Antler's Rajiv Srivatsa on careers in a Web3 world and the future of the creator economy

Venture capital firm Antler’s India arm plans to deploy a third of its $100-150 million corpus for the country in blockchain and Web3 startups. The VC firm says it will offer Indian startups a global network of Web3 investors, entrepreneurs, strategic ecosystem partners like Solana and Polygon, apart from users, developers and other resources.

In a conversation with LinkedIn News, Rajiv Srivatsa, partner at Antler India, spoke about other sectors where he foresees hectic activity, career opportunities in the blockchain and metaverse space, the creator economy, and more. Edited excerpts:

Over the last couple of years, we have seen fintech, including payments and lending, and ecommerce do really well. Social commerce is on the upswing too. What are going to be some strong themes over the next couple of years?

In addition to whatever you said, SaaS and vertical SaaS will also take off. I think, overall, the acceptability of tools and solutions specifically for hybrid workspaces has surged rapidly. There will be a lot of new use cases on how to make hybrid work, whether it’s the creator economy or the new age of corporate relationships and performance management

Then you have more vertical stuff, say, insurance, or oil and gas or the fitness industry. They are undergoing a lot of change. A lot of these Fortune 1,000 companies in the US are still heavily reliant on mainframes and a lot of old solutions. This is where Indian IT services really took off in the last two decades. But now I think there will be a massive set of migrations to very specific solutions in the cloud. So, I think there's a humongous amount of work that can be productised, and that can be sold to the Fortune 1,000 companies for building some phenomenal institutions. India has the capability for doing that.

Then, everything around the metaverse, after Facebook made it mainstream. And it just requires two of the top five companies in the world to make this far more mainstream. That'll happen in the next 2-3 years with VR and AR headsets.

Last but not the least, everything related to human relationships, human potential, health. Mental health has been talked about extensively after the pandemic, but what people have not yet talked about is virtual relationships. Young people are building relationships through Roblox, in the metaverse. And what's the impact of all that on mental health? That’s going to be a big area. Health as a theme will explode over the next 4-5 years.

I think there'll certainly be opportunities in commerce, logistics, hospitality, etc. Of course, there's also a massive swing towards Bharat. Social for Bharat became a big thing in the last two years, as did jobs.

For all the conversation about the potential of Bharat, truth is, the addressable market remains small. And when you look at insurtech or fintech, for example, the bulk of the business continues to come from the metros. Do you think it is something that's going to play out over the next 5-7 years?

There are some proxies to that. I think the GDP of the country is a huge proxy. So, based on other countries’ data, somewhere around $5,000 to $10,000 in per capita is when the disposable income reaches a point where people can spend on other things beyond food, shelter and clothing. It happened in China. Whether that's commerce or hobbies, going beyond the basic needs, I think this will happen in the next 10 years.

"There’s massive, high-margin monetisation for the first 10 million, reasonable, mid-margin monetisation for the next 50-100 million, but beyond the top 100 million monetisation is a massive challenge – it just gets into trickier territory."

COVID had a huge impact on GDP but if you take out that kink, somewhere in this decade is when that inflection point for GDP per capita is likely to be reached. So the entire game right now is to be patient and to invest in building great products.

Monetisation beyond the top 50-100 million is where the challenge is. There’s massive high-margin monetisation for the first 10 million, reasonable, mid-margin monetisation for the next 50-100 million, but beyond the top 100 million monetisation is a massive challenge – it just gets into trickier territory.

But every year, I would say 10-20 million will get into the second bucket. And there'll be an inflection point suddenly where a 100 million might get into the second bucket, but it's going to be tough to predict when that happens. It also depends on how fast the GDP grows.

In the light of the regulatory uncertainty around blockchain and cryptocurrencies, what would be your advice for founders and entrepreneurs in the space?

The way 3.0 works is there'll be a lot of platform-level innovation, it's almost like open source. It’s very easy to take the common code base and start an application-level company. But if you see where the value is going to be, it’s at the protocol level or the platform level. If you're building a platform-level product, you can build it anywhere. You can domicile it in India, you can domicile it elsewhere. It’s tough to predict what the government is going to do, but I don't think it’s going to ban any of this stuff.

