a puffer jacket. It turned out it wasn’t even a true picture.
Matt Zahab
It was mid journey, stable diffusion model. Someone Pope in a puffer jacket, boom goes 20 gazillion impressions. Crazy.
Sandy Carter
And so would have been cooler if you had been able to verify with proof of humanity that the Pope certifies. That is my picture. Right? That’s really cool. And that’s what you can do here. So we’re real excited about this, especially with the explosion of AI. We do believe that this is going to become even more and more important. Now, for all of my Web3 folks out there who do not like to be docs, they want to be anonymous. You don’t have to use this. So it’s a choice, right? Proof of humanity is a choice. But I do think for certain tasks, even as a Web3 lover believer in the ethos, I do see that there are areas and this is all zero proof, right? So if you’re giving away information about you as a human, you’re not giving away your age. You’re just proving that you’re over or under a certain age. You’re not actually saying how old you are, so it still protects you because it’s using that zero proof, but it just enables people to make better decisions. So I think it’s a big win for Web3. Big win for Web2. For sure.
Matt Zahab
Yeah, great point there. Another thing we need to jump into, speaking of AI. Is your new book, and that is called “The Tiger and the Rabbit”. So many questions about the book. First, we’re going to start with the title, and then I’m going to ask you a bunch of questions about writing and launching a book. I’ve heard it is incredibly difficult. Very fun. You learn a ton. I love it. It’s very clean. What is with the title? Why the tiger and the rabbit?
Sandy Carter
Well, so in the book, the book is actually written for companies who want to use Web3. And so I talk about. Forming a team of people. And I called it a Rabbit Team because, you know, in Web3, you go down the rabbit hole. And the rabbit is if you think about a rabbit, a rabbit is fast, and it’s reacting to things that are going on. Typically, if you work in a corporation, I’ve been on many tiger teams, and a tiger team is formed, and then it disperses, like, hey, we have a problem. Need to get Matt his Matt.X. Let’s form a tiger team, and we’ll go figure that out. Once we’ve solved the problem, then we dissolve, but in this space with all this emerging tech. So the book has Web3 in it, it has AI in it and has got Spatial computing in it. You really need a team that stays together. And so I called that the Rabbit Team, and I love the fact that Wiley was the one who selected the title. They love that. I had folks like Pepsi read it. They actually plunked out immediately. I need a rabbit team. I actually have a quote from them on the back that says they renamed their emerging tech team the Rabbit Team because of that. The other thing that I think is really cool, so the book is about Web3 and AI. And so we actually used AI to design the cover. So I had two covers that came out, and I had all of my fans and followers on LinkedIn and Facebook and Twitter vote on the cover. But both covers were designed by AI. So the choice of the fonts and the rabbit and the tiger and everything. So I think that’s really cool. Right? Again, drinking your own champagne, know you’re using your own ideas.
Matt Zahab
And the actual writing process, the launch, talking to publishers, the book tour, the whole nine yards. Walk me through that, because I feel like 99% of the population, myself included have zero clue. I’ve been fortunate to have a couple of guests on the show who have launched multiple books, and it interests the living heck out of me. This is something that obviously, I’m a little too young and haven’t done enough to write one right now, but in the future, hopefully, when I’m a little more chiseled and have a little bit more experience and a little more value to give back, I would love to do this. I think it’d be a lot of fun. I love the nostalgia and just the feeling of having a book in your hand again. It’s something it’s very rare nowadays. We don’t get, this is enough. Walk me through the whole process Sandy, very curious to understand how you made this bad boy happen.
