On forced reflection, breaking into VC, modern friendships, and the new logic of the internet
Gaby Goldberg is an early-stage web3 investor at TCG crypto, working on the firm’s investments at the intersection of consumer and crypto, not even a year out of college. She thinks and writes about the different ways we interact with technology and about ideas surrounding consumer technology and digital culture. You can follow her writing on mirror and twitter.
Gaby Goldberg
[TRANSCRIPT IS AUTO-GENERATED]
[00:00:00] Alex: Gaby Goldberg is an early stage web three investor at TCG crypto working on the firm's investments at the intersection of consumer and crypto, not even a year out of college. She thinks and writes about the different ways we interact with technology and about ideas surrounding consumer technology and digital culture.
You can follow her writing on mirror and on Twitter. Today, we talked about forced reflection, breaking into VC, modern friendships, and the new logic of the internet.
[00:00:30] Alex:
All right, Gabby. So I just wanted to start with the college background, cause you're not too far out of college and I think one thing that's been really relatable.
Yeah. Your story and the path that you've taken is a bunch of uncertainty sort of in the beginning about what it was that you wanted to do, what you were looking into studying any of that stuff. So why don't we start there? Cause there's a pretty cool story. Coming through all that.
[00:00:58] Gaby: Yeah, absolutely.
And I feel like this is something I don't get a chance to talk about a ton. And so oftentimes if people kind of meet me or come across me, you know, in the middle of my journey, they think that everything was supposed to happen this way, or I knew that it was going to happen this way. And a lot of it it's still very new to me and I'm finding my way through things and I'm really grateful to be in this position.
I, I love the opportunity to, to share my background with other young people to know that you don't need to have it all figured out as you go. So, I'm from Southern California. I was a debate and mock trial kid in high school.
And so when I went to college, I studied philosophy or I came into Stanford as a philosophy major, very early on in my college career. I started taking some computer science classes and became very interested in kind of the intersection of those two disciplines. Maybe in a sentence I was interested in.
How people interact with technology. So how do you grow and scale social computing systems? How do you bring real life friends into digital spaces? Or how do you make friends in online space? I worked in the virtual, the virtual reality lab for a couple of years. And so I was kind of circling these ideas of consumer technology for a while.
In terms of my professional career. I had literally no idea what I wanted to do. And like a lot of other college students had kind of thought the way out or the way to a good job or a good career was in kind of like a corporate role, like consulting or banking. And so I applied to all of those things my junior year, and I got rejected from all of them.
And I kind of came to this moment where I was like, I didn't even want to do these things. They don't interest me. And I didn't even get them. And so if I can't even get what I don't want, I might as well figure out what I do want and then try and get that and just start over. And so it took some time off school and I went to Israel.
Actually, I kind of like studied abroad on my own. So I was working at a startup there, like living by myself. I didn't really know very many people there and kind of the idea behind it was I wanted to know. What do I gravitate towards in terms of people and ideas and work opportunities when I'm outside of the bubble of Stanford or the bubble of things and people that I know.
And I found that when I was there, I was working nine to five at the startup, but actually in my free time, I was spending a lot of time. Founders and investors in the Televiv startup ecosystem. And I was going to happy hours, meeting founders, hearing about what they were working on, just for fun. And I was writing about some of those topics on my personal media publication.
And I ended up meeting an investor and in Jordan Odeski who's at ground up ventures. He was splitting his time between Tel Aviv and New York. And he was in Israel at the time I had coffee with him and he said, you know, if you work in venture capital, the stuff you're doing in your free time, you could actually get paid.
And I was like, oh, this is really interesting. Let's let's explore. And I had no idea really what venture capital was at the time. I had a very big idea, but I certainly didn't know that there was an opportunity for someone like me with my experience, to my age, to get into that field. His recommendation to me was to make an account on Twitter and start following founders at industrious on Twitter, which sounded silly to me.
I'd only been on Twitter in high school, but I made an account. I followed a bunch of people and literally. Two weeks after that COVID happened. I lost my job. I got sent home from Israel and I knew I didn't want to go back to college when it was going to be online. And it was actually on my flight home.
