Full transcript: Han Jin on London Real
3:30 Brian Rose: This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Han Jin, the entrepreneur, technologist and AI visionary. You are the founder and CEO of Bluwhale, a decentralized artificial intelligence platform designed to empower individuals by transforming their digital footprints into valuable assets using wallet insights and on chain behavior to create a new intelligence layer for Web three. Your mission is to build the smartest, most decentralized finance and intelligence system by turning 1’s data, device and digital footprint into productive assets. You were featured in the Forbes 30 Under 30 as one of America’s rising stars, and later in business journals 40 Under 40. You believe that AI is one of the most important forces shaping humanity’s future, but that personalization, ownership and decentralization will determine whether it serves us or controls us.
4:23 Han, welcome to London Real in Dubai.
4:25 Han Jin: Thanks for having me, this is exciting.
4:26 Brian Rose: It’s great to have you here. I want to start by saying the Bluwhale is one of our portfolio companies here at London Real Ventures, the world’s first media powered investment firm, where our mission is to transform the world by investing in cutting edge Web 3 and AI companies while giving our partners marketing exposure across the London Real media platforms and academies. We heighten awareness, create customers and build communities by leveraging our global audience and extensive network on Super excited to be part of this project with you.
4:51 So let’s jump in what is.
4:53 Han Jin: Great question. We think Bluwhale is the first intelligence layer that allows individuals to use their smartphones and contribute data storage and computing power so that you can build AI agents, AI applications, smart applications on top of us. We are like a decentralized network that powers the next generation AI to transact and perform on chain. Now we all hear about the big centralized networks, the Chat GPTS and the Grocs and some of the other anthropics.
5:26 Brian Rose: What do we need to know about them versus a decentralized version? Why is that important?
5:31 Han Jin: Really great question. So if you look at, you know, groc or ChatGPT when you’re talking to them and they become so smart about you, guess who has the data? It’s one entity that controls your data, that absorbs your data. And I don’t know how they’re using it for, right? I’m not concerned about the privacy or security, but I’m concerned that one person can decide about how my data is being used.
5:54 Now, if you put that as a decentralized network, which means putting it on a blockchain, blockchain technology has incredible security, incredible privacy. I’m not concerned about that. But what blockchain allows you to do is own that footprint yourself, so you can control who has access to that information, you can control where the information that’s being aggregated, and you can control how much you’re going to profit from that information yourself.
6:21 Brian Rose: You know, we’ve talked a lot about data ownership and you know, for example, like a Google or a Meta, some have called it, you know, digital, you know, colonialization, where you kind of give away your data for free and they sell it back to you.
6:36 Now, browsing history is one thing, but man, the data you share with an AI, as you just alluded to, it’s really sensitive. They might know about my moods, my dreams, my finances, my business plans. I mean, the things people tell ChatGPT these days, it’s probably everything. I think people, if they weren’t concerned about their data being owned by someone else before, I think people are now waking up that this AI data is really sensitive and they probably better think about owning it or at least having it somewhere on chain or decentralized, right?
7:08 Han Jin: 100% And I think about this time, right, like those ChatGPT models become smarter and smarter with every single day. They know more about you, they become more personable. They also become smarter and extracting more information about you, right? But it means like what you’re sharing along the way, you don’t even know anymore or you don’t, you know, remember what you have said that is going into this centralized database that one corporation owns. And so, you know, from my perspective, OK, sure, right.
7:39 If one person owns my information, but I’m not getting anything in return. That’s that’s the question we had at Bluewell. We, we thought about it when people own your information, monetize your information and give you a service that is quote UN quote free, then, you know, we don’t know what the long term impact is going to be. And that’s what we want to put the control and power in your own hands, put it on a blockchain, create a aggregation around your information that you allow other enterprises to access. You allow how much it’s going to cost for those enterprises to access and the financial flow of, you know, who earns, who gets the capital, who gets the profit. It’s very clean and transparent because the information, the access and the monetary piece flows to you. We as a platform, we’re a Bluwhale. We only charge like a very small fine line in terms of matching and being able to provide that service. But you know, like Facebook takes 100%. A big difference, right?
8:49 Brian Rose: That’s what talk to me about the provenance of the data as well, because if it’s on chain, then also you can sometimes identify where that quote, UN quote intelligence comes from. Whereas as we know with the Google Gemini, you know, you ask for pictures of the founding fathers of America and they come back as African American because they’ve gone through some woke algorithm and you can never trace that back to where that data came from. Is that another important part about having on chain data?
9:15 Han Jin: Yes, and and that’s kind of like a lot of the different areas that has been kind of like explored in terms of IP on chain or you know, the transparency of what on chain really means is incredible, right.
9:26 And just because it’s on chain and maybe it’s a public, you know, a public chain doesn’t necessarily mean that everybody can see the information, right? There’s incredible technology in the blockchain, which is called ZK that, you know, doesn’t allow other people to necessarily see the information, even though they are transacting with you or kind of engaging with you. And so being able to understand that that kind of technology in the long term will allow on chain information to be, you know, hidden or, you know, like often processes where you can actually allow other people to see.
9:56 It is is incredibly important when it comes to a transparency and the monetary flow of how the information and how the verification goes, right. Like you, you mentioned about like verifying how the AI and how the information kind of like responds to you. That will be all possible launching.
10:13 Brian Rose: Talk to me about the proof being in the pudding because you are seeing some really significant user numbers. You’re seeing some massive growth. And I’m kind of curious because AI and blockchain, you know, when I mentioned that to people, you know, some people mention this company or that company or this phenomenon, but it’s hard to know who’s actually creating value and who’s creating a sustainable business model that’s going to change the game. And if you ask 10 people in A room, I would say they rarely come up with a company name that is all of those things. So how do you compete in a space that’s super noisy? I was at Satoshi Roundtable in January. And whereas the previous year, Han, the theme was building on Bitcoin, which unfortunately didn’t really go anywhere, this year was all AI agents are going to change the world, the agents going to trade for you.
