Natalia Karayaneva, CEO of Propy: How Blockchain is Transforming Real Estate

Natalia Karayaneva is the Founder and CEO of Propy, a Silicon Valley prop-tech company revolutionizing home purchasing globally by deploying smart contracts on the blockchain. In this conversation, Natalia and Anthony discuss growing up in Russia and Bulgaria, the current fundraising environment for blockchain companies, how real estate markets are evolving globally, and where international investor demand has gone for U. S. based real estate. American Airlines-----airline tickets, cheap flights, vacation packages and American Airlines AAdvantage bonus mile offers at AA.com. McDonald's-----It's a good time for the great taste of McDonald's. Just look for the Golden Arches and pick up a meal that will have you saying "Mhm I'm lovin’ it". -----If you enjoyed this episode and want to stay updated on everything Bitcoin, blockchain, and crypto. Check out Off the Chain newsletter by visiting offthechain.substack.com and join 35,000+ other investors currently subscribed to my daily investor letter.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to Off the Chain, simply the best podcast in crypto. Let's kick this thing off. Natalie Kara-Yaneva is the founder and CEO of Propy, an automation platform for real estate transactions for homebuyers, brokerages, and title companies. In this conversation, we discuss growing up in Russia and Bulgaria, the current fundraising environment for blockchain companies, how real estate markets are evolving globally, and where international investor demand has gone for US-based real estate. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you do as well. But before we get into the episode, I want to talk about our two sponsors today. That's right, one of them is American Airlines. They're the

• 0:45Anthony Pompliano?

  only company that I trust with my life while in the air. Head on over to aa.com, get you an Advantage number, and start booking flights. They go anywhere you want to go. Seriously, though. American is the only airline that I fly. If you head on over to aa.com, they got all kinds of flights. You could fly to Miami, you could fly to China, you could fly to Europe, South America, they probably even got one to Antarctica. Head on over to aa.com. I'm Executive Platinum, get upgraded every time. But if you fly anything else, that's alright, I'll see you at the airport. I'll just be getting on the nice planes at American. So aa.com. Now, our second sponsor today, McDonald's. That's right, Mickey D's.

• 1:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Everyone knows the best restaurant in America. Why? They're consistent, they're cheap, and they got great food. There's not a person listening to this that's going to tell me they've gone and eaten a Big Mac, or a McFlurry, or a McChicken, or how about a large fry? You walk out of McDonald's every time saying, "Mm-mm, damn, that was good." That's right, McDonald's. There's one on every street corner, head on over to McDonald's. So, go check out American Airlines and McDonald's, the two sponsors for today's episode. Now, before we get into the episode, though, don't forget, Off the Chain's not only a podcast. Every morning, I also wake up and I write a newsletter to 40,000 investors analyzing

• 2:07Anthony Pompliano?

  the Bitcoin, blockchain, and cryptocurrency industry. Head on over to offthechain.substack.com, that's offthechain.substack.com, and sign up today. Now, let's get into the episode with Natalie and see what she's got to say.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 2:47Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. Coming to you live from the new off the chain studio. Not really, we just moved the office around. But I'm here with Natalie. Thanks so much for coming to do this.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  Sure. Thank you so much for inviting me.

• 3:01Anthony Pompliano?

  You got your Propy shirt on, ready to go.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  Absolutely. I love your new office.

• 3:05Anthony Pompliano?

  ABC, always be closing. I like it. All right, let's, uh, let's jump right in. You are not from the United States and you've got an awesome story. So you were born in Russia.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And then eventually ended up in Bulgaria. Kind of tell us how.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:22Anthony Pompliano?

  We were in Russia and then in Bulgaria.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. So I was studying software engineering in Russia and at the age of 19, I moved to Bulgaria, established my first engineering company. That's my, how my entrepreneurial career started. And for 15 years, I was, uh, building and constructing real estate in Bulgaria. And then I thought, well, actually I want again to build software. And so knowing all the problems I've experienced in real estate, I relocated myself to the US four years ago. And this is how the story of Propy started.

• 4:02Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, let's talk about school in Russia.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 4:05Anthony Pompliano?

  What is that like? I'm assuming it's like school in most other countries.

• 4:10Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 4:11Anthony Pompliano?

  I think in America, we have this, uh, vision of like. Russian kids going to school and sitting there from 5 a.m. to like 10 p.m. and just being told, "Learn!"

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, learn how to code and spy on the U.S., right?

• 4:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. You can't say that joke. That's not allowed.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:27Anthony Pompliano?

  All the Americans are now turning off the podcast. Wait, but no, what is that like?

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Well, actually, it's a great point that recently we had one account at Propy that we didn't pass the background check with them because of my Russian background. They were very resistant to give data to a Russian-founded company.

• 4:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Crazy. All right, so what's school like in Russia as you study computer science?

• 4:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's an international university of nature and computer science close to Moscow. And the beauty of this university is that the first two years you have to learn many subjects, including software engineering, even if your major, like mine, was environmental scientist. And then the others were lawyers, economists. They had to learn how to code.

• 5:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, everyone learns.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, the first two years, everyone had to learn how to code. And I just loved it. That was my first experience with a computer. Before that, I never touched the computer, even though I had a dream to do it. And but this led me to actually transition from the environmental studies to coding engineering department. And I used to help all the, like, those artistic majors to code and then do their work the first year. Yeah.

• 5:57Anthony Pompliano?

  That's awesome. All right, so you learn how to code and you pretty much know, hey, I'm gonna go do this instead of the environmental work. Why go to Bulgaria?

• 6:08Speaker 02

  Our university was international.

• 6:12Anthony Pompliano?

  You're putting that in air quotes. Why are you putting that in air quotes?

• 6:15Speaker 02

  Because the only international students we had was from other post-communist country, which was Bulgarian group.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  And so, yeah, I met my now ex-husband in the university. I relocated myself to Bulgaria. And yeah, so this is how I ended up in Bulgaria.

• 6:39Anthony Pompliano?

  So, most people know that I'm fond of Bulgaria now that Polina is in my life. And I've been to Bulgaria numerous times. Where in the country were you? In Sofia?

• 6:52Speaker 02

  I used to live in Sofia, in Plavdiv, on the seacoast. Right now, our engineering team sits in Sofia. But before that, I was constructing resorts on the seacoast. So, it was a lot of fun.

• 7:07Anthony Pompliano?

