Launching a Career in Crypto

she256 increases accessibility to the blockchain space by providing a network & education to underrepresented groups in crypto.

Meet Medha Kothari, the Co-Founder of she256 - a transformative movement and 501c3 non-profit that aims to increase diversity and break down barriers to entry in the blockchain space. she256 disrupts the blockchain industry by providing mentorship, education, and events to women and other underrepresented minorities. After originating in the Bay Area four years ago, she256 now has regular events like “Intro to Building Crypto Protocols” and “Crypto Taxes Tips & Tricks”.?Medha is also a research partner at Variant Fund, a first-check crypto fund investing in the ownership economy.

We dive into starting a career in crypto, intentionally increasing investing risk tolerance, and finding a community.?

Eve #WealthWednesday Highlight #30: Medha Kothari, Founder of she256

Thanks for having me, I’m Medha. I've been in the crypto space for about five or six years now since like 2016, 2017. So most of my time, I was a software engineer. That's how I got into this space. I was still in college studying computer science. That's how I found the Bitcoin white paper, through a college organization called Blockchain at Berkeley. After I got into that org, I was surrounded by people who are convinced that crypto is the future, and it's going to be the future of our financial systems, governance systems. And I got really cryptopilled at an early age. And so that's kind of what I spent my entire career on. I've never done anything else.?

Initially I bopped around a couple of different projects doing development work for them until I found the Celo ecosystem. So they're like a layer one Ethereum competitor focused on financial inclusion. In emerging markets. So I was there for a few years as a software engineer, working on their dev tooling team. So helping any sort of dev developer that wanted to build on top of our smart contract platform. So that was like our SDKs or CLRs things like that. And then most recently, I left my job and four months ago I started as a researcher at Variant. So they are like a crypto focused venture fund. And we invest primarily in the ownership economy thesis, which I can go into later if you're interested. But basically, yeah, we're like a crypto generalist fund that only invests in crypto, but kind of across different sectors, like DeFi, NFTs, kind of everything.?

And so definitely a huge pivot going from engineering to investing, but it's been a lot of fun. And then on the evenings and weekends, I run a nonprofit called she256, which aims to increase diversity in this space. So I started that with two friends back in 2018 and we've kind of continued it since. We're about to hit our four year anniversary, actually, which I'm really hyped about. We do a lot of different initiatives around mentorship, community-building, and educational content. And most recently we spun out this investment DAO called Komorebi that actually invested in your company, Eve. And yeah, that's been a lot of fun. It's only been around six months that we're basically a DAO that invests seed and pre-seed capital to female and non-binary crypto founders. And so it's just been a lot of fun learning about how to run a DAO, like how to make these investments. How to do collective decision-making, talking to founders, things like that. But that's what I spend my time on after work.?

What was your first investment?

In terms of traditional investing, I would say I was pretty risk averse until very recently. And so it was probably just a random ETF that my dad told me to put my internship money in. But even earlier than that, this is so random, but I'm obsessed with Crayola. Like the art brand. And I'm really into collector's items. I think my first investment was probably when I was 10 or 11 years old. And I convinced my mom to let me join an eBay auction for these retired Crayola colors because there's 13 of them that were retired and they don't make them anymore. They haven't really gone up in value, but it's fine.?

How/why did you get into your space?

Funnily enough, I have kind of two beginnings. What I thought was my beginning was college. I went to Cal and we're super well known for our blockchain ecosystem there. And I was really lucky to have found Blockchain at Berkeley, which was a student run organization kind of focused on crypto and web3 very early on. And so this was 2016, 2017. I was a sophomore in college. And I think I was just flyered when it was club rush season. And I ended up going to their info session and I was completely blown away. They weren't even talking about an org anymore. They were talking about entirely new primitives for our financial structures, governance systems, things like that. And I just got super sold on the philosophy or ideologies. And so I was like, okay, let me just, look into this, everyone I met there seems smart. Maybe there's something here. And so I read the Bitcoin white paper and then Ethereum. And I just fell like really, really into the rabbit hole and then ended up joining the organization and that just really accelerated my learning that semester specifically then I ended up staying in the org for like three years, I'm still really active in the alumni association. But I think the biggest thing was just being surrounded by people who are like my peers and my friends. So my closest friends came from that org. I'm still friends with them. They were all dropping out to start their own crypto companies or work on a different crypto project. And I was like, “Wow. Okay. Well, these are people I respect. Going into this random space, like I should really dive deeper.” And then it kind of became my thing. In terms of my first investment, I would say it's probably Bitcoin. That was just the thing to invest in. And then right before I got into this space, It was like beginning of 2017 and then the bull run happened. And that I think people were mainly just talking about Bitcoin. So, yeah, it was probably Bitcoin.?

