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Greetings all,

In this week’s episode of Ventures, my guests Tony Rutkowski, Sol Cates, Tony Sager, and I extend last week’s conversation about cybersecurity and Web 3.0. We dive into topics related to international data controls, entrepreneurship in a global landscape, 5G, SSL certificates, and the evolving definition of trust.

Check it out: Cybersecurity, 5G, extraterritoriality, and the dynamic negotiation of trust :: with Tony Rutkowski, Sol Cates, and Tony Sager

Speaking of trust….

It’s hard to overstate the value of people and relationships. In many ways, the Web 2.0 era fooled us for a while by motivating our behavior based on bizarre social graph connections. “Person X that you went to high school with but haven’t seen in 20 years likes Brand Y, so click here”.

Thankfully, that era is coming to an end.

Instead the rise of messaging with our actual friends is becoming even more common. Maybe it’s my age, but the amount of thoughtful emails, text messages, and Slack DMs that I’m having with friends - not to mention phone calls and video calls - has been dramatically on the rise. In addition, small community forums seem to be where more people are congregating and exchanging information. While it may seem like platforms like Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok are where all the action is at, in reality “the socials” are full of a small number of people broadcasting to a large number of listeners. Those listeners are starting to talk more, but they are doing so with their actual friends.

Now, in a pandemic, finding new actual friends is hard. I think this is forcing more DMs and small group conversations, which I believe is a good thing. Trust is a different animal if we are talking about banks handling our money versus shows on Netflix handling our temporary allegiance.

We are seeing a lot of deal flow recently at Prota regarding trust in the financial and social verticals, and the startup teams I’m most interested in have an eye toward ushering in a fuller Web 3.0 era ASAP. Similar to 2017, the latest bull run in crypto feels like another distraction for the underlying, beautiful world that blockchains are creating for us. Not to jinx it, but I’m personally ready for another crypto winter where the true builders can get back to work.

Have a great rest of your week!

~Will