Wisdom From The Women Leading The Blockchain Revolution With Jenny Q Ta

An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

Take risks. You have to invest. How can you be in the blockchain space without believing in cryptocurrency? It isn’t enough to talk the talk: you have to back it up. Decide which coins you want to invest in and learn when to buy, when to sell. You don’t want to be dealing with FOMO. You also want to be sure to buy low, sell high, just like with conventional investment on Wall Street.

As a part of our series about Wisdom From The Women Leading The Blockchain Revolution, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jenny Q. Ta, CEO of GalaxE.io by HODL Assets.

Jenny is a Wall Street veteran, self-made millionaire, and seasoned entrepreneur. As Founder and CEO of Titan Securities, a full-service broker-dealer and investment banking firm, she built and led the company until its acquisition in 2005. Prior to that venture, she founded Vantage Investments, another full-service broker-dealer and investment banking firm, and grew it to a third of a billion dollars in assets. Her most recent company, CoinLinked, achieved a $200M market cap in 18 months and was acquired by HODL Assets in August 2021. She drove the launch of its new NFT social platform GalaxE.io.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you share with us the story of how you decided to pursue this career path? What lessons can others learn from your story?

I’ve always liked to be independent. I used to work 8–5. But I had a mentor way back when I was at a brokerage firm, Shearson Lehman Brothers, who told me that if I wanted to make as much money as he was making at the time — he was making six figures a month — that I should consider entrepreneurship and become the boss, the innovator, that I knew I could become. And I took his advice, and the rest is history. The main lesson there is no risk, no reward. Yes, an 8–5 sounds safe, and to an extent, it is. But you’re going to be doing that for the rest of your life, and it won’t make you rich. With entrepreneurship, of course, there is risk involved. There could also be a lot of rewards. Take risks.

Can you tell us about the most interesting projects you are working on now?

Right now I’m really in love with Web3. I believe that’s the future: smart contracts, cryptocurrencies, the blockchain, NFTs, you name it. I love to work with tech folks who are building platforms that haven’t yet been built in the decentralized world. My current role at GalaxE is actually my first time being CEO of a company I did not found. So one of these days I’m going to write a book about the differences between serving as CEO and founder versus CEO alone. GalaxE combines Web2 and Web3 under one platform, which is pretty interesting. We’re raising a Series A right now; once when we lock that down, we’re looking to build the metaverse. Everybody’s building the metaverse. That’s going to be interesting in itself.

None of us is able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person you are grateful for who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about them?

I have a lot of mentors, but the first and foremost is my mom, without whom I absolutely would not be the Jenny I am today. My mom raised my brother and me on food stamps in Section 8 housing. Oftentimes there wasn’t enough money to pay the bills. We rode the bus everywhere. We wore secondhand clothes. My father was a prisoner of war, so my mother didn’t have a man to turn to for help. I watched all that growing up, and I knew I wanted better for her and for myself.

What are the 3 things that most excite you about blockchain and crypto? Why?

I got into the cryptocurrency space in the latter part of 2015. I would say that I was more fascinated by crypto than by blockchain. Web3 is the number-one draw for me: that includes NFTs, that includes music, that includes everything that is not yet seen today. But then, secondly, you can’t really love Web3 without believing in cryptocurrency. So I believe cryptocurrency is going to grow. The weak ones will die, and the ones that remain will be those with utility behind them. Thirdly, the building of the metaverse really excites me. The metaverse obviously is a part of Web3 and includes the blockchain, cryptocurrency, and the other components I’ve just mentioned. We live for the future. Technology is the future.

What are 3 things that worry you about blockchain and crypto? Why?

First and foremost is getting hacked. I’ve been hacked before, even keeping money in a centralized exchange, and it’s that much easier in a decentralized framework. Number two is related: we don’t have regulation. So it is extremely risky for startup founders to dive into a project without the certainty that what they are doing is in accordance with the law. Web3 is still very much the wild, wild west. The third thing that worries me is that misinformation seems to be spreading faster than verified information. Of the 8 billion people on the planet, only about 300 million are involved in blockchain, cryptocurrency, and NFTs at the moment. And only about half of them really understand what Web3 is. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt — FUD, as we say in the crypto space — spread faster than legitimate news. What the experts have to say may be factual and correct, but it isn’t sexy. And, of course, bad news makes the biggest news. I’m afraid the trajectory of the industry could be tainted by this skewed news feed.

How have you used your success to bring good to the world? Can you share a story?

