From Binance to Metaverse Entrepreneur with Chase Guo 🔥
Welcome back to Extreme Interview, where Marketing Manager New Legends sits down with key members of the ChapterX team. Today’s interview is with one of ChapterX’s founders, Chase Guo!
Chase discusses his background in traditional finance and his path to Web3, which led him to become the Investment Director at Binance. He also shares his thoughts on what it takes to be an entrepreneur and builder of Web3 projects. 💯
Hi Chase! Tell us about your life before crypto. 🤔
I grew up in Singapore and joined the Singapore army for two years after high school. I decided I wanted to go to an American university because it’s so different in culture from the British education that I had throughout my childhood. I was definitely in an exploratory phase after high school and I applied to a bunch of schools and got into UC Berkeley. I ended up loving the West Coast culture; it’s very chill.
So what led you to the East Coast after that?
I decided I wanted to go into finance and thought the East Coast would offer better opportunities. So I applied for a transfer and then went to Penn. I was working towards getting into the finance space and actually got a summer internship at Blackstone. That’s how I started my first job and I guess the rest is history. I was at Blackstone for about four years.
How about crypto? You worked in traditional finance, what got you interested in Web3? 🧐
Yeah so I’ve been in the crypto space since 2017. While working as a financial analyst, I was exploring this new asset class; cryptocurrency. I was going to every single conference in Hong Kong and I remember the first Ethereum that I got was literally over the counter. You have to carry a pile of cash and go to this physical place to buy it. You had to basically hand deliver cash to a very heavily guarded banking counter. These guys are literally carrying rifles and staring down you while you give them the cash. They send Ethereum to your wallet. So that’s how I first got into crypto.
Fast forwarding, you eventually became the Investment Director at Binance. What was that experience like? 🤑
It was incredible. I had so much exposure to the industry because every company wants to talk to you. I ended up having 10 to 15 meetings a day with different projects. Overall I talked to maybe a couple hundred projects about potentially investing in their products. I ramped up quickly and really saw the space evolve and that’s also when the metaverse theme became interesting to me. I then led seed round investments in Layer Zero Labs and a few GameFi projects which fundamentally shaped my beliefs and also made good friends along the way.
I realized with the metaverse, you’re building the infrastructure for creative people and a more immersive platform for that creativity. So to me it seems there will be multiple metaverses powered by tokens and validated by user generated content, similar to how blockchains evolved.
What inspired you to enter the entrepreneurial space and build your own metaverse?
I’ve always been someone who liked to do things differently and make my own path. After getting some experience in crypto and finance, I thought it was the right time to make a move. I met Tania and Ohad and they complement my skills really well. Ohad’s really strong on the tech side and Tania is very complementary with me in terms of all the business stuff and products. I decided to give it a shot and since space is so early, there’s still room for someone like me to come out and build something special.
What does the future of ChapterX look like to you? 🔮
A lot of new use cases for our metaverse will pop up over time and we’re trying to explore every day. The goal is to make things more immersive, but to what extent? No one knows for sure, but I think it’s safe to assume that in the future, everyone will have an immersive space in the metaverse.
So what will that space be used for? It can be gaming for now, but over time it will evolve into a more social space and then maybe it will be more event based with technology improving. Then it will definitely shift towards AR and VR, where it’s going to be super immersive. I think that tech is still not mature yet. It’ll take maybe five to ten years, but in the meantime, I think there’s still a lot of use cases for us to explore with gaming and socializing, but also education. We really need to educate people on what Blockchain is about.
What advice would you give to other people in your position that are either founders right now or they’re working to start a Web3 project? 💯
I think the key is to have a product that you can scale and then onboard many people to use and actually solve a problem for users. Creators need to think deeply about demonstrating the utility of blockchains, NFTs, and tokens to users and how that can give them more immersive experiences. We can unlock incredible experiences for people with this technology, but need to prove it with the quality of our product and features.
Alright Chase, we’re going to close out the interview with Quick Hits! One word answers to rapid-fire questions. What’s your favorite Solana NFT project?
MonkeDAO.
What’s one place that you’d love to travel that you haven’t been to yet?
Barcelona.
What’s your favorite color?
Blue.
What’s your favorite anime?
One Piece.
How about your favorite beverage?
I like to drink tea.
If you could have any superpower, what would it be?
Time travel.
About ChapterX
ChapterX is an immersive Metaverse platform that helps Web3 companies build customizable worlds cost effectively and time-efficiently. Users can opt for fully customizable worlds with unique NFT avatars and games, or the one-click world where you instantly create a pre-made world. Web3 functionalities like in-world DAO governance, game tournaments, voice/video chat are also integrated within the platform.