It sounds like to the teacher, but it was on my flight home waiting at SFO to get back to Santa Barbara that I saw someone I had been following JMJ or Jeff Morris Jr. At chapter one tweeted out that he was hiring an intern for the very first time. So if you want to learn about venture capital, you don't know what it is.
You want to work with someone at a small thing. Like apply here. And to me it felt like the stars had aligned. Like I had been circling a lot of these ideas for a while and I looked at Jeff's portfolio and it seems really interesting. So I sent him an email. I basically said, I really have no idea what venture capitalists, someone just told me.
I might like it and I just lost my job. So let's see. And I had a couple of calls with him and we really got along and I ended up working with him. And so that is kind of what catalyzed. You know, the rest of my career in venture, a lot of it was being, you know, at the right place at the right time. And so I feel so lucky that things happened the way they did, but that was kinda my story in college and how I kind of fell into this field.
[00:05:22] Alex: You know, it's interesting. You bring up the sort of moment of applying to all of these like consulting and finance jobs and everything. And it's, I think pretty universal for a lot of people, right. I know I know a lot people here at Chicago sort of are almost pigeonholed into doing this in a way where there's an environment, a lot of schools where finance or consulting seems to be like the way to do it. And everybody tends to follow that path because a lot of people around them are doing it and it seems to be what they're supposed to be doing.
But at the end of the day, it sounds like in your case, that moment of forced reflection or, you know, going over to Israel, taking some time to actually. Think about what you want was what did it for you? So it's, it's interesting you bring that up. I think forced reflection is probably a good tool.
With that said you know, having had this stint in VC now and doing all these great things that, you know, a year out of college now?
[00:06:15] Gaby: A little bit less, although I shouldn't share that as publicly as they do.
[00:06:21] Alex: What do you think the biggest lessons you've taken away from being in VC? Just a short as you have, have been so far?
[00:06:30] Gaby: Yeah. I think the people who do well in venture are sounds like a cliche, but insatiably curious and honestly a little bit. Sometimes people ask me like, why, why you, like, why are you in this job?
And a lot of times my answer is just, I want it more than anybody else and a little bit competitive in that way. But when you find the things that really interest you and really drive you forward, it is a really beautiful role to play in the ecosystem of helping to push those narratives forward.
For me, a lot of my life has been about basically like telling stories and sharing narratives with the world. So, you know, even for me, I write really publicly and being able to tell my own stories and share those with my community has been really fulfilling for me. And I found that venture capital is a great way to push forward.
The stories of others. Capital is a great way to tell stories. And so for me, it's a really fulfilling job to be able to kind of focus on the areas. Really interests me and work with the people who care about the same things as I do and be able to just like really dig into those and see the impact that it can have on the ecosystem.
And so you've gotta be very curious and you have to learn a lot about what you like, but you also have to know that you don't have all the answers. And so a little bit of like putting your ego to the side and sometimes letting founders lead you to the water. And maybe they've spent their whole life thinking about something that you've never thought about, and then you very quickly have to get up to speed.
So a little bit of like the competitive edge helps with that too. Cause moving quickly,
[00:08:00] Alex: definitely riding off of that. What would you say is like your go-to advice for anybody that's asking like, oh, how do I do what you did? How do I break into this?
[00:08:09] Gaby: I say should get on Twitter first, because that was the advice that I got.
And I think especially as a young person, if you're trying to get into venture and you haven't built and scaled your own company, like maybe someone older who has now transitioned into a role in venture, I think it's probably better to have an edge as opposed to being a generalist. Maybe if you've like understood how to build and scale a SAS business, you can kind of be a generalist for all things.
But I thought for someone like me, if you're young and InVenture you can use your age and your experience as an advantage, but only people like, you know, really kind of thought it out. And so for me consumer technology, how people interact with. And particularly within the web three ecosystem, I'm actually like very well primed to contribute to that discussion.
Because I've kind of lived it, I've grown up with technology. I learned how to code by, you know, building my own tumbler website. I spent so much time on Minecraft and rune scape. I've made a lot of online friends in my day. And now kind of like growing up with crypto, coming into the mainstream I kind of live and breathe these ideas.
