Shaping Two Innovation Stories: The Case for web3

One of my favorite questions to ask people in my industry is for their tech origin story. Some people took apart machines as children. Others loved math or a particular science course. My origin story didn’t come from a childhood fascination or studying computers. It started in an unlikely place: Iran. 

I’ve spent my career investigating a pattern that I first witnessed on the streets of an Iranian city called Shiraz in 2004 and 2005. When I was in graduate school, I went there to research political opposition movements. But my personal philosophy and worldview  transformed when I saw Iranians, most younger than me, using Bluetooth technology to call and text complete strangers. At the time, anyone from a free and open society (including me) would have found this to be a strange use case -- Bluetooth for us was mostly a way to drive and talk simultaneously. But in a repressive society where the government shuts off cell phone networks, people got creative. They came up with uses that even the builders didn’t imagine.

This particular use of Bluetooth was a clever way tech could change the distribution of power by going around the authorities. This late came to international prominence during Iran's Green Revolution in June 2009. But there was also something bigger at play. Two innovation stories were converging. First, the story of the people who build the tech to solve one set of problems. And second, the story of the users in the rest of the world who are applying that technology to a completely different set of challenges. That second story showed me why that tech matters.

And there’s a new convergence today. When I see everything happening with digital assets -- from the assets themselves to the infrastructure supporting them -- I can’t help but think we are in the earliest stages of that first story where the builders are creating something new to solve a particular set of problems. We marvel at the tech, especially its complexity and its potential. We know we are experiencing a once-in-a-generation change that could in some ways create a successor to the Internet, but also coexist with the web as we know it.

While these innovations are exciting, the even bigger motivation is still that second innovation story. Over the next several years, people in every corner of the world, each with unique challenges and ideas,  will see new uses of this technology. They will take it and apply it in ways that will surprise founders, investors, and experts. When the two innovation stories converge around everything we are calling “web3” (crypto, NFTs, DeFi, decentralized infrastructure, smart contracting platforms, etc.), we will see the most significant transformations in world affairs since the digital age began.

Why am I so confident about all of this?

Just before COVID-19, I met a brilliant new friend named Avichal Garg, of Electric Capital. He captured my imagination as we pondered the geopolitical implications of crypto and other digital assets. I have since had the privilege of getting to know some of the best minds shaping a new chapter of technology. The internet fundamentally changed how information moves around the world. Now, we’re seeing a fundamental change in how value moves around the world.  

Katie Haun is at the forefront of this change. She’s broadened my perspective and encouraged me to engage this new tech more formally. I took her advice, and now I'm completely hooked and taking the next step. I am excited to announce that, in addition to and separate from my role as Founder & CEO of Jigsaw, I’m now also serving as an outside advisor to Andreesen Horowitz. 

At Jigsaw, my colleagues and I focus on some of the biggest challenges related to the Internet. I work with brilliant engineers, researchers, designers and product visionaries to explore threats to open societies, and build technology that inspires scalable solutions that help make the internet safer and more accessible. And in this outside role, I have an opportunity to do something similar for challenges related to the movement and distribution of value throughout the world. In this outside role with Andreesen Horowitz, I look forward to continuing the work that I’ve done since that trip to Shiraz in 2004, and to ensuring that the technologies we’re building today give users the chance to write their own stories, surprise even the builders, and ensure a better future for us all.