NEAR To Impossible: Christopher Gulczynski | Niche Protocol | Rebuilding Social Media on NEAR

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1. 0:00

   I've always been interested in how people come into groups and like what those groups do and what the access to those groups looks like and what those those types of interactions look like and why those people coming together in the first place Niche is a complete reinvention of the way we think about social networking it's not really social media it's not social entertainment but it's like back to the fundamentals of what made a social network and what made that valuable my name is Chris gozinski I'm a

2. 0:36

   CEO and co-founder of Niche originally I went to school for graphic design and illustration was kind of my thing that's like what what got me into like kind of the feel it just kind of morphs into UI ux or like website work and that turned into app stuff and I just kind of found myself rolling into like the tech world because that's that's where the work was and that kind of what is what stimulated

3. 0:59

   my my professional uh interests so Niche kind of came out of I think a professional interest like almost almost an obsession around certain like sociological principles about how people come together into networks and what those networks are comprised of and what the accessibility into those networks are why are we all in this big Network right like what what commonalities do we share because right now I'm in a network with co-workers and high school friends

4. 1:25

   and my family and we all share the same like relational status and that seems kind of weird right that's not normally how people come together in networks they come together on things that bring them together like background or uh interests or things that derive identity and I think that's how people come come together in real life so I want to Echo that in our digital presence so as we were kind of like contemplating what we were going to work on and we

5. 1:48

   were thinking about maybe professional networks or like different types of networks and we we kind of stumbled across the idea of ownership of like who what are the what is the value of these networks go to does it go to the the people that run it the people that are in it the the company that that holds the the platform and we basically backed ourselves into a rediscovering doubts and we're like wow there's a model of

6. 2:12

   ownership and a new way of self-governance that that exists but the barriers to entry are really high so we wanted to like take that model and then amplify it to all the people that are in Facebook groups or like Reddit or things like that and then build them a purpose-driven home give them the value propositions of the the technology of web3 I think the benefit of a new organization of social media the way Niche does it touches on I think just

7. 2:37

   general consumers General users we call them members as well as like the creators and the community leaders and I think even Brands too it provides Brands a new way to interface with communities in a mutually beneficial way where they're building relationships rather than just like broadcasting some kind of advertising right that's so impersonal the way we came to near we were doing a diligence on like all sorts of other platforms different blockchains and

8. 3:00

   really what it boiled down to for us I think it was accessibility uh the ecosystem being you know developer friendly as well as just being friendly in in a general term to building complementary things that that go with us right there's a lot of projects happening on near that are very complementary that we can integrate with as well as just general security like technical requirements you have to have a blockchain that can facilitate those

9. 3:25

   types of interactions in an economical way and in a expedient way too like people want to see the instant results right now they make it accessible to to web two Founders like myself coming into it but I think even even having been part of of unicorns before right being in the founder seat and being in the CEO seat is a very different different uh perspective I think once you take into account all the people that are

10. 3:47

    necessary to help you along the way and what that what that support system looks like because it it takes a village it really does and I'm I'm happy to be part of the the New York system because of the support that they're giving us like we really can't do this alone generally speaking I I'm really excited to see what our first class of Founders clubs looks like I think that's exciting no matter what the project is like what your first group of users looks like in the utility they find in your product

11. 4:12

    like in the early days of Tinder or even even Bumble two we we found it was a sticky product no matter the mistakes we made maybe even on the engineering side people were willing to stick with us to to experience a product because they found some some pragmatic use some utility some fun some entertainment so I'm really looking forward to that where the metal meets the road we've put the product out we've got our clubs in line and then to see what the people really do with it we feel web3 is like the

12. 4:37

    future of how things are going to be built right this is this is almost like social networking 2.0 and maybe now it's time to put a little intentionality behind it with this new tech stack and the the value that it brings toward people so that we can we can evolve what people's networks look like and the value that we're giving people and the ownership and the agency that we're giving this is this is just the next Evolution and I think web3 like allows

13. 5:01

    us to do that so like we're really excited to like bring this this new Rich technology and like the the core principles I think of like you know decentralization ownership and privacy and all those things uh how that manifests into a product I think we're really excited to bring that to people success to me looks like uh access axis I feel like I want to give access to everyone uh everyone should

14. 5:24

    have a network of people that they can relate to and whether they can feel like they can be themselves online or offline I think the more I can facilitate that and we can like bridge the gap of someone who's looking to get into a group of people or an interest to watch them start as a neophyte work their way through different clubs finding just their right group of people and then

15. 5:46

    they're themselves then they find just that like Niche where they belong and they can blossom and they can grow and I think a niche we're trying to disrupt what people think of social media and what role that plays in people's lives because right now I think it's taking a form of social entertainment uh which is which is cool and fun but it could be so much more