And if you're targeting someone like me, the new, the new age of the consumer I'm actually very well primed to like, be a diverse perspective in that discussion. And so having that focus experience, whatever it might be, it doesn't need to be done. It can be, you know, FinTech, if you have experience in banking or it can be SAS if that's what you like.
But I think to have an edge and contribute You know, specific perspective is helpful. And then if you're trying to get a job in venture, people know that you're that expert in that topic, as opposed to just being kind of you know, for lack of a better word, like mediocre, everything, if you can be an expert at one thing that I think that's really helpful.
[00:09:44] Alex: All right. Let's get into some of the fun stuff here. You're at TCG crypto. Now, congratulations, by the way. I'm curious to hear, before we get into the TCG story, I'd like to hear a little bit about how the whole web three thing happened for you. Because at first it was like very consumer tech oriented and suddenly we're talking about like Dows and social tokens and stuff.
Like how did that progression look for?
[00:10:07] Gaby: Yeah. On paper, it happened really quickly, but I think when you really think about it, this has been a very long time coming for me. And almost in retrospect, that looks like the narrative makes a lot of sense of the things that I've done in my career. Kind of leading up to this point.
Again, at the time had no idea what it would look like, but it makes a lot of sense that this is where I ended up and I'm really happy to be here and stoked to join the team at Chernin. I've always, like I said, been really curious about the different ways we interact with technology. So even starting from age 18, that's what informed my decision to study computer science and philosophy.
And when I was at both chapter one, the first venture firm that I worked at, and then at Bessemer venture partners, where I spent a year kind of finding a voice as an early stage consumer investor, again, like thinking really deeply about all of these ideas. And over the past couple years, As I've been writing and kind of sharing thoughts with my community online, I've thought a lot about these ideas.
One of them kind of most prominently is this idea of curation. So I wrote a piece over a year ago now called curators are the new creators where I basically said like the creator economy is great for putting out more content than we ever have before. But now where we have kind of common, not evolution is we need people to.
Soar and separate signal from noise. And so these are the curators and what is their role going to be in the ecosystem? And it was actually really funny when I published that piece because I really didn't touch on crypto at all. It was just kind of these values and these first principles that I thought were interesting.
And all of the comments I got from this piece were from my friends in crypto, who were saying Gabby curation is literally like the backbone, the backbone of. Like, this is literally what blockchain technology empowers. You're fully missing the point. And I was like, no, no, you're just saying that. Cause you want me to work in crypto.
And at the time I really didn't connect the dots. And then over the last year, obviously I've connected the dots really well. And I published another piece on curation that hopefully updates my thinking a little bit. More recently I've also written about this idea of modern friends and making friends online and this idea, this idea of like identity and digital space.
It's very much like a web three philosophy. So I've been thinking about these ideas a lot. And honestly, the reason I thought about these a lot is because they affected me. So personally, you know, like I said, making friends online, existing in these virtual spaces, this is why the internet was created.
And in my view, you know, over the last few decades, maybe we lost our way a little bit into what the internet could really be. And. I believe in a lot of people in this ecosystem, believe that crypto will kind of bring us back to the original values of the internet and why it was created and bring the best parts of web to with it.
Some aspects of centralization are really powerful user experience. That's accessible to both technical and non-technical consumers. But really like making the internet, the great equalizer that it was supposed to be is very much like a crypto native goal. And so the reason I decided to join TCG.
Over any other fund, particularly like any really crypto native fund is IFL that something really missing and its ecosystem is the voice that empowers the consumer. More people are coming into crypto now than ever before. And in my view, some of the smartest people I know are building products and crypto, but actually those people are not necessarily the same ones who built and scaled successful products in web.
And so this aspect that I've been thinking about, a lot of building narratives and storytelling and creating really powerful communities often kind of fall through the cracks in web three. And like I said, if we can bring in the best parts of web two of this consumer expertise to web three, I think we're going to be the most well positioned to bring in this next wave of new consumers, the next 10,000,100 million consumers into web three.