11:05 And I went to a bunch of these individual discussions and a lot of people said behind the scenes, they’re like, these agents aren’t actually doing it. They’re not that smart. It’s not necessarily what you think it is so. That is very. True.
11:16 That’s your world. So tell us what it’s like to be in this noisy world versus what you’re building.
11:22 Han Jin: For sure. I have to be completely frank with you because we came out of the Web 2 space. You know, in Web 2, when you’re building a company it, you know, you could be eating ramen and bootstrapping for years and nobody looks at you. In Web three, everything is so hyped, right? Everything is so noisy so and the volatility is crazy. So people are very emotional, less rational now coming into Web 3, the biggest challenge is like, cut to the noise, ignore the noise and being able to focus on what’s real. And so one of the biggest problem is like, we don’t know if a company is AI because it’s a hype, it’s a marketing engine, It’s a, you know, it’s a good narrative, right? It’s what you can tell or if it’s an executional piece. And for me to be completely frank, I think, you know, decentralized AI, web three AI, blockchain or AI on blockchain is still early.
12:11 But The thing is like, what’s good about area markets is that, you know, 2-3 years from now we will be there and we have to start building now. Why we need to start building now is because if we don’t start now, then the centralized AI will get stronger and three to, you know, three to five years from now, they will be dominating the entire world. That’s not what you want. You want to be early. You want to be overlooked for long enough so that you have time to build it up. And then being able to kind of like compete at, at a level that I believe, you know, like 3-4 years down the road is, is a good potential for centralized and decentralized AI to kind of like having a plane, you know, playground
12:54 Brian Rose: now talking about, you know, like what’s, you know, how do you filter? How do you, you know, check out like if, if it’s real or not?
13:02 Han Jin: I think, you know, I always used to say as a founder, because I’ve been building companies for 12 plus years, it’s a matter of, it’s just a matter of time with time will tell because you know, hype is something that will come and go, but execution and and the struggle of execution can only be proven over time. And if a company can continue to deliver on great products, great technology, great infrastructure, and continuously create more impact on people, on individuals, on enterprises and building something that more people are adopting, then they’re maybe onto something.
13:37 But I think that’s kind of like where I see what we need to still grow up or mature, which is not everything needs to be overhyped. Not everything needs to take off from day one and have this moon shot. Just because it doesn’t take off in the first day, it doesn’t mean you aren’t failing, right? Often the the biggest ideas that actually change the world are the ones that people didn’t agree on on the beginning and then over time actually prove that that’s actually the big impact.
14:06 Brian Rose: It’s almost. Like if your business model is in the current hype narrative, you better be concerned, yeah.
14:12 Han Jin: And then also like, you know what I call like hype wave chasing, you know, like that’s, that’s something that is very common in the space. Like there’s a agent narrative, all of a sudden all the companies are having agents. There’s an AI narrative all of a sudden, like all the companies have some AI, some, somewhere in their narrative.
14:31 And so, you know, over time you will see that a lot of the things will die down. And those short cycles are the ones to avoid because they will distract you. The shiny stuff will distract you from your path. And I think for young founders, for, for founders that have not been around for a long time, it’s really hard to say no. Right. But I always used to say, like, you know, if you have 10 questions and you say 9 times no, and you’re my, you know, you have maybe a path that you’re, you know, chasing down.
15:01 Brian Rose: Yeah, it’s well.
15:02 Said it’s. And you only get so many of those pivots before your investors and your community give up on you. Of course you might get one or two, but if you’re finding the third pivot on the 3rd wave, it’s kind of but also. Like, I mean like chasing facing those, you know, three to six months hypes. You can’t really build something really, you know by the time you. Get there, it’s changed, correct? Correct.
15:26 So you need to hack something together, throw something together underneath. It’s a card house that faults. You know it’s not worth, right? Talk to me. About your growth numbers and where are these people coming from and how are they finding you very good.
15:40 Han Jin: Question. So you know, we launched the consumer side last year during Token 2049. So it’s been about a year. Over the last year we have grown to more than 3,000,000 unique wallets and users. That’s massive. And The thing is like in web three, those numbers are more massive than in Web 2, right?
16:00 But you know what’s most interesting for us is it’s all organic. The engagement is organic. We are looking at 1.1 million to 1.2 million unique active monthly active users, like every month, right? And we’re looking at on a daily basis 120 to 150 K of daily active users. So that means like, you know, there must be something that makes them come back, makes them want to transact, want to be here and spending time on you, right. That’s that’s ultimately what Blue will is focusing on. If we are doing a great job on acquiring users, bringing users and giving them an incentive to come back, then we’re building something real.
16:40 Brian Rose: How do you? Find them
16:41 Han Jin: very good. Question, I think they find each other. I think you know some of the product, you know what we call product LED growth designs that we brought out of the web two world. I feel like Web 3 is a lot of guerrilla marketing which means like pump, pump, pump.
16:57 But then when you have guerrilla marketing, the the problem is like after you pump the numbers then decrease very drastically. When you’re creating organic, that means people referring people talking to people, bringing them in continuously bring, you know, kind of like them a purpose or reason to continue come back. Then you have a mass or kind of like this stepping function where the next kind of like adoption comes from a tension of audience that the first audience actually attracted and convinced to come in.
17:31 And so that’s kind of like how we see it, right? Like it was very organic. People talked about it. People know about it Today I was at Sui base camp and one of the guys that gave me a, a swag pack said like, oh, Blue Will. Yeah, of course I know you guys. You’re token.
17:46 I’m so excited about it. When is it coming? And that’s kind of like, you know, I, I wasn’t expecting to, to get anybody to talk to me about Blue Will.
17:54 Brian Rose: That’s when. You know you’re there is when the when the local
17:57 Han Jin: Oh, we are. We are.