  It's nice there.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is beautiful. You know that.

• 7:12Anthony Pompliano?

  So, what is that like? Like, how do you go from software development to building resorts?

• 7:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, my first company was in a small garage. And I was coding simple applications, primarily web applications for small businesses and some real estate developers. And then Bulgaria, as you know, it's a new European Union country. They announced that they will join the European Union. So, suddenly, those British investors were coming to Bulgaria to acquire properties and build. And I was looking at the couple of those buildings appearing on the seacoast. And I thought, okay, it looks like it's a very capital-intensive and lucrative business. So, I went to UK, I went to Russia, Latvia, talked to potential customers,

• 8:01Speaker 02

  figure out what they want, and told to my engineers, "Okay, now we're gonna acquire land." Do awesome renderings of future buildings and sell them cross borders. So this what made me to transition our engineering team to.

• 8:15Anthony Pompliano?

  So you took the engineers that you had and you would buy land. Then you would have the engineers create building renderings, just drawings of them, basically.

• 8:25Speaker 02

  And they were the the most beautiful sophisticated renderings. And people were buying those real estate pieces cross borders without coming and seeing even the site. So the site was empty.

• 8:37Anthony Pompliano?

  So you would sell the land or you would sell them on investing to build the property? Like to build out the building?

• 8:44Speaker 02

  I would sell condos. So it's a resort full of condos with like spas, restaurants and so on. So they would buy a future unit that I would build.

• 8:54Anthony Pompliano?

  And then you would build it?

• 8:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I would build it within one or two years. And normally they would be all very happy with execution that everything is just like it was projected and designed for the pictures, but everything was tech driven, like we had our own CRM system. We had programmers to make sure we're having the tracking system of our customers. That was 2005.

• 9:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and so one of the theories I have is that Bulgarian real estate is going to make a resurgence. You agree?

• 9:28Speaker 02

  Well, with the reason I decided to relocate myself from Bulgaria is actually we, my company was able to drive all that interest to Bulgaria from Russia, Latvia. So UK was interested there anyway, you know, they they're they love real estate globally. But then 2009 and 10, the interest started to decline. So there is there is no more such an interest from foreign investors, not only because there is a decline of those international home buyers, but also the economic situation, the political is really depressing there.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  So yeah, as soon as there is no such an influence from direct foreign investment, the local community also stopped investing in real estate and it's very affordable. So yeah, I would agree that. The real estate industry, they won't see anymore.

• 10:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, you think they won't see anymore interest?

• 10:32Speaker 02

  No.

• 10:33Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, here's my theory. Ready?

• 10:35Speaker 02

  Tell me, yeah.

• 10:36Anthony Pompliano?

  So before Instagram, nobody really knew about Iceland.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And then all of a sudden, some people go and they take a picture in Iceland and they put it on Instagram and it's, oh my God, it looks so beautiful.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:48Anthony Pompliano?

  And now Iceland's popping off. Everyone loves Iceland.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:51Anthony Pompliano?

  And there's a bunch of these places around the world where that's happened. Bulgaria is a place that a lot of people don't know about. They couldn't find it on the map, you know, etc. But they have the sea, they've got the mountains, etc. At some point over the next five years, my guess is that people are gonna quote-unquote "discover Bulgaria."

• 11:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:08Anthony Pompliano?

  And then they're gonna all start going there and it's like this whole thing.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  So this is what I did in 2005, 2010.

• 11:15Anthony Pompliano?

  You did that 15 years ago.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I actually opened the eyes of Russians, which is huge population. I opened their eyes to Bulgaria, invited TV shows, there, reporters, influencers like yourself. So what might happen now...

• 11:31Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm not a Russian influencer.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, but what may happen now is an American influencer will drive an American interest to Bulgaria and maybe we'll see a new wave in Bulgaria to be discovered by Americans.

• 11:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I think, I think it's gonna happen. We'll see.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  Let's do that.

• 11:49Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, so how much did a condo cost at one of these resorts?

• 11:53Speaker 02

  Super cheap, like $50,000.

• 11:56Anthony Pompliano?

  $50,000 for a condo? And that was in 2005?

• 12:00Speaker 02

  Right now, you can buy a property for $50,000 with one bedroom.

• 12:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so now it's $50,000, even then it was even probably cheaper than...

• 12:08Speaker 02

  Back then, for example, I could sell a property in 2007 for $30,000. Next year, it would be $90,000, so 3X.

• 12:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  We did that with my property.

• 12:21Anthony Pompliano?

  That's pretty crazy.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Sounds like some crypto investment.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  Absolutely. It was that hype of a market and we were part of the creation of it. Because it's a beautiful country. It's really beautiful country with the sea coast, the mountains, the talent, the food, everything is natural, organic. Also, it could become, Sophia is becoming a technical hub. There are many talented.

• 12:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Google, there's a bunch of places there.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  Uber, Hewlett Packard, and the engineers there are very talented and very disciplined.

• 12:57Anthony Pompliano?

  And they work hard.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  Yes, they do.

• 13:00Anthony Pompliano?

  They don't complain like the people in America sometimes.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  Absolutely, 24/7.

• 13:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. All right. So how do you go from building the resorts to running a real estate technology company?

• 13:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I've met many high net worth individuals acquiring properties in Bulgaria, Dubai, UK, and they all had this stress like, okay, I want to buy property in London and also I want to buy property in Silicon Valley, but the process is different and I'm not sure if I will be fooled. So we saw this pain and I just, I got very, very excited like, hey, we have the opportunity here, a huge opportunity to automate the process and we know how to make it internationally. So this is how, I came here for one real estate conference for the first time in America, made this visa. Those times it was easy.

• 13:55Speaker 02

  And yeah, I came here and the American real estate community was very welcoming and saying, you have to do it here. Yeah, so this is how I transitioned into the property.

• 14:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And then that's when you moved to the US four years ago?

• 14:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:10Anthony Pompliano?

  What was the first city you went to in America?

• 14:12Speaker 02

  San Francisco.

• 14:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Ah, what was your initial impression?

• 14:16Speaker 02

  You would be surprised. It was very, very good. Somehow I missed all the homeless part and all the disasters. I don't know how, but for the first week, I kind of didn't see that. And I loved the city. I loved the community. Every single meeting I would go to in San Francisco or in the Bay Area, in the peninsula, all people are so welcoming to newcomers. They would ask, how can we help you? Can we make an introduction? You need to meet this person or that person. So that was a big changing environment for me because before that I considered to move to Dubai or Monaco or London.