Sandy Carter
Yeah. So Wiley actually approached me about doing a book. They said that they had there constantly, again, working backwards from their customer, and their customers know there’s all this emerging tech out there, but it’s really hard to understand it. You like to tell stories, and we really need a storyteller. And so one of the things you’ll notice right away I don’t know if you can see it, but this is actually a business fable. So it’s a very different book than what I’m used to writing. So it’s not like a book that says, what is Web3? What is AI? Here’s what you do. It actually has characters in it. I have V, who’s trying to explore what to do with this technology for her company, and Rex, who comes in to help her. And I use some of our whales as characters and some other people as characters. So I actually have dialogue in the book. And Wiley specifically wanted this to be a business fable because they felt like every book out there today was too complicated. People weren’t getting. What is Web3? What is AI? They were confused. And so I hope I did a good job. That up front the whole up front of the book is a dialogue about what is it and trying to use real world examples and stories to explain it. And then the second half of the book is a set of frameworks. So it’s what we’ve used with Web2 companies with Web3 companies to help them think through what is my Web3 strategy? Like, how should I use it? Is it loyalty, or should I use it for engagement? Or what AI tool should I use? I just spoke at a major conference and my presentation won best graphics. I did all of them with Mid Journey. And so do you need a company to design your graphics for you? maybe, maybe not. That’s why I wanted to see if the cover of the book could be designed by artificial intelligence. And so the book is kind of, hopefully, fun. I actually had to take a class, Matt, to learn how to write dialogue. I’ve never written dialogue before. So I took a class from a bestselling fiction author on how to write dialogue. Did the business fable gig. So anyway, so we’re going to see. So fingers crossed. I’ll send you a copy. If any of your listeners want to get it, it’s available up on Amazon The Tiger and the Rabbit, and you know, I’d love to know what you think. Like, did I do a good job of explaining it in really simple terms or not? So let me know what you think. For sure.
Matt Zahab
I would love that. I read in the morning and before bed. I never read during the day again. Too much Twitter, too many emails, too much frizz. But in the morning and at night, I always read. So I would love to throw that right up here on the bookshelf. That would be an absolute treat. Let’s keep buzzing on AI for a sec. There’s so much AI. You just talked about Mid Journey and stable diffusion. Mid Journey is probably my favorite tool. I love ChatGPT, don’t get me wrong. But Mid Journey and again, when I show my friends and family Mid Journey, they’re blown away. Everyone knows what ChatGPT is. Whether you’re 10 or 80, you know what ChatGPT is. If you’re in ten, you use it to cheat in school. And if you’re 80, you’re curious about it. You probably haven’t used it. Mid journey is so much fun. I’m not an artsy person. I’m an athlete. And I always feel like, in life, you’re either one of the two. Very few people are both. If you are both Kudos, you hit the genetic, you know, the gene pool jackpot. I’ve never had a creative, you know, an artistic bone in my body, and this has allowed me to create incredible images that I never would have dreamed of doing. And again, folks, all you need to do go to Mid Journey. You use it in Discord. And I can literally be like a picture of a 28 year old Canadian looking dude in a black shirt and an office, and it’ll spit out a picture that looks like this. It is absolute world-class. What are some of your favorite AI tools right now? Maybe non-obvious ones, if there’s any that aren’t the ChatGPTs or stable diffusion Mid Journeys that you’re using present day.
Sandy Carter
Well, I mean, another tool that I like for drawing is Lexica. I don’t know if you’ve used Lexica before, but I find Lexica also to be really cool for looking and exploring what’s going on. Have you used that one or not?
Matt Zahab
I haven’t, no. But it’s on my to-do list as soon as this is done.
Sandy Carter
It’s pretty cool. Some of the other tools that I use are so I do a lot of videos, and you do too, obviously. So there’s something called CommonSim that helps you with video editing, which I really like. There’s another tool called MiM. I use that for feedback. It will summarize let’s say, like I just said, we’ve got thousands of messages coming in, and we can input all those messages, and MiM will come out with a feedback summary, and it’ll say 99% of every piece of feedback said, we need emojis. We need you guys to support emojis. So I think it’s really cool. I also love Poised, so I do a lot of keynote speaking, and Poised will actually coach me on how I’m coming across. Like when I should make a point, when I should pause. And it’s really good, too. So those are just some of the tools that I love to use today.
Matt Zahab
Well, free Alpha from Sandy here. Literally the mayor of alphatown coming in hot over here. I love that. Sandy last thing, and this has been incredible, and I need you on for round two because we’ve barely scratched the surface here. But we’ll take a quick moment. We’ll jump in the hot take factory. You and I put our knee high shit kicking boots on let a couple fly I need a couple Sandy hot takes before we let you go. Doesn’t have to be crypto, blockchain, AI. Can be health, wealth, happiness, space, race, food, aliens, you name it. But give me a couple of Sandy hot takes before we let you go.