17:58 At the beginning, like we are, we are early, but I, I, I think you know, those are the right indication from you know, to to hear from a random person in the UAE to say like, hey, I’ve heard about Bluwhale. Hey, I’m excited about your token. Hope it goes up so
18:12 Brian Rose: talking. About some of these daily users, you’re talking about 120 to 150 K What are they coming to do on Bluwhale on a daily basis so.
18:19 Han Jin: I also used to say, you know, like if you’re designing a product in Web 3 versus in Web 2 and web two, you’re building kind of like something that is solving a problem, right?
18:28 A painkiller as you speak. And Web three you’re building, you’re designing it as a kind of like a country, like, you know, like like a territory, like a ecosystem that people want to be in. Now in the country, from a country design perspective, you need to allow people to earn, to spend and to come back for more, right? To speculate or to you know. So we have designed our entire platform in a way where they can earn by contributing using their smartphones, right? Like contribute data, contribute storage, contribute other things.
19:01 Brian Rose: Is that a? Deep in play, per SE.
19:02 Han Jin: That’s a deepen. Partial deepen. Of course. OK, that’s a deepen.
19:05 OK. The second piece is like how do you spend, right? Like what kind of avenues like your partners, right, Because we have the enterprise side right where we have now almost 5000 enterprise accounts that are active right offering? Services correct you have. Services assets, you know, like financial products, digital, you know, products and services. So that’s the spending Ave.
19:32 Right, allow them to match with with our users and then have the users spent right. And then, of course, you know, coming back speculating, right, like a staking, being able to speculate on on Blue world’s token going forward, being able to launch what we our newest functionality is like launch your profile tokens. What we mean was profile token is like we are. Then we understand that the contribution to actually turn your digital footprint, what we always say into a financial asset, you actually need to launch an asset.
21:01 So we allow every profile to have their own token attached 1:00 to 1:00. Wow, which? Then also allow other people to invest in that asset and speculate on you, OK, right. Yeah.
21:11 Brian Rose: So is that like a playbook out of a few different protocols? But like, for example, virtuals did this really well. And by pairing a bunch of their agents with their token, they drove their token price up, created all sorts of liquidity, and it’s a model a lot of people are following. You could do something similar with Bluwhale.
21:29 Han Jin: We, we can, but The thing is like, you know, like creating like agents, launching A token around agents is much easier to do than if you build a track record as a person and you’re launching A token around the person. Now for me, I tell my team all the time when we’re building products or we’re building a company, it’s for the long term. We’re not here for the short term. So how do we build long term?
21:51 Credibility and understanding is by building products that are meant for long term. Now the the funniest benefit of this design, which is the one to one match between your identity and the token, is that you know, people are afraid of those short term meme tokens pumping and being rugged. And then the team disappears and you will never know who took your money on Bluewell. Everybody will know it’s a one to one match between the person that has been on Bluewell active and contributing his digital footprint and he is now launching a token. You know, if you would actually run away, you know everything about him.
22:30 Brian Rose: It’s like also an. Identity piece there on Bluwhale.
22:32 Han Jin: That’s right. And so if you run away, you can’t use Bluwhale again.
22:36 Brian Rose: So you’re putting it all at risk.
22:37 All the work that you’ve done.
22:39 Han Jin: Yeah, I mean. Like that’s what what you design a product for the long term is about where people are contributing, increasing the asset value out who they are, which which I believe is how the normal work, you know, kind of should work. And then over time launching and having this asset class that people can speculate, right? Like, for example, if I would be launching A token, they would see like over the many, many years that I’ve built startups, what I’ve achieved, right?
23:06 They can, they can check, they can go online, they can, they can see what are the milestones that Han, you know, went through for every single thing that he did in his life. And to be completely frank with you, that’s the way you slowly build up momentum as the founder too, right? In the beginning, you have nothing, right? You need to maybe fake it until you make it kind of thing, right? But the things like over time, you’re building momentum. And that’s not just your company as a person, as a personal brand, you’re building momentum.
23:36 Your momentum didn’t exist because over the last 24 hours, overnight, all of a sudden you became very famous, right? So over time, how you’re building that momentum, it’s all digital. How can you capture that into an asset class that’s blue?
23:50 Brian Rose: OK, OK. You talk about this intelligence layer, I’ve never really heard anyone use that term, a web three intelligence layer for sure. What does that mean?
23:59 Han Jin: Good question. So the The funny thing about blockchains is like people talk about layers a lot about L1SL2SL3SL fours. It’s like a layered cake where you have more information sitting on top of it. Different layers have like different purposes. I believe that, you know, we see ourselves as AL 3 or L4, whatever you want to call it. The L ones are the foundation of what everything is built on. The L twos are the acceleration, the cost efficiency, and a lot of the things that people are kind of adding into the L twos. Now, what is an L3?
24:34 What is an L4? In my opinion, an L3 and L4 is an orchestration or you can call it an aggregation of the information that are, you know, kind of like boiling up from from the ground up. Why is it intelligent? It’s because we are putting all the information that we need for AI to tap into from a resource perspective. That means like maybe compute, maybe storage, maybe data from a orchestration. That means like pull the right information together in order to actually do the transaction, do that decision making. And then of course, from a scalability perspective, allowing them to be efficient, allowing it to be modular, allow it to be fast and easy, right?
25:17 That’s ultimately how I see a layer, why we exist, why we have this L 3, so, so to speak. And we believe that without that layer, AI cannot autonomously operate on the blockchain. It doesn’t work. We have a lot of competitors in this space that are focusing one puzzle piece at a time, like decentralized compute, decentralized data, decentralized storage, right? There are a lot of players out there that do that. Now tell an AI agent or LLM to go on the blockchain, find all those resources, puzzle them together, and then do the thinking on top of that.
25:54 Doesn’t work. AI doesn’t puzzle on blockchain. AI needs it to be ready, and that’s why centralized companies work so well, right? You have a lot of agents that you interact with or that you’re used on a daily basis. Automating, removing some of the manual work, user experience.
