 I want to make this quick little video talking about how to invest in blockchain startups. Now this is no different than investing in any company or startup that you invested in the past. So what's been happening lately is a lot of people have been asking me what is my strategy for investing? What is my strategy for trading? I just want to state a couple of things before we begin. I'm not a trader. I don't trade cryptocurrency. I don't even hold many cryptocurrency to tell you the truth. I probably hold less than six or seven roughly. I invest in it as a startup. I played the long game. I'm playing five-year game, ten-year game. No different if you invest in any startup. It's tied in a term sheet. The chance of you actually getting your money back is probably 10%. So if you look at the model, eight out of 10 startups usually fail. The two startups that actually do succeed for you make up your failure and also make up the profits for those failures. No different than how VCs invest where VCs put, let's say, a million dollars in 10 companies. They know for the fact that eight or even nine of those companies will fail. But however, that one company will make all their profits back to recoup the losses and then some many times 20 times 30 returns. So basically what I'm going to be guiding you through in this video, just basic philosophies when it comes to A, understanding how a startup should be built and B, what to look out for. So there's two books I want to use as resources for this. Book A is Running Lean, one of my favorite books for building any startup. And book B is traction, kind of every tactical strategy oriented book. So if we're looking at book A, Running Lean on page, quickly over here on page 50 is my favorite page. So for example, let's say you're looking at a blockchain company and you're want to ask yourself key questions. And the questions obviously are, should I invest in this? Do I support this? I always turn to this page. You can actually find this on Google, just type in Lean Canvas model. So pretty much what I always look for is I look for the team. Who is the team? What is their history? Do they have chemistry together? I really analyze the human being. Remember, when you give money to people, you're not giving money to technology. You're not giving money to crypto. You're giving money to humans that are the curators and genitorial individuals that make this startup successful. So that's the first thing I look at. I really want to understand who are these human beings. There's a great saying from Chris soccer. So Chris soccer, probably one of the most, if not the most successful VC in Silicon Valley, he states this, I always ask myself this question. Is this an individual I can go out to dinner for the next seven years with? If you want to invest in something for a big position, you see yourself sitting down with the founders and having dinner with them for the next seven years. If the answer is no, then your relationship might not be the best. Now that's not to say the company won't be successful. It all depends on your how risk averse are you, what type of ethics you have, what type of morals you have, what type of philosophy and ethos you have when it comes to investing in say different companies. Okay. So that's the person looking at the team. Second thing is right away in the top quadrant over here on the lean canvas model is the problem. What problem are they solving? For the most part, 99% of these blockchain companies I see today, I don't know. They're trying to solve this obscured problem. I'm not saying it's not a problem, but there's also timing and startups. And I think timing is probably the second most important thing after the team. So for example, there's a bunch of different startups that came out, e-commerce startups in the 1990s in Silicon Valley. The idea wasn't stupid. The team wasn't stupid. In fact, their brilliant idea was brilliant timing is completely off because infrastructure wasn't there, e-commerce wasn't there. So it's way too early for its time. And I think majority of the blockchain quote unquote startups today, they're way too early. But that's not to say the problem isn't important. It's just timing of the marketplace isn't there. So next thing, what's the problem is identified? So what is their solution? Instead of you trying to go through a white paper that's 50 pages long, if the company or the startup cannot explain to you in a one sentence pitch or elevator pitch how they solve that problem, you should run away. If you have to go through 50 pages of white paper jargon to just get an answer to one sentence, they don't know what they're talking about. So always ask yourself, okay, they've stated the problem and you understand it. Now, what is the solution? How are they solving this problem? And if they can state that problem to you in the most simplistic way possible, as Einstein always states, if you can't explain it to a six-year-old, you're not a good teacher. So if they can't explain to you how they're solving the problem, how the hell they're going to explain their startup to the whole world. They're not, okay? Next, unique value proposition. So they have the problem. They have the solution. What is so unique about them? What makes them special? Is it special technology? Is it geolocation? Is it IP of the team, intellectual capital? Or is it the network effect that they have? Like what makes their business so unique? And you're going to hear this all the time. Oh, my idea is special. No one has come up with this bullshit. Your idea has been there, done that before about what do you have that's more unique than anybody else, okay? I'm not going to go through all of this because there's a bunch of different quadrants, but I do recommend, I do recommend that you get this. Like I said, you could get the book. I recommend reading the book. If you don't want to get the book, you could just go and Google and type a mean Canvas model, but go through every single quadrant. And that's kind of like your checklist manifesto. That's another great book. That's kind of like your checklist to ask yourself questions and also to ask the founders the questions and ask the community over there the questions. If they can't articulately answer these questions in plain English that you and I can answer, you need to second guess what they're doing. So moving along to the second book, Traction. This is more tactical. So let's say once they're bypassed this filter, great team, great timing, understand the leverage that they have, you now want to see the roadmap. And the roadmap is simple. They can create, for example, a three month roadmap. They can create a six month roadmap. They can create a 12 month roadmap. What's really good about this book is most startups, even if they give you a roadmap, it's hard for people to comprehend what that means. So for example, let's say, hey guys, we're gonna do marketing for three months. We're gonna be selling the service or product, X, Y, and Z. This is what we're gonna do. These are affiliate partners. And to you, it may look like amazing. They have everything figured out, but that's just kind of jibble jabble. You really don't understand in detail what that actually means. And that's why if you read traction, you'd understand what marketing strategy is, how to implement that marketing strategy, also the tactics behind it, and the lingo and the language. And it's really imperative to understand how a business is to grow. People can sell you all day long beautiful scripts, beautiful pitch decks, beautiful stories, and you get bought on it. It's just the coating on top of the cake. But then when you bite into the cake, you realize it's cold, or you realize it's garbage cake. So you'll, to really get ahead in the space, or anything, and this applies to, if you want to do whatever, anything in life. This applies to anything in life, whether it's real estate, whether it's stocks, whether it's whatever. One of the reasons I don't really invest in stocks, I don't take time to study stocks, I rather do real estate because I take time to invest in that and learn about it. So Traction's a really good book. Combine these together, and they can really help you to really invest in blockchain companies and any company in general to really get in the mindset of understanding how an ecosystem of a startup should be created and scaled up, okay? If you guys have any questions for me, leave a comment below this video, and like always, if you find value in this video, share this video with your friend, and I'll talk to you guys soon. Peace.