• 14:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Those are all horrible places. Very bad.

• 15:00Anthony Pompliano?

  What a list, London, Dubai, or Monaco. Oh my God.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  I had a hard time to decide.

• 15:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so you choose San Francisco, right? And you knew that you were going to go try to solve this problem, but had you already started Propy yet? Or, okay, you had already started the company?

• 15:17Speaker 02

  I just bought the propy.com domain. So I knew that I want to build a global listing, something like Zillow but global with an ability to talk by properties with a couple of clicks. Obviously, in order to make this process with a couple of clicks, I knew that I will need hundreds of millions of dollars to make it as a technological infrastructure. So we just started as an infrastructure, like a listing platform. Very simple. And then I started to go around and meet many, many engineers who can solve cross-border payments, who can solve paperwork and process. And this is when I got to know blockchain.

• 15:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so when you first started, you didn't have any clue that blockchain or crypto would be a part of the business, but quickly figured that out?

• 16:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 16:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, and so tell us, what exactly is Propy doing today?

• 16:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, Propy today probably is the only solution that is dedicated to automate the entire home buying process, the closing process, from the offer to recording. And the infrastructure level is powered by smart contracts, but on the front end, it's all easy to understand for the home buyer, step-by-step wizard, how to acquire a property.

• 16:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And does the same thing apply when you're selling those resort condos? I don't have to go see the property, right? Back then, they weren't looking at them. Today, I don't need to see it because you guys are doing what? Like, what information are you providing me on the platform? And are you guys doing the due diligence for me to make sure that the property, it says, you know, it is what it says? Or how does that work?

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Well, actually, we are, for now, our focus is a closing process, which means that you've made a decision. And we always recommend our customers to come and see the property. Property, but there are many cases like our first transactions were all made remotely with not even like seeing a property. Uh, so yeah, we're just focused on the closing process. Even when I was constructing and selling properties in Bulgaria and they're cheap. Uh, many of our customers, like half of them would not come and see the property, but we always like recommend them strongly to see what they're buying and then afterwards to to make the closing.

• 17:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so today, if I find a property that I want to buy, do I need to have that property on Propy? Like, does it already have to be listed?

• 17:47Speaker 02

  No.

• 17:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Or I can talk to the seller and say, hey, let's go ahead and actually finalize this transaction, go on Propy, create an account, etc.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's correct. So you can find a property, you may have an agent and the seller has an agent. You tell to your agent or the seller, hey, I'm ready to close. And I'd love to make it securely and faster, so let's use Propy.

• 18:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. Uh, where does crypto come in?

• 18:12Speaker 02

  Uh, the crypto is coming on the smart contract level. Uh, so every single transaction step is powered by smart contracts. Uh, and our goal is to eliminate all the manual work. Right now there are twenty participants in every deal, at least that's minimum. That has to do manual verification and they input data manually again and again and again. So at the point when the transaction is going to recording, there is a twenty percent rate of mistakes from manual work. Uh, so where smart contracts is is coming. Uh, the mission is that we're doing e-recording and ownership transfer. Uh, when software detects that the payment wire transfer is executed and the paperwork is executed.

• 18:56Speaker 02

  This is why every single step is handled by smart contracts. Obviously, it's not seen by the users. And for every single transaction on our platform, we have a token that unlocks the access to smart contracts.

• 19:08Anthony Pompliano?

  And do I need to buy the property in crypto? Like, do I pay in Bitcoin or Ethereum? Uh, or can I pay in dollars?

• 19:15Speaker 02

  You can do both. You can do any currency. We work with forty currencies, Fiat and all the cryptocurrencies. We do transactions in Bitcoin, Ether.

• 19:25Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the weirdest one?

• 19:29Speaker 02

  Well, not the weirdest, but I love this first transaction that we did 2017, the first ever blockchain powered transaction.

• 19:39Anthony Pompliano?

  What happened?

• 19:39Speaker 02

  In Ether and the buyer, Michael Arrington.

• 19:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, that guy's horrible. Michael Arrington, what a bad guy.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  He did a good transaction, though.

• 19:54Anthony Pompliano?

  No, Michael's great, obviously.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  I know, obviously.

• 19:57Anthony Pompliano?

  I tried to get him to come and deals with us. Hey, man, let's go.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:02Anthony Pompliano?

  I know he's listening to this right now. He's probably laughing right now. All right, go ahead.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Absolutely, regards.

• 20:08Anthony Pompliano?

  She said regards.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  Well, sitting here in New York and Michael being in, yeah. So, the transaction was fabulous in a sense that Ether were transferred to acquire property in Ukraine. The seller was in New York and the smart contract hold the funds till we get the data that the paperwork is in place and the signature with notary is approved and notary actually approved the transaction on the platform. And then, once the ownership transfer happened, which we had a data on because of our governmental

• 20:53Speaker 02

  pilot, the smart contract released the funds to the seller and to other parties associated. So, it actually disrupted the escrow function entirely. So, that was the interesting part of the transaction back then. And this is what we're aiming here in the US, because the majority of our deals here are happening with wire transfers in dollars. It's like 99.9% and we're aiming to do the escrow function with smart contract capability.

• 21:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so in that first transaction, Mike was sitting in California, the seller's sitting in New York, but the property's in Ukraine.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's correct.

• 21:37Anthony Pompliano?

  It's pretty complex, but you guys can automate that.

• 21:40Speaker 02

  All remotely, everything automated, everything is recorded and there are hashes on smart contracts now. You can go to EtherScan, find the transaction, see the movement of money.

• 21:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that's pretty good. Look out 20 years. What does this grow into? Right? Like where are you kind of building towards?

• 21:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. In 20 years, we're envision Propy to be, Propy.com to be an international e-commerce platform where people are finding this property they want to see, to buy. They would see it and they would come and they would have an experience like on Amazon. They go through a number of clicks and they got the deed registered that right there on the platform. So very easy way to transfer money. You would put your bank account, if banks still exist in the way they exist today, and you would get your deed. No worries, no anxiety, enjoyable process, just like we love our iPhones.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  You would love actually the process of home buying because it's one of the most valuable assets in our lives.

• 22:49Anthony Pompliano?

  And do you do fractional ownership or is it just I own the property or I don't?