26:09 Seamless, right? How do you do that in a decentralized world where everything is broken out into pieces, right? Why is it so seamless to talk to Chet GBT? It’s because open AI has built everything themselves. They have the data, they have the storage, they have the compute, they have everything on one. That’s why like it’s so seamless. Now let’s let’s put that on on block chains. It doesn’t work.
26:33 That’s why we have very early, right? Like AI is still early. I believe in the next two to three years, you will see tremendous growth in this market. And right now we have a niche market that is maybe quote UN quote a little bit over hyped, but I think the future is bright for for the space you.
26:52 Brian Rose: Mentioned a token earlier that you use internally, you know, to keep people coming back, I guess to incentivize.
26:59 Can you talk about what that looks like right now? And if and when that becomes a public token, how does that change? And then the utility, I mean, the utility is such an important part of a successful token these days. How do you think about that? And you engineer it? Is it a loyalty thing or a token now?
27:15 Han Jin: For sure.
27:15 So the, the, the way our platform works is two ways. One, we have a point system that rewards your loyalty, your engagement, your activity, the contributions. And then we have our main token that is tied to our layer, which means, you know, like when people are, you know, agents are transacting or you know, like doing queries on our layer. This is the our gas token, OK, right. So the gas token is the blue AI token that we’re going to be launching on central exchanges that investors have poured in a lot of capital over the last couple of years and that from a, you know, like valuation perspective is, is very high, OK. Now, from a consumer perspective, from a community perspective, what we did is we believe that the community, even though the market is, you know, a little bit muted, not as fast or, or kind of like scaling the altcoin bull run, we believe that the community should still be having their own point system and the point system should reward the community. So what we did is we launched a funny, we called it blub, like blup.
28:21 Like for example, the noise that the sound that a fish makes or the whale makes blub. Yeah, that’s right. Basically it’s blue points, right? We turned the blue points into a token, did a fair launch at 0 FTB, give everybody a really, you know, good opportunity to to see the token wise. OK, because if you’re starting at 0, how can you go down? Yeah, OK.
28:43 Interesting. Yeah, right. But our gas token that is going to be for the long term chain for the long term of the company that is sitting at 100 million FTV now.
28:53 Brian Rose: Interesting. So once. That launches, there’s a lot of clearly a lot of selling pressure, which is normal, right, but also a lot of buying pressure that could be taking it up, but it’s long term, OK, right.
29:05 And that’s kind of like how we structure things. Interesting. This dual token piece solves a few problems, right. So you can issue that blub first and early and let people use it, but it doesn’t have to punish or hurt or taint the valuation of the other one and the other one has isn’t public yet be your original investors own pieces of it. And then if at some point you’ll float that and then you have to yeah.
29:30 And then?
29:31 Han Jin: Depending on how big the community grows right? Like you see a lot of the meme tokens with large communities, right? But now you don’t just have a meme token itself, even though it blub sounds kind of like a meme. Now you have also a community that is using it on a daily basis that sees value and holding it, right?
29:50 Brian Rose: So it’s kind of like a combination of meme plus utility. And you think people will own both in the future?
29:56 Han Jin: I think. So because you know, like right now, a lot of people have blew points, they have aggregated over the last couple years, a lot of blew points and we’re giving them a choice, right? Do you want to use your blue points to convert later on into the blue AI air drop? Or do you want to convert now into the BLOB token and see how where it goes?
30:16 And that’s the speculation, right? Like how people decide, it’s not up to me. But The thing is like nobody can complain later and say like, oh, you know, I should have committed to BLOB or I should have converted to blue AI. It was your choice, right?
30:29 Brian Rose: Talking about this deep in play, and a lot of people outside of Web three don’t even know what that means and don’t know if it’s important or not. You know, we’ve talked about these big centralized AIS and on one hand, like you said, they’re one stop shop and they can provide a very seamless service.
30:45 But also there’s a lot of compute involved. There’s a lot of hardware involved. There’s a lot of big questions about hardware right now. And with trade wars, who can own it, who can’t own it, who bought it on the sly? And then there’s also the fact that, you know, it might not be able to be controlled and then we might want it decentralized. So why is it important part of your business model having this deep end aspect for sure.
31:08 Han Jin: So for us, when we are looking at like individual contribution, right, a lot of the AI deep in place that we’ve seen require you to have very heavy server farms, GPUs that are very, very expensive, right? And I understand, right. I even think like some of the decentralized as compute platforms that you see today, they don’t even have the computing power that could actually let LMS to automatically or autonomously kind of transact and perform on the blockchain, right? But The thing is like what we saw is like we can start smaller.
31:40 Why don’t we start smaller? And so our idea was, you know, if a person has a smartphone and we use some of the compute on their smartphones or some of the data that they have on their smartphones to contribute into our layer, then initially we are creating this ecosystem where you and I have a device in the pocket that is actually making passive income for me. It makes it simple, right? I’m not saying that your your device right now is solving AIS biggest problems today.
32:11 I’m saying like you have become a part of an ecosystem that over long term now think about like 2-3 years down the road, you know, iPhone 6, you know, I mean like 16 with the computing that they are coming out now doing so many AI things all at once. Then think about like 17/18/19 and whatever we see down the road, how fast your mobile device is going to scale in terms of like computing capabilities, right? It also accelerates and accentuates the theme of decentralized, because now there’s not one gatekeeper, correct? That’s right.
32:48 And then the data sits with you, right? I mean, like all, most of our digital footprint sits on all phones, by the way, it doesn’t sit on our browser sits on the phone, right, right. You opting in, you owning it, right. If you feel like, oh, you know, like where’s my data? It’s not with Han, it’s with.
33:05 Brian Rose: It’s a newer device, right? Yeah. Talk to me about, you know, some of the dystopian narratives of AI because it’s not as if you’re playing into them. But if you ask me why I need to have decentralized AI, we have to maybe address them. Yeah.
33:20 First of all, is most of the general public sleeping on the impact of AI on this planet, on the population? Yeah. And are they also sleeping on the impact of centralized AI? Can you speak on that for sure?