What we are hearing is that there may be more regulations, but there are ways to circumvent some of that by being domiciled abroad. As long as you're building a platform-level product or a protocol-level product, I think there's absolutely no need to be worried about all these regulations. You can just go build like any other company and get global usage.

Actually, there's a huge advantage with some of these companies. You can find talent anywhere in the world. That's the whole point of decentralisation. You can be based anywhere in the world, you can find capital across the world.

What kind of career opportunities do you see emerging in the space?

A lot of the big work is happening in the Valley. There are fewer companies and less mature companies in India. You do see a bunch of crypto exchanges, which have scaled up in India. And of course there are a lot of extension use cases where the crypto exchanges are getting into, such as managing capital or doing NFTs. And that's a good area to learn if you ask me for career opportunities.

"I wouldn't be surprised if there's a humongous number of foundational, platform-level engineering jobs, as well as a lot of content being created for some of those use cases. If you're someone who's a strong community person or an influencer, that's gonna throw out a lot of opportunities."

On the platform level, on the metaverse itself, very few companies have invested yet because people are still predicting the device. For it to really take off, it’s going to be end 2022 or probably 2023, once Apple introduces their AR headset and a bunch of companies make it more mainstream. So it's probably two, three years away, which means it needs lots of capital and a lot more patience. And that's not something you in many companies in India take on given the overall venture and the funding landscape.

But I wouldn't be surprised if there's a humongous number of foundational, platform-level engineering jobs, as well as a lot of content being created for some of those use cases. For example, literally imagine everything that's been built for the mobile and built for the web now needs to be translated into AR as well as VR. So if you're a content creator, there's a bunch of very interesting stuff this is gonna throw out.

If you're someone who's a strong community person or an influencer, that's gonna throw out a lot of opportunities in terms of doing all of that in a completely different device. These are the 2-3 obvious ones, but I would say if you're an engineer, the number of platforms for that you can develop and build for will be phenomenal.

I think it's going to fundamentally change a lot of jobs across these streams over the next 5-10 years.

Let's talk a little bit about the creator economy. Do you think the whole idea of creation as an occupation is going to become mainstream over the next few years?

I very strongly believe so. Over time, monopolies have been built and companies have increased in size. But with the APIsation of work as well as the pandemic, it's going to come back to having companies which are much, much smaller. A very utopian extreme view to that is every single human being is freelancing.

Because, imagine, you're working for a company for three months. All your incentives, your salary is based on how well you do on the three-month project. You then take a break for two months because you want to travel and then you come back and work for company B. It's almost like Web 3.0 for the professional. You have complete power over where you work rather than the place where you're working having power over you.

"There will be a plethora of multi-billion-dollar companies catering to the creator economy across verticals. It could be as big as the SaaS market in a way, because SaaS for the enterprise means creator economy for the individual."

I think freelance is still not as mainstream, but you're going to get that to be the default way in which professional life will actually happen. The moment that happens – or even if that doesn't fully happen – the movement will mean enormous opportunities for the creator economy.

And this could be creators who are individuals working in companies. It could be people who are in the media stream, creating art and music. And, let's say, people in the auto industry coming together and contribute to building a great auto company. There’s a variety of concepts in the Web 3.0 world.

For example, a lot of SaaS products coming together and a lot of individuals coming together can make a very distributed workforce. ?

So there will be a plethora of multi-billion-dollar companies that will be created for this “creator economy” across specific verticals. It could be as big as the SaaS market in a way, because SaaS for the enterprise means creator economy for the individual. And if the enterprise is going to be a collection of individuals, imagine how big this could be.

Finally, what's your advice to startup founders and entrepreneurs looking to raise funds? How do you make that perfect pitch deck?

Actually, there is no need for advice today. There are so many venture capital firms and so many people looking to fund you. Just be true to why you're building something and how you want to build it.

Whether you're a first-time founder or repeat founder, just know the “why” and the “how” and execute that. And, obviously, you'll probably have to raise capital multiple times every year, but if you just go and tell your story in the most passionate way you can, capital is very readily available.?

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