• 22:54Speaker 02

  We had a number of requests, probably over a one billion worth of requests. One day we just sat and counted them all of from institutional players to tokenize their real estate. So we have great expertise on that, but we don't do that.

• 23:12Anthony Pompliano?

  But you don't do it?

• 23:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Will you potentially do it in the future?

• 23:16Speaker 02

  Maybe, maybe. I mean, once we have this marketplace up and running for many, many countries and many buildings, then obviously why not to also offer, hey, invest $1,000 in this building or that building or in a resort.

• 23:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that makes sense. What are you seeing globally in real estate? So I want to talk a little bit about kind of the macro economy and real estate for a second because real estate, similar to stocks, has just been going up.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Value keeps going, keeps going, keeps going, as we know as students of history, that can't go on forever.

• 23:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:55Anthony Pompliano?

  And so there's likely to be a market downturn at some point in the future.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  It is happening already.

• 24:00Anthony Pompliano?

  It's already happening. Explain that.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  Silicon Valley, San Francisco market are all soft for over 15 months.

• 24:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 24:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's been soft. Some markets are turning from seller market to buyer market. Dubai had a disaster in the last two years after even announcing the Expo 2020, and everyone was hoping that the market will outperform. But instead, it had at least 40% down rate. So yeah, you are right. We're in this time when the real estate market is softening globally, but at the same time, there are so many emerging markets where the properties are underestimated, like Bulgaria, for example. It's still a very, very affordable market.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  And there are a number of countries where they just figured how to avoid fraud and make more efficient title registry. In fact, 7, no, $9 trillion are unrecorded today, and it's dead capital in real estate, which will come to the economy one day. And obviously, why you would invest in a property in Silicon Valley where the minimum check is $2 million, where you can invest in 200 countries with a couple thousand...

• 25:24Anthony Pompliano?

  50 grand.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know that they would appreciate.

• 25:28Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure.

• 25:31Anthony Pompliano?

  One of the pieces that is interesting here in the US, so take New York for example. I read that 50% of the construction since 2015 of high-rise condos, only 50% has been sold. So there's incredible amount of supply that has come online that there's just no demand for.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  Really? I didn't know about that.

• 25:59Anthony Pompliano?

  And one of the reasons why, in one of these articles I was reading, is because foreign investment has gone down.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 26:07Anthony Pompliano?

  So basically, one of the things that you gotta think about in terms of real estate for the people listening, you obviously know this, is we sit here and we say, hey, there's a lot of people who want to buy real estate. And we say, let's go build real estate, right? We're gonna build high-rise condos. That sounds like a great idea, you know, today, in January 2020, let's say. Well, it takes us a year to build it, or more, right? 18 months. But by the time it gets done, now all of a sudden, nobody wants to buy it. The demand has gone away. And so that lag is actually pretty painful for real estate developers. And they're faced with, do they offload the inventory at below-market prices and try to recoup something? Or do they hold it, right?

• 26:49Speaker 02

  Rent out and yeah, sit on the cash flow.

• 26:51Anthony Pompliano?

  It's pretty crazy to kind of see it happen.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  Well, it's not happening in the Bay Area for sure, and in San Francisco, because there is still a huge lack of housing. Of course, affordable housing is the main asset the region lacks. But in terms of real estate development, yeah, this is what I was doing before. I see the interest and demand, and then my company would build a lot of inventory. We sell it, but then we saw the interest was softening, and we just stopped doing that. So in New York...

• 27:28Speaker 02

  Because foreign investors are now had to pass through more KYC than I used to. It refers to Russian investors, Chinese investors, and of course, the majority of local communities, they don't want the outsiders that don't occupy buildings. So some of the cities like Vancouver, for example, they actually introduced taxes for foreign investors.

• 27:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, interesting.

• 27:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, fifteen percent tax on top of the property price. So that they encourage more the local community to occupy those buildings.

• 28:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's pretty crazy how real estate is such a like well-established game, right? It's been around forever.

• 28:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:15Anthony Pompliano?

  And people still make the same mistakes. People still make a lot of money off of it.

• 28:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:21Anthony Pompliano?

  And there's the same cycles that you would see in real estate and every other market. And it's kind of this, you know, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, definitely. It's one of the most outdated industries, but it's worth $280 trillion globally. So it's a huge.

• 28:39Anthony Pompliano?

  That's more than Bitcoin.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, a little bit more, right? Just a little bit.

• 28:44Anthony Pompliano?

  For now.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, for now. But the reality is that the population is growing. We will need more inventory. We will need more homes. We will need more buildings. And yes, in some local regions like here in New York, they might be, we reached some highest peaks in price. And this is now the market has to adjust. But in the majority of places, even though the market will soften, but we probably won't see any crashes.

• 29:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's really interesting to think through, right? Because there's some counterintuitive components to it. But we'll see. What's the general environment right now as a founder in terms of fundraising and kind of interest in crypto, etc. Like you're doing this every day. What do you see in there? And how are investors feeling about blockchain and crypto companies?

• 29:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. So as a founder, obviously, I had to fundraise. I have to build a product. I have to sell. We're thirty people right now in the team. When we talk to investors.

• 29:49Speaker 02

  It's it's very different now in comparison to 2018. In 2018, we probably was were bomb- uh bombarded by emails from VCs every single week. From generalists, from top VCs, like, yeah, the blockchain is cool and also you're applying it to a real industry. Uh, and now it seems like they all are afraid of the blockchain and related investments. But in every single VC that is not focused on the blockchain, they always have this young associate or young partner that is super excited about cryptocurrencies and and uh blockchain. And they always try to push through the senior partner or or investor

• 30:34Speaker 02

  uh to find a way still to to be uh at least to research or or invest.

• 30:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you think that that changes in the short term? Or do you think that it feels like this is going to be how the sentiment will be among venture capitalists for a while?

• 30:52Speaker 02

  Um, it's a hard question. Yeah, I'm not sure. Probably. Uh, it, yeah, maybe two, three years, it will be staying the same. Um, but I see more and more VCs, traditional ones that are not focused on blockchain, have still blockchain-related companies in their portfolio, and they start to perform. Uh, they start to have exits, acquisitions, so they tend to prove themselves as very valuable businesses.