I give back a lot. Besides donating to charities, I’ll give a startup a boost to help cover fees every once in a while. A couple of my mentees were having legal problems and needed a lawyer. Now, I’m no lawyer, but founding three companies has given me a crash course in managing my own affairs. So I hopped in and did some negotiating, and they ultimately came to a settlement. I fully intend to continue to share my knowledge and empower startup founders, particularly women founders. I’m an angel investor, and I try to support female-led companies wherever possible.

As you know, there are not that many women in your industry. Can you share a few pieces of advice you would give to other women in the blockchain space to help them thrive?

There are not many spaces or sectors that are female-dominated — even less so in tech. So my first piece of advice would be that, to be part of the boys’ club, you need to act like a man. The position we women are placed in is extremely difficult. They’ll call you names if you’re too strong, but then they’ll count you out if you’re too weak. Watch your peers and see how they run companies. Try to be empathetic but assertive. By doing what men do, you can’t fail.

My second piece of advice is just to learn. Google stuff. Read a lot. Get involved in different groups. If you don’t understand something, ask — even the men in the industry still don’t know everything, and they have to ask too.

Number three is to take risks. You have to invest. How can you be in the blockchain space without believing in cryptocurrency? It isn’t enough to talk the talk: you have to back it up. Decide which coins you want to invest in and learn when to buy, when to sell. You don’t want to be dealing with FOMO. You also want to be sure to buy low, sell high, just like with conventional investment on Wall Street.

Lastly, at the risk of sounding reductive, don’t treat yourself like society treats a woman. Some women I’ve mentored will sit at a round table with me and a group of men and completely shrink themselves. My philosophy is that everyone already knows you’re a woman, so don’t give them a reason to count that as a strike against you. Speak up. Voice your opinion. And when you don’t know something, admit that you don’t know it. It can be scary. But being transparent and honest like that will surprise people — the men in the room, specifically — and win you their respect. And respect is priceless.

What is needed to engage more women in the blockchain industry?

I see a lot of women already in the NFT space. But too many of them give up too easily. For example, I’ve seen men who lose tremendous amounts of money minting NFT collections, but they just keep on going. They’re too stubborn to admit defeat. One guy I knew dropped five or six NFT collections before he began making real money off of them, and now they’re earning him six figures apiece. Women, meanwhile, will turn and run after the first failure, thinking the space simply isn’t for them. Imagine if each of those women gave it one more try.

Women are also extremely intuitive and communicative. The way to keep other women in the blockchain business is not to give it up yourself. Because if you give up, your sisterhood will see that you’ve given up, and that will be all the more excuse for them to jump ship. So, keep doing what you’re doing! Drag your girlfriends into it if you have to. If your collection doesn’t sell, reassure them, “hey, even though mine didn’t sell well, that doesn’t mean yours won’t. Let me help you.” Help each other out. I think if we make that our motto, we’ll flood the fintech industry with women.

What is your favorite “life lesson quote”? Can you share a story of how it has been relevant to your own life?

The Austrian psychotherapist Alfred Adler said, “Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another.” A startup founder cannot succeed if they’re not empathetic. Empathy makes you a stronger leader. As I’ve said, I was raised by a single mother, very poor, and even after becoming a self-made millionaire I never looked at myself in a distorted, puffed-up way. I always remember that little girl wearing secondhand clothes and taking the city bus to school. Wealth doesn’t change me on the inside. I still feel what people in that situation feel. So if I can help those who are not as lucky as I am — and this doesn’t always mean financial help, though that of course doesn’t hurt — that’s me practicing empathy. And that’s only an example in the business world. Empathy is necessary to your personal life, too. Choose empathy and you will never go wrong.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement to bring the most good to the most people, what would that be? You never know what your idea could trigger. :)

I would definitely want that movement to be focused on uplifting women, I would love for all of the wealthy women in the world to combine all their money into one ginormous fund — billions upon billions, maybe get some male investors to chip in — and invest it entirely in female-founded companies. In the last five years, 98% of funding worldwide has gone to male founders and CEOs, with 2% left for the women. I’m hoping this will change, obviously, and I do my part to contribute to that change, but I can’t do it alone. The checks I write to women founders won’t tip the balances. If I could somehow influence the world’s powerful women to join forces like that, I think there’s the potential to effect real change.

How can our readers follow your work online?

I’m very active on Twitter. My handle is @JQT_web3vc. Folks can follow me there. They can also find me on LinkedIn and Instagram under my name, Jenny Q. Ta, and at my website, jennyqta.com. If they want to know more about GalaxE by HODL Assets, that website is galaxe.io.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!

Thank you very much. I greatly appreciate it.