I said I had two beginnings. So the other day I was going through my phone and I found a really old video from when I was in either eighth or ninth grade. And I was like in a mall talking to my dad who is like a nerd, just like me. He's like a software engineer. And he was actually like telling me about Bitcoin and I was recording him because I used to record little tidbits of information he would give me. And this was just one of them. So like, I guess I found out about it before college, but I totally did not have any recollection of that at all.?

I think, especially for me, because I'm usually a little bit hesitant or skeptical to try out new things, especially when they're related to money. I think like hearing it multiple times is a signal for me like, “Okay, people I respect, they're talking about this now.” I feel more comfortable looking into it.?

How/why did you get into your space?

So we started she256 in 2018. So I was still in college. And the way it started was me, Sara and Alexis who are all like amazing kick-ass women in the space right now, we all went to college together and we were all in that blockchain org. Three of us went to this meetup. It was like early 2018. It was probably something around zero knowledge technology. We were just like learning cool new crypto things. And we went, we had a great time. It was a meetup. And then, you know, at the end of the meetup, you network and talk to people. So we were doing that. And then we all kind of paused and looked around and realized that in a group of 60 people, we were the only three women there. And we had kind of enabled each other to even attend. And we were like, this is insane. Like, this is crazy, Berkeley has so many women that are doing cool shit. Like why aren't they here? And so we were like, okay, let's just throw an event. Like, we felt pretty well-equipped with our one year in Blockchain at Berkeley to teach some sort of Blockchain Fundamentals, 101 type of class with other women in tech type orgs on campus. So we're like, okay, let's just get 30 students together who are interested and teach them things. But that year was actually the year that Blockchain at Berkeley also threw what would become SF Blockchain Week. So like one of the biggest conferences in the space, it was like the first year we threw it, like the SEC came, like, I just remember it was huge. Like it was called the Crypto Economic Securities conference. And like people from all around the world in the US came. And we saw that a student run group did that. So we were like, okay, why are we setting our sights so small? We should go bigger. So basically we decided this in February and then we were like, okay, two months from now in April, we're going to throw a huge 400 person conference where the lineup is going to be all women in the space who are doing amazing groundbreaking work in this space. Kind of inspire people and women specifically that like there's already women doing cool shit here, and there's only going to be more and there's room for you here. That was the intention.?

And also just because back then, in conferences, there were just not a lot of women and in the speaker lineup. So we're like, let's just flip the narrative. So we did that. It was honestly like a full-time job, like planning a conference. I would never do that again. That was insane and all on top of doing schoolwork and doing crypto stuff on the side. But it was amazing. And the reception was amazing. Like it was fully sold out. We had amazing speakers who were still in the space now. And clearly there was an appetite for something like this. And we had a bunch of sponsorship money still left. So we got the team together. There were like 12, 13 volunteers and we were like, Okay. So what exactly are we? And we realized that we don't want to just be an annual conference. We want to do more. There's so many other facets. We can explore to get more women and underrepresented minorities in the space. So we decided to incorporate, become a 501-C3 officially. And just start becoming an incubator for different ideas associated with our mission, which was to bring more diversity to this space. And so it kind of just grew from there. We basically like hired people or volunteers that had their own, really cool ideas. So one person we hired had an idea of starting this governance initiative that we just launched a couple months ago where we're trying to become key governance stakeholders in a lot of the top ecosystems. So like for ENS, for example, where like the fourth largest delegate. And then we're also in the Uniswap community, Compound. A lot of others. And then we hired someone who wanted to do like an interview series, where she interviewed a bunch of cool women and non-binary folks in the ecosystem. I think of ourselves as kind of like a studio for mission driven projects. And one of those things was color AB like I mentioned, that spun out six months ago. And I'm the she256 representative, but we also partnered with people like Kinjal and Manasi. But, yeah, it's been one of my passion projects for the last four years. It makes me really, really happy. And I feel like there's still a lot of work to be done, but I think we've come a long way since our roots in 2018.?