• 31:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, so it's kind of like if they see success in the investments they've already made, they'll get more excited.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Kind of poor capital, it makes sense.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, especially those that are now, that have invested in Ripple, in Coinbase, and now they became giant companies. Obviously, they uh they tend to be those that can attract more LPs and more investments. The same with venture capital and early-stage startups.

• 31:49Anthony Pompliano?

  You you mentioned Ripple. Has anybody bought a house or a property with XRP yet?

• 31:54Speaker 02

  We had a number of sellers listing in XRP in 2018, but then we didn't have any sales.

• 32:03Anthony Pompliano?

  No sales?

• 32:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Brad would have been excited.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  I know. I think he actually retweeted one of those listings. But at that point, the majority of people felt that they had to hold and wait the market to recover, which never happened.

• 32:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 32:23Speaker 02

  Till now.

• 32:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, we'll see what happens.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  We'll see, right? We're believers.

• 32:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. What's the one lesson that you've learned building Propy? Like right now?

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Just one?

• 32:34Anthony Pompliano?

  At this point in time, like what's the one big takeaway that you have so far that maybe when you went into building a business, you didn't know or think about, but now you're like, oh, this is what I've learned?

• 32:44Speaker 02

  As a founder, right?

• 32:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, of course.

• 32:46Speaker 02

  Blockchain space?

• 32:48Anthony Pompliano?

  No, just company building.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  Probably be ready to learn every single week. Like the, very often we would discover something like, hey, that's the path to go. And we would stick to it for two, three, four months. And then we would realize, oh no, that's a mistake. So every single week to be learning, reading and asking successful people in your field that have already proved for their mentorship. That was very, because we did a lot of mistakes, obviously, as every startup. We did many, many successes. We did all those historical transactions. We proved to the world that blockchain can work for a real industry, for a real case.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  But just never stop learning. And there are so many amazing books. Yeah, just asking on Twitter, like following you and seeing what articles people are reading and liking. This is helpful as well.

• 33:56Anthony Pompliano?

  It's one of my favorite things I do because people actually find really high quality articles.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Like I tweeted it, I don't know, one Saturday and tweeted it again. And I genuinely was interested like, what are people, you know, reading? So I could kind of be lazy and just have them send me stuff. And then it was so valuable that I just kept doing it.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then it became a routine, right?

• 34:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, this is amazing.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we follow that.

• 34:18Anthony Pompliano?

  I can't believe all these smart people are actually sending me stuff to read. But what, um, okay, so being willing to learn something new every week. Do you do anything from like a habit standpoint that you do intentionally for learning?

• 34:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, yeah, we just discussed it now with your colleague that.

• 34:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Joe, Joe's sitting in the corner. Joe's got a new desk. He's fucking balling over in the corner.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  Thank you, Joe. Yeah. And he updated me with your fantastic metrics that you're doing so great with the podcast, like.

• 34:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Don't tell anybody that we have 10 million downloads a month. Come on, don't, don't share that.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  So congrats.

• 35:01Anthony Pompliano?

  I wish you guys could see Joe's face. Joe's bright red and he's dying laughing because there's really 12 million downloads a month. All right, go ahead.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  That's a great asset, actually. Um, I think you, you guys are a great team. Um, yeah, back to routine.

• 35:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Joe's just trying to sell ads, that's all.

• 35:18Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So, great team.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. Great team. Congrats on that. And, um, um, your previous podcast was fantastic as well. Uh, this book.

• 35:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, Kamal, we're recording this right after we just recorded with Kamal Ravikant, uh, the author of Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It.

• 35:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 35:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Pretty good.

• 35:42Speaker 02

  Pretty good title.

• 35:43Anthony Pompliano?

  You like those kind of books, right?

• 35:44Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And this what I got into my schedule of learnings, a lot of business books.

• 35:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  And a lot of psychological books on how to be more effective and productive and how to make my family, especially my daughter, teenage daughter, how to communicate with her better in more effective a way. Because I can learn a lot from experiencing the daily life. But sometimes you just read a book and know how to deal with the with the specific situation. Uh, so my habit is whenever I go to gym, uh, I have this one hour to listen to a podcast. And I have this queue of those items that I want to hear as well as when I go to massage, which I also have a routine.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  Uh, also I have a podcast and it's a, I consider those hours as like work hours. Because I, yeah, learning for something, something specific I need in my business today. So during the day, it's always something specific I need to learn today to make my company better.

• 36:49Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the best business book you've recently read? Will be a recommendation.

• 36:53Speaker 02

  Oh, this one I love, uh, From Impossible to Inevitable by Aaron Ross and James, uh, Jason Lemkin. It's on SaaS.

• 37:03Anthony Pompliano?

  From Impossible to Inevitable.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 37:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  Uh, or the book they, uh, Aaron Ross, uh, published previously. It's a bible for B two B sales, uh, predictive, uh, revenue. Uh, yeah, this is a book, the phenomenal for B two B sales. Uh, and for sales in general, uh, how to practically do it, how to build the team or how to rebuild, restructure some tactics. Then I really love the book Negotiate, uh, Negotiate by Chris Voss by the FBI.

• 37:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, uh, How to Negotiate.

• 37:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:42Anthony Pompliano?

  But that's not what it's called.

• 37:43Speaker 02

  Never split the difference. Uh, yeah.

• 37:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Chris Voss, the former FBI negotiator.

• 37:48Speaker 02

  Yes, that's correct. That was also fantastic. Then the CEO Within, uh, recent one, uh, by a CEO coach. Again, very practical on how to be an effective SEO, how to build OKRs, KPIs, how to score your team, yourself. Um, yeah, so those items are very, very helpful.

• 38:09Anthony Pompliano?

  What about the psychological books?

• 38:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, the one I recently loved is the courage to be disliked. Uh, then the non-violence communication.

• 38:22Anthony Pompliano?

  So non-violent communication and the courage to be disliked.

• 38:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, those I really like. Normally, like those motivational speakers like Tony Robbins and so on, they don't very much relate to me because they empower you to act, execute, and go and do something. And I have an opposite problem. I want everything to execute. I have tons of ideas.

• 38:49Anthony Pompliano?

  You need somebody to tell you, stop, breathe, slow down.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Like, stop, focus on one thing. Do just one thing at a time.

• 38:56Anthony Pompliano?

  If you don't want to pay Tony Robbins $20,000 to tell you to go act, you could pay me $20,000. I'll tell you, stop, breathe, chill out.