33:33 Han Jin: I mean like. Most of the people that are using AI on a daily basis, they’re sleeping on the fact that AI could be very dangerous. I mean, like every technology is right? Like it has good size and bad size, right? But the danger of what centralized AI can do is, is so scary to me.
33:50 But most people ignore it similar to like how they ignore that on Facebook, their data is being used for advertisement. However, right? Just because your data is used for advertisement, the worst thing that can happen to you is you actually buy the product that showed to you, right? But now think of it this way, like now, if all your data is owned by this AI company where the AI is training and learning and knowing you better than yourself, what are other things that they can do to you? And that’s, that’s to me, very, very scary, right? Because now we’re not talking about like someone owning your data and, and all of a sudden you’re buying like, you know, like, I don’t know, like a iPhone cover right now. It’s like someone owning your data and that person, right? Whatever happens to that data could actually backfire because you’re talking to this very, very intelligent outlet. I don’t know what’s going to happen long term, but I don’t believe it’s going to be free.
34:46 It’s it’s not just because I’m using this great chat functionality that feels free somehow I’m paying for it, but how right. And that’s kind of like what I feel most of the majority of the population is. I’m sleeping on the danger, the risks of centralized and of course, you know, only the big guys being able to do that. I mean, like Elon Musk raising billions of dollars in order to build, you know, like this X company for AI. Great. I mean, like, who else can raise that much amount of money to do so, right?
35:20 So I’m thinking about the small guys. I’m thinking about the 98% of the world. I’m thinking about how do we empower like a team of 2A, team of 5A, team of 10 that is building a new application, new agent or whatever and wants to bring in intelligence. But they don’t have the users, they don’t have the data, they don’t have the resources. That’s what Blue World stands for. We want to democratize AI, and how do we do that? By building it on blockchains on a layer, being able to orchestrate, being able to pull resources together, and being able to make it accessible to anybody. Literally.
35:58 Brian Rose: Are you seeing? Competitors out there right now, do you see anybody that impresses you on the kind of blockchain AI space I mean?
36:06 Han Jin: I see a lot of competitors that are popping up here and there. And to be frank with you, I think after done 10 years of startup, you will always see competitors. You will always see people that try to copy you. You will see people pop up that raise new capital rounds for a product that sounds exactly the same like yours, right? Like to me nowadays, and this is probably comes with experiences like I don’t care anymore because they will pass, right? Because, you know, just because they did a press release doesn’t mean they’re actually going to execute to to their promise, right?
36:40 A lot of companies will die, right? Like 99% of the companies die over a range of like three to five years. So, you know, like I, I’m not too worried, but I think, you know, some of the evolvement that I’ve seen in, in the blockchain space that I’m very impressed about, about some of the, you know, kind of activities and efforts the chains have been pushing. I’m very excited about. I am, I’m also excited about some of the products that people people are building around decentralized compute, decentralized data, decentralized storage, as well as decentralized verification.
37:14 You know, initially it’s about data verification. Now I’ve seen people being able to do model verification, right, which I think it’s very interesting. Yeah, I think you know time will tell if you know 2 years from now when we have the same conversation we are sitting maybe in the bear market and looking over who actually is remaining. That’s probably the most exciting you know, companies you should be keep following
37:39 Brian Rose: so you’re. Confident that you have the fortitude, the long term mission, that daily execution, that you’re not worried when you see people raise here and there and there because you just know you’re unique it’s like.
37:52 Han Jin: The hype cycles, I don’t, I don’t really chase hype cycles either.
37:56 Brian Rose: Yeah, that’s. Your web 2 experience right because.
37:58 Han Jin: Because The thing is, like, I still remember when I raised my first round, it was right after the lunar collapse and right before the FTX collapse, yeah. Mid, mid 22 yeah, I.
38:08 Was pitching AI on the blockchain. People thought I was crazy. I was like, why? Like, you know, tell me another like D5 platform that we can do right. And The thing is like back then, nobody was listening to me. Nobody.
38:24 Everybody is ignoring me. And then all of a sudden, like a year later or two, all of a sudden people are so hyped and then everybody’s slapping AI on their company. So, you know, it comes and goes, right? But like I said, the companies that keep executing to the vision, they have a conviction. They may be a little bit contrarying in the beginning. Those are the ones actually that’s going to make the biggest impact.
38:50 I mean, like blockchain was very contrary and in the beginning also just a small amount of people actually bought in and started working on it, right? Do you think if on day one the blockchain was so hyped and exciting that everybody said yes, that’s the next big thing that we would be where we are today and probably not? Probably not.
39:10 Brian Rose: Yeah, you mentioned enterprises that are also on on Bluwhale. If I’m an enterpriser listening to this, how do you pitch them and say you really want to be here?
39:20 How do you make those choices as well?
39:22 Han Jin: For sure. So the enterprises come to us because they want to grow their users, they want to understand their users, they want to boost their users, and they want to talk to the chain to be able to understand what is the next big service or product or asset or whatever I should be launching that my users love. Interesting. Very simple. Because it’s an intelligence chain, you can ask your questions, correct?
39:45 So. Very, very simple. Our go to market was so simple, right? Purely just like what you know, a team of like 10 data engineers over a month or two months would actually be able to deliver to you where you still need to execute and and grab the information and do stuff.
41:00 Yeah, I. Can do today and automate because automation is probably the first thing that AI finds a great use case around to automate all the manual work that we need to do. So we are left with more time to think more strategic, think more planning, think more long term. And I think that’s what we attacked from day one, right? Help those enterprises understand who their users are, find more of those users on chain.
41:27 Be able to talk directly to the chain using our chat to understand what drives those guys like the same question you’re asking me, right? Like you can ask our chat on Bluwhale to understand, right? So we attracted protocols, D5 platforms, games L ones L twos that are very curious about like, hey, what are those? I don’t know how many million wallets on our chain doing which next project should we invest in to build on us and who should we attract so that our chain grows from from, from from that specific market position, right?