And I felt that being at a consumer fund would be able to do that really. So some background on TCG, it's around a decade old firm, it's been solely focused on the digital consumer. And so making investments like Twitter, Pandora, Surfline the athletic. They actually seated open C during their seed round as kind of like their first investment in this space, they led the series a Zed run and also invested in dapper labs.
And so been kind of circling these ideas. Their view is that the next horizon for consumer is crypto, which obviously I believe as well. And so if they can focus on that intersection of consumer and crypto they can kind of add strategic value, their distribution, go to market storytelling and all of these things.
And so when I heard about what they were doing and their focus, it was clearly like so perfectly in line with the things that I've cared about. And so for me, it was a no brainer.
[00:14:35] Alex: So you're definitely working at the frontier here and I'd assume a lot of that comes with being able to break down these otherwise pretty foreign concepts for people and put them very, very simply.
So let's say you're talking to someone that has no idea what web three is like. Do you have a go-to example that you try and give to get through to people like that?
[00:14:55] Gaby: I mean, I say web three is what the internet was really supposed to be. I think a helpful thing there is kind of getting a history. A big misconception, honestly, that I had.
And I think a lot of other people have is that crypto is this, you know, fundamental step change in values and technology in a way that is like so fundamentally different from what we've seen before. And in some ways it is, it is really like innovative technology that hasn't existed before. But in terms of the value system, I believe that it's actually quite similar to things we've cared about for a while.
I'll kind of start from the beginning. So the web was created in 1989 with this vision. Decentralized and open network of information. And so in this vision, users were uncontrolled and not centralized platforms. And so during this first era, like web 1.0, which is kind of like the static and read only version of the web, we saw companies like Google and Yahoo and Amazon.
And originally, these were all kind of built on these open protocols that people could contribute to. And when the internet was first created, it was highly technical. If you didn't know how to contribute to those open protocols, it was not really for you. And so at the time, a lot of people really didn't think the internet was going to go anywhere because it didn't fit what like the traditional consumer could, could adapt to.
And then obviously as we started. Over the next couple of decades, basically until the president, the president in web two, as those platforms reach scale consumers kind of migrated from those more decentralized services to centralized ones. And so this is kind of a trade-off, it was good because it made true the Internet's goal of.
Providing access to the internet, to billions of people across the world. And so this is when that wave consumers who were not highly technical could finally really be a part of this movement, but kind of a MACOM side of things. It really limited our ability to be innovative and dynamic because it became a lot harder for individuals to create things on.
Without this fear of a centralized platform taking control. So a great example that we still see today is apple. If you build something on the app store, apple takes a 30% cut of all revenues, which is insane to me when you really sit down and think about it, 30% is an insane number. There's a company fan house that is run by some friends of mine who I really respect fan is kind of a creator tool that lets you.
Paywall posts and share things with an intimate community and you can earn money from your most engaged fans. Like that is a great vision. And ideally all of that money should go to the creator, right? The creative crepes, the fans, they bring them to that platform. They should make those revenues and because they're hosted on the app store, Apple's X 30% of the creator's revenue.
And if this is your sole source of income, A lot of money. And so that's just one proof point, but it really helps to eliminate what that actually means for these new technologies. So kind of, I give that history to people and I say my view and the view of a lot of people in crypto is that web three will bring us to the act, these original values.
And so these are the kinds of the buzzwords that I use when I explain, well, three will be decentralized. It will be community governed, efficient, innovative, accessible. This is a big one. And really wildly dynamic and how that works is basically when something is built on a crypto network, it gives us.
this Co-operative economic model that aligns incentives over time. Apple, is an example that I already talked about. So I'll give another example of maybe like Google or Facebook users on Google or Facebook. As those platforms grow over time, the incentives actually change between what Google or Facebook wants and what the users want.
And so that those incentives over time become more and more misaligned until all of a sudden you are. a part of this Huge platform that like, isn't really doing what it initially set out to do of you know, connecting people and bringing people together. Even the Facebook whistleblower that like all of that news over the past week or two is a great proof point of that.
On a crypto network, when users are actually aligned with platform from the ground up, meaning that they're actually shareholders in the network itself, as the platform grows, it becomes more resilient. And the users actually become more incentivized to innovate and create new technology because they're owners in the value of that network.