• 39:04Speaker 02

  I will next time.

• 39:06Anthony Pompliano?

  And then what is it like raising your daughter, who, as you said, is a teenage daughter in today's society with TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Tinder, whatever other things she can have on her phone? Like, what is that like as a parent?

• 39:23Speaker 02

  It's tough. It's always negotiating. And this book, Never Split the Difference, helps.

• 39:30Anthony Pompliano?

  What are you negotiating with her over?

• 39:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:34Anthony Pompliano?

  How old is she?

• 39:34Speaker 02

  She's 13. She just turned 13. She has never been into Instagram, social media just yet, but I feel she's turning into that. And she's very much into iPad, watching YouTube videos. Till now, they were more like, okay, doing some stuff, crafts. So I was kind of, okay, it's not that bad. But then, very often, she would not do her routine stuff. She's really great in homework. When we moved to the US, she was actually very self-independent. Nine years old, but she would go to the school all alone. She would wake up herself. She

• 40:11Speaker 02

  would make pasta for herself. So we just had to survive and be self-efficient, because I couldn't afford nannies or something like that. But then, now, this iPad and always being on screen, it's very, very hard to find a balance.

• 40:33Anthony Pompliano?

  What does she watch on YouTube now?

• 40:36Speaker 02

  I wish she was just watching your podcast, but no.

• 40:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Our podcast gets 50,000 downloads a day on YouTube too, no worries.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm trying to get her into crypto. We're talking very often about Bitcoin. She knows that you can buy a house with a token. Yeah, she knows that stuff already, but she's just watching some teenage series plus.

• 41:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Like the influencer stuff and all that stuff.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, that stuff and then like doing slimes, also those childish stuff like toys and wrapping.

• 41:12Speaker 02

  And then what to wear.

• 41:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's crazy to me. I obviously don't have any kids, although Plina would tell you I am a kid. But the rise of the devices, the connected devices, the social media, etc. Yeah, I remember as a kid, like my mom and dad had a pretty good idea of what I was doing, right? Like, I see what you're watching on television. I know what video games you're playing. Like the things that were going into my head, the content, they pretty much knew.

• 41:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:45Anthony Pompliano?

  I feel like parents don't know that anymore.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, right now it's scary.

• 41:49Anthony Pompliano?

  A harder time knowing what their kids are doing.

• 41:52Speaker 02

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 41:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Which could be good or bad, right? Look, you got a kid that, you know, wants to learn and stuff.

• 41:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, they just need to know that they have borders because sometimes with internet, they feel they can do whatever they want, but.

• 42:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, they can. They can do whatever they want. You don't want them to.

• 42:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, but there are many apps with like parent control, but it's an additional work for a parent. Okay, you have, again, those apps you have to control, see what's going on. But I agree with you, just paying attention and look what they're excited about. That helps to understand where their minds are into. But yeah, our childhood was easy and we had like, you know, the TV channel with a program. You have 15 minutes cartoons and Saturday movie.

• 42:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, the conspiracy theorists would say that the state was programming people, right? They're like, we're gonna tell you what you're gonna watch.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you're like, looking forward. Okay, it's on your schedule.

• 42:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  And then you're bored between those, this time in our childhood, we were very bored what to do in between. So we were very creative and loving nature, going, exploring what's happening outside.

• 43:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Kids don't go outside, come on. The only thing they know about the forest is they saw it on their iPad.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. YouTube scenes.

• 43:09Anthony Pompliano?

  I got a 23-year-old brother who was in New York City, no joke, for two weeks doing an internship. He was two weeks into his summer internship, this is two years ago. And we had to go to St. Louis. My brother was getting married, not him, but another one. And so when we get there, the entire bridal party, whatever, went golfing, all the guys. And we're out on the golf course, and I hear my 23-year-old brother, who's been in New York City for legitimately two weeks, hit everyone with, "Man, it's so great to see like trees and stuff." And we all looked at him like, "Shut the hell up."

• 43:47Speaker 02

  How about Central Park at least?

• 43:49Anthony Pompliano?

  He's been there for two weeks.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, actually, I think that's my main challenge, because I love to rest in nature, going in parks and hikes. And it's very hard to get out my family from the house and get to that. And it's very hard for me to actually make her love nature and explore, like.

• 44:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  But we made it, there's a habit now. So she knows that she just has to do it, because it's a family tradition now.

• 44:18Anthony Pompliano?

  That's a good way to get her to do it, right?

• 44:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 44:20Anthony Pompliano?

  It's family tradition. All right, so before I get into rapid-fire questions, I feel like for people to be a user of property, they've got to understand real estate. And most people will do that on their own, right? They'll go figure out how to learn about real estate, "Hey, I want to buy property," whatever. But one of the things that strikes me is I've got to know about other countries' real estate, right? So I understand the US, or, you know, New York City or San Francisco, whatever, I can find that stuff out. I can talk to people who live there, whatever. How do you suggest people learn about other countries' real estate markets? So Ukraine, Bulgaria, whatever, if I don't go there, how do I actually get a good sense for what's going on in that market?

• 45:01Speaker 02

  I think that that what will happen in 20 years with Propy or with another competitor, this what will happen.

• 45:09Anthony Pompliano?

  No, with Propy, come on.

• 45:10Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  The world will come to a one platform that they have trust to it. Like in Amazon, we have the trust that the good will be delivered. Then there will be one platform where you will be able to to trust that the value of a certain property in Bulgaria or London is the one that should be. And the property is actually physically there because what happens in other countries, they don't have MLS systems, they don't have national certification of realtors at all. And there are just many, many frauds, agents, very often they are fragile and they're not licensed. So there are a lot of scams happening and you would want, you wouldn't want to risk and buy property of this way.

• 45:54Speaker 02

  So now you know, okay, maybe I want to buy a property in Sofia for like, I don't know, $30,000, which is nothing, but it's, it will appreciate potentially.

• 46:05Speaker 02

  And then you have to go there, you know, you have to invest time. Or with a platform in the future, you would just trust the system, you would read what's going on with the country, with the economical and political situation. You will trust the valuation because it will be based on data. Yeah, so this is how I envisioned that the world will be more, in real estate will be more open, transparent. And maybe even a little bit homogenic because right now we have so many differences. But maybe at some point we'll actually will come to a more homogenic market.

• 46:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's pretty crazy to think about how much real estate has changed, yet how fragmented the knowledge is.