42:05 Brian Rose: I mean very reasonable questions, but have you tried asking them without having a huge data team that does, you know, like the month and month of back and forth?
42:15 Han Jin: You can on our side, you can do it from day one is.
42:18 Brian Rose: That one of the reasons you think you’ve had such amazing user growth is the enterprises offering services that’s.
42:25 Han Jin: That’s a really good question. I, I would say, you know, the, the when I came into web three, I noticed that a lot of the business business models were very simplified, which means like 1 sided, right. In web 3-2, you see a much more complex, much more sophisticated business models.
42:43 And then of course, you know, like the building A2 sided or multi sided marketplace is is so painful because you need to not just you manage growing one side, but you need to be able to manage both sides. It’s like a recipe. Getting it exactly right, it’s really, really. Hard, right? That’s why nobody tries to do that, right? But in my opinion, you know, both sides are benefiting from each other.
43:05 That means enterprises coming here that find all the information, talk to the information, grows the information. More users I have here that are contributing, the more enterprises are coming. So both sides need to, it’s like Uber, right? Like the drivers and, and, and the people that want to go somewhere. Yeah.
43:24 Brian Rose: Right. Yeah. So you’re building both. What is this Holy Grail you’ve talked about or where are you trying to get to? Where does it, what does this look like in five years time in your mind?
43:35 Han Jin: Great question.
43:36 So for me, the Holy Grail is not to be a Web 3 blockchain company. The Holy Grail for me is to be able to attract both Web 2 and web three companies to come. And the the the idea around Blue was actually created when my Co founder and I were working on a web 2 AI company before we realized that the only way to to train our AI to be smart enough is if we convince one of the big guys to give us the data so we can train on it, right? And so that means serving the top 2% of the world. Now the small, medium sized businesses, I don’t care if they are in Web 3 or Web 2, they still struggle with the same problem.
44:19 Let’s say they have 10,000 monthly active users. Do they have enough data to do any type of AI around those users? You know, are they able to ask the chat to, to ask like, hey, what, what does my user want? Are they able to provide personalized like services or products that they can design around it? Probably not. It’s too little data.
44:42 You can’t tell, right? Why don’t we build Bluwhale so that all the SMBs are sitting on top of you, pooling information, pooling resources together, and betting on the fact that if we pool as a collective, we might be as strong as one of the big guys when it comes to the AI race. And that’s the vision, that’s the grail, that’s the Holy Grail.
45:05 Brian Rose: And what do you think you can achieve that
45:08 Han Jin: good? Question, I mean like it’s, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s a, it’s a very long term vision for us. I, I, I always used to say when I build a company, I, and this is kind of like what my advisors and mentors always said like, hey, if you’re building a startup plan for five to 10 years, right?
45:28 Don’t go into a startup because you want to exit within like a year or two and just run away, right. If you are for for a real purpose here, you should always calculate. You know, like the average years of IPO is only 7 to 8 years.
45:43 Brian Rose: Right. Yeah, Facebook was about that and maybe that was fast.
45:47 That was fast. Yeah. That’s the web two world. Then in this world, people want the launch 7 to 8 hours. Yeah, they want.
45:53 They want memes and. Stuff they want fast, correct? They want 100 X today.
45:57 Han Jin: Right, which is which is what they want, but they actually don’t want it because like you said, when you actually have execution that fast or even profits that fast, just like guerrilla marketing, it just doesn’t last. And you can’t build something that fast of value. You you can period.
46:13 Brian Rose: It doesn’t. It doesn’t. Work and when you try to. Force it, it doesn’t last, and what goes? Up fast also comes down fast and that’s. What we’ve seen, you know, it’s crazy because I, you know, we’ve invested about 100 companies so far. And so I have a whole group of LP’s and I just try to say this stuff takes time and I get a glazed look and I’m just like, you know, if you think you can go from 1 to a billion in one year, you know, I know we all want that to happen, but it’s just not realistic.
46:38 So we just had, and if it does happen, there’s something wrong. You should be suspicious. It might go down. So just trying to get people to slow down in a world where people got used to quick payouts in web three.
46:51 Han Jin: That’s right. And so how do you tell the next generation, right? How do you you tell the young founders that are about to build their next web three company that are in their early 20s, right, That have been in Web 3 long enough to to know that you know, I can make a 10X tomorrow, right? Why do I need to persist if my launch doesn’t go well, right? So I think all of that will, will show that in this space. And and you know, like I don’t know if you saw the talk or the post from CZ who said like, hey, you know, like I, I think 90% of his portfolio is BNB.
47:25 Brian Rose: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it’s crazy. Yeah. And he? Says like, you know, to succeed, it’s, it’s really the long term and. It’s powerful, isn’t it?
47:33 Han Jin: Yeah. And the truth is, these days you probably talk to most people in Web 3 and they don’t have a 10X. You know, you might have one in 21, but these days not many people can hold it anymore, you know, And if there is one, it’s a quick story and it’s a meme coin and it’s gone. So waiting for that it’s it’s just not the current reality. So maybe this is the time to start adjusting timeframes.
47:55 And you could still have all the beauties of decentralization and you can still put a few meme coins on the side. But we’re all still here building, and that’s why. I hope that this cycle is really about like mass adoption, right with now institutions buying in and playing with tokens and government buying in, right? It might be, it might turn out it’s very different than other, you know, like bear and bolt cycles that we have seen in the past, right? And so we we will see.
48:23 Brian Rose: Do you think the.
48:24 Four year cycle is ending. Do you think we have a super cycle soon?
48:29 Han Jin: I I. I’m thinking about the four year cycle starting to mature more, right, where you have a much more prolonged cycle versus this short like I think it’s like 2 years or 1 1/2 years of like a ball and then 2 1/2 years of like bear, right. So I think, yeah, I and I actually hope, because if that happens, then the space is clearly maturing, right?