What role do you play in the wealth space and why is it important?

It's a good question. I guess my role right now specifically is probably the most relevant, like my day job. Like I said, I'm an investor at Variant. And so venture capital is a huge part of wealth creation and kind of like wealth transfer.?

And then also running Komorebi, which is kind of like a newer experiment in venture capital or venture DAOs. And so I feel like my role there is to invest in like incredible women and non-binary crypto founders. And hopefully through that inspire more of them to become founders in this space. And also encourage people to join venture DAOs. Like a lot of our DAO members are women. And there haven't ever angel invested before. This is like their first foray into investing. So part of my job in the wealth space is encouraging women and underrepresented minorities to spend their money on investing and kind of grow their wealth in that way.?

What do you believe is the most exciting thing you’ve learned and want others to know?

That's such a hard question. I feel like I've learned so much. I would say one thing I've learned is to just increase my risk tolerance. Like obviously, this comes with the assumption of a lot of like privilege and, that's something I definitely want to acknowledge, but I think before I was just always really hesitant of putting my money where my mouth is. Like I was super interested in crypto, like literally for years, but I don't think I actually invested properly, like to a monumental amount to like very recently. And I think part of that was just because I was scared and I wasn't trying to full send. And so I was like investing in less risky things like 401ks or ETFs or whatever. But I think the best thing you can do in this space is be literally invested in things. Whether that's buying NFTs, buying a token to join a DAO, anything like that. Like, I think it's worth putting that money in there because you have so much more stake and like you have just so much more like, I feel like stake in whatever you're trying to join. It's like so much more skin in the game.?

Who is a person or company that inspires you in the space and why?

One of the co-founders of she256, Alexis Gauba. I think she's incredible. She's also a founder of a DeFi protocol. It's an options protocol called Opyn. And she's so inspirational. Like we were in college together, but she dropped out, like after her first year and went full in on Opyn. And it wasn't just like a side project for her. Like even now that it's been like three, four years and they have such lofty ambitions and they've made so much headway. And I think they've done this in a way that's also very inclusive. Like their team is very diverse. They care about that a lot. And also she's just like such a good mentor in this space. Like if you ask her anything she's down to help you out, like no matter how busy she is, And I think we need that type of energy in the space to like bring new people in and make them feel comfortable.?

Opyn is an options protocol that lets you basically hedge ETH and things like that. And they just launched Squeeth, like literally like a month ago. But I think everyone should check out. It's very fascinating.?

What advice would you give to someone getting started?

I would say, find your community. So much of how I learned about this space is through literally having friends. I don't think there's any amount of desk research that would have replaced the in-person conversations I had. And I think we were just talking about this right before this call, but like having the psychological safety and vulnerability to like, be able to ask questions and like maybe like ask stupid questions or like try out different protocols together, lose money together is I think really, really important. Because it bonds you, and it also allows you to knowledge transfer because we all have such different perspectives on, not only the space, but also our experiences as people on this planet. I feel like it's valuable to have a community where you feel that vulnerability and you can just explore things together. So for me, a lot of that is the she256 team, like I'm really close to them. We like to spend a lot of time together. And even when we're not talking about she256. We're just talking about crypto. And that honestly helped me kind of get over my initial risk tolerance and increase that to be able to try new things.?

Anything else we should know?

I'd love to keep in touch with anyone, especially if you guys have questions on how to get into the space more. But I’m really active on Twitter. I'm at @medhakothari And then also for DMs, I use Telegram. It's the same as my Twitter.?

That's probably what I use the most. I'm also on Discord, but I honestly hate Discord. They just are so chaotic. And then in terms of resources I wrote a guide that's like a beginner's guide to crypto. Manasi and I actually wrote it together. It's a bunch of links on things that we thought were really good reads to get into this space. Would recommend that.

#fintech #womenswealth #futureoffinance #investing #investment

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Have thoughts on this week’s topic or questions for me or Medha Kothari? Post your thoughts in the comment section. Until next week. ??

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