• 46:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, very fragmented, yeah, and the process very full of frictions, yeah.

• 46:56Anthony Pompliano?

  What do you think the most important company in crypto is other than Propy?

• 47:00Speaker 02

  In crypto, company, not protocol.

• 47:04Anthony Pompliano?

  You get name of a protocol?

• 47:06Speaker 02

  Well, I'm the believer in Bitcoin and

• 47:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Great answer.

• 47:10Speaker 02

  Of course, Bitcoin standard, right? I just respect all the teams that are working on the protocols. Algorand, Near, Ethereum. We're developing Ethereum, so we see a lot of negative parts as well.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  But I think, I mean, the main thing now is to have the real adoption. This is what we are aiming. To have those enterprise and we have the support of US institutional partners already. Then when we provide the value, when we see finally that blockchain brings the trust and change to the industry like real estate, then we need all those protocols, the underlying technology, the first level layer and the second layer.

• 47:55Speaker 02

  And so it's amazing that those teams are working on developing them even though still there are no real volume happening in those networks.

• 48:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Makes sense. What's the one regulation or law that you would change or improve if you could?

• 48:11Speaker 02

  Of course, you know this one.

• 48:14Speaker 02

  We all want this to sit a little bit. Allow us innovators finally work and innovate. Yeah, so definitely the securities laws.

• 48:25Anthony Pompliano?

  And just revamp them?

• 48:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. From 30s finally like make it to our century and yeah, rewrite them.

• 48:37Anthony Pompliano?

  What about aliens, believer, non-believer?

• 48:39Speaker 02

  There is something there.

• 48:41Anthony Pompliano?

  You think so?

• 48:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I totally believe there is something.

• 48:44Anthony Pompliano?

  You're saying like you know, like you've seen an alien before.

• 48:48Speaker 02

  Well, actually, yeah, once I saw something unbelievable in my childhood and I don't know what was that in Russia, yeah.

• 48:55Anthony Pompliano?

  What did you see?

• 48:56Speaker 02

  Something happening in the sky, but I'm not sure what was that.

• 49:01Anthony Pompliano?

  What, like it was like lights or what?

• 49:03Speaker 02

  A lot of lights, different colors.

• 49:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, there were some speculations that there were some experiments with some rockets nearby in the near city. But I I was born in a nuclear power plant serving city. So we were only 25,000 people in the city, all engineers. And it's a small town to see such a thing, a random thing. Yeah, but I don't know about aliens. Maybe not aliens, but there is something there in the universe.

• 49:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, there's definitely aliens. Come on. The just so I can put it on the record, I read yesterday that there's a star that is close to the sun. And previously, that star, there was a planet revolving around it, right? That's been known since 2016. Big deal. There is now speculation and confirmation. There's a second planet revolving around that star. And so I don't know what that means. Like, it's in like the habitable or habitable area, right? I said that word really funny.

• 50:23Anthony Pompliano?

  That's funny. Um, habitable type planet. Second one, all revolving around the star. And so, of course, I tweeted, right? Because, you know, I basically have only two types of friends on the internet, people who like crypto or people who like aliens. And immediately, people started tweeting back at me that it's four light years away. I don't even know what that means. That's far as shit, though. Yeah, right? And they still think that four light years away could be a planet in which life could exist. Oh, wow. Can't get to it, but we can somehow see it, I guess.

• 51:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, this is scary to me.

• 51:05Anthony Pompliano?

  When you were in school in Russia, how many planets did they tell you there were?

• 51:11Anthony Pompliano?

  In America, they told us nine. They tell you guys nine or they tell you more?

• 51:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, in the sun system.

• 51:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 51:17Speaker 02

  Nine.

• 51:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Nine planets.

• 51:17Speaker 02

  And all sudden later.

• 51:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Over a thousand.

• 51:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:22Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't know where the other.

• 51:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Nine hundred and ninety-one of them came from. But it's pretty crazy to think about in terms of, you know, you're dealing with space and property here and on Earth.

• 51:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:37Anthony Pompliano?

  There's a solar system out there.

• 51:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, there is a whole universe there. We're such a small planet, but also it's fascinating how we're built as humans. How our system is self-sufficient. We have this intelligence. We're building the artificial intelligence.

• 51:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Some of us have intelligence.

• 51:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:57Anthony Pompliano?

  I've seen some people on the internet that are a little shaky on that.

• 52:00Speaker 02

  I've seen them as well.

• 52:01Anthony Pompliano?

  You've seen them too?

• 52:03Speaker 02

  In our community. I've seen those too.

• 52:06Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. What one question you have for me to wrap this up?

• 52:10Speaker 02

  The one question I would have is, um, what is the kind of a founder you believe in, uh, to succeed, like generally?

• 52:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Simple. They don't give up. That's it. I'm a big believer that, um, building a company is really fucking hard. And if you want to put yourself through that pain, you have to have one very important quality. And it's that you will literally take every punch right on the chin, like you don't care. You're not going to give up. And if you can have that mentality, you got a shot. Not guaranteed to succeed, but you're at least in a position where you can be successful. And you gotta have a lot of things go right. You gotta find the right people, gotta build the right product. All that stuff's gotta happen.

• 53:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:01Anthony Pompliano?

  But if you don't have that quality, you're dead in the water. There's no way you can build a company.

• 53:05Speaker 02

  How do you estimate, evaluate one founder if they have that quality or not?

• 53:09Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't know if you can necessarily evaluate it as much as, uh, you're looking for, um, other things in their life that they've gone through that are hard, that they didn't give up on, right? And so like, it's kind of this belief. I call it the warrior theory. I've never actually shared this before. So warrior theory is basically if you take somebody who joins a warrior culture, whether it's, you know, developed nation's army, or some kind of, you know, crazy, wild, unsophisticated thing. Warrior theory is that if you put a warrior in that situation, whether it's their first day or their last day, they are predisposed to being successful. But the difference between

• 53:54Anthony Pompliano?

  the person who is their first day versus the last day is the warrior who it's their last day, they've been through a lot. They're just, they're literally war hardened, right? They've been through it, like, like they have mental armor. They are ready to handle anything because they have seen themselves perform over and over and over again in combat.

• 54:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:16Anthony Pompliano?

  The person who is their first day, they believe that they have it, but they've never proven it to themselves.

• 54:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:21Anthony Pompliano?