So obviously we're extremely, extremely early in that vision. And so sometimes it's hard to share that with people who haven't been thinking about this for at least a little bit. I think honestly, where maybe like a decade or two away from like really seeing the syrup to the masses. But that's the fun part.
And that's the challenge of being able to, you know, really be at the forefront of it and.
[00:19:30] Alex: Let's hope so let's touch on accessibility for a second. I know a big sort of point of contention, especially when it comes to things like social tokens. Dows any of this other stuff, even just crypto in general is just accessibility from a financial standpoint to begin with.
Right. If I want to buy into, I dunno, take any Dow. If I buy some social tokens, I am paying the equivalent of quite a lot in U S dollars to do that. You see the same thing in the NFT space. It's like. Not everybody gets to take part is sort of my point here. Do you see that developing in a certain way in the future?
[00:20:00] Gaby: Yeah. It's certainly something that we need to talk about a lot because as the early people building this future we need to make sure we're having these discussions early on. I've actually written about this in this piece. I wrote called the social token paradox.
In that piece, I'm talking about social tokens and doubts or these kind of decentralized communities and essentially how these communities work right now. Is you own a token. So for example, I'm a part of a community called FWB and I own the FWB token, which allows me to be a part of the community right now, these communities are primarily valued proportionally to their token price.
So in the value of the token goes up, the value of the community goes up and when the price of the token is high. The community obviously becomes more desirable to join. And so after BB is an example, I always throw out because they're incredibly desirable to join. You know, the token price is like pretty insanely high.
If you want to join the community now. Which honestly wasn't the original goal. You know, when FW FWB was created, you can kind of buy in and anybody with like any kind of like reasonable amount of money could join the community. And now, because the price is so high, it really is exclusive to. Diverse voices and diverse perspectives, which is a problem.
It's definitely not something you want to, we want to uphold, especially as the communities we see today are really the pioneers of what we're going to see over the next couple of decades. I think the biggest thing we can do right now is have these discussions and talk about it. I do think there are, there are a few like technical changes that need to be made.
One of them being judging things by, on chain activity. And basically what that means is tracking on the blockchain, the things that you do online. So instead of just being a member of something, By buying your way in. Maybe you can earn your way in or contribute. And even if you don't have a lot of money to begin with, you know, the things that you have to contribute are really valuable.
And then it makes room for a lot more diverse voices and perspectives. But surely this is really important. I will say something that has been really personally gratifying for me is, you know, like coming from traditional tech communities and then moving into web. I have found that the web three communities both online and in real life, when I've gone to conferences and meetups and things like that it's such a diverse group of people.
I actually once went to like a park hangout during one of these crypto conferences. They're a stranger at the park came up to me and asked me, like, what is this? Like, w what are you guys here for? And I explained it was a crypto meet up, and she's like, you guys are all so cool. And it was musicians and artists.
And for the first time, like a really even split between men and women, all different ages and people coming from all these different backgrounds and experiences. And I at least personally had never experienced that before. And so I think we're off to a good start. Obviously there's a lot of more conversations that need to be, had to make sure.
We don't lose ourselves along the way, but it has been something that has been really exciting for me to see
[00:22:50] Alex: another cool thing you talk about. And I think you've written about this as well as just what online friendships mean. And I'm really curious as to your thoughts on how that looks in the future, right.
I'm really interested in what it means for our real life personas and our digital personas to sort of merge in the future. You talk a lot about metaverse stuff, you know, obviously sort of ingrained in the web three thing. Do you have any sort of strong convictions in that space?
[00:23:15] Gaby: Yeah. I love this question because I have so many online friends that have transitioned them to real life friends, especially over COVID.
Basically, I talk about this concept of modern friends, which are friends who kind of originate in digital space and then move into this offline online connection. I think this, the line between what I call URL and IRL is becoming increasingly blurred. And as we spend more time online, we have these, you know, digital versions of ourselves.