48:55 And that’s kind of like where talent comes in, where long term builders come in and long term holders will come in. Yeah.
49:02 Brian Rose: Talk to you about the institutions that you see in this market and how that will change the market because I mean, look, Bitcoin dominance continues to go up. We don’t even know if that’s possible, but it is. You know, institutions we know are massively investing in Bitcoin via ETFs and starting to trickle down maybe into a few others.
49:21 We’re seeing retail really not coming in yet. The Google searches are still really low. Yeah, it’s. Strange, you know Well. Yeah. What does this tell you about this market? Is that a good thing ultimately?
49:32 And what does it do to volatility? How? How are you looking at this?
49:37 Han Jin: So I, I think, you know, for me, and this is kind of like a crypto web three thing that you need to always think about the next tier of liquidity that comes in into the space right? Now, if institutions are now the big players in this, in this ball run, then there’s not much room on the top either, right?
49:57 The next 1 is probably the government that has more money to play with, right? But The thing is like that also means that the space is getting to a stage where maturity starts heading in. Now. I think it’s a good thing that institutions are coming in because it gives more credibility to into the space, right? I do believe that when it starts running a retail will come back. It’s just a matter of like how fast does it run up, right? And then of course, you know, I hope that because the institutions are buying in and this is kind of like also for me, for, for my investors and for, for the institutional interest we have on our token that institutions are not the ones to stay here for the short term. So they don’t like by today dump tomorrow, right? For them, it’s much of A long term horizon, which also gives you much more long term horizon as a builder. If you have institutional interest in your token or in your company to be executing.
51:00 And like I said, everything takes time, right? And if you have only like community buy in that is like hyped like this, how are you going to have like the sustainability, the the persistence to keep going right?
51:14 Brian Rose: You have some pretty big investors like Animoca, Cardano, SBI. I’m curious, will you be looking for more investors in the future? Is there a token generation planned anytime this year?
51:26 And what? Yeah, what are you looking for? You looking for more institutions? Bigger money?
51:32 Han Jin: So on, on my end, like I’ve spent a lot of time in institutional exposure.
51:36 The game for tokens this year is to deal with institutions, right? There are a lot of institutions that are more on the bigger Czech side that are interested in going earlier and earlier and earlier, right? Which I found interesting because that behavior I didn’t see before. But I do understand that they want to invest before BlackRock, right? So they need to take more risk and then because they are smaller, right? And then then being able to do that way. So I we see a lot of interest from like banks from try to find funds from liquid funds from family offices, like really, really big funds that are willing to, you know, cut checks somewhere between like 10 to $20 million at a minimum. OK, right.
52:24 And so that gives me confident that, you know, we could be, you know, building something that is much, much bigger because we, we have kind of like a very ambitious vision, right? I am even like the guys that I tell about what we are building in Web 2, they, they say that’s quite ambitious, right. So that means you also need to raise the amount of capital that can support that vision.
52:46 Brian Rose: And so you’ll be doing some of these bigger raises to continue growing and that’s you’re a web two guy. So you’re you’re comfortable raising and growing because web three people wouldn’t.
52:56 I don’t think a three piece person would rather raise 2030 million right now.
52:59 Han Jin: Oh, totally. Totally. I mean like so.
53:01 Brian Rose: Mentality, isn’t it? Yeah.
53:02 Han Jin: It is a mentality. And The thing is like I tell you why fundraising is hard. It’s freaking hard. It’s it’s one of the hardest thing that any, any entrepreneur needs to deal with because it’s so non rational, like in the way you need to be able to execute on it, right? And because it’s hard in crypto, what you see is like short sprints of companies being able to TGE and then take the liquidity and never need to raise again.
53:31 I don’t believe in that. I think fundraising is a core. It’s, it’s a bread and butter of a good founder of a good CEO that needs to deal with it on a daily basis. Because fundraising is not just about the capital. It’s about bringing the right partners, aligning the right, you know, capital, aligning the right interest, driving the right signals for the market. That’s why I fundraise.
54:01 It’s not because I love it. I really don’t, but it is a core component of what a startup success looks today versus like 10 or 20 years ago.
54:10 Brian Rose: Yeah, and it’s also a great feedback loop, right? If you’re struggling to raise funds, you’re probably not doing the right things. Delivering the right metrics keeps you honest it.
54:22 Han Jin: Does it does right and then also like it, it refines you. How do you tell the story? How do you narrate? How do you position yourself? And then I, I like fundraising from our aspect that VCs always challenge you on the macro, OK, right. As a founder, you don’t see macro. You literally have those horse blinders on and you just keep executing, building your product. But The thing is like, if you don’t see macro, then ultimately you are just moving like, like, you know, maybe too deep into a forest and you don’t see the trees, right? So it’s because you have.
54:58 Brian Rose: To live in that macro world. Correct, you might be. Building this thing right now, but if it doesn’t work in the new paradigm, correct?
55:05 Han Jin: And The thing is like, yes, you know, right, Web 3 is more macro than than anything, Yeah.
55:10 Brian Rose: Yeah, yeah, we’re seeing that a lot right now.
55:12 When will you know that you’ve gotten this right? Do you think, will there be a certain time where you’re like, OK, this is what we’ve been going for? Is it a certain number of users, a certain type of behavior, a certain metric that can beat out a ChatGPT or beat out a Grok? When will you know that you’re like, OK, what? Give yourself credit? You don’t seem like a guy that gives yourself credit a lot like me, which can be great for building big things. But when do you think what is the milestones maybe in your head where you want to go?
55:41 Han Jin: I actually. Believe that there will never be a time where I think I did it right like never. And and the reason why is I, I learned through the last couple years that you probably heard about it, the paranoid survive. Yeah, I think. It’s, it’s, it’s brilliant because in a, in a fast-paced world where we live in today, where technology shifts and moves so much faster than like maybe 1020 years ago, like when our parents were working, you need to be much, much faster on your toes, reacting much faster to the market and also executing much faster than than before.