  And so that doesn't mean, hey, you gotta go start a bunch of companies or anything like that. It just means somebody who's been through a lot of hard things in their life immediately is better positioned to handle the next hard thing because they themselves know, I've been through a lot of shit.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And so I think that that's something that.

• 54:39Speaker 02

  And are you normally born as a warrior? Or you can educate yourself?

• 54:46Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that people who are not warriors are just warriors that haven't been trained yet.

• 54:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Meaning that it's all mindset.

• 54:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? It's like, it sounds stupid and super cliche, whatever. But at the end of the day, it's not what happens to you, it's what you do about it. Right? And so like entrepreneurs are better than anybody. Like there's the shit entrepreneurs deal with on a daily basis. People that don't go through it have no clue.

• 55:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Like literally you can wake up, you know, server basically melted down. Fuck, right? Okay. No press came out. Look, we're so great. Oh, wait, uh, somebody on Twitter screaming at us because, you know, they lost their login or whatever. Oh, we just got nominated for an award, you know? Okay, it's lunchtime.

• 55:36Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 55:36Anthony Pompliano?

  And this is like, we got the rest of the day left. Like, so it's just like this crazy up and down all day long. And it's kind of, you gotta get comfortable.

• 55:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, you have to have the resilience. Yeah, for that. And what are the like three tips, short, for those that are not waking up warriors but would love to be?

• 55:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Go do some hard shit. There's no, there's no three, it's just one tip. Just go do hard shit.

• 56:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And that's different for everybody, right? Some people, they need to do physically hard stuff, right? Go work out, go on a hike, you know, all kinds of that kind of stuff. There's other people who need to put themselves in mentally hard positions. Meaning that they're very comfortable and they don't ever step out of that comfort zone. And so therefore they get-

• 56:18Speaker 02

  Like to go to podcast.

• 56:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, do a podcast. If you're scared of doing a podcast, you should go do a podcast, right? If you're scared of, you know, I don't know, fucking walking in Grand Central because you're claustrophobic and there's too many people. Go fucking sit in Grand Central for an hour, right? Like, like whatever the thing is that you fear. A lot of times I think the best thing to do is just do it.

• 56:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally agree.

• 56:41Anthony Pompliano?

  The, the over exaggerated example is like the parent who says, hey, my kid doesn't know how to swim. Throw him in the pool. Like now I'm standing there, I'm going to make sure he doesn't drown, right? But like, that's one of the fastest ways to figure out, the kid to figure out, like, how do you paddle?

• 56:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:56Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you swim? Um, so I think like that stuff, uh, generally in life, um, is important. The other thing is go talk to people who've been through it, right? And so like, do hard shit and then talk to other people who've done hard shit.

• 57:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:10Anthony Pompliano?

  And if you start to surround yourself with like people with that warrior mindset, all of a sudden you're just like, yeah, this is what's expected.

• 57:16Speaker 02

  Mindset, you're empowered.

• 57:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's, look, one of the greatest things that happened to me in my life is I grew up in a family of five boys, right?

• 57:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I, I heard about that.

• 57:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Cause you can't be soft. Like you just couldn't be. Literally if everyone wanted to do something and you didn't want to do it because you were scared or nervous or, you know, it was hard or whatever. The other four not only did it and you didn't, so you felt left out.

• 57:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:40Anthony Pompliano?

  But they made fun of you while they were doing it.

• 57:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:43Anthony Pompliano?

  So eventually you just realized like, all right, well, I might as well go do this. So look, you, you've been through all kinds of stuff in your life, right? Like you're, uh, you're a Russian influencer. You lived in Bulgaria, came to the US, didn't really know anybody. Like all of those things are data points in a story that like, people go through hard shit in life. And if they are successful in overcoming those obstacles, they're likely to keep doing it.

• 58:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I agree with you.

• 58:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Look, every immigrant does, right? Because they've all, they've all lived it.

• 58:13Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:13Anthony Pompliano?

  And it's like, Plina and I talk about it all the time. It's just like, there is something about people who, especially immigrants, who come to the United States when they don't know anybody.

• 58:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, and especially from a post-communism country. You're just born to be resilient. And if you're already here, you relocated yourself. That's a very, very good sign that you go through hardships. You got here, so you're a fighter. Yeah, and very often, yeah, very often I got those questions, especially female entrepreneurs, on how, how to move forward when you don't know anybody? How to move forward if you have a kid? So I totally agree with you, Pomp here, that, yeah, just do the hard thing and go out of the zone of comfort. Like, I, for example, had a fear of public speaking before when I just moved here.

• 59:07Speaker 02

  I very much feared my accent, the lack of English fluency. You see, now, again, I'm making the mistake. But just going there, out of the zone of comfort, and then you become an expert in that. And even you have fans and you influence people's life. And so you start enjoying something that you used to fear.

• 59:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's practice.

• 59:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 59:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Right, like, how, I always am shocked by people who believe that you're gonna be good at something and you never practiced it.

• 59:38Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

• 59:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Right, I literally have never met anybody who's just naturally, like, the best at something. They might be good at it, they might be predisposed to be good at something, right? They might have certain talents that make them good at something, but they're never the best. And so you gotta be the best.

• 59:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Go fucking practice.

• 59:54Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah.

• 59:55Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, I'm getting off my soapbox. Where can, where can people find Propy? Proppy.com?

• 59:59Speaker 02

  Proppy.com, yeah.

• 1:00:00Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, what's the Twitter handle?

• 1:00:02Speaker 02

  @ProppyInc.

• 1:00:04Anthony Pompliano?

  @ProppyInc, and what's your Twitter handle?

• 1:00:07Speaker 02

  @NataliaProppy.

• 1:00:10Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, @NataliaProppy.

• 1:00:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:12Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, thank you so much for doing this.

• 1:00:14Speaker 02

  Absolutely, thank you, I enjoyed it very much.

• 1:00:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Long Propy, short, all the soft people in the world.

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Hey everyone, Pop here. If you liked this episode of Off the Chain and want to help us take crypto to the top of the Apple, Spotify, and other podcast charts, please do us a favor and rate, review, and subscribe. To review, simply go to the Off the Chain homepage, scroll down until you see the five blank stars. Taking 15 seconds to fill those stars in and leave a quick review goes a long way in helping us take the entire crypto ecosystem to the top of the charts. I appreciate you listening and see you next time on Off the Chain.