And so this is also something that I think went through really helps to empower us this idea of identity and digital. How do you present yourself online? How do you join communities online and make real enduring connections and friendships? This is largely an unanswered and unfinished question and web for you right now.
Right now, the idea of identity is largely kind of confined to your wallet address. You know, the tokens you hold, the communities, you're a part of the NFTs you own. And it's certainly a good start, but I don't think that this is. The end goal. I think we're going to see a very interesting social layer for the internet.
Start to emerge bill on this blockchain technology, which will show how do you interact and transact and share things, share things with friends online. NFTs are certainly a cool start because it's a little bit similar to like having painting hung on your wall in your home. Except now thousands of people come into your house every day and can see the paintings you have.
There's a really interesting company called on cyber. If you go to on cyber.io and it's sort of like this digital, like 3d experience to showcase the NFTs, almost like in a, in a digital home of your own. So it's certainly a good start. But it's been really cool to see these communities kind of start from the ground up in web three these like niche discord, communities and servers and start to see kind of how people congregate and, and build really interesting.
[00:25:04] Alex: I do want to take a little bit of time to talk about the latest thing you've written. I didn't realize this was happening before we came on. So really cool. Cause it's like half an hour old or something. But talk about, talk about, damn. Talk about a decentralized autonomous media networks.
[00:25:21] Gaby: Yeah, sure. Essentially I talked about this problem with media networks a little bit earlier. I've talking about Facebook and Google, not necessarily being what they originally set out to be. And I have to say, I wrote this piece with my friend Kiran, and so I have to give him credit. He is an incredible writer and he's working on this you know, personally on a verse protocol.
I definitely recommend anyone listening to check out Karen's profile and what he's working on with verse. And he's really trying to kind of productize the site. But we wrote about what a media network would look like if it were collectively owned by its users. Essentially we believe that, you know, the next step function innovation in consumer crypto will be damned this decentralized autonomous media network.
So there are three fundamental characteristics that we think of. One it's a tokenized network owned by its users. So for example, let's think of Barstool sports. Imagine a Barstool sports was a dam. Every contributor to Barstool sports would now own the Barstool token.
And so if the value of Barstool goes up, everybody benefits, but if people are slacking off slacking off and the quality isn't good, the token price goes down and people can buy in and support it and invest in it the same way you can invest in any other entity. So that's. Number two is built in incentives for users to coordinate and adding value to that network.
So, I mean, it's pretty simple here because participants at the dam actually own the network. They're much more incentivized to coordinate in increasing the value of that network. So think about Instagram on Instagram. We obviously are not owners of Instagram unless we work there and have some. Share in the company.
And so really because of that, because we're not owners in the actual network, we're really just incentivized to make it all about ourselves. Right. You post as much as you want, you make it all about you. You can sometimes spam the feed. That's why a lot of times you see these like really annoying accounts on Instagram saying like follow for follow, or like for, like, for spanning all the time.
So the average. You know, bumps them up in the feed. And people have found ways to make the network work for itself or work for that person. But if you were a shareholder in it, obviously that would make the value of that network go down. Right. Instagram sucks when it's just follow for follow or like for like, we're actually a highly curated feed of really interesting thing.
The value would be a lot higher. And if everyone were a shareholder in that, they'd be a lot more incentivized to make that happen as opposed to make it just about that. So that's number two. And then lastly is the singular utility of creating and distributing media. There's one is really just what separates a dam from a Dow or which is a decentralized autonomous organization.
So if a Dow is really like a decentralized community, a dam is a media network. So. I guess I'll stop there. I definitely encourage people to read about it. The really interesting thing that we're doing is in this piece, we are crowdfunding the creation of the world's very first dam, which is going to be a public patient on mirror.
And if you own 250 dam tokens, you can be a contributor on this publication. And I guess we will see where it goes. This is very much an experiment, but it's been really cool to work on this piece with Karen. Who's just absolutely brilliant. And I'm excited to build a stand with him. So if you want to be a part of.
He shared, I get into the crowdfund before it's too late.
[00:28:40] Alex: Get out to it. People I'm excited to see where it goes.
All right. Talk soon.
[00:28:45] Gaby: Cool. Have a good weekend. Bye.