Sandy Carter
Wow. Okay, let’s see. What are my hot takes? I think that as we move forward with all the new technology that’s coming out, I think that we’re going to see a huge convergence of tech today. We see people talking about AI. We see people talking about Spatial people talking about quantum computing. I see all of these things converging. I don’t see a lot of people talking about that yet, but I do see the convergence of these technologies. And this Is another reason why I think that people don’t need to have tiger teams that come together and then disperse. Because I think the knowledge of all of these tools together are what’s going to be really powerful. Hot take number two. I think as we’re looking at the future, I think that blockchain is going to grow exponentially because of AI. I kind of mentioned it before, but because blockchain the way they do the hashing blockchain can identify if you are a person with all the deep fakes out there I just keynote at an AI forum. Might be like what, your digital identity for Web3? I just keynoted at an AI forum because the number one concern for CEOs was how do I know that what I’m looking at is real? Like, how do I know it’s your voice? How do I know that it’s your email. How do I know that blockchain can help that? So I just see AI pushing blockchain forward at just a magnificent rate and pace. Kind of like what it’s done for Nvidia, right? Nvidia has the Chips trillion dollar company now and I think that that’s going to be a really big area. Hot take number three, maybe not too hot take, but I will say that I’m seeing more growth of Web3 crypto and everything outside the US. More innovation happening because of the rules and regulations. Now I know we just heard about Grayscale. We just had the Coinbase ruling for the futures. We just had Ripple win some cases. I think that we in the US really need to sit down and get our regulations clear so that people can operate here and therefore innovate. I’m really afraid that if we don’t do that quickly that other areas of the world, the Middle East, I’m getting ready to go to Tokyo, Asia, they’re going to outpace us in innovation because the regulations are set up to spur innovation. And I think right now because we’re unclear in the US, it’s stalling innovation. I mean a lot of Web2 companies are afraid to even use Web3 until the rules and regulations are clear.
Matt Zahab
Hey Sandy, you’re preaching to the choir. I mean I’m Canadian. It’s even worse here. All the top talent, regardless what field you’re in, tech, banking, health, doctors, everyone’s gone. Everyone leaves and usually goes to your neck of the woods for good reason because you provide more opportunity and there’s more regulatory framework. So c’est la vie, it is what it is. But Canada Trudeau, if you’re listening, and he’s definitely not listening, but on some chance you are open up the borders a little, let some good innovation happen. But Sandy, absolute pleasure. Had an absolute blast, learned a ton and you gave me some homework to do, which I love and cannot wait to read your book too. This has been an absolute treat. Can’t wait to have you on for round two. Before you go, please let our listeners know where they can find you unstoppable and your book online and on socials.
Sandy Carter
Yeah. So for Unstoppable we’re unstoppabledomains.com. So go there and grab that domain before someone takes it, like Matt just talked about Matt.X gone, so go out there and grab that. On Twitter we’re @unstoppableweb. I don’t know why, but that’s what we are. So if you follow us at @unstoppableweb, we’ve got about 380,000 followers, so it’s really fun. We have a great community. You can find me on all social platform. I’m @sandy_carter on Twitter. @sandy_carterfounder on Instagram. And just Sandy Carter on LinkedIn. I’d love for you guys to come and I would love for you guys to grab a copy of the book and it’s available on Amazon. Look for The Tiger and the Rabbit search on my name and you should be able to find it. I’ll also give you a link, Matt, I don’t know if you do links in your podcast. I’ll also give you a link. I really, truly would love your feedback on it to see if I hit the mark on some easy frameworks and some easy ways to tell stories about what Web3 is.
Matt Zahab
You got it, sandy, thanks a lot for coming on. Can’t wait for round two. Until then, all the best and we’ll be in touch.
Sandy Carter
Thanks, Matt.
Matt Zahab
Folks, what an episode with Sandy Carter from the one and only Unstoppable Domains dropping a silly amount of knowledge bombs left, right and center. Alpha everywhere. We’d love to see it. Huge shout out, Sandy and the team for coming on. This was truly great. Listeners, love you guys. Thank you so much for everything. If you enjoyed this one, I hope you did, please do subscribe. To my team, love you guys. Thank you so much for everything. Justas, my sound editor, you are the GOAT. Appreciate you as always. And back to the listeners, love you guys. Keep on growing those bags. Keep on staying healthy, wealthy and happy. Bye for now and we’ll talk soon.
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