2018 Reflections, Resolutions, Reminders : Building Deep-Tech in India

2018 has been a whirlwind. My colleagues and I have carefully watched the blockchain / decentralized technologies space for years, learning alongside some of its earliest pioneers and following the entire cycle of 2015’s Ethereum growth, 2016’s fermentation, 2017’s bull cycle craze and 2018’s sobering plateau. Throughout all this: the world has changed; we have changed. Yet I would not change one thing about this journey: the people we have brought together and learned from, the evidence we’ve seen first-hand confirming the transformative potential of this new technology, and the personal growth we have each experienced — these tenets and realities are what make our conviction and bond grow stronger every day.

2018 was also a new beginning. We established Dunya Labs in August, a blockchain studio in Bangalore that aggregated all we have learned from the past few years into a cohesive thesis. We built a strong international team, a brand known for quality, community and integrity, and are launching our first product in a mere few months. We are working on some of the most exciting technology domains in one of the most exciting technology markets in the world.

We could not be luckier.

To close out 2018 and welcome 2019, I’d like to share a few thoughts. Firstly on blockchain and decentralized technology, and then on our entrepreneurial journey at Dunya Labs.

Decentralized Technologies:

1. 2018 was the year that sobered the seemingly endless euphoria of 2017. Global regulatory pressure against the unregulated, low-governance ICO boom finally halted a long and crazed season. Products failed to ship, investor and retail sentiment came back to reality, and brakes were put on the runaway ship. This, to us, is a good thing: it is constraint, not excess, that drives innovation, and we welcome the new wave of smart money, smart talent and integrity entering to build in blockchain for the long-term.
2. Working in socially-revolutionary technology requires a keen, realistic eye on macro trends: drivers and timescales are everything. Increasing privacy and authoritarianism-driven censorship concerns are strong drivers for adoption of decentralized technologies like blockchain. The beauty of working in this space is that it requires deep understanding of macro trends (geopolitics, global capital markets, tech trends), but also similarly deep thought into exactly how any new product addresses these trends. Too often “big-tech” and “bad governments” are used as catch-all phrases to promote “decentralized technologies”: next year, we must ask ourselves, exactly how are the products we build adding value to the decentralization movement? We are seeing teams that are articulating and building around these concrete theses: these will be the winners.
3. Transformational technology requires the vision (and patience) of building products that live on trajectories — we may be laying the groundwork for a “parallel” decentralized world, but how will the centralized one port into this vision? Products like Brave, which have “current world” product-market fit and utility value (consumers right now care about faster, safer, privacy-preserving browsers) and “future world” trajectory (with “BAT”, Brave envisions shifting the entire digital consumer — publisher paradigm) thrive on trajectories, and help adoption of the future-world by doing so.
4. Phase 1 of decentralized protocol adoption is acquiring developer and entrepreneurial mindshare. Phase 2 of decentralized protocol adoption is product-market fit between what those developers/entrepreneurs built, and mass consumer markets. Building for Phase 1 means building the picks, shovels and on-ramps to help developers and early adopters onramp to using and (most importantly) building decentralized applications.
5. Next year we will see the public blockchain protocol wars, as numerous new protocols ship their testnets and release their mainnets. There will be the good (cross-pollination of innovative features, capital deployment by ecosystem funds to capture developer mindshare, ) the bad (governance failures, capital deployment failures, missed timelines, slower-than-expected adoption) and the ugly (it is a war, after all). The teams that are able to align with the winners or build interoperable blockchain infrastructure will be rewarded greatly.
6. 2019 will be the year of the serious builders. We are sure it is going to be an incredible ride where we continue to learn, collaborate, and build with some of the brightest in the world.

India:

1. “Blockchain, not crypto” is the first narrative that plays out in a market newly exposed to blockchain and cryptoassets. This narrative is playing out in India right now. Serious blockchain enthusiasts must take the time to truly explain to all stakeholders how regulations can be shaped to embrace the most revolutionary parts of blockchain-enabled technology: by not shying away from understanding cryptoassets.
2. Developer education and awareness is sorely needed. India has a vibrant and talented developer ecosystem at scale — yet the exposure to blockchain barely strays beyond Hyperledger and some dabbling in Ethereum. Demystifying exactly what public blockchain protocols are — are finding ways to offer developers a hands-on experience — is the first step to gaining broader awareness.
3. India is one of the most exciting markets to be in, period. With the largest youth population in the world and strong economic growth on the horizon, India is going through one of those “growth” moments that happens only once in a country’s lifetime. There are numerous obstacles to face — but one can see this as a problem or as an opportunity.

At Dunya Labs:

1. We inaugurated our Bangalore office and grew to a team of 12 in less than 4 months; we are a killer group of engineers, product folks and blockchain enthusiasts.
2. We built a computational resource management tool for EOS platform that will be released in Q1 2019.
3. We worked with the Indian government closely on blockchain regulation and developer education, becoming a voice in India’s future outlook on blockchain.
4. We launched the Catalyst Series alongside key government and corporate partners, a hands-on developer workshop that offers training in new blockchain protocols, driving developer adoption and community building for the protocols of the future.
5. We published thought pieces and research content to bring the Indian ecosystem closer to blockchain’s cutting-edge developments.
6. We brought incredibly strong board members on board, including Cyndi Williams, previous MD of Thoughtworks Studio and Ramana Nanda, Harvard Business School Professor.
7. We continued to practice our principles: experimentation, excellence, integrity and community.
8. We lent a hand to numerous entrepreneurs who are interested in, or actively working in, blockchain in India. We’d love for you to reach out too.

I look back on this year and am filled with gratitude. A wise person once told me, “Professionals win on mastering competency. Startups win on mastering luck.” For this past year, luck has been on our side. Seize the moment.