56:21 So for the next generation of founders and entrepreneurs, like the challenges will become more intense. You need to manage more things all at the same time. You need to be good at a lot of things all at the same time. Multitasking becomes a really big thing, right? So in my opinion, you know, like you always have a hunch, you will always have a hunch that you’re on the right track.
56:43 You should always have a North Star that you are following, right? That, that you believe that you’re shooting for and then hope that you had, you know, end up in heaven, Right. Like, that’s isn’t that what the Americans say? Yeah. So just get used to it. You’re always going to be there, always struggling, always paranoid, always innovating in order to survive. And if if.
57:03 You, if you stop struggling and you start feeling like, oh, I’m, I’m there. Yet I think that’s where companies die.
57:11 Brian Rose: You would love one of my mentors that was a guest on London Real 10 years ago and he used to say success is on the razor’s edge of failure. And he used to say every, if I ever hear a founder or CEO telling me things are good, I know they’re dead. You would love this guy. His name is Dan Pena.
57:30 He’s called the Trillion Dollar Man, he’s got a castle in Scotland, yadda yadda. And he’s a high performance coach and he says exactly that. And I always repeat that to all of my students and some of my LP’s. And I’m like, look at a company that you think has it all, like Apple or something like that. They are putting it on the line every single day to maintain that dominant share.
57:49 If you think they’ve got it easy or they have a Moat or something, you’re kidding yourself. It’s on the razor’s edge of failure. And that’s true about your life as well. You better be on there putting it out every single day, taking risks or you’re not going to be able to create wins in the future. I mean like.
58:04 Han Jin: For me, I, I compare it across like multiple different disciplines in your life, right? Like your health, right? Your, your, your career, right? Being able to, you know, put it at the edge every single time allows you to grow. It’s what causes growth, right? Like I go to the gym, my muscles don’t grow. If you don’t push them, right, they will get comfortable, right?
58:27 So that means like everything in human nature is about seeking that challenge, pushing for that challenge, getting yourself ready for that challenge. Same with the company. To be completely honest, if you want the company to continue growing then you need to put it back online. Take that risk and push it to the edge and see if you can survive.
58:47 Brian Rose: Yeah, I had a 29 year old kid last night trying to knock my head off in a boxing ring, so I know what you’re talking about. Yeah, that’s.
58:55 Han Jin: There you go. Right. That’s putting a right. Yeah. On
58:59 Brian Rose: I think we’re with the right guy on this investment.
59:02 So look, we always were really impressed with your vision, but this is the first time I really got to know you personally. And I really like your ethos as a founder. And I really think this is the ethos that survives. And so look, your numbers are off the charts. I love the long term focus and I know you have, you’re working lots of things in the background, which is fantastic.
59:24 How can people start using Bluwhale today as an individual, as an enterprise? How can they engage with you and maybe even invest in you for sure?
59:33 Han Jin: So it’s very simple, right? If you’re an individual or you’re an enterprise or you’re building something new, go to Bluwhale.com, right? There’s an enterprise sign in, there’s a consumer sign in, use whatever.
59:46 You have to just login, create that profile, create that account and then all the things that are required from you will be there. We designed it in a way that it allows you to slowly Polish, upgrade and move things forward and we try to make the user onboarding journey as simple as possible. Web 2. Correct. Yeah, From a investment perspective, I’m always years, always happy to meet new investors. I think, you know, for me, fundraising is my bread and butter and has to be for, for, you know, like a couple years ago when I was doing my first company and I hated fundraising so much.
1:00:25 Like you, you can’t believe it. I was like complaining about every day until there was advice from one of my fellow founders who said like, hey, if you don’t, if you don’t like fundraising, maybe you shouldn’t be ACEO. And that hurts. That really hurts. But it was what I needed to hear because it it put me in the right perspective. Fundraising is not the capital.
1:00:49 Fundraising is talking to people, getting feedback, putting yourself out there, standing naked in front of that person and being ripped apart and feeling OK. And I think that’s the scariest part for a lot of people about fundraising, being ripped apart, getting that feedback, feeling personally attacked on that kind of stuff, right? And I think, you know, as ACEO, where it’s a very ego driven business, you know, there’s a reason why we take on those big risks to do those irrational things, right?
1:01:27 If you cannot take that feedback, if you cannot, you know, hear what sucks, then you, you are not building, you’re not, you’re not finding the right things that that that you should be looking for. I hope a lot of younger founders listen to this.
1:01:40 Brian Rose: It’s powerful. And I was just thinking about politics as well. I mean, if you want to be in politics these days, you know you have to be fundraising too. And that means you got to be in touch with your message. And again, these even the other aspects of your life. If you hate going to the gym every day and you’re complaining about it, well then maybe you shouldn’t go and maybe your body is going to not deliver anymore.
1:02:03 Han Jin: Or you can find a way to embrace it and love it and master it, correct? And and then brace the pain, right? I mean, like that, that pain when, when my muscles are hurting because they are in pain, then I know, like, you know, I know it’s growing and I’m, I’m pushing right to the edge.
1:02:20 Brian Rose: Yeah. You’ve done your job for the day. That’s right.
1:02:23 Yeah. That’s fantastic, Han. Really appreciate this. Congrats on the success. So follow Bluwhale. And I can’t wait to see what’s coming next with you guys. I just love to see a winner in a space where there’s so much noise, you know, it’s nice to be like, okay and okay, but look at these guys are doing, look at these users, look at the value, look what the the community is saying. It’s like, okay, it’s really nice to be able to show someone something that’s concrete and solid and proven with somebody with a long term vision.
1:02:49 And yeah, we’re obviously on board and Congrats man. Looking forward to the next few years, decades, etcetera.
1:02:59 Han Jin: I appreciate. It thanks for having me here and excited to have you all on board to join me on this journey.
1:03:08 Brian Rose: Excellent dude. Thank you so much, appreciate it. And I wanted to say thank you to Web Three TV. We will see you next time.
